A “Desperate And Bloody” Fight: The Battle Of Moore’s Mill, Callaway County, Missouri, July 28, 1862

Description

On July 28, 1862, a Union cavalry column was ambushed by a Confederate force near present day Calwood in Callaway County, Missouri. For several hours on that July afternoon, hundreds of men fought not far from Auxvasse Creek, a tributary of the Missouri River, near a place called Moore’s Mill. The purpose of this report is to review the many historical sources that bear on the events of July 28, 1862, and to describe the methods and results of archeological investigations of the battlefield that took place in 2013 at the request of the Missouri’s Civil War Heritage Foundation with support from a grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service. The Missouri’s Civil War Heritage Foundation is planning to interpretively link this site to other significant Civil War locales in mid-Missouri that can be visited by persons with an interest in that state’s rich Civil War heritage. It is hoped that by reviewing the state of knowledge of the battle and confirming the location of the battlefield through archeological evidence, the battle will be better understood and the battlefield can continue to be preserved.