CHAPTER XII. A GALAXY OF NOTABLE MEN
The Union commanders were naturally very apprehensive that as soon as Price and Mc-Culloch realized that the field had been abandoned they would precipitate upon them their immense horde of vengeful horsemen. Such was not the case. Nothing tells so eloquently of the severity of the blow which Lyon had dealt his enemies than that it was two whole days before Price and McCulloch were in a frame of mind to move forward 10 miles and occupy Springfield, the goal of their campaign. This delay was golden to the Union commanders, hampered as they were by hosts of Union refugees fleeing from the rebel wrath, and incumbering the column with all manner of vehicles and great droves of stock. Considering the activity of the Missourians in guerrilla warfare, and the vicious way they usually harried the Union forces, it is incomprehensible, except on the theory that the Confederate forces had been stunned into torpor by the blow. The Union column was able to make its long retreat of 125 miles from Springfield to Rolla and traverse an exceedingly rough country cut up every few miles by ravines, gorges and creeks, without the slightest molestation from the six or eight thousand horsemen whom McCulloch had complained were so much in the way during the battle on the banks of Wilson's Creek.
Gen. McCulloch made a number of lengthy and labored explanations to the Confederate War Department of his failure to make any pursuit, but in the light of facts that then should have been attainable none of these was at all satisfactory. He admits that he did not enter Springfield until after his scouts had brought him satisfactory assurances that the Union army had abandoned the town. Aug. 12 he advanced to Springfield, and issued proclamations to the people announcing himself as their deliverer, and that his army "by great gallantry and determined courage" had entirely "routed the enemy with great slaughter."
If he expected to be received and feted as a liberator he was sorely disappointed, and in one of his letters he says in connection with his customary uncomplimentary allusions to Gen. Price's army, "and from all I can see we had as well be in Boston as far as the friendly feelings of the inhabitants are concerned."
The truth was that the advance of the Confederates had had a blighting effect upon that large portion of the people which had hoped to remain neutral in the struggle.
Gen. Lyon, with all his intensity of purpose, had kept uppermost in mind that he was an agent of the law, and his mission was to enforce the law. He had kept his troops under excellent discipline, had permitted no outrages upon citizens, and had either paid for or given vouchers for anything his men needed, and had generally conducted himself in strict obedience of the law. His course was a crushing refutal of the inflammatory proclamations of Gov. Jackson and others about the Union soldiers being robbers, thieves, ravishers and outragers.
Quite different was the course of the twenty or more thousand men whom Price and McCulloch led into Springfield. They were under very little discipline of any kind, and were burning with a desire to punish and drive out of the country not merely those who were outspoken Unionists, but all who were not radical Secessionists. They knew that the sentiment in Springfield and the country of which it was the center was in favor of the Union, and they wanted to stamp this out by terror.