As dawn broke, Sigel was able to assess his situation more fully. The knoll he occupied rose almost 150 feet above the southeastern edge of the Sharp farm, where many enemy cavalrymen were camped. Joseph Sharp’s “large white house” stood a mile away, to the northwest, fronting the Wire Road that constituted the Southern army’s logistical lifeline. Sigel could see Sharp’s backyard and two large fields, roughly rectangular in shape, adjacent to the south. The fields were enclosed by split rail fencing, although some of the rails may have disappeared to feed campfires. The field farthest from Sigel, closest to the Sharp house, had been planted in corn. No doubt hungry Southerners picked it clean in short order, as a large herd of cattle belonging to the army was placed in the enclosure. The second, larger field adjoining it had been previously harvested and was now in stubble. The eastern edges of the fields paralleled Wilson Creek, the land dropping off toward the creek bottom near the fence line. A farm road ran along their western border. To the north, this road joined the Wire Road at Sharp’s house, while from the southwestern corner of the stubble field it ran southeast to the John Dixon farm.1
The area was slightly familiar to Sigel, as the Army of the West had tramped past the Sharp farm on its way to and from Dug Springs. Some memory of it and the general topography of the place probably influenced him when he persuaded Nathaniel Lyon to divide his forces for a two-pronged attack. From his elevated position, the determined colonel could now see perhaps a quarter of the Southern army. Hundreds of men were milling about the stubble field and moving in and out of tents that lined its eastern edge. Others, including infantry and artillery, occupied camps on both sides of the creek, although Sigel could have seen only glimpses of them due to the trees along the stream. The scene was a strange mixture of order and disorder. The concentration of the enemy’s baggage train on the Wire Road suggested that the Southerners were preparing to advance. Some cavalry units were mounting up, while others still had their horses picketed. Smoke rose from many dozens of campfires, and no one showed the least concern for security.2
After consulting with Colonel Salomon, Sigel began positioning his brigade. The civilian guides were evidently uncertain about the condition of the roads ahead, as Sigel feared he would have difficulty fording Wilson Creek with his artillery. He therefore ordered two sections (four guns) from Backof’s Missouri Light Artillery to be deployed on the knoll itself. The hill made an excellent artillery platform, and the prospect of dropping shells onto the sleepy camp was irresistible, despite the long range. Sigel was unconcerned that his movements on the hilltop might be spotted by the enemy below, as he expected to hear Lyon’s initial fire any moment. But once the guns opened, the battery might be vulnerable to the Southerners camped on the eastern side of the creek. As a precaution he ordered Captain Eugene Carr’s company of the First Cavalry to take a position due north of the guns. Because the Fifth Missouri’s Company K, commanded by Captain Samuel A. Flagg, was already detailed to guard the prisoners, Flagg’s men remained with the guns on the knoll where they could provide support if necessary. To fulfill the primary mission of blocking the Wire Road in the rear of the Southern army, Sigel sent the rest of the infantry and the remaining section of artillery down the ravine toward the Dixon farm. The Second Dragoons, led by Lieutenant Charles E. Farrand, a New Yorker who had graduated from West Point in 1857, rode ahead.3
According to Sigel, it was 5:30 A.M. when he first heard the sound of Lyon’s musketry from the north. At his signal, the largely amateur artillerymen of the Missouri Light Artillery jerked their lanyards, beginning what turned out to be, for its modest size, one of the most effective longrange bombardments of the Civil War. Sigel proudly recalled that it had “a ‘stirring’ effect on the enemy, who were preparing breakfast.” In fact, it produced chaos. Private John T. Buegel of the Third Missouri noted gleefully, “It was a funny sight to see them running about in confusion.”4
The Southerners who came under fire in Sharp’s fields did not all respond identically. Some maintained their discipline, quickly moving out of harm’s way, while others fled and took no further part in the battle. The majority rallied only after a lengthy period of confusion. Southern accounts of what took place admit to considerable disorder but tend to downplay both its duration and importance.
McCulloch, Pearce, and Price seem to have given little thought to which troops occupied the Sharp property, as units from all three components of the Western Army were there. Colonel Elkanah Greer’s Confederate South Kansas-Texas Cavalry was approximately 800 strong. A company of horsemen from Arkansas, probably numbering fewer than 100 men, camped with the Texans. Led by a Captain Dalrymple, they were apparently Confederate rather than Arkansas State Troops, as McCulloch placed them under Greer’s command. Colonel De Rosey Carroll’s First Arkansas Cavalry, which belonged to the Arkansas State Troops, had 350 men. The Missouri State Guard was represented by two units: Colonel William B. Brown’s 320 troopers from Parsons’s Division and 273 horsemen from Clark’s Division under Lieutenant Colonel James Patrick Major. Though relatively few of the enlisted men were experienced, two of their leaders could boast substantial accomplishments. Greer, as noted earlier, was a veteran of the Mexican War. Major, a native of Fayette, Missouri, was a West Point graduate who had served in Texas with the Second U.S. Cavalry before resigning his commission at the outbreak of the Civil War. Only twenty-five, he was heavyset, with thick eyebrows and a drooping, walrus mustache. The camp as a whole was under the command of Brigadier General Alexander Steen, who had acted as drillmaster for the Missouri State Guard since the encampment at Cowskin Prairie.5
The mounted units totaled over 1,500 men. It is unclear who appointed Steen to oversee them, or even why, as they were not organized into a tactical formation. True, the terrain separated them somewhat from the rest of the army, but they were hardly so isolated as to need an independent commander. Steen probably held only a figurehead position. Indeed, his real job may have been to look after the almost 2,000 unarmed State Guardsmen and a number of camp followers—slaves, women, and perhaps even children—who had accompanied the Western Army despite McCulloch’s attempts to leave them behind. Most of these were apparently camped on the Sharp property, although their precise location is unknown.6
The northeastern corner of Sharp’s cornfield ran right up to the creek. Greer’s Texans, who had left most of their tents behind, camped in “a skirt of timber” that lined the stream. They had been preparing to move to the Wire Road when rain canceled the night march on August 9. Greer interpreted McCulloch’s orders that the army should sleep on its arms so literally that most of his men simply stretched out on the ground, the reins of their still-saddled horses in hand. This could not have been conducive to rest, nor would the men have been happy when Greer roused them to feed their horses a full hour before sunrise, while almost everyone else in the Southern camp remained asleep. Although the colonel allowed the men to boil coffee, he restricted them to cold food, as he expected the army to march on Springfield at dawn. The Texans finished their unsatisfactory meal at first light.7
The acoustic shadow that prevented McCulloch and Price from discerning the opening fire on the northern spur of Bloody Hill affected those positioned at the Sharp farm in the same fashion, for they did not hear any sound from the initial engagement. Greer learned that a battle had erupted when a staff officer arrived from McCulloch, ordering the South Kansas-Texas Cavalry to take up a position at the ford where the Wire Road crossed Wilson Creek. He gave orders for his men to form up, but before word reached all of the companies Sigel’s surprise bombardment alerted them to danger in their rear. Bugler Albert Blocker recalled the shock of hearing “an awful explosion” near the creek. Within moments a second shell “came crashing through the tree tops” directly over his own unit, the Texas Hunters of Harrison County. These were perhaps Greer’s best men, armed with Colt’s repeating rifles, and Captain Thomas W. Winston soon had them in line. The colonel wanted Winston’s men to act as the anchor of the formation, the head of a column of ten companies, but it proved difficult to assemble the troopers under fire.8
For one thing, some of the Texans had disobeyed their commander’s orders to sleep on their arms; others had strayed from camp. Douglas Cater, the music teacher who had joined the nattily dressed but miserably armed Rusk County Cavalry, was washing his face at the creek when a shell burst near him. He scurried to rejoin his company. Another soldier, Irish-born B. L. Thomas, had actually chained and padlocked his horse to a tree the night before. When the firing erupted he was unable to open the lock and fled in panic. Indeed, as one soldier recalled with unusual candor, some of the Texans “skedattled not less than three quarters of a mile before their officers could rally them.” A number of these men never returned to the fight, and a few others made no attempt to join it in the first place. Stephen M. Hale, a forty-seven-year-old farmer elected captain of the Wigfall Cavalry, Company D, made a surprising discovery about two of his men once the bombardment began:
There were two privates in Company D . . . who had become notorious for their bravado on the march up from Texas, having bragged incessantly about what they would do to the Yankees when they caught them. But as their company moved out in the face of Sigel’s artillery, both men found themselves overcome by a sudden indisposition. “Captain Hale,” they cried, “Where must we go? We are sick.” “Go to h[ell], you d[amned] cowards!” the disgusted captain replied. “You were the only two fighting men I had until now we are in a battle, and you’re both sick. I don’t care [where] you go.”9
Panic and confusion not only reduced the Texans’ numerical strength, it severely weakened the unit’s combat effectiveness by destroying its command structure. After only five of the regiment’s companies, plus Dalrymple’s Arkansans, had assembled, Greer led them up the Wire Road toward the ford in the mistaken belief that the entire regiment was following him. He soon had to move his horsemen off the road into the adjoining brush to skirt the baggage train. The remaining five companies were late in reaching the road. They were either more disrupted than the others or encountered difficulty passing through Sharp’s fences. The circumstances are not clear, but arrangement of the Texans’ camp probably led them to take a different exit from the cornfield than the other companies. By the time they entered the road, Greer and the others were hidden by the baggage wagons and hundreds of the unarmed members of the Missouri State Guard, attempting to get out of harm’s way. With no one in charge and uncertain of which direction to take, they did nothing for some time.10
Major George W. Chilton finally assumed command of Companies G and H, the Deadshot Rangers and the Cypress Guards. A thirty-three-year-old native of Kentucky, Chilton was a former member of the Texas legislature as well as a delegate to the recent secession convention. Although one of the most outspoken defenders of slavery in eastern Texas, he owned only five slaves himself, far fewer than most of his fellow officers in Greer’s regiment. One or more of his slaves may have accompanied him to Wilson’s Creek. Historians cannot document the views of such “body servants,” as they were called, but a few were seen to fight side by side with their masters and at least one was wounded. Unable to locate Greer, Chilton and his men joined a group of Missouri State Guard cavalrymen and rode toward Bloody Hill. The remaining Texans—the Kaufman County Cavalry, the Cass County Cavalry, and the Smith County Cavalry (Companies F, I, and K)—were badly disorganized. Lieutenant Colonel Walter P. Lane eventually restored order to these commands. A forty-four-year-old native of Ireland considered to be “a legend in his own time,” Lane was a San Jacinto veteran, a colorful adventurer “full of blarney and bombast” who had made a fortune in mining. Not knowing where either Greer or Chilton had gone, he led the three companies into the trees along the creek for safety, where they remained idle.11
Once Greer reached the ford of Wilson Creek and realized that only a portion of his regiment had accompanied him, he sent his adjutant, Matthew D. Ector, back to the Sharp farm to find the errant companies. Ector was equally concerned with locating his missing thirteen-year-old son Walton, whom he had left in the care of the regimental chaplain, the Reverend Clemens. Ector could not find them (they emerged safely that afternoon), nor was he able to get any of the horsemen headed toward Greer. Because of the confusion caused by Sigel’s bombardment, the South Kansas-Texas Cavalry was split into three battalions under Greer, Chilton, and Lane.12
Churchill’s First Arkansas Mounted Rifles and Carroll’s First Arkansas Cavalry were camped just south of Greer’s Texans, but in the open field without any shelter. Early that morning one of Carroll’s company commanders, a Captain Ramsaur of the Augusta Cavalry, left the camp for a nearby spring, perhaps seeking a cleaner source of drinking water than the creek, as his men were downstream from the rest of the army. Ramsaur’s route is unknown, but at some point he spotted Sigel’s column and rode back to camp to raise the alarm. Yet despite his impassioned warnings, Churchill refused to believe that the enemy could be approaching from an unexpected direction. The captain was vindicated only minutes later as the first of Sigel’s shells screamed overhead. As the men’s horses were unsaddled and picketed, the artillery fire reduced the two units of Arkansans to a disorganized mob within minutes. Some of the frightened soldiers abandoned their mounts and fled northwest, directly away from the enemy’s fire, heading toward the Wire Road where it ran through a patch of woods on a hill overlooking the Sharp farm. They took no further part in the battle. Others who followed the same route maintained more discipline, escaping with their horses, but at least an hour passed before Churchill and Carroll were able to rally a substantial portion of their respective men. Although the Arkansans’ effectiveness was greatly reduced, they finally returned to the Wire Road, moving toward the ford of the creek as their leaders searched for someone to give them orders.13
The Missourians camped in the southernmost stretches of Sharp’s fields were also caught by surprise. Early that morning Lieutenant Colonel Richard H. Musser had approached Colonel Major with orders for the State Guard cavalry. Musser was judge advocate general for Clark’s Division and volunteer aide to its commanding general. He informed Major that Clark wanted the horsemen to join him near Price’s headquarters. This proved difficult, as the bombardment caught the unit just as the men were saddling up. “The horses, being untrained, became so restive under fire that I was unable to form my men in camp,” Major recalled. He therefore ordered them to follow the Arkansans into the distant woods and rally there. But few of the frightened soldiers halted once they reached the trees, and a great deal of time passed before Major was able to reestablish even the beginnings of control. Meanwhile, Clark grew so anxious for cavalry support that he sent both another volunteer aide, Captain Joseph B. Finks, and his adjutant general, Colonel Casper W. Bell, to find out why Major was taking so long. Together, the three officers eventually rallied about one hundred men plus twenty-odd stragglers from other units. Most of the stalwarts were from the Windsor Guards, commanded by a Captain Burriss. As Major moved this small force toward the sounds of firing on Bloody Hill, he joined Chilton’s battalion of Texans. The two remnant units acted as support for the infantry of McBride’s Division rather than Clark’s, apparently because they encountered these men first. Sigel’s bombardment thus not only reduced Major’s combat effectiveness by two-thirds, it further jumbled the organization of the Southern army.14
The State Guardsmen commanded by Colonel Brown were closest to Sigel’s guns, yet they came under the least direct fire, as most of the shells passed over their heads. These were men from Parsons’s Division in central Missouri, with company designations ranging from fanciful (the Osage Tigers) to cumbersome (the Clark Township Southern Guards). For reasons that are unclear, three additional units had been placed under Brown’s command. Captain Charles L. Crews led a company of undesignated mounted infantry, while captains named Stapes and Alexander commanded cavalry battalions whose identities remain unknown. Mystery also shrouds the campsite and actions of the handful of Cherokee who had joined the army. If they were camped on Sharp’s property, they probably panicked as badly as the other horsemen there. In any case, despite Brown’s “gallant and desperate attempt to form his men,” they fled for the timber. Hours passed before Brown was able to assemble some two hundred men from his original force and report with them to Price’s headquarters at the Edwards farm. In Price’s absence McCulloch placed them under Greer’s command.15
The effects of the Union bombardment exceeded Sigel’s wildest expectations. Unluckily, however, a Southern prisoner had escaped just moments before the Union guns opened fire. Details of the incident are unknown, but Sigel had to assume that the enemy would soon receive accurate information regarding his numbers and location. He considered abandoning the knoll altogether, but the artillery was having such good effect that he was loath to move it. He decided to ride after the main column to hasten its movement. One of Backof’s subalterns, Lieutenant Frederick Schaeffer, remained to direct the continuing bombardment.16
Farrand’s dragoons had meanwhile followed the road southwest to the bottom of the ravine, crossed Wilson Creek at a ford, and climbed onto a small plateau. The infantry and artillery followed without difficulty. Mixed scrub growth lay to their right, but on the left the land was cleared and fenced in. These twenty acres of fields belonged to John Dixon, whose farmhouse they reached just after the road turned sharply to the northwest.17
Sigel joined the column at the Dixon farm. In their passage through the property the Federals tore down some of Dixon’s fences. This was a small incident on the scale of things, but emblematic of the helplessness and suffering of all the civilians living near Wilson Creek that day.18
Continuing up the road, the Federals discovered a small party of Southerners in the ravine through which Terrell Creek ran. These were probably foragers, but Farrand assumed that they were pickets and ordered his horsemen to charge. The enemy fled so swiftly to the southwest that it avoided either capture or casualties. Farrand was disappointed, but his men had at least driven the enemy away from the Southern camp so that no alarm could be raised.19
Once the Federals crossed Terrell Creek, they emerged onto the plateau farmed by the Sharp family. The southern end of the stubble field, marking the farthest extent of the Southern camp, lay less than a quarter of a mile due north. Across the intervening scrub oak and prairie grass the Federals could see that it was now almost deserted, thanks to the effective artillery bombardment. The few Southerners who remained nearby seemed not to notice as the Union soldiers continued along the road, turning north at the edge of the fence. Within moments they began capturing prisoners, men too frightened or demoralized to make any resistance.20
From atop the knoll, the four guns from the Missouri Light Battery continued their pounding. North of them, Captain Carr ordered his sixty-five cavalrymen to dismount. While one man in four held horses, the remainder opened fire with their carbines. Carr realized that the range was too great “to do much execution,” but he wanted “to give them an idea of my being there.” Not content with his passive role, and perhaps smarting from his recent arrest, Carr then pushed farther north until he was more than half a mile from the artillery he was supposed to be protecting. This was an irresponsible move, as it left him out of communication with the knoll and placed his company perilously close to the southernmost camps on the eastern side of Wilson Creek. It gave him a superb view of the enemy, however, and what he saw caused him great alarm. Looking southwest, he observed Sigel’s column on the road paralleling Sharp’s stubble field. The Federals appeared to be unaware that a portion of the Southerners were rallying. Some were gathering around the Sharp farm, while others were beginning to move south in the low ground along the eastern edge of the stubble field. A short march would place them squarely on Sigel’s flank. Carr immediately dispatched a trooper to warn Sigel of the danger, then started his own company back toward the knoll.21
About the time Carr was becoming concerned, Sigel halted his column and sent a messenger back toward the knoll, instructing the detached forces to rejoin him. This action was long overdue, as almost an hour had passed since the battle opened and the brigade was dangerously dispersed. Whereas Sigel’s messenger needed only five minutes to reach the knoll, the inexperienced gunners of the Missouri Light Artillery would require some ten minutes to limber their guns. Because of the ravines and the necessity of fording two creeks, the artillery would take about fifteen minutes to reach the main column. Sigel must have known, therefore, that it would take the entire brigade at least thirty minutes to assemble at his location. Yet he maintained his forces on the road in column, a highly vulnerable formation, without making any preparations for defense, even though he could see the enemy “forming across the valley” to attack him.22
As Sigel estimated that the troops rallying in the low land near the creek to his right were over 2,500 strong, his behavior reflected both overconfidence and tactical ineptitude. He may have been lulled into complacency by evidence that the enemy was demoralized. Throughout the deserted Southern camp breakfasts sizzled on untended campfires, wagons stood abandoned, and many horses remained picketed, their owners having fled without attempting to saddle them. Equipment of all kinds was strewn about. When Farrand’s dragoons swept briefly through the southern end of the field, they discovered “a wagon load of Maynard rifles, one of regular rifled muskets, and several boxes of United States regulation sabers, all new.” (Why such badly needed arms had not been issued is unknown. Perhaps they had arrived from the Southern supply base, Fort Smith, the previous evening, too late for distribution.) The Union horsemen also collected over one hundred prisoners, almost without effort. Yet remaining in column was dangerous regardless of the enemy’s morale. True, even a last-minute order to go into line facing right would have given the Union infantry a usable position behind the fence lining the road in time to repel an attack from the northeast. But the angle of the line would be poor, particularly for the artillery, which would have taken longer to deploy. Moreover, Sigel ignored the possibility of a counterattack against the head or left flank of his column, from either the vicinity of the Sharp house or the wooded hill to the northwest. At the very least he should have sent scouts toward the Sharp house to investigate the condition of the enemy and deployed skirmishers on his left flank to guard against surprise. Nothing testifies to the effectiveness of the Federals’ initial bombardment more than the fact that the Southern efforts to rally, observed with concern by Carr, did not result in an attack on Sigel. The colonel’s column rested undisturbed on the road from approximately 6:30 to 7:00 A.M. During the lull some Union troops may have broken ranks to loot the abandoned Southern camp, although the Federal commander later hotly denied that any breach of discipline occurred.23
When the artillery from the knoll arrived, Sigel felt strong enough to resume the offensive. To break up the enemy rallying to the right of the head of their column, the Federals tore an opening in the fence rails lining the road and went into a line across the stubble field. Sigel placed his guns facing northeast, stationing his infantry on their left while Farrand’s horsemen guarded the right. Around 7:15 A.M. the full battery opened, possibly with canister, as the closest enemy was no more than five hundred yards away. The Southerners actually numbered only some eight hundred men, and despite the protection of low ground the artillery fire unnerved them. One Union cavalryman reported that enemy officers “raved and stormed and tore their hair in trying to make their men advance.” Although this was probably an exaggeration, Southern command and control had clearly evaporated. With half an hour of sustained bombardment Sigel broke up the troops facing him, driving them northeast, deeper into the woods lining Wilson Creek.24
Carr’s cavalrymen arrived just as the Union guns fell silent for lack of targets. As the level of musketry and artillery fire indicated that Lyon must be heavily engaged to the north, Sigel ordered Carr to assume the advance while the rest of the brigade filed back onto the road. A company of the Third Missouri, deployed as skirmishers, followed closely behind the cavalry. During the bombardment the Southerners’ cattle herd and a large number of stray horses apparently stampeded, collecting in the northwestern corner of Sharp’s cornfield and finally breaking through the rails. Some of them blocked the road, and it took several minutes to pass through them. As Carr’s horsemen neared the intersection of the farm road and the Wire Road, they saw evidence that the Southerners had been slaughtering cattle for their army at the Sharp farm. It was about 8:00 A.M. when they turned right onto the Wire Road, halting near Sharp’s front yard. Sigel had every reason to feel elated. “We were now on the principal line of retreat of the enemy, and had arrived there in perfect order and discipline,” he recalled with justifiable pride. “Up to this time we had made fifteen miles, had been constantly in motion, had had a successful engagement, and the troops felt encouraged by what they had accomplished.”25
Judged strictly as a maneuver, Sigel’s march from Springfield to the Wire Road was a magnificent accomplishment, equal to any similar feat of arms in previous American military history. He had moved a great distance in almost complete secrecy, opening his surprise attack at exactly the moment intended. The effect on his enemy had been devastating. In subsequent action he had broken the Southerners’ attempt to rally, placing his own force squarely on their line of communications. But the ability of the Federals to exploit such remarkable success would depend on what Sigel did next.