 On August 12th, two days after the Battle of Wilson's Creek, Dr. John Wyatt observed the piles of bodies that littered the battlefield in southwest Missouri. He wrote in his diary, quote, Many of the wounded are lying where they fell on the blazing sun, unable to get water and any kind of aid. Blow flies swarm over the living and the dead alike. I saw men not yet dead with their eyes, nose, and mouth full of maggots, end quote. Six weeks after the battle, John Short was leading a cow back to his home when he came across the decomposing body of a Union soldier, only now discovered. Even without the continuation of the war, returning to a state of normality would have been difficult for the civilians who lived around Wilson Creek. More than 500 bodies were left on the field after the battle, and neither army did much of anything to remove them, leaving it almost entirely to the civilians to dispose of the corpses strewn about their property. The Sharps House, where the Southerners had made camp, had been almost entirely destroyed. The Shorts, where the Union forces began the battle, were more fortunate, but their crops were either looted or trampled. Another Unionist, John Ray, lost a chicken coop to a cannonball, as well as suffering some damage to his outhouse, but his home was spared any real damage because it had been used as a hospital, with the yellow hospital flag signaling that this building was not to be targeted. But after his family spent the battle hiding in their cellar, they came out to find their home filled with dead and dying soldiers, and they had no course but to help take care of them. Some of the injured men lingered on, not injured enough to die, but not well enough to leave, making them the Ray family's responsibility for as long as six weeks. Nathaniel Lyon led his campaign not because of its tactical significance, but because he wanted to punish the traitors, who dared to join the Southern Rebellion. This was something he was not unwilling to acknowledge, and his new commander, John Vermont, recognized this as well. And Lyon certainly did punish supporters of the Confederacy, like the Sharps, but whether it was his intent or not, he also punished the Unionists, like the Shorts and the Rays. The legacy of the Battle of Wilson's Creek was little more than the indiscriminate destruction of the livelihoods of civilians, regardless of whose side they took. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the previous episode, we looked at the first half of the Battle of Wilson's Creek, also referred to as the Battle of Oak Hills or the Battle of Springfield. I originally hoped to get through the battle in a single episode, but I like details far too much to cut it down that short. So today's episode is essentially the Battle of Wilson's Creek part two, and we will pick up where we left off last time. The first few hours of the battle saw a semi-successful surprise attack by the outnumbered Union forces that gave Lyon an initial advantage against the disorganized and unprepared Southern troops. But by around 8 p.m., the Confederate forces started to organize a concerted response, and fighting was heating up on the hill that later became known as Bloody Hill. Of the three Union assaults that began between 5 and 6 a.m., the only one that was a clear success was the one conducted by Franz Siegel on the southernmost portion of the battlefield. He had successfully scattered the Confederate forces, captured roughly a hundred prisoners, and even claimed weapons that had not yet been distributed to the already under-equipped Southern forces. When General Ben McCulloch made his way to Sharps Farm, where Siegel's attack was concentrated, he found the entire area in disarray. As Siegel was moving in a position at the bottom of Bloody Hill, some of his men were lagging behind to set fire to Confederate tents and wagons. Things did not look good for the Confederate Army in Missouri. But Siegel did not take very effective advantage of his early morning victory. After clearing out the Confederate camps, he set his artillery at the south side of Bloody Hill, with the guns pointed directly north, with the hope of helping Nathaniel Lyon trap the Southerners on the hill. But his guns were not well positioned. There were entire areas on the Confederate portion of the hill that were completely safe from Siegel's cannons, and the guns themselves were extremely vulnerable to attack. If he had had enough infantry supporting the guns, that might be OK, but Siegel neglected the infantry support of his battery almost entirely, apparently too overconfident from his initial success. He sent only about 250 infantry to support the battery. He then dispatched some of his forces to protect his flanks, but he sent them too far away to be effective. They were separated not just by distance, but also by the dense foliage that rested between the various farms. If you visit Civil War battlefields today, a lot of them are very open, and the lands are clear, but this can give a misleading image of the terrain during the actual battles, in which lands not used for farming were usually still pretty well forested. Siegel's left flank was supposed to be protected by the first U.S. cavalry regiment under Captain Eugene Carr, but he moved far enough that he and his men could no longer even see the battery they were supposed to be protecting, and they got lost. Protecting Siegel's right flank were Lieutenant Charles Farren's dragoons, who dismounted and set themselves up against the fence around Sharp's farm, but this put them in a poor position to respond quickly to an attack on the battery's right flank. But Siegel wasn't aware of his vulnerable position, and as soon as his men were in place, he ordered the artillerists to start shelling some of the Missouri State Guard who were inside of their cannons. The Southerners returned fire, and the two forces kept this up without much damage for roughly 30 minutes before Siegel ordered his men to stop firing because it was just too hard to tell which troops were part of which army on the hill. He didn't want to accidentally hit Lyonsmen. Some southern forces were moving down the main road in the area, called the Wire Road, that led northeast to Springfield, and entire groups of unarmed Southerners surrendered to Siegel this way. Seeing the movement of Southerners on this road, Siegel figured they must be being driven that direction by Lyons assault, so he turned four of his cannons toward the road. But while Siegel was seeing these scatterings of Confederates, what he couldn't see was that elsewhere on the battlefield, away from Bloody Hill, McCulloch and some of the other officers were starting to rally their men for an organized response. McCulloch now had about 2,000 Arkansas state troops at his command, which he refrained from sending against Siegel, probably because he wasn't yet sure of the total size of the Union forces, and he was worried that there could be another point of attack besides Lyons and Siegel's forces. One of his subordinate officers was organizing some of the Louisiana regiments, and he sent them to McCulloch. But the exhausted and undisciplined soldiers delayed as they passed by Wilson Creek, which was now polluted with the carcasses of soldiers and horses, but the men stopped to fill up their canteens anyway. This should give you an idea of how oppressive the August heat was in Missouri during this battle that the soldiers were even willing to drink that water. As the southern forces were gathering, Siegel's men were spread thin and were trying to avoid firing on friends. One Union soldier, Charles Tott, wandered up to McCulloch and his troops, and McCulloch ordered him to identify himself. As soon as McCulloch spoke, Tott realized that he was facing the enemy, and he raised his musket. But before he could fire at McCulloch, one Louisiana soldier beat him to the punch, sending a well-aimed bullet that killed Tott instantly. General McCulloch looked at the soldier who fired the killing shot, with the men around him not knowing if he was going to rebuke the soldier for firing without orders or commend him for possibly saving his life. And McCulloch said simply, that was a good shot. And then turned to the regiments leader, John Vigilini, and said, Captain, take your men up and give them hell. This was the order to finally attack Siegel's right flink. Vigilini's regiment of Louisiana volunteers were known as the Pelican Rifles, and he led them toward the foregun Siegel had turned toward Wire Road. When he got to within about 15 feet of the cannons, Vigilini came to a halt and demanded that the artillerists identify themselves. Now he knew that these were Union cannons, but he also knew that the Union forces were being cautious about firing on friends, so this was pretty much a ruse to give the Union artillerists pause to give the Pelican Rifles some time to get ready for a bayonet charge. But one of his men ruined the ploy by yelling, look at their Dutch faces, referring to the German heritage of Siegel's men. Siegel was obviously German, as his name clearly indicates, and he commanded the loyalty of German Americans. With this statement, though, the fighting erupted, and the Arkansas and Missouri Confederates that were still organizing with McCulloch joined the fray. The Pelicans were in close range and fired to their first volley at almost point-blank range, taking out more than a third of the small infantry support that Siegel had set up to protect his battery. It was a devastating start to the fight for the Union side. Matters were made worse with significant troop confusion. At one point, a Union man picked up a banner dropped by an Arkansas color bear, maybe as a trophy we don't know, and he made the mistake of carrying it toward Siegel. But this was an incredibly costly decision, as the artillery on the hill under the command of James Totten mistook the entire force for attacking Confederates and opened fire on Siegel's men. And there was no easy way to signal the mistake as Totten's battery was farther up the hill, and Siegel had yet to make contact with anybody in Lyon's force. And to only add to the confusion, they mistook some of the Louisianans firing on them for similarly dressed members of the First Iowa. So this is one of the most catastrophic examples of troop confusion, exacerbated by the soldier who stupidly picked up an enemy banner as he drew fire from Union artillery from one side, and they simultaneously believed they were being fired on by allies from another side who actually were the enemy, but their confusion made them reluctant to fight back. Add this to the vulnerabilities in Siegel's formation, and we can start to imagine the disaster that Siegel's men were dealing with. By the time Siegel actually figured out which troops were on which side, another group of Missouri Confederates started to attack his vulnerable left flank that had been left unprotected by the cavalry who'd gotten lost in the woods. The Union line at the bottom of the hill fell apart, and the Louisianans took control of the cannons that had been turned toward the wire road. But even as the Union men started to flee, Southerners took their own damage from friendly fire as new combatants were showing up and firing on the Confederate regiments. The cannons from the Confederate Fort Smith battery under the command of John Reed accidentally killed two brothers-in-law who served in the Morehouse Guard from Louisiana, and several others were injured before Reed realized his mistake. This disorder, along with the random bullets fired from fleeing Unionists, prevented Southerners from being able to pursue the escaping enemy, but the territory around Sharp's farm that had been lost only an hour or so before had been successfully reclaimed. Some of Siegel's regiments tried to retreat up wire road toward Springfield when they founded themselves facing an ambush by unknown Confederate forces, probably some of the men who'd fled earlier and were now returning to the battlefield with no regimental organization. But their ambush tore into the retreating men of the 3rd and 5th Missouri Union regiments as well as a regiment of Siegel's cavalry and a small artillery regiment. The surprise volley of Confederate fire killed one of the horses pulling a cannon and wounded another, costing the Union another cannon that can no longer retreat. In their panic, Siegel's retreating men turned the wrong way on wire road and started moving away from Springfield, leaving the battle, but putting them deeper in the Confederate controlled region of Missouri. The dragoons who were supposed to have protected Siegel's right flank had never really joined the battle. It was actually their commander, Charles Farrand, who had picked up the Arkansas banner and taken it to Siegel drawing friendly fire. And as if that wasn't a costly enough decision, in his absence, his men had nobody to give them orders. So they didn't take any action to protect Siegel's right. And by the time Farrand returned to them, his only order was for their retreat. So now they made a separate escape down wire road towards Springfield with Farrand taking hostage, a local civilian, because he didn't actually know the way back and he wanted the civilian to show him how to get to Springfield. And as they were moving there, they soon came across the cannon abandoned by the other group before they were ambushed. Farrand had his men cut away the dead and wounded horses that were weighing the cannon down and he had the remaining horses pull the cannon towards Springfield, but the poor overburdened horses that were left to pull the cannon eventually collapsed from exhaustion, forcing Farrand to hitch new horses to the gun in order to bring it all the way back to Springfield. Despite these problems though, he did make it back safely and was able to keep the cannon from falling into Confederate hands. Siegel was also retreating, leading some of his remaining men back to Springfield himself. But as he moved along the wire road, he was spotted by a cavalry unit from the Missouri State Guard. The Southern cavalry moved in to flank Siegel and set up an ambush, leading to one final small skirmish between Siegel's remaining 400 or so men against the Confederate force of roughly the same size. The ambush came as Siegel was crossing Wilson Creek and they tried to put up a fight, but they started to drop like flies in the creek with more than 60 of them killed. This was enough to break the last semblance of discipline from Siegel's men. And when they fled, it was every man for himself, including Siegel. The Southern cavalry took 147 of the men prisoner as well as a supply of weapons and another cannon. Siegel himself abandoned his horseless men as he directed his own mount into a row of corn, pulled out a wool blanket he had with him and draped it around his shoulders to disguise his identity and then galloped back towards Springfield, leaving his troops to whatever fate they found at the hands of the Missouri cavalry. Siegel never made contact with Lyon and he never returned to the battlefield after he arrived uninjured in Springfield. Even though he would actually be promoted sometime after this battle, the word of his cowardice spread and he earned no shortage of outrage from disgusted Northerners. By 9 a.m., the tide had entirely turned for the Union troops. While Siegel's line was broken and scattered, Lyon held his line at the front of the hill with almost no adjustments to the formation. He was trying to hold fast until Siegel connected with him, which he expected at any moment. The entirety of Lyon's army was now part of this front line with all of his reserves having been pulled up and placed in a position and all other Union forces haven't been driven back by the Southerners. At this point, this amounted to maybe 3,500 men and 10 cannons. After four hours in battle, his previously green troops were starting to get accustomed to combat. One private in the first Iowa regiment later wrote about the shift in his experience, quote, we all lay down on the ground and for some time the shells, round shot and canister were playing closely over our heads. Our company did not have much to do for a while in the way of shooting. We simply laid down on the ridge and watched the battery in front of us or sat up or kneeled down. When we saw the puff of the artillery, we dodged and went down flat and in the course of 15 minutes gained so much confidence that we felt no hesitation in walking around and seeing what we could see, knowing that we could dodge artillery ammunition, end quote. The Union artillery was able to hold the Southerners at bay but on a number of occasions some group of Confederate soldiers or another got to within close enough range to take out a few Union men with close range buck shots before being driven back. But Lyon's line held and the fire from the Southern artillery was almost entirely harmless. Lyon didn't go unscathed. At one point he dismounted only to have a bullet graze his calf forcing him to mount his horse to stay in the battle. Not long after that, his horse collapsed on its front legs and then fell dead to a Southern bullet forcing Lyon to return to his feet limping among his men due to his minor leg wound. Then another bullet cut the right side of his head sending a small stream of blood into his face and beard. But aside from his dead horse, these were minor wounds but between these two stray bullets and the August heat which was particularly draining for Lyon who refused to so much as loosen the top button of his heavy officer's jacket, he finally decided to go and rest in the shade of a tree out of harm's way. When his chief of staff, John Showfield came up to him Lyon said, Major, I'm afraid the day is lost but Showfield did not agree. No general, he said, let us try it again. This was enough encouragement for Lyon to stay and fight a bit longer. Samuel Sturgis, one of the commanders of a cavalry regiment dismounted and offered his horse to the general. When Lyon returned to his men, the soldiers from the first Iowa called for the general to personally lead them in an attack. Some of his subordinate officers tried to talk him out of it but Lyon responded, I am but doing my duty. This was the last opportunity he had to try to claim victory. Calling for some of the Kansas and Missouri troops to participate in the attack, Lyon led the advance with Colonel Robert Mitchell, leader of the second Kansas infantry, riding next to him. Lyon gripped the horse's reins in his left hand as he turned to his right to face the troops following behind him. Come on, my brave boys, he yelled. I will lead you forward and just as he finished this sentence, a volley of Confederate gunfire came out of the undergrowth in front of him, tearing into the front line. Lyon took a bullet that tore straight through the left side of his chest, passed between his ribs, ripped through his lung and his heart and came out through his shoulder blade. He started to fall from his saddle only to have his personal aide, Albert Lehman, catch him just before he fell to the ground. On the edge of death, Lyon looked at his aide and whispered, Lehman, I'm going. These were his last words. Lyon became the first commissioned officer of the United States Army killed in the Civil War. Elmer Ellsworth, whose death I told about several episodes ago, was the first Union officer killed, but he did not have a federal commission as Lyon did, so Lyon became the first general officer to be killed. Lyon wasn't the only one to fall from the volley, which some soldiers described as an ambush, though it seems that it was really just a frontal assault by some soldiers who had the good fortune of being hidden by the foliage around them. The sight of several of their men falling, including their commanding officer, created a short-lived panic, but the soldiers quickly found their composure and started to fight back with a fury. One Kansas officer recalled, quote, we fired over Lyon's body and three or four of Captain Tholen's men as they lay wounded, end quote. The fighting continued at close enough range that Mitchell, who'd taken a bullet to the leg but had remained on his horse, was able to strike one southerner with his sword before riding off the field to have his wound tended to. After several minutes, the southerners finally fell back, giving the Union men the opportunity to carry Lyon's body off the battlefield. With Lyon gone, command of the Union forces fell into the hands of Major Samuel Sturgis, whose horse Lyon had been riding when he was killed. The Missourians, who took out General Lyon, did so at the cost of one of their own officers, Colonel Richard Waitman, who took three bullets to the chest. As the Missourians fell back, Texas cavalry leader, Colonel Alcana Greer, received orders from General McCulloch to attack the Union's right flank. He led about 400 men into the battle, but they were quickly driven back under a quote, unquote, perfect sheet of bullets as one 16-year-old Texas volunteer described it. Following this failure, Greer gave orders to an Arkansas cavalry regiment neglecting to even send word to their commander of his decision. He yelled at them, quote, draw your pistols, men, and charge. From 50 yards away, the Arkansas and Texas cavalry both rushed in, pistols firing, as the Union infantry held their bayonets upward to stop the charging horses. Some of them fled, but the uncoordinated charge was largely unsuccessful. Joseph Totten, watching the charge from the top of the hill, described it as, quote, ineffectual in its force and character as to deserve only appellation of child's play. Their cavalry is utterly worthless on the battlefield, end quote. Greer's charge consisted of maybe 240 men. There would have been around three times that number if he'd coordinated the attack properly, and he was probably lucky to only lose a couple dozen of them to the poorly executed attack. During the fighting, Sterling Price narrowly avoided a handful of bullets that put holes in his clothing without touching him, but one bullet finally grazed him, giving him only a minor injury. Price turned to a nearby officer and joked about the wounds, quote, that isn't fair. If I were as slim as a lion, that fellow would have missed me entirely, end quote. But despite all their advantages, the Southern troops had little success breaking the Union line. Price began to call his troops back right around the time that Sturgis was given word that he was now the Union commander. Sturgis knew that his army was in bad shape, but he thought there was still one hope of victory, and that was Siegel, who still had sent no word. If he showed up and attacked the Confederate right, then the Union front could push against them, and the combined forces could push the Southerners back. But Sturgis had no idea where Siegel was. They held out hope as they could hear cannon fire in the distance, and they could also see some gray clad troops carrying what appeared to be a United States flag, both of which probably belonged to Siegel. So Sturgis ordered his men to prepare one final advance to attempt to join with Siegel's troops on the other side of the Confederate line. Price was preparing his own attack, organizing his men for the largest coordinated attack the Confederates had yet been able to conduct. With Siegel gone, a few companies of Confederate infantry were sent to occupy the position from which Siegel's artillery had originally initiated combat. This gave them a wide view of the battlefield, and what they saw was heartbreaking from the testimony of one of the soldiers, quote, Oh, it was pretty to see the whole of the battle as we sought with the advantage of our high position. Churchill's camps were on fire, tents and wagons with mules tied to them would pull back on the halters and bray and seemed to beg for mercy. But the halters would have to burn in two or break or they would have to stand there and burn to death. I saw mules burning and pulling on their halters till finally they would have to just give up and sink to the ground and die. Sometimes they would get loose by the halters burning in two and they would start off with fire all over them, end quote. Just as with the battle of Bull Run, soldiers were significantly affected by the cruel sight of the animals who founded themselves victims of the war. At around 10 a.m. Nathaniel Pierce started leading a group of Southern reinforcements to support Price's line on Bloody Hill. It was in fact Pierce's men that Sturgis believed to be Siegels. As Pierce joined Price on the hill, it was apparent that these were not the allies Sturgis was hoping to connect with. By 1030, the Southern advance was underway as thousands of Confederate soldiers began to push up the hill, finally acting in a single concerted effort. The intense firing that came now from both sides filled the field with a cloud of black smoke. The Union center was ordered to fire from the ground but this wasn't easy to do so the men would take a knee, fire their weapons and then drop to their bellies where they had a great deal more difficulty reloading their weapon but they were less likely to be hit. The fighting went on for 45 minutes and even with the significant push, Price realized that the advance was not going to succeed. With the dead and wounded now scattered around the field, the Confederate infantry started to fall back with or without orders. But as the Confederates started to fall back, the Union men were running low on ammunition and Sturgis still had no idea where Siegel was. As one Kansas regiment, who no longer had any ammunition fell back, they left a vulnerability in the Union line that the third Louisiana regiment was able to exploit. They pushed through and successfully took out a number of soldiers and artillery horses before being driven back. But the dead horses compelled the artillery to fall back after cutting their carcasses free. Even as they withdrew, more artillery horses were killed hindering the retreat. This forced the artillery to stop and cut free the horse which left them exposed to gunfire and a handful of them took bullets as well. Little by little, the Union line was finally starting to break. The men who could still fight covered the rest as the Union army retreated. They were able to keep the Southerners from pursuing them, sending one final volley at the Southerners, driving them back one last time before the final holdouts turned and started a retreat towards Springfield. By 5 p.m., the last of the Union soldiers had made it to Springfield almost exactly 24 hours after they'd left in preparation of the day's battle. Before the battle, when Lyon originally departed from Springfield, he refused to take any ambulances with him, worried that the noise of the ambulances would ruin the element of surprise, or rather a rational fear given that he had horses pulling cannons. But after some of his officers talked some sense into them, Lyon allowed two ambulances to be brought along. This would hardly be sufficient to deal with the many injured soldiers that fell during the battle. Enough of the injured men were able to make it back to Springfield that practically the entire town was turned into a hospital. Along the banks of Wilson Creek, makeshift hospitals were erected to deal with the many injured soldiers who had dragged themselves to the water to have something to drink as they cooked under the Missouri sun. Between both sides, maybe 2,000 men were wounded. So essentially all available resources between Wilson Creek and Springfield were marshaled to tend to them. Many of the wounded, of course, would die from the injuries. But even before this, each side saw nearly 300 killed. In retrospect, with battles like Gettysburg and Antietam in mind, this seems almost insignificant. But the total dead and injured on the southern side amounted to a casualty rate of about 12% and the union side saw nearly 25%. Lyon's forces saw a higher casualty rate than any single battle fought during the entire Mexican War. And since the deadlier battles were still to come, this was a remarkably devastating outcome. Because we have the benefit or maybe the handicap of hindsight, it is sometimes easy to overlook how significant such casualty counts were for even seasoned soldiers at this point in the Civil War. Worried about a southern pursuit, the Union Army didn't linger long in Springfield. The town was largely Unionist. So when the army left, many civilians went with them, worried about retribution from Confederates. They were now refugees of war. When the Southern Army did move into Occupy Springfield, there was hardly anybody left to stop them from a wholesale looting of the town. And despite McCulloch's attempt to maintain order among his men, the Southerners helped themselves to everything they could, many of them believing that it was their just response after having their own homes previously looted by the Union soldiers. Of course, in cases of both Union and Confederate looting, it was predominantly innocent civilians who paid the price. In the Northern press, papers celebrated the great Union victory at Wilson Creek. One article praised Fran Siegel for pursuing his defeated enemy until well into the night. At first, this may be explained by hasty and irresponsible journalists reporting on unreliable information, but even as the truth came out, newspapers continued to tout the false Union victory. One Kansas newspaper reported, quote, the victory of the Union force under general line was brilliant and overwhelming and accomplished under the great disadvantage of having but 8,000 of our troops to make the attack on 23,000 of the rebels upon their chosen ground and strongly entrenched, end quote. Even a St. Louis paper reported well after the truth had spread, that quote, the closer the accounts of this battle are sifted, the more certain does it appear that the federal forces, though vastly inferior in numbers, achieved the most brilliant victory, end quote. An Indiana newspaper ironically wrote to the quote, the battle completely upset the Gaskinade heard so often that one Southerner can whip two Northerners. It was a clear triumph on the part of general lion's men. The subsequent night retreat without pursuit by the enemy does not change the fact that McCulloch's army was whipped in the encounter and so the historians will record it, end quote. Of course, Southern papers were reporting their own victory and touting that this, following the victory at Manassas Junction was simply further proof of the superiority of the Confederate soldier and the righteousness of the Southern cause. Even though the Southern papers were correct in their claim of victory unlike the North, both sides were propagandizing. Good press meant more support for the war effort. Stories of victory were encouraging. Nathaniel Lion's body was accidentally left behind when the Union army evacuated Springfield. Southerners were threatening to desecrate the body of the hated commander, but Southern officers showed more respect for the dead. His decomposing body was stored temporarily in an ice house and then hidden in an ordinary coffin and escorted out of Springfield by Captain Mcdonald who had been among the secessionists taken prisoner by Lion during the Camp Jackson affair in St. Louis. When Sturgis sent men back to Springfield to try and retrieve Lion's body, they were surprised to discover that the Confederates had already taken care of everything. Lion's body was returned to St. Louis on August 26th, more than two weeks after his death and Vermont kept the coffin under guard until it could be returned to Lion's hometown in Connecticut. As his body was being moved through the country, Northerners poured out to pay their respects and mourn the fallen general. Like Ellsworth, Lion became a martyr for the Union cause. Lion wasn't very well liked by many people who knew him, which should have been rather apparent if you've listened to the previous episodes and this was apparently a family trait. His father was an unpopular man who had made the entire family rather alienated in their own community. But when Lion's funeral was held on September 5th, he was a Union hero. His funeral procession was a mile and a half long and the locals crowded his funeral. He was a martyr for the noble cause of Unionism and the people of Connecticut came out in droves to pay their respects. In the next episode, we will look at how John Vermont, who served for only a few months as the commander of the Department of the West, imposed martial law on the state and upset President Lincoln by issuing an emancipation proclamation of his own for any slaves owned by disloyal Missourians, which will conclude our story of how the Union maintained control of Missouri. 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. M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.