The Pike's Peakers and the Rocky Mountain Rangers: A History of Colorado in the Civil War

Having been born and raised on the Missouri River at Atchison, Kansas, and having the ghosts of the Civil War about me constantly, I have been passionately interested in the Civil War as long as I can remember. The Victorian and antebellum homes with servant quarters still behind them, the wooded bluffs and caves where escaped slaves were hidden, and the mystique of the Missouri River area itself have maintained this feeling of the war for me. My mother’s immediate family was from the Missouri River bottoms on the Missouri side and my father’s immediate family was from rural Atchison on the Kansas side. From my incomplete and somewhat misinformed family and formal history education, I assumed for most of my life that my mother’s family was Confederate in its leanings and that my father’s family was Union. I was unaware that the town and county’s namesake, Sen. David Rice Atchison, was from Missouri and had much Pro-Slavery activity. No effort has ever been made to change the town’s name since the war. No Confederate tie to him was taught in any of my classes in school.