The Battle of Fort Davidson, also known as the Battle of Pilot Knob, was a battle of Price's Missouri Expedition fought on September 27, 1864, near Pilot Knob, Missouri. Confederate troops under the command of Major-General Sterling Price had entered Missouri in September 1864 with hopes of challenging Union control of the state. On September 24, Price learned that Union troops held Pilot Knob. Two days later, he sent part of his command north to disrupt and then moved towards Pilot Knob with the rest of his army. The Confederate divisions of Major-General James Fagan and Brigadier-General John Marmaduke drove Union troops under Brigadier-General Thomas Ewing and Major James Wilson from the lower Arcadia Valley into Fort Davidson on September 26 and on the morning of September 27.
On the afternoon of the 27th, Price aligned troops around Fort Davidson in order to attack it from multiple sides. While intended to occur together, the attacks occurred separately and were repulsed in the same fashion. Brigadier-General William Cabell's Confederate brigade made three separate attacks against the fort, and succeeded in crossing the fort's moat on the final attempt, but were unable to enter the fort. That night, Ewing decided to abandon the fort. His men blew up the fort's magazine and slipped past Confederate troops guarding the escape routes undetected. Some of Price's men temporarily pursued Ewing beginning the next day, but eventually broke off the pursuit to rejoin Price's main body. With his troops dispirited by the unsuccessful attacks at Fort Davidson, Price decided against attacking St. Louis. The Confederate army then moved westwards, before being beaten at the Battle of Westport on October 23. Price's men then withdrew to Texas, having been defeated several more times during the retreat and pursued much of the way. The site of Fort Davidson is preserved as a historic site and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
At the start of the American Civil War in 1861, the state of Missouri was a slave state, but did not secede. However, the state was politically divided: Governor Claiborne Jackson and the Missouri State Guard (MSG) supported secession and the rebellion, while Brigadier-General Nathaniel Lyon and the Union Army supported the United States and opposed secession. Under Major-General Sterling Price, the MSG defeated Union armies at the battles of Wilson's Creek and Lexington in 1861, but by the end of the year, Price and the MSG were restricted to the southwestern portion of the state. Meanwhile, Jackson and a portion of the state legislature voted to secede and join the Confederacy, while another element of the legislature voted to reject secession, essentially giving the state two governments. In March 1862, a Confederate defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas gave the Union control of Missouri, and Confederate activity in the state was largely restricted to guerrilla warfare and raids throughout 1862 and 1863.
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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