Editing Plattsburg, Missouri (section)

== History ==
The area along the rivers has been inhabited for thousands of years by [[indigenous peoples]]. Historic [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] tribes in the area included the [[Ioway]], [[Meskwaki]] and [[Sac (people)|Sac]] tribes, who ceded land to the United States in the [[Platte Purchase]]. This area became part of northwest Missouri.

The European-American settlers first called their settlement Concord. (This has been used for a contemporary man-made lake and surrounding housing development in the city.) Later the city was renamed Springfield. After the discovery that there was an earlier [[Springfield, Missouri]], settlers named it "Plattsburg," after [[Plattsburgh (city), New York|Plattsburgh, New York]]. This is the seat of [[Clinton County, New York]].  Both it and Clinton County, Missouri were named for [[George Clinton (vice president)|George Clinton]], one of the Founding Fathers, the first governor of [[New York (state)|New York]], and vice president of the United States from 1805 to 1812.<ref>[http://www.rootsweb.com/~moclinto/histsoc/ Clinton Co. MO Historical Society<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>

The area was settled chiefly by migrants from the [[Upper South]], especially central Kentucky and western Virginia. It was near a region called "Little Dixie" in Missouri because of the strong Southern presence. These migrants brought their [[slaves]] and culture with them. For a brief period of time during the 1830s, Plattsburg was home to a Federal land office for areas of northern Missouri that were newly opened to settlement by European Americans after the [[Platte Purchase]] in 1836. Until then, Plattsburg was one of the farthest western non-military settlements.

The area became a leading producer of both [[hemp]] and [[tobacco]], both major commodity products of the [[Bluegrass Region]] of central Kentucky. They were labor-intensive and dependent on labor of enslaved African Americans labor. [[David Rice Atchison]], the US senator from here, was pro-slavery. As the county seat, Plattsburg was a center of trade and politics, with a variety of retail stores and professions. At one point, when Kansas City was a major beef processing and export center, Plattsburg was known as "the Beef Capital of the World".

By 1860, the county had a total population of 7,848. The 1,144 enslaved African Americans comprised 17% of the total.<ref>[http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/county.php "Missouri: County-level Results for 1860"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111013123855/http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/county.php |date=2011-10-13 }}, Historical Census Browser, University of Virginia Library, accessed 17 September 2011</ref> During the [[American Civil War]], two minor battles took place nearby.  The town was occupied by both [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] and [[Union (American Civil War)|Federal]] forces.  In 1863, elements of [[William Quantrill]]'s [[guerrilla]] band captured a unit of Federal troops encamped in the county courthouse located in Plattsburg.