Butterfield Overland Mail in Missouri - 1858-1861

Three years after the mail coaches began stopping here, Cassville briefly held a government. Secessionist legislators under Governor Claiborne F. Jackson had enacted an ordinance of secession at Neosho on October 28, 1861, and Cassville then served as Missouri's Confederate capital for one week, from October 31 to November 7, until advancing Union forces pushed Jackson and his allies south. The Confederacy admitted Missouri as its twelfth state on November 28, though the state's Unionists never accepted the ordinance. The Battle of Pea Ridge later secured Missouri for the Union.

What the plaque says

Butterfield Overland Mail in Missouri - 1858-1861 Cassville, the last town on the route of the Butterfield Mail in Missouri, was not a relay station but the coaches stopped for mail and passengers. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri, 1958

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roaring River State Park — 6.4 mi
  A deep valley cut into the edge of the Ozark Plateau south of Cassville, with a fern-hung spring, a trout hatchery on an 1865 mill dam, and land bought with a patent-medicine fortune.

More markers nearby

• Butterfield Overland Mail in Missouri - 1858-1861 — 16 mi
• Lawrence County — 20 mi
• Galena — 24 mi