James McCown

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

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. He moved to Missouri, first to Henry County, Missouri and then to Warrensburg, where he 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.

At the start of the Civil War, McCown joined the Missouri State Guard (a Confederate outfit), becoming colonel of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment of the 8th Division. McCown enlisted with his sons, William, James, and Charles. When the State Guard was dissolved, McCown then served in the First Missouri Confederate Infantry Battalion, first as a private but within three months being elected the battalion's lieutenant colonel.

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