Coming Events and Programs

The Bushwhacker Museum has two excellent traveling exhibitions scheduled for the 2011 season: "Black Jack Battlefield" and "Divided Loyalties".  

The "Black Jack Battlefield" exhibit will be featured in May and June. It provides fascinating information on an altercation that some claim was the first significant battle of the Civil War. It was assuredly the first pitched battle between pro and anti-slavery groups. This fight took place in June of 1856 in Douglas County, Kansas, about 30 miles from the Missouri line. 

The "Divided Loyalties" exhibit is scheduled for August, September and October of this year. It draws on more than nine million pages of Civil War related documents and court cases to examine the social conflict which permeated Missouri for the two decades following the Border War of the mid-1850s.

Some of the documents in this exhibit provide information on  the impact of slavery on the state's culture and economy. Other documents, such as muster roles and military correspondence, shed light on the lives of soldiers during this time period. More than a third of the exhibit focuses on challenges Missourians faced during the decade after the war's end, including the vigilante violence, and the disenfranchisement of much of the poplulation.