Joseph Shelby was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1830, where he was raised and attended Transylvania College; in 1852 he moved to Missouri where he became one of the richest young men in the state as a hemp farmer, rope manufacturer, and steamboat owner.

In 1854, he returned to Kentucky, where he recruited a company of pro-slavery cavalry to fight in Kansas against the Free-soil forces. When the Civil War broke out, Shelby was called to St. Louis by his cousin, Congressman Frank Blair, who offered him a captain’s commission in the U.S. Army. Shelby refused to join the Union forces, however, and accepted a commission as a captain in the Missouri State Guard. He recruited and outfitted a company of pro-Southern mounted rangers in Lafayette County and joined General Sterling Price.

After participating in the battles of Carthage, Wilson’s Creek, Lexington, and Pea Ridge, Shelby entered Confederate service. He recruited a cavalry regiment, and, with the rank of colonel, led a cavalry brigade during the Prairie Grove campaign.

Shelby led an impressive, lengthy raid through Missouri in the fall of 1863, an act that won him promotion to brigadier general, and served with distinction in the repulse of Frederick Steele’s Camden Expedition in southern Arkansas in the spring of 1864. That fall, Shelby led his “Iron Brigade” in Price’s Missouri Raid, and saved Price’s army from disaster at the Battle of Westport.

When the war ended, Shelby and his men decided to leave the United States. Sinking their battle flag in the Rio Grande River, they crossed into Mexico and established the Colony of Carlotta. Shelby returned to Missouri in 1867, where he became a key figure in helping heal the wounds of the Civil War. In 1892, President Grover Cleveland appointed him the U. S. Marshal of the Western District of Missouri, a position he held until his death from pneumonia on February 13, 1897.

Carte-de-Visite by Tureman & Vandeventer, Boonville, Mo.

Image Courtesy Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield; WICR 31493