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Submitted: 1/19/14 • Approved: 1/19/14 • Last Updated: 4/17/18 • R746139-G0-S3
Major
8 and 9th Infantry
Missouri State Guard
Civil War Confederate States Army
Mar. 9, 1841
Dec. 26, 1864
Confederate spy's fateful bid to hook up with invading army in 1864
MANCHESTER • Confederate agent James Morgan Utz's wagon clattered toward the Meramec River with a hidden stash of medicine and secret messages. Utz hoped to contact Gen. Sterling Price's army, which was pressing north toward St. Louis.
Utz, 23, had grown up on a farm in present-day Hazelwood and was a Confederate soldier until his capture in 1862. Returning home, he became a spy. He was driving west on Sept. 25, 1864, when Union cavalrymen stopped him near the village of Manchester. They hauled him to the Gratiot Street Prison, the jail for secessionists in St. Louis.
Soldiers nervously prowled the countryside around St. Louis because Price's push from Arkansas, begun Sept. 19, had thrown the local Union leadership into a dither. "The Invader in Missouri!" shouted a headline in the Missouri Democrat, a pro-Union St. Louis newspaper that blamed Price for the "apprehensions of many good citizens and the foolish hopes of some traitors."
GUERRILLA WARFARE
Price, a former Missouri governor, had joined the Confederacy shortly after the Civil War began in 1861. His advance with 12,000 soldiers was the first major strategic Confederate presence in Missouri in two years, despite the nasty guerrilla war that ravaged so much of the state.
As Utz packed medicine for the invaders, Union Gen. Thomas Ewing gathered troops at Fort Davidson, a vulnerable earthwork near Pilot Knob, terminus of the Iron Mountain Railroad 90 miles south of St. Louis. On Sept. 27, Ewing's force of 1,400 held off repeated Confederate attacks. That night, his army slipped away and exploded the fort's magazine.
Price kept moving north but decided against attacking St. Louis. Some of his cavalrymen burned railroad property in De Soto, Pacific and Union. In Pacific, they also took boots from Theodore Belfer's store and "a heavy stock of liquors" from William Manthy's tavern. The main army turned toward Jefferson City.
Its closest encounter to St. Louis was at the Cheltenham post office, on Manchester Road just west of today's Hampton Avenue. Postmaster Augustus Muegge said four Confederate horsemen asked him which side he was on and threatened to kill him. Shielded by his wife, Muegge fled out the back door.
CONVICTED OF SPYING
In St. Louis, members of the Order of American Knights, a secret pro-Southern organization, heard about Price heading west and decided not to rise up. Price was defeated near Kansas City. A military court found Utz guilty of spying and condemned him to hang.
His family was prominent locally and appealed to President Abraham Lincoln to spare his life, but Utz went to the gallows of the St. Louis County Jail, Chestnut and Sixth streets, at midday on Dec. 26, 1864. His last words: "I have nothing to say, only that I desire my person to be turned over to my friends."
He is buried in Fee Fee Cemetery in Bridgeton.
Source: Look Back series by Tim O'Neil
http://www.stltoday.com
Headstone Photo(s) Contributed by David M Habben DHabben@aol.com
Contributed on 1/19/14 by tslundberg
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Record #: 746139