My goodness, I'm not even sure where to begin with this one.

1) First off, your argument that a slaveholder in Missouri would not be "down" with preserving the Union indicates a failure to understand the war in Missouri at a basic level. You might focus your research on the make-up of the slaveholding Unionist state government in Missouri from 1861 through January 1865. Start with the Unionist governor of Missouri, and his brother-in-law who happened to be the United States Attorney General. Then proceed to the Unionist Missouri officer corps during the same time period, including generals and senior provost marshals, and work your way through the field officers. Those slaveholders were definitely down with what the Union was trying to do.

2) Second, you say that almost everything you have found on David Guitar indicates he was a Confederate officer, but then you proceed to say that everything you have found may have been edited by a man who lives and breathes among us. Move beyond flawed secondary sources and start digging into primary sources.

3) Once you get into the primary sources you should be able to move beyond the circular logic that David Guitar couldn't have been Union because he was Confederate, and since he was Confederate he was a southern-sympathizer, and because he was a southern-sympathizer he could not have been Union. Round and round we go....

4) And, in your effort to "find truth" you need look no further than the records that establish that he enrolled as captain in Company B, 61st Enrolled Missouri Militia in Columbia on Sept. 27, 1862. The 61st Enrolled Missouri Militia was a regiment in the Union Army.

5) Even if he has a headstone saying Confederate on it, it hardly changes the fact that he was served in the Union Army. Headstones that may have been put up last year, or ten years ago, are hardly authoritative, especially if one was put up based on flawed late 20th century/early 21st century research.

6) And if he served in the Confederate Army, why is there no record of him having done so (something written a year ago is not a record). What Confederate unit was it that he served in? Why is it being stated he served in the Confederate Army, but nobody can say what unit he served with.

7) And, perhaps most significantly in the finding of the truth, David Guitar's OWN BIOGRAPHY in the History of Boone County, which was written while he was still alive, tells us quite unambiguosly that "During the war he was captain of a militia company under Gen. Douglass." General Douglass was the most prominent boot-on-the-ground Union General operating out of and around Columbia during the Civil War.

It appears to me that a writer who was not/is not familiar with historical research methodology discovered that David Guitar was a slaveholder, discovered that he served in the military during the war, couldn't get his head around the fact that slaveholders filled the ranks of the Union Army in Missouri, stopped his research at that point and started writing without being familiar with the war in Missouri.

It also seems to me that a lot of good boys who fought for the South earned the honor of having a Confederate headstone mark their resting place. If, due to mistaken research, one was placed over a Union officer's resting place, it dishonors both those Confederates who earned it as well as the Union officer. That headstone needs to be replaced with a Union headstone.