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The Battle of Carthage, also known as the Engagement near Carthage, took place at the beginning of the American Civil War on July 5, 1861, near Carthage, Missouri. The experienced Colonel Franz Sigel commanded 1,100 Federal soldiers intent on keeping Missouri within the Union. The Missouri State Guard was commanded by Governor Claiborne F. Jackson himself and numbered over 4,000 soldiers led by a hero of Mexico, Sterling Price, along with 2,000 unarmed troops who did not participate in the battle.
The battle was a strategic victory by the Missouri State Guard in large part owing to new tactics introduced on the battlefield by independent partisan rangers serving with Captain Jo Shelby. Carthage played a part in determining Missouri's course during the war, as it helped spark recruitment for the Southern regiments. A founder of the county who fought in the battle and was then elected Lieutenant Colonel of the 13th Missouri Cavalry Regiment and 5th Missouri Infantry attorney Robert Wells Crawford, served as a recruiter for the Confederate States Army in Missouri, a post he was nominated for by Waldo P. Johnson, formerly a United States Senator from Missouri in a letter to Missouri governor-in-exile Jackson dated October 24, 1862.
Chronologically the first major battle after Lincoln invoked "the war power" in lieu of a Declaration of War in his Message to Congress on July 4, 1861, the Battle of Carthage was strategically and tactically significant. The battle marks the only time a sitting U.S. State governor has led troops in the field, and then, against the Union to which his state belonged. Serving at the vanguard of Governor Jackson's army, a band of 150 independent partisan rangers were under the command of Captain Jo Shelby, a Missouri farmer. From tactical battlefield maneuvers under fire by Sigel's batteries to pressing his retreat to Sarcoxie, Shelby's rangers "snatched the victory at Carthage from Sigel's grasp", and pro-Confederate elements in Missouri celebrated their first victory. The depopulation of mineral-rich Jasper County and the destruction of Carthage by sustained hostilities throughout the war paved the way for Victorian-era resettlement.