CHAPTER XIV. LOSSES IN BATTLE--THE RETREAT.
|We expected to pick up one or two of the wounded men into my wagonon our way back,” said Harry, “but found we did n’t have to. The otherwagons had followed close behind us, and gathered up all who could n’twalk or take care of themselves. Some of the country people were outlooking after them, too, and by this time everybody ought to be caredfor in some way. But, of course, there ‘ll be a great deal of sufferingunder the best of circumstances, as there is a great number of woundedmen on both sides.” And Harry was right; there was a great number ofwounded in proportion to the number of men engaged. It has been said bystudents of warfare that down to that time there had never been in theUnited States a battle in which the proportion of casualties wasas great as at Wilson’s Creek, and without stopping to examine thehistories of all previous battles this is a safe assertion. Let us lookat the figures:
The total of the Union forces was not far from five thousand fourhundred, including officers and men. They lost in the battle two hundredand fifty-eight killed, eight hundred and seventy-three wounded, and onehundred eighty-six missing, a total of casualties of one thousand threehundred and seventeen; or, deducting the missing, we have of killed andwounded on the field of Wilson’s Creek, one thousand one hundred andthirty-one, or more than one in five of all who were present; and it isgenerally considered by military men that where the killed and woundedare one-tenth of the total on the field the battle is a severe one.
The rebel reports place their effective force on the tenth of Augustat ten thousand one hundred and seventy-five, of which two hundred andseventy-nine were killed and nine hundred and fifty-one wounded, a totalof one thousand two hundred and thirty, or about one man in nine of thewhole force. Even this was a heavy loss, but much smaller in proportionwhen compared with that of General Lyon’s army.
Colonel Blair’s regiment, the First Missouri, had seven hundred andtwenty-six men under arms when it went into battle. Its loss wasthree hundred and thirteen, or almost one-half its entire number.Seventy-seven of its men were killed, ninety-three dangerously wounded,one hundred and twenty-six otherwise wounded, two were captured andfifteen were missing at the next roll-call. The First Kansas lost twohundred and ninety-six men out of seven hundred and eighty-five; theSecond Kansas, the First Iowa, and in fact all the other regiments onthe field lost severely, but not as heavily in proportion as did theFirst Missouri and the First Kansas.
Another notable circumstance of the battle was the large number of thoseengaged in it under Lyon who afterward rose to high rank. From thatlittle army eight officers rose to be major-generals before the endof the war, and thirteen to be brigadier-generals. Many of the menwho fought in the ranks became captains, majors and colonels. In 1863thirty-two commissioned officers were in the service from one company ofthe First Iowa, and twenty-eight from one company of the First Missouri.And through all the noble records they made during the war for thepreservation of the Union, one of their proudest boasts was, “I was atWilson’s Creek with Lyon.”
Among those who rose to be major-generals were Schofield, Stanley,Steele, Granger, Sturgis, Herron, Sigel and Osterhaus; while of thebrigadier-generals were Carr, Plummer, Halderman, Mitchell, Dietzler,Sweeney, Totten, Clayton and Gilbert. Some of these officers coveredthemselves with glory in subsequent campaigns, and their names arefamiliar to the veterans of the war and will live in the history of thecountry.
All this, time we have left Jack and Harry talking about the battle, andparticularly about the experience of the latter in accompanying the flagof truce.
Their conversation was cut short by an order to be in readiness tomove at any moment. Evidently this meant that the army was to abandonSpringfield, which it could hardly hope to hold for any length of timeafter the result of the day’s fighting.
“If they ‘ll allow us,” said Jack, “we’ll keep our wagons close togetherand help each other all we can.”
“Of course we will,” was the prompt reply. “We shall probably follow ourregiment, unless the train gets mixed up on the road and the wagons arescattered.”
“I don’t know much about it,” said Jack, “but it seems to me that therebs could make it very lively for us if they wanted to. Here we’ve gota long train of wagons, we’re a hundred and thirty miles from the endof the railway, and there’s a river to cross on the way, besides lotsof small streams and miles of woods, where they could drop on us at anytime before we knew they were there.”
“Anyway, we ‘ll hope for the best,” responded Harry, “and see how thingsturn out. Wonder who’s to command the army now that General Lyon’sdead?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find that out, though, pretty soon.”
Before the march began they ascertained that the retreat was to beconducted by General Sigel. Major Sturgis, who had assumed commandimmediately after Lyon’s death, refused to hold it longer, on the groundthat General Sigel’s commission in the volunteer service was superiorto his own as a major in the regular army. Accordingly General Sigelassumed command with the assent of all the regular officers, and ordereda retreat to Rolla.
Had the rebels chosen to give trouble they could have given a greatdeal. The road to Rolla was none of the best. It was crowded withthe wagons of Union men who were fleeing in terror at the threatenedapproach of the rebels, and the army had a train of wagons nearly fivemiles long to encumber its movements. If the rebels had attacked it onthe road, they would have had a great advantage over the soldiers whohad been defeated at Wilson’s Creek. Brave as these men were, a defeatedarmy is never as good at fighting as one that has not suffered in thatway.
But the retreating army was not molested, and in five days it hadcrossed the Gasconade river and was in a place of safety. As soon as ithad passed the Gasconade Major Sturgis discovered that he was really theranking officer, owing to the expiration of Sigel’s commission, or sometechnicality concerning it, and therefore he demanded the command.
Sigel was disinclined to yield it then, but rather than have trouble hedid so, though had he foreseen the result it is quite probable that hewould have refused. The commanding officer was entitled to write thereport of the battle, and accordingly the report was written by MajorSturgis. At that time there was a great deal of ill-feeling on the partof many of the regular officers toward the volunteers. They looked withcontempt, often undisguised, upon the soldiers who had come from civilpursuits or had not made military matters the occupation of theirlives. This feeling gradually wore away, though it was never entirelyobliterated, but in the early part of the war there was much more of itthan was good for the service.
General Lyon had none of this feeling, but this was far from beingthe case with the regular officers under him. And their contempt forvolunteers was especially strong toward the Germans. They had few goodwords for the Teutons who wore the blue, especially when those Teutonswere commissioned officers.
General Sigel, having brought the column from its perilous position atSpringfield to a point where it was out of danger, certainly deservedto have something to say about the official report, especially when thatreport placed upon him the responsibility for the defeat of the Unionforces and the victory of the rebels. It should be remarked that theofficial reports do not show any loss in killed and wounded on the partof the two companies of regular cavalry that accompanied Sigel in thebattle of Wilson’s Creek, though four men are reported missing from oneof those companies. With the exception of these four missing men allthe loss of Sigel’s column was borne by his infantry and artillery, allvolunteers and nearly all Germans.
At daybreak on the morning of the eleventh of August the head of theretreating army marched out of Springfield in the direction of Rolla andthe rising sun. Five miles from Springfield there is a road coming infrom the direction of Wilson’s Creek, and it was feared that the rebelsmight have pushed on a force during the night to contest the passage ofthe fugitives beyond this point. Had they done so, the great wagon-trainwould certainly have been in peril.
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But no enemy appeared, and there was an agreeable disappointment on thepart of many of those in retreat. To none was this more the case than toHarry and Jack, who did not relish the idea of losing their wagons andthe property in their charge. Somehow the horses and mules seemed tocatch the spirit of retreat and to feel that they were in danger. Oneof the drivers declared that he had never known them to pull half asearnestly as they did on the first day out of Springfield. He was surethey were solid for the Union and did n’t want to fall into Johnny Reb’shands.
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All along the road there was the wildest alarm among the inhabitantswho had espoused the Union cause. They felt that their lives would bein peril as soon as the army had passed, and many of them had alreadypacked their wagons and were fleeing toward Rolla with whateverhousehold goods they could carry away. They abandoned homes and farms,everything that they were unable to carry, and the spectacle presentedby these fleeing refugees was a pathetic one. They filled the road bothin front of and behind the army, and for weeks and weeks afterward asteady stream of them poured into the Union lines. We shall have more tosay about these unfortunates by and by.
At last, after many trials and tribulations, the disheartened and wearyarmy was encamped at Rolla, where the welcome whistle of the locomotiveresounded through the air. The campaign of the southwest was ended,and the footsore warriors had an opportunity to gain the rest they sogreatly needed.
Jack and Harry parked their wagons with the rest of the train, andwondered what would happen next.
“We’ve had a lively time of it, Jack,” said Harry; “but I’m not sorry wecame.”
“Nor I either,” was the reply; “and I’m in no hurry to go home. Let’swait here awhile and see what’s going to turn up.”
This was agreed to, and they sat down to wait.