At dawn on 10 August 1861 Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon attacked a much larger Southern army camped along Wilson's Creek, southwest of Springfield, Missouri: Confederate troops from Arkansas under Ben McCulloch and the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard under Sterling Price. On Bloody Hill Lyon's men threw back three attacks, but a second Union column under Franz Sigel was routed, and Lyon himself was killed, the first Union general to die in battle. Low on ammunition, the Union army withdrew. It was the first major battle of the Civil War west of the Mississippi.
The fight for Missouri
In the summer of 1861 the war in Missouri was still taking shape. Sterling Price, a former governor, had been given command of the state militia and raised a pro-Confederate army in the southwest of the state. Confederate troops from Arkansas under Brigadier General Ben McCulloch came up to join him, while Lyon's Union Army of the West was camped at Springfield.1
The Union force was badly outnumbered: the American Battlefield Trust gives 5,400 Union troops against 11,000 Southerners, and Britannica more than 10,000. On 9 August each side made plans to attack the other. Lyon decided to strike first, splitting his small army: he would lead the main body against the front of the Southern camps while Colonel Franz Sigel, with about 1,200 men, swung round to hit them from the rear.2
Bloody Hill
At about 5 a.m. on 10 August Lyon fell on the Southern camps along Wilson's Creek, some 10 to 12 miles southwest of Springfield, and Sigel's guns drove Southern cavalry from its camp in a farm field. The Southerners recovered and formed a line, and over the morning they attacked Lyon's position on the ridge later called Bloody Hill three times without breaking it.3
During the second assault Lyon was mortally wounded, and command passed to Major Samuel Sturgis. Meanwhile McCulloch's men surprised Sigel's column and quickly overran it. After the third attack, which ended around 11 a.m., Price and McCulloch pulled back, but Sturgis, with his men exhausted and their ammunition running low, ordered a retreat to Springfield. The Southerners were too disorganized to pursue.4
The National Park Service recalls that Lyon's body was carried to the farmhouse of John Ray, where the family laid it out on their best bed; the house became a field hospital for Southern soldiers. The American Battlefield Trust estimates the casualties at 1,235 on the Union side and 1,095 on the Southern side.5
A victory not exploited
Wilson's Creek was a tactical victory for the South and gave it control of southwestern Missouri, but the Southern commanders could not turn it into more. The National Park Service calls it the first major Civil War battle west of the Mississippi and the place where the first Union general was killed in action, and notes that the costly Southern victory focused national attention on the war in Missouri. Britannica adds that it established Price as a military commander. Missouri went on to see more strife than any other state of the Trans-Mississippi theater. The war's larger battles are surveyed in our guide to the greatest battles of the Civil War.6
Also on this day
- 1904: Battle of the Yellow Sea. In the Yellow Sea, the Russian squadron trapped at Port Arthur tried to break out to Vladivostok and was met by the Japanese fleet in the Russo-Japanese War.
