The Second Battle of Lexington was a minor battle fought during Price's Missouri Expedition as part of the American Civil War. Hoping to draw Union Army forces away from more important theaters of combat and potentially affect the outcome of the 1864 United States presidential election, Sterling Price, a major general in the Confederate States Army, led an offensive into the state of Missouri on September 19, 1864. After a botched attack at the Battle of Pilot Knob, the strength of the Union defenses at Jefferson City led Price to abandon the main goals of his campaign.
In response to the Confederate incursion, the Union Army of the Border under Major General Samuel R. Curtis was formed by withdrawing troops from duty guarding isolated settlements along the western frontier and calling up the Kansas militia. The call-up of the militia became a political issue in Kansas, which restricted Curtis's use of the militiamen. Price's army was moving west along the Missouri River, and was caught between Curtis's Army of the Border and Union Department of the Missouri cavalry pursuing from the east. Major General James G. Blunt took a portion of Curtis's army east to the town of Lexington, Missouri, on October 18. Blunt was hoping for reinforcement from Curtis, but this was not feasible due to most of the Kansas militia's refusal to move that far into Missouri.
On October 19, Price's army, led by Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby's command, attacked Blunt at Lexington. Initial contact was made at around 11:00 am, but it took several hours for the Confederates to develop their attack. Blunt's outnumbered command was gradually pushed back as Price deployed more of his army. Confederate rifled artillery played a major role in the outcome of the battle, outranging the Union mountain howitzers. The Confederates attempted to cut the Union path of retreat with a cavalry brigade, but this was unsuccessful. Protected by a rear guard, Blunt's troops fell back behind the Little Blue River. Blunt fought another delaying action at the Battle of Little Blue River on October 21, and after the Battle of Byram's Ford and the Second Battle of Independence on October 22, Price was defeated at the Battle of Westport. Several other battles followed during Price's withdrawal, including a defeat at the Battle of Mine Creek on October 25. The campaign wrecked Price's army as an effective fighting force and the Confederates did not make another offensive campaign in the Trans-Mississippi theater before the surrender of the department on June 2, 1865.
At the start of the American Civil War in 1861, the state of Missouri was a slave state, but did not declare secession, as the state secession convention rejected it. Nonetheless, the state was politically divided: Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Missouri State Guard (MSG) supported secession and the Confederate States of America, while Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon and the Union Army opposed it. Under Major General Sterling Price, the MSG defeated Union armies at the battles of Wilson's Creek and Lexington in 1861, but by the end of the year, Price and the MSG had been restricted to the southwestern region of the state. Meanwhile, Jackson and a portion of the state legislature voted to secede and join the Confederate States of America, while another element of the legislature voted to reject secession, essentially giving the state two governments. In March 1862, a Confederate defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas gave the Union control of Missouri, and Confederate activity in the state was largely restricted to guerrilla warfare and raids throughout 1862 and 1863.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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