 After his victory in the skirmish at Booneville, which was a far greater strategic victory than the small scale of the battle suggests since it gave Nathaniel Lyon control of the Missouri River among other things, Lyon had to get the rest of his house in order before he could continue pursuing the quote-unquote state officials on the run, referring primarily to the traitorous Missouri governor Claiborne Jackson and the former governor Sterling Price. On June 18th, he gave an order to Major Samuel Sturgis to bring his forces from Fort Leavenworth to combine with Lyon's forces in Clinton, Missouri. Lyon needed the extra men, but this would mean delaying his pursuit. Before he could move to Clinton though, Lyon had to wait for the arrival of the first Iowa volunteer infantry regiment. Both additions would give Lyon a force of about 5,000 fighting men, but they also needed supplies, which would account for Lyon's third delay in his pursuit of the traitors and the supplies were supposed to be coming on the river from St. Louis. Once he had the supplies in the Iowa men, he could move to Clinton to join forces with Sturgis. Also on June 18th, Lyon received orders from Washington that he was to halt his campaign in Missouri and that Major General George McClellan had been put in charge of Missouri on June 6th. McClellan was commander of the military department of Ohio, but the decision was to shift Missouri to this department. Neither Lyon nor Blair had been previously notified of this decision, but Montgomery Blair, Frank's brother in Washington, was already working to have the order overturned. He had no luck. But then Frank and Montgomery's father, the senior Francis Preston Blair, who had been personal friends with and an unofficial advisor to President Andrew Jackson, stepped in to exert his influence. But his influence was not ultimately needed, as by the time he met with General Scott, he learned that McClellan had issued orders giving control of Missouri to Lyon anyway. He was too busy dealing with western Virginia to be bothered with Missouri. So Francis Blair sent word to his sons, but Montgomery and Francis were less confident in Lyon than Frank Blair, and they continued to try to get Washington to effect a change of leadership in Missouri, with John C. Framont in mind. If you are not familiar with the relationship between Framont and the Blairs, I recommend you go back and listen to my episode on the election of 1856. All of Lyon's delays at Booneville gave Jackson and Price time to regroup and prepare for a better defense. As the state guard traveled through Warsaw and then through Tipton, they picked up another small militia force and then came upon a small band of Home Guard, the Unionist militia, and scattered them, capturing 350 muskets. Shortly thereafter, they picked up another militia who brought with them four pieces of artillery that had been taken from the arsenal in liberty when the secessionists seized it. They finally arrived at Lamar, Missouri, where he hoped to join with Price's troops marching south from Lexington, which was in the northwestern corner of the state. Once all these forces combined in Lamar, they totaled nearly 5,000 strong, though 800 of them were unarmed, but they did have seven artillery guns. Price, meanwhile, was out gathering more recruits, and he was able to pick up an extra thousand men, though they were almost entirely unarmed and untrained. But he did meet with Confederate Brigadier General Nicholas Bartlett Pierce in Maysville, Arkansas, where he learned that Ben McCulloch was bringing some Confederate soldiers from Fort Smith toward Maysville, which would put them right across the border from the state guard in Missouri. Price was also able to borrow 600 muskets from Pierce before crossing back over to Missouri. While Lyon was stuck at Booneville, some of his subordinates were making their way across the state, where they would eventually join forces. But this also gave Jackson and Price time to gather their own men in supplies and join with Ben McCulloch's army on the Missouri-Arkansas border. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute Podcast Historical Controversies. In the previous episode, we looked at the operations to control Missouri, conducted by Union General Nathaniel Lyon, from the massacre in St. Louis to the small skirmish at Booneville that gave Lyon control of the Missouri River. Lyon's efforts may have been successful up to this point in subduing the state, but it had the effect of drying Missourians away from Union sympathies as they witnessed his harsh methods of control. Today, we will begin looking at the tense lead up to the Battle of Wilson's Creek. On June 11th and 12th, Captain A.H.W. Cook gathered a force of about 700 Union volunteers and set up at a small village called Cole Camp, standing between Governor Jackson and his Missouri State Guard as they tried to move southwest. The small battle at Booneville took place on June 17th, but the Confederate forces had no knowledge of the many delays that Lyon was facing there, so in their minds, this small force at Cole Camp could threaten to slow them down enough to allow Lyon to catch up with them. But in Warsaw, a heavily processed session town about 20 miles south of Cole Camp, Confederate Colonel Walter S. O'Kane was assembling a force of his own. While he gathered men, rumors were spreading about the soldiers at Cole Camp, and O'Kane decided they had to be dealt with. His force was only about half the size of the body of men under Cook's command. Knowing that he was outnumbered, O'Kane wanted to gather as much information as he could before attacking, so he sent a local sheriff who also happened to be a devout secessionist to the camp under the pretext that he was issuing a warrant. The sheriff was then to try to get as accurate an assessment of the Union forces as possible and report back to O'Kane. The arrest warrants were made out for Captain Cook himself, as well as his quartermaster, Henry Mitchell. Cook obviously refused to submit to arrest, but he did promise that he would take no offensive action unless he was given orders to do so by Nathaniel Lyon. The sheriff agreed, since he was just there to gather and tell anyway, and left. Cook was aware of the secessionists in Warsaw, but I guess he must have believed that they were pacified by his promises to the sheriff, so he actually let roughly half of his men go home to tend to their families. Now the forces on both sides were roughly equal in size. So the men at Cole Camp were idling about, comfortable that they were in no immediate danger, while O'Kane was preparing his attack. He tried to keep his plan secret, but the movement of his men was pretty obvious to all observers, including one Unionist civilian in an area named John Tyree. Tyree was a slave owner, but he was also an unconditional Unionist. On June 18th, the day before the attack on Cole Camp, Tyree saw the preparations that O'Kane's men were busy with, and he went to Captain Cook and reported on what he'd seen. Cook took action, calling for his absent troops to return and placing pickets outside the camp to keep watch. But the men under his command weren't exactly the most disciplined soldiers, and they spent most of their time drunk, so few preparations for a pending attack were actually made. They were overconfident. One soldier said, quote, I can whip these rebels single-handed, end quote. While this was going on, O'Kane had started to lead his men north toward Cole Camp. As they were moving, they ran into Tyree, who was returning home after giving Cook his warning. It was nearly midnight by the time they ran into him, so they were suspicious. It wasn't normal to see a civilian traveling at this time of night, so O'Kane ordered Tyree to be held for questioning. As one soldier held a light up to Tyree's face, O'Kane interrogated the man until another soldier spoke up to say that he recognized Tyree and that he'd seen him at Warsaw observing the Confederate preparations earlier in the day. That was enough for O'Kane, who correctly surmised that Tyree had given Cook information about the ambush. The Confederate officer ordered Tyree tied to a tree and had him shot. Then they moved on to continue carrying out their attack. As the soldiers came close to Cole Camp, they moved along a ridge to the east to hide their movements. This led them to Heisterberg Barn, where several Union men were sleeping. Pickets were stationed out front to keep watch. Of the 350 Confederate forces, 100 were on horseback, and they moved in a wide half-circle around the barn to approach it from the north, while the infantry moved in from the south. The Confederates moved quickly on the pickets outside the barn and overwhelmed them. It was now about 3 o'clock in the morning. The last picket, seeing the Confederates moving in on him, dropped his weapon and ran into the barn to sound the alarm. In his haste, he left the barn doors open behind him. This meant that the Confederates were able to charge into the barn and unleash a volley of musket fire on the unsuspecting Union soldiers who were jarred awake. As the men jolted up to try to fight back, they remembered that they had moved their weapons outside the barn so they would have more room to sleep. They had effectively left themselves defenseless and pinned inside the barn. With their guns outside, the Union men grabbed farm tools to try to give fight, pitchforks, scythes, shovels, whatever they could get their hands on. Outside the barn, another group of 50 or so Union soldiers were sleeping, and they were woken up as well. They actually had their guns nearby, and they quickly grabbed them and started to fight back. The gunfire from these 50 men drove some of the Confederates back toward the barn, allowing some of the Union soldiers to make their escape. But the Confederates regrouped and swarmed in for another attack. The Union soldiers scattered into the woods. More Union men had been sleeping in the woods, and they were all now coming awake from the commotion of the fleeing men. As they realized what was happening, they made for their guns and tried to fight back, but they were cut short by Okane's cavalry charging at them. They joined the flight through the woods, which made it hard for the cavalry to pursue them because of all the trees. But back at another nearby barn, Harms Barn, the Union soldiers that had been sleeping there didn't know what to do. They were confused. Many of them were still drunk. And to add to the confusion, Okane's men were carrying a flag of the United States, so the Union soldiers weren't sure who was fighting whom. So when Okane's men turned their attack toward the soldiers of Harms Barn, the Unionists pretty much just stood there until they started to be shot down. It was a massacre. The fight, if we can even call it a fight, was over as quickly as it had begun. With the battlefield now in Okane's complete control, he had all the buildings, as well as the remaining Union soldiers, dead and alive, searched. The men were allowed to keep anything they wanted as the spoils of war, with the sole exception of the 362 muskets that were retrieved and added to the Confederate supplies to be distributed to some of the many unarmed troops later. The ambush lasted maybe a half hour, and it ended with 35 Union dead and another 60 wounded. Thirty more had been taken prisoner. Okane only lost seven men and had 25 wounded. Captain Cook was excoriated in the northern press, and his men were more than happy to blame their leader for the defeat. It seems like the criticism against Cook is entirely fair in this case. Regardless of who deserves the blame, though, Okane's success at breaking up Cold Camp left Jackson free to move southwest without interruption. Like Boonville, this was a small victory with significant tactical advantages gained. While all of this was going on, Lion was still held up at Boonville, partly due to how much his subordinates didn't like him. His quartermaster, Justin McKinstry, was so fed up with Lion's disregard for supply protocol that he dismissed all the teamsters who were supposed to drive wagons of supplies to Lion's men. So Lion had to spend his time trying to find new wagons and people to drive them from all around Boonville. The undisciplined volunteers didn't help matters either. A volunteer regiment from Iowa was particularly troublesome. At one point, they got so annoyed with the midnight braying of the army pack mules that they tried to employ an old trick to quiet them down. The trick was to tie a bag of sand to the tail of the mule, and for whatever reason, this would keep the mules from braying in the middle of the night. This all seemed to work fine until one mule, named Smolix, decided he didn't much care for the bag of sand that was tied to his tail. And he started to go berserk around the camp, knocking stuff over and creating chaos in the camp until somebody was able to remove the bag of sand from the mule all while avoiding being kicked or trampled by it. This, by the way, is the kind of stuff that I love about history that always gets left out because it isn't all that important in the big scheme of things, but just paints such a different picture of what's going on than we usually have in mind. Another incident with the Iowans came when an army regular, meaning somebody who was actually serving in the National Army prior to the Civil War, was punished for some local infraction. The punishment, which wasn't out of the ordinary for anybody familiar with army life at the time, was to have the regular bucked and gagged. This was when the person was, quote, seated on the ground. His hands and feet were bound. His knees were drawn up between his arms and a rod inserted so that it ran under the knees and over the arms. A stick was thrust sideways into the offender's mouth and bound there, end quote. The Iowa volunteers were not accustomed to such forms of punishment, though, and they were incensed at the sight of this young man tied up this way. They thought the punishment was, quote, excessive for a free man, end quote. And they called for the officer in charge to release him. Instead, he ordered a dozen of the other regulars to fix their bayonets, and the Iowans started to get ready for a fight. Iowa State Militia versus US Army regulars. Ultimately, some other officers stepped in and diffused the situation, but I think incidents like this give significant insight into the conduct of the armies that they outside of the war. It was a constant burden on the commanding officers, and line was no exception. One more incident with the Iowa troops. This one came later, but it's just funny, so I wanna tell it, is when the Iowans were given a supply of, quote, fly blown, putrid, quarter of beef, end quote, that had first been offered to the regulars who rejected it. So the Iowans were incensed at being given bad meat that wasn't even good enough for the US Army regulars, and they raised hell about it. Just as before, some officers stepped in and talked to them down from a potential riot, and the Iowans then decided to make fun of the whole situation by holding a funeral for the cow, bearing him with full military honors, naming it Corporal Churibusco, and reading a passage from the revised Army regulations before having one of their members ending the ceremony with a eulogy that ended with the line, quote, my Dominica rooster can whip your Dominica rooster, you bet, you bet, end quote. I love this stuff, you just can't make it up. One final interesting anecdote from the Iowa troops came only days before the Battle of Wilson's Creek, which we'll talk about in the next episode. In it, an Iowa volunteer came upon an Army regular who was setting his fancy new Springfield rifle against a log as he went to get a drink of water from a nearby spring. While the man was distracted, the Iowa volunteer snuck up and replaced to the top of the line Springfield rifle with his own far inferior and well worn musket. Then when the regular was done drinking, he apparently went back, picked up the musket without even noticing that it wasn't his gun and took off as if nothing was wrong. The Iowan who stole the Springfield rifle nicknamed it orphan, quote, because of the way it had been so cruelly deserted, end quote. On July 1st, the Department of the West was reformed, meaning that Lion was no longer under the command of General McClellan, but he was also considered too rash of a commander to be made head of the Department of the West. So that title went to John C. Framont. But Framont was far too focused on his big plans for the West to be bothered with Nathaniel Lion. So he failed to pay any attention to Lion's needs in dealing with the Confederates in Missouri. So coming into the month of July, Lion was no immediate threat to the Missouri State Guard. However, one of Lion's subordinate officers, Fran Siegel, was in a much better position to interfere with the Confederate activities in the Southwest corner of the state. Siegel was a German born officer and many of the Union volunteers in Missouri were German as well. And as such, they were very loyal to Fran Siegel. On June 28th, Siegel had received reports of sterling prices camp of just under 1,000 men with reinforcements headed their way. Even though Siegel had only two regiments under him, he thought he could attack prices camp, scatter them and then move north and attack the reinforcements led by Claiborne Jackson. This was ambitious to say the least and it would not go as planned. On July 4th, Ben McCulloch leading a company of Confederate soldiers crossed from the Confederacy into the state of Missouri. This included both his own brigade as well as Pierce's brigade of Arkansas state troops. Learning that a battle between Claiborne Jackson and Fran Siegel was imminent, he led 3,000 men forward. He sent a group of men toward Neosho to capture the small garrison that Siegel had left behind. The troops surrounded Siegel's men and claimed a bloodless victory. But McCulloch would miss out on the fighting and carthage between Jackson and Siegel. On the morning of July 5th, the next day, Jackson's scout wrote up to him and said, quote, Governor, it's that little whipper snapper Siegel. Him and Charlie Salomon, they and their Dutchman marched through carthage this morning in hope of finding you napping at Lamar. Governor Jackson smiled and replied, quote, somebody should have told them that we were only cat napping. Instead of conducting an ambush on the camp, Jackson decided to set up his troops in defense positions. He put his men on high ground overlooking a creek a few miles north of Carthage. And there he waited for the attack from Siegel and the 950 men Siegel had with him. Jackson had the advantage of numbers, but Siegel had better equipped men. When Siegel found Jackson's forces, he set his artillery in strategic positions and began firing at around 11 a.m. Jackson's artillerists fired back with the seven guns they had. Then Siegel pushed his infantry forward, leaving them entirely exposed. This wasn't entirely unlike the advance at Booneville except that Jackson had a significantly larger force at his disposal this time. The state guard quickly flanked Siegel's men and forced them to retreat all the way back to Carthage. The battle ended quickly and each side saw a few dozen casualties. Just as one piece of trivia, though it isn't all that significant to the story, is that after the battle, some local women were tending to the wounded and one of the teenage volunteer nurses was Mira Bell Shirley, who would later earn infamy as the outlaw Bell Star, who was part of the same gang as Jesse James, another Missouri Confederate who would later gain notoriety as an outlaw. In fact, later in the series, when I devote some episodes to the Missouri guerrillas and William Clark Quantrill, we'll see a number of famous outlaws of the Western frontier. But by this time, Lion was on his way to Springfield as well and he learned of Siegel's defeat on July 9th. He forced his men to march in an exhaustive pace with small rations covering 50 miles in 30 hours of the July heat. One soldier left an account of the March quote. The dust and heat were oppressive. Along the roadside were strode by scores of the regulars. Out of our company of 97 men, only 27 marched into camp and stacked arms. Other companies were completely broke up. Of the Iowa City Company in our regiment, eight men came in. A company behind us came in 21 strong and not an officer. But to cap the climax, we were wet with the dew and completely exhausted for the want of food and sleep. We had no place to sleep, but in the wet weeds of a cornfield as our blankets were miles back on the wagons. Walking in a hot sun, carrying a 10 pound musket, equipment, belts, cross belts, cartridge box with 40 rounds of cartridges in it, haversack, canteen, et cetera. Slung on is a trial of endurance, end quote. It's worth mentioning that the actual weight of their burden when they were marching is actually less than what a modern soldier would have been carrying. But the difference would be a modern soldier has the weight more evenly distributed because of modern backpacks and things like that. So the burden by the weight of the soldiers in the Civil War doesn't accurately represent what they were actually dealing with, not to mention the fact that none of these troops went through anything like basic training to prepare them for these kinds of marches. So this was obviously a very difficult thing for them to do. Lyon reached Springfield on July 13th, riding horseback ahead of his men. Lyon now had roughly 5,000 men surrounding the city of Springfield. He had succeeded in taking the state, but he had failed in preventing Jackson and Price from assembling their own small army. Jackson and Price set up their forces at Kauskin Prairie just next to the Arkansas-Missouri border, and McCulloch moved back into Arkansas but kept nearby in Maysville. The interactions that the soldiers had as they marched through Missouri were telling as well, considering that Missouri was probably the most divisive border state, except perhaps Virginia, considering the split that formed West Virginia. But as they passed one old lady in a rocking chair, the Union soldiers asked if there were many secessionists in the area. She responded, quote, "'Not so many as you might think. There are lots more Union men here than secess. I've been reading the Bible right smart all my life, and I know that there was going to be a war. It's prophesied in the Bible, and I've told some of these people that if they go to war, they will get whipped because it's prophesied in the Bible. The North always whips the South in the Bible, and besides, this war was foretold, and the North is to whip the South," end quote. I have no clue what passages of the Bible she thought prophesied the American Civil War, but I suppose she was ultimately vindicated. But I like this testimony more as to the picture it paints about civilian reactions to the war in these early months. We can also see how varied and disparate people's view of things were. Lyon was still in Springfield, Missouri during the Battle of Bull Run. He was hearing rumors that up to 20,000 secessionist troops were camped up in the corner of the state. He was also receiving word from the War Department that some of his forces were being moved elsewhere. By August 1st, he was ready to move out of Springfield, but the stress of all the delays, his undisciplined troops, and the lack of support he was getting from Vermont were beginning to wear on him. On August 2nd, he started to lead his troops out of Springfield, another long march in the Southern Heat, only to receive reports during their mid-morning break from marching that there were Confederate cavalry about a mile away. There should have been welcome news for Lyon who led the march with the express intent of attacking Confederates, but he had oversized estimates of the forces and his troops weren't in the best fighting condition. He was starting to have doubts. He decided not to attack and he sat his men at a place called Doug Spring, which is along the road southwest of Springfield and was pretty much surrounded by the various Confederate forces camped throughout that corner of the state. The Confederate cavalry in question was part of the Missouri State Guard's second division under the command of Brigadier General James Reigns and the cavalry regiment was led by Colonel James Cawthorne. It consisted of roughly 1200 men. Reigns also had about 1200 infantry camps nearby under the command of Colonel Richard Waipman. Nathaniel Lyon estimated the total force to be about 3000 men, which was only a little higher than the actual number. When the cavalry started moving in to get a better eye on Lyon's forces, Lyon changed his mind and figured he had to attack. He ordered his artillery and four companies of soldiers to move forward to meet Reigns' forces. Reigns responded in kind, sending out his artillery and placing some sharpshooters around to slow the Yankee advance. He then sent word to Ben McCulloch that Lyon was starting a large scale attack. Sometimes this is referred to as the Battle of Doug Springs, but it's more often referred to as Reigns' Scare because aside from some minor exchange of gunfire, it was pretty uneventful except to embarrass Reigns for sending word of a battle that was not to be. During the two hours standoff though, the Confederate cavalry tried to charge the Union line to scatter them, but this was a disaster. They were broken by the Union artillery and scattered themselves. In the chaos, they left about 200 abandoned horses that the Yankees had their eyes on, but right as they started to take them, Lyon ordered the retreat. Both sides were foiled by the worries of some unknown number of hidden troops of the enemy and the skirmish amounted to little for either side. The real effect of the standoff was to send the Missourians who scattered into a panicked retreat past other Confederates from Arkansas and Louisiana who'd started coming to help them. As the panicking Missourians passed to the third Louisiana, McCulloch rode out, quote, fairly foaming with rage, exhausting his whole vocabulary of the tuperation which was not a meager one, end quote. According to the testimony of one of his men, the whole affair left very few casualties but a great deal of injured pride for Brigadier General Reigns and his retreating men. Lyon decided to move back to Springfield with McCulloch falling behind in a futile pursuit. Lyon arrived back in Springfield on August 5th and three days later, two local women got permission to leave Springfield and they immediately took off to pass information to the Confederates. They met with Sterling Price and told him that, quote, Lyon was greatly perplexed, that he was in constant expectation of being attacked, that he had kept his men under arms at all the time and that he was getting ready to abandon Springfield, end quote. Price took this information to McCulloch telling him they needed to attack immediately. McCulloch disagreed. Instead, he sent some scouts out and told Price he'd get back with him in the evening. But when evening came, McCulloch didn't follow up. Price was livid. On the morning of August 9th, he took matters into his own hands. He stormed into the general's tent and said, "'General McCulloch, are you going to attack Lyon or not?" When McCulloch gave an unsatisfactory answer, Price informed him, quote, "'Then I want my own Missouri troops and I will lead them against Lyon myself if they are all killed in action. And you, General McCulloch, may go where the devil you please." End quote. McCulloch had been called out and he knew it. Price's ultimatum worked. McCulloch said that he would hold a council of war and Price's tent that evening and they would plan the attack. And this time, his word was good. During the meeting, Price again insisted on an attack and he got his way. Orders were given to move out at 9 p.m. Nathaniel Lyon was holding a similar meeting of his own in Springfield. He was less eager to attack. He told his officers, quote, "'Gentlemen, there is no prospect of our being reinforced. It is evident that we must retreat. Shall we endeavor to retreat without giving the enemy battle beforehand and run the risk of having to fight every inch along our line of retreat? Or shall we attack him in his position and endeavor to hurt him so that he cannot follow us? I am decidedly in favor of the latter plan. I propose to march this evening and throw our whole force upon him at once and endeavor to rout him before he can recover from his surprise." End quote. Although the rumors Confederate troops were exaggerated, Lyon would find himself in a poor position in the next battle to take place in Missouri and a much more significant one than the two skirmishes discussed in this episode. On the morning of the battle, Lyon rode from company to company and gave the same orders, quote, "'Men, we are going to have a fight. We will march out in a short time. Don't shoot until you get orders. Fire low. Don't aim higher than the knees. Wait until they get close. Don't get scared. It's no part of a soldier's duty to get scared." End quote. One subordinate officer, Thomas Sweeney, gave a shorter but more inspiring speech. He said, "'Stay together, boys, and we'll saber hell out of them.'" With this, the Battle of Wilson's Creek was about to begin, and that will be the topic of our next episode. Historical Controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash SupportHC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.