M. Jeff Thompson

Brigadier-General Meriweather Jeff Thompson (January 22, 1826 – September 5, 1876), nicknamed "Swamp Fox," was an American soldier who was a senior officer of the Missouri State Guard who commanded cavalry in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. The () was named after him.

Early life and career

Meriwether Jefferson Thompson was born in Jefferson County, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), into a family with a strong military tradition on both sides. He received basic training in military tactics in Charleston, South Carolina, but was not appointed to a military academy. Following his education, he found employment as a store clerk in a few Virginia and Pennsylvania towns. He moved to Liberty, Missouri, in 1847 and St. Joseph the following year, beginning as a store clerk before taking up surveying and serving as the city engineer. He later supervised the construction of the western branch of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad. He married Emma Catherine Hays in 1848.

When Union Major-General John C. Fremont issued his namesake Proclamation, placing Missouri under Martial Law and threatening to execute prisoners of war, Thompson declared a counter-proclamation threatening to do the same. Lincoln would step in and recede the proclamation, stopping the bloodshed from breaking out. Thompson's force of 3,000 soldiers began raiding Union positions near the border in October. On October 15, 1861, Thompson led a cavalry attack on the Iron Mountain Railroad bridge over the Big River near Blackwell in Jefferson County. After successfully burning the bridge, Thompson retreated to join his infantry in Fredericktown. Soon afterwards, he was defeated at the Battle of Fredericktown and withdrew, leaving southeastern Missouri in Union control.

After briefly commanding rams in the Confederate riverine fleet in 1862, Thompson was reassigned to the Trans-Mississippi region. There, he engaged in a number of battles before returning to Arkansas in 1863 to accompany Gen. John S. Marmaduke on his raid into Missouri. Thompson was captured in August in Arkansas, and spent time in St. Louis' Gratiot Military Prison, as well as Alton Military Prison, in Alton, Illinois. In addition to Fort Delaware and Johnson's Island prisoner-of-war camps ("Poor old Jeff, how my heart went out to him; he a prisoner and his devoted wife in a madhouse", Major Lamar Fontaine wrote later).

thumb|left|Thompson as a POW

Eventually, he was exchanged in 1864 for a Union general. Later that year, Thompson participated in Major-General Sterling Price's Missouri expedition, taking command of "Jo" Shelby's famed "Iron Brigade" when Shelby became division commander. He served competently in this role.

In March 1865, Thompson was appointed commander of the Northern Sub-District of Arkansas. He agreed to surrender his command at Chalk Bluff, Arkansas on May 11, 1865.

Later life

After the American Civil War, Thompson moved to New Orleans, where he returned to civil engineering. He designed a program for improving the Louisiana swamps, a job that eventually destroyed his health. He returned to St. Joseph, Missouri in 1876 where he succumbed to tuberculosis. He is buried in Mount Mora Cemetery in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Honors

In early 1862 at New Orleans, a side-wheel river steamer was converted to a "Cottonclad" ram and named after Thompson. The CSS General M. Jeff. Thompson was sent up the Mississippi that April to join the River Defense Fleet in Tennessee waters, seeing its first action at Plum Point Bend. On June the 6th, after being set afire by gunfire at Memphis, the General M. Jeff. Thompson ran aground and soon blew up.

==See also==

List of acting Confederate generals
List of people from West Virginia

References

Sources

Allardice, Bruce S. More Generals in Gray. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995. .
Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. .
Filbert, Preston, The Half not Told; the Civil War in a Frontier Town. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001. .
Howerton, Bryan R. "Re: Jacksonport 1865 surrender list?" Arkansas in the Civil War Message Board, Posted January 1, 2004. Accessed January 1, 2012,
Morgan, James Logan. A Brief History of the 45th Arkansas Cavalry Regiment, C.S.A. The Stream of History, Volume 16, Part 4 (Oct. 1978). Accessed January 6, 2012.
Sifakis, Stewart. Who Was Who in the Civil War. New York: Facts On File, 1988. .
Silkenat, David. Raising the White Flag: How Surrender Defined the American Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. .

External links

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Official

M. Jeff Thompson papers, 1848-1959 at the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
M. Jeff Thompson papers, 1860-1940 at the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library
M. Jeff Thompson papers, 1854-1935 at The State Historical Society of Missouri
Patent Model for Rule for Describing Polygonal Forms Invented by M. Jeff Thompson at the National Museum of American History

Other

M. Jeff Thompson at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas
M. Jeff Thompson at The Political Graveyard