An account of the battle of Wilson's Creek, or Oak Hills, fought between the Union troops, commanded by Gen. N. Lyon and the Southern, or Confederate troops, under command of Gens. McCulloch and Price, on Saturday, August 10, 1861, in Greene county, Missouri

by R. I. Holcombe; Thomas W. Adams

AFTER THE FAMOUS VICTORY.

Dies iræ! O, the moaning and wailing that were all over the land west of the great Fathers of Waters when the full tidings of the battle of Wilson’s Creek were learned! From Dubuque and Baton Rouge, from Iowa and Texas, from Louisiana and Kansas, and from every county of Missouri, there went up a sobbing prayer from many a household for strength to bear the bereavement of a father, a husband, a brother or a son slain that 10th of August, 1861, down by the beautiful little stream in the Ozarks.

There they lay, strewn all about over the ground, with faces white and waxen, or clotted with blood, these men who had died to please the politicians. In cosy, shady nooks where fairies might delight to dwell; out in the glare of the blazing sun, festering and corrupting; in cornfields with blade and tassel waving above them, in dells and glens, and vales, and on the hillsides—dead men everywhere. With a tiny bullet hole a baby’s finger might stop, marring no feature and mangling no limb; with bowels torn out, with faces shattered, heads torn to pieces, handsome countenances distorted into ghastly, grinning objects—dead men everywhere.

Wounded men everywhere. Crawling about, delirious with pain and agony; lying prone and almost motionless, staring up into the blue sky, dying slowly and making no sign; shrieking, groaning, cursing, praying, imploring help, begging for a bandage, for water, lying quietly, laughing even,—wounded men everywhere. In hospitals, under trees, in tents, in houses, in stables, with surgeons probing and cutting and carving and sawing and clumsily bandaging; in ambulances jolting off towards Springfield; limping along to hide and escape another hurt—wounded men everywhere.

Blood everywhere. On the blades and the silks of the corn; on the leaves of the pretty green bushes.

Great drops on the bunch-grass, but not of the dew;

Staining the velvet moss on the hillsides; purpling in puddles in the pathways and by the roadsides; reddening the lucid waters of bonnie Wilson’s creek; flecking the wheels of the guns and daubing the stocks of the muskets; clinging in loathsome gouts to the stems of wild flowers—blood everywhere—human blood—and the best blood of the Republic, too.