Later Gen. Fremont testified before the Committee on the Conduct of the War that he had ordered Gen. Lyon, if he could not maintain himself at Springfield, to fall back to Rolla, but singularly he did not produce this order.
Though Gen. Lyon had marched his men 50 miles in one day to prevent the junction of Gen. Ben Mc-Culloch's Arkansas column with the hosts Gen. Sterling Price was gathering from Missouri, he was not able to interpose between them.
On Saturday, Aug. 3, the Confederates had all gotten together on the banks of Crane Creek, 55 miles southwest of Springfield, with general headquarters in and around the village of Cassville.
How many were concentrated is subject to the same obscurity which usually envelops Confederate numbers. Lyon estimated there were 30,000. Later estimates by competent men put the number at 23,000. Gen. Snead, Price's Adjutant-General, put the number at 11,000, which would be a severe reflection on the loyalty of the Missouri Secessionists to their Governor, since Gen. McCulloch certainly brought up about 5,000 from Arkansas, which would leave only 6,000 to respond to Gov. Jackson's proclamation, and gather under the standards set up by his seven Brigadier-Generals—Parsons, Rains, Slack, J. B. Clark, M. L. Clark, Watkins and Randolph.
While Lyon had incomparable troubles, there was far from concord in the camp of his opponents. Like thousands of other men, McCulloch's ambition far transcended his abilities. He at once assumed the attitude that as a Brigadier-General in the Confederate army he out-ranked Sterling Price, who was a Major-General of state troops. This, at that early period of the war, was a humorous reversal of the State Sovereignty idea, so flagrant in the minds of those precipitating Secession.
Jefferson Davis and his school of thought had been fierce in their contention that the part was greater than the whole, and that the States were greater than the General Government. Yet Gen. McCulloch was unflinching in his insistence that a Confederate Brigadier-General outranked a State Major-General. The dispute became quite acrimonious, but was at last settled by Price's yielding to McCulloch, so anxious was he that something decisive should be done toward driving back Lyon and "redeeming the State of Missouri." According to Gen. Thomas L. Snead, his Chief of Staff, he went to Gen. McCulloch's quarters on Sunday morning, Aug. 4, and after vainly trying to persuade McCulloch to attack Lyon, he said:
"I am an older man than you, Gen. McCulloch, and I am not
only your senior in rank now, but I was a Brigadier-General
in the Mexican War, with an independent command, when you
were only a Captain; I have fought and won more battles
than you have ever witnessed; my force is twice as great as
yours; and some of my officers rank, and have seen more
service than you, and we are also upon the soil of our own
State; but, Gen. McCulloch, if you will consent to help us
to whip Lyon and to repossess Missouri, I will put myself
and all my forces under your command, and we will obey you
as faithfully as the humblest of your own men. We can whip
Lyon, and we will whip him and drive the enemy out of
Missouri, and all the honor and all the glory shall be
yours, All that we want is to regain our homes and to
establish the independence of Missouri and the South. If you
refuse to accept this offer, I will move with the
Missourians alone against Lyon; for it is better that they
and I should all perish than Missouri be abandoned without a
struggle. You must either fight beside us or look on at a
safe distance and see us fight all alone the army which you
dare not attack even with our aid. I must have your answer
before dark, for I intend to attack Lyon tomorrow."