tei|M 
 
 
 
 ^sTLE^> 
 ■ 
 
 Erf 
 

 Class 
 Book 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
Judge Johx F. Phillips. 
 
 Colonel Seventh Missouri Federal Cavalry, commanding Brown's 
 Brigade of Pleasanton's Army in the Battle of Westport. 
 
THE BATTLE 
 
 o 
 
 r WESTPORT 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL B. JENKINS. 
 
 COMPILED FROM THE OFFICIAL RECORDS OF THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE 
 ARMIES, FROM BIOGRAPHIES, STATEMENTS OF PARTICIPANTS, FEDERAL 
 AND CONFEDERATE OFFICERS, EYE-WITNESSES, PRIVATE SOURCES, 
 NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS OF THE TIME, ETC., ETC. ACCOMPANIED BY 
 HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED MAPS OF THE BATTLE-FIELDS REPRO- 
 DUCED FROM GOVERNMENT ORIGINALS, SHOWING MOVE- 
 MENTS OF THE TROOPS ENGAGED, ETC. ILLUSTRATED 
 WITH PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE IMPORTANT SITES MEN- 
 TIONED, OF RELICS OF THE BATTLE, ETC., ESPE- 
 CIALLY TAKEN FOR THIS WORK. TO WHICH 
 IS ADDED AN APPENDIX CONTAINING THE 
 FIRST COMPLETE STATEMENT OF THE 
 ORGANIZATION OF THE THREE AR- 
 MIES ENGAGED, AND AN IN- 
 DEX OF INDIVIDUALS AND 
 TROOPS MENTIONED. 
 
 FRANKLIN HUDSON PUBLISHING CO., 
 
 KANSAS CITY, MO. 
 
 1906. 
 
v ^congress! 
 
 i«s Receded 
 
 JUL i VJOB 
 
 lllCCu J" if $ 
 
 CUHY A. 
 
 Copyrighted, 1906, 
 
 by 
 
 PAUL B. JENKINS, 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The; student of military and political history will 
 readily note a marked resemblance between the engage- 
 ments fought on July ist to 3d, 1863, before Gettysburg, 
 in the State of Pennsylvania, and that of October 21st to 
 23d, 1864, near Kansas City, in the State of Missouri. 
 Barring only the numbers engaged and the corresponding 
 losses, the battles of Gettysburg and of Westport had 
 much in common. Each was the result of a campaign of 
 invasion planned by the Confederate War Department 
 for the purpose of severing the Union territory at the 
 point of attack, the one in the East, the other in the West. 
 Each such campaign was intended seriously to embarrass 
 the Federal defence by necessitating the summoning of 
 distant forces to resist the invasion, thus setting other 
 Confederate forces freer to conduct their own lines of ac- 
 tion. Each seriously threatened the principal cities in 
 the invaded territory, and in each case that territory was 
 chosen for the reason that it contained such places of im- 
 portance — Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia in 
 the eastern campaign ; St. Louis, Kansas City and the im- 
 portant military post of Fort Leavenworth in the western. 
 The engagement in which each campaign culminated oc- 
 cupied three days of incessant fighting, and the defeat to 
 the Confederate arms with which each closed put an end 
 forever to further attempts at carrying the war north- 
 ward in their respective portions of the Union. Each 
 such defeat established one of the two high-tide marks of 
 
 5 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 the Confederacy, the one in the East, the other in the 
 West. And, finally, each period of three days' conflict 
 composed, in numbers and importance of results attained, 
 the largest and most decisive land battle of the Civil War 
 in its respective portion of the two great natural divisions 
 of the United States, the territories lying respectively 
 east and west of the Mississippi River. 
 
 In spite, however, of the importance that may be thus 
 justly claimed for the series of actions known as the Battle 
 of Westport, those actions and their results have received 
 but scant attention from the historians of the "Great 
 Conflict." The reasons for that neglect are not difficult 
 to ascertain. There were but few writers, scholars, stu- 
 dents and West Point graduates on the more western 
 field or in the ranks of Price's, Curtis' and Pleasanton's 
 armies. Their numbers were from the Ozark mountains 
 of Arkansas, the farms of Missouri and the prairies of 
 Kansas. Theirs was no mere political strife; it was the 
 combat of men who fought for the very soil over which 
 they charged, and backed with their muskets the opinions 
 taught them at their mothers' breasts. If the strategy of 
 Yorktown and Waterloo was absent from their maneu- 
 vres in the field, at least they knew well how to forge rude 
 sabers at the blacksmith's anvil, or to handle rifles that 
 had already rendered good service at Chapultepec or 
 checked the yelling rush of Arapahoe and Pawnee. Then, 
 their battle over, they mustered themselves out of service, 
 plowed the earthworks under, and set about building 
 cities as the sole monument of charge and counter-charge, 
 until to-day school-houses dot the battle-field and church- 
 spires fine the historic "Trail." 
 
Preface. 7 
 
 As to the sources from which the accompanying nar- 
 rative has been drawn it must suffice to say that the list 
 is far too long for enumeration. It includes every pub- 
 lished volume that has dealt in any way with the history 
 of the Union, the West, the States of Missouri and Kansas 
 and their cities, during the year 1864, or with the par- 
 ticular campaign itself. It includes the 103 reports of 
 officers of every rank which were submitted to the War 
 Departments of the United States and of the Confederacy 
 respectively at the close of Price's campaign. It includes 
 the personal narratives of five leading officers and half an 
 hundred or more other veterans, participants in the cam- 
 paign and its engagements, who have kindly given the 
 benefit of their recollections. 
 
 The writer — if such title the present compiler may 
 claim — is the sole male member of his family since 1776 
 who has not at some time worn the uniform of the United 
 States Army. That honor denied him, it has for years 
 been his hope to add in some slight way to that literature 
 which contains the noble record of those Americans, who, 
 on countless fields, have fought for the right as God has 
 given them to see the right. Ten years ago, on becoming 
 a resident in the vicinity of this all too little-known field 
 of one of the decisive conflicts of the Civil War, he began 
 the study of the events that culminated in that action. 
 Finding that not one adequate account of those events 
 had been written since 1865, he undertook the collection 
 of notes, studies and interviews which he hoped might 
 one day tell the story of the Battle of Westport — the 
 Western Gettysburg. That story is contained in the 
 pages which follow. — P. B. J. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter. Page. 
 
 I. Early Life of Sterling Price 1 1 
 
 II. First Services of Price to the Confederacy . . . . 19 
 
 III. Plan and First Movements of the Missouri Campaign . 26 
 
 IV. Price's Movements up to Jefferson City. Preparations 
 
 Against His Advance 36 
 
 V. Engagements at the Little Blue, Independence, and the 
 
 Big Blue 55 
 
 VI. The Battle of Westport. From Dawn to Eight O'clock 80 
 
 VII. The Battle of Westport. From Eight O'clock to Noon 103 
 
 VIII. The Battle of Westport. From Noon to Two O'clock . 139 
 
 IX. The Retreat and the End of the Campaign . . . . 1 48 
 
 Appendix 159 
 
 1. Organization of Price's Army. "The Army of the 
 
 Trans-Mississippi" 161 
 
 2. Organization of Curtis' Army, "The Army of the Bor- 
 
 der" 166 
 
 3. Organization of Pleasant on' s Army, "The Army of the 
 
 Department of the Missouri" 170 
 
 4. Comparison of Numbers Engaged in the Battle of 
 £ Westport and in Other Battles of the Civil War 
 
 West of the Mississippi 173 
 
 5. The "Reynolds' Manuscript" on Sterling Price and the 
 
 Confederacy 175 
 
 Index of Individuals and Troops Mentioned 183 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY LIFE OF STERLING PRICE. 
 
 THE third and last great "raid" made by General 
 Sterling Price, C. S. A., into the State of Missouri 
 was, in spite of this its common name, no such 
 irregular and unofficial an expedition as, for in- 
 stance the attack of Quantrill and his band on the town 
 of Lawrence, Kansas. It ought properly to be called an 
 invasion rather than a raid, inasmuch as it was a military 
 movement on the part of a force numbering 10,000 men, 
 definitely planned and ordered by the Confederate War 
 Department for strategic reasons, executed by an army 
 organized for the purpose and formally entrusted to the 
 command of a former Brigadier-General of the United 
 States Army, a veteran of the Mexican War, Governor of 
 the State of Missouri from 1852 to 1856, and a prominent 
 officer of the Confederate forces in the immediately pre- 
 ceding actions of the War. 
 
 Sterling Price was by birth a Virginian, born in Prince 
 Edward County, in 1809, of intelligent and fairly well-to- 
 do parents. His youth had been spent in the local 
 schools, in a course at Hampden-Sidney College in his 
 native county, and in the study of law. In 1831 his 
 father moved with his family to a farm in Chariton 
 County, Missouri, which place became Sterling Price's 
 home up to his death in the epidemic of cholera in St. 
 Louis in 1867. Young Price had no small ability, for he 
 
12 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 had lived in Missouri but nine years when, in 1840, he 
 was elected a member of the State Legislature and was 
 immediately made Speaker of the House, an unusual 
 honor for a man so young and so comparatively unknown 
 throughout the State. For several years thereafter he 
 was the principal public figure in both civil and military 
 affairs in the State. In 1846 he was elected to Congress 
 and took his seat, but remained in Washington only a 
 short time. Two reasons have been assigned for his res- 
 ignation. One is that there was certain vigorous and 
 bitter criticism of him in his home State; the other that 
 he wished to take part in the then impending war with 
 Mexico. It is not definitely known to-day what was the 
 cause of the criticism and opposition to him at home, 
 though the existence of such feeling is mentioned by all 
 his biographers. It is but fair to believe that a desire to 
 enter the military service of his country was as large a 
 factor in his decision to resign from Congress as any other 
 motive, for he had no sooner reached Missouri on his re- 
 turn than he began to raise a force of volunteers to take 
 part in the first move that the United States might make, 
 and in this design he and his men were successful. 
 
 The immediate matter in dispute between the United 
 States and Mexico was the claim of the former that the 
 cession of the Territory of Texas included the country 
 between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, a claim 
 which Mexico denied, refusing accordingly to yield the 
 territory thus bounded. In March, 1846, President Polk 
 ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy the disputed 
 soil, and this he did with a force of 2,300 men. In May, 
 General Ampudia attacked Taylor with 6,000 Mexicans 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 13 
 
 and was severely defeated at Palo Alto. On May 13th, 
 the United States declared war against Mexico and called 
 for 50,000 volunteers, General Stephen W. Kearney being 
 instructed to assemble the first forces at Fort Leaven- 
 worth, to form them into the "Army of the West," and 
 to proceed at once to Santa Fe. Two practically complete 
 regiments were almost immediately at General Kear- 
 ney's disposal, known as the First and Second Missouri 
 Mounted Volunteers, the first having been raised by Colonel 
 A. W. Doniphan, of Clay County, Missouri, the second by 
 Sterling Price, who was at once commissioned Colonel of 
 his force. With the addition of a few less complete 
 forces — three squadrons of the First United States 
 Dragoons under Major Sumner and two batteries of ar- 
 tillery under Major M. L. Clark, one of them the famous 
 "Battery A" of St. Louis — these composed General 
 Kearney's expedition, and they started at once on the 
 long march of 900 miles from Fort Leavenworth to the 
 town of Santa Fe. The force was divided for the journey 
 into two divisions, the first containing all except Price's 
 regiment, the second that body alone. Their line of 
 march was that which later became famous as the "Santa 
 Fe" Trail." 
 
 Francis Parkman, the historian, at this time engaged 
 on his tour of the Western plains, has left us (The Oregon 
 Trail, chap, xxvi) a most picturesque description of Kear- 
 ney's army and its odd and irregular advance on this 
 campaign. He met them on the Upper Arkansas, and 
 after commenting on meeting a company or two a day, 
 straggling along and hunting or resting on their way, 
 he^says : 
 
14 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 "No men ever embarked upon a military expedition 
 with a greater love for the work before them than the 
 Missourians; but if discipline and subordination are the 
 criterion of merit, they were worthless soldiers indeed. 
 Yet when their exploits have rung through all America, 
 it would be absurd to deny that they were excellent ir- 
 regular troops. Their victories were gained in the teeth 
 of every established precedent of warfare, and were 
 owing to a combination of military qualities in the men 
 themselves. Doniphan's regiment marched through New 
 Mexico more like a band of free companions than like the 
 paid soldiers of a modern government. When General 
 Taylor complimented him on his success at Sacramento 
 and elsewhere, the Colonel's reply very well illustrates 
 the relations which subsisted between the officers and men 
 of his command. 
 
 " 'I don't know anything of the maneuvres. The 
 boys kept coming to me to let them charge ; and when I 
 saw a good opportunity, I told them they might go. 
 They were off like a shot, and that 's all I know about it.' 
 "Price's soldiers, whom we now met, were men from 
 the same neighborhood, precisely similar in character, 
 manners, and appearance. There were some ruffian faces 
 among them, and some haggard with debauchery ; but on 
 the whole they were extremely good-looking men, superior 
 beyond measure to the ordinary rank and file of an army. 
 Except that they were booted to the knees, they wore 
 their belts and military trappings over the ordinary dress 
 of citizens. Besides their swords and holster pistols, they 
 carried slung from their saddles the excellent Springfield 
 carbines, loaded at the breech." (In this last sentence 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 15 
 
 Parkman seems to have fallen into the error of using a 
 popular misnomer for the arm mentioned. There was in 
 1846 no "Springfield" breech -loading carbine in use in 
 the army of the United States. It is true that Jenk's 
 breech-loading carbine, manufactured for the Govern- 
 ment by the Ames Arms Company of Springfield, Massa- 
 chusetts, was in use, but only in the navy. It is prac- 
 tically certain that the carbine alluded to was the famous 
 Hall's breech-loading carbine with the tip-up breech- 
 block, issued in both flint and percussion-lock, well 
 known historically as the first breech-loading arm offi- 
 cially adopted by any government. It, however, was 
 manufactured at the Harper's Ferry Arsenal. At this 
 date its inventor, Colonel John H. Hall, was living in 
 Missouri, whence these troops came and where he and his 
 invention were alike widely popular, and many arms 
 with his invention are known to have been used in the 
 Mexican War.) 
 
 On arriving at Santa Fe with the first column, Kearney 
 took possession of the country in the name of the United 
 States, appointed a former Missourian, William Bent, of 
 St. I/Ouis, as Governor, placed Doniphan in command of 
 the military, and, before Price's column had arrived, set 
 off with 200 dragoons for California, with the intention of 
 seizing that territory also for the Union. During the en- 
 suing winter there occurred an incident which made for 
 Price at least one bitter enemy, one whose enmity en- 
 dured, as we shall see, implacable throughout their life- 
 times, and, strangely enough, deeply affected in later 
 years the history of the West and the checkered fortunes 
 of the Confederacy. Throughout the entire military 
 
1 6 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 career of Sterling Price — that is to say, throughout his 
 lifetime — it was always true of him that he was among 
 the most lax of supposed disciplinarians. Parkman's 
 quoted description of the troops under him on his first 
 campaign affirms it, while during his Confederate career 
 his warmest admirers were forced to admit, though they 
 strove to excuse it, and his enemies made capital of the 
 fact until he was in his grave. 
 
 Hard upon Kearney's departure for California, Doni- 
 phan, after a few minor engagements with the Navajo 
 Indians, was ordered to Chihuahua, thus leaving Colonel 
 Price in command at Santa Fe. Of Price's failure to 
 keep either the surrounding country or his own soldiers 
 sufficiently under control the treacherous Mexicans and 
 Pueblo Indians took advantage, plotting the recapture of 
 the place from the possession of the United States. They 
 succeeded in raising a revolt and in butchering Governor 
 Bent (January 19th, 1847) and several other Americans, 
 but were then compelled to flee before Price's vengeance. 
 With 500 of his Missourians Price pursued the insurgents 
 through the small towns of Canada, Moro, and the cele- 
 brated Pueblo de Taos. Among the most treasured pos- 
 sessions of the Missouri Historical Society of St. Louis 
 there may be seen the small silk American flag carried by 
 the before-mentioned Battery A, and which bears the 
 names of these towns as those where the battery partici- 
 pated in the fighting. At the last-named place the Mex- 
 icans attempted to make a stand against their pursuers 
 by barricading a church and two ancient Indian "pu- 
 eblos" and holding them as a fort, but Price and his men 
 cut through the adobe walls with axes and intrepidly en- 
 
The Battle of Westport. 17 
 
 tered and seized the improvised stronghold. In ten days 
 the revolt was crushed, Price having lost 47 men killed as 
 against the Mexicans' 285. Yet it was undeniable that 
 only the most regrettably lax vigilance on Price's part 
 had made the uprising possible. 
 
 Among the officers of the United States forces in this 
 campaign there was a Colonel Jefferson Davis, a Missis- 
 sippian, who had also been a member of Congress, and, 
 like Price, had resigned to take part in the war. He had 
 raised the First Mississippi Volunteers, with whom he had 
 accompanied General Zachary Taylor's expedition, and 
 was wounded at the battle of Buena Vista. From the date 
 of the Mexican revolt at Santa Fe\ Davis professed the ut- 
 most contempt for the unmilitary negligence that alone 
 had made it possible, a feeling which was often publicly 
 shown in the form of a marked personal animosity to- 
 ward Price, with whom he had in later years more than 
 one unconcealed exchange of bitter personalities. 
 
 The United States Government, however, did not look 
 as seriously on the affair at Santa Fe as Davis did, for in 
 the same year Price was commissioned a Brigadier-Gen- 
 eral. Davis was also offered a similar commission by 
 President Polk, but refused it on the ground that "a mil- 
 itary appointment by a Federal executive was unconsti- 
 tutional." Immediately after this promotion Price was 
 ordered into Mexican territory to take the post of Military 
 Governor of Chihuahua. Here the Mexicans endeavored 
 again to catch him off his guard, but Price had learned 
 something about Mexicans, and when they brought him 
 false reports that peace had been made, instead of be- 
 lieving their news he promptly attacked the town of 
 
1 8 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 Santa Cruz de Rosales, in which engagement he lost 45 
 men as against the defenders' loss of 300 in killed, wound- 
 ed and captured. This was the last action of any note 
 in which he took part during the Mexican War. At its 
 close he returned to his farm in Chariton County, Mis- 
 souri, and for the next ten or twelve years was probably 
 the most popular and most widely known single citizen 
 of the State, being elected Governor in 1852. His term 
 of office was uneventful and at its close he returned once 
 more to the farm. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 FIRST SERVICES OF PRICE TO THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 THE Southern friends of Sterling Price have always 
 claimed that he was originally "a Union man," 
 and such he seems indeed to have been according 
 to his own interpretation of the term. He be- 
 lieved in the existence and maintenance of a union among 
 the various States, but he believed also that that Union 
 had no rights that were superior to any possessed by the 
 individual States. To him each State and each State 
 Government was supreme within its own boundaries, and 
 this belief guided his future conduct, as will presently ap- 
 pear. When the movement toward secession was spread- 
 ing from one to another of the Southern States, a con- 
 vention was called in the State of Missouri (February 
 28th, 1 861) to determine whether it also should secede. 
 Of this now famous Convention Sterling Price was elected 
 President, and the historic decision was reached that it 
 should not secede. 
 
 Presently, however, Camp Jackson, near St. Louis — 
 where the militia that sympathized with the Confederacy 
 was being assembled by order of Governor Claiborne 
 Jackson — was forcibly seized by Captain Nathaniel Lyon, 
 of the Second United States Infantry, and 1,000 men, an 
 act which to Sterling Price was a direct violation of the 
 cherished doctrine of "States' Rights." At once he of- 
 fered his services and his sword, not to the Confederate 
 
 19 
 —2— 
 
20 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 Government, but to the Governor himself, and at that 
 official's direction began to raise an army to be known as 
 the "Missouri State Guards." Over this force he refused 
 at first to lift the "stars and bars" of the Confederacy, 
 but flew instead the State flag of Missouri. In com- 
 pany with other regular and irregular Confederate forces 
 he and his men took part in the battles of Wilson's Creek, 
 near Springfield, Missouri (August ioth, 1861); the 
 famous "hemp-bale" siege and assault of the Masonic 
 College at Lexington, Missouri (September nth-2oth, 
 1 861), where the victory over the Federal garrison under 
 Colonel J. A. Mulligan was claimed for Price and raised 
 him high in the Southern esteem; Pea Ridge, Arkansas 
 (March 7th-8th, 1862); and other minor skirmishes. At 
 Pea Ridge lie was slightly wounded in the right forearm 
 by a musket-ball on the second day of the battle, but 
 with his arm in a sling continued to direct his troops. 
 In this battle the victorious Federal troops were under 
 the command of Brigadier-General S. R. Curtis, whom 
 Price was destined one day to meet again. 
 
 After the battle of Pea Ridge, Price abandoned the 
 idea of supporting Missouri alone, hoisted the Confed- 
 erate flag, offered his services to President Jefferson 
 Davis, and, his corps being officially designated as the 
 "Army of the West," was sent to cooperate with Major- 
 General Earl Van Dorn's "Army of West Tennessee," 
 east of the Mississippi. This was in April of 1862, by the 
 9th of which month the forces of Van Dorn and Price 
 joined those of Bragg, Polk, Hardee, and Breckinridge at 
 Corinth, Mississippi, under General G. T. Beauregard, a 
 total of some 80,000 men. No sooner were these troops 
 
The; Battle; of Wejstport. 21 
 
 assembled than Major-General Halleck began to move 
 against them with his army of 110,000 men, and by 
 strategic advances, elaborate intrenchments at every 
 halt, the use of heavy siege-guns, etc., forced the Confed- 
 erates to evacuate Corinth (May 29th) without a battle, 
 and to retreat to Tupelo, fifty-two miles south, to which 
 point Halleck and his army did not pursue. 
 
 At this time ensued the climax of Jefferson Davis' 
 manifestations of his hostility to General Price. In the 
 month of June, Van Dorn, Beauregard, Bragg and others 
 united in urging Davis to place Price in command of the 
 entire Confederate forces west of the Mississippi. While 
 there was in the Confederacy a decided difference of sen- 
 timent toward Price, some (George C. Vest, Major E. C. 
 Cabell, Thomas C. Reynolds, and Jefferson Davis himself) 
 intimating frankly that they suspected Price of a plot to 
 remove Davis from the Presidency by a popular move- 
 ment and proclaim himself President or Generalissimo, 
 yet the feeling of these particular fellow-officers toward 
 him, and the high esteem in which he was held by a large 
 element among the Southern people of the West, may be 
 inferred from the letter which Van Dorn wrote Davis 
 concerning the matter, saying: "The love of the people 
 of Missouri is so strong for General Price, and his prestige 
 as a commander is so strong there, that wisdom would 
 seem to dictate that he be put at the head of affairs in the 
 West." Price himself, with several of his staff, went to 
 Richmond to present this request in person, being re- 
 ceived along the route by the people of the South with 
 the utmost admiration, cordiality and honor. Recep- 
 tions, fetes and entertainments were accorded him, even 
 
22 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 in Richmond itself, and even his enemies were compelled 
 to admit that at this time he was the Confederate military 
 hero of the hour. 
 
 But Davis' enmity to Price remained unaltered. 
 Colonel Thomas L. Snead of Missouri, ever the warmest of 
 Price's admirers and the staunchest of his defenders, was 
 present at the interview between Price and Davis and 
 from his account we quote the following : 
 
 "The President said that he had determined not to 
 let the General and the Missourians return to the trans - 
 Mississippi. 'Well, Mr. President,' said General Price, 
 with the utmost respect and courtesy, 'if you will not let 
 me serve you, I will nevertheless serve my country. I 
 will send you my resignation, and go back to Missouri 
 and raise another army there without your assistance, 
 and fight again under the flag of Missouri, and win new 
 victories for the South in spite of the Government.' 
 
 "No one who ever encountered Jefferson Davis in au- 
 thority can ever forget the measured articulation with 
 which he gave force to his words addressed to one who 
 presumed to oppose his wishes or to refuse obedience to 
 his will. His eye flashed with anger and his tone was 
 contemptuous as he replied with measured slowness: 
 'Your resignation will be promptly accepted, General. 
 And if you do go back to Missouri and raise another army, 
 and win victories for the South, or do it any service at all, 
 no one will be more pleased than myself, or' — after a 
 pause which was intended to emphasize, and did empha- 
 size, the words which followed — 'or more surprised!' 
 
 " 'Then I will surprise you, sir!' exclaimed General 
 Price, bringing his clenched fist down upon the table with 
 
The; Battle of Westport. 23 
 
 a violence which set the ink-stands on it a-dancing; and 
 out he went, indignant and furious, to return to his hotel 
 and forward his resignation." 
 
 Nor was this quoted account quite all the scene, for 
 while Price was writing his resignation, Colonel Snead 
 told the story publicly, in front of the Spottswood Hotel 
 tore from his uniform the insignia of his Confederate rank, 
 and repeated Price's avowal that he would go West and 
 fight again under the Missouri flag. 
 
 Contrary to his statement, however, Davis did not ac- 
 cept Price's resignation, but sent word the next day that 
 Price and the Missourians should go back across the Mis- 
 sissippi "as soon as it could safely be done," until which 
 time they were still left at Tupelo. 
 
 But Price had no love for a campaign of inaction, and 
 on September 18th he drove a small Federal garrison out 
 of Iuka, 10 or 15 miles east of Corinth, taking possession of 
 the town and a large amount of supplies. At Grant's or- 
 ders Rosecrans immediately moved against Price with 
 9,000 men, General E. O. C. Ord and 8,000 cooperating 
 with him, and on the 19th inst. severely defeated him be- 
 fore Iuka, forcing him back southward again. 
 
 Undiscouraged, Price, throughout his entire career a 
 most aggressive commander, next proposed to Van Dorn 
 that they unite and attempt to drive the Federal forces 
 out of northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, 
 hoping to carry the movement clear to the Ohio. Price's 
 army leading, they boldly advanced against Rosecrans' 
 now strongly-fortified position at Corinth, which place 
 they attempted to take by direct assault, on October 3d 
 and 4th, in the fierce battle to which the name of the town 
 
24 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 has been given. The action consisted of a series of most 
 desperate assaults against the Federal batteries mounted 
 en barbette around the town, Rosecrans himself saying, 
 "It was about as good fighting on the part of the Confed- 
 erates as I ever saw," but the Confederates were repulsed 
 with the disastrous loss to Price of 2,100 men, or over 10 
 per cent of his entire command. In this battle Brigadier- 
 General W. L. Cabell commanded a brigade in Maury's 
 division and Colonel W. F. Slemons commanded the 
 Second Arkansas Cavalry, both of which officers were 
 later with Price in Missouri. Another of Price's officers 
 was Colonel Francis M. Cockrell, who commanded the 
 Second Missouri Infantry. 
 
 After this culminating reverse, General Price and 
 many of his Missouri troops returned west of the Missis- 
 sippi. For the next year and a half, or up to the prep- 
 aration for his last and greatest campaign, his activities 
 consisted chiefly in participation in the battles of Helena, 
 Arkansas (July 4th, 1863) and Camden, Arkansas (April 
 20th, 1864), against Steele's expedition. 
 
 In personal appearance Sterling Price was tall and very 
 large, six feet two inches in height and of massive propor- 
 tions save for his hands and feet, which were small for 
 one of his size. During the years of his life with which 
 this narrative deals he grew increasingly heavier and 
 corpulent, until constant horseback-riding became dis- 
 agreeable and he preferred to travel in a carriage or am- 
 bulance, both of which, drawn by mules, accompanied his 
 headquarters in the field. Commonly smooth-shaven, as 
 in the excellent oil-painting of him preserved by the Mis- 
 souri Historical Society of St. Louis, the exigencies of 
 
The Battle; of Wsstport. 25 
 
 army life often compelled him to wear the beard shown 
 in many of his pictures, and it is thus that he is seen as 
 the central figure in Wilson's painting of the battle of 
 Pea Ridge, formerly owned by the Southern Historical 
 Society of St. Louis, now in the Missouri Room of the 
 Confederate Museum at Richmond. He was a masterly 
 horseman, and in earlier years and the prime of life spent 
 much of his time in the saddle, invariably selecting large 
 and spirited animals for his mounts whenever possible. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PLAN AND FIRST MOVEMENTS OF THE MISSOURI CAMPAIGN. 
 
 IN the late spring of 1 864 the military forces of the Con- 
 federacy consisted — not to go too far into other de- 
 tails — of two large armies and three smaller forces. 
 The larger bodies were the Army of Northern Virginia 
 under General Robert E. Lee, on the southern bank of the 
 Rapidan and confronting the Union Army of the Potomac ; 
 and the Army of the Tennessee under General Joseph E. 
 Johnston, at Dalton, Georgia, opposed to Sherman's army, 
 then still at Chattanooga in preparation for its great 
 movement to the east and southeast, against Atlanta 
 and thence to the sea. The three smaller bodies of Con- 
 federate soldiery were: first, a force guarding the great 
 natural storehouse of the Shenandoah Valley; second, the 
 cavalry force under General Forrest that was always 
 threatening Tennessee; and, third, the Army of the De- 
 partment of the Trans-Mississippi, in the Southern States 
 west of the Mississippi and under General E. Kirby Smith, 
 he having charge of that Department. It is with this last 
 army that the remainder of our story wholly deals. 
 North of the Louisiana line it consisted chiefly of troops 
 from Arkansas and Missouri and among its officers were 
 Major-General Sterling Price, Brigadier-General Joseph 
 O. Shelby, Major-General John S. Marmaduke, Major- 
 General James F. Fagan, and Brigadier-General W. L. 
 Cabell — names all well known to the war history of the 
 
 26 
 
The Battle of Westport. 27 
 
 South and West — their headquarters being in various 
 small towns in Arkansas and along the western bank of 
 the Mississippi. 
 
 At this time, early in the summer of 1864, General E. 
 Kirby Smith was weighing the question of what disposal 
 to make of this force at his command. Those were not 
 wanting who urged that it be sent east to join and coop- 
 erate with the Confederate forces under either Lee or 
 Johnston. Among those who made this plea was Gen- 
 eral "Dick" Taylor, who went so far as to secure a prom- 
 ise from President Jefferson Davis that should the army 
 cross the Mississippi eastward, as he urged, it should be 
 placed under him. This command he never received, 
 for the army never came. More than one Southern au- 
 thority affirms that E. Kirby Smith hated Taylor so that 
 he was unwilling to satisfy him by giving him the army, 
 and that this was one reason for its being sent into Mis- 
 souri instead. Be this as it may, the Confederate officers 
 named — Price, Shelby, Marmaduke, Fagan, Cabell, 
 Thomas C. Reynolds, etc. — brought much pressure on 
 Smith to entrust the army to them and send it at once 
 into Missouri. They advanced the claims that this move 
 would compel the Federal Government to divert a large 
 part of their eastern forces into Missouri to meet it, and 
 would thus affect the Union cause in both West and East, 
 weakening Sherman, Grant and Thomas, setting Dee and 
 Johnston correspondingly freer from opposition, and pos- 
 sibly adding enormously to the strength of the Confed- 
 eracy by the seizure of Missouri and eastern Kansas. 
 This view Kirby Smith favored, and orders were issued 
 to the Army of the Trans-Mississippi to prepare for an in- 
 
28 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 vasion of Missouri under the command and leadership of 
 Major-General Sterling Price. Of this plan of campaign 
 it was said, and that by a Northern officer and within a 
 year of the close of the war, that "in distance from base, 
 in country traversed, and in objects aimed at," it "was 
 hardly less stupendous in character than those which 
 have illumined in luster the name of General Sherman." 
 
 With a view to further weakening the Union cause in 
 the West and correspondingly strengthening the Confed- 
 erate arms, secret correspondence was begun by Generals 
 Smith and Price with the secret organizations of Confed- 
 erate sympathizers whose "lodges" were numerous in 
 Missouri and were claimed to be almost as numerous in 
 Illinois. In Missouri they were known as the "Order of 
 the American Knights of the State of Missouri," in Ill- 
 inois they were the "Knights of the Golden Circle." 
 Both Kirby Smith and Price looked for large accessions 
 from among the membership of these societies, Price 
 openly asserting that he had received promises from them 
 that they would join him to the number of 30,000 men. 
 It was even a part of the original plan of campaign to 
 form these particular accessions into a separate division, 
 over which Brigadier-General W. L. Cabell was to be 
 placed in command. (See the Appendix, Organization 
 of Price's Army.) As none of this hoped-for reinforce- 
 ment ever developed, it may be remarked that the reason 
 why these friends of the Confederacy were unable to 
 assist Price to any extent was that General Rosecrans, 
 commanding the Federal Department of the Missouri 
 with headquarters at St. Louis, kept close watch on the 
 "rebel societies," as he called them, and, as soon as Price 
 
Brigadier-General W. L. Cabell. 
 Commanding Cabell's brigade, Shelby's division, Price's army. 
 
The; Battle of Westport. 31 
 
 started, Rosecrans arrested and placed in jail the presi- 
 dent, secretary, treasurer, and many other members of 
 the Missouri society. The president proved to be none 
 other than the Belgian consul at St. Louis. 
 
 Price's army was to consist of three divisions, to be 
 commanded respectively by Major-General James F. 
 Fagan, Major-General John S. Marmaduke, and Brigadier- 
 General Joseph O. Shelby. Fagan's division consisted of 
 four brigades and one "unattached" body of troops, and 
 numbered, all told, twenty regiments of cavalry, one bat- 
 tery of artillery, and one additional section of a battery. 
 Marmaduke's division consisted of two brigades, num- 
 bering ten regiments of cavalry, two batteries of artillery, 
 and one company of engineers. Shelby's division con- 
 tained three brigades, with thirteen regiments of cavalry 
 and one battery of artillery. (For regiments, officers, 
 etc., see the Appendix.) It should be understood that 
 many of these "regiments" were in reality but handfuls 
 of men, probably not one numbering anything like full 
 strength. All in all, Price started with close to 10,000 
 men, all of whom were mounted. His artillery consisted 
 chiefly of twelve-pounder mountain howitzers and small 
 field-pieces, with one or two remarkable products of 
 rustic blacksmith shops. He had, however, at least 
 eight large Parrott rifled guns (twenty-pounders), of 
 which two had been captured from Federal forces at 
 Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, by General "Dick" Taylor; 
 two from the Eighth Indiana Volunteer Battery, cap- 
 tured by General Marmaduke at Poison Springs and 
 Camden, Arkansas; and four taken by Fagan at Mark's 
 Mill, Arkansas. A large portion of his small-arms and 
 
32 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 ammunition had also been captured from Federal forces 
 in the disasters that had befallen the Union arms on the 
 Red River expedition. A considerable proportion of the 
 muskets with which his men were armed had been im- 
 ported by the Confederacy from England, through Mex- 
 ico, such, for instance, being the Enfield rifles with which 
 Cabell's brigade was armed. Price also started with a 
 surprisingly large wagon-train of baggage and other 
 equipment, numbering not less than three hundred 
 wagons. During the progress of the invasion this was in- 
 creased by raids, etc., to the remarkable total of five 
 hundred wagons. 
 
 Of the generals commanding these divisions of Price's 
 army, at least two must receive more than passing 
 mention. 
 
 John S. Marmaduke was a man of marked intellectual 
 ability and high sense of honor. A Missourian by birth, 
 born in Saline County, he was thirty-four years of age at 
 this time, and had spent many earlier years as a student 
 at Chapel Hill College, Lafayette County, Missouri ; at the 
 Masonic College at Lexington, Missouri ; at Yale and Har- 
 vard Colleges, and had graduated from West Point in 1857. 
 He had thus enjoyed all the advantages of wealth, social 
 position, wide education and thorough military training, 
 having been a Lieutenant in the Seventh Infantry, 
 U.S.A., with Albert Sidney Johnston's expedition against 
 the Mormons. He was a man of handsome and dis- 
 tinguished bearing, and a striking figure in the field, with 
 his tall physique, clear complexion, and long, light mus- 
 tache, and invariably wore an officer's soft hat, turned up 
 at the left side and fastened with a silver crescent. Dur- 
 
The; Battxi; of Westport. 33 
 
 ing the entire campaign he rode a very fine mare of which 
 he was very proud, a beautifully saddle-gaited animal, 
 which he called "Miss Mary Price." Later in life he be- 
 came Governor of Missouri, in 1884, but died in that 
 office, and over his grave at Jefferson City the State has 
 erected a monument. 
 
 Joseph O. Shelby was by birth a Kentuckian, educated 
 at Transylvania University and in Philadelphia, and set- 
 tling in Lafayette County, Missouri, in 1849. Lacking 
 the military training of Marmaduke, he was yet among 
 the most daring of cavalry officers, and the fame of 
 "Shelby's charges" endures to-day. After the war he 
 was among those who for a time cast in their lot with 
 Maximilian in Mexico, but soon returned to his native 
 land, and at the time of his death in 1897 was United 
 States Marshal of the Western District of Missouri. 
 
 There is a slight disagreement — which may be a mere 
 technicality — between various writers and authorities as 
 to where General Price assumed command of his army of 
 invasion. His biographer, W. L- Webb, says in "Battles 
 and Biographies of Missourians," that it was on August 
 30th, at Tulip, Arkansas, but the Governmental records 
 of the Civil War state that it was on August 29th, at 
 Princeton, in the same State. It is certain, however, 
 that his army entered Missouri on September 19th, 
 crossing from Arkansas into Ripley County, near the 
 southeastern corner of the State. On this date he also 
 divided his force so as to cover the widest possible strip 
 of country in his progress, and from his entrance into the 
 State up to his detour around Jefferson City he advanced 
 his army in three parallel columns, Marmaduke's^division 
 
34 The; Battle of Westport. 
 
 on the right, Fagan and Price himself in the center, and 
 Shelby on the left. The first skirmish occurred the next 
 day, September 20th, when a detachment of the Third 
 Missouri State Federal Militia Cavalry under a Lieutenant 
 Erich Pape was driven out of Doniphan, in Doniphan 
 County, and the little town was burned. 
 
 As it is the series of engagements that led up to or 
 composed the Battle of Westport that form the chief ob- 
 ject of this history, rather than the details of Price's 
 progress thither, we shall have to pass over much of his 
 invasion by giving an outline of his itinerary from the 
 State line up to his movements in the more immediate 
 neighborhood of Kansas City. Thus his general line of 
 march through the State was as follows : 
 
 September 19th. — Entered Missouri in Ripley County. 
 
 September 20th. — Burned Doniphan, in Doniphan 
 County. 
 
 September 22d. — At Greenville, Wayne County. 
 
 September 28th. — Repulsed Federals under General 
 Ewing at Pilot Knob, Iron County. 
 
 October 2d. — At St. Clair, Franklin County. 
 
 October 4th. — Crossed the Gasconade River, in Gas- 
 conade County. 
 
 October 5th. — Colonel David Shanks, Sixth Missouri 
 Cavalry, Shelby's division, killed by a Federal scouting 
 party while crossing the Osage River near Castle Rock. 
 
 October 7th. — Attacked outposts at Jefferson City, 
 Cole County. 
 
 October 8th.— Withdrew and made detour south of 
 Jefferson City. 
 
 October 10th. — At Boonville, Cooper County. 
 
 October 15th. — Took Glasgow, Howard County, after 
 small fight. 
 
The Battle of Westport. 35 
 
 October 19th. — Vigorous skirmish 3 miles south of 
 Lexington, Lafayette County, with outposts of Blunt's 
 Federal force on a scout near that town. 
 
 October 21st. — Engagement at the Little Blue River, 
 Jackson County. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PRICE'S MOVEMENTS TO JEFFERSON CITY. — PREP- 
 ARATIONS AGAINST HIS ADVANCE. 
 
 PRICE'S two previous smaller invasions of Missouri 
 soil had been only too well known to the Federal 
 authorities, and had been indeed such a bugbear 
 to the citizens of the State that a common joke of 
 the day was that in Missouri there were five seasons in 
 the year — "spring, summer, fall, Price's raid, and winter." 
 Nor were rumors of his coming confined to any one season, 
 and it was not nntil it was certain that his army was 
 actually well within the boundaries of the State that the 
 Federal commanders realized the need of taking definite 
 steps against him. 
 
 Major-General W. S. Rosecrans, commanding the De- 
 partment of the Missouri, as has been mentioned, with 
 headquarters at St. Louis, was himself most incredulous 
 in regard to Price's reported advance. As late as the 
 24th of September he telegraphed to Major-General S. R. 
 Curtis, at Fort Leavenworth that he did not credit the 
 reports he had received, and as late as the 28th he was in- 
 clined to believe that at most Price only contemplated a 
 raid along the south bank of the Osage and possibly into 
 Kansas. But when, within the next twenty-four hours, 
 it began to seem as if St. Louis itself might actually be 
 Price's first objective point, and that he was even then 
 almost within striking distance ; and when it was learned — 
 
 36 
 
The Battle of Westport. 37 
 
 with amusing exaggerations — how considerable were the 
 numbers of his army, the city had some exceedingly 
 exciting days. 
 
 Rosecrans telegraphed east for Major-General Alfred 
 S. Pleasanton to come and take command of the forces 
 in the field, Pleasanton having just been succeeded in the 
 command of the cavalry in the Shenandoah by General 
 "Phil" Sheridan. He also issued a call through the State 
 of Illinois for all the men that could be raised, and sum- 
 moned the entire available strength of the (Federal) Mis- 
 souri Enrolled Militia. In response to the first of these 
 summons there came to St. Louis five regiments of new 
 hundred -days' volunteers from Illinois, all infantry — the 
 One Hundred and Thirty-second, One Hundred and 
 Thirty-fourth, One Hundred and Thirty-eighth, One 
 Hundred and Fortieth, and the One Hundred and Forty- 
 second Illinois Volunteers — who were at once formed into 
 a brigade under Colonel Hugo Wangelin, for the defence 
 of the city. At the second summons there were as- 
 sembled by Brigadier-General E. C. Pike, with the as- 
 sistance of Brigadier-Generals C. D. Wolff and Madison 
 Miller, skeletons of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, 
 Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, Eleventh, Thirteenth, 
 Fifty-second, Eightieth, and Eighty-fifth regiments of 
 the Missouri Enrolled Militia. The Seventh Kansas, a 
 veteran regiment returning from service at Memphis, 
 was held, Major-General A. J. Smith being in command, 
 while Colonel E. C. Catherwood was placed in charge of a 
 newly-recruited regiment known as Merrill's Horse, and 
 of a part of the Thirteenth Missouri Volunteer Cavalry. 
 Besides these forces, Senator B. Gratz Brown and Major 
 —3— 
 
38 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 Frederick T. Lederberger assembled between four and 
 five thousand citizens, and all were set at work together 
 at building fortifications, defences, out-works, rifle-pits, 
 artillery-barbettes, and the like, for the purpose of re- 
 sisting Price. The First Brigade of the defence-force — 
 consisting of the First Regiment Missouri Enrolled Mil- 
 itia, Colonel W. P. Fenn; the Second, Colonel E- Stafford; 
 the Eightieth, Colonel L. J. Rankin; and the Eighty- 
 fifth, Colonel W. A. J. Smith — numbering 1,750 men, 
 under Brigadier-General Madison Miller, was hurried out 
 to hold the bridges and fords of the Meramec River. 
 Two other principal brigades were the Second, under 
 Brigadier-General C. D. Wolff — consisting of the Third 
 Missouri Enrolled Militia, Colonel Vahlkamp; the Sixth, 
 Colonel T. Niederwieser ; and the Tenth, Colonel H. Hilde- 
 brand, a total of 1,206 men — and the Third Brigade, 1,500 
 men, under Brigadier-General Geo. F. Meyers, composed 
 of the Eleventh Missouri Enrolled Militia, Lieutenant- 
 Colonel E. Beekman; the Thirteenth, Colonel J. B. Marcy ; 
 and the National Guard of St. Louis under Lieutenant 
 W. B. Parker. To these two brigades there were added 
 three "unattached" companies of militia cavalry under 
 Major F. Walter. 
 
 It has often been debated whether Price ever actually 
 meant to attack St. Louis, but at least he gave its citizens 
 a tremendous scare. A detachment of his scouts actually 
 did come within a day's march of its suburbs, for on Sep- 
 tember 30th Major-General A. J. Smith and a force con- 
 sisting of both the last-mentioned brigades, the Seventh 
 Kansas, and the cavalry under Major Walter, was sent 
 out to the village of Kirkwood — now the residence-suburb 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 39 
 
 of that name — to resist what they believed to be Price's 
 van-guard, but no actual engagement occurred. Price 
 himself, in his official reports to the Confederate War De- 
 partment, says that there were two reasons why he did 
 not move upon St. Louis. They were, first, that while 
 he was at Ironton information was brought him that the 
 Federal defence-force in and about the city exceeded his 
 own by two to one ; and, second, that he deemed it of the 
 utmost importance to reach Jefferson City as soon as pos- 
 sible and seize the place and its abundant supplies. His 
 scouting-parties in the direction of St. Louis were there- 
 fore called in and his army turned westward. 
 
 As soon as it was evident that Price's course was to be 
 west along the Missouri River, Rosecrans ordered Major- 
 General Smith and the Seventh Kansas veterans in pur- 
 suit, at the same time sending word out into the western 
 portion of the State that all Federal troops were imme- 
 diately to assemble at Jefferson City to protect the capitol 
 against capture by the invaders. The Federal brigades 
 under Brigadier-Generals John McNeil at Rolla, John B. 
 Sanborn at Springfield, Egbert B. Brown at Warrensburg, 
 and Clinton B. Fisk (the nominal headquarters of the last- 
 named being at St. Louis), responded and proceeded with 
 all haste to fortify Jefferson City. Major-General Alfred 
 S. Pleasanton reached St. Louis from the east on October 
 8th and went on the same day to Jefferson City by 
 steamer, to take charge of all the Federal forces and move 
 against Price without delay. On that date it was, as 
 mentioned in the previously-given itinerary of Price's 
 progress through the State, that Fagan's division attacked 
 the Federal out-works about the capital city, but was 
 
4o The; Battle; of Wsstport. 
 
 withdrawn immediately and the army passed around 
 Jefferson City to the south and turned westward toward 
 the remaining goals of Kansas City, Fort Leavenworth, 
 and eastern Kansas. 
 
 This affair at Jefferson City, brief as it was — indeed, 
 hardly more than a temporary halt in the movements of 
 the invading force — yet deserves more than passing men- 
 tion, in that the attack of Fagan's division, its immediate 
 withdrawal, and the passing onward of Price's force, com- 
 bine to mark the failure of the great invasion to accom- 
 plish the second of the original objects of its campaign. 
 An attack upon the city of St. Louis, and even its possible 
 seizure, was the first in order of the objects which it was 
 hoped by the authorities and strategists of the Confed- 
 eracy, and even by Price's own officers and men, that the 
 invasion would accomplish. Such attack was, as we have 
 seen, not even begun. The seizure of Jefferson City, the 
 capital of the State, with its seat of the State government 
 and the contents of the State treasury, was the second such 
 object, and if second in order yet probably first in rank. 
 The Confederate element in Missouri and their friends in 
 the other Southern States never ceased to claim that while 
 the Federal element might be in nominal control, yet the 
 State and its government was Confederate at heart. 
 Claiborne F. Jackson, the Governor of the State (elected 
 1861), though having fled from the capital when Captain 
 Lyon seized the city, yet continued to claim his office in 
 spite of having been succeeded in actual power by the 
 "provisional" appointee of the United States Govern- 
 ment, Hamilton R. Gamble. Accordingly, on Jackson's 
 death late in 1862, Thomas C. Reynolds, who had him- 
 
The; Battle of Westport. 41 
 
 self been Governor of Missouri from 1 840 to 1 844 and who 
 was Lieutenant-Governor under the Jackson administra- 
 tion, claimed that the rightful title and authority of the 
 Governorship of Missouri descended to him, and from his 
 retirement to South Carolina came at once to Richmond, 
 Virginia, where, with the Missouri Senators of the Con- 
 federacy, he conducted what might be called the Southern 
 claim to the State of Missouri. This claim it was hoped 
 that Price's invasion would convert into fact, and on the 
 start of the campaign Reynolds joined Price and con- 
 tinued with him, the Confederate hope and plan being that 
 Price would seize Jefferson City and proclaim Reynolds 
 as the rightful Governor of the State. This plan was 
 frustrated, and this hope crushed, by Price's withdrawal 
 of his forces from that attack upon the Federal defences 
 of Jefferson City which, as we have seen, Pagan's division 
 of his army had begun. Of Price's withdrawal and 
 failure to seize the capital, Reynolds wrote in an open 
 letter "to the public," dated at Marshall, Texas, De- 
 cember 17th, 1864: 
 
 "The confused operations before it (Jefferson City) 
 may be judged by the facts that our ammunition train 
 came near being led into the Federal lines, and when the 
 army encamped at night neither of the two officers next 
 in rank to General Price, Fagan and Marmaduke, was in- 
 formed of or could learn the location of any division ex- 
 cept his own, or of General Price's headquarters. The 
 city could have been taken the day he neared it; it was 
 then defended mainly by raw militia, most of whom our 
 friends said were anxious to surrender or even to join us. 
 The State House, with its lofty dome, lay that day in full 
 
42 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 view of a gallant army confident of victory ; next morning 
 . General Price suddenly ordered a retreat, on 
 the road to Springfield." 
 
 Events now began to move rapidly, for on reaching 
 the capital next day Pleasanton took command of the 
 Federal forces there and at once ordered Sanborn and his 
 brigade to pursue Price with all speed. Late the same 
 day (October 9th) the remainder of the defence-force — 
 now known as the Cavalry Division, Department of the 
 Missouri — set off to the westward also, all under the com- 
 mand of Brigadier-General John B. Sanborn. Pleasanton 
 himself remained at Jefferson City to ascertain what line 
 of march and action the campaign of pursuit would take, 
 and to provide for additional troops, reinforcements, etc., 
 before he himself should join his army. (For the troops 
 composing these commands, see the Appendix.) 
 
 By this time the absence of discipline and the conse- 
 quent state of disorder in Price's never very orderly army 
 was, as a prominent Southerner and eye-witness says, 
 "something terrific." The words are quoted from the 
 above-mentioned open letter of Ex-Governor Reynolds 
 himself, who has left us in that public and published doc- 
 ument a startling picture of the march and its scenes. 
 In his description he says : 
 
 "Nothing contributed more to throw everything into 
 confusion and harrass and fatigue his [Price's] troops than 
 his singular order of march, sometimes called the tail- 
 foremost or topsy-turvy system of moving an army. On 
 the day's march, the division which had marched and 
 camped in the rear the day before passed to the front, 
 the troops halting till it had done so. In this Virginia 
 reel of regiments, brigades and divisions, bewildered 
 
The; Battle of Westport. 43 
 
 stragglers and new recruits got completely lost, until at 
 last, a common sense cutting the Gordian knot of military 
 blundering, they ceased attempting to find their com- 
 panies and adopted the practice of bivouacing themselves 
 in what was well known as the 'stragglers' camp.' The 
 origin of this system of marching is obscure, but a gen- 
 tleman who witnessed its effects in the Missouri State 
 troops under General Price in 1861 hazarded the plausible 
 conjecture, based on the similarity of operation and re- 
 sults, that it is merely an enlarged application of the 
 mode in which that renowned warrior, Baron Mun- 
 chausen, killed the lion by thrusting his arm down the 
 animal's throat, and turning him wrong side out by 
 pulling his tail through his mouth. 
 
 "Under such management of an army, of course out- 
 rages and crimes could not be repressed. I cheerfully 
 testify to the strenuous efforts of the commanders of di- 
 visions and brigades, and the- officers generally, to pre- 
 serve order. Nor should any one judge harshly of private 
 soldiers yielding to the combined temptations of a rich 
 conntry and an almost total withdrawal of restraint. 
 Even then the real fighting-men did little injury, sneaks 
 and dead-heads being the principal plunderers. It would 
 take a volume to describe the acts of outrage; neither 
 station nor sex was any protection; Southern men and 
 women were as little spared as Unionists; the elegant 
 mansion of General Robert E. Lee's accomplished niece 
 and the cabin of the negro were alike ransacked; John 
 Deane, the first civilian ever made a prisoner by Mr. 
 Lincoln's Government, had his watch and his money 
 robbed from his person in the open street of Potosi, in 
 broad day, as unceremoniously as a German merchant at 
 Fredericktown was forced, a pistol at his ear, to sur- 
 render his concealed greenbacks. As the citizens of Ar- 
 kansas and northern Texas have seen in the goods un- 
 blushingly offered them for sale, the clothes of the poor 
 man's infant were as attractive spoil as the merchant's 
 
44 The; Battle of Westport. 
 
 silk or calico or the curtain taken from the rich man's 
 parlor; ribbons and trumpery gewgaws were stolen from 
 milliners and jeweled rings were forced from the fingers 
 of delicate maidens whose very brothers were fighting in 
 
 Cockrell's Confederate Missouri brigade 
 
 "The natural result ensued, and the disorders con- 
 tinued. They may be judged of by the fact that at Boon- 
 ville, the hotel occupied as General Price's own head- 
 quarters, was the scene of drunken revelry by night; 
 that guerillas rode unchecked, in open day, before it, with 
 human scalps hanging to their bridles, and tauntingly 
 shaking bundles of plundered greenbacks at our needy 
 soldiers; and in an open letter to him [Price], which he 
 left unanswered and undenied, I asserted that while 'the 
 wholesale pillage in the vicinity of the army had made it 
 impossible to obtain anything by purchase, stragglers and 
 camp-followers were enriching themselves by plundering 
 the defenceless families of our own soldiers in Confederate 
 service.' On still darker deeds I shudderingly keep 
 silent." 
 
 On the nth, while near Boonville, in Cooper County, 
 Price received W. L. Quantrill and Captain "Bill" Ander- 
 son, both well known then and since as leaders among the 
 guerillas who had long harried the unfortunate State of 
 Missouri (to say nothing of Kansas), and commissioned 
 them to set out on side-raids, the former to cut the Han- 
 nibal and Saint Joseph Railroad, the latter to destroy the 
 North Missouri Railroad, both moves designed to prevent 
 the importation of more Federal troops to act against his 
 army. Anderson was killed fifteen days later, near 
 Albany in the southwest corner of Ray County, by 
 Lieutenant-Colonel S. P. Cox of the Thirty-third Missouri 
 Enrolled Militia and Major John Grimes of the Fifty-first, 
 and his arms and equipment were ordered distributed to 
 
The; Battle; of Westport. 45 
 
 these officers and their men as "honorable trophies." 
 The commission mentioned as having been given him by 
 Price was found on his body. Quantrill practically dis- 
 appeared from the State after receiving the instructions 
 alluded to, and was next heard from in Kentucky. 
 
 On the 1 8th there reached Price a spy whom he had 
 sent some time before to report on conditions, prepara- 
 tions, etc., in St. Louis, and who brought the surprising 
 message that Price was being pursued by 24,000 men from 
 that city and 15,000 from Jefferson City! In view of the 
 actual numbers engaged in Price's pursuit, there is room 
 for considerable doubt as to whether this "spy" had ever 
 even attempted to carry out his dangerous mission, but 
 it was probably from this source that there originated the 
 grossly-exaggerated impressions current among Price's 
 officers as to the forces opposed to them. 
 
 Long before this date, however, Federal forces were 
 preparing for Price's coming, in his front, as well as pur- 
 suing in his rear. On the 1 7th day of September, Ma jor- 
 General S. R. Curtis, commanding the Department of 
 Kansas and the Indian Territory, with headquarters at 
 Fort Leavenworth, returned to his post from the neigh- 
 borhood of Fort Kearn:/, where he had been busy com- 
 pelling the hostile Bruies, Sioux and Cheyennes to desist 
 from an attack, for which they had seized the oppor- 
 tunity of the Government's absorption in the war in the 
 East, on their old enemies, the Pawnees. With him re- 
 turned Major R. H. Hunt, who had been his only staff - 
 officer on this expedition. He found on his desk dis- 
 patches notifying him that Price was even then starting 
 from Arkansas on another grand invasion of Missouri. 
 
46 The Battle: of Westport. 
 
 That same day Curtis telegraphed the substance of his 
 information to Rosecrans at St. Louis and wired to 
 Governor Thomas Carney of Kansas, at Topeka, that 
 he might have to "ask the militia of southern Kansas 
 to aid in checking rebel approaches." Within the 
 next few days he managed to set much more of the 
 machinery of military resistance in motion, ordering 
 the towns of Lawrence, Paola, Olathe, and Fort Scott 
 to be fortified against possible attack; summoning 
 Major-General J. G. Blunt in from an expedition against 
 the Indians west of Fort Lamed ; mounting heavy siege- 
 guns at the above-named Kansas towns and at Fort 
 Leavenworth; notifying the Fifteenth Kansas Volunteer 
 Cavalry at Mound City, the Sixteenth and Eleventh reg- 
 iments and McLain's Independent Battery Colorado 
 Volunteers at Paola, that they must be prepared to move 
 at any day; sending the Second Colorado Cavalry from 
 Fort Leavenworth to Kansas City, then on a scout to 
 Pleasant Hill, and finally stationing them at Hickman's 
 Mills; and finally summoning Captain J. H. Dodge's 
 Ninth Wisconsin Battery in from Fort Riley. 
 
 Rosecrans kept Curtis posted as to his own measures 
 against Price in the neighborhood of St. Louis, while 
 from Jefferson City Curtis received reports of Price's ad- 
 vance toward that place. On the 8th inst. he urged Gov- 
 ernor Carney to call out the entire militia of Kansas, and 
 on the 9th the Governor published his correspondence 
 with Curtis and issued the following call : 
 
 "Kansans, rally! You will do so, as you have always 
 done so promptly when your soil has been invaded. The 
 call this time will come to you louder and stronger because 
 
The; Battle of Westport. 47 
 
 you know that the foe will seek to glut his vengeance upon 
 you. Meet him, then, at the threshold, and strike boldly; 
 strike as one man against him. Let all business be sus- 
 pended. The work to be done now is to protect the State 
 against marauder and murderer. Till this is accom- 
 plished we must lead a soldier's life and do a soldier's 
 duty. Men of Kansas, rally! One blow, one earnest 
 united blow will foil the invader and save you. Who will 
 falter? Who is not ready to meet the peril? Who will 
 not defend his home and the State? To arms, then ! To 
 arms and the tented field until the rebel foe shall be 
 baffled and beaten back! "Thomas Carney, 
 
 "Governor." 
 
 This call, in spite of its almost ludicrously melo- 
 dramatic phraseology, was all very well as far as it went, 
 but an experienced soldier like Curtis knew that the time 
 was short, and that no days might be wasted in folly, 
 oratory, and indecision. Accordingly, on the 10th he 
 took matters in his own hands, proclaimed martial law 
 throughout the State of Kansas, ordered all business to 
 cease, and summoned every able-bodied man between the 
 ages of eighteen and sixty into the ranks, whites and 
 blacks alike. This vigorous proceeding had the effect of 
 arousing the population to the emergency of the situation, 
 all business was suspended as ordered, and the organization 
 of military forces took precedence over all else. Major- 
 General Deitzler, in command of the State Militia, came to 
 the front in this critical situation in a spirit far more ad- 
 mirable and effective than that shown by many of his 
 political colleagues, and issued orders for the men of each 
 county to concentrate at the county-seat or other des- 
 ignated town, there to be formed into regiments, etc., 
 commanding each man to bring with him such arms as 
 
48 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 he might have at hand, with "a full supply of ammuni- 
 tion" and "two blankets, a tin cup, knife, fork, haver- 
 sack, coffee-pot and frying-pan." 
 
 Even at this date Kansas contained its full quota of 
 cranks and many of these mounted the stump or took up 
 the pen, assuring the people that the State militia could 
 not be taken outside the boundaries of the State by any 
 authority for any purpose, and claiming that Curtis' only 
 object in raising the troops was to have them away from 
 their residences at the time of the approaching November 
 elections. These allegations were actually taken with 
 sufficient seriousness to lead Governor Carney and Major- 
 General Deitzler to make a trip to Fort Leavenworth to 
 ask General Curtis as to their truth. That vigorous old 
 soldier promptly and emphatically informed them that 
 his authority was sufficient to take State militia any- 
 where at any time ; though he added that he did not think 
 it likely that any one would be in service more than a few 
 weeks, and that every man should be mustered out im- 
 immediately the danger was past. This satisfied the 
 State officials and silenced the demagogues — the latter 
 for a time only, as we shall see. 
 
 Between the ioth and 14th of October, General Curtis 
 went to Kansas City — which point Price had now pub- 
 licly announced as his first goal, with Fort Leavenworth 
 as his second — and there reconnoitered in person the 
 country that with the experienced soldier's instinct and 
 observation he saw must be the field of the approaching 
 battle. He decided to make a first stand against Price 
 at the Big Blue River, a second before Kansas City, and a 
 third, if necessary, at Wyandotte, Kansas — now Kansas 
 
The Battle of Westport. 49 
 
 City, Kansas. He directed his chief engineer, Lieutenant 
 George T. Robinson, to provide strong earthworks at 
 these points, and also around Kansas City on the south 
 and east, and to connect Kansas City and Wyandotte 
 with a floating bridge. In all these works the then City 
 Engineer of Kansas City, Mr. William Miller, aided, and 
 was later given special praise by Curtis in his reports. 
 The limits of the Kansas City of that day did not extend 
 beyond the present Holmes Street on the east, Eighth and 
 Locust on the southeast, and Eleventh and Centra 
 Streets on the south. The fortifications provided for use 
 in case Curtis' forces in the coming battle should be 
 driven back upon Kansas City, lay accordingly just out- 
 side of each of these points, beginning at Seventh and 
 Charlotte Streets, passing Ninth and Locust Streets (at 
 exactly the location of the Public Library to-day), and 
 running thence to Fourteenth and Central and ending at 
 Fourteenth and Madison. They were strongly built of 
 their kind, and consisted of a breastwork of earth with a 
 sloping outer face and a trench within, and before them 
 was dug a series of rifle-pits, these being the ordinary 
 form of such fortifications at that day. They were so 
 deeply dug and the thrown-up earth was so solidly packed 
 that they were plainly visible and were the beloved play- 
 ground of the boys of the city for more than ten years 
 after the war. The plan for these works was made by 
 Lieutenant Robinson and they were carried out under 
 command of Colonel R. T. Van Horn, then a member of 
 the State Legislature, editor of the "Journal of Com- 
 merce" (predecessor of the "Kansas City Journal"), and 
 in command of Van Horn's Battalion United States Re- 
 
50 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 serves, reporting to General Curtis and practically a 
 member of his staff. In Curtis' report of this visit to 
 Kansas City he states that he "found lawyers, ministers, 
 doctors, merchants, all digging in the earthworks before 
 Kansas City and at the Big Blue River." He sent out 
 warnings to travellers and merchants, and notified steam- 
 boat-owners and captains that if they expected their 
 craft to ply on the Missouri east of Kansas City they had 
 better bullet-proof their pilot-houses and engine-rooms, 
 and wired to the army headquarters at St. Louis of his 
 intended firm stand against Price's approach. By the 
 ioth, Major-General J. G. Blunt had arrived at Olathe on 
 his hurried return from his Indian campaign in western 
 Kansas, and received orders from Curtis to take up his 
 headquarters at Hickman's Mills with all of the Kansas 
 troops that were at the time available. He accordingly 
 gathered skeletons of what presently became the First, 
 Second and Third brigades of Curtis' army, and went into 
 camp at the designated point at n a. m. of the 14th, 
 leaving orders that as the remainder of the Kansas troops 
 came in they were to report to Major-General G. W. 
 Deitzler at Shawneetown, just within the Kansas State 
 line, and were there to be organized and forwarded as 
 rapidly as possible. 
 
 Two days later a mutiny broke out in this camp of 
 Blunt's at Hickman's Mills, and on the part of men who 
 should have learned far better by this time. Brigadier- 
 General W. H. M. Fishback, in charge of the Kansas 
 Militia in the camp and under General Blunt, together 
 with Colonel J. S. Snoddy of the Sixth Regiment Kansas 
 State Militia, decided not to recognize the authority of 
 
The; Battle; of Westport. 51 
 
 Blunt or Curtis as having power to take State militia 
 across the State line, and both refused to obey orders 
 they had received, and ordered the entire militia to return 
 into the territory of Kansas. This unsoldierly perform- 
 ance, and one sufficient in itself to have defeated the plans 
 for checking Price, was promptly nipped in the bud by 
 Blunt's placing the two offenders in close arrest, and di- 
 recting the Sixth regiment to elect another colonel im- 
 mediately. This the militia very cheerfully did, naming 
 a veteran, James Montgomery, nnder whose leadership 
 they later did very good work in the field — -"gallant ser- 
 vice," as Blunt himself later reported. It is probably 
 due to Brigadier-General Fishback's memory to add that 
 Curtis himself later ordered Fishback freed from this ar- 
 rest, and even placed his name on the honor-roll of the 
 troops after the campaign, while Blunt himself rather 
 grimly puts in a plea for them in his report of the matter, 
 saying that he could not "inflict upon them the summary 
 punishment prescribed by the rules of war, viz., death," 
 because he knew "that they were the instruments selected 
 
 . by others to carry out their mischievous and dis- 
 graceful designs." 
 
 Among General Curtis' troubles at this time not the 
 least was a strangely widespread impression that all this 
 work, preparation and the like had been based upon 
 mere rumors of Price's coming, such as had so often ob- 
 tained a considerable degree of credence in former years. 
 Indeed, on the 19th, the very day when General Blunt 
 and the bulk of his command was engaged in a fierce little 
 fight near Lexington with Price's van-guard, certain 
 newspapers published in Kansas City and the little 
 
52 The; Battle of Westport. 
 
 Kansas towns near by expressed the opinion that Price 
 had long since left the State, if, indeed, he had ever ser- 
 iously entered it. But when the news of this actual 
 fight so near at hand was spread throughout the com- 
 munity and the militia soldiery, General Curtis suddenly 
 found himself the object of a sentiment of desperate de- 
 pendence upon him and his efforts that was as marked as 
 had been the former atmosphere of unbelief and suspicion. 
 In the meantime, from the ioth to the 20th of the 
 month, Price had been moving rapidly from the direction 
 of Jefferson City toward Kansas City. On the 15th, a 
 detachment of 1,200 men of Shelby's division — consisting 
 of Lieutenant-Colonel Alonzo W. Slayback's Missouri 
 Cavalry Battalion, Elliott's Missouri Cavalry regiment 
 under Colonel Benjamin Elliott, the Fifth Missouii Cav- 
 alry under Colonel F. B. Gordon, and Collins' Missouri 
 Battery under Captain Richard A. Collins — made, under 
 the leadership of Brigadier-General M. Jeff Thompson, 
 who commonly commanded Shelby's own brigade (as 
 distinguished from the rest of Shelby's division), a side- 
 raid upon the town of Sedalia. Starting before day- 
 break the horsemen took the little town completely by 
 surprise, Elliott's cavalry leading the charge in over the 
 prairie upon the two earthen redoubts and the line of 
 rifle-pits. The actual fighting lasted but a few moments 
 and the affair was hardly accompanied by great credit to 
 either side, for the defenders fled pell-mell as soon as the 
 Confederate howitzers of Captain Collins' battery opened 
 fire, and even Jeff Thompson, in his reports to the Con- 
 federate authorities, admits that "there was considerable 
 plundering." The raiders took everything they could 
 
The Battle; of Westport. 53 
 
 carry from the town, destroyed everything that bore the 
 mark of the United States Government, and eye-wit- 
 nesses of that day tell of seeing them riding through the 
 streets, their feet bare in their stirrups, carrying their 
 boots full of whiskey, for lack of other facilities for its 
 transportation . 
 
 Pleasanton's army was hard on Price's rear, Brig.-Gen. 
 Sanborn being in charge until the 19th, when Pleasanton 
 himself came on from his headquarters at Jefferson City 
 and took command of the pursuit in person. There was 
 constant skirmishing all the way, whenever any of Price's 
 rear fell back far enough or when Pleasanton's van-guard 
 pushed ahead sufficiently to bring either in touch with the 
 other. Price's men carried away everything from the 
 farms and villages and destroyed whatever could not be 
 loaded into their wagons, largely with a view to retarding 
 their pursuers by wiping out both supplies and fodder. 
 Their numbers were considerably swelled by what they 
 called "recruits," but whom the Federal sympathizers 
 regarded as Confederate supporters who had small liking 
 for the prospect of close interviews with Pleasanton's 
 men. Price practically forced into his ranks all the male 
 citizens of military age encountered in his march, and 
 notices still exist which were posted in Lexington on his 
 arrival there, ordering all such to "report for duty" to 
 officers appointed for the purpose of assigning them. 
 This policy resulted in there being accumulated among his 
 force a large number of unarmed men and boys — Price 
 himself says "several thousand" — and all such were at- 
 tached to the wagon-train and made to assist the enor- 
 mous numbers of wagons and horses that had been ac- 
 —4— 
 
54 The; Battle of Wsstport. 
 
 cumulated by the Confederates. Not a few of Price's 
 officers were much opposed to this policy, and Brigadier- 
 General W. L. Cabell has left a graphic description of how 
 this^unarmedjmob rushed wildly to whatever part of the 
 army was least engaged, when any firing occurred. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ENGAGEMENTS AT THE LITTLE BLUE, INDEPENDENCE, 
 AND THE BIG BLUE. 
 
 ABOUT the 1 7th of the month Major-General Blunt, 
 at Curtis' command, set out from Hickman's Mills 
 with practically all of the Kansans there gathered 
 under him. Some 2,000 of the First and Second 
 brigades into which Curtis' forces had now been formed 
 (see Appendix) composed his force, including their two 
 batteries of four twelve-pounder mountain howitzers 
 each. With these men, all mounted, he made an ex- 
 tended scout through the towns of Pleasant Hill, Holden, 
 and Lexington. Three miles south of the last place he 
 and his men made on the 19th the determined little fight 
 of which we have heard while noting Price's advance, 
 and retreated only when they had forced Price to halt 
 and bring up his heavy Parrott rifled guns and put them 
 into action. On this being done, Blunt and his force re- 
 treated to the banks of the Little Blue River, a small 
 stream eight miles east of the town of Independence. 
 The sharpness of this skirmish may be judged from Gen- 
 eral Shelby's comment thereon to his brother-officers. 
 Reporting that he had been resisted by troops under 
 Blunt, some of the others doubted that Blunt was the 
 man in command. Shelby, who had met Blunt before, 
 answered simply: "Well, gentlemen, all I have to say is 
 that it was either Blunt or the devil!" 
 
 55 
 
56 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 By the next day, the 20th, General Curtis had placed 
 practically all his army so as to resist Price to the best 
 advantage. A few scattering volnnteers were at Kansas 
 City with the Kansas City Home Guards under Colonel 
 Kersey Coates. A few others were on guard at West- 
 port and other minor points. His main line of defence 
 was, of course, the elaborate and complete earthworks, 
 which have been mentioned as constructed along the 
 western bank of the Big Blue River from its junction 
 with the Missouri River south to the Hickman's Mills 
 crossing. Till the moment came for the use of this line, 
 however, he meant to annoy the enemy as much as pos- 
 sible by fighting him all the way from where Blunt was 
 now in touch with his van-guard. On the 20th, Curtis 
 ordered the newly-made Fourth Brigade (created at 
 Blunt's request from the late-arriving Kansans and other 
 forces that till then had been stationed elsewhere) under 
 Colonel James H. Ford, and the Independent Battery of 
 Colorado Volunteers under Captain W. D. McLain, to join 
 Blunt's forces at the Little Blue and there to "feel" the 
 enemy and compel him to develop an attack. It was not 
 intended — it was in fact forbidden by Curtis— to bring on 
 a battle at this point, and all these forces were instructed 
 to retreat to the Big Blue as soon as hard-pressed by 
 Price's columns. 
 
 The morning of the 21st brought General Curtis the 
 news that these forces were already engaged, and he at 
 once rode to the scene himself and directed first the re- 
 sistance and then the retreat. The Confederate attack 
 at the Little Blue was made by Major-General Marma- 
 duke's division, the Tenth Missouri Cavalry under Colonel 
 
The Battle of Westport. 57 
 
 Robert T. Lawther leading, reinforced by one hundred 
 and fifty of the Third Missouri Cavalry under Colonel 
 Colton Greene and the Seventh Missouri Cavalry under 
 Colonel S. G. Kitchen. General Marmaduke himself had 
 two horses shot under him in the fight here. The Fed- 
 eral brigades were dismounted and drawn up on the sum- 
 mit of the wooded slope rising to the west of the little 
 river, Moonlight's brigade and four howitzers in the 
 center, Jennison's on the right (the Third Wisconsin Cav- 
 alry forming his right and the Fifteenth Kansas Cavalry 
 his left), and Ford's on the left — Ford placing McLain's 
 Colorado battery in the center of his line, the Sixteenth 
 Kansas to the left of it, and the Second Colorado at the 
 right. While in line and waiting for the Confederate at- 
 tack, the men of the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry sang 
 
 "Rally 'round the flag, boys." 
 
 The bridge across the stream in front of this line of 
 battle had been buined, as the last detail of all, by Major 
 Martin Anderson and two companies of the Eleventh 
 Kansas Cavalry, who the night before had hauled a huge 
 wagon-load of hay upon the bridge and fired it as soon as 
 the Confederates came in sight. General Marmaduke re- 
 ports that his Engineer Company under Captain J. T. 
 Hogane rebuilt or improvised another bridge, but the 
 bulk of his command did not wait for this, and made their 
 way to the western side of the little stream and opened 
 fire on the waiting Federal line. Their first attack, in 
 the order mentioned, was repulsed, but as their reinforce- 
 ments came up they regained and held their ground. 
 Among other casualties received on the Federal side in 
 
58 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 this sharply-fought engagement, Major J. H. Smith, a 
 much-beloved officer of the Second Colorado Cavalry, 
 was shot through the heart and instantly killed while on 
 his horse, directing the dismounting of his men for volley- 
 firing against the Confederate approach. A Captain G. 
 L. Grove, in command of Company G of the Eleventh 
 Kansas Cavalry, only 23 years of age, but yet widely and 
 honorably known throughout Kansas, so over-exerted 
 himself that he died at Westport a few days later. Sen- 
 ator "Jim" Lane of Kansas also took part in this fight, 
 nominally on Curtis' staff, but actually fighting in the 
 ranks with a Sharps' carbine, having been supplied with 
 his equipments by Major Hunt. The fearlessness with 
 which General Curtis exposed himself in the face of the 
 enemy, while directing the action and endeavoring to 
 hold his not over-steady militiamen to their work, may be 
 inferred from the fact that of the forty mounted men of 
 his personal escort fifteen had their horses shot under 
 them. During the resistance to Marmaduke's attack 
 here, Major Hunt opened with the two howitzers attached 
 to Curtis' escort, from the shelter of a little group of 
 trees, houses, and a blacksmith's shop. The Confederates 
 promptly turned both artillery and musketry on the spot 
 and two of the battery horses fell at their first volley. 
 The sergeant in charge, a notorious bully of Fort Leaven- 
 worth, promptly took to his heels, when Major Hunt, 
 Major Ross of the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry (later Senator 
 Ross of Kansas), and an orderly named Bloomer, united 
 in cutting the harness from the dead horses and saving 
 the gun, Major Hunt being hit in the head by a piece of 
 n exploding Confederate shell while thus engaged. An 
 
Major R. H. Hunt. 
 Chief of Ordnance and Artillery on the staff of General Curtis. 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 6i 
 
 interesting feature among the events of the fight was the 
 arrival on the field of battle of a little company of would- 
 be Federal volunteers from the town of Warrensburg, 
 under the lead of a Captain Geo. S. Grover, who came of 
 their own accord to take part in the fighting and to whom 
 General Curtis promptly assigned a position which would 
 give them what they wanted, and he later reported that 
 they did excellent service. The losses on the Confed- 
 erate side in this action at the Little Blue are unknown, 
 but Major-General Blunt estimated those on the Federal 
 side at two hundred killed, wounded, and missing. 
 
 Toward the close of the afternoon Curtis ordered all 
 his hard-pressed forces to abandon the field and retire to 
 their assigned positions in the earthworks and defences 
 along the west bank of the Big Blue River, between Inde- 
 pendence and Kansas City (see maps). As his men were 
 retreating through the town of Independence to this new 
 position a woman fired a shot from a window of a dwel- 
 ling at the passing troopers of the Second Colorado Cav- 
 alry and wounded one of the lieutenants of that regiment. 
 
 While going back with his force, Curtis received, in 
 the town of Independence, a telegram informing him of 
 Sheridan's decisive defeat of Early in the Shenandoah 
 Valley, and he sent out messengers to carry the news of 
 this victory to all the troops and to residents in the near-by 
 country. By the same couriers he also made public his 
 intention of checking Price the next day at the Big Blue, 
 and from the saddle he personally announced these mes- 
 sages, etc., in the town-square of Independence. He sent 
 a telegram to Rosecrans at St. Louis, urging him in turn 
 to make Pleasanton push Price to the utmost, hoping 
 
62 The Battle o* Wkstport. 
 
 thus to crush the invaders between front and rear attacks. 
 Finally he reassured himself that every foot of the Big 
 Blue was closely guarded, a front of between ten and 
 fifteen miles. Such was the situation on the night of the 
 2 ist hist, as detailed in his own reports of that evening, 
 his own force (which he estimated at 15,000 men) en- 
 trenched along the west hank of the Big Blue, facing east- 
 ward toward Independence, Price's army covering the 
 country from near the Big Blue eastward nearly to (he 
 Little Blue, and Pleasanton lying on Price's rear. 
 
 On the next day occurred the action known as the 
 Battle of Hi- Big Blue River. 
 
 The dawn of the 22(1 found General Curtis at his head- 
 quarters in the field, on the line of the trenches along the 
 Big Blue and at almost exactly the point where Fifteenth 
 Street (extended) now crosses the stream. The entrench- 
 ments north of that point — Curtis' left wing — were under 
 the general command of Major General G. W. Deitzler of 
 the Kansas Militia, and those south of this point were gen 
 erally under Major C.eneral Blunt. Deitzler had not par- 
 ticipated in the fight at the Little Blue the day before, 
 but had spent the time in preparing his portion of the 
 trenches for occupation by such militia as he already had 
 with him and by those who should return from the en- 
 gagement at the Little Blue. Governor Thomas Carney 
 himself was also present here, and personally "entered with 
 zeal and energy upon the work" at the same point, as 
 Curtis later wrote. Colonel C. W. Blair, commanding the 
 Third Brigade, also executed much of the preparations 
 here, felling trees, obstructing fordable places in the stream, 
 placing the guns of Dodge's Ninth Wisconsin Battery in 
 
f/,,t> No. I- 
 
 •- .p.-. H KOI 22» 
 
 
 ** I OOQQ 
 
 Hi ■ ■ 
 
 MM , oNe-TMipjo i*cm to out Mitt 
 
 ..: .• Geo T Robinson loao i ' ■ eral s. R.Cur- 
 
 ,- partmenf • ' IPestport. 
 
 a, a Old independence Road. J; Pifteen goftbc Big Bloc ■■ -■ ' ' -Old Hoc 
 
 of the Santa Pe Trail. D, D Old Westport Roa grounds. P — Porest HlU Cemetery, 
 
 »pa Path U P> ' • "•' division, J Price's army, Marmaduke'h 'ii vision. I — 
 
 army, Jennison's brigade, i. Curtis' army. Moonlight's 
 
 brlgads air*sbrigad« I i •■■>• | 4< Curtis' army, troops 
 
 nadei Deitzlet I Pleasanton's army, Brown's (Phillips'; brigade. Q Pleasanton's army, McNeil's 
 brigade R Pleasanton's army Banbori i h a 'on * army, wintlown brigade. T, 'f — 
 
 PortinCStionS before Kansas City. D Wagon-train with i'rice's army. 
 
The Battel of Westport. 65 
 
 position, etc. The mouth of the Blue was guarded by 250 
 men of the Fourth Kansas, next to whom on the south 
 came the Second Kansas Colored State Militia under 
 Captains R. J. Hinton and J. L. Rafety. Next in order 
 was the Sixth Regiment, with their newly-elected Colo- 
 nel, James Montgomery. The Ninth Wisconsin Battery 
 under Captain Dodge and the Independent Colorado Bat- 
 tery with their fine rifled field-pieces had position in 
 what was thus the center of the line of resistance. To 
 their right — southward, again — lay the Fifth Kansas and 
 Lieutenant-Colonel G. P. Eves' Twenty-fourth Kansas 
 State Militia, better known by the name of the Bourbon 
 County Militia Battalion. Beyond these were the Tenth 
 Kansas and the right section of the Second Kansas Bat- 
 tery under Lieutenant D. C. Knowles, and at Byrom's 
 Ford (see map) was the Fourth Kansas under Colonel W. 
 D. McCain. The southern end of the line was formed 
 chiefly by Colonel C. R. Jennison's First Brigade and 
 Moonlight's Second Brigade, the extreme southern point 
 of the Hickman's Mills Crossing being held by Brigadier- 
 General M. S. Grant with 100 militiamen of the Second 
 and the Twenty-first Kansas and one brass howitzer under 
 Captain J. T. Burnes of the Second. Such was the long 
 line of battle which it was hoped would check Price and 
 the 37,000 men whom rumor reported as accompanying 
 him. 
 
 Early in the morning the skirmishers moving ahead of 
 Price's van drove in the outposts and pickets that were in 
 front of Curtis' headquarters, compelling them to seek 
 the protection of the trenches. At first Curtis took this 
 to mean that the main attack would come directly against 
 
66 The Battle; of Westport. 
 
 his position, but the fact that no further action followed 
 made his experienced soldier's instinct suspect that the 
 move was a feint to draw attention from his right, or 
 southern, flank, and he immediately moved his head- 
 quarters back to a point from which he could more easily 
 communicate with his entire line, and at 9 o'clock sent to 
 all the officers along his right wing this message : 
 
 "Price making only feeble demonstrations in front of 
 me. Look out for your position. Send scouts toward 
 Independence. Send me reports every thirty minutes." 
 
 Curtis' suspicion was exactly correct, for it was Price's 
 intention simply to hold the attention of Curtis' left till 
 he could break through or slip around the right flank. 
 Price was too old a soldier to risk being caught in a trap 
 on the bank of the Missouri, and he knew well that his 
 only hope lay in keeping to the open country to the south. 
 Yet so firmly fixed was his confidence in his ability to 
 break through or escape the preparations made to check 
 him that early in the morning of this very day he sent a 
 taunting message into Kansas City, directed to the officers 
 at Fort Leavenworth and assuring them that he would 
 take supper in the Fort on the evening of the next day. 
 
 Soon the right wing of Curtis' line began to learn the 
 correctness of their commander's apprehension. The 
 scouts sent out in accordance with his instructions began 
 to return with reports that Price was moving on a line 
 southwest from Independence. Presently the officers 
 and men of the Kansas regiments along the right of the 
 line could see the mounted skirmishers of the enemy ap- 
 proaching through the trees of the rolling country op- 
 posite them across the Blue. The howitzers of Jenni- 
 
The; Battle of Westport. 67 
 
 son's, Moonlight's and Blair's brigades opened upon them, 
 and the line of the Big Blue thundered steadily as the 
 little field-guns sent their canister at the foe. The guns 
 of Shelby's division, which formed Price's van here as 
 usual, opened in reply, while just to the southward of 
 their position the Confederate cavalry dismounted and 
 crept toward the river, slipping from tree to tree and 
 from cover to cover to reach the Federal trenches with 
 their musketry and carbine-fire. Little by little they 
 pressed forward in increasing numbers in the face of the 
 Kansans' fire, working always toward the south in the 
 hope of turning Curtis' flank and finding a chance to cross 
 the river. The Federal loss was not great, for the men 
 were largely protected by their earth- works, and the Con- 
 federates, though necessarily suffering more for lack of 
 such shelter, were yet so concealed among the trees that 
 much of the fire directed at them was random and inef- 
 fective. Morning passed, noon came, and the afternoon 
 was under way and the firing continued steadily across 
 the narrow, deep and muddy channel of the stream. 
 
 On Price's side the conduct of his force during the 
 morning was along two lines. The first was the steady 
 forward movement of his fighting-force until the two 
 leading divisions (Shelby's and Fagan's) were massed 
 against the river. The second was his bringing up his 
 immense wagon-train from the rear to the middle of his 
 army, a move designed to keep it from capture by Pleas- 
 anton's pursuing troops, who were now uncomfortably 
 close behind. It is true that the fighting between these 
 two Federal armies on the one side and the one Confed- 
 erate on the other was less aggressive and well-organized 
 
68 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 than among the better disciplined and more experienced 
 armies of the eastern campaigns, but it is also true that 
 few actions of the Civil War were more stubbornly fought 
 in proportion to the numbers engaged than were these 
 actions along the Big Blue River. More than one officer 
 of experience has commented particularly on the per- 
 sistent and tenacious nature of this assault by Price's 
 mounted and dismounted cavalrymen against the nu- 
 merically superior Federal force entrenched on the op- 
 posite side of the stream whose natural situation made 
 it difficult to cross without hindrance. All military au- 
 thorities, of course, agree that an entrenched force has 
 an almost infinite advantage over an exposed and as- 
 saulting body, and when that advantage is increased by 
 a steep-banked stream fordable in but few places, it is 
 evident that the attacking force must possess great 
 bravery and determination to even face such a superior 
 position. Yet this is exactly what Price's irregular cav- 
 alrymen did— -more than that, as we shall presently see, 
 they succeeded in forcing a crossing in the very face of 
 this resistance to their advance. Curtis had added to his 
 position still another defence than those afforded by the 
 stream and the trenches, for, as we have seen mentioned, 
 on the day before, Colonel Blair's brigade had choked the 
 deep channel of the stream at many points with felled 
 trees, forming an abatis through which a way could only 
 be forced by much delay and the use of axes. True, Price 
 had small choice but to press his attack with vigor, for as 
 the day wore on Pleasanton's pursuit grew nearer and 
 nearer, until the Confederate army was hemmed in on 
 the north by the impassable Missouri, on the west by the 
 
The; Battle of Westport. 69 
 
 Federal line along the Big Blue, and on the east by Pleas- 
 anton's vigorous advance. 
 
 Shortly before noon the situation became yet more acute 
 for the Confederates. Marmaduke's division formed their 
 rear-guard, and his men were practically backing through 
 their Independence, their backs toward the army whose 
 rear they were protecting, their faces and their firing-line 
 toward Pleasanton's aggressive pursuit. Some of them 
 remained in the saddle and galloped hither and thither 
 through the streets of Independence to check now this 
 now that detachment of their pursuers; others dis- 
 mounted, sending their horses on ahead (westward), and, 
 seizing such shelter as the streets, houses, gardens and 
 lanes of the town offered, gave way as slowly as possible, 
 maintaining a vigorous fire in the face of their pursuers. 
 Pleasanton determined to break down this resistance 
 to his advance. About the middle of the afternoon he 
 sent forward orders to Brigadier-Generals Sanborn and 
 McNeil, who were conducting the advance, directing them 
 to charge and break the lines of Confederates who were 
 so successfully holding them in check. This meant a 
 charge directly into and through the town of Independ- 
 ence and in the face of mounted and dismounted cavalry- 
 fire and against artillery that was well sheltered among 
 the buildings and structures of the town. McNeil elected 
 to make his charge with his brigade in the saddle and 
 using their sabers, Sanborn to make his with his men dis- 
 mounted and using their carbines. The two charges were 
 made simultaneously, at almost exactly 3 o'clock, starting 
 from points just outside the eastern limits of the town, 
 Sanborn's brigade attacking on the Federal right (the 
 
70 The; Battle of Westport. 
 
 north) and McNeil's on the left (the south). The van of 
 McNeil's charge was formed by the Thirteenth Missouri 
 Veteran Volunteer Cavalry, supported by another already 
 famous veteran regiment, the Seventh Kansas Cavalry, 
 at this time under Major F. M. Malone. This last was 
 undoubtedly one of the most remarkable bodies of troops 
 enlisted during the entire war, composed as it was of six 
 companies enlisted in Kansas, three brought from Illinois, 
 and one from Ohio. Alike among friends and foes, this 
 regiment had a reputation as fighters, and the temper of 
 some of its men may be inferred from the fact that the 
 Ohio company was under the leadership of John Brown, 
 Jr., who was accustomed at each nightfall to gather his 
 men around him and make them a fierce harangue, 
 ending with the question: "Do you solemnly swear to 
 avenge the death of John Brown?" to which the entire 
 company would shout in answer, "We do!" D. R. An- 
 thony was long the colonel of the regiment, and the name 
 of W. F. Cody, "Buffalo Bill," was on its roll, his first 
 fame as a scout having been won while serving with this 
 regiment. The men were equipped with Colt's revolving 
 rifles and Spencer repeating carbines, the most notable 
 and effective weapons in use in the war. This was the 
 regiment that bore throughout its career the nickname of 
 "Jayhawkers," a title to which to-day the whole State 
 lays claim. 
 
 Without firing a shot McNeil's men charged into the 
 town and broke through streets, yards and gardens in 
 pursuit of the scattering Confederates, charging, forming 
 and charging again upon squads of Marmaduke's men as 
 they fled to the westward, and capturing two of their 
 
Thp; Battle of Westport. 71 
 
 guns. Sanborn's dismounted brigade marched to their 
 charge at the double-quick, the Second Arkansas Cavalry, 
 Colonel John K. Phelps commanding, being in the lead in 
 the charge. Halting to fire one great volley ahead of 
 them as they reached the easternmost houses of the set- 
 tlement, they hurried forward at will, their lines neces- 
 sarily broken by the obstructions of streets and buildings, 
 loading and firing as fast as their carbines would permit, 
 keeping steady sheets of lead whizzing through the un- 
 fortunate village and striving to shoot down any Con- 
 federate whom they could discern through the great 
 clouds of smoke that drifted and rose through the streets 
 and among the trees of private lawns. And if feminine 
 sentiment had been displayed in bitter hostility to the 
 Federal cause in the town the evening before, it was man- 
 ifested by other women on the opposite side at this time, 
 for during the entire battle in the very streets of Inde- 
 pendence two ladies stood on the upper floor of a two- 
 story porch or "gallery," as it is called in the South, of a 
 house one block south of the town square, and waved 
 their handkerchiefs by way of encouragement to the 
 Federal troops, with whom their sympathies obviously 
 lay. 
 
 The Confederate irregular cavalry regiments resisted 
 there fierce charges through the very center of the town 
 with the utmost bravery — indeed, surprisingly, in view 
 of the double attack and the greater number of the Fed- 
 erals — and General Marmaduke and General Cabell (who, 
 though regularly attached to Fagan's division, was as- 
 sisting Marmaduke in this rear-guard action) kept so near 
 the Federal charging-line that when at last they had to 
 —5— 
 
72 Tiif; Battle; of Westport. 
 
 put spurs to their horses to escape capture, General Cabell 
 was compelled to leap his horse over a piece of ordnance 
 that lay in his way, and chanced to drop his sword and had 
 no time to recover it, and it was secured by one of McNeil's 
 cavalrymen. A member of Cabell's personal staff, accom- 
 panying him, was less fortunate, being headed off by a 
 squad of McNeil's troopers and captured. A two-gun 
 battery of Confederate artillery was worked against San- 
 born's dismounted and charging lines until they were so 
 near that when at last the battery-captain gave the order 
 to limber up and retreat at full speed, a blazing volley 
 from the Federals killed or disabled every horse in the gun- 
 teams, compelling the artillerymen to flee on foot and 
 abandon the guns to the enemy. These guns were later 
 found to be the Parrott rifles originally captured from Fed- 
 eral forces at Pleasant Hill, Louisiana, by General "Dick" 
 Taylor. These actions all occurred in the very midst of 
 the town of Independence, beginning at the eastern edge, 
 continuing westward and ending on the western limits of 
 the settlement, where the Federals were halted, the re- 
 treating Confederates forming Price's rear-guard finally 
 being seen riding or running off at full speed. 
 
 It is difficult to estimate the losses on either side in this 
 fight through the town; for the reason that the surgeons 
 on either side were kept so on the move that they con- 
 tented themselves with only a roughly-summarized list 
 of the wounded whom they attended. Yet a study of the 
 reports of the officers commanding during the action gives 
 considerable reason to believe that about 25 Federals 
 killed and 75 wounded must be close to the correct figures, 
 while several eye-witnesses counted the Confederate dead 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 73 
 
 as they lay in the streets and agree that 40 bodies were 
 thus found, the number of the wounded being unknown. 
 Where all the bullets, shot and shell went to is a puzzle, 
 for there is no room for doubt that the firing in every form 
 was incessant. McNeil's brigade, being mounted, suf- 
 fered the severest loss on the Federal side, but also cap- 
 tured the most prisoners; while Sanborn's men, on foot, 
 suffered less, but were able to capture but few of their 
 opponents. 
 
 Captain George Todd, a famous young Confederate 
 whose home was in Jackson County, of which Independ- 
 ence is the county-seat, and who had been serving in 
 Cabell's brigade, was killed on the outskirts of Inde- 
 pendence in this fight in Cabell's last charge. Known to 
 the Federal sympathizers as "a notorious guerilla," he 
 was held in most opposite esteem by friends of the Con- 
 federacy, and had been called by them "a flower of 
 Southern manhood." He had been Quantrill's second in 
 command in the raids on Lawrence and Baxter Springs. 
 Closely pressed by Federal cavalrymen, he put spurs to 
 his horse and was dashing away at full speed, his bridle 
 in his teeth, firing backward over each shoulder with a 
 revolver in each hand, when a Federal bullet pierced his 
 throat. 
 
 With this fierce fighting thus driving his rear in upon 
 him, Price had no choice save to make the most desperate 
 effort to break through or get around Curtis' forces in the 
 trenches along the Blue, and in this difficult task his men 
 finally succeeded. Diverting the head of his attack to 
 the extreme right (south) of the Kansas line, he endeav- 
 ored to beat back from the trenches the defenders of that 
 
74 The; Battle of Westport. 
 
 point in Curtis' resistance sufficiently to enable one hun- 
 dred axemen under Captain J. T. Mackey of Captain J. T. 
 Hogane's Engineers' Company (Marmaduke's division) 
 to clear the stream of the Blue from the fallen trees which 
 had been thrown into it, and so make a crossing possible. 
 After an hour and a half of desperate work on the part of 
 these axemen and the dismounted cavalry of Shelby's 
 brigade who were covering them with their fire, a passage- 
 way across the stream was made directly opposite the 
 Thirteenth Kansas Regiment (commonly known as the 
 "Johnson County Regiment") under Colonel A. S. John- 
 son, being a part of Colonel Jennison's First Brigade. This 
 occurred at almost exactly 5 o'clock in the afternoon. This 
 regiment, composed of wholly new and untrained re- 
 cruits, gave way and struck out toward Kansas and home 
 at a record-breaking gait, though they presently met an 
 officer of the regular army, Major T. I. McKenny, In- 
 spector-General of Curtis' force, who was seeking infor- 
 mation as to how the fight was going, and who promptly 
 drew his revolver and swore that he would kill the first 
 man who took another running step. This checked their 
 speed and they continued their retreat in more decent 
 order. 
 
 Having effected this break in Curtis' line, Price threw 
 the full strength of Shelby's and Fagan's brigades through 
 the gap, and soon flanked Jennison's and Moonlight's 
 brigades, forcing the retreat of these also and cutting off 
 completely General M. S. Grant and his militia of the 
 Second and the Twenty-first Kansas regiments who were 
 at Hickman's Mills Crossing, the men of the Second being 
 captured and with them the twenty-four-pounder brass 
 
M*p No. 2- 
 
 Showing Position of Forces at 3 to 4 p. m., October 22d. 
 
 Scale, one-third inch to one miu 
 
 l/rt/e Santo/i, 
 
 Fac-simile of map made in 1864 by Lieutenant Geo. T. Robinson, to accompany Major-General S. R. Cur- 
 tis' official report to the United States War Department on the Battle of Westport. 
 
 A, A — Old Independence Road. B — Fifteenth Street crossing of the Big Blue River. C, C — Old line 
 9f the Santa Fe Trail. D. D— Old Westport Road. E — Countiy Club grounds. F — Forest Hill Cemetery. 
 S— Swope Park. H — Price's army, Fagan's division. I — Price's army. Marmaduke's division. J — 
 Price's army, Shelby's division. K — Curtis' army, Jeunison's brigade. I, — Curtis' army, Moonlight's 
 brigade. M — Curtis' army, Blair's brigade. N — Curtis' army, Ford's brigade. O — Curtis' army, troops 
 under Deitzler. P — Pleasanton's army, Brown's (Phillips') brigade. Q — Pleasanton's army, McNeil's 
 brigade. R — Pleasanton's army, Sanborn's brigade. S — Pleasanton's army, Winslow's brigade. T, T — 
 Fortifications before Kansas City. U — Wagon-train with Price's army. 
 
The Battle of Westport. 77 
 
 howitzer that was the property of the State of Kansas. 
 General Grant made good his escape, as did Colonel G. W. 
 Veale and his men of the Twenty-first. 
 
 Jennison's and Moonlight's brigades, though forced 
 from their positions and compelled to retreat westward, 
 yet conducted that movement on a line parallel with 
 Shelby's and Fagan's successful westward progress, Jen- 
 nison halting before Westport village and Moonlight 
 pushing to Shawneetown, where he secured food for his 
 men and forage for their horses, against the fight on the 
 morrow. A disagreement that arose between the com- 
 manders of these brigades on the very field of battle at 
 this time came very near allowing Shelby actually to 
 enter and seize Westport itself. Jennison had been dis- 
 missed from the service by Secretary Stanton, but had 
 been re-commissioned by Governor Carney himself. As 
 vShelby's advance toward Westport was well under way, 
 after his successful forcing the crossing of the Big Blue, 
 Jennison ordered Moonlight to advance in cooperation 
 with him and check it. Moonlight refused to recognize 
 Jennison as an officer, on the ground of his dismissal, and 
 accordingly would receive no commands from him, and 
 continued on his way to Shawneetown, where he had de- 
 termined to rest his brigade over night. This left the 
 head of Shelby's advance toward Westport opposed only 
 by Jennison's men, when Major R. H. Hunt, Curtis' Chief 
 of Artillery, perceived the situation and attacked Shelby 
 with the mounted men of Curtis' escort — Company G of 
 the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry — and the two howitzers at- 
 tached to the staff. In later years General Shelby him- 
 self always affirmed that this attack of Major Hunt's 
 
78 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 kept him from seizing the town of West port at this time, 
 the evening of Saturday, the 2 2d. Jennison's men took 
 position before West port and continued the fight until a 
 late hour, one company of artillery firing uninterruptedly 
 with their particular and much-beloved new brass twelve- 
 pounder howitzer until its incessant reports attracted the 
 attention of Brigadier-General Shelby himself. He called 
 to Colonel Sidney D. Jackman, commanding Jackman's 
 brigade of his division, and to Colonel F. B. Gordon of 
 Gordon's Missouri Cavalry, and said: "Jackman, do you 
 
 hear that gun? I 'm tired of its d d noise. Go over 
 
 there and take it !" Immediately these two officers gath- 
 ered portions of their commands and made a flank move- 
 ment, concealed by a convenient corn-field, and suddenly 
 charged out upon the busy gunners and captured them 
 and their gun. With them were taken two Kansas ar- 
 tillery flags, seized by Captain A. C. McCoy and Captain 
 Carroll Wood of the Fifth Missouri Cavalry, and these 
 officers promptly hunted up General Price on the field 
 and presented him with these trophies. This Captain 
 McCoy was among the most daring of the Confederate 
 officers, being especially mentioned in not less than six 
 reports by Price and Shelby. 
 
 All these unexpected breaks and changes on the part 
 of the forces composing his right wing at the Big Blue left 
 General Curtis no alternative save to order the best pos- 
 sible retreat, and as the evening twilight came on he or- 
 dered his entire army to fall back clear to the trenches be- 
 fore Kansas City and West port. This evacuated the line 
 of works along the west bank of the disputed stream and 
 permitted Price to ford it at all points and to place Mar- 
 
The Battle of Westport. 79 
 
 maduke's division as a rear-guard in the very defences 
 which Curtis had occupied during the day. At the same 
 time Price's van, as we have seen, was already in the 
 country before West port, west of the Big Blue and south 
 of Brush Creek (see map), where it encamped for the 
 night. Simultaneously with these movements Price or- 
 dered his great wagon-train to set off as fast as possible 
 southward, under escort of Brigadier-General W. h- Ca- 
 bell and Colonel John Q. Burbridge, the latter with his 
 Fourth Missouri Cavalry, the hope being to protect it 
 from Federal capture and to have it rejoin Price when 
 he should have passed the obstacles immediately in his 
 front. 
 
 On the part of Pleasanton's pursuing force, as night 
 came on he moved through Independence and practically 
 filled on the country between that town and the Big Blue, 
 ready to begin the attack on Price's rear anew with the 
 coming day. So closed Saturday, October 2 2d, 1864. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BATTLE OE WESTPORT. — FROM DAWN TO 
 EIGHT O'CLOCK. 
 
 BEFORE entering upon the description of the bat- 
 tle itself, certain moves made and orders given 
 during the ensuing night must be noted, in view 
 of their bearing upon the tactics and actions of 
 the coming day. 
 
 As we have seen, General Curtis ordered the majority 
 of his weary Kansans to shelter entirely within the de- 
 fence-lines that had been thrown up about the then little 
 Kansas City. The exceptions to this order were the 
 brigades of Jennison and Moonlight, the one having kept 
 on Shelby's right flank till dark and then encamping in 
 and around the village of Westport, the other spending 
 the night close to Shawneetown. During the night the 
 scouting and picket -work before the the trenches sur- 
 rounding Kansas City was done by the Home Guards, 
 the improvised force of citizens under Colonel Kersey 
 Coates, in order that the Kansans might get as much res 
 as possible before the next day's conflict. Loyal women 
 baked bread and other provisions all night long and be- 
 stowed them upon the worn and half-famished militia- 
 men, while others welcomed officers and men alike to 
 their tables and fed them by relays as long as the night 
 and the food lasted. Ammunition-wagons moved 
 through the lines all night and a special train was sent 
 
 80 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 8i 
 
 out to Jennison's force, that every soldier might have all 
 the paper musket-cartridges he could carry for use in the 
 coming fight. 
 
 South of the earthworks about Kansas City all the 
 pasture, corn-fields, timber-lands and farms, intersected 
 chiefly by three country roads. These were the present 
 Twelfth vStreet, leading eastward toward Independence; 
 the Troost Avenue of the present, then extending through 
 the country southward to Brush Creek and beyond; the 
 third the present Westport road that zig-zags through the 
 bluffs up from the Southwest Boulevard to the Westport 
 district. Along the last two it was that Curtis' army 
 moved out to the battle-field early in the morning of 
 the 23d. 
 
 Out in Pleasanton's lines, as they filled the country 
 between Independence and the Big Blue, that General 
 was making his plans for a final crushing assault on 
 Price's rear. One of his brigades had had but little 
 fighting up to this time — or so Pleasanton felt — having 
 acted largely as a rear-guard, and this he determined 
 should bear the brunt of the assault upon the Confed- 
 erates at the stream. This was the first Brigade, Brig- 
 adier-General Egbert B. Brown commanding. After Mc- 
 Neil's and Sanborn's brigades had carried the town of 
 Independence, as described, Pleasanton threw his Fourth 
 Brigade to the fore, under Colonel E. F. Winslow of the 
 Fourth Iowa Cavalry, and had it drive Price as hard as 
 possible up till midnight. This it did, fighting and firing 
 for hours after dark in order to disturb the Confederates 
 to the utmost, in which hope they succeeded, to judge by 
 the later comments of Brigadier-General John B. Clark 
 
82 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 of Marmaduke's escort, who was accordingly in the 
 trenches opposite this nocturnal display, and whose sub- 
 sequent report on the fighting of these days says: 
 
 "Notwithstanding the almost impenetrable darkness 
 of the night, they rushed upon us with a reckless fierce- 
 ness that I have never seen equaled, giving us warning of 
 a confidence reposed in the efficiency and number of their 
 troops in case we were pressed to a general attack." 
 
 At midnight this brigade finally ceased action and en- 
 camped, being the nearest of all Pleasanton's forces to 
 the trenches along the Big Blue in which Marmaduke 
 and his rear-guard now lay. Between midnight and 
 dawn Pleasanton sent orders to Brigadier-General E. B. 
 Brown to move up with his brigade and Thurber's Bat- 
 tery H of the Second Missouri Light Artillery, with its 
 3-inch Rodman rifled field-pieces, and thus be ready at 
 the first approach of light to pass Winslow, relieve him, 
 and attack the enemy at the river with all possible vigor. 
 The order to this effect was couched in exceedingly 
 pointed language, saying : 
 
 "As your command has as yet done no fighting, the 
 General expects you to push them vigorously to-day. 
 The Major-General commanding . will accept of 
 
 no excuse for the non-fulfillment of this duty, but will 
 hold you responsible." 
 
 Unfortunately for General Brown he did not take the 
 hint thus plainly given by his superior officer, and before 
 the sun had risen he had experienced the bitterest morti- 
 fication possible to a soldier. 
 
 With this review of the events leading up to the Battle 
 of Westport, and of the preparations made on the eve of 
 
Map No. 3. Showing Position of Forces during night of October 22d-23d. 
 
 /& 01 
 
 SCALC, ONE-THIRO INCH TO ONE 
 
 irtf/e Santa f£\ 
 
 Fac-simile of map made in 1864 by lieutenant Geo. T. Robinson, to accompany Major General S. R. Curtis 
 official report to the United States War Department on the Battle of Westport. 
 
 ~r ,1, Ja A ~ Old Independence Road. B— Fifteenth Street crossing of the Big Blue River. C C— Old line 
 r *J^ p ^iV ?' U T° ld West P° r t K°ad. K— Country Club grounds. F- Forest Hill CemeteVy 
 Priee'T it™ ar «A iwT!t!5*- 8 arm 7' pagan's division. I— Price's trrny, Marmaduke's brigade^ J- 
 ll\ a S y ' ^ he, . b y s division. K— Curtis' army, Jennison's brigade, t,— Curtis' army Moonlight's 
 undlr nei^W CUr p 1S pi™ 7, fair's brigade N-Curtis' army, Ford's brigade. O-CurtTs-'armT roopf 
 brigade RPlea^fnn a f a r™ nS C a T y ' f^*'* (Phillips') brigade. Q-Pleasanton's army, McNeil 
 Sf'.. R— P le f as anion's army, Sanborn's brigade. S— Pleasanton's army, Winslow's brieade. T T— 
 Fortifications before Kansas City. U— Wagon-train with Price's army. g ,l 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 85 
 
 its occurrence, we shall now consider the events of the 
 battle itself, describing them by dividing the day into 
 such periods as embraced the chief actions on either side 
 and in the various portions of that great field over which 
 the fighting spread. 
 
 From 3 a. m. till dawn. 
 
 At 3 o'clock in the morning General Curtis sent word 
 from Kansas to Colonel Jennison, ordering him to move 
 immediately southward with his command so as to reach 
 the enemy in the vicinity of Brush Creek, just south of 
 West port, by earliest daylight, and at once to engage the 
 enemy whom he would find there. In pursuance of this 
 order Jennison 's brigade moved through West port village 
 and to a point near where the present Wornall Road 
 crosses the stream. Ford's brigade, which had spent the 
 night on the hills near Westport, the men never taking 
 the saddles from their horses, was to move forward on 
 the left of Jennison's — i. e., between Westport and the 
 point where Troost Avenue crosses Brush Creek to-day — 
 and with it McLain's battery was to go into action, these 
 guns having been taken into the defences about Kansas 
 City during the night, but being back at Westport before 
 dawn. The Twelfth Kansas State Militia was also to co- 
 operate with these forces, Colonel L. S. Treat being in 
 command. Colonel Moonlight and his Second Brigade, 
 at Shawneetown, received orders to go into action on the 
 right of the Federal line south of Westport — i. e., on a po- 
 sition nearly parallel with the State Line — and thus to hold 
 Price back from any attempt to escape into Kansas. Gen- 
 erals Blunt, Deitzler, and Blair were to march with their 
 
86 The; Battle oe Westport. 
 
 commands in time to go into action immediately following 
 Jennison. Colonel Coates was to hold his Home Guards 
 in the trenches about the city until it developed whether 
 they would be needed on the field, and if so, where. Gen- 
 eral Curtis himself would remain in the city until he 
 should hear how the first fighting went, when he would go 
 at once to whatever point needed his personal presence 
 most. 
 
 At midnight Pleasanton ordered McNeil to move with 
 his brigade, together with Captain W. C. F. Montgomery's 
 Battery L of the Second Missouri Light Artillery, toward 
 the junction of the Independence and the Little Santa Fe 
 roads, in order to head off the expected attempt at es- 
 cape of Price's wagon-train, and in obedience to this order 
 the brigade marched all night toward the designated po- 
 sition. At 5 a. m. he ordered Sanborn to advance with 
 his brigade to the assistance of Brigadier-General Brown, 
 who ought to be just beginning his emphatically-ordered 
 assault on the Confederate trenches at the Big Blue. At 
 6 o'clock, to Pleasanton's horror, he received a message 
 sent back from Colonel Winslow, whom Brown was to 
 have relieved, asking where Brown and the relieving- 
 force were. Pleasanton immediately mounted, sum- 
 moned his staff, and galloped at full speed to the extreme 
 forward line of his army, where he found Winslow's men 
 still facing the enemy across the river and waiting to be 
 allowed to fall back. The brigade of Brown was no- 
 where to be seen, and finally Pleasanton found it still en- 
 camped in Winslow's rear, with no sign of any activity 
 on Brown's part. Pleasanton found Brown himself 
 standing near a number of other officers who were making • 
 
Ths Battls of Westport. 87 
 
 various preparations for entering with their commands 
 the fight which was already vigorously under way in the 
 woods along the Big Blue immediately in their front. 
 Pleasanton checked his horse before General Brown and, 
 shaking in Brown's face the cowhide whip which he al- 
 ways carried when in the saddle, denounced him furiously 
 for his inaction in view of the express orders he had re- 
 ceived during the night. Brown replied that Winslow 
 had made no room for his men to pass forward as di- 
 rected. Pleasanton instantly ordered Brown to the rear 
 under arrest, and with him Colonel James McFerran of 
 the First Missouri Cavalry of Brown's brigade, saying as he 
 did so that they were "ambulance-soldiers" and that the 
 rear was where they belonged. He then demanded of 
 the officers standing by: "Who is next in command 
 here?" One of them replied: "Colonel Phillips is." 
 "Where is he?" demanded Pleasanton. "Here I am, 
 General," answered Phillips, who at the moment was 
 sitting on the ground, changing his heavy cavalry-boots 
 for a pair of lighter shoes, the better to lead on foot his 
 men of the Seventh Missouri Cavalry, whom he had dis- 
 mounted and sent into the timber in front to enter the 
 fight, placing them under the command of Lieutenant- 
 Colonel T. T. Crittenden until he himself should overtake 
 them. "Well, what are you doing down there?" said 
 Pleasanton, looking down at him. Phillips answered: 
 ' ' I am getting ready to push my men into that fight down 
 there, where they have already gone." "Well, I see that 
 the men of your regiment want a fight, and they shall 
 have it," said Pleasanton. "You take charge of this en- 
 tire brigade and go down there and put those people 
 —6— 
 
88 The; Battle; op Wpstport. 
 
 out!" — meaning, of course, the Confederates under Mar- 
 maduke along the west bank of the stream in the timber 
 before them. Colonel Phillips (now Judge John F. Phil- 
 lips of the United States Court at Kansas City) immedi- 
 ately remounted, placed Lieutenant -Colonel Crittenden 
 (later Governor of Missouri, 1 881-1885) in entire charge 
 of the Seventh Regiment, ordered Lieutenant-Colonel 
 B. F. Lazear to take McFerran's place in command of the 
 First, and prepared to lead Brown's brigade into action. 
 General Brown, save for some protesting reports to 
 Rosecrans, Halleck, and the army authorities at Wash- 
 ington, and a subsequent acquittal by a court-martial, 
 passed out of the history of his country.* 
 
 *While the immediately foregoing statements are in exact ac- 
 cordance with the events described, and will be found to correspond 
 exactly with the official reports, it is but fair to the memory of Gen- 
 eral Brown to add, even at this late date, that there were two sides 
 to the story. Officers of high rank and unimpeachable integrity 
 personally vouch for it that General Pleasanton's attitude toward 
 many of his subordinates during this campaign, and especially in 
 these actions, was one of needlessly harsh and acrimonious criticism. 
 Fresh from the fierce conflicts of the far more experienced and 
 better organized armies of the East, he showed plainly that his 
 opinion of the fighting-spirit of the Western volunteers and militia 
 was low indeed. Not only did he treat General Brown as described, 
 refusing to receive any explanation whatever from Brown himself, 
 but he bitterly censured Brigadier-General McNeil, whose brigade 
 did such superior work in the battle at Independence; denounced 
 Curtis and his men and arrested some of the Kansas officers on the 
 field, in spite of the fact that they were not under him; and refused 
 to allow any of the Kansas troops to act as escort for the prisoners 
 taken in the engagement. It is undeniably true that Brown's dil- 
 atoriness greatly interfered with the completeness of the Federal 
 victory; that McNeil was deceived — as we shall presently see — by a 
 clever trick on the part of Cabell and the escort accompanying 
 Price's wagon-train; and that the raw recruits under Curtis dis- 
 played a marked agility in making for the rear on more than one 
 occasion. But it is also true that a man of a less bitter spirit that 
 Pleasanton would not have acted toward the men and the officers 
 under him as he acted. 
 
The: Battle of Wsstport. 89 
 
 It was fully 8 o'clock before Phillips could move 
 Brown's brigade forward and lead it against the Big 
 Blue, and the time that had elapsed allowed Marmaduke's 
 division so to prepare for the attack against it that it is 
 probable that this delay alone was sufficient to prevent 
 Price from being crushed, as well as defeated, on the 
 field of Westport* 
 
 From dawn to eight o'clock. 
 
 By the time that the first rays of light appeared in the 
 east, with promise of a beautiful Sabbath day, clear and 
 cool, the Kansas soldiers under Jennison, Blunt and 
 Deitzler had moved out to the south of Westport village 
 and were making their way through the timber that lined 
 the banks of Brush Creek. At the same hour the brigades 
 under Colonels Ford (on the left) and Moonlight (on the 
 right) had reached the positions assigned them in the 
 orders of the night and were joining in the general move 
 upon the enemy's stand on the open ground south of 
 the woods. 
 
 Two points in regard to the field of the Battle of West- 
 port must be noted if the actions of the day are to be 
 correctly placed, and these may be noted by reference to 
 the accompanying maps, fac-similes of one drawn at the 
 time by Lieutenant Robinson of Curtis' engineer corps. 
 To-day the narrow stream of Brush Creek follows the 
 same channel as in 1864, but the timber along its course 
 has been narrowed to a strip of hardly more than a few 
 yards in width in many places. But at the time of the 
 battle all the country on either side the stream was either 
 farm-land or timber, and a heavy growth of tall tiees ex- 
 tended on either side the creek-bed, half a mile from the 
 
90 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 stream in many places, and it was along the southern 
 side of this strip that the principal actions of the battle 
 occurred, placing the field of the main conflict farther 
 from the stream than would appear at a first survey of 
 the ground to-day. The Fifty-first Street of to-day, 
 from near the Country Club eastward to Troost Avenue, 
 corresponds very nearly to the southern line of the timber 
 as it stood in 1864, and therefore marks the northern edge 
 of the battle on the open ground. 
 
 The second marked change in the aspect of the field 
 of Westport since 1 864 consists in the fact that the high- 
 way known to-day as the Wornall Road was then sub- 
 ordinate in importance to the State Line Road, that 
 ancient route whose obscure, rough and unpaved exist- 
 ence is unknown to-day to many of even the riding, 
 driving and automobiling class of Kansas Cityans. Fur- 
 thermore the road that to-day forms the southern boun- 
 dary of the Country Club grounds — Fifty-fifth Street 
 west of the Wornall Road — did not, in 1864, run directly 
 into the State Line Road at right angles, as it does to-day, 
 but reached it by a diagonal, running southwest and 
 northeast, that passed to the south of the old cemetery 
 just west of the Ward Farm. Of this old bit of road the 
 remains are distinctly visible to-day, and they mark al- 
 most exactly the spot where Moonlight's brigade, coming 
 from Shawneetown on the morning of the 23d, went into 
 action against the Confederates whom they found on the 
 open ground before them. (See the maps and photo- 
 graphs.) 
 
 On the Confederate side, Price had drawn up his army 
 in a long line that practically extended from Westport, 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 91 
 
 his van, to the Big Blue, his rear. Beginning before West- 
 port, the first third of this line of battle was formed by- 
 Shelby's division, concentrated at this point. Next to 
 the eastward came Fagan's division, extending toward 
 Troost Avenue and beyond. The easternmost and rear 
 third of the line was formed by Marmaduke's strong 
 force before Pleasanton, at the Byram's Ford of the Big 
 Blue, and occupying the trenches from which the Kan- 
 sans under Curtis had been driven at the close of the 
 afternoon before. 
 
 As the sun rose clear, the Kansans under Jennison, 
 Blunt, Ford, and Deitzler marched boldly into the timber 
 south of Brush Creek, when they immediately came into 
 contact with Shelby's ever-ready troopers, who, charging 
 to the accompaniment of the famous "rebel yell," vig- 
 orously rushed them back through the woods and to the 
 north side of the creek again, where they re-formed in 
 line on the hill north of the creek and contented them- 
 selves for the time with artillery-firing from that point. 
 Shelby's charging horsemen established themselves in 
 the woods on the edge of the bluffs south of the creek, 
 and the immediately subsequent actions consisted chiefly 
 of an exchange of fire from howitzers and field-guns, 
 many of the shells from the Confederate guns passing 
 over the Kansans' position and falling in the streets of 
 the village of Westport, one in particular exploding in 
 Shawnee Street, just north of the old Harris House. 
 
 A particularly daring detachment of Shelby's brigade 
 made an attempt to descend the bluffs along the creek, 
 thinking to cross the stream and make a dash upon the 
 left wing of the Kansans' line on the opposite hill, but 
 
92 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 the move was detected and two regiments of Kansas 
 militia charged into the creek-bed and with several steady 
 volleys drove the daring Confederates back. The little 
 action is notable in that the move of this handful of 
 Shelby's men represents practically the high-tide mark 
 of Price's entire invasion — not that it was the most 
 northern point reached, for the taking of Glasgow, in 
 Howard County, was the most northern move made 
 during the campaign — but it was the last aggressive ad- 
 vance made by any of Price's men in the line of his or- 
 iginal goals of Kansas City and Fort Leavenworth. The 
 two Kansas regiments that repulsed this attack were the 
 Fifth Kansas State Militia under Colonel G. A. Colton 
 and the Nineteenth Kansas, led at this time by Colonel 
 A. C. Hogan (so reported by General Blunt), though this 
 officer commanded the Fourth Kansas at other times and 
 is named as its Colonel. This Nineteenth Regiment was 
 one of the latest accessions to Curtis' forces, having 
 reached Kansas City only on the 21st, and having been 
 assigned to the Third Brigade by order of General G. W. 
 Deitzler. 
 
 A second charge of the entire Kansas line was made in 
 an attempt to re-take the bluffs and timber on the south 
 side of the creek, but Shelby's men had a strong position 
 there (on either side the point where the Wornall Road 
 south of Westport winds up the long, steep hill south of 
 the creek) and the attack was at a great disadvantage, 
 the Kansans "coming tumbling back," as an eye-witness 
 described it, almost as soon as the attempt was made. 
 Major-General Deitzler tried to force the howitzer bat- 
 teries of the Kansas troops across the stream and through 
 
Plate I. 
 
 Old hotel, the "Harris House," in Westport. Used by Major- 
 General S. R. Curtis as a field headquarters from 7:30 to 10:30 
 a. m. on October 23d. 
 
The Battle of Wdstport. 95 
 
 the opposite timber, but the woods were so thick, the 
 slope so steep, and the resistance to this move so sharp, 
 that General Blunt and he sent word to General Curtis, 
 in Kansas City, that they could not take the hills under 
 the existing circumstances. 
 
 Curtis galloped at full speed to the village of West port, 
 reaching there at half-past 7 o'clock and immediately se- 
 lecting the old hotel, the Harris House, as his headquar- 
 ters. Hurrying up to its roof he surveyed the field of 
 battle and the actions that had already occurred were 
 pointed out to him. A young Kansas politician named 
 Plumb, later the well-known Senator Plumb of Kansas, 
 was with Curtis at this time as a volunteer aide. Another 
 aide was Mr. J. L. Norman, now (1906) President of the 
 Board of Education of Kansas City. From the roof of 
 the hotel Curtis could see the fighting south of West port 
 plainly indicated by the smoke that rose from the brig- 
 ades of Blunt, Blair, Deitzler, Ford and Jennison, with 
 that of Moonlight farther to the west (the right wing) , all 
 of whom were engaged with Shelby's and Fagan's di- 
 visions of Confederates. The indications were plain that 
 the Kansans were being held in check completely at the 
 time, and such was the case, for from 6 to 8 o'clock the 
 Federal forces along the creek and before West port were 
 met with very general and repeated repulses and were 
 compelled to retire from each attack. For nearly an 
 hour Curtis allowed the battle to continue in this position, 
 several attempts being made to force the Confederates 
 back from the hills immediately south of the creek, but 
 without success save on the part of Ford's brigade, which 
 finally managed to establish itself in the edge of the 
 
96 The; Battle of Westport. 
 
 timber on the south of the creek. Moonlight's brigade, 
 on the Kansans' right, also managed to gain ground 
 against Shelby's men during this time, due largely to the 
 fact that his position was one which partially flanked the 
 Confederates against him. 
 
 Before taking up the next move in this part of the 
 field, however, it must be seen what had been going on dur- 
 ing these hours in the neighborhood of the Big Blue, where 
 Price's rear under Marmaduke was endeavoring to beat 
 back Pleasanton's pursuit — if pursuit that may be called, 
 which had become a wide and fierce charge across a 
 stream and against an entrenched foe. What Pleasant on 
 was now trying to do was exactly what Price had had to 
 try the day before, and had eventually succeeded in ac- 
 complishing, as we have seen. Good use had been made 
 by the Confederates of the delay afforded by Brown's 
 tardiness, and of the eight heavy rifled Parrott cannon 
 with Price's artillery (two of which had been captured 
 from Marmaduke's men in Independence the afternoon 
 before), three had been sent forward to be used in Shelby's 
 fight before Westport, while the remaining three had been 
 placed so as to sweep the roads, fords and country at and 
 beyond the Big Blue. It was against these that Pleas- 
 anton's advance moved, the First Brigade now under Col- 
 onel Phillips, the Third under Brigadier-General San- 
 born, and the Fourth under Colonel Winslow. Several 
 vain attempts were made by these forces to force the 
 crossing of the stream. At many points along the river 
 the timber was so thick that cavalry could only be ad- 
 vanced, if mounted, in columns of fours along the roads, 
 and one such charge upon the entrenchments of Marma- 
 
J. L. Norman. 
 Volunteer aide on staff of General S. R. Curtis. 
 
Plate II. 
 
 View from the roof of the old hotel, the " Harris House," looking; 
 southwest toward Brush Creek and the high ground beyond, the 
 field of fighting between Curtis' army and Shelby's and Pagan's 
 divisions of Price's army in the early morning of the 23d. It was 
 from this point that Major-General Curtis watched the progress of 
 the battle up to the hour of personally leading the successful charge 
 of his forces upon the left (west) flank of Price's lines. 
 
The Battle of Westport. ioi 
 
 duke's men proved fearfully costly in killed and wounded. 
 Indeed, the roads that crossed the Big Blue toward Mar- 
 maduke's cannon were strewn — one eye-witness says 
 "piled" — with dead horses and men. The only thing 
 that could avail was to dismount the entire three brig- 
 ades and charge the stream on foot, and at Colonel Phil- 
 lips' orders this was done. It was costly work, for every 
 officer who participated reports that "the fighting was 
 the fiercest possible at this point," or words to the same 
 effect. Several hundred men fell in this action. The 
 actual manner of crossing and its accomplishment must 
 come under the next period of the day's fighting-time. 
 
 It may be mentioned at this point, however, that 
 McNeil's midnight march with his brigade and Mont- 
 gomery's battery of the Second Missouri Light Artillery 
 to demonstrate against and if possible capture Price's 
 wagon-train, came to naught. McNeil came in sight of 
 the train when some two or three miles south of the main 
 attack on Marmaduke at the river, and saw the hundreds 
 of wagons making off southward and apparently under 
 heavy escort, accompanied by thousands of horsemen. 
 Some of this surprisingly numerous escort were indeed a 
 fighting-force — the guard under General Cabell and Col- 
 onel Burbridge which Price had sent with the train — ■ 
 but by far the greater number were the the asand or more 
 unarmed men (Price says, "several thousand") who had 
 gathered to Price's army and had been assigned to the 
 duties of the wagon-train. Seeing McNeil's threatening 
 advance toward them when it was still some two miles 
 or more on their left, and thus north of them, and seeing 
 that that advance halted on discovering them, it occurred 
 
102 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 to the Confederate officers with the train that possibly 
 the attack could be averted by a further display of their 
 apparent strength. At General Cabell's orders the 
 wagons were rushed ahead, the howitzers of his brigade 
 were put into action, the mounted men were drawn up 
 in line of battle, the unarmed horsemen were marched 
 and countermarched and finally thrown out to right and 
 left in a seemingly overpowering array, on which McNeil 
 later reported, in all innocence as to the true nature of 
 this force, that it far out-flanked him on both wings. In 
 addition to this display, the long, dry grass of the prairie 
 was set on fire, and the wind drove the smoke and flame 
 directly toward the pursuers, while the Confederates kept 
 up a brisk fire through this screen. The ruse produced 
 a most successful impression on McNeil, and his brigade 
 kept its distance throughout the entire day, never coming 
 to closer quarters, and the train made good its escape, 
 for that day and the next at least. In his reports to 
 Rosecrans, General Pleasanton urged that action be taken 
 against McNeil for his hesitation to attack this appar- 
 ently great force, and he was later tried by court-martial 
 at St. Louis and suspended for three months, but his ap- 
 peal to the Judge-Advocate was sustained, and he was 
 restored to rank and dutv. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF WESTPORT. — FROM EIGHT 
 O'CLOCK TO NOON. 
 
 BETWEEN 9:30 and 10 o'clock General Curtis sent 
 orders along his entire line of Kansans saying 
 that he would now personally take the front 
 and lead a general advance, and that he would 
 expect every regiment to move forward to close quarters 
 with the enemy. The order was promptly responded to, 
 and on the extreme right and left wings of the line the 
 brigades of Moonlight and Ford were successful in forcing 
 back their own opponents of Shelby's and Fagan's di- 
 visions, driving them out of the timber on the south of 
 the creek and forcing them to seek the welcome protection 
 of a great number of stone fences that bordered the fields 
 of the open country, and which they promptly used as 
 improvised breastworks. 
 
 On Curtis' own first attempt to go forward before 
 Westport he was not as successful. He attempted to 
 lead the men under Jennison, Blunt and Deitzler, to- 
 gether with some of the artillery, up the hill as they had 
 tried to go before. Major R. H. Hunt, Chief of Curtis' 
 artillery, was with him in this attempt and the artillery 
 consisted of the Ninth Wisconsin Battery and the two 
 mountain howitzers regularly attached to Curtis' staff 
 and commanded by a vigorous little Welsh artillery 
 officer, Lieutenant Edward Gill, well known in later years 
 
 103 
 
io4 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 as Rev. Edward Gill, long Presiding Elder of the Meth- 
 odist Episcopal Church at Manhattan, Kansas. Again 
 the steepness of the bluffs and the steady fire of Shelby's 
 men on the crest prevented success. Then occurred a 
 most interesting event. A very old and feeble man, a 
 resident of a little farm in the vicinity, made his way with 
 tottering steps toward where General Curtis was re- 
 forming his repulsed troops, and begged a moment's 
 hearing. "This aged Missouri patriot," as General Cur- 
 tis' report calls him, undaunted by the sights and sounds 
 of conflict, himself unarmed and supporting his age with 
 great difficulty, had correctly grasped the situation and 
 its only remedy. He explained to General Curtis that he 
 knew where there was a gap or slope in the rocky ridge on 
 the south of the creek, that had proved so unimpregnable, 
 and would point it out. Curtis at once bade him lead the 
 way, and the old man conducted the officers and their 
 following troops to a much more gentle acclivity, some 
 few hundred yards west of where the Wornall Road now 
 crosses Brush Creek, up the ravine to the westward of 
 the present bridge over the stream. This was not only 
 easy of ascent, but it was also close to the west end of 
 Shelby's line and offered opportunity for a flanking move- 
 ment, and through this gap and up the slope poured 
 Curtis' now dismounted cavalry and their artillery. 
 General Curtis begged the old patriot to mount a horse 
 and accompany him and his staff throughout the day, as 
 a mark of gratitude for the really very great service that 
 he had done them, but — to quote General Curtis' later 
 description of the event — "the weary veteran refused to 
 ride, but sunk down with delight and exhaustion when 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 105 
 
 he saw the success of our guns . . . the rebellion 
 vanishing before him, and his home and country free." 
 (Mr. Joseph L. Norman, before mentioned, was riding at 
 General Curtis' side during the whole of this incident, 
 and he wrote the account of it which Curtis later turned 
 in as part of his report.) 
 
 On thus reaching the more open timber south of the 
 creek and on the edge of the level prairie, General Curtis 
 immediately opened on the enemy before him with the 
 guns of Colonel J. H. Dodge's Ninth Wisconsin Battery 
 from Fort Riley, McLain's battery, and the several small 
 howitzers under Major R. H. Hunt, resulting imme- 
 diately in shaking the firmness of Shelby's men and 
 driving them still farther out upon the prairie. With 
 the opening of the artillery fire, the Kansans under Blunt, 
 Deitzler and Jennison emerged from the timber, coming 
 out upon the open ground near the spot where the Country 
 Club House stands to-day. In this immediate vicinity 
 every man and every gun was put into aggressive action, 
 and the firing became steady from west of the Country 
 Club east nearly or quite to the present Troost Avenue. 
 Once gaining the ground south of the creek and the tim- 
 ber, many of the Kansans displayed a spirit in favorable 
 contrast to their late retreats before Shelby's attacks. 
 Many of them now moved forward eagerly, slipping from 
 tree to tree, and from one fence to another, watching 
 their opportunities and shooting like hunters as they 
 caught a favorable opportunity for a chance at one of the 
 foe. This stage of the battle was reached at almost 
 exactly 11 o'clock. 
 
106 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 When the Federal advance over the present Country 
 Club grounds and the adjoining Ward Farm began, the 
 right flank of the advancing line was severely treated by 
 a number of Confederate sharp-shooters and riflemen, 
 who had posted themselves in and among brick buildings 
 of the farm. General Blunt directed Colonel Blair to at- 
 tack the place, and with the Nineteenth Kansas, dis- 
 mounted, he drove the sharp-shooters out with severe 
 loss. This particular action may be regarded as the point 
 of successfully turning Price's left flank, the west end of 
 Shelby's leading division. 
 
 At almost the exact time that General Curtis and the 
 batteries had reached the open ground south of the creek, 
 there had been some very desperate and hand-to-hand 
 fighting east of the Wornall Road and toward Troost 
 Avenue. Ford's brigade, which had been the first to 
 gain a foot-hold on the ground south of the stream, had 
 met with strong resistance from the Confederates shel- 
 tered behind the stone fences mentioned. Similar fight- 
 ing now began in the vicinity of the present Country Club 
 grounds as the two armies closed with one another. 
 The Confederate officers saw at once that the. success of 
 the Federal movements at these points was fraught with 
 utmost danger to their position and bent every attempt 
 to check it. The three Parrott guns which have been 
 mentioned as forwarded from the Big Blue earlier in the 
 day had just arrived, and were at once planted a few hun- 
 dred yards southeast of the Country Club grounds and 
 directed a hot fire upon the Federals. Jennison imme- 
 diately placed McLain's battery in the road at a point 
 not far from the present Club House and began a vigorous 
 
Plate III. 
 
 Part of the field tf conflict between Curtis' army and Shelby's 
 and Fagan's divisions of Price's army, on the high ground south of 
 Brush Creek. The picture is taken from the present Country Club, 
 where Curtis' artillery was placed immediately after gaining the 
 high ground, and the view is in the line of fire of these guns. The 
 duel between Colonel J. H. McGhee and Captain Curtis Johnson, 
 described in the text, took place on the slope beyond the pond 
 shown in the picture. 
 
The; Battle of 1 Westport. 109 
 
 reply. At once McGhee's regiment of Arkansas cavalry- 
 charged in column against these guns, their Colonel at 
 their head. Jennison shouted to Captain Curtis Johnson 
 of Company B, Fifteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry, and 
 these two officers led this company and two squadrons 
 of the Second Colorado Cavalry, under Captain Green, in 
 a desperate counter-charge upon the approaching Con- 
 federates. The two masses of horsemen met at full 
 speed and a short but fierce fight followed, ranging from 
 the old Wornall House to the present lake on the Country 
 Club grounds, in which the Kansans lost 15 men. As the 
 two forces came together, Captain Johnson singled out 
 the leader of the Confederates and dashed at him for a 
 personal encounter. Both drew their revolvers, pre- 
 ferring them to the saber, and a duel between them took 
 place in the very midst of the melee of plunging horses 
 and clashing sabers, cracking pistols and shouting men. 
 McGhee fired first, shooting Johnson in the left arm and 
 inflicting a severe and painful wound and one that dis- 
 abled him for many weeks to come. But on receiving 
 the wound Johnson spurred his horse still closer and 
 with his Colt revolver shot McGhee through the heart, 
 dropping him dead from his horse upon the field. (This 
 Captain Curtis Johnson seems to have been a man as 
 modest as fearless, for he was subsequently highly men- 
 tioned in the reports of not less than six officers, himself 
 making no mention of this occurrence.) The fall of their 
 Colonel disheartened the Confederate column and they 
 broke and fled, leaving nearly 100 of their number en- 
 closed in the Kansans' line as prisoner. Twenty-five or 
 more fearfully wounded members of McGhee's regiment 
 
no The Battle; of 1 Westport. 
 
 were left in the vicinity of the Wornall House as the 
 charge fell back, the body of their Colonel among them. 
 Dead horses, dropped sabers, blankets, guns, saddles, 
 and the like strewed the ground at the point of this 
 close and deadly encounter. The Confederate Brigadier- 
 General M. Jeff Thompson in his official reports after the 
 battle mentions this charge as one of the events of the 
 day that turned the tide of battle most disastrously 
 against Price and his men. General Blunt witnessed the 
 entire action and at once ordered Jennison to lead a 
 counter-charge. Only one squadron of the Second Col- 
 orado was available at the moment, but they drew sabers 
 and, with Jennison at their head, drove home nearly to 
 the battery of Parrott guns. One of these guns, by the 
 way, while firing at this time, was itself struck on the 
 muzzle by a Federal shot and was left disabled on the 
 field when the later retreat occurred. Many who later 
 saw this abandoned piece reported that it had burst, but 
 we shall presently have proof that such was not the case. 
 Jennison halted his line as near the Confederate firing-line 
 as he dared — that line being now steadily though slowly 
 falling back — and sent for reinforcements to come up to 
 him, while upon the retreating enemy whom he had been 
 pursuing the entire artillery force of the Kansans' thir- 
 teen howitzers and eighteen brass Parrott guns began to 
 fire anew and with telling effect. 
 
 It may as well be said just here, and cannot be too 
 strongly emphasized, that while the entire engagement 
 fought this day has been given the name of the Battle of 
 Westport and is popularly supposed to have centered in 
 the vicinity of that village, yet the severest and most im- 
 
Map No 4" Showing Position of Forces at 8 to 10 a. m., October 23d. 
 
 5calE, ONt-THiBO INCH TO ONE MlVC 
 
 i/ff/e San'afi 
 
 Facsimile of map made in 1864 by Lieutenant Geo. T. Robinson, to accompany Major-General S. R. Curtis' 
 official report to the United States War Department on the Battle of Wcstport. 
 
 A A — Old Independence Road. B — Fifteenth Street crossing of the Big Blue River. C, C — Old line 
 )f the Santa Fe Trail. U, D — Old Westport Road. E — Country Club grounds. F — Forest Hill Cemetery. 
 3 T~ s wope Park. H — Price's army, Fagan's division. I — Price's army, Marmaduke's division. J — 
 Price's army, Shelby's division. K — Curtis' army, Jennisou's brigade, t, — Curtis' army, Moonlight's 
 jngade. M — Curtis' army, Blair's brigade. N — Curtis' army, Ford's brigade. O — Curtis' army, troops 
 mder Deitzler. P — Pleasanton's army, Brown's (Phillips') brigade. Q — Pleasanton's army, McNeil's 
 jngade. R — Pleasanton's army, Sanborn's brigade. S — Pleasanton's army, Winslow's brigade. T T — 
 fortifications before Kansas City. U — Wagon-train with Price's army. 
 —7— 
 
Plate IV. 
 
 Present aspect of the east approach to By ram's Ford. Scene 
 of the crossing of Phillips' (Brown's), Winslow's. and Sanborn's 
 brigades in their attack on PriceVrear-guard under Marmaduke. 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 115 
 
 portant actions of the conflict were those conducted at 
 the crossing of the Big Blue by Brown's brigade under 
 Colonel Phillips and Winslow's brigade under Colonel 
 Winslow and (later) under Lieutenant -Colonel F. W. Ben- 
 teen, both in their forcing of Marmaduke's resistance at 
 this point and in their later arrival on the field of West- 
 port. The heaviest losses in both officers and men suf- 
 fered by any troops in the battle occurred in these brig- 
 ades and at this point. And had it not been for the ar- 
 rival of these forces on the field south of Brush Creek 
 where Curtis and his men were engaged with Shelby and 
 Fagan, it would have been a far different story that would 
 have been written. This we shall now see. 
 
 As last described, Brown's brigade (now Phillips') 
 and Sanborn's were being dismounted, their attempts to 
 cross the stream in the face of the entrenched enemy 
 having proven unsuccessful. They were accordingly 
 formed in line of battle and advanced to the east bank of 
 the river, from which position they began a heavy fire 
 across the stream. Colonel Phillips deemed that a flank- 
 ing movement might be successful, and sent Major George 
 W. Kelley with the Fourth Missouri Volunteer Cavalry 
 to make an attempt at the south end of Marmaduke's line. 
 It took Kelley two hours to make sure of a place where 
 the river could be crossed, for his men were retarded not 
 only by the presence and the fire of the enemy, but by the 
 trees felled in the stream all along its course. During 
 this entire time every man on both sides was hotly en- 
 gaged and Kelley's horse shot under him, but at last a 
 place was found where a crossing was possible, and where, 
 indeed, the nearest Confederates were driven back from 
 their side of the river. 
 
n6 The; Battle of Westport. 
 
 This point was the then widely-known Byram's Ford 
 Crossing. Constantly in use at that day, on the main 
 line of the road leading from Independence to the country 
 south of Kansas City, it has since become unusable owing 
 to shifts in the channel of the stream and is even almost 
 unknown to many residents in the neighborhood, while 
 the old roads that once led to it have many of them been 
 fenced off and the ground around it cleared of this heavy 
 timber and made into farms. In 1864, however, it was 
 an easy crossing at a point where the river was wide and 
 shallow, bordered by thick woods through which the 
 roads approaching the ford passed. Deciding to move 
 against this point, Phillips threw every available man 
 against the weakened resist nice of Marmaduke's men, 
 and the crossing was made not only at the ford itself, 
 but at points for a quarter of a mile on either side, the 
 Fourth Cavalry under Kelley, the Seventh under Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel Crittenden, and the First under Lieuten- 
 ant-Colonel B. F. Lazear wading over in this order, the 
 men all dismounting and holding their arms above their 
 heads as they waded, some of them waist - deep, their 
 horses being held in the timber on the east bank. As 
 this strong force was plainly seen moving in the timber 
 near the ford the officers of Marmaduke's division moved 
 all their men back from the river to the crest of a long 
 sloping hill west of and commanding the river. Forming 
 in a strong line here, making use of several rail fences, log 
 houses, etc., they placed their howitzers and three Par- 
 rott guns in position and opened a heavy cross-fire upon 
 the ford and the woods in its immediate vicinity. (The 
 twelve-pounder shell shown in Plate X was fired at this time 
 
Plate V. 
 
 Old log house around which Marmaduke's rear-guard division 
 •of Price's army made a second stand when driven back from its 
 first position at Byram's Ford of the Big Blue River. Originally 
 stood in a small clearing in heavy woods. The logs composing the 
 structure still plainly exhibit many bullet-marks. 
 
Plate VI. 
 
 View from point where Phillips' (Brown's) brigade halted and 
 lay down in their charge on Marmaduke's position. Looking back 
 toward Byram's Ford, over the ground covered by Phillips' ad- 
 vance. Log house standing during the battle shown in left middle 
 ground. Byram's Ford lies in the hollow under the white mark on 
 the horizon. The " Little Santa Fe Road," by which Pleasanton's 
 army moved against Price's rear-guard, passed close to the houses 
 een on the horizon at the left of the picture. 
 
The Battle of Westport. 121 
 
 having been plowed up recently near the old ford.) In 
 spite of this vigorous opposition Phillips' brigade waded 
 the stream, in crossing which several men and horses were 
 killed, and rushed up the high bank on the west side, 
 their relief on reaching a position on its top from which 
 they could reply to the fire, finding vent in a great cheer 
 all along their line. On getting all the men of his brigade 
 across the river Colonel Phillips urged them at a double- 
 quick through the woods on the west bank to charge the 
 Confederates' second position without delay. Before 
 that position, as it has been described, there lay a wide, 
 open field, forming the face of the hill, some three hun- 
 dred yards square, steep and with stumps and rocks 
 cropping out everywhere. There was no way directly to 
 attack the strong position of Marmaduke's men on the 
 crest of this hill except by moving directly up the hill 
 through this open field, which the Confederate cannon 
 and musketry-fire completely commanded, and which 
 was instantly swept by sheets of lead and iron at the first 
 appearance of Phillips' men in the timber at its lower 
 edge. Twice Colonel Phillips tried to force a charge up 
 the hill, but although he — the only mounted man among 
 the Federals at the moment — rode ahead of them, the 
 fire down the slope was so fierce that even the veterans 
 of his command would not face it, and lay down on the 
 ground behind the stumps and rocks and began to answer 
 the enemy with their rifles, carbines and Colt's revolvers. 
 At this moment Phillips was dismayed to find that his 
 men were running out of ammunition. It appeared that 
 General Brown, in addition to having failed to move at 
 dawn as ordered, had failed to provide his troops with 
 
122 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 ammunition, in spite of messages sent him saying that it 
 was at his disposal, and also in spite of a later report of 
 his (October 27th) in which he asserted that he had not 
 failed so to do. Phillips sent Major Kelley back in haste 
 for both ammunition and reinforcements, both of which 
 were sent, the latter in the shape of Colonel Winslow's 
 brigade, under Lieutenant -Colonel F. W. Benteen, Wins- 
 low himself being at the time in command of the entire 
 division. In the meantime the Confederates had taken 
 advantage of the pause in the attack more firmly to es- 
 tablish themselves in their position in the timber on the 
 crest of the hill, and their fire was such that many officers 
 among the Federal force subsequently expressed their 
 wonder that any of their men ever survived. "They oc- 
 cupied not only the ground, but the very tree-tops as 
 well," to quote from one officer's report, their sharp- 
 shooters climbing into trees and singling out the Federal 
 officers with deadly accuracy, not less than seven line 
 officers and one field officer being shot at this point. 
 The field officer was Colonel Winslow himself, who, with 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Benteen beside him, was bringing up 
 at a running charge one hundred men of the Fourth Mis- 
 souri under Captain C. P. Knispel, a battalion of the 
 Fourth Iowa under Captain E. W. Dee, and a regiment 
 of the Missouri militia. He led them at a run past where 
 Phillips' men were lying on the ground replying to the 
 enemy's fire. As he passed, Colonel Phillips shouted to 
 him, ' ' Do n't try to go in there, Colonel ! No man can 
 live there !" Winslow did not hear him and went on, but 
 had not ridden an hundred feet farther when he was hit 
 in the leg by a rifle-ball and fell from his horse, severely 
 
Plate VII. 
 
 View up the hill where Phillips' (Brown's), Sanborn's, and 
 Winslow's brigades made their final and decisive charge against Mar- 
 maduke's second position. At the time of the battle a heavy belt, 
 of woods bordered the crest of the slope shown, along the horizon- 
 line, in the edge of which Marmaduke's division was posted. The 
 Federal charge moved directly up the hill in the line of view shown. 
 The man in the picture is standing near the spot where Colonel E. F. 
 Winslow of the Fourth Iowa Cavalry (Fourth Brigade, Pleasanton's- 
 Army) was shot from his horse, and the child is standing near 
 where Lieutenant-Colonel T. T. Crittenden, commanding the 
 Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry (First Brigade, Pleasanton's- 
 army), was wounded. 
 
Plate VIII. 
 View from Marmaduke's second position looking over the field 
 of the final and decisive charge of the Federal forces toward the log 
 house and Bvram's Ford in the distance. Marmaduke s line was 
 drawn up Tin the edge of heavy timber, from the spectator's position 
 SlS fence seen at the extreme left of the picture ; ^hp* 
 l Brown's), Sanborn's, and Winslow's brigades charged direct^ ojer 
 the ground shown, from the log house and large tree toward the 
 spectator The bullets shown in Plate X. were plowed up at this 
 p^int The carrying of this position by the Federal charge was the 
 deciding action in the entire Battle of Westport. 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 127 
 
 wounded, though he subsequently recovered from the 
 wound. He rallied sufficiently to turn over his command 
 to Lieutenant-Colonel Benteen, and was then left lying 
 on the field. When Winslow fell, his men halted, broke, 
 and ran back toward the foot of the hill. Benton rallied 
 them and led them back again to the charge, with the 
 Third and Fourth Iowa regiments supporting them, 
 having come up by this time. 
 
 At this same time Lieutenant -Colonel Crittenden was 
 also wounded. He was shot at by a Confederate sharp- 
 shooter in a tree, in a position so conspicuous that the 
 officer saw him and realized that the man was shooting 
 at him. But the sharpshooter's aim was low, and the 
 bullet struck the ground some twenty feet in front of 
 Crittenden, ricochetting and striking the officer squarely 
 upon a thick wad of the fractional paper currency of the 
 day, "shin-plasters," as they were called, which was in 
 a waistcoat pocket, and though the missile did not pierce 
 farther the force of the blow hurled him to the ground, 
 producing great sickness, pallor and agony. His fellow- 
 officers thought he had been shot through the body, and 
 Colonel Phillips hurried to his side, gave him a drink of 
 some old peach brandy with which a friend had recently 
 filled Phillips' canteen, examined the wound and found 
 that it was not serious, and even found the bullet in the 
 pocket where it had struck. 
 
 Phillips then ordered his brigade up, and all the men 
 on the field charged together up the slope in the face of 
 the furious Confederate fire, reaching and breaking the 
 Confederate fines, the men of Company A of the Third 
 Iowa capturing a flag from a regiment of Marmaduke's 
 
128 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 division. As several officers report, "this was the fiercest 
 and most sanguinary conflict of the entire engagement," 
 the men closing with one another and fighting desperately 
 with sabers and revolvers. The log cabins mentioned as 
 near the Confederate position were so many centers of 
 desperate hand-to-hand fighting, Marmaduke's men 
 having entered them to fire from their protection and 
 through their windows, and holding them till they were 
 overpowered or shot down by the swarming Federals. 
 The one old log house still standing and shown in one of 
 the accompanying photographs still bears many bullet- 
 marks, while an officer estimated that another, on the 
 crest of the hill, had been hit 5,000 times in this fight. 
 Much credit for the final charge was given by the officers 
 to the steady work done by Battery H of Thurber's 
 command of the Missouri Light Artillery, one section of 
 which, under Lieutenant Philip Smiley, fired almost inces- 
 santly, with canister and at short range, from 8 o'clock 
 till after 1 1 . 
 
 Phillips', Benteen's and Winslow's men were far more 
 effectively armed than were Marmaduke's, the Seventh 
 Missouri (Federal), being armed with the Smith breech- 
 loading carbine, and at least one regiment of Winslow's 
 brigade being armed with the Henry repeating rifle, .44 
 caliber, the predecessor of the later Winchester lever- 
 action repeater. Of these troops in action General W. L. 
 Cabell later wrote: "The enemy, armed with Henry 
 rifles, poured a rapid and scathing fire into our com- 
 mands, which far exceeded any firing we could do from 
 our muzzle-loading Enfield rifles." 
 
Ex-Go vernor T. T. Crittenden. 
 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Seventh Missouri Cavalry, Brown's Brigade. 
 Pleasanton's Armv. 
 
Mki c Showing Position of Forces at 10 a. m. to noon, October 23d. 
 AP INO. O 
 
 Scale, one-thiho inch QNC mile 
 
 vfe Sanfa 
 
 simile of map made in 1864 by lieutenant Geo. T. Robinson, to accompany M«jor-General S. R. Curtis' 
 official report to the United States War Department on the Battle of Westport. 
 
 A : A— Old Independence Road. B— Fifteenth Street crossing of the Big Blue River. C C— Old line 
 e banta Fe Trail. D, D— Old Westport Road. E— Country Club grounds. F— Forest Hill Cemeteiy. 
 .wope Park. H — Price's army, Fagan's division. I— Price's army, Marmaduke's division. J— 
 
 I arm r y ' „}■? s dlvlslon - K— Curtis' army, Jennison's brigade. I,— Curtis' army, Moonl'gnt's 
 £ . M ,— Curtls army, Blair's brigade. N— Curtis' army. Ford's brigade. O— Curtis' army, troops 
 ' r , Deit * ler - P— Pleasanton's army, Brown's (Phillips') brigade. Q— Pleasanton's army, McNeil's 
 *2 e - K — Pleasanton s army, Sanborn's brigade. S— Pleasanton's army, Winslow's brigade. T T — 
 locations before Kansas City. U — Wagon-train with Price's army. 
 
Henry 
 as') brigad 
 'ansas Citj 
 
 Smith '. 
 issouri (F 
 rmies durii 
 
 rt-» CD S 
 
 
 SB P 
 
 P — 
 
 5' Q o 
 
 
 s.p p 
 
 S-*w 
 
 
 3 g? 
 
 pVjCfq 
 
 ai 3s 
 
 ? o 
 
 p * 
 
 ~'P 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Otri" 
 
 - P 
 
 51 » f? 
 
 — • j£ 
 
 s-W 
 
 3 ro 
 
 — 2 
 
 K p • 
 
 
 — S £" 
 
 CD 
 
 
 
 2 cal 
 le of 
 in p 
 
 B° 
 
 P H-> 
 
 o -• 
 
 r" ci 
 
 ber. (Gil 
 Westport 
 ssession o 
 
 CD o 
 o_ • 
 
 fD 4- 
 S-O 
 
 ►C P 
 O 3^ 
 
 M > cr 
 
 p£ CD 
 
 
 CD O 
 
 r*~ ra 
 
 d b SP 
 
 
 ►7 C3 3 
 
 
 S.&B. 
 
 ^ — 
 
 > c-t- 
 
 3 Oi 
 
 fD O 3" 
 
 o 
 
 's pate 
 f these 
 rsity C 
 
 5 ~ 
 
 <-► o 
 n Y' 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 n* P ~^ 
 
 = ~ 
 
 
 CD x 
 
 Q - h- ' 
 
 CS T> 
 
 Ws-oc 
 
 ~. — 
 
 5 CD C5 
 
 £ _ 
 
 35 "o 
 ■"7 * 
 
 = •< 
 
 £_ . 
 
 a. s 2 * 
 
 MB 
 
 CD DC 
 
 B 2 
 
Plate X. 
 
 Confederate twelve-pounder howitzer shell, plowed up on west 
 bank of the Big Blue River at the Byram's Ford crossing. Fired 
 from artillery placed at the second position of Price's rear-guard 
 under Marmaduke. 
 
 Button from Federal soldier's uniform. Found at point where 
 the final charge of Phillips' (Brown's), Sanborn's, and Winslow's 
 brigades carried the second position of Price's rear-guard under 
 Marmaduke. 
 
 Bullets plowed up on the field of the final charge of the three 
 above-named brigades. Identified as follows, from left to right: 
 
 [over] 
 
1. Confederate shot-gun ball. 
 
 2. Colt's .36-caliber revolver bullet. 
 
 3. Bullet from Burnside's breech-loading carbine, .56 caliber. 
 
 4. Solid-base rifle bullet. 
 
 5. Hollow-base musket bullet. 
 
 6. Bullet from Smith's breech-loading carbine, .52 caliber. 
 This carbine was issued to the Seventh Missouri State Militia Cav- 
 alry. 
 
 7. Metallic cartridge, from Henry repeating rifle. .44 caliber, 
 center-fire. Missed fire, cap bearing impression of firing-pin. 
 
The: Battle of Westport. 137 
 
 The position of this stand of the Confederate rear- 
 guard under Marmaduke was on the line of the north- 
 and-south road, to-day known as Ehnwood Avenue, a 
 Httle less than a half mile east of Cleveland Avenue and 
 the Swope Park trolley line, and about 1,500 feet north 
 of the north line of Swope Park. It was at this point that 
 the bullets and button shown in Plate X. were found, and 
 similar relics of the fight are still to be found in large 
 numbers for a distance of 600 yards (the bullet-range of 
 that day) east and west of this site. 
 
 Marmaduke's last desperate stand thus broken, he 
 had no alternative save to retreat in the direction of the 
 main body of Price's army, now falling back before the 
 Kansans' artillery, their mounted charges, and the 
 swarms of shouting militia in front of West port. Once 
 started, Phillips and Benteen drove the retreating Con- 
 federates with every man of their commands, mounting 
 them as soon as the position was taken and continuing 
 the pursuit at full speed, hurrying Thurber's guns for- 
 ward and stopping them on one ridge after another to 
 send shell and canister after the enemy's hurrying retreat. 
 The sound of these approaching guns soon reached the 
 ears of the Kansas troops engaged with Shelby's and 
 Fagan's brigades, and as the reports grew louder and 
 nearer, tremendous cheers rose from the Kansans as they 
 realized its significance and that Pleasanton's long pur- 
 suit from St. Louis had arrived on the field at the critical 
 moment. General Curtis says that it was just noon when 
 he heard the sound of Pleasanton's guns above the roar 
 of the fighting in his own vicinity, and he felt so sure of 
 what it augured for the Federal arms that he immediately 
 
138 The Battle; of Westport. 
 
 despatched a messenger to Kansas City to notify Colonel 
 Coates that there would be no need for him and his Home 
 Guards, and asking him to telegraph to Rosecrans at St. 
 Louis that the day was as good as won. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF WESTPORT. — FROM NOON 
 TO 2 O'CLOCK. 
 
 GENERAL CURTIS was right. The brigades of 
 Phillips, Benteen and Sanborn drove the Con- 
 federates under Marmaduke westward until the 
 two battle-fields were pratically one, extending 
 from before Westport on the northwest to a point a mile 
 east of Troost Avenue on the east, upon which vast field 
 the entire Federal and Confederate forces now faced and 
 fought one another. The advance of Phillips', Sanborn's 
 and Benteen's cavalry columns upon the field, driving 
 Marmaduke's division before them, made their attack 
 practically a flanking one, and Price's line of battle was 
 crushed together with Federal assaults on the north and 
 east at the same time. With the presence of Pleasanton's 
 forces on the field, Price's men rapidly fell back south- 
 ward, when Price and his officers rode along the lines beg- 
 ging the men to make one more stand, which they did. 
 This was at almost exactly i o'clock, and this second 
 stand of Price's army was on an east-and-west line from 
 the present Forest Hill Cemetery to the Wornall Road. 
 Even in the heat of battle the officers and men were fas- 
 cinated by the martial beauty of the spectacle that was 
 presented by the vast extent of the firing lines that were 
 now entirely in the open and perfectly visible under the 
 brilliant and unclouded October noon. Great clouds of 
 
 139 
 
140 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 smoke rose from the entire field, from batteries and reg- 
 imental volleys, and the din of the furious cannonade was 
 plainly heard by the citizens miles away in Kansas City, 
 where most of the non-combatant population was on 
 house-tops or hill-tops to listen and to watch the smoke 
 rising from the distant field. At this hour of the battle, 
 from 1 2 130 to 1 130, nearly thirty thousand men were en- 
 gaged on a field between three and four miles square, ex- 
 tending from the State Line before Westport to about the 
 southeast corner of Forest Hill Cemetery, or where the 
 monument to the Confederate dead stands to-day above 
 the last resting-place of Brigadier-General Shelby and 
 many of his men. 
 
 Not a few deeds of marksmanship and daring char- 
 acterized the fighting at this time, that of Price's last 
 stand, and have passed into history. Confederate sharp- 
 shooters again climbed the occasional trees that dotted 
 the prairie and from these points of vantage used their 
 rifles in picking off the Federal officers and men. On the 
 Federal side some very accurate work was done with 
 cannon in the attempt to disable the enemy's artillery. 
 Two shots in particular were so notable as to have passed 
 into the official reports of the battle. One was from a 
 gun of a most interesting artillery force belonging to 
 Curtis' army and variously named in the official reports. 
 Manned by negroes recruited in Leavenworth under 
 Major R. H. Hunt, the attention of Stanton, the Secretary 
 of War, had been drawn to its existence, and he had per- 
 sonally issued commissions to three negro officers of its 
 force. One was a Captain Douglas, of Muscatine, Iowa, 
 a man of remarkable natural eloquence and great power 
 
Plate XI. 
 
 Front and rear views of the monument erected on the battle- 
 field by the Kansas City Chapter, United Daughters of the Con 
 federacy, in honor of the Confederate dead in the Battle of West- 
 port. The monument stands at the east end of the Confederate 
 line of Price's last stand, the statue of the Confederate soldier 
 facing toward the Federal pursuit. On the slope before the/monu- 
 ment may be seen the low head-stones marking the graves where 
 have been gathered all the Confederate dead. The largest of ithese 
 head-stones, visible in the rear-view just at the left of the base of 
 the monument, marks the grave of Brigadier-General Shelby, 
 buried here on his death in 1897. 
 
The; Battle oe Westport. 143 
 
 over his people. A second was Lieutenant Miner, a 
 highly-educated colored man who had been private sec- 
 retary to Colonel George C. Hoyt, the lawyer from Athol. 
 Maine, who had defended John Brown in his famous trial. 
 The third was of an opposite type, First Lieutenant ' ' Bill " 
 Matthews, a giant and coal-black negro, a Hercules in 
 strength, unlettered, but devoted to his service. The 
 battery consisted of six rifled field-pieces and was at- 
 tached to Colonel C. W. Blair's brigade during the battle. 
 Its official title was the Second United States Colored 
 Battery Light Artillery, and several of its men were killed 
 before Westport, while the excellent work it did is men- 
 tioned in many Federal reports. The particular shot was 
 aimed by a white officer, Captain J. H. Dodge, command- 
 ing the Ninth Wisconsin Volunteer Battery, but who 
 used this gun of the negro battery at this moment, the 
 shell shattering the carriage of a Confederate howitzer 
 and dropping the piece disabled to the ground. The other 
 shot was aimed by Major R. H. Hunt, more than once 
 mentioned herein as Chief of the Kansas Artillery, with a 
 gun of Lieutenant Eayre's section of the Ninth Wisconsin 
 Battery, and the solid shot struck one of the heavy guns 
 of Captain R. A. Collins' Missouri Battery, with Shelby's 
 division, shattering the piece to the trunnions. The re- 
 markable effect of the shot was due to the fact that the 
 gun was being loaded at the moment it was struck, and 
 the charge that was being inserted exploded, bursting 
 the gun and killing and wounding several men and 
 horses in its vicinity. It was later examined by Federal 
 officers and found to be an imitation-Parrott, cast in a 
 Confederate foundry in Texas. At the time when these 
 
144 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 shots were fired the Federal batteries were standing in 
 a position near the present Wornall Road, some distance 
 south and east of the present Country Club, and the 
 disabled Confederate pieces were some six or eight hun- 
 dred yards farther southeast. 
 
 Another unique feature of the entire engagement was 
 the diversity of arms used, on the Confederate side, at 
 least. These comprised excellent Enfield rifled muskets 
 imported from England through Mexico, sabers and other 
 swords, many of them the product of rustic blacksmith 
 shops ; single and double-barreled shot-guns, not a few of 
 them antiquated flint-locks; and cannon that ranged 
 from the Parrotts, Rodmans, Napoleons and howitzers 
 down to a most original piece in the possession of one of 
 Price's forces, some six feet long, but only an inch in bore, 
 but praised by one of its gray-clad devotees as "inval- 
 uable for picking off individuals at long range." It is 
 also reported, on apparently credible authority, that some 
 of the guns of Collins' battery, General Jeff Thompson's 
 brigade, were breech-loaders, after a pattern invented by 
 a D. W. Hughes of Memphis, Tennessee, later of Yates 
 Center, Kansas, to whom a patent was awarded by the 
 Confederate Government in 1863. These were of various 
 sizes, some cast in bronze and some bored out of old 
 car-axles, generally of but an inch to two inches in bore, 
 mounted on light carriages and often moved by men alone 
 after the fashion of naval howitzers. They fired a single 
 leaden ball, and a range of three miles was claimed for 
 the best of them. The difference in the arms used in the 
 ranks was so marked even during the progress of the 
 battle that more than one Federal officer reports having 
 
P P • 
 
 < 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ai(ra 
 
 
 
 
 p 3 ,_: 
 
 i- 
 
 
 X 
 
 he large 
 by A. T 
 s an aide 
 
 re 
 
 
 
 P 
 
 3 
 
 en 
 
 
 
 
 
 SLo 
 
 ~. 
 
 re 
 
 O 
 
 
 
 re 
 
 _ 
 
 re re 
 
 
 EC 
 
 
 -J -! 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 - £ 
 
 
 - 
 
 (~) 
 
 V. T+ 
 
 
 r- 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 S- s 
 
 
 _ 
 
 IT 
 
 re re 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 — 
 
 «H 
 
 o S ►— 
 
 o re 
 
 C 
 
 E^t 
 
 o £f 
 
 
 
 q re 
 
 
 
 - GO 
 
 ^ X H 
 
 3 If 
 
 • re a 
 
 ^3 
 
 re > 
 
 5? 
 
 re 3 - ^ 
 re -7- >— 
 
 p -u 
 
 7? p • 
 
 E.2 
 g.8" 
 
 O i 
 
 1 o 
 
 2 2 
 
 i p 
 
 
 O-: 
 
 a 
 
 2 cr 
 
 r-i 
 
 ~ re 
 
 ■ £ 
 
 re i-s 
 
 
 P O 
 
 3=f£ 
 
 — 'O 
 
 re 
 
 2- oT 
 
 !s 
 
 ^ - 
 
 ELff 
 
 
 
 
 -1 t - * 
 
 Xp 
 
 •■^ p 
 
 M 
 
 Q 
 
 jSfC 
 
 P P 
 
 8 S 
 
 3 p- 
 
 
 5*5 
 
 P'i- 
 
 c o 
 
 <^o 
 
 TfZ. 
 
 re 7q 
 
 *° *_ 
 
 p J3* 
 
 £.2 
 
 "i re 
 
 s* c 
 
 - P 
 
 P e* 
 
 o Si 
 
 s-*d 
 
 re i 
 
 -*. p 
 
 O-re" 
 
 £.6 
 
The: Battle of 5 Westport. 147 
 
 noted by the unmistakable roar of shot-gun volleys that 
 the troops engaged were either raw recruits or irregular 
 soldiery, and not musket-armed regulars. One Confed- 
 erate officer reports that his men were compelled to dis- 
 mount whenever they wished to fire, as their guns were 
 so long as to be unusable from the saddle, being evidently 
 the old-fashioned but once-famous arm known as the 
 "Kentucky pea-rifle." 
 
 But this last and desperate stand of Price's men — 
 though it shook the impetuous onset of Sanborn's brigade 
 for a moment, and though it quite gave wings to a reg- 
 iment of Kansans upon whom Shelby's fierce troopers sud- 
 denly whirled about — could yet avail nothing against the 
 now combined armies of Curtis and Pleasanton, and the 
 union of these lines rang out in their united volleys the 
 death-knell of Price's last great "raid." As the Confed- 
 erate Brigadier-General M. Jeff Thompson later wrote, 
 "then for the first time in this campaign Shelby's brigade 
 turned its backs toward the foe." Thurber's battery, 
 with the brigades of Phillips and Benteen, did as much 
 toward forcing the flight as any of the Federal artillery, 
 being galloped into short range and firing on the re- 
 retreating Confederates with double-shotted canister. 
 With the first break of this last stand the great rout began. 
 Price says that he ordered the retreat when the news 
 reached him that his wagon-train was being threatened 
 by a Federal brigade (McNeil's), though, as we have seen, 
 this threat came to nothing. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE RETREAT AND THE END OF THE CAMPAIGN. 
 
 OFF to the southward moved the pursued and the 
 pursuers. The sound of the heavy firing grew 
 fainter and fainter to the anxious listeners in 
 the little Kansas City of that fateful day, and 
 the Battle of Westport was over. Toward the close of 
 the afternoon Curtis halted the rawest of his Kansans and 
 sent them back to Kansas City, there to be mustered out 
 and returned to their homes, and by an order dated, "In 
 the field, on Indian Creek," revoked his declaration of 
 martial law in the State of Kansas. The Fifth, Sixth and 
 Tenth Kansas regiments were allowed to continue the 
 pursuit in company with Pleasantan's veterans as far as 
 Fort Scott, where they too were halted and mustered 
 out of service. 
 
 With these exceptions the two united Federal armies 
 continued the chase all that night and the next day, ad- 
 vancing directly southward as fast as the jaded horses of 
 pursued and pursuers made possible, along the State 
 Line between Missouri and Kansas, now on one side of the 
 line and now on the other. That night (the 24th) the 
 pursuit halted at Mound City, the then little county-seat 
 of Linn County, Kansas, the rear-guard of the Confed- 
 erates occupying the two mounds at a little distance from 
 the settlement, from which it takes its name. In the 
 middle of the night, at Curtis' orders, the Second Col- 
 
 148 
 
The Battle of Westport. 149 
 
 orado Cavalry and the (detachment of the) Eighth Mis- 
 souri State Militia Cavalry, under Major R. H. Hunt 
 and Colonel J. J. Gravely, moved, in pitch darkness and 
 a pouring storm, to take the mounds. Just before day- 
 break the Confederates abandoned the mounds after a 
 brief exchange of fire, and the pursuit across the prairies 
 began anew. 
 
 Five miles southeast of Mound City, in the timber on 
 the north bank of Mine Creek and not far from its junction 
 with the Little Osage, Price's men halted for the last 
 stand of their entire campaign. Shelby's division had 
 been sent to protect the great wagon-train, but the di- 
 visions of Fagan and Marmaduke were drawn up in line 
 of battle, six lines deep, ten pieces of artillery placed on 
 their left wing. Phillips' and Benteen's brigades charged 
 directly against the center and left of the enemy's posi- 
 tion, hoping to cut off and capture the guns, in which 
 they were eventually successful, though not till they had 
 experienced severe losses from shell and musketry. The 
 regular formation of the battle-lines gave way to the 
 utmost confusion, in which friends and foes were hardly 
 distinguishable, and one Federal line even charged an- 
 other. Officers, fancying themselves leading their men, 
 found themselves the prisoners of those about them; 
 soldiers, their muskets at their shoulders to fire, lowered 
 them to take another look and determine whether the 
 objects of their aim were for them or against them. 
 Major Abial R. Pierce, commanding the Fourth Iowa 
 Cavalry of Winslow's (Benteen's) brigade, is reported to 
 have cut down eight Confederates with his own saber and 
 he look two flags with his own hands. Colonel Slemons, 
 
150 The Batti,e of Westport. 
 
 commanding Slemon's brigade, who had been with Price 
 since the day of Corinth, and who had held the rear-guard 
 on the mounds at Mound City, was mortally wounded. 
 Major-General Marmaduke, while striving to rally his 
 men, was attacked by a Federal corporal, already se- 
 verely wounded, James Dunlavy of Company D, Fourth 
 Iowa Cavalry. Dunlavy was firing at Marmaduke with 
 his revolver, when the officer, taking him for a Confed- 
 erate, rode up to him to reprove him for firing at one of 
 his own side. Dunlavy waited till Marmaduke was 
 within short range, leveled his pistol and forced him to 
 dismount and surrender, when Marmaduke's horse im- 
 mediately ran away, and the corporal turned his captive 
 over to Colonel Blair, commanding the Fourth Brigade 
 under Curtis. Blair presented Dunlavy with Marma- 
 duke's revolver as a trophy of his feat. At almost the 
 same time Brigadier-General W. L. Cabell was captured. 
 Like his fellow-officers, he had been trying desperately to 
 rally his broken lines, the flag-bearer of Colonel Anderson 
 Gordon's Arkansas cavalry regiment riding with him and 
 defiantly waving the regimental flag. In jumping Mine 
 Creek, Cabell's horse fell, when a white-haired lieutenant 
 and three men of the Seventh Missouri Cavalry (Phillips' 
 regiment, now under Lieutenant -Colonel T. T. Crittenden) 
 demanded his surrender. The General gave up his pis- 
 tols and the sword he was carrying (his own having been 
 lost at Independence, as we have seen), when the lieu- 
 tenant proposed to kill his captive on the spot to prevent 
 his getting away. In the surrounding confusion General 
 Cabell got away, seizing a little Choctaw pony which a 
 Confederate private was riding, and finding Colonel Gor- 
 
MAn Nn R Showing Position of Forces at 1:30 p. m. and after, October 23d. 
 
 
 5CME , ONE-TMIRO INCH ONt Mil* 
 
 M^/eSaniafi 
 
 Fac-simile of map made in 1864 by lieutenant Geo. T. Robinson, to accompany Major-General S. R. Curtis' 
 official report to the United States War Department on the Battle of Westport. 
 
 A, A — Old Independence Road. B — Fifteenth Street crossing of the Big Blue River. C, C — Old line 
 of the Santa Fe Trail. D, D — Old Westport Road. E — Country Club grounds. F — Forest Hill Cemetery. 
 G — Swope Park. H — Price's army, Pagan's division. I — Price's army, Marmadulce's division. J — 
 Price's army, Shelby's division. K — Curtis' army, Jennison's brigade, t, — Curtis' army, Moonlight's 
 brigade. M — Curtis' army, Blair's brigade. N — Curtis' army, Ford's brigade. O — Curtis' army, troops 
 under Deitzler. P — Pleasanton's army, Brown's (Phillips') brigade. Q — Pleasanton's army, McNeil's 
 brigade. R — Pleasanton's army, Sanborn's brigade. S — Pleasanton's army, Winslow'8 brigade. T, T — 
 Fortifications before Kansas City. U — Wagon-train with Price's army. 
 
Ths Battle of Westport. 153 
 
 don the two strove again to form a resistance. While 
 thus engaged they ran into the Third Iowa Cavalry, a 
 volley from whom shot Cabell's horse in several places, 
 and he was again dismounted. Sergeant Cavalry N. 
 Young, of the Third Iowa, seized him and protected him 
 from several Federal soldiers who would have shot him 
 on the ground that he had once been captured and had 
 escaped. The sergeant took his prisoner to General 
 Pleasanton himself, by whom his surrender was received. 
 Both these Federal officers later received medals of honor 
 at the recommendation of Lieut enant-Colonel F. W. Ben- 
 teen. Several other Confederate officers, over eight hun- 
 dred of their men and nine guns were captured at Mine 
 Creek. Price himself narrowly escaped capture, having 
 been but a few feet from Cabell when he was seized, and 
 escaping only by the fleetness of his horse. General 
 Price ordinarily travelled with his army in a carriage, but 
 at the beginning of this action, seeing that it bade fair 
 to be exceedingly close, he betook himself to a horse, and 
 to this fact owed his escape. It was indeed the end of his 
 campaign — of his army itself. That night his wagon- 
 train was burned to keep it from capture and his reserve 
 ammunition exploded for the same purpose. His Ad- 
 jutant-General wrote: "Everything is now a mass of 
 confusion," and "the morale of the army is ruined." 
 The last campaign of Sterling Price, the greatest move of 
 the Confederacy in the West, was over. 
 
 In the following spring, on April 25th, 1865, there was 
 called at General E. Kirby Smith's instruction a "Con- 
 federate Court of Inquiry," for which Price himself had 
 asked, that it might "vindicate his honor" in regard to 
 
154 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 his conduct of his invasion that had ended so disas- 
 trously for the Confederate arms. The court convened 
 at Shreveport, Louisiana, with Major O. M. Wat kins, 
 C.S.A., as Judge-Advocate, and remained in session till 
 May 3d, when it adjourned to meet again at Washington, 
 Arkansas, at the call of General Smith, but the war 
 coming soon to a close such a call was never issued and 
 it never met again. 
 
 The numbers engaged in the Battle of West port have 
 often been grossly misstated, even when such statements 
 have been based on the reports of the time, chiefly be- 
 cause each side firmly believed and affirmed the other 
 enormously to outnumber it. As we have seen, Price 
 himself was told by one of his own spies that he was pur- 
 sued by 39,000 men, while he writes that he understood 
 that Blunt alone of Curtis' force had 8,000 men under 
 him. On the Federal side General Rosecrans gives 
 15,000 as his lowest estimate of the numbers of Price's 
 cavalry, with 26,000 as the largest number reported to 
 him. 
 
 The truth was that Price had close to 9,000 armed 
 men with him at the time of the Battle of West port. 
 Opposed to him were somewhere near 15,000 under Gen- 
 eral Curtis (Curtis' own statement, dated two days before 
 Westport), and 6,500 more under Pleasanton, although 
 1,500 of these were not actually in the battle, being sent 
 on the fruitless move against Price's wagon-train. There 
 were thus almost exactly 20,000 Federal and 9,000 Con- 
 federates engaged in the battle of the 23d. 
 
 The casualties of the day — and of the two previous 
 days of fighting at the Little Blue, Independence and the 
 
o p. 
 
 go >— 
 m ►-!■ 
 
 S2. CO 
 § ° B 
 O JP 
 
 2 2. o 
 
 GO M 
 2^ P 
 
 P 2 -s 
 . co o 
 Tjh-.P 
 P P 3 
 
 CD 
 
 y, 
 
 P rs 
 
 p p c 
 SS 2 ro 
 
 g B a- 
 
 •- 2.P- 
 
 W JQ CO 
 
 w cyso 
 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 p o 
 
 SO P 
 
 p » 
 
 aq -• 
 
 p p 
 
 2.P - 
 
 go p 
 
 P. H 
 
 CP5 p 
 
 5'p 
 £ co 
 
 t— - p 
 
 GO 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 5s 
 
The Battle; of Westport. 157 
 
 Big Blue — were equally exaggerated then and since, the 
 fierceness of the fire and the newness of battle-experiences 
 to many of the contestants leading them to imagine 
 losses greater than actually occurred. Comparing the 
 statements of witnesses, participants, officers, newspaper- 
 reporters and hospital-physicians, we conclude that a 
 total of 1,000 casualties — dead and severely wounded — 
 is as near a correct estimate of the losses on both sides 
 as is possible. 
 
 The wounded were ministered to in at least four 
 places. Some were cared for on the field and in and 
 about the old Wornall Home, which was converted into 
 a temporary hospital by the Federals under Curtis. A 
 few were carried to Shawneetown in an ambulance at- 
 tached to the Second Colorado and driven by a 16-year- 
 old boy, now Mr. C. W. Whitney of Kansas City. Many 
 others were brought to Kansas City, the Confederates 
 being placed in the Southern Methodist Church that then 
 stood on the south side of Fifth Street, between Delaware 
 and Wyandotte streets. The Federal wounded were 
 cared for in the Lockridge Hall, then standing at the 
 southeast corner of Fifth and Main Streets, and con- 
 verted into a hospital under charge of Surgeon Philip 
 Harvey of the United States Volunteers. 
 
 Of the dead, many were buried on the field, some (it 
 is said) in the old cemetery on the State Line Road near 
 the Ward Farm, others in the burying-ground of which 
 until recently traces were visible at Troost Avenue and 
 Fifty-first Street, and sixty-eight unidentified Confed- 
 erates being buried at one place. Other Confederates 
 were buried on the W. B. Clark Farm south of Forest Hill 
 
1 58 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 Cemetery. The remains of as many as could be traced 
 were in late years placed in the beautiful lot owned by 
 the Daughters of the Confederacy in Forest Hill Cem- 
 etery, above which rises the shaft that commemorates 
 their devotion to their cause. On General Shelby's death 
 in 1897 he was buried here among his men. 
 
 With the Battle of West port, Price and his men of the 
 Confederate "Army of the Trans-Mississippi" passed out 
 of history, and never again to the end of the great con- 
 flict was Missouri seriously in danger. They should for- 
 ever form a sacred ground, those fair farm acres where 
 was fought the battle that saved the West for the 
 Union — the western Gettysburg. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 i. Price's Army, "The Army of the Trans-Mississippi." 
 
 2. Curtis' Army, "The Army of the Border." 
 
 3. Pleasanton's Army, "The Army of the Department 
 
 of the Missouri." 
 
 4. Comparison of Numbers Engaged in the Battle of 
 
 Westport and in other Battles of the Civil War 
 west of the Mississippi. 
 
 5. The "Reynolds' Manuscript" on Sterling Price and 
 
 the Confederacy. 
 
 159 
 
ORGANIZATION OF PRICE'S ARMY. 
 
 "The Army of the Trans-Mississippi." Major-General 
 Sterling Price, C.S.A., commanding. L. A. Maclean, 
 Adjutant-General. 
 
 fagan's division. 
 Major-General James F. Fagan. 
 
 Cabell's Brigade. — Brigadier-General Win. L. Cabell. 
 Lieutenant-Colonel A. V. Reiff . 
 
 Monroe's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel James C. Mon- 
 roe. 
 
 Gordon's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel Anderson Gor- 
 don. 
 
 Morgan's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel Thomas J. Mor- 
 gan. 
 
 Hill's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel John F. Hill. 
 
 Gunter's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Thos. M. Gunter. 
 
 Harrell's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel John M. Harrell. 
 
 Witherspoon's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion. Major 
 J. L- Witherspoon. 
 
 Hughey's Arkansas Battery. Captain W. M. Hughey. 
 
 Slemon's Brigade. — Colonel W. F. Slemons. Colonel 
 Wm. A. Crawford. 
 
 Second Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel W. F. Slemons. 
 
 161 
 
162 The Battle oe Wsstport. 
 
 Crawford's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel Win, A. Craw- 
 ford. 
 
 Carlton's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel Chas. H. Carl- 
 ton. 
 
 Wright's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel John C. Wright. 
 
 Dobbin's Brigade. — Colonel Archibald S. Dobbin. 
 
 Dobbin's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel Archibald S. 
 Dobbin. 
 
 McGhee's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel James H. 
 McGhee. 
 
 Witt's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel A. R. Witt. 
 
 Blocher's Arkansas Battery, i section. Lieutenant J. 
 V. Zimmerman. 
 
 McCray's Brigade. — Colonel Thomas H. McCray. 
 
 Forty-fifth Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel Oliver P. 
 Lyles. 
 
 Forty-seventh Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel Dee Cran- 
 dall. 
 
 Fifteenth Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Timothy Reves. 
 
 Unattached. — Rogan's Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel 
 Jas. W. Rogan. 
 
 Anderson's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion. Captain 
 Wm. L.f Anderson. 
 
The Batti,e of Wsstport. 163 
 
 marmaduke' s division. 
 Major-General John S. Marmaduke. 
 Brigadier-General John B. Clark, Jr. 
 
 Escort : 
 
 Company D, Fifth Missouri Cavalry. Captain D. R. 
 
 Stallard. 
 
 Marmaduke' s Brigade. — Brigadier-General John B. 
 Clark, Jr. Colonel Colton Greene. 
 
 Third Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Colton Greene. 
 
 Fourth Missouri Cavalry. Colonel John Q. Burbridge. 
 
 Seventh Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Solomon G. 
 Kitchen. 
 
 Davies' Battalion Missouri Cavalry. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel J. F. Davies. 
 
 Eighth Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Wm. L. Jeffers. 
 
 Tenth Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Robert R. Lawther. 
 
 Fourteenth Missouri Cavalry Battalion. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Robert C. Wood. 
 
 Hynson's Texas Battery. Captain H. C. Hynson. 
 
 Harris' Missouri Battery. Captain S. S. Harris. 
 
 Engineer Company. Captain Jas. T. Hogane. 
 
 Freeman's Brigade. — Colonel Thomas R. Freeman. 
 
 Freeman's Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Thomas R. 
 Freeman. 
 
 Fristoe's Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Edward T. Fris- 
 toe. 
 
 Ford's Arkansas Cavalry " Battalion. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Barney Ford. 
 
1 64 The; Battle oe Westport. 
 
 Shelby's division. 
 Brigadier-General Joseph O. Shelby. 
 
 Shelby's Brigade. — Colonel David Shanks. Colonel 
 Moses W. Smith. Brigadier-General M. Jeff Thompson. 
 
 Fifth Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Frank B. Gordon. 
 
 Eleventh Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Moses W. Smith. 
 
 Sixth Missouri Cavalry. Colonel* David Shanks. 
 (This regiment sometimes incorrectly given as the 
 Twelfth.) 
 
 Elliott's Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Benjamin El- 
 liott. 
 
 Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Battalion. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Alonzo W. Slayback. 
 
 Collins' Missouri Battery. Captain Richard A. Col- 
 lins. 
 
 Jackman's Brigade. — Colonel Sidney D. Jackman. 
 
 Jackman's Missouri Cavalry. Lieutenant-Colonel C. 
 H. Nichols. 
 
 Hunter's Missouri Cavalry. Colonel DeWitt C. Hun- 
 ter. 
 
 Williams' Missouri Cavalry Battalion. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel D. A. Williams. 
 
 Schnable's Missouri Cavalry Battalion. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel John A. Schnable. 
 
 Collins' Missouri Battery, i section. Lieutenant Ja- 
 cob D. Connor. 
 
 Tyler's Brigade. — Colonel Charles H. Tyler. 
 
 Perkins' Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Caleb Perkins. 
 
 Coffee's Missouri Cavalry. Colonel Jacob T. Coffee. 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 165 
 
 Searcey's Missouri Cavalry. Colonel James T. Sear- 
 cey. 
 
 Unattached. — Forty-sixth Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel 
 W. O. Coleman. 
 
 (Note. — -The majority of the above regiments were at 
 most but skeleton organizations, many consisting of mere 
 handfuls of men. Of the 50 regiments, etc., reported, the 
 total number never exceeded 10,000 men under arms. 
 
 Some accounts mention a fourth division, "Cabell's 
 Division." It was Price's intention to form such a di- 
 vision when the hoped-for recruits from Confederate- 
 sympathizing societies in Missouri and Illinois should 
 have become sufficiently numerous to compose such a 
 separate force, but such never became the case, and the 
 "division" was never actually formed. Certain captured 
 Confederates stated the opposite of this, however, which 
 information was duly reported. Hence the error.) 
 
ORGANIZATION OF CURTIS' ARMY. 
 
 "The Army of the Border." Major-General Samuel 
 R. Curtis, U.S.A., Department of Kansas, commanding. 
 
 Escort: Company G, Eleventh Kansas Volunteer 
 Cavalry, and two mountain howitzers, under Lieutenant 
 Edward Gill. 
 
 FIRST DIVISION. 
 
 Major-General James G. Blunt, U.S A., commanding. 
 
 Major-General George W. Deitzler, Adjutant-General 
 Kansas State Militia, in charge of the militia in the field. 
 
 Major-General Chapman S. Chariot, Assistant Adju- 
 tant-General Kansas State Militia. 
 
 Major Robert H. Hunt, Chief of Kansas State Ar- 
 tillery. 
 
 First Brigade. — Colonel Charles R. Jennison, Fifteenth 
 Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. 
 
 Fifteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Lieutenant - 
 Colonel Geo. H. Hoyt. 
 
 Detachment Third Wisconsin Cavalry. Captain Rob- 
 ert Carpenter. 
 
 Battery of five twelve-pounder mountain howitzers. 
 Second Lieutenant H. L. Barker. 
 
 Second Brigade. — Colonel Thomas Moonlight, Eleventh 
 Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. 
 
 Eleventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Preston B. Plumb. 
 
 166 
 
The; Battle of Wsstport. 167 
 
 Detachment (Companies L and M) Fifth Kansas Vol- 
 unteer Cavalry. Captain Jas. H. Young. 
 
 Detachment (Companies A and D) Sixteenth Kansas 
 Volunteer Cavalry. Lieutenant-Colonel Sam'l Walker. 
 
 Battery of four twelve-pounder mountain howitzers, 
 manned by Company B, Eleventh Kansas Volunteer 
 Cavalry. 
 
 Third Brigade. — Colonel Chas. W. Blair, Fourteenth 
 Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. 
 
 Fifth Kansas State Militia. Colonel G. A. Colton. 
 
 Sixth Kansas State Militia. Colonel Jas. Montgom- 
 ery (succeeding Colonel J. S. Snoddy.) 
 
 Tenth Kansas State Militia. Colonel Wm. Pennock. 
 
 Wilson's Independent Scouts. Captain John Wilson. 
 
 Two-gun Battery Second Kansas State Artillery. 
 Lieutenant D. C. Knowles. 
 
 Independent Battery Colorado Volunteers. Six rifled 
 field-pieces. Captain W. D. McLain. 
 
 Fourth Kansas State Militia. Colonel W. D. McCain. 
 (Added on 21st inst.) 
 
 Nineteenth Kansas State Militia. Colonel A. C. Ho- 
 gan. (Added on 21st inst.) 
 
 Company E, Fourteenth Kansas Cavalry. Lieuten- 
 ant W. B. Clark. 
 
 Ninth Wisconsin Battery. Captain James H. Dodge. 
 
 Fourth Brigade. — Colonel James H. Ford, Second Col- 
 orado Cavalry. (This brigade created on 20th inst. by 
 Major-General Curtis at Major-General Blunt's request.) 
 
 Second Colorado Cavalry. Major J. H. Pritchard 
 (succeeding Major J. N. Smith, killed at Little Blue.) 
 
168 The Battle of Westport. 
 
 Detachment Sixteenth Kansas Cavalry. Major James 
 Ketner. 
 
 Independent Battery Colorado Volunteers. (See 
 Third Brigade. With Fourth Brigade after 20th inst.) 
 
 Other regiments or detachments of regiments of Kan- 
 sas State Militia, all infantry, unattached or reaching the 
 vicinity of Kansas City too late for formal assignment to 
 brigades, etc., and therefore serving generally under or- 
 ders from Major-General George W. Deitzler, Adjutant- 
 General Kansas State Militia. No regiment mentioned 
 here save as its name is given in some official report as 
 having some connection, however remote, with the bat- 
 tles of either Little Blue, Big Blue, or Westport. 
 
 Second Kansas State Militia. Colonel George W. 
 Veale. 
 
 Detachment Seventh Kansas State Militia. Colonel 
 Peter McFarland. 
 
 Ninth Kansas State Militia. Colonel Frank M. Tracy. 
 
 Twelfth Kansas State Militia. Colonel L. S. Treat. 
 
 Thirteenth Kansas State Militia. Colonel Alexander 
 S. Johnson. 
 
 Fourteenth Kansas State Militia. Colonel Wm. Gor- 
 don. 
 
 Eighteenth Kansas State Militia. Colonel Matthew 
 
 Quigg- 
 
 Twentieth Kansas State Militia. Colonel J. B. 
 
 Hubble. 
 
 Twenty-first Kansas State Militia. Colonel Sandy 
 Lowe. 
 
 Second Kansas Colored State Militia. Captain R. J. 
 Hinton. 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 169 
 
 Unattached. — Kansas City Home Guards. Colonel 
 Kersey Coates. 
 
 (Note. — Many officers of regiments other than given 
 above, happening to be in the vicinity of Kansas City, at 
 Fort Leavenworth, at Fort Riley, in Kansas, etc., on 
 duty, on leave, or on furlough, served temporarily in 
 various capacities with the Army of the Border.) 
 
ORGANIZATION OF PLEASANTON 'S ARMY. 
 
 "The Army of the Department of the Missouri." 
 Major-General Alfred S. Pleasanton, U.S.A., Provisional 
 Cavalry Division, commanding. Colonel J. V. DuBois, 
 Chief of Staff. 
 
 First Brigade. — Colonel J. P. Phillips. (Succeeding 
 Brigadier-General E. B. Brown, arrested, on 23d inst.) 
 
 First Missouri State Militia Cavalry. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel B. F. Lazear. (Succeeding Colonel Jas. McFer- 
 ran, relieved by order of Pleasanton on 23d inst.) 
 
 Fourth Missouri State Militia Cavalry. Major George 
 W. Kelley. 
 
 Seventh Missouri State Militia Cavalry. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel T. T. Crittenden. (Succeeding Colonel John F. 
 Phillips, placed in command of brigade on 23d inst.) 
 
 First Iowa Cavalry. Major John McDermott. 
 
 Second Brigade. — Brigadier-General John McNeil. 
 
 Seventeenth Illinois Volunteer Cavalry. Colonel J. L. 
 Beveridge. 
 
 Thirteenth Missouri Cavalry Veteran Volunteers. 
 Colonel E. C. Catherwood. 
 
 Fifth Missouri State Militia Cavalry. Lieutenant- 
 Colonel J. A. Eppstein. 
 
 Detachment Ninth Missouri State Militia Cavalry. 
 Lieutenant-Colonel D. M. Draper. 
 
 Detachment Third Missouri State Militia Cavalry. 
 Lieutenant-Colonel H. M. Matthews. 
 
 170 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 171 
 
 Detachment Second Missouri Volunteer Cavalry 
 ("Merrill's Horse")- Captain G. M. Houston. 
 
 Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. Major F. M. 
 Malone. 
 
 Battery of four twelve-pounder mountain howitzers. 
 Lieutenant A. Hillerich. 
 
 Battery B. Second Missouri Light Artillery (twelve- 
 pounder Napoleons). Captain J. J. Sutter. 
 
 Third Brigade. — Brigadier-General John B. Sanborn 
 
 Detachment Sixth Missouri State Militia Cavalry 
 Major fm. Plumb. 
 
 Detachment Eighth Missouri State Militia Cavalry 
 Colonel J.J. Gravely. 
 
 Detachment Sixth Provisional Enrolled Missouri 
 Militia Cavalry. Lieutenant-Colonel Jno. F. McMahan. 
 
 Detachment Seventh Provisional Enrolled Missouri 
 Militia Cavalry. Major W. B. Mitchell. 
 
 Second Arkansas Cavalry. Colonel John E. Phelps. 
 
 Batteries H and L, Second Missouri Light Artillery. 
 Six three-inch Rodman guns. (Battery H, Captain C. H. 
 Thurber, with the First Brigade at Big Blue. Battery L, 
 Captain W. C. F. Montgomery, with the Second Brigade 
 near Hickman's MilL.) 
 
 Fourth Brigade. — Colonel E. F. Winslow, Fourth Iowa 
 Cavalry. (Wounded at the Big Blue, October 23d, and 
 succeeded by) Lieutenant-Colonel F. W. Benteen. 
 
 Fourth Iowa Cavalry. Major Abial R. Pierce. 
 
 Third Iowa Cavalry. Major Benjamin S. Jones. 
 
 Tenth Missouri Cavalry. Lieutenant-Colonel F. W. 
 Benteen. (On taking command of brigade was succeeded 
 by) Major W. H. Lusk. 
 
172 The Battle oe Westport. 
 
 (Note. — Only such regiments, etc., are given here as 
 had some connection, however remote, with the actions of 
 either Little Blue, Big Blue, or West port. Several other 
 regiments, detachments, and bodies of troops went a short 
 distance from St. Louis, Jefferson City, and other points, 
 under Pleasanton's command and nominally in pursuit of 
 Price, but were ordered back or elsewhere as it was seen 
 that they would not be needed. All such are omitted 
 here, as Pleasanton himself omits mention of them in his 
 reports on these battles. 
 
 More of the above regiments than are so stated were 
 only detachments of their respective forces, particularly 
 in the Fourth Brigade. 
 
 The above is the theoretical organization of the 
 Army and was considerably altered — regiments, com- 
 panies, detachments, etc., being shifted as necessary — 
 during the actual pursuit of and engagements with 
 Price's forces.) 
 
COMPARISON OF NUMBERS ENGAGED IN THE 
 
 BATTLE OF WESTPORT AND IN OTHER LAND 
 
 BATTLES OF THE CIVIL WAR WEST OF 
 
 THE MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 The statement, more than once made in the preceding 
 pages, that the Battle of Westport was the largest battle 
 in point of numbers engaged that was fought west of the 
 Mississippi River during the Civil War, having been fre- 
 quently disputed, there follows below the official figures 
 of the numbers engaged on both sides in every engagement 
 of importance in the territory mentioned. 
 
 The battle of Arkansas Post and Fort Hindman, Ar- 
 kansas, January ioth and nth, 1863, had more troops 
 engaged than had the Battle of Westport, but it does 
 not enter into the present consideration, having been 
 partly a naval battle, Porter's fleet of three iron-clads and 
 six gun-boats being used to reduce the Confederate force. 
 
 The battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas (see below), 
 has sometimes been alleged as having had more troops 
 engaged than at Westport, the statement having received 
 credence that there were 32,000 Confederate troops en- 
 gaged. The report to that effect has been traced by the 
 writer to the fact that the Federals captured a Confed- 
 erate officer's account -book, in which it was recorded that 
 rations for 32,000 men were issued. Those figures are, 
 however, untenable in view of the fact that the figures 
 given below were supplied by Major-General T. C. Hind- 
 
 173 
 
174 
 
 Ths Battle of Wsstport. 
 
 man, C.S.A., and have been accepted both by the Gov- 
 ernment's Official Records of the Civil War and the Cen- 
 tury Company's "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," 
 Vol. 3, page 441 et seq. 
 
 TROOPS ENGAGED IN PRINCIPAL LAND BATTLES FOUGHT WEST OP THE 
 MISSISSIPPI RIVER DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 Place. Date. Fed. Con. Total. 
 
 Wilson's Creek, Mo. . ..Aug. 10, '61 5,400 10,175 15,575 
 
 Lexington, Mo Sept. 18-20, '61 3,600 18,000 21,600 
 
 Belmont, Mo Nov. 7, '61 3,114 5,000 8,114 
 
 Pea Ridge, Ark Mar. 7, '62 10,500 16,202 26,702 
 
 Prairie Grove, Ark Dec. 7, '62 14,000 10,000 24,000 
 
 Helena, Ark July 4, '63 4,129 7,646 n,775 
 
 Westport, Mo Oct. 23, '64 20,000 9,000 29,000 
 
THE "REYNOLDS' MANUSCRIPT" ON STERLING 
 PRICE AND THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE) MANUSCRIPT. 
 
 Thomas C. Reynolds, Governor of Missouri from 1840 
 to 1844, Lieutenant-Governor under Governor Claiborne 
 F. Jackson's deposed administration, and after Jackson's 
 death the Confederate claimant to the Governorship of 
 Missouri until the close of the Civil War, was among the 
 many prominent Southerners, officials, soldiers, and pol- 
 iticians who, not long after Lee's surrender and the col- 
 lapse of the Confederacy, betook themselves to Mexico 
 to live. 
 
 On the death of Ex-Governor Reynolds all of his pa- 
 pers, documents, etc., were sent to his relatives, the well- 
 known Savage family of Baltimore, Maryland, many of 
 them expressly left to his nephew, Hon. George Savage, 
 of that city. 
 
 In later years, on carefully examining this valuable 
 collection, Mr. Savage found in it a most remarkable doc- 
 ument, unfortunately left unfinished, in which, almost 
 immediately after the close of the war, Ex-Governor Rey- 
 nolds had written out, in surprising detail, much of the 
 inner history of the Confederacy, especially as that history 
 related to the State of Missouri, that State's relation to 
 the Confederate Government, and General Sterling Price's 
 connection with that Government, its Army, and its 
 armed invasion of Missouri. 
 
 »75 
 
176 The Battle; oe Westport. 
 
 Immediately on recognizing the value of this elab- 
 orate narrative, Mr. Savage took steps for its preservation 
 by donating the original, in Ex-Governor Reynold's own 
 handwriting, to the Missouri Historical Society, and it is 
 to-day preserved in the Society's building, 1600 Locust 
 Street, St. Louis, Mo., as one of its most remarkable and 
 valued treasures. 
 
 The Manuscript amounts to the equivalent of 128 
 typewritten pages and covers the entire political and 
 military career of General Sterling Price up to his selec- 
 tion by the Confederate authorities as the commander of 
 the invasion of Missouri. That selection and the reasons 
 therefor narrated in full, it was evidently the intention of 
 the writer to continue his account of the invasion under 
 General Price's command, but the writing ceases in the 
 middle of a sentence and a page, and was never com- 
 pleted. The manuscript is accompanied by certain let- 
 ters between Ex-Governor Reynolds and General Price, 
 Major Henry Ewing, etc., and by a copy of Reynolds' 
 open letter "to the public," dated at Marshall, Texas, 
 December 17th, 1864, from which quotation is made in 
 the preceding pages. 
 
 On learning of the intended publication of this ac- 
 count of the Battle of Westport, the Librarian of the Mis- 
 souri Historical Society kindly granted permission to con- 
 sult this most valuable document and to make such quo- 
 tions, etc., therefrom as might be germane to the subject. 
 No portion of this narrative has heretofore been made 
 public. The portions given below are the opening par- 
 agraph and the narrative of the reasons for the final se- 
 lection of General Price for the leadership of the Missouri 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 177 
 
 invasion. Every word is as found in Ex-Governor Rey- 
 nolds' handwriting, save as abbreviated names ("P." for 
 Price, etc.), are given in full. 
 
 "GENERAL STERLING PRICE AND THE CONFEDERACY. 
 
 "City of Mexico, 10th March, 1867. 
 "I propose in this memoir to state, partly from mem- 
 ory, and partly from letters and memoranda, and with 
 entire impartiality, the connection of General Sterling Price 
 with the military and civil affairs of the Confederate 
 States and the State of Missouri, during the late Civil 
 War, in explanation of the course pursued toward him by 
 their respective authorities; the true reasons for which 
 had, to a great extent, to be kept as 'secrets of State,' 
 
 during the continuance of the war itself 
 
 "In deciding on a commander for the Missouri ex- 
 pedition, two considerations weighed, and necessarily so, 
 which are remarkably illustrative of those defects in the 
 Confederate people and government, which, perhaps more 
 than any other two separate causes, contributed to their 
 failure to secure independence. 
 
 "One was this: However disputed was General 
 Price's military capacity, there could be none as to his 
 skill as a politician and especially as a military demagogue. 
 His curiously composite staff, with its ramifications and 
 correspondents both inside and outside of the Army, and 
 a specific organ in Mr. Tucker's newspaper at Mobile, 
 formed a powerful machinery for puffing General Price 
 himself, and unscrupulously and often falsely attacking 
 everybody who stood in his way, or became the object, 
 justly or not, of his or their jealousy and dislike. A 
 
178 The: Battle; of Wsstport. 
 
 species of terrorism was exercised or attempted over 
 everyone who could influence General Price's fortunes, 
 especially over the Missouri Congressmen and others 
 connected with Missouri or Trans-Mississippi affairs. 
 Generals McCulloch, Van Dorn, Hindman and Holmes, 
 successive commanders of the Arkansas District, Gen- 
 eral Pemberton, commanding General Price in Missouri, 
 Governor Jackson, General Harris, members from Mis- 
 souri of the Confederate Congress, and even President 
 Davis had been successively the object against which it 
 had been, with more or less success, employed. The 
 favorite, almost exclusive mode adopted, most sillily, by 
 General Price and his friends for advancing his fortunes 
 was attack and abuse of, and terrorism over, instead of 
 efforts to gain over, conciliate or secure, those who could 
 advance him. The sole exceptions to this rule of con- 
 duct were Senator Peyton, General H. K. Smith and my- 
 self, and even we were only partially so. Senator Peyton 
 was a decided 'unfriend' of General Price, but too for- 
 midable as a popular orator, and favorite of the army, 
 for General Price's friends to attack him hastily. The 
 disposition to bully me was checked in the manner before 
 related; that to assail General Smith began to be ex- 
 hibited in July, 1863, in a conversation Major John 
 Tyler, volunteer aide of General Price, had with me at 
 Little Rock; I closed the conversation by stating, with 
 some vehemence, that as long as I sustained General 
 Smith I should treat an attack on him, direct or indirect, 
 precisely as I would an attack on myself. It was well 
 understood, from my conversation with Major Snead, 
 heretofore related, that I should meet any such attempt 
 
The Battle oe Westport. 179 
 
 at terrorism by an effective counter -terrorism directed 
 against the officers themselves engaged in it. I heard 
 nothing more of attacks on General Smith until after the 
 Missouri campaign ; then the Price faction endeavored to 
 make up for lost time. But the terrorism above men- 
 tioned had produced one effect clearly; however it may 
 have diminished the number of General Price's friends, 
 it had made most men, especially military officers, indis- 
 posed to expose themselves to the public abuse and both 
 public and secret attacks sure to be directed against any 
 one supposed, whether correctly or incorrectly, to stand 
 in the way of General Price. 
 
 "A constant piece of tactics of General Price's par- 
 tisans was in his success to claim all the credit for him, 
 in his failures to lay all the blame on somebody else, and 
 in any failure of his superiors to claim that there would 
 have been no failure had he commanded. He ostenta- 
 tiously claimed a preference over everybody else in com- 
 manding an expedition to Missouri. Inevitably there- 
 fore, any other commander, if successful, would be 
 treated as having stolen his thunder, and be persecuted 
 therefor, or if unsuccessful, be doubly damned for having 
 failed where General Price would certainly have suc- 
 ceeded. Any commander placed over him in such an 
 expedition would have to suffer the same attacks which 
 had been directed against McCulloch, Van Dorn, and 
 Pemberton. I have the decided impression that this 
 state of things had much to do with General Buckner's 
 disinclination to command such an expedition; but I 
 cannot now remember whether I gathered it from his 
 language or heard it from others. 
 
i8o The Battle; of Westport. 
 
 "The other irregular consideration which had to be 
 duly weighed was the dread by the Richmond government 
 of political dissensions, and the interference there of mere 
 politicians in purely military matters. 
 
 "President Davis himself had been, both by nature 
 and education, not at all subject to any such dread, and 
 inclined rather to underestimate than exaggerate the 
 weight due to political considerations in determining on 
 military matters. But the constant trouble the 'Price 
 imbroglio' had given him, the project to depose him in 
 1862, and the plan of Governor Rector of Arkansas and 
 others, in that year, of making the Trans-Mississippi 
 Department independent of the Confederacy, had, as 
 both General Smith and I believed, produced in him a 
 continuous fear of so fatal an event, and consequently a 
 great desiie for calm and harmony among the restless pol- 
 iticians and turbulent elements of that section. Better 
 informed on the ground itself, General Smith and I had 
 no such fear. But we shared the President's desire for 
 a calm and harmony, and felt that sound policy demand- 
 ed every reasonable effort to prevent the discouraging 
 and demoralizing effect on the Richmond government of 
 any dissensions or popular excitement in the Trans- 
 Mississippi Department. 
 
 "Now it so happened, as our ill luck would have it, that 
 harmony and an exultant feeling of confidence in our 
 military leaders had just been produced by the retirement 
 of General Holmes and the repulse of the Federals in 
 Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, when the controversy of 
 General Taylor and the Louisiana politicians, with Gen- 
 eral Smith, and that of Governor Murrah of Texas, 
 
Thf, Batti^ of Westport. 181 
 
 backed generally by the politicians of that State, with 
 General Magruder, arose to disturb us. To add to these 
 elements of discord, a controversy with so violent a man 
 as General Price — especially, as I considered (though as 
 the fact was unknown to General Smith, he could not be 
 influenced by it) in view of the Edwin Price connection — 
 was to be avoided if possible. This was especially the 
 case, as Colonel Bryan, of General Smith's staff, had re- 
 cently returned from Richmond, and stated that the ad- 
 ministration there evidently 'afraid of General Price,' 
 i. e., desirous of avoiding all trouble or controversy with 
 him. That administration, unlike Mr. Stanton, President 
 Lincoln's War Secretary, had not seen that no risk is too 
 great to secure absolute subordination among the military. 
 
 "Under all these difficult circumstances, and from 
 these mixed political and military considerations, I gave 
 it to General Smith as my opinion that the command of 
 the expedition should be given to General Price ; that the 
 best and most reliable division and brigade commanders 
 should be furnished him. I told General Smith that 
 while giving him this opinion, I must not be considered 
 as urging it on him; that he should decide solely on his 
 own judgment and responsibility; but that whatever his 
 decision, I should sustain him, both with the President 
 and the public, in adopting whatever the difficult and 
 delicate circumstances might suggest to him." 
 
 (Having concluded the subject of the selection of 
 General Price, the Manuscript was evidently intended to 
 proceed with the history of his invasion, but breaks off 
 in the middle of the second sentence after the above quo- 
 tation, and was never completed.) 
 
INDEX 
 
 OF INDIVIDUALS AND TROOPS MENTIONED. 
 
 (No attempt is made in this Index to indicate every mention 
 of the Individuals and Troops listed therein, as some names — Price, 
 Curtis, Shelby's Division, etc. — occur on nearly every page. Every 
 individual and every body of troops mentioned in the preceding 
 pages is to be found in the Index, however, all troops being enumer- 
 ated under the various names by which they chanced to be known 
 or alluded to, and each being indexed both as to Organization and 
 the principal mentions made of each in the narrative.) 
 
 A. 
 
 Page. 
 
 American Knights of the State of Missouri 28 
 
 Ampudia, General 12 
 
 Anderson, Captain " Bill" 44 
 
 Anderson, Maj. Martin 57 
 
 Anderson, Captain W. L 162 
 
 Anderson's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion 162 
 
 Anthony, D. R 70 
 
 Arkansas Troops: 
 
 Arkansas Battery, Blocher's 162 
 
 Arkansas Battery, Hughey's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry Battalion, Anderson's 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry Battalion, Harrell's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry Battalion, Witherspoon's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Carlton's 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Crawford's 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Dobbin's 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Forty- fifth 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Forty-seventh 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Forty-sixth 165 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Gordon's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Gunter's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Hill's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Lyles' 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, McGhee's 162 
 
 i83 
 
1 84 , Index 
 
 Arkansas Troops — Continued: Page. 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Monroe's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Morgan's 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Rogan's 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Second 161 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Second Federal 171 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Witt's 162 
 
 Arkansas Cavalry, Wright's 162 
 
 B. 
 
 Barker, Lieutenant H. L 166 
 
 Beauregard, General G. T 20 
 
 Beekman, Colonel E 38 
 
 Bent, Governor Wm 15 
 
 Benteen, Lieutenant-Colonel F. W 17 1 
 
 Benteen's (Winslow's) Brigade 128 
 
 Beveridge, Colonel J. L 170 
 
 Blair, Colonel C. W 167 
 
 Blair's Brigade 167 
 
 Bloomer, Orderly 58 
 
 Blunt, Major-General J. G 166 
 
 Blocher's Arkansas Battery 162 
 
 Bragg, General Braxton 20 
 
 Breckinridge, General 20 
 
 Brown, B. Gratz 37 
 
 Brown, Brigadier-General E. B 170 
 
 Brown's (Phillips') Brigade 170 
 
 Brown, John, Jr 1° 
 
 Burbridge, Colonel Jno. Q 163 
 
 Burnes, Captain J. T 65 
 
 C 
 
 Cabell, Major E. C 21 
 
 Cabell, Brigadier-General W. L ™ l 
 
 Cabell's Brigade I ° I 
 
 "Cabell's Division" l6 5 
 
 Carlton, Colonel Chas. H 162 
 
 Carlton's Arkansas Cavalry 102 
 
 Carpenter, Captain Robert 160 
 
 Carney, Governor Thos 4" 
 
 Catherwood, Colonel E. C 170 
 
 Clark, Brigadier-General Jno. B., Jr 103 
 
 Clark, Major M.L . *3 
 
 Clark, Lieutenant W. B. , • • ■ • l6 7 
 
Index. 185 
 
 Page. 
 
 Chariot, Major-General C. S 166 
 
 Coates, Colonel Kersey 169 
 
 Cockrell, Colonel F. M 24 
 
 Cody, Wm. F 70 
 
 Coleman, Colonel W. 165 
 
 Collins, Captain R. A 164 
 
 Collins' Missouri Battery 164 
 
 Colorado Battery, Independent 167 
 
 Colorado Cavalry, Second 167 
 
 Colored Battery, Second U. S. Light Artillery 143 
 
 Colton, Col. G. A 167 
 
 Connor, Lieutenant J. D 164 
 
 Cox, Lieutenant Colonel S. P 44 
 
 Crandall, Colonel Lee, 162 
 
 Crawford, Colonel Wm. A 162 
 
 Crawford' s Arkansas Cavalry 162 
 
 Crittenden, Lieutenant-Colonel T. T 17° 
 
 Curtis Major-General Samuel R 166 
 
 D. 
 
 Davis, Jefferson 17 
 
 Davies, Lieutenant-Colonel J. F 163 
 
 Dee, Captain E. W 122 
 
 Deitzler, Major-General Geo. W 166 
 
 Dobbin, Col. A. S 162 
 
 Dobbin's Brigade 162 
 
 Dobbin's Arkansas Cavalry 162 
 
 Dodge, Captain Jas. H 157 
 
 Dodge's Battery 157 
 
 Doniphan, Colonel A. W 13 
 
 Douglas, Captain 14° 
 
 Dragoons, First U. S 13 
 
 DuBois, Colonel J. V 170 
 
 Draper, Lieutenant-Colonel D. M 17° 
 
 Dunlavy, Corporal Jas 15° 
 
 E. 
 
 Eayres, Lieutenant George P . .143 
 
 Elliott, Colonel Benjamin 164 
 
 Eppstein, Lieutenant-Colonel J. A .65 
 
 Eves, Colonel G. P 170 
 
 Ewing, General 34 
 
186 Index 
 
 F. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Fagan, Major-General Jas. F 161 
 
 Fagan's Division 161 
 
 Fenn, Colonel W. P 38 
 
 Fishback, Brigadier-General W. H. M 50 
 
 Fisk, Brigadier-General C. B 39 
 
 Ford, Lieutenant-Colonel Barney 163 
 
 Ford's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion 163 
 
 Ford, Colonel J. H 167 
 
 Ford's Brigade 167 
 
 Forrest, General 26 
 
 Freeman, Colonel T. R 163 
 
 Freeman's Brigade 163 
 
 Freeman's Missouri Cavalry 163 
 
 Fristoe, Colonel E. T 163 
 
 Fristoe's Missouri Cavalry 163 
 
 G 
 
 Gill, Lieutenant Edward 166 
 
 Gordon, Colonel Anderson 161 
 
 Gordon, Colonel F. B 164 
 
 Gordon, Colonel Wm 168 
 
 Gordon's Arkansas Cavalry 161 
 
 Gove, Captain G. L 58 
 
 Grant, Brigadier-General M. S 65 
 
 Grant, General U. S 27 
 
 Gravely, Colonel J. J 171 
 
 Greene, Colonel Colton 163 
 
 Grover, Captain Geo. S 61 
 
 Grimes, Major Jno 44 
 
 Gunter, Lieutenant-Colonel T. M 161 
 
 Gunter's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion 161 
 
 H. 
 
 Hall, Colonel John H 15 
 
 Halleck, General 21 
 
 Hardee, General 20 
 
 Harrell, Lieutenant-Colonel Jno. M 161 
 
 Harrell's Arkansas Cavalry Battalion 161 
 
 Harris, Captain S. S J 63 
 
 Harris' Missouri Battery 163 
 
 Harvey, Surgeon Philip 157 
 
 Hildebrand, Colonel H 38 
 
 Hill, Colonel Jno. F 161 
 
Index. 187 
 
 Page. 
 
 Hill's Arkansas Cavalry J 6i 
 
 Hillerich, Lieutenant A I 7 I 
 
 Hindman, Major-General T. C x 73 
 
 Hinton, Captain R. J *68 
 
 Hogan, Colonel A. C 167 
 
 Hogane, Captain J. T 163 
 
 Hogane's Engineers' Company *63 
 
 Houston, Captain G. M *7i 
 
 Hoyt, Colonel Geo. C *43 
 
 Hoyt, Lieutenant-Colonel George H 166 
 
 Hubble, Colonel J. B 168 
 
 Hughes, D. W 144 
 
 Hughey, Captain W. M 161 
 
 Hughey's Arkansas Battery *6i 
 
 Hunt, Major R. H 166 
 
 Hunter, Colonel D. C 164 
 
 Hunter's Missouri Cavalry J 64 
 
 Hynson, Captain H. C 163 
 
 Hynson's Texas Battery . 163 
 
 I. 
 
 Illinois Troops : 
 
 Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, Seventeenth 17° 
 
 Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 132c! 37 
 
 Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 1 34th 37 
 
 Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 138th 37 
 
 Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 140th 37 
 
 Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 142a 37 
 
 Infantry, Second U. S 19 
 
 Iowa Troops: 
 
 Iowa Cavalry, First 1 7° 
 
 Iowa Cavalry, Third 171 
 
 Iowa Cavalry, Fourth 17 1 
 
 J- 
 
 Jackman, Colonel S. D 164 
 
 Jackman' s Brigade 164 
 
 Jackman' s Missouri Cavalry . .164 
 
 Jackson, Claiborne 19 
 
 Jeffers, Colonel Wm. L 163 
 
 Jennison, Colonel C. R 1 66 
 
 Jennison's Brigade 166 
 
 Johnson, Colonel A. S 168 
 
i88 
 
 Index. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Johnson, Captain Curtis 109 
 
 Johnston, General A. S 32 
 
 Johnston, General Jos. E 26 
 
 Jones, Major B. S 171 
 
 K. 
 
 Kansas City Home Guards 
 Kansas Troops : 
 
 169 
 
 Kansas State Artillery, Second 167 
 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 Kansas State Milit 
 
 1, Second 168 
 
 i, vSecond Colored 168 
 
 1, Fourth 167 
 
 1, Fifth 167 
 
 1, Sixth 167 
 
 i, Seventh 168 
 
 1, Ninth 168 
 
 1, Tenth 167 
 
 1, Twelfth 168 
 
 i, Thirteenth 168 
 
 1, Fourteenth 168 
 
 i, Eighteenth 168 
 
 i, Nineteenth 167 
 
 1, Twentieth 168 
 
 i, Twenty-first 168 
 
 Kansas State Volunteer Cavalry, Fifth 167 
 
 Kansas State Volunteer Cavalry, Seventh 171 
 
 Kansas State Volunteer Cavalry, Eleventh 166 
 
 Kansas State Volunteer Cavalry, Fourteenth . . . .167 
 
 Kansas State Volunteer Cavalry, Fifteenth 166 
 
 Kansas State Volunteer Cavalry, Sixteenth 168 
 
 Kearney, General S. W 13 
 
 Kelley, Major George W 170 
 
 Ketner, Major Jas 168 
 
 Kitchen, Colonel S. G 163 
 
 Knights of the Golden Circle -.28 
 
 Knights of the State of Missouri, American 28 
 
 Knispel, Captain C. P 122 
 
 Knowles, Lieutenant D. C 167 
 
 Lane, Jas 58 
 
 Lawther, Colonel R. R 163 
 
 Lazear, Lieutenant-Colonel B. F 170 
 
Index. 189 
 
 Page. 
 
 Lederberger, Major F. T 3 8 
 
 Lee, General R. E 26 
 
 Lowe, Colonel Sandy, 1 68 
 
 Lyles, Colonel O. P 162 
 
 Lyles' Arkansas Cavalry 162 
 
 Lyon, Captain N 19 
 
 Lusk, Maj. W. H 171 
 
 M. 
 
 Maclean, Adjutant-General L. A 161 
 
 Malone, Major F. M 171 
 
 Marcy, Colonel J. B 3 8 
 
 Marmaduke, Major-General Jno. S 163 
 
 Marmaduke's Brigade 163 
 
 Marmaduke' s Division 163 
 
 Matthews, Lieutenant "Bill" . 143 
 
 Matthews, Lieutenant-Colonel H. M 170 
 
 Maximilian, Emperor 33 
 
 McCain, Colonel W. D 167 
 
 McCoy, Capt. A. C - 78 
 
 McDermott, Major Jno 170 
 
 McFarland, Colonel P 168 
 
 McFerran, Colonel Jas 87 
 
 McKenney, Major T. 1 74 
 
 McLain, Colonel W. D 167 
 
 McLain's Battery 167 
 
 McMahan, Lieutenant-Colonel Jno. F 171 
 
 McNeil, Brigadier-General Jno. B 170 
 
 McNeil's Brigade 170 
 
 McCray, Colonel Thos. H 162 
 
 McCray's Brigade 162 
 
 McGhee, Colonel Jas. H 162 
 
 McGhee's Arkansas Cavalry 162 
 
 Merrill's Horse 171 
 
 Miner, Lieutenant 143 
 
 Miller, Madison, Brigadier-General 38 
 
 Missouri Troops, Confederate : 
 
 Missouri Battery, Harris' 163 
 
 Missouri Battery, Collins' 164 
 
 Missouri Cavalry, Third . .163 
 
 Missouri Cavalry, Fourth 163 
 
 Missouri Cavalry, Fifth 164 
 
 Missouri Cavalry, Sixth 164 
 
 Missouri Cavalry, Seventh 163 
 
190 
 
 Index. 
 
 Missouri Troops, Confederate : 
 
 Page. 
 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 
 Cavalry, Eighth 163 
 
 Cavalry, Tenth 163 
 
 Cavalry, Fifteenth 162 
 
 Cavalry Battalion, Da vies' 163 
 
 Cavalry Battalion, Fourteenth 163 
 
 Cavalry Battalion, Schnable's 164 
 
 Cavalry Battalion, Slayback's 164 
 
 Cavalry Battalion, Williams' 164 
 
 Cavalry, Eleventh 164 
 
 Cavalry, Coffee's 164 
 
 Cavalry, Elliott's 164 
 
 Cavalry, Freeman's 163 
 
 Cavalry, Fristoe's 163 
 
 Cavalry, Hunter's 164 
 
 Cavalry, Jackman's 164 
 
 Cavalry, Perkins' 164 
 
 Cavalry, Searcey's 165 
 
 Missouri Troops, Federal: 
 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 Missouri 
 
 Eight Artillery, Second . 
 State Militia Cavalry, First . 
 State Militia Cavalry, Second 
 State Militia Cavalry, Third 
 State Militia Cavalry, Fourth 
 State Militia Cavalry, Fifth . 
 State Militia Cavalry, Sixth 
 State Militia Cavalry, Seventh 
 State Militia Cavalry, Ninth. 
 State Militia Cavalry, Tenth 
 State Militia Cavalry, Thirteenth 
 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 Enrolled Milit 
 
 a, Infantry, First 
 a Infantry, Second 
 a Infantry, Third 
 a Infantry, Fourth 
 a Infantry, Fifth 
 a Infantry, Sixth 
 a Infantry, Seventh 
 a Infantry, Tenth 
 a Infantry, Eleventh 
 a Infantry, Thirteenth 
 a Infantry, Thirty-third 
 a Infantry, Fifty-first 
 a Infantry, Fifty-second 
 a Infantry, Eightieth 
 a Infantry, Eighty-fifth 
 
 171 
 170 
 171 
 170 
 170 
 170 
 161 
 
 171 
 170 
 161 
 170 
 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 44 
 44 
 37 
 37 
 37 
 
Index. 191 
 
 Page. 
 
 Mitchell, Major W. B 171 
 
 Montgomery, Colonel Jas 167 
 
 Montgomery, Captain W. C. F 171 
 
 Monroe, Colonel Jas. C 161 
 
 Monroe's Arkansas Cavalry 161 
 
 Moonlight, Colonel Thos 166 
 
 Moonlight's Brigade 166 
 
 Morgan, Colonel Thos. J 161 
 
 Morgan's Arkansas Cavalry 161 
 
 N. 
 
 National Guard, St. Louis 38 
 
 Nichols, Lieutenant-Colonel C. H 164 
 
 Niederweser, Colonel T 38 
 
 Norman, J. L 95 
 
 O. 
 
 Ord, General E. O. C 23 
 
 P 
 
 Palmer, A. T. 145 
 
 Pape, Lieutenant Erich 34 
 
 Parker, Lieutenant-Colonel W. B 38 
 
 Parkman, Francis 13 
 
 Pennock, Colonel Wm 167 
 
 Perkins, Colonel Caleb 1 64 
 
 Perkins' Missouri Cavalry 164 
 
 Phelps, Colonel Jno. E 171 
 
 Phillips, Colonel Jno. F 170 
 
 Phillips' Brigade 170 
 
 Pike, Brigadier-General E. C 37 
 
 Plumb, Lieutenant-Colonel P. B 166 
 
 Plumb, Maj. Wm 171 
 
 Pleasanton, Major-General A. S 1 70 
 
 Polk, President 12 
 
 Polk, General 20 
 
 Price, Major-General Sterling throughout 
 
 Pritchard, Major J. H 167 
 
 a 
 
 Quantrill, W. L 44 
 
 Quigg, Colonel M 168 
 
 R. 
 
 Rafety, Captain J. L 65 
 
 Rankin, Colonel L. J 38 
 
192 Index. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Reiff, Lieutenant-Colonel A. V 161 
 
 Reves, Colonel T 162 
 
 Reynolds, Thomas C. 40 
 
 Robinson, Lieutenant George T 49 
 
 Rogan, Colonel Jas. W 162 
 
 Rogan's Arkansas Cavalry 162 
 
 Rosecrans, General 23 
 
 Ross, Major 58 
 
 S. 
 
 St. Louis National Guard 38 
 
 Sanborn, Brigadier-General Jno. B 171 
 
 Sanborn's Brigade 171 
 
 Schnable, Lieutenant-Colonel Jno. A 164 
 
 Sehnable's Missouri Cavalry Battalion 164 
 
 Searcey, Colonel J. T 165 
 
 Searcey's Missouri Cavalry 165 
 
 Shelby, Brigadier-General J. 164 
 
 Shelby's Brigade 164 
 
 Shelby's Division 164 
 
 Shanks, Colonel David 164 
 
 Sheridan, General Phil 59 
 
 Sherman, General W. T 28 
 
 Slayback, Lieutenant-Colonel A. W 164 
 
 Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Battalion 164 
 
 Slemons, Colonel W. F 161 
 
 Slemons' Brigade 161 
 
 Smith, Major-General A. J 37 
 
 Smith, General E. Kirby 26 
 
 Smith, Major J. N 167 
 
 Smith, Colonel M. W 164 
 
 Smith, Colonel W. A. J 38 
 
 Snead, Colonel T. L 22 
 
 Snoddy, Colonel J. S 167 
 
 Stafford, Colonel E 38 
 
 Stallard, Captain D. R 163 
 
 Steele, General 24 
 
 Sumner, Major 13 
 
 Sutter, Captain J. J 171 
 
 T. 
 
 Taylor, General "Dick" 27 
 
 Taylor, General Zachary 12 
 
 Texas Battery, Hynson's 163 
 
 Thomas, General 27 
 
 Thompson, Brigadier-General M. Jeff 164 
 
 Thurber, Captain C. H 171 
 
Index. x 93 
 
 Thurber's Battery- 
 
 Page. 
 • I7 1 
 
 Todd, Captain Geo ^| 
 
 Tracy, Colonel F. M l68 
 
 Treat, Colonel L. S fi 
 
 Tyler, Colonel C. H j£ 
 
 Tyler's Brigade 
 
 V. 
 
 Vahlkamp, Colonel 3 
 
 Van Dorn, General Earl 
 
 Van Horn, Colonel R. T j*y 
 
 Veale, Colonel Geo. W x °° 
 
 Vest, Geo. C 
 
 W. 
 
 Walker, Lieutenant-Colonel S. W l 7 
 
 Walter, Major F % 
 
 Wangelin, Colonel Hugo •*/ 
 
 Watkins, Major O. M £* 
 
 Webb, W. L A A 6 . 
 
 Williams, Lieutenant-Colonel D. A *"^ 
 
 Williams' Missouri Cavalry Battalion *°4 
 
 Wilson, Captain Jno .' 
 
 Wilson's Scouts "' 
 
 Winslow, Colonel E. F ' 
 
 Winslow's Brigade ' 
 
 Whitney, C. W 3/ 
 
 Wisconsin Troops: fi 
 
 Wisconsin Battery, Ninth *"' 
 
 Wisconsin Cavalry, Third *°° 
 
 Witherspoon, Major J. L fi 
 
 Witherspoon's Arkansas Cavalry Battahon *«* 
 
 Witt, Colonel A. R Jjr 
 
 Witt's Arkansas Cavalry 
 
 Wolff, Brigadier-General CD tL 
 
 Wood, Captain Carroll £ 
 
 Wood, Lieutenant-Colonel R. C ^ 
 
 Wright, Colonel Jno. C , 
 
 Wright's Arkansas Cavalry 
 
 Y. 
 
 Young, Sergeant C. N l67 
 
 Young, Captain Jas. H 5<i 
 
 Z. 
 Zimmerman, Lieutenant J.V l62 
 
JUL 1 1308