Navigating the Missouri: Steamboating on Nature’s Highway:
1819-1835
By William E. Lass
(September 2008 Civil War News)

Illustrated, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 464 pp., 2008. The Arthur H. Clark Company, University of Oklahoma Press, Order Department, 2800 Venture Dr., Norman, OK 73069-8218, $45 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Joseph A. Derie
Joseph A. Derie is a VMI graduate and a long time Civil War buff and military book reviewer. A retired Coast Guard officer and licensed officer of the Merchant Marine, he is a Certified Marine Investigator and marine surveyor.

Review:
As told by the title, Navigating the Missouri tells the story of steamboating on those waters from its earliest beginnings to its ending (due to economic reasons) in 1935.

Chapter 7, “The War Years,” covers the Civil War in a short 36 pages. Of these only nine pages are about the mainstream Civil War and the war in Missouri, and the remainder are about the Indian Wars in Minnesota and the Dakotas and the use of steamboats to transport and supply the Army during those campaigns.

The war in Missouri covers the battle of Lexington, Price’s Raid, guerilla raids (interestingly, while guerillas shot up and captured a number of steamboats, they apparently never burned one), and the efforts of U.S. Army Quartermasters in the Western River Transportation Office in St. Louis to obtain steamboats to support the Army’s campaigns.

Apparently that office had the authority to impress steamboats to work for the U.S. (paying the going rates) if enough steamboats could not be contracted for.

Although well-written and well-researched, with many interesting pictures and illustrations, Navigating the Missouri is of only extremely limited attraction to the general Civil War reader. It will have some appeal to those with an interest in Missouri during the Civil War and in the Indian Wars fought during the Civil War.