June 2, 1865…LAST MEETING OF THE IRON BRIGADE
The "Iron Brigade" of Missouri Cavalry, led by General Joseph O. Shelby, met for the last time in Corsicana, Texas, June 2, 1865. This famous division, originating in a company raised and commanded by Shelby in Lafayette County, Missouri, in 1861, had seen service at Carthage, Wilson's Creek, Lexington, and Pea Ridge. Shelby had raised a regiment of cavalry in 1862 which was combined with other units into a brigade. These troops he led with General John S. Marmaduke on his expeditions into southwest Missouri in 1862-1863 and to Cape Girardeau in 1863. Following Shelby's famous raid through Missouri in the fall of 1863, he became in 1864 the youngest Brigadier General in the trans-Mississippi department.
Joining the army of General Sterling Price, then invading Missouri, he participated in a raid culminating in the battle of Westport in October.
After the surrender of Generals Lee and Johnson in the East, only the Missouri Iron Brigade and Arkansas forces maintained organization in the West. Proposals to surrender were spurned by Shelby, but many Missourians wished to turn home. John N. Edwards, eyewitness and chronicler of Shelby and his men, wrote of this last meeting:
"...Shelby's Missouri Cavalry Division came forth from its bivouac for the last time. A call ran down its ranks for volunteers for Mexico. One thousand bronzed soldiers rode...to the front ...Two and two they ranged themselves behind their leader, waiting." With his thousand men behind him, Shelby set off across Texas for voluntary exile in Mexico. Shelby offered assistance to Emperor Maximilian, attempting to crush the Juarez revolt, but the offer was declined. He and many other of the Missouri exiles returned home, when Maximilian's government collapsed. [J.N.Edwards, Shelby and His Men (1867); Edwards, Shelby's Exped. to Mex. ( 1872) ; Dict. Am. Biog., XVII (1935) ; Ency. Hist. Mo., V ( 1901) .]
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