John Sappington Marmaduke (1833 - 1887)

Born 14 Mar 1833 in Arrow Rock, Saline, Missouri, United States

Ancestors

Died 28 Dec 1887 at age 54 in Jefferson City, Cole, Missouri, United States

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Preceded by 24th Governor Thomas Theodore Crittenden

John S. Marmaduke 25th Governor of Missouri 1885—1887

Succeeded by 26th Governor Albert P. Morehouse

Biography

John Marmaduke is Notable.

John was the son of Meredith M. Marmaduke and Lavinia Sappington Marmaduke. He was a regular army officer from the divided border-state of Missouri, who became a Confederate Major general during the American Civil War.

Serving in Arkansas, he aroused controversy by killing his own commander in a duel, and was then accused of murdering African-American soldiers in the Red River Campaign. During Sterling Price's raid into Missouri, Marmaduke was captured at the Battle of Mine Creek (October 1864) and remained in captivity until the war's end. He became Governor of Missouri in 1884, successfully campaigning for railroad reform before dying in office of pneumonia in 1887.

He was the second of ten children and born on his father's plantation near Arrow Rock, Saline County, Missouri. His father, Meredith Miles Marmaduke (1791-1864), was the eighth Governor of Missouri. His great-grandfather, John Breathitt, had served as the Governor of Kentucky from 1832-1834, dying in office.

Marmaduke attended Chapel Hill Academy in Lafayette County, Missouri and the Masonic College in Lexington, Missouri before attending Yale University for two years and then Harvard University for another year. Congressman John S. Phelps appointed Marmaduke to the United States Military Academy where he graduated in 1857, placed 30th out of 38 students. He briefly served as a second lieutenant in the First United States Mounted Rifleman, before being transferred to the Second United States Cavalry under Col. Albert Sidney Johnston. Marmaduke served in the Utah War and was posted to Camp Floyd in 1858-1860.

During the Civil War he was involved in eleven battles. In one, the Battle of Shiloh he was wounded in action thus incapacitating him for several months. He was captured at the Battle of Mine Creek and taken prisoner where he remained until the end of the war. He was promoted to major general in March 1865 while still a prisoner.

Marmaduke returned home to Missouri and settled in St. Louis after the war. He worked briefly for an insurance company, whose ethics he found contrary to his own. He then edited an agricultural journal and publicly accused the railroads of discriminatory pricing against local farmers. The governor soon appointed Marmaduke to the state's first Rail Commission.

He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1880 against former Union general Thomas T. Crittenden. In 1884, he ran again this time exposing alleged abuses of Missourians by Union troops during the Civil War. Using these tactics which reached sympathetic Missourians ears he won the election. Soon thereafter (1885 and 1886), he settled potentially crippling railroad strikes and pushed through legislation that began regulating the state's railway industry. He had a full third of the state's annual budget allocated to education.

Gov. Marmaduke never married and his two nieces served as hostesses at the Governor's Mansion. He is buried in the City Cemetery in Jefferson City. Marmaduke, Arkansas in Green County was named in his honor.

Sources

• Douglas M. Henry; www.records.ancestry.com and http://www.elmwoodcem-kc.org/family_history.
• Find A Grave: Memorial #11024
• John S. Marmaduke on Wikipedia