The Town Crier

100 YEARS AGO

Gen. Lyon, 487 Others Die At Wilson Creek

It was perhaps six o'clock in the morning when the long roll sounded, and up and down the gullies, ravines and cornfields along Wilson's Creek in southwestern Missouri, 11,000 Confederate troops began getting up, starting their breakfasts under the scrub oaks and grumbling over the drizzle that had fallen during the night.

Approximately a mile to the north, General Nathaniel Lyon, the red-bearded Yankee who had saved St. Louis for the Union, rode among his army of 4,500 talking "Men, we are going to have a fight. We will march out in a short time. Don't shoot until you get orders. Fire low - don't aim higher than their knees..."

And about a mile to the south, 1,118 Union soldiers under General Franz Sigel were stealing along between a fence and a woods to attack the Confederates from the rear at the same time Lyon attacked from the front.

Lyon's and Sigel's target was a vast army of Missourians, Louisianans, Arkansans and Texans encamped 10 miles south of Springfield, Missouri, under the command of Confederate General Ben McCulloch an army that nearly doubled the size of the attackers. It was August 10, 1861, 100 years ago this week.

Lyon Attacks

Lyon moved his men into the attack at dawn, infantry and cavalry leading, a battery of artillery following. They were met by Confederate pickets who fell back, shouting out the warning. At the same time, Sigel captured 40 men, then opened up with artillery from the hill and attacked the Confederate rear with his infantry.

Within minutes, the battle became a continuous roar, and men were falling dead on top of each other in the cornfields.

Then quite suddenly, there was a lull. Missouri General Sterling Price, serving under McCulloch for the Confederates, re-formed his lines, brought up reinforcements and counterattacked. Rank after rank of Confederates charged through the bullets and into the Union line.

Lyon ordered every available man into the fray. On the far side of the field, meanwhile, Sigel had met catastrophe. Stopping momentarily during the same lull, he, too, was counterattacked by overwhelming numbers, and his men turned and ran in panic, not to be heard from again that day.

The Confederates now turned their full fury on Lyon.

Lyon Wounded

Lyon, meanwhile, was in the thick of it. First, his horse was shot. Next, a ball grazed his leg and blood trickled from it. Then a shot creased his scalp, and the blood ran into his beard. Still he rode among his troops, shouting them forward. Only to his top officers did he confide, "I fear the day is lost."

Finally, bringing up the last of his reserves and personally leading them in a charge, Lyon was killed. A ball smashed his chest, and he fell into an aide's arms and died.

At that, the ranking Union officer, Major Samuel D. Sturgis, pulled his remaining men back and headed for Springfield in retreat.

The casualties were about the same on both sides: 223 Union men and 265 Confederates were killed; 721 Union and 800 Confederates wounded. But 291 Union men, against only 30 Confederates, were missing.