Brenda,

Well, actually there was a Lebanon, MO in Laclede County of SW MO, and it had a small Union garrison for some of the war to protect the main supply road to the important Union base at Springfield. There was no prison at Lebanon, though. Laclede County is about three or four counties NE of Lawrence County, MO. Some of the Union records of southern POWs they held do have errors in them, and I have seen cases where POW records were accidentally switched for those of another POW with a similar name.

Guthrey having been sent to the Rock Island prison meant that the Union forces in Missouri considered him a "legal combatant" and therefore deserving to be treated as a POW and all that entails.

That was a big deal in MO for a couple of reasons. The Civil War generals of both sides who attended West Point were taught the rules of warfare as they had been established in the Napoleonic wars a few decades earlier. Part of that included Napoleon's ruling against partisans or guerrillas as NOT being legal combatants, since they kept their combatant status hidden, did not wear uniforms, and in Napoleon's opinion were to be killed when captured because their form of warfare was against generally accepted rules of war. Specifically in Missouri, a Union general in charge of Missouri during spring 1862 (MG Henry W. Halleck) decreed officially that since guerrillas were not "legal combatants" Union commanders were obligated to conduct an on-the-spot "drumhead" hearing or tribunal when they captured southern men under arms without uniforms and execute them "in the field" if they failed to meet the status of "legal combatant." This led to both sides conducting a "no quarter" war where guerrillas were concerned. This went against the exception made by Patriots in the Carolinas during the American Revolution that since all the Continentals (five regiments of them) were surrendered to the British at the siege of Charleston, SC in 1780, remaining Patriots conducted guerrilla war against the British as the only mode of warfare left available to them. This became the basis for guerrilla war in some parts of the South, but that Union general ruled it violated the generally accepted rules of war in Missouri, at least.

The other reason this was touchy during Price's raid of MO in September and October 1864, was because part of the southern force executed a captured Union major and six Union privates for the war crime of burning the town of Doniphan, Ripley County in SE MO on 19 September. The Confederate force held those particular prisoners for several days and turned them over to a Rebel colonel who knew of this. This colonel on October 3 near Union in Franklin County, MO held an impromptu tribunal at a creekbed and executed these seven POWs, on the assumption the major sent out the patrol with orders to burn Doniphan, and the assumption that all six enlisted men were part of the patrol that burned the town. Actually, there was no proof the major actually issued any such orders, and only two or three of the six enlisted men were part of the patrol that burned that town on 19 September. The sad part of all this is that the Confederate colonel failed to leave his reasons for the executions with the bodies, nor did anyone in Price's command make any effort to send some rationale to the Union troops of the reasons for the executions of the seven POWs. When Union forces discovered the seven bodies with hands tied behind their backs two weeks later about 29 October (as I recall the date), word of this got around very quickly and even became well known in Rebel ranks. This tended to make all southern troops painfully aware that to preserve their lives if they became captured, they had to assert or even prove they were NOT guerrillas, especially if they did not have on a proper Confederate uniform, and Rebel uniforms were hard to obtain late in the war west of the Mississippi River anyway.

Even if Guthrey had not heard about these things, he may have been quickly notified by his Union captors that they had to take steps to determine if he was a "regular" Rebel soldier, because if was not, his life hung in the balance. I rather doubt he was in a Confederate uniform, but I could be wrong about that. The fact that his Union captors sent him on to the Rock Island prison tells me he was able to get his captors believe his "conscript taken against his will" story, and I heard this was a common plea by Price's soldiers captured not in a Confederate uniform. He may have been subject to a tribunal to determine his combatant status in St. Louis, because the tribunals were held there where the appropriate facts could be ascertained. .

I can see that some of this is rather subtle and hard to understand so many years later, but it was literally "life or death" at that time.

Bruce Nichols