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Battle Of Wilson's Creek

Missouri's governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, wanted Missouri to join the Southern states when those states began to leave the Union in early 1861. Other people in the Missouri government wanted to keep Missouri in the Union. A state convention was held in March 1861 to decide what to do. The people who attended the convention decided that Missouri should stay in the Union.

Governor Jackson did not agree with the decision of the convention. He began working on a secret plan to get control of the guns and ammunition stored at the U.S. Arsenal in St. Louis. He wanted to take control of those arms so the State Guard would have the power to help him take Missouri out of the Union. He ordered the State Guard to meet at a place in St. Louis called Camp Jackson. They planned to march on the arsenal and capture it. Jackson's plan might have worked if Union Captain Nathaniel Lyon had not found out what was about to happen. Captain Lyon acted quickly. He surrounded the camp with several thousand of his men and forced the State Guard to surrender.

Then Lyon made the mistake of marching the captured State Guard troops through the streets of St. Louis. Crowds of angry people gathered and began shouting and throwing rocks at Lyon and his Union army troops. Shots were fired. Several soldiers and more than twenty people in the crowd were killed. Other people were injured.

Many of the Union troops were German, and they were blamed for what happened by pro-slavery Missourians, many from Southern states. Germans had been coming to Missouri in large numbers since the 1830s. Most of these immigrants settled along the Missouri River between St. Louis and Hermann, but others settled in central and western Missouri. Most of the Germans were against the idea of slavery and took the side of the federal government in the Civil War.

Angry newspaper articles were published about the so- called Camp Jackson Massacre, and songs were even written about it. One of these songs was called "The Invasion of Camp Jackson by the Hessians." The word Hessians was another word used for "Germans." Soldiers from Hesse in Germany had been brought to America by the English to fight in the Revolutionary War. Many had stayed in America, but most of the German immigrants in Missouri were not from Hesse. The term just became a popular word for Germans. Germans are also sometimes referred to as the "Dutch."

The Camp Jackson affair did more than anything else to make many Missourians decide to take Governor Jackson's side, join the State Guard, and try to force the Union army out of Missouri. General Sterling Price had been Missouri's governor during the Kansas-Nebraska dispute. He agreed to lead Jackson's State Guard, and it was not long before fighting began.

There was, however, one last attempt by both sides to find a way to keep the peace. Lyon and his main supporter in Missouri, Francis Blair, met with Governor Jackson and General Price at the Planter's House Hotel in St. Louis on June 11, 1861. The meeting did not go well. Jackson said he would not give the order for any Missouri troops to join the Union army. He also told Lyon, who was now a general, to take his Union army troops out of the state. This demand angered Lyon. He told Jackson and Price that their words and actions left him no choice but to go to war against them.

Jackson and Price left the Planter's House and took a train to Jefferson City, burning railroad bridges behind them. Governor Jackson called for fifty thousand men to join him and drive the Union army out of the state. He said that anyone who wanted to join him should come to either Boonville or Lexington and sign up. Both towns were on the Missouri River, and both towns were known to have many strong Southern supporters. Jackson and Price then left for Boonville to help organize the men who were meeting there.

General Lyon and his Union army troops went after the State Guard. Lyon captured Jefferson City on June 14. Then he headed for Boonville with his well-trained and well-armed men. General Price had left Boonville to go to Lexington to help organize the volunteers there. One of those volunteers was eighteen-year-old Frank James. He had joined a local group of "Home Guards" at Centerville, not far from the James farm, a few weeks before Price came to Lexington. His brother Jesse also wanted to join, but he was only fourteen at the time. His mother thought he was too young to go, so she kept him at home.

Back at Boonville, Governor Jackson ordered his men to try to stop Lyon's men, who were now marching on Boonville. But the State Guard troops never really had a chance. Lyon's attack made the State Guard turn and run so fast that the battle was called "The Boonville Races." The fighting at Boonville was an important win for the Union army. Jackson had to retreat south toward Arkansas, and Union troops took control of the Missouri River and the state government.

When Price heard about the defeat at Boonville, he also took his troops south and joined Jackson's troops in southern Missouri. They were attacked at Carthage, Missouri, by Union troops under the command of General Franz Sigel, a St. Louis German. Col. Franz Sigel led a force of 1,000 Federals into southwest Missouri in search of the pro-secessionist Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson and his loyal troops. He had also been sent to southern Missouri by General Lyon with the idea of trying to stop Price and Jackson from joining Confederate troops in Arkansas.

Carthage was the locale of a number of partisan skirmishes after an initial July 5, 1861, engagement. Upon learning that Sigel had encamped at Carthage, on the night of July 4, Jackson took command of the troops with him and formulated a plan to attack the much smaller Union force. Next morning, Jackson closed on Sigel, established a battle line on a ridge ten miles north of Carthage, and induced Sigel to attack him. Opening with artillery fire, Sigel attacked. Seeing a large Confederate force—actually unarmed recruits—moving into the woods on his left, Sigel feared that they would turn his flank and withdrew. The Confederates pursued, but Sigel conducted a successful rear-guard action. By evening, Sigel was inside Carthage and under cover of darkness; he then retreated to Sarcoxie. The battle had little significance, but the pro-Southern elements in Missouri, anxious for any good news, hailed their first victory.

General Sigel did not have nearly enough men to stop Jackson and Price, but he did slow them down at the Battle of Carthage. Sigel then retreated to Springfield to wait for Lyon to arrive with additional Union army troops. The scene was set for the biggest and most important battle fought in Missouri during the Civil War.

General Price and Governor Jackson continued to march south after fighting General Sigel at Carthage. Price was joined at Cassville, Missouri, by Texans, Arkansans, and Louisianans under Brig. Gen. Benjamin McCulloch and the Arkansas State Guard under Brig. Gen. Nicholas B. Pearce. Price and McCulloch together had about twelve thousand men. They decided to attack the Union troops at Springfield. The troops under General Price and General McCulloch began marching toward Springfield and camped for the night along Wilson's Creek just south of the town. The most significant battle west of the Mississippi River in 1861 occurred at Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, on August 10.

In July, Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon had swept through Missouri and established a base at Springfield. At the same time, Sterling Price was drilling a force of Missouri State Guards on the Cowskin Prairie in McDonald County. On August 2, Lyon tested the vanguard of the Rebel force—Missouri State Guard—at Dug Springs and, though he bested them, he realized the Confederates outnumbered him and withdrew to Springfield. The Confederates went into camps along Wilson's Creek and planned to attack Lyon, but rain on the evening of August 9 forced a postponement of their offensive.

Generals Lyon and Sigel had only about six thousand Union troops, so Lyon sent a message to the Union army headquarters in St. Louis asking for help. When he found out he was not going to get any help, he decided he might be able to defeat Price and McCulloch by making a surprise attack during the early morning hours. Despite being outnumbered two to one, Lyon decided to use the element of surprise to attack the Confederates in their camps. On the evening of August 9, he sent a force of 1,200 under Col. Franz Sigel to pass east of the Rebels' camp and attack from the south. Lyon led the rest of the attacking force, about 3,200, and at dawn on August 10 approached the camps from the north.

At first things seemed to be going well for the Union army, but the Confederates under General McCulloch finally forced Sigel to retreat. Many soldiers were not in uniform, and Sigel's men had mistaken some of McCulloch's troops for Union troops. Sigel's flanking attack started well while at the same time Lyon's force surprised the Confederates in their camps along the creek. But the Confederates formed lines of battle and soon the tide reversed. Sigel's Germans were counterattacked by McCulloch's Louisianans and Arkansans, routed and driven from the field.

General Price then ordered his State Guard troops to attack General Lyon's men on a high hill overlooking the valley of Wilson's Creek. Price's Missourians battled Lyon's soldiers on a scrub oak-clad ridge that has since been known as "Bloody Hill" because of the vicious, sometimes hand-to-hand fighting that occurred there. At nine-thirty A.M. Lyon was killed on Bloody Hill while leading a charge. So many people on both sides were killed during this part of the battle. Lyon's men were able to hold the hill.

By eleven A.M. Lyon's successor, Maj. Samuel Sturgis, ordered a withdrawal as the Federals nearly exhausted their ammunition. However, the battle, fought in very hot weather, sapped the Confederates' enthusiasm and they did not pursue the Federals, who retreated first to Springfield and then back to their Rolla railhead. Lyon was the first Union general to be killed during the Civil War.

The Battle of Wilson's Creek, or Oak Hills as the Southerners call it, shifted the momentum in Missouri for the next six weeks from the Federals to the pro-secessionist Missourians. The death of Lyon and the large number of Union soldiers killed and wounded during the fighting at Bloody Hill made it necessary for the Union army to retreat to Springfield and then to St. Louis. The Confederate and State Guard armies also had many men killed and wounded, but the Battle of Wilson's Creek was a victory for the Confederate forces. Southern sympathizers made up many songs about Sigel and his "Dutch" troops who fought at Wilson's Creek.

Wilson's Creek was the first major battle west of the Mississippi River. Among the men who fought on the Confederate side were Frank James, William Clarke Quantrill, and Cole Younger. Frank James, Jesse's older brother, had joined Price's army at Lexington. Quantrill had been a fierce fighter for the Missourians during the Kansas-Missouri Border War. Cole Younger was from a wealthy family that lived in Harrisonville, Missouri, just south of Kansas City. After the war he and his brothers would become well-known members of the Jesse James gang.

One story about what happened to Frank James after the Battle of Wilson's Creek says that he got the measles shortly after the battle and was left at a hotel in Springfield. Union troops captured him, but later let him go after he promised he would go back to his home and not fight again for the rest of the war. Frank did go back home to Clay County, but he did not keep his promise to stay out of the war.

Robert L. Dyer. . University of Missouri Press. 1994.

Wilson's Creek This book provides the first in-depth narrative and analysis of this important but largely overlooked battle. The authors include not only a traditional military study of the fighting at Wilson's Creek, but also provide an innovative social analysis of the soldiers who participated and the communities that supported them.

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