James McCown

James McCown (March 21, 1817, Virginia – July 8, 1867, Warrensburg, Missouri) was a Confederate States Army officer in the American Civil War.

Early life James Madison McCown was born and raised in Kanawha County, West Virginia (then part of Virginia). He worked on riverboats on the Ohio River and was a militia captain. McCown, a Southern Methodist, married Caroline McCown in Kanawha County (the couple eventually had three daughters and six sons, some of whom later served with McCown in the Missouri Militia).

They moved to Missouri, first to Henry County, Missouri and then to Warrensburg, where McCown became a leading citizen and clerk of the county court and circuit court in Johnson County. In 1857 McCown won appointment as a bureaucrat serving the state legislature and moved for a while to the state capital.

With the coming of the secession crisis, political passions ran high in border-state Missouri. In 1860 McCown was the regular Democratic nominee for county clerk and was defeated in the election by Independent Democrat Marsh Foster (along with Whig candidate F. S. Poston). When Missouri was to elect representatives to a state constitutional convention to decide whether or not to secede, Foster supported Unionist Aikman Welch. On the afternoon of election day, February 18, 1861 McCown and his son William became involved in a political argument at the Warrentown courthouse which turned into a gunfight, and Marsh Foster was shot dead. James and William McCown were arrested for murder but only William McCown was indicted.

Among the Unionists involved in the Johnson County political disputes leading to the assassination of Foster was Brinkly Hornsby, a Unionist from East Tennessee. Sterling Price was the leader of the Confederate Missouri State Guard, and Raines and Cockerell were fellow officers in the 8th Division.

McCown's feud with the Fosters did not end with his death; twenty years later, his son, William, was murdered in retaliation for Foster's death. or July 8,