My husband grew up in Missouri near St. Louis, so he has me well up to speed on Missouri history. We still travel once a year or so to see his family. It is long trip from Oz to the USA. 16 hours or so non-stop from Sydney to Dallas. Our so-called conservative prime-mister is awful and we are about as messed up with PC as the USA.
yikes.
missouri along with kansas seem to form its own self contained version of the first war between the states. what i noted is that things seemed about equally divided in those states in the years leading up to and during the war. i think the history is particularly useful to study, if only as a model for things to watch out for if people cannot be civil with each other about political differences in the current era. back then in that region it was marked with several years of guerilla warfare. i suppose that would be what people would have to look forward to in the current era if folks cannot reconcile. while i was there i visited the wilson’s creek battlefield which was the second major battle of the war between the states after manassas (which i have also visited). the folks at the museum were fairly friendly with know-nothing questions from me, and i appreciated their help in bringing me up to speed on events related to antebellum missouri history. the stories of true grit, outlaw josey wales, and parts of the old tv series “wagon train” are set in the region. on my trip i only got time to see the springfield-branson area, having a nice time there, but regrettably missing everything else that the state has to offer. i would have liked to visit hannibal, for example, for the mark twain connection. (one interesting thing that i learned was that it was a big hemp growing state in the old days, and that this was the only crop amenable to slave labor in that region, since it was not quite suitable for cotton. on top of everything else it is a bit weird to wonder about all these historical folks running around growing hemp. anyways they seem to have been actually fighting about hemp in that region as much as anything else, if the historical accounts i have read are correct.)