At the outbreak of the Civil War, the choice of which side to join in the conflict was obvious for many young Missouri men. One stuck with family, or tradition, or with their convictions. For one young Cape Girardeau County teenager, though, the choice was not obvious. Eighteen-year-old William R. Whittaker was a resident of the Pocahontas area in Cape Girardeau County when he decided to join in the fray in 1863. Many of his neighbors were immigrants from North Carolina, and if they did not enslave people, then they often sympathized with those who did. Others were Northern sympathizers, however, as were the Germans who had settled in the area over the previous 20 years. Most young men who signed on expected glorious pursuits on the battlefield, but that proved unrealistic, as William would find.
When William decided to join up, he initially thought about going with the Southern forces. Ultimately he and his father joined Co. H of the 56th Enrolled Missouri Militia. Local Enrolled Missouri Militia units, or EMM, showed poor reliability. Many used the cover of being in the militia to settle old arguments with other local men, and the militia failed as an effective counter to guerilla activity. The solution developed by Governor Hamilton Gamble was to select the most loyal men who had fewer family obligations into units called the Provisional EMM. The units were to be equipped and paid by the federal government, and the men were eligible for federal pensions when these became available later.
William was selected for Company E in the 8th Provisional EMM, which began recruiting in May 1863. The men did guard duty at the forts in Cape Girardeau, and by summer William’s company served as guards at the bridge over Whitewater River near present-day Delta. August 1 a Union wagon train stopped for the night at Round Pond, 3 or 4 miles away from the bridge. The train of 30 wagons, 40 teamsters, and 20 guards carried supplies to Bloomfield. Guerillas led by John Bolin attacked the camp that night when the guards failed to deploy. The attackers killed between 10 and 15 men and burned most of the wagons.
The dead were hastily buried. Ten days later the Company E commander, Adolph Tacke, asked for volunteers to remove the bodies to Lorimier Cemetery in Cape Girardeau. William was one of these. The bodies were in very bad condition, and William became sick to his stomach. He required removal to the hospital in Cape to recover then went home briefly on sick furlough. He claimed later the incident resulted in chronic diarrhea, but that was a standard claim on pension applications requiring disability.
William returned to duty by early fall. As the fall 1863 judicial elections approached, it became obvious to Governor Gamble that radical Unionists dominated the Provisional EMM units, who opposed Gamble’s Conservative Unionist administration. Gamble disbanded most Provisional EMM units to prevent the militia from influencing the November elections. So, William’s company journeyed to Pilot Knob at the beginning of November and mustered out on November 8.
William came home to Pocahontas, and a year later married Margaret M. Sadler. He worked for years as a carpenter and was a very skilled builder. The couple lived out their lives in the county, and William received a military pension in his old age.
