A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
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CHAPTER XVII, CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST
While the events I have described were going on in Virginia, the campaign in the West was moving on vigorously, though in a smaller way. At St.Louis many citizens were shot down in the street. In some instances women and children were thus murdered by the Black Republican soldiery. The State had taken no steps towards secession. But as the laws of the States and the property and lives of its citizens were already the prey of soldiers in Federal uniform, it is certainly true that the Federal Administration began the work of subjugating the State in earnest before any signs of secession were apparent in the people or authorities of the State.
Governor Jackson called out the Missouri militia, who were encamped under the laws of the State at a place called Camp Jackson, near the city of St.Louis. These State troops were compelled to surrender to a superior force of abolition soldiers under Captain Lyon, who was afterwards made a general by Mr.Lincoln, and was killed not long after at the battle of Springfield. Immediately after this surrender, Governor Jackson called for 50,000 volunteers for State defence. He appointed Stirling Price Major General of the State forces of Missouri, and also appointed eight or nine brigadier generals.
On the 20th of June, 1861, General Lyon, at the head of 7000 well armed and well drilled Federal troops, started for the capture of Booneville. At that place was stationed Colonel Marmaduke, with about 800 State troops, poorly armed with the poorer sort of rifles and shot guns, with no cannon, and very little ammunition. Understanding the superior force and equipment of the enemy, and well knowing that it would be impossible for eight hundred men poorly armed to stand against 8000 men well armed, Colonel Marmaduke ordered a retreat. But this the men refused to do, declaring that they would not leave without giving the foe, as they called it, "a peppering." So they stood their ground, with no commander but their captain and lieutenant. A fight ensued which lasted nearly two hours, in which three Missourians were killed and twenty wounded, while the Federal loss was, in killed and wounded, over one hundred. But "the barefoot rebel militia," as they were called, were forced to fly, after that gallant little resistance.
There were several unimportant fights following immediately this skirmish at Booneville. A man who called himself Colonel Cook, a brother of the infamous B.F.Cook, who was hanged with old John Brown in Virginia, had raised a force of abolitionists, under the name of "Home Guards," to the number of about one thousand. Upon this force, Colonel O'Kane, with a small body of State soldiers, fell one morning at daybreak, and almost annihilated them, as they were asleep at the time. Over two hundred were killed, while a much larger number were wounded, and over one hundred taken prisoners. In this surprise the Missourians lost four men, and twenty wounded, and they captured three hundred and sixty muskets.
But the first important battle was fought at Carthage, on the 5th of July, 1861, between the Federal army, commanded by General Sigel, and the Missouri State troops, commanded by Governor Jackson. After one of the most spirited engagements of the whole war, General Sigel was badly whipped, and that, too, by a vastly inferior and badly equipped force. The next day after this battle, General Stirling Price arrived at Carthage, in company with Brigadier-General Ben. McCulloch, a famous fighting officer of the Confederate army, and also Major-General Pierce, of the Arkansas State militia. These accessions added about 2000 men to the defensive army of Missouri.
The abolition army under the several commands of Generals Lyon, Sigel, Sweeny, and Sturgis, had united at Springfield. The Missouri army started at once on the march towards Springfield, while, at the same time, the abolition commanders quickly marched out their army to meet it. The Missouri force was a sorry sight for an army, in all but desperate fighting pluck. A subordinate officer drew the following humorous picture of its condition: "We had not a blanket, not a tent,nor any clothes, except the few we had on our backs, and four-fifths of us were barefooted. Billy Barlow's dress at a circus would be decent, compared with that of almost any one, from the major-general down to the humblest private. But we had this preparation for battle, every one believed that he was fighting in a cause the most sacred that ever aroused the heroism of man."
This army consisted of five thousand three hundred infantry, with fifteen pieces of artillery, and six thousand horsemen armed with nothing better than flint-lock muskets and old shot guns,and very few cartridge-boxes. One long day's march brought this motley army to Wilson's Creek, or as it is also called, Oak Hill, eight miles from Springfield. Here they rested for the night; and the soldiers, notwithstanding their tedious march, "danced around their camp fires until a late hour." In this army there were about one thousand Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, some dressed in the regular Confederate uniform, and others in all kinds of fantastic uncivilized gear.
The Federal army, under Generals Lyon and Sigel, consisted at this time of about nine thousand men, well armed, among which was a thousand United States regulars, of the First and Second U.S. infantry, the Fourth U.S. cavalry, and Second U.S. dragoons. General Lyon, learning that the Missouri army was encamped at Wilson's Creek, struck his tents at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and marched slowly and silently along until he arrived within an hour's march of the enemy's camp, when he halted in a little valley, where his army slept upon their arms. The next morning, at daybreak they were again ready to march to the attack of the Missourians.
General Lyon now harangued his soldiers, telling them that they were within a short hour's march of the enemy, and that he should that morning breakfast them in their camp. At sunrise he reached the position he wanted, and immediately opened the battle by attacking the Missourians at two points, on their right and left. He led the attack upon the right himself, while General Sigel was to attack the left and rear. After passing round a hill to get in position, General Sigel mistook a portion of General Lyon's force for the enemy and furiously began to pour shot and shell upon it, and kept up the mistake until General Lyon sent round a messenger to inform him of his mistake.
Though surprised, the Missourians under the command of General Ben. McCulloch, were instantly made ready for the battle, and entered into the fight, not only with courage, but with the reckless desperation of men who preferred death to defeat. In numbers and arms General Lyon had a very great advantage. He also had the still greater advantage of having effected the surprise of Ben.McCulloch's army. But this latter benefit did not seem very great, as the Missourians were instantly at work resisting the foe. It was a short but terrible conflict, in which General Lyon was killed, and his army beaten and put to a complete rout.
The retreat was conducted with a good deal of skill and energy by General Sigel. By forced marches he reached Rolla, a distance of about 175 miles in a little over three days, allowing his soldiers only three hours and a half sleep every twenty-four hours.
This entire defeat and rout of the abolition army in Missouri was regarded as almost the finishing blow to that cause in the West. And so it might have been, perhaps, but for a disagreement between General McCulloch and General Price, in consequence of which General McCulloch took at the Confederate force under his command and returned to Arkansas, leaving General Price alone, with only the State troops of Missouri for the defence of that State. There is little doubt that, had General McCulloch remained and acted in conjunction with General Price and the State troops, Missouri would, in a short time, have been wholly cleared of the presence of the abolitionists. Some time afterwards General McCulloch expressed his profound regret at what he called his "great mistake in withdrawing from Missouri."
Losing the support of the Confederate forces, General Price marched his State army of about five thousand men for the Missouri River, receiving reinforcements of citizens all along the line of his march.
Learning that the infamous bushwhackers and ruffians, Jennison, Jim Lane, and Montgomery,were near Fort Scott, with a force of marauders, plundering, burning, and murdering wherever they went, he marched directly for that place. Fifteen miles from Fort Scott, he met with Jim Lane, and put him to an utter rout and flight, and then continued his march on to Lexington, where Colonel Mulligan, with a Federal force, was strongly intrenched. at that place a desperate battle transpired, which, after fifty-two hours of uninterrupted fighting, resulted in the entire defeat and surrender of the abolition force under Colonel Mulligan.
In General Price's official report of the battle, he said: "This victory has demonstrated the fitness of our citizen soldiery for the tedious operations of a siege, as well as for a dashing charge. They lay for fifty-two hours in the open air, without tents or covering, regardless of the sun and rain, and in the very presence of a watchful and desperate foe, manfully repelling every assault and patiently awaiting my orders to storm the fortifications. No general ever commanded a braver or better army. It is composed of the best blood and bravest men of Missouri."
Just before this battle, General Fremont had been appointed by Mr.Lincoln to the command of the Department of the West. He inaugurated his advent in Missouri with the most ridiculous display of pomp, parade, and insolence. He behaved himself far more like an eastern bashaw than like a general in a republican country. He put forth a swelling order proclaiming "the abolition of slavery" and the confiscation of the property of all Missourians who adhered to the government of their State. So wildly did he behave himself that President Lincoln felt himself compelled to check his imprudence; and finally, he was, after a short reign, removed from his command, for military incapacity, and for permitting immense swindling of the Government by his subordinates.
While the battle of Lexington was going on, an army of jayhawkers, under Jim Lane and Montgomery, fell upon five hundred Missourians about thirty miles above Lexington, who, in an almost hand-to-hand fight, completely cut the jayhawkers to pieces, and thus made two victories for the Missourians on that day.
But these brilliant victories described in this chapter, were nearly the end of the triumph of the Missourians over the abolition foe. An army of 70,000 men was ready to march under General Fremont, and as General Price had no force to meet such a tremendous army, and being without means of transportation for even the whole of the small force he commanded, and being almost out of ammunition, he was obliged to disband a portion of it, and make the best retreat he could. Fremont had his immense army already on the march, with the design of entirely surrounding the little force remaining under General Price; but the vigilant Missouri commander defeated his project by boldly sending out small forces to attack at two points the advance columns of General Fremont's army.
In this he was entirely successful, for he made such an impression upon the abolition force that Fremont halted and began to ditch. But General Price gladly left the abolition general ditching, and made the best of his retreat towards the Arkansas line. His whole command, now only 15,000 strong, crossed Osage River, which was much swollen by recent rains,in two rude flatboats constructed by his men for the occasion. Afterwards it took General Fremont sixteen days to get across the same stream on his pontoon bridges.
General Price continued his retreat to Neosho, a little town on the southern borders of Missouri, where Governor Jackson had assembled the State Legislature. At this place, after the people of Missouri had been plundered and ravaged for months by the marauding abolition army, the Legislature passed an act of secession, and appointed delegates to the Provisional Congress of the Southern Confederacy. The State was literally driven out of the Union. We may say fought out of it. It was not the intention of the Legislature to pass an act of secession, until it found the State laws overthrown by the abolition army under the pay of Mr.Lincoln's Administration.
The presence of the Federal army in Missouri, against which the State authorities struggled so long and so gallantly, was as great a crime on the part of Mr.Lincoln and the Black Republican party as the presence of the same kind of invading army would be in New York or in Massachusetts at the present time. The Missourians were all the time fighting for the preservation of their own laws, and the protection of their own State. And there was hardly a respectable native citizen of the State, whose heart was not honestly and devotedly with General Price in his gallant but vain struggle to drive the marauding abolition foe from its borders.
The State was literally overrun with such ruffians as Jim Lane, Montgomery, and Jennison,the former friends and associates of old John Brown in all his thefts and murders in Kansas. For many months before the Legislature passed the ordinance of secession, the native citizens of Missouri had been pillaged and imprisoned in the most cruel and brutal manner. The banks of the State were robbed of their specie. The dwellings of the wealthy were entered by freebooters in Federal uniform and stripped of their silver spoons, jewelry,ladies' wardrobes, and all other valuables. Their cattle were driven off, and either killed to feed the abolition army, or given to the Germans who assisted that army to invade and plunder the native people of the State.
General Lyon, who was killed at the battle of Wilson's Creek, was a Connecticut abolitionist of the most bitter type. He had neither pity nor mercy for any white man who was not an abolitionist He was an excellent military officer, but fanatical and cruel in carrying out his creed.
But under the military rule of General Lyon, the people of Missouri were not so badly off as they were under the brief but disgraceful reign of General Fremont. Fremont carried things with such a high hand that Mr.Lincoln was obliged in a short time to remove him. As I have before told you, he began by assuming the airs of some eastern bashaw or monarch. Some of his German officers imprudently let slip the idea that Frermont cared nothing for Lincoln or the United States, but that he was going to establish an immemse German empire in the West. Perhaps this had something to do with Lincoln's very sudden removal of Fremont.
A gentleman describing a journey in Missouri at that time, writes as follows: "God forbid I should exaggerate; and were I willing to do so, things are so bad that they could not be painted worse, with all the coloring in the world. My whole journey to this place has presented harrowing sights-widows, wives, children, and the aged,standing houseless by the wayside,their homes in flames and ruins. You will ask if they are Missourians who have done these things; you know the character of native Missourians too well, to think they are. These destroyers are the valiant German and Dutch heroes of Sigel; runaways from battle-fields, who show their paltry spite to helpless little ones, whose fathers and brothers are fighting for freedom of thought, word, and action. Heaven forbid that the name of Missourians should be placed on such a record! Yet there are ambitious leaders among them, who care not who perish so they may rule. A German republic or empire is their dream, and already their general (Fremont) is assuming all the trumpery and airs of foreign courts-already he travels in state, has a German bodyguard, tricked out in what appears to be the castoff finery of a third-class theatrical wardrobe. When he travels on the river, an entire steamboat is not more than sufficient to accommodate the majesty of Fremont; guards pace before his door night and day; servants in gay livery hand round Catawba on silver waiters; grooms and orderlies flit about like poor imitations of the same class of servants in German cities, while the ruling language of the court is very low Dutch, redolent of lager bier and schnapps."
The suspicion that Fremont was secretly aiming at a German empire of his own in the Great West, gained some little confirmation from his manner of treating Mr.Lincoln's order for his removal. At first, for several days, he refused to be removed, but gave orders to all his subordinates to allow no one to reach his person. This was to prevent President Lincoln's order of his removal from being served on him. But after being satisfied that it would be a vain attempt for him to hold out longer, he yielded. And after his removal, a considerable portion of his German soldiers mutinied, and refused, for some time, to do further service in the war.
It will probably never be known to what extent this scheme for a German empire under Fremont had progressed, at the time of Fremont's timely removal by Mr.Lincoln, but there is no doubt that those who were capable of sustaining the horrible despotism of the abolition reign in Missouri were capable of enjoying the absolute rule of monarchy.
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