I did not have a concept of Camden County as either predominantly northern or southern in the war until you asked. I poked around and discovered that elements of the Union 47th Enrolled Missouri Militia kept a tight rein over Camden County during the war and that a number of the officers of the Union active-duty 8th Cavalry Missouri State Militia came from Camden County. The 8th was a tough unit and was rough on southerners in its operations. Further, the Union kept tight control on major modes of transportation in Missouri including the Osage River that flows through Camden County. The Osage was navigatible across nearly its entire course in Missouri from its mouth on the Missouri River back west almost to the Kansas border.

I looked your Adam Kinder up in the 1860 census and see that he was born in North Carolina. I also looked for Kinders from Camden County in the military on either side and found none in the online Missouri State Archives in the Missouri Secretary of State's website. Considering that there were 17 Kinder households in Camden County during the war I would expect to find some of them at least in the Union militia, but found none. Many of the Confederates do not appear in the Missouri State Archives for a variety of reasons. It was martial law in Missouri that all able-bodied males enroll in the Enrolled Missouri Militia starting in summer 1862, but no Kinder's record as having done so in Camden County appears in my source. The Missouri State Archives seems to capture the EMM enrollments rather well. I do see several Kinders in nearby Johnson County on the Confederate side and several from Cape Girardeau on the southern side, too.

I conclude that Camden County was closely controlled for the Union side during the war and that your Kinders appear to be southern in sympathy, but this is from circumstantial evidence and is not ironclad.

There were several skirmishes in Camden County during the war, but with the major obstacle of the Osage River and its hilly nature, this area was not desirable for movement by either side. Therefore, Camden County remained rather quiet throughout the war, even though the war swirled around Camden County on all sides.

Bruce Nichols