USA > Missouri > Missouri the center state, 1821-1915 > Part 41
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THE STATE THE STAKE
and join us! We have plenty of ammunition, and the cattle on ten thousands hills are ours. We have forty thousand Belgian muskets coming; but bring your guns and muskets with you, if you have them; if not, come without them. We will strike our foes like a southern thunderbolt, and soon our camp-fires will illuminate the Meramec and Missouri. Come, turn out !"
According to the War Records, General Thompson, not long after the issue of his appeal, sent out a scouting party for fresh meat. The only cow of a widow was taken. The widow came into camp and called upon the commander. "Why, General," she protested, "is it possible you intend to rob a widow of the only cow she has in the world, when, as you have said in your proclamation, the cattle on ten thousand hills are yours?" The general grinned and ordered the cow returned to the widow.
Wilson's Creek and the Corn Fields.
Some fields of ripening corn determined the location of the Battle of Wilson's creek. On the way to Springfield Price and McCulloch camped on the banks of the creek near the fields. They expected to live on that corn while waiting for their trains to come up. And there they were attacked by the man they expected to attack in Springfield. Wilson's creek has its beginning in the suburbs of Springfield. It flows in a westerly direction several miles, bends southward and follows that course about ten miles to its junction with the James.
At Springfield Lyon found himself with between 7,000 and and 8,000 men, nearly all of them Missourians. He had 3,000 men who had been enlisted for three months and their terms would be out the middle of August. He had no idea of giving up the advantage gained and began to prepare for battle, sending urgent messages to Fremont in St. Louis for reinforcements. "Governor Jackson will soon have in this vicinity not less than 30,000 men. I must have at once an addi- tional force of 10,000 men or abandon my position," he wrote. He didn't get his reinforcements and he didn't abandon his position. Blair was in Washington. He carried Lyon's appeals to the Cabinet. Orders were sent to Fremont. Farrar, Cavender and John S. Phelps, afterwards governor, went as a delegation to Fre- mont and urged that help be sent to Lyon at Springfield. Fremont promised 5,000 men. It was not until the 4th of August, too late, that two regiments were ordered to go to Lyon, Stevenson's from Boonville and Montgomery's from Leav- enworth. Finally Lyon sent defiantly to Fremont that he would fight anyway. And he did.
Lyon learned on the Ist of August that Price and McCulloch had started toward Springfield. He marched out to meet them, hoping to be able with his smaller force to attack them separately. A skirmish occurred at Dug Springs in which the Union troops had the best of it. Price urged McCulloch to join him in attacking Lyon. The commander of the Arkansas troops was reluctant. He re- ferred to the instructions he had about going into Missouri. Snead said this was not McCulloch's real reason for holding back. "He had in truth no confidence in the Missouri troops, and none in General Price, or in any of his officers except Colonel Weightman." Up to this time McCulloch had commanded the Arkansas troops and Price the Missourians. Price saw the McCulloch had "determined not to advance another mile except in chief command of the entire force." On Sun-
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day morning Price took Snead with him and went to McCulloch's headquarters to make a final effort. According to Snead General Price said :
"I am an older man than you, General McCulloch, and I am not only your senior in rank, but I was a brigadier-general in the Mexican war, with an independent command when you were only a captain ; I have fought and won more battles than you have ever witnessed ; my force is twice as great as yours; and some of my officers rank and have seen more service than you, and we are also upon the soil of our own State; but, General McCulloch, if you will consent to help us to whip Lyon and to repossess Missouri, I will put myself and all my forces under your command, and we will obey you as faithfully as the humblest of your own men. We can whip Lyon, and we will whip him and drive the enemy out of Missouri, and all the honor and all the glory shall be yours. All that we want is to regain our homes and to establish the independence of Missouri and the South. If you refuse to accept this offer, I will move with the Missourians alone against Lyon. For it is better that they and I should all perish than that Missouri be abandoned without a struggle. You must either fight beside us or look on at a safe distance, and see us fight alone the army which you dare not attack even with our aid. I must have your answer before dark, for I expect to attack Lyon to-morrow."
McCulloch accepted the offer of command about sunset. He explained that he had been awaiting dispatches; that having learned Pillow was advancing into Mis- souri from New Madrid, he felt justified in attacking Lyon.
The Fight for Missouri.
McCulloch had decided to move from Wilson's Creek the night of August 9th to attack Lyon in Springfield. Just before the hour set for the advance of the Confederates, rain began to fall. The order was countermanded. The reason for postponement was another of the extraordinary conditions of this early fighting for Missouri. Most of Price's men had no cartridge boxes. They were carrying their ammunition in their pockets. The rain would have wet the powder and put three-fourths of the Missourians on the Confederate side out of the fighting.
But Lyon, impatient to force the issue, didn't wait for McCulloch to attack. He left Springfield on the afternoon of the 9th, intending to surprise the Con- federates by an early morning attack. The Union force was divided. Lyon marched by a route to take him around the left of the Confederates. He sent Sigel by a more southerly route to pass around the right of the enemy. Both Lyon and Sigel passed the opposite wings of the Confederates and were ready at daylight to attack in the rear. The Confederate report shows that so well was this movement carried out that at six o'clock the morning of the Ioth neither Price nor McCulloch knew that Lyon had left Springfield and they were expecting to make the attack there.
Of the Missourians who fought five hours under Price on Bloody Hill, one who was in the thickest of it, Thomas L. Snead, said: "Many of them had not even enlisted, but had only come out to fight ; thousands of them had not been organized into regiments; many of them were unarmed; none of them were uniformed; very few of them had been drilled. Their arms were mostly shot-guns and rifles, and they had no other equipments of any kind; no tents at all; no supplies of any sort, and no depots from which to draw subsistence, or clothing, or ammunition, or anything. They had no muster rolls and they made no morning reports. They bivouacked in the open air, they subsisted on the ripening corn, and they foraged their horses on the prairie-grass."
BARNUM'S HOTEL. ST. LOUIS, DURING THE CIVIL WAR
GRATIOT STREET PRISON, ST. LOUIS, DURING THE CIVIL WAR
ROBERT A. BARNES Founder of Barnes Hospital
JOSEPH CHARLESS
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So many of the higher officers on the Union side fell with Lyon, that the sol- diers, when the battle closed were under command of a major. The First Mis- souri went into the fighting with 800 men and came out with 505. The First Kan- sas lost 284. Of Steele's battalion of regulars, sixty-one, out of 275 were killed or wounded. Price had 4,200 men when the fighting begun. He was wounded as were many of his officers. He lost on Bloody Hill 988 in killed and wounded. "Never before," said Snead, "considering the numbers engaged, had so bloody a battle been fought upon American soil ; seldom has a bloodier one been fought on any modern field. The lines would approach again and again within less than fifty yards of each other, and then, after delivering a deadly fire, each would fall back a few paces to reform and reload, only to advance again, and again renew this strange battle in the woods. Peculiar in all its aspects, the most remarkable of all its characteristics was the deep silence which now and then fell upon the smoking field, while the two armies, unseen of each other, lay but a few yards apart, gath- ering strength to grapple again in the death struggle for Missouri."
Two newspaper men wrote histories of the Civil war in Missouri. Both had been connected with St. Louis papers. Both served in the war. They knew from personal observation the local situation which had no counterpart in any other State. One of these soldier historians was in the Southern army. The other served with the North. Thomas L. Snead, the Confederate, called his book "The Fight for Missouri." And from his point of view the fight ended with the battle of Wil- son's Creek, in August, 1861. John McElroy, who gave the Northern view, car- ried "The Struggle for Missouri," as he called his book, down to the battle of Pea Ridge in March, 1862.
Lyon had not fallen in vain. "By capturing the state militia at Camp Jackson," said Snead, "and driving the governor from the capital and all his troops into the uttermost corner of the State, and by holding Price and McCulloch at bay, he had given the Union men of Missouri time, opportunity, and courage to bring their state convention together again, and had given the convention an excuse and the power to depose Governor Jackson and Lieutenant-Governor Reynolds, to vacate the seats of the members of the general assembly, and to establish a state government which was loyal to the Union and which would use the whole organized power of the State-its treasury, its credit, its militia, and all its great resources -to sustain the Union and crush the South."
The Part Performed by Grant.
On the day that Lyon marched out of Springfield to attack Price, at Wilson's Creek, Grant, sitting under an oak tree at Ironton, received his commission as. brigadier-general. The sequel to the issue of that commission was a change in the plans of Albert Sidney Johnston, Polk and Pillow. The Army of Liberation did not make the intended advance into Missouri to capture St. Louis. Cairo very quickly became the new storm center. Jeff Thompson with 2,000 Missourians started from Columbus, Kentucky, early in October. He made a rapid march up through Southeast Missouri intending to show the Confederate generals what was possible. The Swamp Fox gave the Illinois colonels in the vicinity of Ironton quite a scare and did some good fighting. Thompson and his men were entirely at home in the valleys and mountains of that picturesque region. The Illinois troops were more accustomed to prairies. Jeff Thompson made his way as far north as Vol. I-19
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Big River bridge, forty miles from St. Louis. Fremont was busy with Price in the western part of the State. Jeff Thompson sent back word of his success to Albert Sidney Johnston. He expected Pillow to come on rapidly with an army and take St. Louis. All went well with the Swamp Fox until the battle of Fred- ericktown. There he was attacked by 3,500 troops, chiefly Illinoisans under Colonel Plummer and Colonel Carlin. Grant planned and ordered the attack. Thompson made a strong stand but found he was outnumbered. His men re- treated. The infantry followed him ten miles and the cavalry pursued him twelve miles farther breaking up and scattering his force. Thompson reported from New Madrid that his command was "very much demoralized." This ended the proposed movement to take St. Louis. Grant moved over to Cairo and started an expedition to Paducah and elsewhere. It was Grant's activity in Southeast Missouri and Western Kentucky that prompted Lincoln's approving comment that the new brigadier seemed to be a man who "kept things moving."
Battle of the Hemp Bales.
The battle of Lexington lasted eight days, counting from the first skirmish. It was one of the strangest of the Civil war. Price's army had grown like a rolling snowball as he marched north from Springfield to the Missouri river in the early autumn of 1861. That was characteristic of the campaigning in Missouri. When Price advanced, recruits flocked to him. As he fell back many of them re- turned to their homes.
After the battle of Wilson's Creek, Price made his headquarters at Springfield for some days. Hundreds of his unarmed men were equipped with the guns captured on the battlefield. Organization was perfected. The experience of the first battle, the baptism of blood, had told upon the Missourians. The well uni- formed and completely equipped Arkansas and Louisiana men under McCulloch no longer referred to Price's "undisciplined mob." The last week of August Price left Springfield with an army of 10,000 Missourians fit for any issue of war. He made a feint at Fort Scott which alarmed Kansas and then marched for the Mis- souri river. He reached Lexington on the 12th of September. The usual ir- regular contingents had joined him on the way, swelling his force to over 30,000. As Price approached, several bodies of Union troops fell back and concentrated at Lexington. Two of these commands were Mulligan's Twenty-third Illinois, an Irish regiment, and Marshall's First Illinois cavalry, both of them recruited largely in Chicago. The Eleventh Missouri under Colonel Everett Peabody, and 500 Home Guards under Colonel White made up the force in Lexington when Price arrived. The Union troops could have taken boats and escaped. But Lexington had been made a depot of supplies and commanded the river. Mulligan, who took command as the senior colonel, felt that he must stay and try to hold the place and protect the government property until reinforcements reached him. He se- lected a high hill between what were then known as Old Lexington and New Lex- ington. Around the grounds and buildings of the Masonic College he threw up heavy earthworks. Into the space of about fifteen acres the 3,500 men, half as many horses and the wagon trains were crowded. At Jefferson City were 5,000 men under General Jeff. C. Davis. Sturgis had 4,000 men at Mexico and Pope was in Northwest Missouri with 5,000. The expected reinforcements did not arrive. Mulligan fought well. Price's men worked closer and closer. The nights were
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THE STATE THE STAKE
moonlight. Squads of Missourians crawled up ravines and found cover behind buildings. They kept up a fusillade by night as well as by day. This was great sport for the irregulars who had brought their shot guns and squirrel rifles and had joined Price's army on the way from Springfield. Mulligan's 3,500 ought to have been slaughtered several times over but the total number killed was less than 100. The batteries of Guibor, McDonald and Clark pounded away, making scars in the stone walls of the college and occasionally killing a horse and a mule which added to the discomfort of the besieged. Price finally ordered his men to close in. They did it by rolling bales of hemp up the hill. Mulligan saw this moving fort of hemp bales approach within 150 feet of works. He gave one last search- ing look for the reinforcements which never came and surrendered. Price gave honorable terms. He always did. The Union troops surrendered their arms, took an oath not to fight any more against Missouri, were ferried to the north side of the river and turned loose. Mulligan was told to keep his sword. He be- came the guest of General Price until some time afterwards he was sent to St. Louis, escorted by L. D. Kingsland, a young officer on Price's staff, to be ex- changed.
Price captured at Lexington 3,000 rifles, five cannon, 750 horses, $100,000 worth of commissary stores, wagons, ammunition. He also dug up the great seal of Mis- souri which Governor Jackson and the state officers had buried in a cellar when they abandoned the idea of making Lexington the temporary capital and took a hurried departure. State records which had been left behind at that time were recovered by Price.
The men behind the hemp bales were from General Harris' command. When the military bill went into operation "Tom" Harris was given the most difficult of the Congressional districts to organize for the State Guard. His district was the northeast corner of the State. When he had recruited a considerable force, sev- eral newly mustered Illinois regiments were sent into North Missouri to be broken in. They were put to chasing Harris. One of these regiments was the Twenty-first Illinois, commanded by Colonel U. S. Grant. Harris was followed from place to place until his recruits scattered. The chase was not called off until it was re- ported that Harris' army was reduced to the general, his staff and three enlisted men and that they had successfully concealed themselves in the hills of Salt river.
Harris' opportunity came with the six days' fighting at Lexington. In his official report General Harris told how he took 132 bales of hemp and rolled them up the hill, sheltering his men behind them. He said, "I directed the bales to be wet in the river to protect them against the casualties of fire of our troops and the enemy, and soon discovered that the wetting was so materially increasing the weight as to prevent our men in their exhausted condition from rolling them to the crest of the hill. I then adopted the idea of wetting the hemp after it had been transported to this position."
Mulligan hoisted the white flag when he saw the 132 bales of hemp steadily approaching his trenches and within 150 feet of them. "Tom" Harris' movable breastworks became famous. There was some controversy about the credit for the suggestion. Friends of Colonel Thomas Hinkle, of Wellington, near Lexing- ton, and in the hemp growing region of Missouri, claimed that he first proposed the use of the hemp bales.
,
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Price and Fremont.
Price held Lexington until the Ist of October while Fremont was organizing the Army of the West with elaborate preparations to crush him. No other army of the Civil war was outfitted as was Fremont's in the fall of 1861. Among the supplies, which the quartermasters purchased in great quantity, were half bar- rels for water, although Fremont was about to traverse the Ozarks, a region abounding in springs and running streams. Mules in droves were bought. About the middle of October, Fremont started his divisions from several points to follow Price. He reached the Osage nine days after Price had crossed. Price moved at the rate of about fifteen miles a day. He was at times one hundred miles ahead of Fremont. When he arrived at Neosho he stopped long enough for the state gov- ernment to set up a temporary capital and for members of the legislature who were traveling with the army to hold a two weeks' session. The principal business was the passage of an ordinance of secession declaring Missouri out of the Union. This paved the way for the election of Senators and Representatives to the Con- federate Congress at Richmond. Price moved still nearer the Arkansas line and made his headquarters at Pineville. Fremont stopped at Springfield and began to prepare for battle. Price was fifty miles away. Instead of a battle a "solemn agreement" was entered into by Price and Fremont. It was dated the Ist of November. The stipulations signed by the two generals were:
"I. No arrests whatever on account of political opinions, or for the merely private expression of the same, shall hereafter be made within the limits of the State of Missouri, and all persons who may have been arrested and are now held to answer upon such charges only shall be forthwith released; but it is expressly declared that nothing in this proclama- tion shall be construed to bar or interfere with any of the usual and regular proceedings of the established courts under statutes and orders made and provided for such offenses.
"2. All peaceably disposed citizens who may have been driven from their homes because of their political opinions, or who may have left them from fear of force and violence, are hereby advised and permitted to return, upon the faith of our positive assurances that while so returning they shall receive protection from both the armies in the field wherever it can be given.
"3. All bodies of armed men acting without authority or recognition of the major- generals before named, and not legitimately connected with the armies in the field, are hereby ordered at once to disband.
"4. Any violation of either of the foregoing articles shall subject the offender to the penalty of military law, according to the nature of the offense."
Fremont signed this agreement at Springfield on the Ist of November and Price signed it at Cassville on the 5th. But on the 2nd of November a mes- senger arrived at Springfield with an order from Winfield Scott telling Fremont to turn his command over to General Hunter and report to general headquarters. Fremont issued an address of farewell to the "Soldiers of the Mississippi Army" and left Springfield for St. Louis. In this address he said: "Soldiers, I regret to leave you. Most sincerely I thank you for the regard and confidence you have in- variably shown me. I deeply regret that I shall not have the honor to lead you to the victory which you are just about to win, but I shall claim to share with you in the joy of every triumph, and trust always to be fraternally remembered by my companions in arms."
Fremont was the hope of the anti-slavery people. Not long after he took com- mand at St. Louis he proclamed the freedom of the slaves owned by Missourians
THE BRANT RESIDENCE ON CHOUTEAU AVENUE Headquarters of Fremont in 1861
MRS. JESSIE BENTON FREMONT (Miss Jessie Benton)
GEN. JOHN C. FREMONT
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THE STATE THE STAKE
who had joined the Confederates. President Lincoln repudiated Fremont's action. He held it was in violation of existing laws. Furthermore the general had usurped a prerogative of the President. John G. Whittier made this incident the subject of stirring lines which were copied throughout the country :
"Thy error, Fremont, simply was to act A brave man's part, without the statesman's tact, And, taking counsel but of common sense, To strike at cause as well as consequence. Oh, never yet since Roland wound his horn, At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as thine own, Heard from the van of freedom's hope forlorn."
Missouri's War Record for 1861.
Missouri was the kindergarten of the Civil war. From the little army with which Lyon fought the battle of Wilson's Creek in August, 1861, came seven major-generals and thirteen brigadier-generals. Of the southern rights Mis- sourians who fought in that same battle seven rose to be general officers in the Confederate army.
When the year 1861 closed there had been fought in Missouri and for the most part between Missourians, sixty-one battles. The losses on the Union side were 500 to 600 killed, 2,000 wounded and 3,600 taken prisoners. The losses on the Confederate side were about the same.
Lincoln, in a letter about the close of the year, wrote, "Before Spring the peo- ple of Missouri will probably be in no favorable mood to renew for next year the troubles which have so afflicted and impoverished them during this."
CHAPTER XVI.
CIVIL WAR IN MISSOURI.
A Great Emergency-The Man of the Hour-"Old Sanitary"-Organising the Plan of Relief -Merciful Missourians Behind the Firing Lines-Major Hodges' Narrative-James E. Yeatman-The Sanitary Fair-Assessment of Southern Sympathizers-Dr. Eliot's Protest to President Lincoln-How the Missouri Chaos "Stampeded" Sherman-A Leave of Absence-The Story of Insanity-A Long Hidden Confidential Letter-Hal- leck Called Upon to Explain-Missouri in the War Records-The Policy of Exter- mination-"War Is Butchery on a Grand Scale"-Guerrillas "Should Not Be Brought in as Prisoners"-"Forty-one Guerrillas Mustered Out by Our Boys in the Brush"- William F. Switzler on "The Reign of Terror"-Missouri Warfare as John F. Philips Saw It-Graphic Story of the Charge on a Church-Retaliation by Order of General Brown-Bill Anderson and the "Kansas First Guerrilla"-A Defiant Proclamation- The Death of Anderson-Depopulation Suggested for Boone County-A Man Hunt in the Lowlands of the Southeast-"We Killed in All Forty-seven"-The Paw Paw Mili- tia Controversy-Gen. Clinton B. Fisk's Reports-A Brush Expedition in H'estern Missouri-The War on Smugglers-Gen. John McNeil's Order to Burn-Fisk Said, "Pursue and Kill."
In Missouri the war was waged with unspeakable bitterness, sometimes with inhuman cruelty. It was fought by men in single combat, in squads, in companies, in regiments, in great armies, in the open, in fortified town, and in ambush, under the Stars and Stripes, under the Stars and Bars, and under the black flag .- Champ Clark.
Unpreparedness was the state of the Union when Civil war broke out. Men could be enlisted. Guns and uniforms could be bought. Cartridges could be made. The fighting began as if no thereafter was taken into account. Back from the front trickled the earliest human stream of wounded and sick. It swelled rapidly as the months passed. The fighting became heavier. Born of a great emergency, late in the summer of 1861, the Western Sanitary Commission came into existence.
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