Silencing the Vicksburg Guns: The Story of the 7th Missouri Infantry Regiment (US) by Jerry Evan Crouch. 176 pp., maps., sc.

Silencing The Vicksburg Guns; The Story of the 7th MIssouri Infantry Regiment

Shelby Foote, the gentleman and writer, has said that the Revolution started us out as a country, but the Civil War decided which way we were going. Moved by angry words, inspiring music, and patriotic slogans, young men (and many not so young) enlisted in both the Union and Confederate armies by the tens of thousands. Many were also motivated by pedestrian concernsñthe monthly pay or a chance for adventure. Whatever their reasons, most of the citizens who became soldiers were defined by that experience and were justly proud.

Years later and hundreds of miles from where he had fought, John Davis Evans founded the Evans Union Ice Cream Company, proving that he had not forgotten the Civil Warñnor the side he had taken.

Private Evans was my great-grandfather. He is my window on the Civil War and on the 7th Missouri Infantry Regiment, in which he served. I began this research because I wanted to find out more about him, a Utah man who had returned to the east to fight for the Union. My research has revealed that description to be slightly misleading: John Evans was in St. Louis, at his mother's house, when the Civil War began.

Evans' parents had joined the Mormon Church in Wales in 1845 when John was two years old. The family immigrated to America in 1850 and settled in the St. Louis area where John was raised.

In 1859 at the age of 16, John earned his designation as a Utah immigrant by traveling to Salt Lake City as a teamster for a Mormon supply wagon train. He returned to his home near St. Louis, crossed the plains a second time in 1860, then came back home again, where he joined the 7th Missouri.

For nearly 18 months after their formation on June 1, 1861, the 7th Missouri Infantry Regiment trained, maneuvered, and skirmished. Finally, about December 1, 1862, the regiment began its principal mission. During their final year and a half in the Union army, these soldiers focused their efforts on silencing the guns at Vicksburg, Mississippi, a successful action, which ultimately turned the tide of the western war toward a Union victory.

Jerry Evan Crouch

January 2005