Meriwether Jeff Thompson (22 January 1826-5 September 1876) was a Missouri State Guard and Confederate States Army Brigadier-General during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Meriwether Jeff Thompson was born in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1826, and he moved to Liberty, Missouri in 1847 and St. Joseph a year later, becoming a store clerk. He later supervised the construction of the western branch of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, and, in May 1861, after the start of the American Civil War, the secessionist Thompson cut down the US flag from the St. Joseph post office and threw it to a secessionist mob, who shredded it to pieces. He became a Brigadier-General in the Missouri State Guard, and he was nicknamed the "Swamp Fox of the Confederacy". He was defeated at the Battle of Fredericktown in October 1861 and at the First Battle of Memphis in 1862, where he led Confederate naval forces. In August 1863, he was captured during one of John S. Marmaduke's raids into Missouri, and he was a competent commander of Joseph O. Shelby's old brigade. On 11 May 1865, he surrendered to the Union at Chalk Bluff, Arkansas, and he became a civil engineer in New Orleans after the war; he died in 1876.
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