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By Pauline Masson
In the last week of September 1864 Pacific resident William J. Stuhlman faced a serious decision.
The Civil War was in its fourth year. Sherman and soldiers from the Pacific area were fighting in Georgia. Most people thought the war in the west was over. But in North Arkansas there was one holdout.
Confederate General and former Missouri Governor Sterling Price entered Missouri from Northeast Arkansas, with the contingent of 12,000 cavalry troops and 14 cannons.
It was the largest Confederate cavalry raid of the war.
Price’s goal was to capture St. Louis and recover Missouri for the Confederacy. He was confident he could enlist recruits and confiscate supplies for his traveling army along the way. And it worked to a degree. His army grew to 15,000, which was followed by a 500-wagon supply train and some 5,000 cattle that could transport an astonishing supply of seized goods and live stock.
Price’s Army became a horde of looters and pillagers, taking at will any usable crops, stored food, clothing, livestock, hardware and tack that was in plain sight.
Telegraph wires rang with reports that were read aloud at the railroad depot of the moving army that ravaged farms, homes and businesses. Families began to flee ahead of approaching forces to reach safer ground.
Williams J. Stuhlman, a Pacific resident and Union loyalist, who was serving as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Missouri Militia stationed in Union to protect the Pacific Railroad property there, eyed these reports with a particular alarm.
Mr. Stuhlman was one of the earliest property owners in Pacific. He bought his first property Lot 40 at the corner of Union and Second streets and built a brick house there in 1854, reported by some to be the first brick home in Pacififc. The house later became the Catholic Sisters convent. It was razed in 1960 to make way for the school parking lot.
In 1857 he bought a three-acre lot on Osage Street between fifth and seventh where he built a one story house that had both an attic and a cellar. He bought the seven acres behind the house and planted a vineyard. A native of Germany he was a skilled vintner. By 1864 he had 1000 gallons of wine stored in Oak barrels and vats.
Wine making, his grandson George Stuhlman said, was an art no doubt learned while living in Wurttemberg among the hills along the Rhine River valley, the premier red wine region of Germany.
Mr. Stuhlman was 37 years old when the Civil War started but he immediately enlisted in Wm. Ink’s Battalion of the Missouri Home Guard at the rank of sergeant. When the Home Guard was disbanded 90 days later, Sgt. Stuhlman enlisted in the Missouri Militia where he was elevated to the rank of second lieutenant.
What troubled him on reports of Price’s plundering was that he had stored in his cellar on Osage Street in Pacific a fortune in one popular commodity – a thousand gallons of oak aged Missouri wine – that it seemed almost certain the pillaging army would seize and drink the wine, and in drunken frenzy might destroy property and molest the women.
On Tuesday September 27, a battle was fought at Pilot Knob, south of Pacific. Confederates destroyed the Iron Mountain railroad and moved west to follow the Frisco Railroad lines north.
By Wednesday, September 27 fleeing refugees began to arrive in downtown Pacific on the Frisco ahead of the approaching Rebel army. Pacific residents gave them food and blankets to protect them from the September chill.
After listening to reports of the atrocities being committed by the ravaging rebel army. Lt. Stuhlman knew what he needed to do. He asked for and was granted a leave of absence to go home to Pacific and dispose of his wine.
In Pacific, he rolled the oak barrels to the street and poured the wine down the gutter. All 1,000 gallons.
It was a spectacular loss.
The 1860s were a high time for wine in Missouri. It took off in 1847 when Stone Hill Winery in Hermann began producing wine in large quantities. By the 1860s Missouri was the second highest producing state of wine in the U.S. next to New York.
Wine was more valuable than milk, molasses or whiskey. In 1860 a gallon of milk cost 24 cents. A gallon of molasses cost 50 cents. A gallon of whiskey cost between 60 cents and $2.03.
Cheap wine could be found for $1.30 a gallon. But, if aged in oak barrels, as Mr. Stuhlman’s was, cost could reach $3.95 a gallon. We know how he aged his wine because the oak wine casks, vats and barrels were listed in the list of his assets following his death in 1878.
If we compare the cost of cheap wine, at $1.30 a gallon, Mr. Stuhlman lost $1,300 when he dumped his wine into the street – $25,130 in today’s money.
To look at that another way, to buy 1,000 gallons of wine aged in oak barrels today would set you back $140 a gallon – $140,000 for Mr. Stuhlman’s lot.
It turned out Mr. Stuhlman was right to fear the havoc that drunken soldiers might wreak on the town.
At about 6:00 a.m. on Saturday October 1, 1864 some 2,000 Confederate Cavalrymen roared into downtown Pacific with orders to disable the Pacific and Frisco railroad property. They set fire to the railroad depot, eating house, ice house, repair shop, round house and five water tanks, 17 building in all. With no way to fight the fires some structures still burning at 11:00 a.m. when Union troops arrived.
The plundering force then broke into stores on St. Louis Street and private homes, grabbing up every usable item, and some for no observable reason. In one eye witness report, startled civilians watched as a looting soldier stomped on a little girl’s doll, crushing its head as the tiny girl watched in horror.
In another report, one soldier had confiscated a bolt of fabric from one of the stores. As he rode out of town, the fabric began to unravel from its bolt and waved behind the departing soldier like a carnival streamer.
Union forces disembarked at Dozier and faced Confederate troops with two piece of artillery lined across the Franklin Road. They drove the Rebels back into town where they again formed a line with artillery on St. Louis Street in front of the old Blue Goose mansion, where the new Pacific Post Office now stands.
Enough canon fire was exchanged that one hundred years later, residents were still digging the solid stone cannon balls from gardens and buildings.
Colonel Lewis Merrill, who commanded Union Troops in this event reported that five or six Union soldiers were killed in the skirmish and a like number of Confederates. No civilian lives were lost.
By 1 p.m. the Confederate troops gave up the battle and headed west. They took Uncle Peter Morrison and two other men as prisoners. They later released the prisoners at Union, minus their shoes, but were given horses to ride home.
Uncle Peter Morrison would spend the rest of his life as a popular speaker at public events where he shared his experience when he met ”Old Pap,” the familiar name for General Price.
No academic history book detailing what is known locally as The Battle of Pacific has surfaced. But in 2011 the Meramec Valley History Society produced a program that was recorded on a CD. The disk is available the Red Cedar Museum and Visitor Center.
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