Wilson's Creek

Near Springfield, Missouri, on August 10, 1861, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Wilson's Creek in an engagement that marked the opening major clash of the war's Trans-Mississippi Theater. This fight is sometimes called the Battle of Oak Hills.

That August, Confederate troops led by Brigadier General Benjamin McCulloch, joined by Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard, moved toward Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon's Army of the West, then encamped at Springfield. Lyon split his men into two columns, one under his own command and the other led by Col. Franz Sigel, and struck the Confederate position along Wilson Creek, roughly ten miles southwest of Springfield. Confederate cavalry bore the initial assault and gave up the high ground in retreat. Throughout the day, Confederate infantry launched three separate attacks against the Union line without managing a breakthrough. Sigel's force eventually fell back toward Springfield, which let the Confederates gather their strength against Lyon's remaining column. Lyon fell in the fighting, and command of the Union troops passed to Major Samuel D. Sturgis. Recognizing that his exhausted soldiers were running low on ammunition, Sturgis ordered a withdrawal back to Springfield. Historians count the day as a Confederate triumph, though the victors were left too scattered and poorly supplied to chase down the retreating Federals.

Missouri stayed within the Union for the rest of the conflict, yet this engagement handed the Confederacy effective command of the state's southwestern region. Price capitalized on the win by marching the Missouri State Guard northward, a campaign that would eventually reach its climax at the siege of Lexington, Missouri.

Battle

Under cover of darkness, McCulloch's camp had pulled its pickets, leaving the way open for Lyon's approaching column to catch the opposing forces off guard. Confederates and their militia allies got their first hint of trouble when foragers from Rains' division spotted the advancing Federals in the early hours of August 10. Colonel James Cawthorn, in command of Rains' cavalry, dispatched a patrol that soon ran into Lyon's men. Around five in the morning, artillery fire from Lyon's guns opened the engagement. Cawthorn pulled together additional troops and arranged them along a ridge that would come to be known as Bloody Hill. Word of the Union advance reached McCulloch through Rains, but he dismissed it as just another false alarm from that officer, and an acoustic dead zone kept the early gunfire from carrying to his ears. It was not long, however, before McCulloch, Price, and James M. McIntosh could see the Federal advance for themselves. Meanwhile Lyon dispatched Joseph B. Plummer, leading regular army troops and cavalry, across the creek to the eastern side in order to widen the assault on the left. By roughly half past five, Cawthorn's Missouri State Guard horsemen had been pushed off the summit of Bloody Hill.

Captain William Woodruff's Pulaski Light Battery, an Arkansas unit, then began shelling the Federals atop the hill. James Totten answered with his own battery's fire, a bit of irony given that he had once trained Woodruff in artillery tactics before the war began. Beyond dueling with Woodruff, Totten also turned his guns on the enemy encampments below. Lyon spent the period until half past six consolidating his hold on Bloody Hill, even as Price assembled his Missouri State Guard to meet him. Around five o'clock, two men who had slipped away from camp told Pearce that Union troops were passing to the east, likely a sighting of the trailing edge of Sigel's column, which by that point had taken up a position south of camp. Plummer, for his part, pushed onward despite rough ground slowing his progress, aiming to strike at Woodruff's guns by moving his regulars into the Ray family's cornfield. McCulloch countered by sending McIntosh forward with the 2nd Arkansas Mounted Rifles, the 3rd Louisiana Infantry, and an Arkansas militia unit. McIntosh's men succeeded in clearing Plummer from the cornfield but were then thrown back by Union cannon fire from Bloody Hill, forcing Plummer to fall back to the main Federal line.

By his own account, Sigel first caught the sound of Lyon's fight around half past five. He had already positioned artillery on a rise above the Joseph Sharp farm, and once he heard the distant combat, he gave the order to fire. Below him in Sharp's fields sat close to 1,500 mounted troops drawn from Confederate, Missouri State Guard, and Arkansas ranks, along with nearly 2,000 unarmed Guardsmen and camp followers. The barrage sent this mass into disarray, scattering the cavalry so badly that many riders proved difficult to reassemble. Sigel's main body pressed onward, wading across Wilson Creek and then Terrell Creek, and the artillery on the rise was eventually recalled to rejoin the column. After sitting exposed in column formation between 6:30 and 7:00, Sigel's guns deployed once more, scattering another body of opposing troops. By around eight o'clock, a cavalry force under Eugene Carr had reached the Sharp house and taken a position astride the Wire Road, the vital supply and communication line for the Southern armies.

Back on Bloody Hill, officers Sturgis and John Schofield picked up the sound of Sigel's opening bombardment, mistakenly believing they were hearing enemy fire directed back at Sigel. More artillery fire from that direction reached their ears shortly after seven, prompting Lyon to push forward. Price's men, whose weapons were fit only for fighting at close quarters, braced to receive the assault. Curi

Aftermath

Losses on each side proved roughly comparable, with Union casualties numbering close to 1,317 and Confederate, Missourian, and Arkansan losses estimated at 1,222 among killed, wounded, and captured combined. Lyon's army lost nearly a quarter of its strength in the fighting. Among Union units, the heaviest proportional damage fell on the 1st Missouri, the 2nd Missouri, and the 1st Kansas, and the 1st Kansas ranked seventh among all Union regiments in the entire conflict for numbers killed or mortally wounded. On the Southern side, the troops under McCulloch and Price's Missouri State Guard bore far worse losses than Pearce's Arkansas contingent.