Learn Our History Today: On August 10, 1861, during the Civil War, the first major battle west of the Mississippi River, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, was fought near Springfield, Missouri. At the beginning of the Civil War, Missouri was a state with divided loyalties. On one hand it was a slave state with many of its citizens supporting the institution, and on the other hand it contained many people who staunchly supported the Union and had recently experienced a large influx of German immigrants, most of whom were unionists. When the Civil War erupted, Missouri quickly formed two state governments, one rebel and one Union. The Union was the more powerful of the two and in short order the Confederate government was forced to go on the run to the southwest portion of the state. However, their government was not able to stay in power. The Confederate faction was able to put a substantial army in the field, known as the Missouri State Guard. These men were not very well trained and their arms consisted mainly of hunting shotguns and old flintlock muskets, but they numbered in the thousands and were led by an able commander, General Sterling Price. In August 1861, the Missouri State guard together with the Confederate Army of the West under General Benjamin McCulloch began a campaign to retake Missouri for the Confederacy, starting with the southwest corner. Unfortunately for the rebels, while camped on the banks of Wilson’s Creek, their offensive was cut short by a preemptive assault by the Union army of Nathaniel Lyon, which consisted mainly of Unionist Missourians and Kansans. In the fighting that ensued, it initially appeared that the Union would be victorious, as they had pushed the Missouri State Guard from their positions atop a rise known as Oak Hill, and they had driven back McCulloch’s men from their campsite on the creek. However, thanks to the skill of McCulloch and Price, the Confederates organized counterattacks and charges up and down the line, knocking the Yankees back across Wilson’s Creek and up the face of Oak Hill. While McCulloch’s men were able to drive the federals back with relative ease, Price had a much harder time of it and Oak Hill soon earned a new nickname, Bloody Hill. Both sides charged up and down the steep, rocky, tangled, wood covered slopes of the hill, and in the dense under growth the shotguns of the Missourians proved particularly deadly. For a while the momentum swayed back and forth, and it wasn’t until Lyon was killed at the head of a charge, that the battle turned in the rebels favor. At the end of the fighting, both sides had lost more than a thousand soldiers, and although it was a Confederate victory, the rebels were not able to continue their offensive as the army was badly battered and almost completely out of ammo.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 16:48:25 +0000
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