Lost Cause in Montana

diane

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If any scholar of the Civil War wants something fresh to write a book about, the West during the Civil War and Reconstruction is an excellent topic! Everything from John Brown's daughter living in the obscure little town of Red Bluff, Ca and getting heckled by Confederate sympathizers to the curious City of the Dead (Colma, Ca). Cattle drives, railroads, farming colonies in Southern California. Gold in South Dakota, Colorado where there is a Dixie Land. (Farm colony who found out cotton is really picky about where it grows.) Many Southerners found it impossible to start over in the South but possible to finish up life in the West. Children born during and just after the Civil War made colorful the country! Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday come to mind...
 

5fish

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Here is a tale...


Ken Robison is a local historian and author of "Montana Territory and the Civil War: A Frontier Forged on the Battlefield" and the forthcoming "Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price's Army."
 

5fish

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You got me looking up stories...


The 1870 census found that Montana's 20,500 inhabitants were roughly one-third from Northern states and one-third from other countries. The rest came from the West, border states like Missouri or the South. Fewer than 1,000 people came from Confederate states, Malone and his colleagues wrote in "Montana: A History of Two Centuries."

"The Confederate sympathizers never came near gaining a majority of the Montana vote," they concluded, "but they sometimes raised enough hell to give observers that impression."

In Virginia City, Confederates reportedly celebrated Lincoln's assassination, Strahn wrote, by dancing in the streets.
 

diane

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The Civil War in Idaho Territory would be a good start! In 1863, Lincoln recognized the territory, which included Idaho, Montana, and part of Wyoming. This formation was because of political problems between Confederate Democrats and Radical Republicans - even needed to call in help from Ft Boise. The Confederates had arrived, as they had done in Kansas and other spots, to vote even though they couldn't. But - it shaped politics in the territory for over 100 years. (And the effect these foreign politics had on Native tribes - say, the Nez Perce - wasn't minor.)
 
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