Affair, Sedalia

On October 15, 1864, during the Civil War, Confederate troops seized the Union-held town of Sedalia, Missouri, in what became known as the capture of Sedalia. This action stemmed from a broader invasion of the state that Confederate Major General Sterling Price had begun on August 29. Price, once governor of Missouri and formerly in charge of the Missouri State Guard, aimed to divert Union attention away from more critical fronts and spark a widespread rebellion against federal authority in the state.

Price's original plan to seize St. Louis fell apart following a costly defeat at Fort Davidson, prompting

Prelude

When the Civil War began in 1861, Missouri stood among the slave states, its allegiance far from settled. Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson threw his support behind secession and raised a militia known as the Missouri State Guard to advance that cause. In response, Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon, commanding Union troops, drove Jackson along with the secession-leaning lawmakers out of Jefferson City, the seat of state government. Although Jackson's forces managed several victories on the battlefield, by year's end Union troops had confined them to the state's southwestern corner. From this position, Jackson and his fellow secessionists established a Confederate government for Missouri, an entity that spent much of its existence as a government-in-exile, shifting locations repeatedly before finally taking root in Marshall, Texas. As a result, the state found itself with two rival governments claiming authority. It was not until March 1862, following the Battle of Pea Ridge, that Union control over Missouri became firm, though the years 1862 and 1863 still brought widespread guerrilla conflict to the region.

Price's Raid

As September 1864 began, the war's fortunes east of the Mississippi River, particularly the fall of the Confederacy's cause in the Atlanta campaign, boosted Abraham Lincoln's standing in that year's presidential race against George B. McClellan. Lincoln favored fighting on, while McClellan pushed for an armistice that would have left slavery intact. West of the river, in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, Confederate forces had turned back Union attackers during the Red River campaign in Louisiana between March and May. With the situation deteriorating for the Confederacy elsewhere, General Edmund Kirby Smith, who led the Trans-Mississippi Department, received orders to send his infantry east to reinforce the fighting there. This could not be accomplished, since Union naval power on the Mississippi blocked any large-scale crossing.

Smith, lacking the resources for a full offensive, concluded that a strike aimed at pulling Union forces away from the war's main fronts could achieve the same purpose as sending troops east. Major General Sterling Price, along with Thomas Caute Reynolds, the Confederate governor of Missouri, proposed that pushing into Missouri would accomplish this goal, and Smith gave his approval, placing Price at the head of the campaign. Price had once governed Missouri, fought in the Mexican-American War, and led the Missouri State Guard in 1861 before joining Confederate ranks. He believed the operation might spark a popular revolt against Union authority in the state, draw Union soldiers from more important battlegrounds (since many troops once stationed in Missouri had already left, leaving the Missouri State Militia as the chief defense), and improve McClellan's odds against Lincoln in the coming election. On September 19, Price led roughly 12,000 to 13,000 men across the state line.

Price soon discovered that Union forces occupied Fort Davidson, near Pilot Knob, and rather than leave such a force behind his advancing army, he chose to strike it. This clash, remembered as the Battle of Fort Davidson, unfolded on September 27 and ended with the Confederates driven back after suffering heavy losses. Although the fort's garrison withdrew under cover of darkness, Price abandoned his intended assault on St. Louis, since his army had absorbed at least 800 casualties and its spirit had suffered. Turning away from St. Louis, Price directed his men toward Jefferson City, though progress slowed because of the large supply train accompanying the force. By October 7, the Confederates neared Jefferson City, defended by about 7,000 men, most of them untested militia. Believing incorrectly that Union numbers there reached 15,000, Price, wary of another costly failure like the one at Fort Davidson, chose not to attack and instead began marching toward Boonville the following day. Boonville lay within Little Dixie, a section of central Missouri sympathetic to the Confederate cause, and accounts vary as to whether Price gained between 1,200 and 2,500 new recruits there. Short on arms and provisions, Price then ordered two detachments away from his main force: Brigadier General John B. Clark Jr. moved toward Glasgow, while Brigadier General M. Jeff Thompson's brigade, part of Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby's division within the Missouri State Guard, headed for Sedalia.

Battle

What drew Price toward Sedalia was word that Union forces there held large numbers of mules and cattle, supplies that could feed the Confederate troops and provide fresh mounts. Thompson led a force built around Shelby's Iron Brigade, which included Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Battalion, Elliott's Missouri Cavalry Regiment, the 5th Missouri Cavalry Regiment, and Collins' Missouri Battery, numbering somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 men in total. Although the unit's paper strength stood near 2,000, a significant portion of the men had slipped away to visit family in the Boonslick region. Slayback's battalion, previously assigned to scouting, linked back up with Thompson at Longwood and brought word that Union horsemen had been active nearby but had since shifted westward.

The following day brought the capture of two Union stragglers outside Georgetown. These men claimed they were former Confederates pressed into Union ranks, and they revealed that the cavalry Slayback had spotted belonged to Brigadier General John B. Sanborn. They further disclosed that Union troops were massing at both Jefferson City and Kansas City, while a separate infantry column at California was readying to march toward Georgetown. Thompson, who had set up a line of couriers to keep Price informed, relayed this intelligence at once. He briefly abandoned plans to strike Sedalia, then reversed course after concluding the infantry posed no immediate threat to his position and that Sanborn's men were too distant to intervene in time.

Sedalia sat on open prairie, largely bare of trees or terrain that might shield an approaching army, though its defenders had built two redoubts along with several rifle pits. Guarding the town were close to 800 home guard and Enrolled Missouri Militia troops, among them soldiers from the 1st Missouri State Militia Cavalry Regiment. A separate detachment of 33 men from the 7th Missouri State Militia Cavalry, led by Captain Oscar B. Queen, waited there as well, tas

Aftermath

Once the fighting stopped, a certain amount of looting broke out. According to historian Paul B. Jenkins, who wrote in 1906, Thompson's troops ransacked Sedalia and singled out government property for destruction. Historian Paul Kirkman offers a different picture, suggesting Thompson tried to confine the plundering to supplies with military value. Kyle Sinisi, a more recent historian, agrees that Thompson sought to manage the seizure of military goods in an orderly fashion, though the situation slipped beyond his grasp even as the Confederate commander took steps like shooting a soldier's mule and striking some of his men with the flat side of his sword. Sinisi adds that most of the looting hit businesses rather than private residences. Witnesses on the scene claimed they saw Confederate soldiers going about barefoot, their boots stuffed full of stolen whiskey. The town's post office did not escape the ransacking either. Thompson himself insisted that "no outrage or murder was committed" and noted the capture of a quantity of weapons along with wagonloads of "goods suitable for soldiers." By this stage most of the Confederate units involved in the battle had lost their cohesion, with the exception of Slayback's Battalion, which held together well enough to take on guard duty once the fighting ended. Thompson's forces also made off with close to 2,000 mules and cattle.

On the Union side, losses amounted to one soldier killed and 23 wounded, while several hundred more were taken prisoner. Thompson lacked the means to hold these captives properly or grant them the usual written paroles. How each prisoner fared depended on the category Thompson assigned him: a few hundred designated as home guard were simply let go, whereas 75 men from the Enrolled Missouri Militia and 47 from the Missouri State Militia received spoken paroles outside normal procedure, accompanied by warnings of consequences should they break the terms. Union officers objected that this approach violated proper practice, but their complaints went nowhere. Queen judged these paroles worthless and headed back to Jefferson City to seek further instructions. Aware that lingering too long risked encirclement by Union forces, the Confederates pulled out of Sedalia within a matter of hours. Thompson then pushed northward to reunite with Price's main force, catching up with it at the Salt Fork River close to Waverly on October 18.

Clark's assault on Glasgow likewise achieved its aims. By October 19 the Confederates had pushed on to Lexington, clashing there with Union troops in what became known as the Second Battle of Lexington. Two days after that, Union Major General James G. Blunt tried and failed to halt Price's advance at the Little Blue River crossing. A string of further engagements followed before Price ran into a Union force numbering close to 20,000 near Kansas City on October 23, sparking the Battle of Westport, in which Price's 9,000 men suffered a decisive defeat. Retreating into Kansas, Price met with further disaster at the Battle of Mine Creek on October 25, where around 600 of his soldiers were taken prisoner. That same day he gave the order to destroy nearly the entire wagon train, which had become too much of a burden to manage. The campaign's last significant clash unfolded near Newtonia, Missouri, on October 28, when Blunt defeated Price in the Second Battle of Newtonia, by which time the Confederate army was falling apart. Union forces kept up the chase until the remaining Confederates crossed the Arkansas River on November 8, and the retreat did not truly end until they reached Texas near the close of November 1864. In the end, the campaign had no bearing on the election, and although a portion of the XVI Corps was temporarily sent to Missouri, this shift proved short lived and left no lasting mark on operations in other theaters of the war.