Glasgow

Prelude

Price launched his Missouri Expedition by crossing into the state from the south with a cavalry force numbering around 13,000. A large share of these troopers carried inadequate weapons, and the army's entire artillery train consisted of just 14 pieces, all of them small and thus restricted in range and combat value. On the Union side stood Major General William S. Rosecrans, head of the Department of Missouri, whose available strength fell short of 10,000, a good portion being militia who had never faced a major engagement. As September drew to a close, the Confederates ran into a modest Union garrison holding Fort Davidson near Pilot Knob. Their assault on the post on September 27 was repulsed, though the defenders pulled out and left the fort under cover of darkness that same night. This fighting cost Price several hundred casualties. Portions of his column pushed onward to Franklin before swinging west toward Jefferson City by way of Union and Washington.

The setback at Pilot Knob led Price to give up any plan of striking St. Louis, and his march toward Franklin was never a genuine effort to seize that city. St. Louis, moreover, had gained additional strength from an infantry command under Major General A. J. Smith. Progress for Price's army was hampered by an extensive wagon train, which

Context

When the Civil War began in 1861, Missouri remained a slave state that never left the Union, though its loyalties were split down the middle. Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson led the Missouri State Guard in backing the Confederacy, while Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon commanded Union forces loyal to the federal government and opposed to secession. Major General Sterling Price directed the State Guard through victories early on at Wilson's Creek and Lexington, yet as that year closed, his men found themselves pushed back into the state's southwestern corner. During this period, Jackson and part of the legislature cast votes to join the Confederacy, while a rival legislative faction voted against secession, leaving Missouri with two competing governments. The Confederate loss at Pea Ridge in Arkansas that March of 1862 handed the Union control over Missouri, and for the next two years Confederate efforts in the state amounted to little beyond scattered guerrilla raids.

By September 1864, Confederate forces had suffered defeat in the Atlanta campaign. Combined with other developments in the eastern theater, this outcome strengthened Abraham Lincoln's position in that year's presidential race against George B. McClellan, who wanted the war ended, while Lincoln sought to see it through. A good number of Confederates believed that if McClellan won the presidency, peace negotiations would follow that secured Confederate independence. By this stage, though, the Confederacy's odds of ultimately winning the war had grown very slim. With the military situation east of the Mississippi deteriorating for the Confederates, Edmund Kirby Smith, who commanded the Trans-Mississippi Department, received orders to send his infantry eastward to reinforce the fight there. The Union Navy's grip on the Mississippi River, however, made such a transfer impossible.

Lacking the resources for a full offensive, Smith concluded that a diversionary strike, one meant to pull Union troops away from the main fighting fronts, could accomplish much the same purpose as sending troops east. Price, together with Thomas Caute Reynolds, the Confederate governor of Missouri, proposed invading the state, and Smith gave his approval, placing Price in command of the campaign. Price hoped the operation would accomplish multiple aims at once: spark a popular revolt against Union authority in Missouri, draw Union soldiers away from the war's major theaters, and improve McClellan's odds of unseating Lincoln at the polls. On September 19, Price led his force, called the Army of Missouri, across the state line.

Aftermath

The triumph at Glasgow lifted spirits within Price's army, spirits that had suffered following Pilot Knob. Union losses in equipment were substantial: 1,200 weapons, 1,000 overcoats meant for federal troops, and 150 horses all fell into Confederate hands.

Guerrilla violence accompanied the aftermath. On October 16, Quantrill and his followers robbed a bank. Then, during the night of October 21 to 22, men under Anderson beat a civilian to death while trying to extract money from him, and afterward assaulted a woman he had previously freed from slavery. Before this, the Union garrison stationed at Glasgow had kept guerrilla bands from striking the town, but once Harding and his troops departed, Glasgow became vulnerable to such raids.

Accounts of how many Union soldiers were taken prisoner vary widely. Certain Confederate sources put the figure as high as 1,000, while Union tallies list 550. Historian Mark A. Lause dismisses the Confederate claims and argues that the Union count runs too low because it failed to properly account for militia numbers; he estimates the true figure at roughly 650. Similarly, Union casualty figures list no more than 32 wounded and between 8 and 11 killed, yet Lause considers the wounded total implausibly small, likely because militia losses went unrecorded, and he proposes about four dozen wounded as a more realistic figure. Clark's own official account left out casualty totals altogether, and multiple Confederate units failed to document their losses, though one regiment is known to have lost seven killed and 46 wounded. Preservationist Frances E. Kennedy puts the number of Union soldiers paroled at more than 600