Troubled State

In his private journals, Franklin Archibald Dick, a St. Louis attorney, Union officer, and provost marshal general, wrote of his concerns about keeping Missouri pro-Union during the turbulent Civil War years. His firsthand perspective of important historical events include the early Camp Jackson incident when he was Captain Nathaniel Lyon’s assistant adjutant general, and when he served as Missouri’s provost marshal general under Major General Samuel Curtis. Dick was troubled by the slow progress and terrible cost of the war. For him, the divided city of St. Louis was heartbreaking, and his journal entries changed from early optimism to later doubts about his future due to the war and his loyalty to the Union. After the war, Franklin Dick practiced law with Montgomery Blair, President Lincoln’s postmaster general.