MG Dodge methodically kept and enlarged some practices initiated by his predecessors that he deemed effective including use of Rosecrans' citizen guards and blockhouses that Rosecrans already orderd built near important railroad bridges and such.

I had one date wrong. About two weeks after Dodge took over command (on December 9) on December 24 he issued confidential directives to his five district commanders on several points that he emphasized in "O.R." vol. 41, part 4, pp. 928-9. Enlarging upon his directive for the district commanders to use local troops "to hold and protect their own counties" he added "When such companies are formed, impress upon them the importance of building forts, stockade, and block-houses at their towns and rallying points, the benefits whereof cannot be overestimated." BG Clinton B. Fisk, as commander of the District of North Missouri would then have passed Dodge's directives down to the Columbia citizens guard already formed, as you have stated. It is possible that the Columbia "Tigers" had already built such a fort, and, who knows, maybe this is where Dodge got the idea. Before Dodge the only blockhouses I heard about were for protection of important railroad bridges, and Price's forces destroyed at least one of two of these during October 1864 at critical locations in Osage and Gasconade Counties on the Pacific Railroad. Before Dodge I had not read of local citizen guards using stockades in town, but that is not to say there were none, only that I had not read of them.

Incidentally, James S. Rollins, the Tigers captain was at Centralia on 27 September and with difficulty kept his identity as a legislator hidden from the guerrillas who took over the stagecoach in which he was a passenger. Rollins was a witness to what happened there that day. Anderson's men made all the residents and others from the train and stagecoach watch them shoot down the Union soldiers taken off the train. That would certainly motivate me to build a blockhouse or anything else I could think of to keep those men from doing the same to me.

I can see lots of problems with local troops relying on blockhouses and stockades, and some of those may have made commanders before Dodge reluctant to pen men up in such things. If they had the time, Anderson's or Todd's guerrillas would find a way to defeat such structures. Dodge did not say so, but I think he pushed the blockhouses in towns in order to build the confidence of the citizens guards and give them a central rallying point. Before that, the rallying point was the courthouse from the inception of the Enrolled Missouri Militia program in July 1862 since that was where the EMM firearms were kept. During Dodge's tenure the armaments of the citizen guards were up-scaled from shotguns and rifle-muskets to Spencer rifles and carbines, showing more confidence in the citizens guards. Under Rosecrans and earlier Dept. of the Missouri commanders the thinking was that whatever arms were given to the local troops the guerrillas would take them away anyway, so don't give them the latest firearms. Under Dodge that was reversed and it helped transition Missouri back to local control and civil law and away from total reliance on Missouri State Militia and other Federal troops.

Bruce Nichols