Gen. Curtis’s army was far from realizing as the night closed down on that exciting March 7 how completely it had whipped the overwhelming numbers of Van Dorn, Price, McCulloch, Mcintosh and Pike.  Those of Jeff C. Davis’s and Osterhaus’s Divisions, who had done the heavy fighting on the Leetown front, knew that they had driven away the mass of the enemy in their front until there was no longer any show of opposition.  They of Carr’s Division, on the extreme right, the brigades of Dodge and Vandever, realized that they had had a terrible fight, in which they had generally defeated the enemy, inflicting great slaughter, though they had suffered heavily themselves.  Still, the enemy had gained a little ground.  The men of Carr’s Division felt that now, since the rest of the army was coming to their help, they would undoubtedly win a victory in the morning, and clear the rebels from the road leading back to Springfield.  This confidence was shared by the men of Jeff C. Davis’s and Osterhaus’s Divisions, who had come to their assistance, and they all felt more hopeful than did Sigel and Asboth’s Division, which had taken little or no part in the fighting.  The following remarkable letter from Gen. Asboth to Gen. Curtis, written at 2 o’clock in the morning of March 8, reveals the general belief of that portion of the army that the condition was desperate and it would require extraordinary efforts to release the army from a very hazardous situation: 

     Headquarters Second Division, Camp Near Sugar Creek, Ark.,

March 8, 1862; 2 a. m.  General:  As Oen.  Sigel, under whose command you have placed me, with my division, has not yet returned to our camp, I beg to address you, General, directly, reporting that all the troops of the Second Division were yesterday, as well as now, in the night, entirely without forage; and as we are cut off from all supplies by the enemy, outnumbering our forces several times, and as one more day without forage will make our horses unserviceable, consequently the cavalry and artillery as well as the teams, of no use at all, I would respectfully solicit a decided concentrated movement, with the view of cutting our way through the enemy where you may deem it more advisable, and save by this, if not the whole, at least the larger part of our surrounded army.

Gen. Curtis seems to have realized quite early in the afternoon the condition of affairs on his left in front of Leetown, and that the fight there was over.  He therefore directed the cavalry under Col.  Bussey to take up the best positions, holding the ground.  All the infantry and artillery were ordered over toward the Springfield road to form a new line of battle, substantially a prolongation of that established at the close of the fighting by the stubborn resistance of Dodge’s and Vandever’s Brigades, which had so decisively repulsed the last attacks upon them the previous evening.

Sigel, who had a remarkable faculty for incurring criticism in every battle, had not made use of Gen. Asboth’s Division at any time to relieve the pressure upon Davis and Osterhaus, so that it had hardly fired a shot.  He now had trouble about getting his troops into line, and it was 8 o’clock in the morning before he finally took his place on the left, notwithstanding the fact that he was ordered to have his divisions in line before daylight.  Curtis had now all his artillery up, and though it was not so numerous as that opposed to him, it was better equipped and drilled, and promptly opened the battle with a fire to which the Confederate guns could make no adequate reply.  The whole line then moved forward with blazing rifles, sweeping unchecked up the hillsides, straight for the enemy’s front.  In a few minutes the Confederate line parted in the center and disappeared.  Most of the Missourians fell back toward Keetsville, directly north.  Greer and his remnants ran around our left toward Bentonville, pursued by Col.  Bussey’s cavalry.  Van Dorn and Price with another remnant broke around our right, going through an obscure hollow and taking the road to Huntsville.  Like most men of impetuous initiative, Van Dorn when he was whipped was badly whipped.  He sent riders post haste to order his trains burned, but Gen. Green, who commanded the train guard, was of cooler mettle, and succeeded in getting the trains away safely.

Gen. Sigel pursued the central portion through Keetsville, seven miles to the north, capturing nearly 200 prisoners and a great quantity of arms and stores.  He believed Curtis would retreat, and was well on his way to Springfield when ordered back by Curtis to make his camp on the battlefield with the rest.  Gen. Curtis officially reported his loss as follows: 

Union losses.

Command.

Killed.

Wounded

It will be noticed by the above figures that Davis’s Division lost four officers and 42 men killed, 18 officers and 256 men wounded, while Sigel’s two divisions lost only three officers and 28 men killed, seven officers and 149 men wounded.

The heaviest loss fell upon the 9th Iowa, which had 39 killed, 176 wounded and four missing.  The next heaviest was upon the 4th Iowa, which had 18 killed, 139 wounded and three missing.

Gen. Van Dorn estimated his loss at 1,000 killed and wounded and 300 missing.  This is known to be inaccurate, because more Confederate than Union dead were buried on the battlefield, and Gen. Curtis sent 500 prisoners to the rear.

The question naturally occurs:  Why did Van Dorn relinquish such a supreme effort with such a small loss?

Our amusing acquaintance, Gen. Pike, does not conceal the fact that he and those around him were very badly whipped.  After joining Van Dorn he resumed his old habit of standing around “observing the enemy.”  He reports that he did this for two hours at a stretch when Curtis was delivering the final crushing blows upon Van Dorn.  He then moved with much promptness toward the rear, for an officer came up with the stunning intelligence, “You are not safe here, for the enemy’s cavalry are within 150 yards of you.”  This seemed to have escaped his “observation” up to that time.  He rode on, and his pace was accelerated by hearing another officer cry out “Close up; close up; or you will all be cut to pieces.”

He halted presently, but had to start again, for a shell was sent by the enemy up the road from the point of the hill around which he had just passed.  The cry of “The cavalry are coming was raised, and everything became confusion.”  He escaped the “enemy’s cavalry by rapid riding,” but was unable to get ahead of his fastgoing troops and stop them, until they reached Elm Spring, many miles away.  He came to this sage conclusion: 

The enemy, I learn, had been encamped at Pea Vine Ridge for three weeks, and Sigel’s advance was but a ruse to induce our forces to march northward and give them battle in positions selected by themselves.

There were others who shared his feelings; for he says: 

Just before night, Saturday afternoon, I had met Col.  Rector in the hills, who told me he had about 500 men with him; that they were in such condition that they could not go more than six or eight miles a day, and that he thought he would take them into the mountains, hide their arms in a secure place, and, as he could not keep them together and feed them, let them disperse.  He asked my opinion as to this, and I told him that no one knew where the rest of the army was; that Gens.  Van Dorn and Price were supposed to be captured and the train taken; that if his men dispersed with their arms they would throw them away, and that I thought the course he proposed was the wisest one under the circumstances.  The enemy were pursuing on all the roads, and as it was almost impossible for even a dozen men in a body to procure food, I still do not see what better he could have done.

Curtis’s cavalry found these guns and brought them into camp; also, all the artillery that was captured the day before from Davis’s and Carr’s Divisions.

Gen. Van Dorn made several reports which are strangely inconsistent with one another, and seem the natural efforts of a man to find the best excuses that will present themselves from day to day for his failure in a great effort.  His first report, which was to Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston and the Confederate War Department, and sent two days after the battle, reads as follows: 

     Headquarters Trans-Mississippi District, March 9, via Hog
     Eye; March 10, 1862.

Fought the enemy, about 20,000 strong, 7th and 8th, at Elkhorn, Ark.  Battle first day from 10 a. m. until after dark; loss heavy on both sides.  Gens.  McCulloch and Mcintosh and Col.  Hebert were killed; Gens.  Price and Slack were wounded (Gen. Price flesh wound in the arm); the others badly wounded, if not mortally; many officers killed and wounded; but as there are some doubts in regard to several I cannot yet report their names.  Slept on the battlefield first night, having driven the enemy from their position.  The death of Gens.  McCulloch and Mcintosh and Col.  Hebert early in the action threw the troops on the right under their commands in confusion.  The enemy took a second and strong position.  Being without provisions and the right wing somewhat disorganized, determined to give battle on the right on their front for the purpose only of getting off the field without the danger of a panic, which I did with success, but with some losses.

I am now encamped with my whole army 14 miles west of Fayetteville, having gone entirely around the enemy.  I am separated from my train, but think it safe on the Elm Springs road to Boston Mountains.  The reason why I determined to give battle at once upon my arrival to assume command of the army I will give in report at an early day.

In this it will be seen that he disclaimed any intention on the second day of making more than a fight to cover his retreat.  This is clearly an afterthought to excuse the poor battle that he put up.  There is no doubt that he had still hoped to whip Curtis’s army, and that he had men enough to do it, if they had been handled properly and had fought with the same determination and aggressiveness that the Union troops did.  For some weeks he continued to send in reports, explanatory and partially contradictory of his first.

Gen. Sterling Price’s report, made March 22, gives no idea that the retreat was determined on after the events of the first day, but says with relation to the close of the struggle on the evening of March 7: 

The fiercest struggle of the day now ensued; but the impetuosity of my troops was Irresistible, and the enemy was driven back and completely routed.  My right had engaged the enemy’s center at the same time with equal daring and equal success, and had already driven them from their position at Elkhorn Tavern.  Night alone prevented us from achieving a complete victory of which we had already gathered some of the fruits, having taken two pieces of artillery and a quantity of stores.

     My troops bivouacked upon the ground which they had so nobly
     won, almost exhausted and without food, but fearlessly and
     anxiously awaiting the renewal of the battle in the morning.

The morning disclosed the enemy strengthened in position and numbers and encouraged by the reverses which had unhappily befallen the other wing of the army when the brave Texan chieftain, Ben McCulloch, and his gallant comrade, Gen. Mcintosh, had fallen, fearlessly and triumphantly lead-. ing their devoted soldiers against the Invaders of their native land.  They knew, too, that Hebert-the accomplished leader of that veteran regiment, the Louisiana Third, which won so many laurels on the bloody field of the Oak Hills, and which then as well as now sustained the proud reputation of Louisiana-was a prisoner in their hands.  They were not slow to renew the attack; they opened upon us vigorously, but my trusty men faltered not.  They held their position unmoved until (after several of the batteries not under my command had left the field) they were ordered to retire.  My troops obeyed it unwillingly, with faces turned defiantly against the foe.

It will be noticed that Price is not as frank as usual in giving reasons for his rapid retirement at the moment when, he claims, he was in the full flush of victory.  “The retirement of several batteries not under my command” is a conspicuously inadequate excuse.

In the course of a month or so Van Dorn managed to gather himself together again so as to begin voluminous communications with Richmond, explaining that “I was not defeated, but only foiled in my intentions.”

He proposed to return to his old Pocahontas plan, “relieve Gen. Beauregard by marching my army upon the Federals at New Madrid or Cape Girardeau, and thence on to St. Louis.”  He would turn his cavalry loose on Gen. Curtis’s long line of communications, and send Gen. Pike with his Indians to harry southwestern Missouri and Kansas.

The Confederate War Department did not think highly of this, but shortly transferred him and his troops east of the Mississippi.

Gen. Price was also transferred east of the Mississippi, with the Missouri troops he had taken into the Confederate army, and his farewell to the Missouri State troops is worth reproducing as a specimen of the heated rhetoric customary in those days: 

     Headquarters Missouri State Guard,

     Des Arc, Ark., April 8, 1862. (General Orders N.)

Soldiers of the State Guard:  I command you no longer.  I have this day resigned the commission which your patient endurance, your devoted patriotism and your dauntless bravery have made so honorable.  I have done this that I may the better serve you, our State and our country-that I may the sooner lead you back to the fertile prairies, the rich woodlands and majestic streams of our beloved Missouri-that I may the more certainly restore you to your once happy homes and to the loved ones there.

Five thousand of those who have fought side by side with us under the Grizzly Bears of Missouri have followed me into the Confederate camp.  They appeal to you, as I do, by all the tender memories of the past, not to leave us now, but to go with us wherever the path of duty may lead, till we shall have conquered a peace and won our independence by brilliant deeds upon new fields of battle.

Soldiers of the State Guards!  Veterans of six pitched battles and nearly 20 skirmishes!  Conquerors in them all!  Tour country, with Its “ruined hearths and shrines,” calls upon you to rally once more In her defense, and rescue her forever from the terrible thraldom which threatens her.  I know that she will not call In vain.  The Insolent and barbarous hordes which have dared to Invade our soil and to desecrate our homes have Just met with a signal overthrow beyond the Mississippi Now Is the time to end this unhappy war.  If every man will but do his duty, his own roof will shelter him In peace from the storms of the coming; Winter.

Let not history record that the men who bore with patience the privations of Cowskln Prairie, who endured uncomplainingly the burning heat of a Missouri Summer and the frosts and snows of a Missouri Winter; that the men who met the enemy at Carthage, at Oak Hills, at Fort Scott, at Lexington and on numberless lesser battlefields In Missouri, and met them but to conquer them; that the men who fought so bravely and so well at Blkhorn; that the unpaid soldiery of Missouri were, after so many victories and after so much suffering, unequal to the great task of achieving the Independence of their magnificent State.

     Soldiers, I go but to mark a pathway to our homes.  Follow
     me!

Very few but those who had already been cajoled into the Confederate service followed.

A great deal of bitterness was developed from the discovery upon the battlefield of a number of Union dead who had been scalped by Pike’s Indians.  Many of these belonged to the 3d Iowa Cav., and the investigation of the matter was conducted by order of Col.  Bussey, by his Adjutant, John W. Noble, afterwards Secretary of the Interior.  Col.  Bussey became Assistant Secretary of the Interior.

The bodies of at least eight of the 3d Iowa Cav. were exhumed and found to have been scalped and the bodies otherwise maltreated after their deaths by the scalping knives and tomahawks of merciless Indians.  The matter was made subject of a strong communication from Gen. Curtis to Gen. Van Dorn, and the latter’s Adjutant-General, Dabney H. Maury, replied, cordially condemning any such deeds, but claiming that, on the other hand, many prisoners of war had been killed in cold blood by Curtis’s men, who were alleged to be Germans.  The letter said: 

The General commanding feels sure that you will do your part as he will in preventing such atrocities in the future, and that the perpetrators of them will be brought to justice, whether Germans or Choctaws.

Gen. Curtis was promoted to Major-General for his victory, and well deserved that honor, in spite of some bitter critics.  Sigd was also made a Major-General, with much less reason.  Asboth had his withheld Brigadier-Generalcy confirmed to him.  Cols.  Carr, Davis and Dodge were made Brigadier-Generals, but Cols.  Osterhaus, White and Bussey, who had done conspicuous fighting, had to wait some months for their promotion, and Cols.  Greusel and Pattison never received it.

Among those who received praise for their gallantry that day was Maj.  John Charles Black, of the 37th Ill., later a Colonel and Brigadier-General, Commissioner of Pensions under President Cleveland, Representative-at-large from Illinois, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, and now President of the United States Civil Service Commission.  Maj.  Black was severely wounded in the sword arm in the fight, but refused to leave the field until Gen. White ordered him to do so.

Another was Maj.  Phillip Sidney Post, of the 59th Ill.  He later became Colonel and Brigadier-General; was left for dead on the field at Nashville, but recovered, to be Consul-General at Vienna and represent Illinois for many years in Congress.  He was also wounded in the sword arm, and also refused to leave the field until he was peremptorily ordered to do so.

The moral effect of the victory was prodigious and far-reaching.  High expectations had been raised by Van Dora, McCulloch, Mcintosh, Price and Albert Pike, which were abjectly prostrated.  The mass of fugitives, white and red, who scattered over Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory, each with his tale of awful slaughter and disheartened defeat, had a blighting effect upon the Secessionists, and greatly strengthened the Union sentiment.

It was a desperate two-days’ wrestle between the very best that the Southern Confederacy could produce west of the Mississippi River-the ablest commanders and the finest troops-and a small Union army.  It was breaking, test, under the fairest conditions, of the fighting qualities of the two combatants.

Though bitter, merciless, sanguinary fighting was to perturb the State for three years longer, it was no longer war, but guerilla raiding and bandittism, robbery and murder under a pretext of war.  Price, indeed, made an invasion of the State two years later, but it was a hurried raid, without hope of permanent results.

At the conclusion of the battle Missouri was as firmly anchored to the Union as her neighbors, Illinois, Iowa and Kansas.

The battle for Missouri had been fought and won.