Home : America At War : The Civil War : Trans-Mississippi Theater :Battle Of Westport
In the autumn of 1864, Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department commander Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith ordered Maj. Gen. Sterling Price to undertake a large-scale raid deep into Missouri. Similar in size and scope to Lt. Gen. Jubal Early's summer raid on Washington, D.C., though intended to cover more ground, Price's raid had similar objectives—raiding Federal depots to acquire much-needed supplies for the footsore Confederate armies, diverting troops intending to join the Federal commands challenging Hood in Georgia and Lee in Virginia, and reaping whatever political damage might come to Lincoln's November reelection by threatening such places as, in Price's case, St. Louis and the Missouri capital, Jefferson City. Price had little chance of finding any Southern-leaning recruit who wasn't already in the ranks or content with bushwhacking in his own home area. Some green recruits were picked up along the way, but they were ill equipped and added little to offset an increasing number of Union soldiers being redeployed to oppose and then crush the expedition. Price started out from Princeton, Arkansas, on August 29 and along the way built up his army by calling upon the cavalry divisions of Maj. Gen. John S. Fagan, Brig. Gen. Joseph 0. Shelby, and Brig. Gen. John S. Marmaduke. The combined force of more than twelve thousand rode north into Missouri on September 19 and toward their first objective, Fort Davidson near Pilot Knob. Fort Davidson was a stout earthen Federal fort guarding the terminus of the Ironton Railroad, which linked that town and Pilot Knob with St. Louis, eighty miles to the north. Aware that Price was on the move, Missouri Department commander Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans received permission from Washington to order a force "The 10,000 Israelites" under Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Smith, then at Cairo, Illinois, en route to reinforce Sherman in Georgia, to disembark at St. Louis to augment Federal garrisons there. At the same time, Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing, author of General Order No. 11 which made him a wanted man among Missouri Confederates, was en route to Fort Davidson with reinforcements. Ewing refused two Rebel demands for surrender. The Confederates approached Fort Davidson on the night of September 26. The attack on Fort Davidson did not go well. The fort was defended by a small force of Union soldiers. But there was a deep ditch all around the fort and the next day, a six-hour assault on the fort cost the Confederates 1,500 casualties; the Federals lost 184 of their 1,200-man garrison. Price then decided to wait until dark; he planned to put his artillery into position on a high hill overlooking the fort and attack from both the front and the rear the next morning. As the Confederates prepared to assault the fort again that night, Ewing knew he could not continue to hold the fort, so he slipped his men out through a gap in the Confederate ranks in the middle of the night and returned to St. Louis. Confederate expectations of capturing the fort's supplies and cannons were frustrated by the Federals, who spiked the guns and lit a slow fuse to the powder magazine which detonated after their escape. Price had paid excessively in lives for Fort Davidson and provided the Federals invaluable time to concentrate forces at St. Louis to frustrate Price's plan. Because Price lost so much time and so many men trying to capture Fort Davidson, he had to change his plans about attacking St. Louis. He decided to march west toward the state capital, Jefferson City, with the idea that he might be able to take over the seat of government in the state. But when he got to Jefferson City he found the city was heavily fortified. He also learned that a large Union force was coming after him from St. Louis. Price kept moving west and made his next stop at Boonville on the Missouri River. There he met with "Bloody Bill" Anderson's guerrillas and gave them the orders to attack the railroad lines in northern Missouri. Price then continued marching west up the river toward Lexington, Independence, and Kansas City. He had started from Arkansas with nearly twelve thousand men, but he now had only about nine thousand left. Ahead of him at Kansas City was General Curtis with twelve thousand Union troops. Behind him was Union General Alfred Pleasonton with nearly five thousand troops. Pleasonton had been chasing Price ever since his army left Jefferson City.
The smoke of gunfire again filled the air on October 22, 1864, as Price's army pressed toward Kansas City. Instead of turning south, Price was leading his columns toward an entrenched force from Kansas under General Blunt. General Blunt's Federal Big Blue River line was attacked by Jo Shelby's Confederate division on October 22. The Rebels probed the line at several fords, until Shelby discovered a weak point in the line at Byram's Ford. Exploiting this point caused the Federals to retreat, but their retrograde did not become a rout. Contesting ground stubbornly, Blunt's people were backed up to the Kansas state line south of Westport, where another line of entrenchments running east-west parallel to Brush Creek was thrown up. By the end of the day, the Confederates occupied the former Federal works on the Big Blue's west bank and Curtis was re-forming his line perpendicular to the Kansas border, setting the stage for the Battle of Westport. Meantime, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton's Union force crossed the Little Blue east of Independence, defeated a Rebel brigade in James Fagan's command, and occupied Independence. Marmaduke's division then met Pleasonton about two miles west of Independence, hit the Federals hard, pressed them back, and held them at bay until the morning of October 23. Pleasonton's actions, however, frightened Price and his army, and influenced them, after they had crossed the Big Blue River, to send their wagon trains to Little Santa Fe on the Fort Scott road. The next day Price ordered part of his remaining army to guard a crossing of the Big Blue River called Byram's Ford. They were supposed to keep Pleasonton's men from crossing the river at this point and attacking Price's rear. The men trying to keep Pleasonton's army from crossing the Big Blue River at Byram's Ford held the crossing for a while, but Pleasonton finally overpowered them. The main part of Price's army then attacked General Curtis, and a fierce battle took place. At first the Confederates had some success, but then the greater numbers of the Union army troops began to turn the battle against the Confederates. Price decided that he needed to deal with the two Union forces and decided to attack them one at a time. With Pleasonton still behind him, Price chose to strike Curtis at Westport first. Curtis had established strong defensive lines and during a four-hour battle, the Confederates hurled themselves at the Union forces but to no avail. On the morning of October 23, General Price formed a battle plan to defeat the Federal forces in detail, then take his army into Kansas for the return march south. Encouraged by Shelby to attack and first defeat Curtis, Price left Marmaduke's division to face Pleasonton while he attacked Curtis's force with Shelby's and Fagan's, and they assailed the Federals' Brush Creek line, south of Westport. They drove the militia back, but not for long. The militia, with twice the number of men as the Rebels, held their own and mounted a counterattack. While this alone was not disastrous for the Confederates, Pleasonton assaulted Marmaduke at Byram's Ford, at eight A.M. Three hours later Marmaduke's men were mauled and they retreated toward Westport. Price was beginning to feel the pinch of the Federal vise. Only savage resistance by Shelby's cavalry in a rear-guard action prevented capture of Price's wagon train and much of his force at Westport, the largest battle in terms of the number engaged to be fought west of the Mississippi River. Price realized he was in great danger of having his whole army destroyed, so he ordered a retreat. The Rebels could not break the Union lines and retreated south. Westport was the decisive battle of Price’s Missouri Expedition, and from this point on, the Rebels were in retreat. His men started moving south along the Kansas-Missouri border. The Battle of Westport was over. Nearly a thousand men were killed, wounded, or captured on both sides during the battle, and Price's last effort to drive the Union army out of Missouri had come to a bloody end. After narrowly escaping annihilation at Westport, Price began his retreat through Kansas, where pursuing Federals next challenged him at Marais des Cygnes. On October 25, Price's column drifted back into Missouri along the Little Osage and Marmiton rivers. Price's wagon trains had difficulty fording the Marmiton, and, as at Mine Creek, the Confederates had to make a stand in this battle also called Charlot's Farm. Here Jo Shelby's cavalry again fought the pursuing Federal force, allowing the rest of Price's column to continue retreating in the direction of Carthage, Missouri. In the last fight in his long retreat after the Battle of Westport, Maj. Gen. Sterling Price encountered Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt's pursuing force one more time at Newtonia. On October 28, 1864, Blunt surprised Price's force, resting in camps southwest of Newtonia after their rapid flight south from the Marmiton River. Again, Shelby's "Iron Brigade' of cavalry stood in the forefront in first shielding Price's now hapless army and carrying the fight to the foe. But when General Blunt was reinforced, Shelby's rear guard executed an orderly withdrawal. From Newtonia, Price's retreat continued without further serious interruption until his columns crossed Red River and reached Laynesport, Arkansas, in early December. With Price's defeat at Westport in the fall of 1864, the war in Missouri was nearly over. Curtis chased Price south along the Kansas border, driving what was left of his ragged army down into Texas. Two of the main guerrilla leaders had been killed about the same time as the Westport battle. George Todd was killed by a Union sharpshooter just outside Independence a few days before the battle; and "Bloody Bill" Anderson was killed in a charge on Union troops in Ray County a few days after the battle. Jesse James and the other men who had been riding with Anderson went south to Texas after Anderson was killed. Quantrill had been in hiding for several months before the Battle of Westport. When he heard about Price's defeat he gathered some of his most trusted men together, including Frank James, and left Missouri for Kentucky. Some of his men later said he had a plan to go to Washington, D.C., and assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. But an actor named John Wilkes Booth had the same plan and killed Lincoln on April 15, 1865. Less than a week before the assassination, the Civil War came to an end when the main part of the Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9. But as the war ended, the James Gang was born.
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