The Battle of Athens was an American Civil War skirmish that took place in northeast Missouri in 1861 near present-day Revere and southeast Iowa along the Des Moines River across from Croton (3 miles southeast of Farmington). The Union victory has the distinction of being the most northerly of Civil War Battles fought west of the Mississippi, and also of being the only such battle fought along the Iowa border.
As Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon pursued the secessionist Missouri State Guard to the southwest portion of the state, loyal Home Guard companies were forming throughout the state, while at the same time stranded secessionists were still attempting to organize. At Kahoka, Missouri, Mexican–American War veteran David Moore was elected colonel of the 1st Northeast Missouri Home Guard Regiment.
Colonel Martin E. Green called up the 2nd Division of the Missouri State Guard to a training camp on the Horseshoe Bend of the Fabius River. There he formed the 1st Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Division, Missouri State Guard. The lieutenant colonel was Joseph C. Porter and the major was Benjamin W. Shacklett.
Moore was faced by a growing secessionist force and by dissension in his own command. He determined to strike local secessionists, then fall back to Athens, Missouri (pronounced "Aythens") where he would be close to the Croton, Iowa supply depot and Iowa militia support. On July 21, with the help of a company of Illinois militia and a company of Iowa Home Guards he attacked the village of Etna in Scotland County, Missouri and drove off Shacklett's MSG cavalry. He then fell back to Athens.
Colonel Green responded by entering Edina in Knox County, Missouri on July 31—stampeding the local Home Guards. He then proceeded toward his target, Moore's Unionist regiment in Athens. Meanwhile, several hundred of Moore's regiment received Springfield rifled muskets.
On August 4 Green bivouacked seven miles west of Athens. While Moore attempted to prepare for attack, several of his company commanders allowed men to visit home. Moore called for reinforcement from Croton and Keokuk, Iowa, but they would not cross the river in time to participate in the engagement.
On 5 August 1861, Colonel Martin Green's force of about 2,000 Missouri State Guardsmen with three cannons tried to capture the town from about 500 Missouri Home Guard. Moore's pickets warned of the secessionists' advance at 5 AM, and Moore called out the regiment to begin assembling it for battle. Between men still absent on weekend leaves and removing the sick across the river, Moore had only 333 men in line.
Green's much larger force surrounded the town on three sides, with the river behind the Unionists. Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Callihan commanded the Union left flank. He found himself facing Major Shacklett's cavalry and James Kniesley's three gun battery. The Unionists had no artillery. However, Kniesley's guns were a motley assortment (a 6-pounder, a 9-pounder, and a hollowed log) supplied with only a few solid shot and improvised canister.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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