Lafayette County History
First Battle of Lexington
The First Battle of Lexington also known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, was an engagement of the American Civil War, occurring from September 13 to September 20, 1861, between the Union Army and the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, in Lexington, the county seat of Lafayette County, Missouri. The State Guard's victory in this battle bolstered the already-considerable Southern sentiment in the area ...
Lafayette County was settled primarily from migrants from the Upper South states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. They brought slaves and slaveholding traditions with them, and quickly started cultivating crops similar to those in Middle and Kentucky: hemp and tobacco. Lafayette was one of several counties settled mostly by southerners to the north and south of the Missouri River. Given their culture and traditions, this area became known as Little Dixie In 1860 slaves made up 25 percent or more of the county's population. Residents generally supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. Before and more heavily after the Civil War, Germans directly from Germany and German Americans from the St. Louis area settled in the area making up a large part of the population of Concordia, Emma, Wellington, Napoleon, Higginsville, Mayview, and Lexington. The German population tended to support the Union during the Civil War.
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