CHAPTER XI. A TERRIBLE MARCH--A FIGHT AND A RETREAT.
|On the first of August General Lyon marched out on the road to thesouthwest and in the direction where the enemy was supposed to be; infact, where it was positively known that he could be found. Most of thewagons were left behind, and among them were those driven by Jackand Harry. Not wishing to miss the chance of seeing a battle, thoseenterprising youths accompanied the column by permission of theirregimental quartermaster, and under promise to return whenever wordreached them that they were wanted.
August is a hot month in that part of the country; in fact, it is ahot month, as everybody knows, from one end of the United States tothe other. Only a few miles were made on the first day’s march fromSpringfield, but those few miles witnessed the exhaustion of many ofthe soldiers. The next day the column moved on to a place known as“Dug Spring,” probably to distinguish it from the natural springs whichabound through that country. And the heat of that day was somethingterrific.
Scores of men, overcome by the sultry atmosphere, dropped out of theline of march and fell exhausted by the roadside, where some of themdied from the effects of sunstroke. Water was to be found only at longintervals, and when found the springs were soon rendered muddy or werecompletely exhausted by the crowds that rushed into them.
In southwest Missouri, as in many parts of the southern states, thespring which supplies a residence is covered with a frame building eightor ten feet square, and known as the springhouse. There are very fewcellars in that region, and the springhouse is used for preserving milk,meat and other articles requiring the lowest attainable temperature inthe absence of ice. The spring that gave the name to the locality inquestion was of this sort, and a small stream of water flowed from itperpetually, and probably is flowing still. To realize what happenedthere, let us quote from a letter which Harry wrote that evening to hismother:
“My Dear Mother: I have known what it was to be very thirsty, but untilto-day I never knew what it was to suffer--actually suffer--for wantof water, though I have often thought I knew. It was one of the hottestdays I ever saw in my life; the road was just one long line of dust, asno rain had fallen for some time and the ground was perfectly dry. Wehad a little skirmishing with the rebels in front of us, but it was veryevident that we only met small scouting parties of them, as they fellback very soon after we met them. But so much did the men suffer forwant of water that they didn’t care for the enemy, and would have riskedtheir lives for a cooling drink from a brook or spring.
“We had left Wilson’s Creek and Tyrol’s Creek behind us; they are littlestreams or brooks that ordinarily contain only a few inches of water,but are said to be small rivers in their way when heavy rains fall. Wewent several miles without water, and at length the head of the columnreached a large spring, which they told us was made by digging in thelow ground, and for this reason it was called Dug Spring.
“Of course the first men that came to it rushed into the littlespringhouse to quench their thirst and fill their canteens, which theysucceeded in doing. But before they had done so the crowd around thebuilding was so dense that those inside could not get out; everybody wasfrantically seeking for water, water, water, and so wild were the menthat the officers could not control them.
“They lifted the springhouse from its foundations and threw it to oneside, but this didn’t help matters any. As fast as the men came up andthe word was passed that there was a spring there, the ranks were brokenand all that the officers could do was not enough to keep the menin place. Officers and men struggled together for water and alldistinctions of rank were lost.
“The spring was soon exhausted and so was a trough close by thatcontained water which had evidently stood there for some days. A poola little way below the spring, where the hogs had wallowed, was eagerlysought by the struggling crowd and their feet stirred the contentsso that it was half mud. Soldiers had a hard struggle to fill theircanteens with this stuff, and when they had done so and came out ofthe crowd they refused to give away a single drop. One of the newspapercorrespondents says he saw an officer offer five dollars to a soldierfor a canteen full of this liquid, and the soldier refused it, saying hecould not get any more and would die himself unless he had something todrink.
“By the time Jack and I got to the spring the water was all gone andwe didn’t know what to do, as we were ready to drop with thirst. Ourtongues were swollen and almost hanging from our mouths, and we felt wecould not stand it much longer. I dashed into the crowd at the springand saw it was no use; then I got into the other crowd at the pool andtore up two handfuls of the moist earth and carried them to one side.Jack did just like me, and we managed to squeeze a few drops of waterout of the earth which we had thus secured. We tried it again, othersdid the same thing, and somehow we managed to get enough to cool ourthroats just a little.
“We camped this evening on a little creek a few miles further on, andhere we are. The men care little for food; all they want just now isto get enough water to drink. The camp is in great confusion and if awell-disciplined enemy should fall on us just now it would have a goodchance of whipping us. They say the rebels are only a little way aheadof us, and perhaps we shall have a fight with them to-morrow.”
On the next day there was a skirmish, in which a few men were wounded,and the report was that the rebels had suffered severely; but as usualin such cases, especially at the beginning of the war, the rumors werefar above the facts. As an illustration of this tendency we will takeone of the battles of 1861 in which there were ten killed on one sideand thirteen on the other, and about forty wounded. The Union commanderestimated the rebel loss “at not less than from three hundred and fiftyto four hundred,” while the Confederate historians said the Unionloss was “from one hundred fifty to two hundred killed, and from threehundred to four hundred wounded.” One of the best reports of a skirmishwas that of a commander who wrote, “our loss was nothing; the enemy’s isnot known, but is certainly three times as great as our own.”
Twenty-four miles from Springfield General Lyon decided to fall back tothat town, as he learned that the rebels had a force three or four timesas great as his own; it turned out that these figures were a good dealexaggerated, but after making the most liberal deductions it is certainthat they had fully twice his number. He reached Springfield on thefifth of August, and was more disheartened than ever. No reinforcementshad come to him from General Fremont, and from all indications none werelikely to be sent in time to do him any good. We had two alternatives:to fight a battle with great odds against him, or to fall back to Rolla,the terminus of the railroad, without a fight.
At a council of his officers it was decided that the moral effect ofretreating without a battle would be greater than after one; unless,indeed, the army should be so badly defeated that escape would beimpossible. The rebels advanced and camped on Wilson’s Creek, ten milesfrom Springfield. It has become known since that there was a bitterquarrel between General’s McCulloch and Price, and in consequence ofthis quarrel the rebels did not come at once to attack Springfield.
McCulloch was carrying out the policy of the Confederate government,which just then did not favor pushing the war into the border states;while Price wanted to take the offensive against the national governmentand push the Union forces quite out of the state of Missouri. He was forfighting and pushing on, while McCulloch was opposed to anything of thekind; not on account of cowardice, be it understood, for he was as bravea soldier as the Confederacy produced during the war, but for politicalreasons, which have just been mentioned. He was only induced to marchupon Springfield by General Price giving up the command to him, andfurthermore by the threat of the latter that if McCulloch still refusedto advance, he (Price) would alone advance with his Missourians and givebattle to the Union forces.
On the eighth of August Price learned that Lyon was fearful of anattack, and was making preparations to abandon Springfield. He urgedMcCulloch to advance at once, but the latter would not do so. On theninth it was decided that an
attack would be made on Springfield thenext day, and the troops were ordered to be in readiness to move at nineo’clock that night. But the plan was changed on account of a slight rainwhich fell towards evening and threatened to continue during the night.Many of the Missourians had no cartridge-boxes and were obliged tocarry their ammunition in their pockets; consequently, a rain would havespoiled their cartridges and made these soldiers useless in a fight.
To what slight causes do we often owe the course of events!
The rain which stopped the Confederate advance did not interfere withthe plan which General Lyon formed during the day after consultationwith his officers. It was to move out on the night of the ninth and beready to attack by daylight on the tenth. The rebels were camped alongWilson’s Creek for a distance altogether of about three miles, and itwas not likely that they expected General Lyon would seek to troublethem with his greatly inferior numbers. As they expected to move atdaylight, to attack Springfield, they had drawn in their pickets, andconsequently were not aware of the Union advance until it was close uponthem. General Lyon’s plan was to attack both ends of the rebel campat the same time, and for this purpose he divided his forces, sendingGeneral Sigel with his own and Colonel Solomon’s regiments of infantry,a battery of six guns and two companies of regular cavalry to attack theright wing of the rebels on the east side of the Fayetteville road. Atthe same time he proposed, with the remainder of the Union forces, tofall upon the other wing of the enemy’s camp. The movements were to beso timed that the attack would be made at daylight, and General Sigel,in case he got first into position, was to wait for the sound of GeneralLyon’s guns.
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On this plan the two forces marched out of Springfield on the evening ofthe ninth. To how many men was that the last march, including the bravecommander of the Union army of southwest Missouri!
Each column by midnight had reached a point about four miles from therebel camp, and within sight of some of the rebel camp-fires. There themen bivouacked on the field, and waited anxiously for the coming dawn.Daylight glimmered at length in the east, and, with as much silence asis possible to an advancing army, the march was resumed.