We were not only exposed to the raking fire of an enemy well concealed behind impregnable fortifications with both light and heavy artillery manned by veteran soldiers that knew how to shoot, but our own shells from the top of Shepard mountain, many of them fell among us and burst over our heads without reaching the fort. We lost in this battle about 200 or more men killed and possible 300 wounded, of our bravest and best soldiers that were sacrificed for no good reason and the remainder of the arm realized what real war was and condemned our commanders severely for putting us against a well equipped, well armed fortification when there could be no great advantage gained by so doing even if successful.
After dark we quietly slipped away and marched back to our horses where they had stood all day without any forage as well as ourselves and kindling small fires with wet wood and brush, after getting a very meager meal, we laid down to eat, (sleep??) but by daylight we were up and skirmishing the country for something to eat ourselves and our horses. As soon as we were ready to march at 8 am, we were put on the road following the retreating Union soldiers who had blown up the fort early in the morning and started on a march of 60 miles to the railroad at Leasburg. We were not long in overtaking the rear of this command and were skirmishing, dismounting and fighting almost constantly every few miles for two days and marched all night of the 29th, and at noon of the 30th, Wood’s Battalion and Burbridge’s Regiment, of Clark’s Brigade, were detailed to go to Cuba station on the railroad and destroy the railroad to prevent the Union troops from getting away on the cars or receiving reinforcements. We reached the railroad about 5pm and succeeded in tearing up the road for a mile, and turning the ties and rails up side down, rolled them down the embankments and burned up the town and depot with a large amount of cord wood. Just as we were entering Cuba, a half mile from the station, we captured one or two prisoners and left one man in charge to guard them and on our return from town I learned that our man had been killed and the prisoners were gone. I did not see our man that had been killed, but I saw him when he was detailed and left in charge of the prisoners..
On our return from Cuba to re-join the command, a mile or two out from Cuba, the roads forked and our command went to the left and I was detailed by our Adjutant, Jenkins, to remain at the fork of the roads and tell Lieutenant Barton, of Company D, who was in charge of the rear guard of our battalion, which road the command had taken, but as I had been engaged constantly for 48 hours and had had no sleep, the command had not left me two minutes until I threw my leg over the saddle and sat sideways and went sound asleep. Upon waking up I did not realize myself, which road the command had taken, so I rode away from the fork of the roads for a short distance down the right hand road to ascertain if the army had gone that way and in my absence from the fork in the roads for a few minutes the rear guard came and took the left hand road and I missed them.
After a few minutes I rode back to town to see if I could learn anything of them and the citizens there told me they had been gone more than hour, so I was left alone in a strange country, on a dark night and lost from my command, but I succeeded in following the road for a short distance when I stopped at a farm house and called. A lady came to the door and told me the militia was assembling at Steeleville, but she did not see me and did not realize who I was, but she said there (was) great excitement in the country and the militia was being rushed to the post as rapidly as possible. Realizing that I was likely to meet an armed force of militia if I followed the road, I decided to camp and wait until daylight and get my bearings. In going forward I came to a cornfield on the left of the road and got off and gathered a feed of corn for my horse and tied it up in my blanket and started towards the creek, which I supposed was south, through the thick timber and underbrush. I had not gone far when my horse stopped and refused to go further and I dismounted to see what the trouble was and as I went around in front of my horse, I fell down an embankment eight or ten feet high and turned a complete somersault, but afterwards I succeeded in finding a place where I got back up the bank and went to my horse and succeeded in getting him down in the bottom where we were concealed by the bank and I fed my horse and rolled up in my blanket.
The sun was an hour high in the morning when I got up and (as it was a) very cloudy day, it was very difficult for me to keep the right direction, but by one o’clock, I succeeded in getting back to the main road and the crossing of the stream where we had had a severe skirmish the day before. I got off my horse and went into a house where I found a wounded German soldier desperately excited and badly wounded and he was very anxious to talk with me, but as I did not understand German I was unable to talk with him.
On taking the main road towards Leasburg, where the Federal army had gone and where I supposed our army was following, I had not gone but a few miles when I struck fifteen or twenty of our brigade that had been out on a scout and robbed a millinery store. They were all drunk and every one of them had on ladies’ hats and wraps. They didn’t know themselves where the army had gone, but I told them that I was under the impression that the command had gone north so they got on their horses and we followed and found where the army had camped the night previous and a mile from the camp, we struck a heavy guard that had been placed there the night before with Capt. Relford, of Kitchen’s Regiment, in command.
When I rode out in front of the drunken soldiers and talked with him he wanted to know of me where the army was and I told him I was sure they had gone north. He told me he had positive instructions from Gen. Marmaduke to remain at his post until relieved by his command and he had been waiting there 24 hours. He had a guard of fifteen or twenty men with him and as we marched toward Leasburg, a little before sundown, we ran right into the Federal pickets who fired on us as soon as they saw us, but didn’t succeed in hitting any of us and they followed us a mile or more when we ran until our jaded horses could run no longer and we succeeded in striking the trail of our command which had gone east along the Frisco towards St. Louis and got a German farmer to pilot us through the country and late in the night, after 12 o’clock, I succeeded in getting back to my company, locating them by their horses. Feeling around under a fellow’s head I found a chunk of corn bread and a beef melt, well cooked, on which I made a hearty meal and laid down and rolled up in my blanket by the camp fire. The first thing I knew the following morning was when I heard a fellow say: “Who is that fellow that has not got up?” and I received a kick or two from someone trying to arouse me and when I got the blanket from over my head and they saw who I was, they were all very much elated and surprised, as they thought I was dead.
From there our battalion marched east to the Meramec bridg, on the Frisco railroad, and by carrying cord wood to the center of the bridge and stacking it up and setting it on fire, we destroyed the bridge. From there we marched direct to Uniontown, and from there to Washington on the Missouri Pacific R(ailway). And between St. Louis and Hermann, we succeeded in capturing a freight train that had a few boxes of Sharps rifles, cavalry carbines, that were issued to the battalion, giving all of us a good breech loading gun. For some reason Price took possession of the train and put our battalion aboard in box cars with a piece of artillery on a flat car in front of the engine and started for Jefferson City, but after we traveled a few miles, our horses being led by a part of the command as near the railroad as possible, we found the track torn up in front of us and our train moved back east and it was run on a trestle, set of fire and destroyed. We took our piece of artillery off of the flat car and tied a long rope to it and pulled it up the mountain by hand and while part of the command oulled up the artillery the rest of us carried two guns and the blankets of our comrades until we succeeded in getting a pair of oxen from a German farmer that made the carrying of the artillery easier and we afterwards secured a pair of big, fat, gray German horses and succeeded in carrying our artillery and equipment back to the command.
We did not have anymore serious trouble until we crossed the Osage River close to Jefferson City. There they halted us and issued a large amount of ammunition and we realized there was trouble ahead and after marching to Jefferson City and passing over the ground where they had been fighting the day previous and where the dead Union soldiers lay in the road, we formed a line around the town and our battalion lay a long. Frosty, cold October night in line of battle, with our bridles in one hand and our guns in the other and hearing the commands of officers in the town and the rattling of teams and teamsters and we were not allowed to kindle fire, and of all my experiences as a soldier this was one of the most disagreeable nights I remember putting in as I was tired, hungry, and sleepy.
On the following day we marched to California, Missouri, arriving there late in the evening, and just as our brigade was going into town there was a column of Federal cavalry marching on the east side of town, on our right, but as soon as they discovered we were there in force, they commenced to retreat. Our artillery was thrown into position in the streets of the town and the woods were shelled for a little while to keep the enemy from attacking us.
From there we marched up to Marshall, Saline County. While Shelby’s Division went to Sedalia, part of our division went to Glasgow where they made the capture of the post, a few soldiers. The Colonel of our Battalion was waiting in Saline County where they were organizing new companies to fill up our battalion and make a regiment. We succeeded in getting four new companies between Marshall and Lexington and went south with Price’s command as unarmed men, but the remnant of the old battalion, what was left of us, held our position in the brigade and after meeting the enemy at Lexington and driving them before us, our brigade took the advance, and at Little Blue, eight miles east of Independence, late in the afternoon of Friday, October 21st, we met the enemy strongly posted behind stone walls built as fences around farms. We encountered in this strong position the 15th Kansas Cavalry, and the 11th Kansas Cavalry and the 2nd Colorado Cavalry and we found them among the most stubborn and hardest fighters that we had ever encountered in our experience in the war.
As we dismounted and ran to our position on the right of the road, and on the right of Clark’s Brigade, and hadn’t any more than got in line when our skirmishers were thrown out and they hadn’t gone more than thirty yards when they came rushing back and said: “Boys, they are coming.” The Union troops had dismounted and were fighting on foot and came out from the their well concealed positions and fought us on the blue grass ridges with but little protection and came within thirty yards of our line where both sides fought like demons. I had a position behind a large linn tree, three or more feet through, with another tree, a foot in diameter, coming up from the root of the old tree with a space of about twelve inches between the two. From this position I fired with my breech loading gun into four or five Union troops thirty steps from me who stood behind an oak tree two feet in diameter. I remember distinctly that I was under the impression after I fired, that they would come on and be right up to us before we could re- load, so I jerked out my Remington revolver and shot with a rest from the tree right into the crowd of four or five men seeking shelter behind the oak tree, but they soon discovered where my bullets were coming from and I had a personal experience that I will never forget.
A Union trooper with a light complexion and blue eyes with about four weeks growth of beard on his face stood behind that tree alone while both of us were trying to shoot the other. I remember that after my revolver was empty, I re-loaded my gun and took deliberate aim from the side of this tree with a rest and tried to hit his elbow which I could see plainly, but whether I succeeded in wounding him or not, I do not know, as we were ordered to fall back.
I had occasion to over the battle ground after the battle and in front of our battalion men lay in piles two and three across each other where they had fallen. Our line was broken in the center to our left and driven back 80 to 100 yards where they made another stand, and just as we got the order to fall back on our line, I saw our Colonel’s horse jump as he was shot in the right stifle with a Minnie ball and the Colonel dismounted. We fell back 100 yards or so and left faced and closed up the gap between us and the center and the balance of our brigade and just as we were left faced and marching through an apple orchard, my brother and myself had been at the head of our company and the extreme right of our line, and as we left faced we were in the rear and as the command struck a trot, we walked, and were practically left alone with a line of dismounted Federal Cavalry shooting at us with carbine and shooting with a rest from an old field fence.
As we marched side by side, my brother, at my left, received a Minnie ball through his hips, and my first thought was to go on and protect myself, but I decided to in an instant and turned him over on his back and asked him if he was seriously hurt and he said that he was not, so I took him up, as he was younger and smaller than myself, and carried him under my right arm with my gun under my left and marched through a shower of bullets 30 or 40 yards where we got protection from a log house and Gen. Marmaduke was sitting there on his horse and afterwards understood that he had had two horses killed from under him in that engagement. I succeeded in carrying my brother off of the field and after seeing our doctor dress his wounds, we laid him in a feather bed in a log cabin by the side of the road with his feet to the fire and I mounted my horse and rode over the field and every wounded and dead man had whiskey in his canteen and I have always thought this accounted for their desperate charge and this desperate fighting that Friday afternoon.
I followed the command on through Independence. We took a position just west of the city on some blue grass ridges where we rested and got something to eat Saturday morning until Fagan’s Division, which was in our rear, had been attacked by Gen Pleasington from the east, while Shelby was constantly engaged with Blunt and Curtis both towards Kansas City and Westport and Fagan moved through Independence, where most of his men had experienced a severe cavalry charge and had received many saber wounds, we took the rear and were hard pressed during the evening and night until 10 o’clock when our division was dismounted and our horses sent to the rear and we formed a long line along a field fence. As the Federal troops advanced on this position, we retreated unmolested to the banks of the Big Blue and laid down.
Just before sun up, as I lay on my blanket with my feet in the road, a cavalry man dashed up at full speed and said: “Boys, they are right on you.” And we jumped on our horses and were in line in a moment and rode across the Bog Blue and dismounted and sent our horses to the rear and made a temporary fortification out of fence rails. It wasn’t long before the enemy appeared in a solid line and charging our position through an open field we repulsed them three distinct and separate charges with heavy losses, but we soon moved from our position and mounted our horses and looking over Brush creek to the east at 9 am there was a solid line and brigade of Federal Cavalry on the ridge east of us and not more than a mile from us. We could see them distinctly in the bright morning sun. We moved to the west side of the timber on Brush creek and threw out our skirmish lines and as I was sent out on the skirmishing line we lay in this position skirmishing with this line of cavalry while Shelby and Fagan were fighting desperately in and around Westport, and the constant roar of the artillery and the rattle of musketry for three or four hours told plainly to the initiated soldier what was going on.
Historians may criticize and say what they may in regard to Price’s management in this critical position but, with the road leading through the Big Blue bottom blocked with heavy trees, that had been cut down across the road and had to be cut in two and moved before the army could cross. And between two well armed qnd well fed armies, he succeeded in cutting his way out with his train of 300 wagons and his artillery on that Sunday morning.
We left our position in the afternoon on Sunday and went into camp at one o’clock on the Kansas line and moved out early Monday morning and marched with our division in front, going, it was reported from Gen Price’s headquarters, to encourage us and to keep up our nerve (as we were then traveling on nerve strictly and without rations of any kind except what we could forage in the country), that we were going to meet Gen Gano and Gen. Stanwatie (Stand Watie) with a large reinforcement and a large supply train that was coming to meet us on the following day, and as our battalion was in front I noticed Gen. Marmaduke often throwing his glasses up to his eyes and gazing in a southerly direction as if he looked for something, and I naturally supposed it was Gano. After marching all day on Monday,, before we had been dismounted five minutes, our captain and twenty or thirty men of our battalion were detailed to go on guard duty. We went southeast of Mound city, Kansas, on a country road and went out three or four miles from camp where we scattered out in the country trying hard to get something to eat for ourselves and horses and spent the best part of the night skirmishing for something to eat.
The following morning, about day light, while half of our boys were out trying to get something to eat, we received pressing orders to return to camp at once, but as half of our men were absent, our Captain didn’t want to go away and leave them, but in thirty minutes, our Adjutant came dashing up on his horse with orders to come to camp at once. We left our boys in the country and went back to the main road and when we got back to camp our rear guard was fighting hard right on our camp ground trying to hold their ground until we got in.
After we struck the command we marched off through Kansas until about 10 am to Mine Creek which our heavily loaded wagons and artillery had difficulty in crossing on account of the jaded and worn out condition of our teams. In forming the line, was in the rear that morning, in front with Cabell’s brigade immediately in our rear 100 yards behind. Mine Creek runs through the Kansas prairie with a streak of timber 100 or 200 yards wide, in some places there were holes of water in the creek and other places it was dry and taking our position about a quarter of a mile from the creek, to protect our wagon trains with a double line of cavalry, the Union force came up with a skirmish line on horses 300 or 400 yards distant and halted, and left a solid line of mounted cavalry behind them so far that we could not see them and while this line stood there holding our attention, and we skirmishing with them slightly by dismounting and shooting with a rest from our saddles and occasionally hitting a horse, as we could see them jump, the Union lines came up on the right and left and extended their lines, overlapping ours very rapidly, and spread out in a valley between two ridges where there was no timber to disturb the view when a brigade of Federal cavalry flanked us and came up and planted their artillery on a ridge west of us and opened fire with battery right at the remnant of our battalion that had about faced and was marching towards them.
(and as I discovered, regiment after regiment kept coming into line at full speed I said to our Second Lieutenant Bullock, who was then in command of our company as our Captain had been wounded and captured, “Look at that line up there, they are lapping clear around us.” He said “You attend to your business, Gen. Marmaduke will look after that.”
So after the lines had extended clear around us and crosses the creek and in the streak of timber above and below us, a solid line of Federal cavalry came up in the rear while we were facing the east and when the solid line of Federal cavalry came up and charged us from the front, we started to retreat and went down to the edge of the timber, and did not realize that we were surrounded until we got near the creek bank when I heard a soldier say to Lieutenant Colonel Barry, of the 10th Missouri, who was right next to me: “They are Federals, don’t you see them shooting at us?” This line of cavalry had been firing right into us when we were facing them without our knowing it and the Colonel’s command was: “Charge them, boys, or we are gone!”
I put up my six shooter and swung my carbine by my side and putting my spurs in the little mule I was riding, forty of us simply ran over a solid line of Union cavalry who tried to halt us. We ran through the thick brushes and a shower of bullets were coming from every direction Just as we struck the edge of the prairie we were cornered in the corner of a new stake and rider fence, but the leaders threw the rails down to knee high and as we jumped over, I heard the command: “Scatter, boys, or they will kill every one of us.” We at once scattered and kept running three or four miles on the prairie and it was one or two hours before I saw one of our men or anyone I knew.
In this engagement our command lost 440 and of our battalion, the original troops that came to Missouri, four hundred strong, there were left of us, after this engagement, 52 men. After we had been cut to pieces and demoralized, we at once dismounted and reorganized and reformed a line on foot while the enemy was following us in broken lines and picking up stragglers and making prisoners of a large number of our men. There were only five of Company F engaged in this battle that succeeded in getting away, and one of them was badly wounded in the left arm.)
In our previous engagement I should have said that we lost both Gen. Marmaduke and Gen. Cabell and a message was received from Price that if we would stand once more we could check the enemy and stop it from following us, and Price then about faced his unarmed and armed men.
Just as the remnant of our battalion about faced a private of Company D, who was riding a fine Missouri mare with a brand new saddle rode up to our Colonel and said: “Colonel, I am sick.” (And the Colonel told) him that if he could not ride to give his horse to a man that would fight, so I promptly dismounted from my little mule and tuned my mule and rig over to the soldier and mounted his fine mare and went through the fight on her, but we had no more than reached a camp that night, when Mr. Buckhart, a member of company D, was hunting for me to get his mare back.
We made a demonstration that checked the fighting and the advance of the Federal army, but when we retreated and took up the line of march, as we left the field and marched through the prairie, we could plainly see the advance of the cavalry followin us and as we would go down in a valley and over the ridge, as I was in the extreme rear of Price’s army when the sun went down, I could see the heads of the column a quarter of a mile following us. As this engagement was ended, a box of ammunition was set out every few yards by the side of the road
And everyone requested to take all they could carry, which we did.
We marched until 12 o’clock at night and went into camp, but left there before day light in the morning as it was cloudy and raining and Price corralled his wagons and set them on fire to destroy them. The terrific noise of the bursting ammunition and the burning of the wagons abandoned by us in the dark, rainy morning, was a sight never to be forgotten by anyone that saw it. After we abandoned the wagons we would see flashes of powder going up in the air like lightning and the constant bursting of the shells was terrific.
From there we marched night and day and went to Newtonia, Missouri, where we attempted to recuperate and get some rest. Our brigade was on scout about 10 miles east of Neosho and many of us engaged in the fight there (editorial remark: the text is awfully indistinct here). I remember distinctly of lying down as soon as (we got to) camp to get some sleep near a camp fire until some time after thirty minutes shells commenced falling down through the tree tops around our camp fire and destroyed our rest and slumber. We were soon mounted on our horses and in full retreat and succeeded in getting away.
We didn’t make another halt until we were at Cane Hill where we rested for about 24 hours and where I succeeded in securing a haversack of meal from a farm house a few miles distant and we had one square meal of corn bread, the first we had had since leaving Independence. I also succeeded in getting a bushel of fine northwestern Arkansas apples that I had hoped to carry south and that would be an assistance in supporting me for a few days at least. I had them tied on the back of my saddle and when we went into camp that night I temporarily left my little mule tied, with the sack of apples on the saddle and when I returned I found that the mule was as hungry as I was and had had succeeded in getting the apples off my saddle and had eaten almost the entire bushel, however, I made a good meal on the rest of them.
From Cane Hill we marched west into Indian Territory in a country that was de-populated and no forage and nothing for men or beast. Our horses grazed at night on prairie grass while we subsisted on what few wild cows, oxen, or cattle that we could find in the country. After we got well into the Territory my little mule was so weak. and so given out that I decided I would have to walk and lead him in order to carry my saddle, guns and pistols, and from Arkansas river , over 200 miles, I walked with practically nothing to eat , but succeeded in following the army and going through without being left by the road, left to starve, die, or taken prisoner.
When we finally reached Red river there we secured a side of beef, corn bread, sweet potatoes and succeeded in stealing a few fat hogs, we lived well for one month, at least. While we were camped on Red river we fared reasonably well until January when Gen. McGruder took charge of Price’s command, as Gen. Price had been ordered under a court of inquiry, or court martial, for the way his army had conducted itself on the raid in Missouri, and I presume it is true that no civilized country ever saw an army of thieves turned loose on a community as was Price’s army while we were in Missouri. We took everything in sight that we could use in our business and a great deal of stuff that we couldn’t use and after our engagement at Mine creek and the disastrous retreat I think there could have been a train of wagons loaded with plunder thrown away by Price’s army in its desperate efforts to escape.
But when we were brought up in line to be inspected by Gen. McGruder I had gone there on January 3rd with the expectations of being remounted and of drawing a good horse, as we had understood that Hill’s regiment of Arkansas troops was to be dismounted, but instead of being mounted the inspector came down our line and where a man was afoot without a horse and stood in line he was marched out in front and where a Missouri soldier has succeeded in taking a good Missouri cavalry horse south, he was marched out in front and his horse taken away from him for artillery service. And the men who were afoot were surrounded by an infantry guard and marched off as closely guarded as if we had been Union soldiers and on the following morning we were marched at day light to Washington, the infantry headquarters, 36 miles distant. We were force from our commands without consideration and put into the infantry and artillery. I was sent under guard to Blocker’s battalion and put in the 7th (?) Arkansas Artillery under Gen. McNally who originally lived at Pine Bluff (Arkansas). Every man what was in any southern house or for any reason had been separated from his command was sent to his battalion to make up a full quota of 100 men to a company.
We were sent from the camp near Washington, southern Arkansas, to Mendon, Louisiana and then marched back near to Shreveport in February and we remained there until May. Soon after the news came of Lee’s surrender, our battalion broke up themselves without taking any oath or parole and took all the artillery horses and mules and went to their homes, but I went back to my old command, Wood’s Battalion, and we at once moved to Shreveport where we surrendered to Gen. E.R.S. Canby, the first week of June, 1865. We were furnished transportation on Federal steamers down the river to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and then the same transportation boat brought us back up the Mississippi River and the White River to Jacksonport where we were turned loose to march to our homes 100 miles distant without rations and going through a country with nothing to eat as the people that lived in that country at that time were practically on starvation, but I succeeded in reaching home June 25, 1865.
During all my career and during the thirteen different engagements in which I participated, I succeeded in getting through without a wound or scratch except my right arm broken in the first engagement, as stated above.
The End.