The Battle of Wilson’s Creek – Missouri’s Crucial Summer of 1861

On August 10, 1861, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Wilson’s Creek, shaping Missouri’s fate in the first major Civil War battle in the West.

It was a hot Saturday morning in the Missouri Ozarks, the kind of heat that presses down like a weight. The haze hung over the rolling hills and oak thickets southwest of Springfield, and in those hills two armies were about to decide the fate of a divided state.

Missouri in 1861 was a political paradox. Its voters had rejected secession, but its new governor, Claiborne Jackson, was openly working to pull the state into the Confederacy. The legislature had been pro-Union, but that was before the Camp Jackson Affair in May, when Union troops under Captain Nathaniel Lyon seized a pro-Confederate militia camp outside St. Louis. The prisoners were marched through the city under armed guard. Rocks flew, shots rang out, and twenty-eight civilians were left dead. The riot hardened lines. Many who had been neutral now leaned toward secession, and Jackson used the moment to create the Missouri State Guard, placing it under the command of former governor and Mexican War veteran Sterling Price.

Lyon, promoted to brigadier general, had no patience for half measures. In June he declared war on the state government, without waiting for Washington’s approval. He sent columns sweeping across Missouri, scattering the State Guard, capturing the capital at Jefferson City, and driving secessionist forces into the southwestern corner of the state. Along the way he joined forces with Colonel Franz Sigel, a German immigrant and veteran of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, who commanded the loyalty of Missouri’s sizable German-American population.

Sidebar: Faces of Wilson’s Creek
Nathaniel Lyon
Born in Connecticut and forged in the hard school of frontier and wartime service, Lyon was a career officer with little patience for compromise. He had fought in Florida’s swamps during the Seminole Wars, seen the streets of Mexico City in 1847, and commanded the St. Louis arsenal when Missouri’s loyalties were teetering. His capture of Camp Jackson made him a hero to Unionists and a villain to secessionists. At Wilson’s Creek, he refused to retreat in the face of long odds, leading from the front until a bullet through the chest ended his life. His determination kept Missouri from falling into Confederate hands in 1861.

Franz Sigel
Sigel was a German revolutionary turned American officer, a man whose presence in the ranks drew Missouri’s German immigrants to the Union banner. He had been a teacher, newspaperman, and school superintendent in St. Louis before the war. At Wilson’s Creek, his flanking maneuver started well but collapsed when Confederate troops deceived his men into thinking they were Union reinforcements. Critics called it a blunder; supporters pointed to the bravery of his outnumbered force. Either way, Sigel remained a symbol for German-American loyalty to the Union cause.

Sterling Price
A Virginian by birth and a Missourian by choice, Price had fought in the Mexican War, served as governor, and presided over the Missouri State Guard with a mix of paternal authority and political skill. To his men, he was “Old Pap,” a leader who shared their hardships and inspired their devotion. At Wilson’s Creek, his Missourians pressed the Union lines again and again on Bloody Hill. Though the Confederates won the field, Price could not carry Missouri fully into the Confederacy, but his reputation as a commander of the Trans-Mississippi endured.

Ben McCulloch
McCulloch came from the rough-and-ready tradition of Texas Rangers and frontier fighters. He preferred a black velvet civilian suit to a military uniform and had a knack for leading from the front. At Wilson’s Creek, he directed Confederate forces with a steady hand and survived a close brush with death when a Union sentry nearly shot him. While his refusal to pursue the retreating Union army frustrated Price, McCulloch’s caution reflected a commander who knew the limits of his force.

The summer was full of hard marching and hard feelings. Sigel had tried to intercept Price’s forces at Carthage in early July, but had been beaten back. Lyon pressed south anyway, hoping to smash the enemy before they could unite. But Price was calling in help. Brigadier General Ben McCulloch, a Texan with a reputation for personal bravery, brought Confederate troops north from Arkansas, joining Price’s Missourians and Arkansas State troops under N. Bart Pearce. By early August, they were camped along Wilson Creek, nine miles from Springfield, with over eleven thousand men.

Lyon had fewer than six thousand. His soldiers were worn down from the heat and short on supplies. Many of his volunteers had signed up for only ninety days and were close to going home. Major General John C. Frémont, the Union’s new commander in the West, refused to send reinforcements and urged him to retreat to Rolla. That meant giving up all he had gained, and Lyon was not a man to retreat without a fight. He decided to attack.

Before dawn on August 10, Lyon split his army. He would lead the main force in a frontal assault on the Confederate camp. Sigel would circle south with twelve hundred men to strike from the rear. The idea was to hit hard from both sides, sow confusion, and break the enemy before they could rally.

The surprise worked at first. Lyon’s men drove Confederate cavalry off a rise that would soon be called Bloody Hill, and Sigel’s column rolled into the southern camp, scattering Price’s Missourians and capturing artillery. But McCulloch and Price reacted quickly. On Bloody Hill, the Confederates regrouped and counterattacked three times. The fighting was close, with musket volleys crashing through the oak groves and artillery booming from the ridges. Lyon, wearing his old captain’s coat instead of a general’s uniform, was everywhere on the line, rallying his men. He had already been wounded twice when a bullet struck him through the chest. He died instantly, the first Union general killed in the war.

Command passed to Major Samuel Sturgis, but the fight raged on. Sigel’s luck turned south when he mistook approaching Confederate troops for Union reinforcements. They opened fire at close range, sending his men into a panicked retreat. With one wing shattered and ammunition running low on Bloody Hill, Sturgis ordered a withdrawal. The Union army pulled back to Springfield and then to Rolla.

The Confederates held the field, but their victory was limited. McCulloch refused to pursue, believing his troops too disorganized and low on supplies. Price would lead his Missourians north for a campaign that ended with the capture of Lexington in September, but Missouri itself would remain in the Union for the rest of the war.

The cost at Wilson’s Creek was heavy. Union casualties were about 1,235 killed, wounded, or missing. Confederate and State Guard losses were around 1,095. For Missouri, the battle was a turning point in sentiment and control, solidifying secessionist strength in the southwest but failing to tip the state into the Confederacy’s column.

For the Union, the death of Nathaniel Lyon made him a martyr. Congress passed a resolution honoring him and the men who fought under him. Veterans on both sides returned to the battlefield in later years, piling stones at the spot where they believed Lyon had fallen. That gesture, whether or not the location was exact, spoke to the respect earned in a fight neither side would forget.

Today, Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield preserves those hills and ridges, the quiet creek, and the rolling fields where Missourians fought Missourians, and where a small battle in a hot Missouri summer helped decide the course of a divided state. The oak groves still stand, and on a still morning, with the mist rising from the creek bed, you can almost hear the drums and the crack of rifles, and imagine the stubborn courage that burned on both sides of the line.