Chapter 7

They Take the Rags off the Bush

When Ben McCulloch learned that Governor Claiborne Jackson’s force was safe and that all the available Missouri State Guardsmen could now be concentrated on Cowskin Prairie, he withdrew to Arkansas but remained near the state line. Perhaps because there was so little good news coming out of Missouri, the Southern press greatly played up McCulloch’s invasion of the Union and capture of the Federals at Neosho. The Dallas Herald, for example, described the incident as “the most characteristic thing of Ben we have seen yet.” Aggressive action indeed typified McCulloch. Because he now commanded Bart Pearce’s Arkansas State Troops as well as his own Confederates, he began organizing two brigades that he balanced in strength without regard to the troops’ type of service. The bulk of the Arkansas State Troops, who remained at Camp Walker near Maysville, constituted one brigade, under Pearce’s command. Three miles east of the town McCulloch established Camp Jackson, where he planned to concentrate all of his Confederate forces. Some were still en route from Fort Smith, however, and Greer’s South Kansas-Texas Cavalry continued its long march to the front. To flesh out this second brigade, which he commanded in person, and provide it with artillery and additional cavalry, McCulloch ordered about seven hundred Arkansas State Troops, including Reid’s Fort Smith Battery, to join him at Camp Jackson.¹

In a letter dated July 9, McCulloch explained his recent operations in Missouri to the secretary of war: “Having made the movement without authority, and having accomplished my mission, I determined to fall back to this position and organize a force with a view to future operations.” As a War Department communication of June 26 had already sanctioned a Confederate invasion of Kansas and Missouri at McCulloch’s discretion, the Texan’s reference to lacking authorization is puzzling. It is possible, but unlikely, that McCulloch had by this time received Secretary Walker’s letter of July 4 cautioning him to violate Missouri’s sovereign territory only upon the most dire necessity. The important thing is that McCulloch’s July 9 report envisioned offensive operations in the near future. He wrote: “The force that was marching on the governor’s rear will no doubt move to Springfield, and I think there will be an urgent necessity in the course of a few days to make an attack upon that place, or we will receive an attack from their concentrated forces. Should I receive no instructions in the mean time, I think that I will, together with General Pearce and Price, make an advance upon it as soon as the different forces are sufficiently organized to take the field.” McCulloch may for some reason have grown concerned about the larger implications of his movements. Nevertheless, he was clearly willing to act on his own responsibility, and his plans anticipated a speedy return to Missouri and a decisive campaign against the Federals.²

Like most department commanders in 1861, McCulloch complained constantly to Richmond about his acute lack of arms, ammunition, and money to pay his troops. But he was more than satisfied with his command. “The men are all healthy and in good spirits,” he reported. “They are a fine body of men, and through constant drilling are becoming very efficient. I place a great deal of reliance upon them.”³ In this assessment he made no distinction between his Confederate soldiers and Pearce’s Arkansas State Troops.

Two things soon changed McCulloch’s optimistic outlook. The first was his logistical situation. Less than a week after his aggressive-minded July 9 communication with Secretary Walker, McCulloch abandoned Camp Jackson, withdrawing the brigade there to Bentonville. “I find it impossible to occupy any point near the State line, owing to the scarcity of water and supplies,” he explained in a letter to Sterling Price. He informed the State Guard commander that he hoped to make a personal reconnaissance into Missouri as far north as Cassville and possibly move his brigades to that point. As it turned out, McCulloch advanced with only the mixed Confederate-Arkansas State Troop brigade under his own command, moving from Bentonville a scant seven miles north up the Wire Road to camp at Sugar Creek, where water was readily available. The Southern forces gathered in northwestern Arkansas now numbered almost five thousand. As these men and their horses required about 24,000 pounds of food each day, they could not live off the land for long. Within a week or two at most, McCulloch would either have to advance into Missouri or retire to his supply base at Fort Smith. A move forward meant collecting more wagons, so for the moment the Southerners went nowhere.⁴

Logistical difficulties were only one reason why McCulloch did not return immediately to Missouri. He informed the War Department that he was “anxious” to attack Nathaniel Lyon in Springfield or at least strike his rear to cut the Federals off from supplies and reinforcements. But the “condition of the Missouri troops” made a forward movement impossible. In a letter to Secretary Walker dated July 18, he explained: “[U]pon consulting with General Price . . . I find that his force of 8,000 or 9,000 men is badly organized, badly armed, and now almost entirely out of ammunition. This force was made by the concentration of different commands under their own generals. The consequence is that there is no concert of action among them, and will not be until a competent military man is put in command of the entire force.”⁵

McCulloch’s reference to consulting with Price is interesting, as it is unclear from surviving documents how much time he and Price had been able to spend together or how many Missouri State Guard units McCulloch had actually seen at this point. Yet his letter to Walker suggests that he had little regard for the Missouri soldiers or their leader. The question is why. McCulloch’s concern for the Missourians’ lack of arms and ammunition is readily understandable. Although he loaned over six hundred muskets to the State Guardsmen, they remained poorly equipped to fight a battle. A large number had no arms of any kind, and too many of those who possessed weapons had only shotguns or hunting rifles. As a result of Lyon’s whirlwind campaign, which had kept constant pressure on the State Guard, few had learned more than the rudiments of drill. But if anyone were able to see the potential rather than the liabilities of hastily armed militia, it should have been McCulloch. As a veteran of the rag-tag army that won independence for Texas and as a Ranger who fought in Mexico and led many a scouting expedition against Native Americans, McCulloch would seem to have had little reason to put faith in colorful uniforms, brightly polished buttons, and close-order drill. In any case, the State Guard contained a scattered leavening of Mexican War veterans and several well-disciplined prewar militia units like the Washington Blues of St. Louis, giving it as much potential for future excellence as any gathering of volunteers across the country.

Had the year been 1846 rather than 1861, McCulloch might not have worried as much about the condition of the Missourians. But the circumstances had changed and so had Old Ben. For although he rose to fame as a leader of some of the rowdiest volunteers in American history, in the 1850s McCulloch’s ambition became achieving command of a regiment of U.S. Cavalry. Such Regular soldiers routinely endured levels of discipline that would have caused Texas Rangers to mutiny, yet their world was the one McCulloch longed to join. As of July 1861 McCulloch was the only general in the Confederate army who lacked a West Point education. But when he expressed pride in the level of training of his Confederate and Arkansas State Troop units, he spoke as a man who considered himself a professional soldier, as good as any West Pointer, and in 1861 he apparently had an appreciation for discipline that had not marked his previous military exploits.

The difference in arms and military proficiency between the forces McCulloch commanded and those under Price appears significant but hardly drastic. McCulloch’s concern seems understandable, yet a bit exaggerated. But when McCulloch made his assessment, he was burdened with greater responsibilities and greater uncertainties than he had ever before experienced. He faced as a potential enemy a man who appeared to be able to create troops out of thin air and move them tremendous distances at great speed. Nathaniel Lyon’s name has been obscured by later heroes of the Civil War, and McCulloch left no written record of what he thought of the Connecticut Yankee. But subsequent events suggest that the former Texas Ranger may have been intimidated by his opponent—not by Lyon’s West Point education, but by his performance during the summer of 1861.

It should be noted that McCulloch did not criticize the Missourians themselves, merely their lack of preparation. His statement that they would never be ready for battle “until a competent military man is put in command” was a clear indictment of Price in terms of both his service to date and his future potential.⁶ The fact that McCulloch and Price did not get along is recognized by all biographers, but the reason for their mutual dislike has never been adequately explored. Up to this point the two men had spent a few hours together at most, during which time they should have commiserated on the basis of their similar plight. Like McCulloch, Price scorned West Point pedigrees, and who was better suited to comprehend Price’s challenges in attempting to establish an army without proper governmental support than McCulloch, who dispatched letter after letter to an administration in Richmond that neglected the Trans-Mississippi? Given conditions in Missouri, what more could McCulloch have expected Price to have accomplished in the short time since Lyon’s unilateral declaration of war? What action, or lack of action, on the part of Price by mid-July 1861 could have suggested to McCulloch that he was unfit for command or that he would not cooperate fully and selflessly to achieve their mutual goals?

Perhaps biographers avoid these questions because they cannot be answered with any satisfaction. The two generals’ surviving private correspondence, which is slight, sheds no light on the situation. But for reasons that are unclear, McCulloch formed a low opinion of Price following their first contact. Price was able to inspire extreme devotion among his soldiers, but he never won McCulloch’s confidence. Interestingly, there is no contemporary evidence indicating that Price thought ill of McCulloch at this time.⁷

While pondering his next move, McCulloch continued to concentrate his available forces at either Camp Walker near Maysville or the site on Sugar Creek north of Bentonville that had been christened Camp Yancy. For the common soldier, this was a time of adjustment to military life. Captain R. M. Hinson, who commanded the Moorehouse Guards of the Third Louisiana, was proud of his command. “The boys stood the march much better than I expected,” he wrote after they reached Camp Walker. Hinson’s wife Mattie had accompanied him from Shreveport all the way to Van Buren, so he was now separated from her for the first time. The feelings of affection he expressed to her in a letter on July 10 were doubtless typical of many soldiers in McCulloch’s army who missed their loved ones:

Similar thoughts were expressed by the pen of John Johnson of the First Arkansas Mounted Rifles on July 23:

Hinson was a planter and Johnson a yeoman farmer. Although their letters reveal different levels of education, their words demonstrate that much of what the soldiers experienced cut across class lines. There are parallels too in the confidence they expressed about the future and in their low opinion of the enemy. “In a few days we will probably be face to face with the black republican dutch of Missouri,” Hinson wrote. “The boys are all highly delighted at the idea of getting into some excitement. As for myself, I feel like the dutchman who will kill me is still in Jerusalem.” Johnson was even more blunt, informing his wife, “We still expect to go to Spring Field Missouri where we expect to have a fight and think we can whip five to one.”¹⁰

Pride in hometown and state ran high as the prospects of combat increased. “The boys are burning for a battle,” wrote a soldier from Pulaski County, Arkansas. On parade they were “regular as clock pendlams,” he asserted, and, as a result, “when the Arks, boys goes by they take the rags off the bush.” A civilian who accompanied the Third Louisiana as a teamster observed, “The Shreveport Rangers are looking well and will make their mark along with the balance of the Louisiana boys.” The man’s name is unknown. Some difficulty, perhaps a physical defect, had denied him enlistment in the regiment, yet he was determined to fight despite his civilian status. His words, written for the Shreveport South-Western, testify to the manner in which love of family, pride in country, and concepts of courage were inextricably intertwined for nineteenth-century Americans: “I did not come after office, I came to fight for my country, as a duty I owe to my family and country and when you hear of the 3d La. regiment on the battle-field you will hear of me being in the hottest of it. I have every opportunity of making myself a military man, I can assure you that my whole soul is in it, without fear, not forgetting my family which I left behind, which is near and dear to me.”¹¹

Such letters remind us that although soldiering separated men physically from their loved ones, acute anxiety on the home front made war a community experience. To her son Omer, a lieutenant in the Pulaski Light Battery, Mary E. Weaver wrote: “At times I have the blues so bad it unfits me for my duties. Should one of my boys be sacrificed for his country this world would be a blank to me—but I hope and pray the ‘God of battles’ will shield my dear boys & our brave army.”¹²

The Weavers were one of Little Rock’s most prominent families. Omer Rose Weaver was born in Kentucky in 1837, but the family moved to Arkansas in 1838. Samuel M. Weaver, Omer’s father, built one of Little Rock’s largest and most expensive homes. It included an extensive library, and Omer had every educational advantage growing up, graduating from the University of Nashville in 1856 when only nineteen years old. Working for the U.S. surveyor general in Arkansas, he was a prominent member of Little Rock’s social circle. Active in the local debating club, he spent large sums of money on clothing. A friend wrote of Weaver: “Wearing his light hair falling down his neck in folds, carefully brushed; scrupulous in the slightest detail of dress and person almost to singularity, he was yet so unpretending in his demeanor and unaffectively kind in his sympathies as to disabuse any mind misled by such an impression, so easily discovered to be unworthy of his courteous, consistent, and reliable nature.” In short, Weaver was the sort of young man usually said to exemplify the best of Southern society.¹³

By all accounts Weaver was an excellent young officer. He had joined the Pulaski Light Battery in peacetime, when the men were still called the Tottens. His mother, like many people in Little Rock, seemed personally offended when Captain Totten sided with the Union. “I hope if Old Abe’s disciples do venture on Arkansas soil, they will meet with the warmest reception the country can afford—only to think of it, Totten is in Missouri, wielding the sword we gave him, against us!!” she declared.¹⁴

Mary and Samuel Weaver sent at least six letters to their son during the campaign that led up to the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Some of these were mailed, others delivered by hand. Little Rock’s citizens continued to support “their” military companies as best they could. Civilians constantly journeyed to the military camps, bringing food, clothing, and correspondence from home. In this manner community ties remained strong. In Omer Weaver’s case, the mail service allowed him to carry on a clandestine love affair with Annie, a girl back in Little Rock. The young lady’s last name is unknown. Apparently she and Omer believed that her parents would not approve of the match, as Omer’s mother took great care to deliver Omer’s notes to her, and receive hers to him, in secret. Omer even sent the girl his photograph, which she criticized, writing, “I don’t think the picture is very good but is like you in your Iceberg moods.”¹⁵

These exchanges may seem frivolous, but continued contacts with home folk such as Weaver enjoyed were important in sustaining the morale of the soldiers. Whenever a soldier received a package from home, his whole company might celebrate. Sergeant Ras Stirman of Colonel Gratiot’s Third Arkansas Infantry thanked his sister profusely for “the box of nice things” she sent. “We had the best Supper last night that I ever eat,” he explained. “Only one thing was lacking & that was your presence.” At Camp Walker, Stirman and his friends hunted rabbits for fun, longed for “logger beer,” and attended “one of the greatest hoe downs you ever saw.” In their spare time they swatted flies, which seemed to outnumber the soldiers considerably. But there were occasional reminders that soldiering was by its nature dangerous work. Stirman’s unit was initially camped near the Third Louisiana, but the Pelicans soon shifted to Camp Yancy. There one evening a soldier named James Howard was killed by the accidental discharge of a comrade’s musket. Either because he feared punishment or was ashamed of his action, the man who caused the accident deserted.¹⁶ Disease, of course, remained the men’s greatest fear. Prior to the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, fourteen members of the Third Louisiana died of disease and twenty-six were discharged for medical reasons. Other units suffered comparable losses.¹⁷

To the north of McCulloch’s troops, the bulk of the Missouri State Guard sprawled across Cowskin Prairie. An open area formerly used as a place for slaughtering cattle, it was well positioned as a training camp. Twelve miles north of Pearce’s Brigade at Camp Walker, its center lay three miles from the Arkansas line and three miles east of the Indian Territory. Price established his headquarters at the large home of a prosperous farmer named Benjamin F. Hopkinson. As more and more units arrived, the camp spread westward until some men were camped within half a mile of the Indian Territory.¹⁸

Whatever McCulloch’s opinion of him, Price was doing everything possible to turn his men into competent soldiers. To begin with, he appointed Alexander Early Steen drillmaster for the State Guard. The son of an officer in the U.S. Army, Steen had a checkered career that suggests a love-hate relationship with the military. Born in St. Louis, he was not a West Point graduate, yet he obtained a commission in the Regulars in 1847 and fought in the Mexican War. He resigned at the close of the conflict but was recommissioned in 1852, serving at frontier posts as a lieutenant, first with the Third and then with the Sixth Infantry. Although his father remained loyal to the Union, Steen resigned once again on May 10, the day of the “Camp Jackson Massacre.” On June 18 he became a brigadier general commanding the State Guard’s Fifth Division, replacing Alexander Doniphan. As the Fifth Division was in the extreme northwestern corner of the state, effectively behind enemy lines, Steen was a general without a command, and Price was wise to make use of his Regular Army experience by placing him in charge of training. The soldiers initially resented his high standards but soon came to appreciate them. “The fact is General Steen follows up the old adage and does everything well,” one soldier noted. “The business of camping, or striking tents and marching, is done with the precision of clock work.” Soldiers also valued Steen’s humor, warmth, and accessibility when off duty. A born raconteur, he persevered in his tasks despite poor health.¹⁹

There was plenty of room on Cowskin Prairie to exercise cavalry, infantry, and artillery, and some soldiers recorded that the daily drill sessions lasted from four to six hours. Such a schedule was hardly excessive, but there were other demands on the men besides learning the school of the soldier. The Cowskin Prairie region was sparsely settled, and the relatively few farms nearby were taken over by the military to provide corn and wheat for the men. John Bell of Clark’s Division recalled that “details were sent into the surrounding country, took possession of the wheat fields, threshed the wheat, took it to the neighborhood mills, [and] had it ground into flour that supplied us with bread.” Payment was presumably offered for the produce thus confiscated. The prairie grass on which the State Guard pitched its tents fed not only cavalry and baggage horses, but also a large herd of cattle that had been collected from various points. Henry Cheavens, also of Clark’s Division, recorded in his diary that beef was the staple of the soldiers’ diet, but they supplemented it with potatoes, milk, and honey purchased from local farmers. “It is a fine fruit and grape country,” he noted, which provided additional items to whet the palate. Yet it would not take more than a few weeks for the Missourians to literally “eat out” the region. Like McCulloch, Price would have to either advance or retreat within a short time. With neither railway nor water connections to a supply base, he could not remain stationary for long.²⁰

Food was only one of Price’s logistical concerns. His men needed weapons, ammunition, accoutrements, clothing, and camp equipment of every kind. To take the offensive the Missouri commander not only required additional horses, he also needed wagons, harnesses, and all the tools and supplies necessary to keep horses shod and in good health. Under the circumstances, his nascent quartermaster corps did a remarkable job.

A local newspaper joked that the standard equipment for a soldier in the Missouri State Guard was “a quart of whiskey, one loaf of bread, one pocket Bible, one Barlow knife, and one fine tooth comb.” The reality was even stranger than this good-natured jibe suggests. The quartermaster’s records for Parsons’s Division, for example, indicate that large quantities of supplies were issued between June 28 and July 12. A list of specific items distributed to the men reads like the contents of a general store, and such mercantile establishments may indeed have been the major source for the quartermaster’s procurement. Among other things, the men received cords of wood, matches, candles, and lanterns; tin cups and plates, knives and spoons; tin dippers and water buckets; skillets and baking pans; coffee mills, coffee pots, tea kettles, and mess kettles; hatchets, axes, and spades; rope and nails; weighing scales and flour sifters; butcher knives; and soap, washbasins, and washboards. They were also issued canned tomatoes, tobacco, mustard, pocket handkerchiefs, playing cards, and whiskey.²¹

The State Guard may not have kept complete records, but attempts were made to facilitate such activities. The captains commanding companies in Parsons’s Division were supplied with quires of paper, blank books, pencils, pens, pen holders, bottles of ink, and inkstands. Mounted companies had special needs, and some were able to receive saddles, brushes, curry combs, surcingles, bridles, halters, double-team harnesses, and salt for horses.²²

Clothing was issued, including undershirts, drawers, flannel coats, vests, cotton shirts, and calico shirts. These were presumably civilian rather than military items. The supply of ready-made clothing was clearly inadequate, as large quantities of bulk cloth were distributed, together with clothing patterns. In his diary Cheavens noted, “Cloth was given, and most all went to work making clothes.” Cheavens made himself a pair of pants while others in his company made shirts. His diary entry gives no description of the results, but if everyone used the same color of cloth it would have given his company a common appearance. Cotton trim, which was also issued, was probably used to decorate shirts and pants in a military fashion. Such endeavors may have raised the proportion of the State Guard wearing some matching items, through not necessarily complete uniforms, to nearly 30 percent. The variety of cloth issued—jeans, calico, toweling, twills, bed ticking, hickory shirting, blue and brown drill cloth, osnaburg, striped cotton cloth, lindsey, cottonade, satinet, and cassimere—worked against standardization. As the average soldier probably had little experience with needle and thread, the results must have been wonders to behold. When one considers the combination of such camp-engendered sartorial efforts, the variety of prewar militia uniforms, uniforms made hastily by home folk at the outbreak of the war, and the ordinary civilian clothing that so many of the men wore, the Missourians gathered at Cowskin Prairie presented an appearance unique in the annals of the Civil War.²³

When not sewing, the men labored to manufacture ammunition for small arms and artillery. Thanks to Governor Jackson’s efforts, a substantial supply of powder reached the camp, as did bulk lead from the nearby Granby Mines. Details of men formed musket balls by melting the lead in cast-iron skillets and pouring it into hastily fashioned wooden molds. It was crude work and a particularly unpleasant assignment beneath the blazing summer sun. The production of artillery ammunition was an even greater challenge. As there was no way to manufacture solid shot or explosive shell, it was fortunate that the State Guard batteries already had a reasonable supply of these. But there was an acute shortage of canister, an artillery round that was essentially a tin can filled with iron spheres just over one inch in diameter. Because iron could not be melted over a campfire, iron bars were simply cut into crude slugs and loaded into metal cylinders turned out by the owner of a local tin shop.²⁴ But even their best efforts gave Price barely enough ammunition for a single battle.

Although ammunition was precious, a practice range was established to give the men experience firing live ammunition. While there were many experienced hunters in the ranks, it is one of the great myths of American history that such skills gave men an advantage on the battlefield. The most formidable soldiers in Western civilization during the nineteenth century, common British infantrymen, rarely handled firearms before enlisting. Training, as Ben McCulloch had begun to realize, was more important than frontier traditions. Colonel John Burbridge of Clark’s Division was the firing range instructor. A soldier recalled him as “a slender man of less than medium height, very erect and graceful, wearing an officer’s coat and cap of the old militia.” Burbridge made “a notable appearance on the field,” despite the fact that he rode “a very unwarlike, under-sized bay horse.” The artillery crews trained under Captain Hiram Bledsoe. Known affectionately as “Old Hi,” he was said to love his guns “more than a cavalryman loves his horse or a shepherd his dog.”²⁵

Like the men under McCulloch, those serving with Price took pride in their service and were confident of their ability to defeat the Federals. “Our Brigade is poorly armed, but makes up for it in strong hearts,” a State Guard soldier wrote in his diary. “There can be no such word as fail with such brave men.” Because of the chaotic conditions, communities in Missouri were not able to follow “their” companies with the same regularity as did home folk in other states, North and South. But the little news that did reach home was greeted with pride and confidence. In early July the editor of the Liberty Tribune in Clay County, 185 miles north of Cowskin Prairie, could inform his readers only that the town’s company was reported to be in the southwestern corner of the state. Yet he had no doubt of its performance in any future contest, writing: “We all venture to predict that if there is any fighting to be done the gallant boys of Old Clay will do their whole duty.”²⁶

Lyon faced problems similar to those that plagued his opponents. His forces were camped in an irregular semicircle stretching from positions just south of Springfield to the village of Little York, approximately ten miles to the west. Lyon issued strict orders for the protection of private property, and relatively few problems arose regarding discipline. There was considerable shifting about over the next two weeks, from mid-July until the end of the month; but in general the troops under Captain Sweeny occupied Springfield itself and camps in the south, while the men in the columns of Lyon and Sturgis who had arrived more recently camped to the west. Most of the men seemed comfortable, although some still lacked tents and were forced to lie in the open. One of the Regulars who accompanied Lyon from St. Louis recalled that they set up camp among shady trees on a hilltop. An All Hazard boy from Atchison wrote home that the Kansans were established in a pleasant natural amphitheater one mile in diameter. “[I]n the center is a cave, out of which flows an almost exhaustless stream of pure water,” he noted. Artillery was posted at strategic points to guard against attack. The First Iowa, stationed at Pond Springs, three miles from Little York, was impressed by the staunch Unionist sentiments of the locals and the Home Guard company they had formed. “Although small, Little York is true as steel,” a soldier informed his home folk in Muscatine.²⁷

Rest was welcome, but acute clothing shortages fueled discontent among the common soldiers. Regulars and volunteers alike had worn out almost everything while en route to Springfield. The Iowans left particularly vivid accounts of their plight. A soldier in the Muscatine Grays described his fellows as having blistered feet due to dilapidated shoes and trousers repaired with bits of carpet, coffee sacks, or scrap flannel. Only their coats were in good shape, as they were accustomed to march in their shirt sleeves.²⁸ A correspondent to the Dubuque Weekly Times contrasted the natty precampaign appearance of the Governor’s Grays with their current condition:

One must allow for journalistic exaggeration, but all sources agree that Lyon’s men were severely ragged, the Iowans extremely so. Ironically, while at Springfield the Governor’s Grays did get a package from the ladies of Dubuque. When opened it revealed dozens of havelocks—cloths designed to drape over the men’s caps and hang down behind to protect their necks from the sun. The Grays sent their thanks to “the fair manufacturers and donors,” but they doubtless would have preferred receiving almost anything else.³⁰

Food was an even more pressing problem. Like Price, Lyon detailed soldiers to collect corn and wheat from surrounding farms and take it to local mills. Once ground, it was carried to Springfield bakeries, where men detached from Sigel’s Third Missouri and Salomon’s Fifth Missouri were “turning out loaves as fast as they could.” Lyon paid $1.00 per bushel for grain, a “handsome price,” according to one observer. Milling and baking went on twenty-four hours a day but produced an insufficient supply of food. As shortages continued, word of the soldiers’ difficulties filtered back to their hometowns. “Much complaint is made at the tardiness with which our troops are supplied with necessary stores and provisions,” a Kansas paper reported.³¹

The Iowans gave their encampment at Pond Springs the derisive title “Camp Mush,” as cornmeal mixed with water was their sole government ration for days.³² The laws of supply and demand allowed farmers living near Springfield to reap exorbitant profits. According to the diary of William W. Branson of the Muscatine Volunteers, the Iowans had been on one-quarter rations for several days prior to their arrival in the Springfield vicinity. “The fare that we get now is fifty per cent below that the slaves get here or in any other state,” he recorded angrily en route. As soon as they set up their tents at Pond Springs, local civilians began to take advantage of their situation. On July 22 Branson wrote, “The farmers are now making it a practice of bringing in loads of provisions, pies, biscuit, corn bread, & selling them to us soldiers for two prices, knowing that we are short of eatables.” On another occasion he lamented, “No bread for supper to night, only what we procure with our own money.”³³ According to Franc Wilkie, the civilian correspondent following the campaign, these deprivations threatened to compromise the men’s effectiveness. “What men so clothed and fed can fight with any degree of spirit and determination?” he asked his readers.³⁴

To make matters even worse, several hundred civilians dislocated by the passage of the armies fled to Springfield, where they camped in squalor, demanding government assistance. Their complaints took up so much of Lyon’s time that he finally organized a wagon train and shipped many of them, along with the sick from his army, to Rolla. Unionist congressman John Phelps took charge of this exodus, which included as escort the Home Guard he had organized in Springfield. Meanwhile, Phelps’s wife Mary, accompanied by her slaves, distributed food from their farm to the soldiers at Springfield on a daily basis, without charge.³⁵

Rolla was Lyon’s supply base, and, as the railway ran from there to St. Louis, it should have given him a much more secure logistical base than either Price or McCulloch enjoyed. But Lyon was no longer the master of events in Missouri. On July 3 the War Department had created a new Western Department, embracing Illinois and the states and territories west of the Mississippi, under the command of Major General John Charles Frémont. A Mexican War hero known as the “Pathfinder” from his days as an explorer, Frémont was in 1856 the first Republican candidate for president. He became Lyon’s superior partly due to the influence of Frank Blair Jr., who had traveled to Washington, leaving his First Missouri Infantry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George L. Andrews. Like Lyon, Frémont was an ardent foe of slavery and a man of driving energy. Blair had every reason to expect Lyon and Frémont to work well together.³⁶

Unfortunately, Frémont did not reach his St. Louis headquarters until July 25. Lyon’s pleas for increased support before that date were lost in the great bureaucratic void of the War Department. Within days of reaching Springfield, he sent several communications to Washington outlining his position. He now had more than 7,000 men concentrated in southwestern Missouri, but none of them had received any pay and their clothes were disintegrating. Despite the best efforts of the officers he had left in St. Louis and Rolla to procure food and ship it to Springfield, the men he now styled members of the Army of the West were forced to endure acute shortages. As a consequence, he expected few of his ninety-day volunteers to reenlist when their terms of service expired in late July and early August. This might leave him with no more than 4,000 men to face the combined forces of Price and McCulloch, which he estimated to be 30,000 strong.³⁷

Lyon requested food, clothing, and 10,000 men as reinforcements. What he received was an order detaching Captain Sweeny and many of the Regulars for service elsewhere. As Lyon was noted for his temper, his reply to this potentially devastating directive was remarkably calm. On July 17 he wrote another letter to the War Department, patiently explaining his needs and his peril once again, concluding that he would “delay” executing the order to detach Sweeny and the Regulars until the authorities in Washington had time to reconsider his requests. Lyon could not legally prevent his volunteers from leaving when their enlistments expired, but as a career Regular Army officer he knew how to deal with bureaucrats. Sweeny stayed put.³⁸

Lyon had traveled far and accomplished much, but it must have seemed to him like the world was closing in. Several contemporaries commented on his fatigue and despair during this period.³⁹ Far from being defeated, he responded with characteristic aggression. He would attack the enemy immediately, and Sweeny, whose importance in Missouri seemed to be questioned by the desk-bound strategists in Washington, would lead the attack.