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ARMY ■ August 2011
Library of Congress
Above, from left to right, an 1861
map of Missouri based on Land Office Department surveys. Claiborne
Fox Jackson, governor of Missouri
when Fort Sumter, S.C., fell in 1861,
was a Southern sympathizer in a
slaveholding state already divided
over the slavery issue. BG Nathaniel
Lyon, then a captain in the 2nd U.S.
Infantry, commanded the U.S. Arsenal in St. Louis and strengthened its
defenses to keep it from the South.
Suspecting Confederate gun smuggling to take the arsenal, CPT Lyon
gathered a force and captured Missouri militia men outside St. Louis.
Right, a sketch depicts a mob attacking Federal troops escorting militia
members to the arsenal for holding
in May 1861. CPT Lyon’s operation
soured the citizenry on the Union
and ignited pro-South sympathy. Far
right, three months later Northern
and Southern troops clashed in the
Battle of Wilson’s Creek (Oak Hills),
the bloodiest battle yet fought in the
West, which gave the Confederacy
control of southwestern Missouri.
National Park Service
Library of Congress
Library of Congress
★★ A State with Two Stars:
Missouri’s War Within a War
M
By Dennis Steele
U.S. Government
Senior Staff Writer
issouri was divided long before the Civil War
began. Admitted to the Union in 1821 under the
Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed
its entry as a slaveholding state, Missouri remained internally fractured over the issue of slavery.
Governorship of the state had swung between pro-North
and pro-South officeholders; at the time of the fall of Fort
Sumter, S.C., the governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, was decidedly pro-South. Gov. Jackson, at most, tried to maintain a
thin façade of neutrality at the war’s outset as his immediate
predecessor had set Missouri on a policy course of “armed
neutrality”—with the state declaring that it would defend itself from aggression from any quarter. Nevertheless, a state
convention held in March 1861 overwhelmingly voted that
it was in Missouri’s best interest to stay in the Union.
As governor, Jackson was bound by the convention’s decision, but he believed that public opinion in Missouri inevitably would shift toward secession. He leaned toward instigating that shift by means other than political, if necessary.
When Sumter fell and President Lincoln called for Missouri to provide four regiments to the Union cause, Jackson refused and continued a push for the U.S. Arsenal in
St. Louis to be peacefully transferred to state control. ThenCPT Nathaniel Lyon had recently taken command of the
arsenal, however, and on the night of April 26 most of the
arsenal’s arms had been sent across the Mississippi River
to Illinois for safety. CPT Lyon was clearly not inclined to
give the keys to the governor, and he strengthened the arsenal’s defenses. (Lyon, commanding Company D of the
2nd U.S. Infantry, is said to have wrangled his way into
command of the arsenal through political connections.)
In the meantime, Jackson arranged a secret arms deal
through emissaries with Confederate President Jefferson
Davis to give him the heavy guns necessary to take the arsenal and make it “Missouri’s Sumter.”
The Confederate weapons, captured from the Baton
Rouge (La.) Arsenal, were to go to a pro-South faction
within the Missouri Volunteer State Militia—which was
not a wholesale secessionist group—and be delivered during the militia group’s traditional annual muster held just
outside the St. Louis city limits. In early May 1861, the
militia units came together, and the gathering place was renamed Camp Jackson in honor of the governor.
CPT Lyon announced that he had received intelligence
about the Confederate arms smuggling, assembled a force
largely composed of Home Guard volunteers (about four
regiments in strength) and took it upon himself to order a
move on Camp Jackson to extinguish the threat posed by
the Missouri militia against the arsenal. It was not sanctioned by his higher command.
On May 10, 1861, Lyon’s force surrounded Camp Jackson, and more than 800 members of the Missouri militia
August 2011 ■ ARMY
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Clockwise from above left: MG Sterling
Price commanded the Missouri State
Guard in 1861, whose mission was to resist a Union invasion. MG William Selby
Harney, when still a brigadier general,
tried to reestablish Missouri’s neutrality
until relieved of command. MG Franz Sigel
was a colonel when he led a Union force
that captured the city of Springfield, Mo.
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eventually stacked arms and surrendered. A civilian mob—some armed,
some drunk and armed—stood in the
way as the prisoners were marched
out of camp. Shots were fired from the
crowd, killing two Federal troops and three volunteers. The
soldiers fired back, volleying into the crowd and killing as
many as 28 people—including one militia prisoner and a
baby in its mother’s arms, according to a newspaper account—while wounding more than 100 people. The captured militia were then held in the arsenal until they took
the oath of allegiance, at which point they were released.
L
yon made a mistake in staging a “parade” to show
off his victory, but he was right about the arms transfer. The steamboat J.C. Swan had landed at St. Louis,
offloading several plank crates that were marked as
containing a certain type of marble to account for their
weight. The crates, which did contain some ordnance, were
transferred to Camp Jackson under the cover of darkness.
Lyon’s move against the militia was vindicated, but it
stoked a fire under Missouri’s pro-South movement and
unleashed general anti-Union sentiment, especially antiLyon sentiment.
The day after the Camp Jackson incident, the until-then
pro-Union Missouri state legislature responded angrily.
Within days, it authorized Gov. Jackson to disband the Missouri State Volunteer Militia and reform it under the name
of the Missouri State Guard with the mission of resisting a
Union invasion and putting down “rebellion” by Missourians who joined Union forces. Command was given to Sterling Price, a former governor who had served as a brigadier
general during the Mexican-American War. He was appointed to the rank of major general in the Guard.
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Jackson saw the legislature as having
played into his hands by giving him
near-dictatorial power to defend the
state.
Lyon’s commander, BG William S.
Harney, was appalled by the bloodshed
and frightened by the Missouri government’s reaction. He sought to reestablish Missouri’s previous neutrality and
came to an agreement with MG Price to
do so. In effect, the agreement confined
federal Union forces to St. Louis and
put the rest of the state’s defenses under the Missouri State Guard. Incensed
by this, a pro-Union congressman sent
word by backdoor channels to Abraham Lincoln about the proceedings.
Lincoln, too, appeared to be appalled;
he relieved BG Harney, brevetted Lyon
to brigadier general and gave him temporary command of the Department of
the West with orders to keep Missouri
in the Union with all means at hand.
(Recalled to Washington, D.C., Harney
was captured by Confederate forces on
the way and was offered a Confederate
commission. He declined.)
In early June, BG Lyon and Jackson
met face to face to settle their personal differences and, perhaps, revise the neutrality agreement; the meeting, however, descended into a yelling match. BG Lyon stormed out,
shouting, “This means war.”
He declared war on the Missouri state government a few
days later (a move retroactively sanctioned by the Lincoln
administration) and made plans to “evict” Jackson and his
rebel government.
Lyon assembled a force and moved by river boat from
St. Louis to take the state capital, Jefferson City. Another
Union force left St. Louis under COL Franz Sigel, marching
toward Springfield, Mo.
Lyon captured Jefferson City unopposed on June 13.
Jackson and most of his administration had fled the capital
to Boonville, Mo., west of Columbia, Mo. A force of the
nascent Missouri State Guard assembled there under the
personal command of Jackson. Lyon went after Jackson,
and the forces traded a few shots, but the Missouri militia,
ill-prepared for a fight, retreated. The governor appeared
to favor survival more than confrontation.
Lyon tarried in Boonville for a couple of weeks, unable
to mount a pursuit because of logistics, but a new and decidedly pro-Union state government was installed in the
capital to replace Jackson’s administration. On July 22, a
special convention composed of Missouri Unionists convened in Jefferson City, voting against secession and declaring the governor’s seat vacant. A provisional governor
was appointed rather than elected. (Missouri would not
elect another governor until after the Civil War.)
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O
n August 9, 1861, the Confederate Army was
nine miles from Springfield, with camps strung
out along Wilson’s Creek. Lyon realized that he
would have to pull back soon because of the supply situation, but he was certain that he would be pursued
by the Confederates and, perhaps, run down and beaten in a
disadvantageous fight. He also wanted to strike a blow
while he could, even if it was to cover his withdrawal.
Both Lyon and McCulloch laid plans to attack the other
at dawn the next morning. McCulloch delayed because of
rain; Lyon struck.
COL Sigel, a German immigrant trained in Europe, convinced Lyon to undertake a daring plan of dividing his inferior force into two wings to attack the Confederate camp on
its flanks. It was risky, considering that the Federals were outnumbered at the onset, but Lyon accepted the plan. Lyon left
Springfield with approximately 3,600 men and 10 cannons.
Sigel had about 1,100 men in his wing and six artillery pieces.
Lyon’s force marched cross-country. It was spotted by
Southern foragers, who raised the alarm as the Federals approached a spur of what would be known after the battle as
Bloody Hill. The main Confederate camp was still nearly
three-quarters of a mile away.
Confederate cavalry responded to the alarm, and other
formations joined to block Lyon’s advance. Lyon sent some
infantrymen and a few artillery pieces to engage the blocking
force and tried to skirt around it with his main body, moving
farther toward the flank when he spotted Confederate units
forming on Bloody Hill. He eventually ordered an assault on
the hill.
Library of Congress
Near right, as a brigadier general, Benjamin
McCulloch, a former Texas Ranger who
commanded Confederate forces in northwest Arkansas, moved into Missouri alongside MG Price. Far right, explorer MG John
C. Frémont, who took command of the Department of the West in July 1861, saw the
campaign in southwest Missouri as a distraction from his main mission of protecting
the Union’s position on the Mississippi River.
were also a problem; the men were on short rations. Lyon,
however, ignored MG Frémont’s urging to withdraw to
Rolla, Mo., the nearest operating railhead, to receive supplies from St. Louis. At the same time, he felt that he was undercut by Frémont, who refused to send reinforcements or
replacements. In Lyon’s view, Frémont was ignoring the
fight at hand. From Frémont’s perspective, however, eliminating the threat posed by the Missouri State Guard and
Confederates in southwest Missouri was a distraction from
his primary mission, which was to protect the Union’s position on the Mississippi River and open it for a future strategic campaign into the heart of the Confederate West.
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Jackson’s force linked up with another militia column
under MG Price and combined to number about 6,000, but
the men were untrained, disorganized and largely armed
with whatever weapons they had brought from home. Two
thousand of them had no arms at all.
COL Sigel, meanwhile, took Springfield and proceeded
west to interdict Jackson. He and his 1,100 troops made
camp near Carthage, Mo. Jackson hatched plans to attack
Sigel’s camp on July 5, 1861. It was a short and generally
inconclusive battle, but Jackson and the Missouri State
Guard claimed victory. Still, they continued retreating.
Lyon received reinforcements and joined Sigel in Springfield to continue pressure against the Missouri State Guard.
MG John C. Frémont, the famed explorer, had arrived to
take command of the Department of the West, and Lyon
was given command of the Army of Southwest Missouri.
Lyon’s army pinned the militia in the far corner of southwest Missouri. Jackson and what was left of his administration eventually set up a government-in-exile in Neosho,
Mo., and in October 1861 issued an ordinance of secession.
The Confederacy recognized the government-in-exile and
its secession, making Missouri its 12th state, with Jackson
as governor. A star for the state of Missouri appeared on
both the Confederate and Union flags throughout the war.
(Because Union forces occupied virtually all of Missouri,
Jackson eventually took refuge in Arkansas, where he died
of stomach cancer in 1862.)
MG Price saw that he could not contest, much less recapture, Missouri with the force he had and sought help
from the Confederate government. Confederate BG Benjamin McCulloch, a swashbuckling former Texas Ranger,
commanded Confederate forces in northwest Arkansas,
and he received permission to move into Missouri alongside Price, with McCulloch in command. Other columns of
Confederates from nearby states joined McCulloch, bringing the South’s army total to about 12,000 men.
The Missouri State Guard and the Confederates did not
mesh well, creating conflicts and eventually splitting command. In addition, about 5,000 enlistments in the Confederate regiments were near expiration. Those men were anxious to go home, and the whole army was short on
ammunition. Nevertheless, the Confederates launched an
offensive into Missouri and headed toward Springfield.
Lyon had about 6,000 men under his
command, but many of his soldiers
had only enlisted for 90 days, and their
time, too, was nearly over. Provisions
Library of Congress
A Kurz and Allison
lithograph depicts
the death of BG
Lyon (on horseback) in the fierce
fighting during the
Battle of Wilson’s
Creek. The South
gained victory as
the North effected
an orderly retreat,
but Missouri remained divided
throughout the
Civil War.
M
eanwhile, the other Union wing had moved into
place, completely undetected. Sigel put his artillery on a dominant hill. Hearing Lyon’s first
shots, he opened fire and soon advanced. Overall,
the two wings had achieved the surprise planned—at least,
surprise enough. As the sun rose, the Federals had the edge.
The Confederates organized a belated but determined
rally.
As Lyon advanced up Bloody Hill, Sigel’s artillery was
in position to support the attack, hitting the Confederates
from the rear and breaking up their line. But Sigel soon
ceased fire in fear of hitting his own men. (As in the previous battle at Manassas, Va., regiments on both sides were
wearing a variety of uniforms, and it was difficult to tell
one side from the other.)
The tide of the battle was about to swing.
McCulloch led an attack against Sigel, using low ground
as cover to approach and then quickly surprising Sigel in a
rush that pushed the Federals back and drove them away.
Price was leading the fight against Lyon on Bloody Hill.
Lyon increasingly was put on the defensive as more Confederate and Missouri State Guard units joined the fight.
Union regiments held the flanks, but the center was giving
way. Lyon was slightly wounded in the head and hand,
and his horse was shot from under him. Lyon mounted another horse and led reinforcements to shore up the center
of his line.
The maneuver succeeded in pushing back the Confederates, but at a cost. Lyon, hit again (this time by a cannonball), lay dead. Command passed to MAJ Samuel Sturgis.
McCulloch, having dealt with Sigel, joined Price and the
Missouri State Guard at Bloody Hill and continued the attack. Price was wounded, leading from the front. The Union
force held out for nearly two more hours, but Sturgis de56
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cided that Lyon’s intent—to strike a superior force with a
spoiling attack to punish the Confederates and cover a withdrawal to Rolla—had been achieved. He organized an overall orderly retreat, subsequently rejoining Sigel in Springfield. The Union Army then pulled back to Rolla without
pursuit.
The Battle at Wilson’s Creek (Oak Hills) had been the
bloodiest battle then fought in the West. Both sides suffered significant casualties. Each side sustained more than
250 men dead and about 1,000 wounded, captured or missing—more than 2,500 casualties in all.
Following the Battle of Manassas by mere weeks, the
Battle at Wilson’s Creek was further evidence that it would
be a long and bloody war.
Missouri would continue to be contested and divided,
providing sympathy, supplies and volunteers to both sides
for battles far away. Within the state, bloodshed would
continue throughout the war. The threat to Missouri posed
by conventional Confederate forces eventually would be
worn down and snuffed out, but the conflict would descend into a brutal partisan/guerrilla bloodletting that
would last until the end of the Civil War and appear afterward in different guises.
Lyon’s action at Camp Jackson is often blamed for sparking the state’s conflict; given all the factors, however, Missouri was destined to fight its war within a war.
Amid the mélee on Bloody Hill, Lyon’s body was forgotten by his men and left behind. Found by the Confederates, he was buried temporarily on a Unionist’s farm near
Springfield. Eventually, BG Lyon—noted as the first Union
general to die in the Civil War—was returned to his home
in Connecticut and interred in his family plot. About
15,000 people attended the funeral, nearly the same number of soldiers who fought at Wilson’s Creek.
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