Byram's Ford

Background

Missouri occupied an uncertain position when the Civil War erupted in April 1861. Though the state permitted slavery, internal political division kept it from joining the secession movement. Claiborne Fox Jackson, then governor, favored the Confederate cause and worked against Union forces led by Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon. In August, Confederate troops together with the pro-secession Missouri State Guard managed to defeat Lyon's men at Wilson's Creek, yet by year's end these combined forces had been pushed back into the southwestern corner of the state. Missouri itself split into two rival governments during this period, one loyal to the Union and the other aligned with the Confederacy. The Union secured lasting dominance over the state in March 1862 following its victory at the Battle of Pea Ridge across the border in Arkansas. For the remainder of 1862 and into 1863, Confederate resistance within Missouri survived mainly through scattered raids and guerrilla activity rather than organized campaigns.

By the autumn of 1864, Confederate hopes for outright military triumph had all but vanished, while President Abraham Lincoln appeared to be gaining ground over his rival George B. McClellan, an advocate of ending the conflict, in that year's presidential race. As Confederate fortunes east of the Mississippi deteriorated, Edmund Kirby Smith, who oversaw the Trans-Mississippi Department, received orders to shift his infantry eastward to more critical fronts. That plan collapsed in practice, since the Union Navy's grip on the Mississippi River made any major crossing unworkable. Faced with this obstacle and stretched thin on resources, Smith chose instead to strike at Union positions within his own department. Sterling Price, a Confederate major general, joined with Thomas Caute Reynolds, who had taken over leadership of Missouri's Confederate government in February 1863 after Jackson's death, in urging an invasion of the state. Smith endorsed the proposal and gave Price command of the campaign. The architects of the plan believed it might ignite widespread rebellion against Union authority in Missouri, pull Union soldiers away from more decisive fronts elsewhere, and boost McClellan's odds of unseating Lincoln.

Battle

Fighting erupted near 08:00 when Shelby pushed Union skirmishers back over the Big Blue. Roughly an hour afterward, about 1,500 men in Jackman's brigade made a feint toward the northern end of the Union position, but Curtis refused to be fooled, judging the pace of the action too sluggish for a genuine assault. When officers stationed along the northern line informed him that little Confederate movement could be seen on the Kansas City road, Curtis grew surer that the northern threat was secondary and grew wary instead of a flank attack from the south. He instructed Blunt, together with Melvin S. Grant (who led two Kansas State Militia regiments stationed near Hickman Mills to the south), to watch closely for Confederate activity and send word every thirty minutes. At 11:00, troopers of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry noted Confederate columns heading for the southern crossings, and lookouts in a Union signal tower farther north spotted the dust their movement raised.

Around that same hour, Shelby resolved to push a crossing at Byram's Ford, on the southern stretch of the Union line. Jennison's brigade had held that ford since about 09:00, its defenses having been built the prior night by one of Grant's militia regiments. Fallen timber and other barriers clogged the crossing, yet only the brush on the Union bank had been cut away, giving the Confederates cover that the nearby defenders of Jennison's brigade lacked. Jennison's roughly 1,200 troops sat mostly on high ground west of the ford, leaving only a firm skirmish line and five mountain howitzers to guard the crossing itself.

Thompson's brigade, numbering about 1,445, was the first substantial Confederate force to arrive at the ford. Though his assaults failed, Thompson kept up steady pressure on Jennison, prompting the dispatch of the 16th Kansas Cavalry Regiment, and perhaps a Missouri militia unit, to bolster the defenders. For three hours the two sides grappled, while Jackman detached two of his own units, Nichols's Missouri Cavalry Regiment and Schnable's Missouri Cavalry Battalion, to strengthen Thompson's ranks. Near 14:00, Thompson and Shelby chose to search for other crossings that might outflank Jennison's tenacious hold. Colonel B. Frank Gordon took his 5th Missouri Cavalry Regiment south with orders to ford the river, wheel north, and sever Jennison from any help; his men located a crossing and passed over unopposed. Slayback's Missouri Cavalry Battalion, sent north, soon discovered Hinkle's Ford, a spot local farmers used that had been left undefended.

These two crossings, one above and one below Byram's Ford, produced a wider collapse of the Union line. Accounts from participants placed the moment of breakthrough anywhere between 14:00 and 15:00; historian Mark A. Lause attributes this spread to the fact that the crossing happened in phases rather than all at once. Flanked on both sides, Jennison had no choice but to pull back, which freed the ford itself. Axes abandoned there by Union troops let the Confederates clear the remaining obstacles within roughly an hour. Jennison's men tried retreating northwest toward Westport but found their path blocked by the Confederates who had come across at Hinkle's Ford. In the end the brigade fell back four miles, crossing into Kansas. Blunt had directed Moonlight's brigade to reinforce Jennison near 13:00, but that order never reached him. Once his scouts told him Jennison had been driven off, Moonlight moved to help, arriving at Hinkle's Ford only after the Confederates had already crossed, and then withdrew toward Westport.

Moonlight's men event

Aftermath

The precise number of casualties from this engagement remains uncertain. Historian Kyle Sinisi, in his study The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price's Missouri Expedition of 1864, calculates