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Published: April 15th 2020
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NATHANIEL LYON MONUMENT
Turns out he was killed in a rock fight. THE LION OF MISSOURI As part of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 the State of Missouri was admitted to the union as a slave holding state. Slavery was part of their statehood charter. When the Civil War fetched loose in 1861 Missouri did not have to secede from the union in order to keep its slaves. In the same election that Uncle Abe Lincoln ascended to the Presidency a perfidious bastard named Claiborne Jackson was elected Governor of Missouri. Jackson was staunchly pro-Confederate and insisted on another election in which Missouri would secede. Much to his chagrin the voters elected to remain neutral. There were, however, federal forces already in Missouri that Jackson viewed as a violation of the state’s neutrality. He then applied to Jefferson Davis to have his state annexed to the Confederacy and for Confederate forces to enter the state and drive the federals out. In the meantime conscription was called forth to establish a state militia. Some districts in the more heavily populated northern part of state favored remaining in the union and conscripted a federal militia. Other districts conscripted a Confederate militia. Into that mess strode a fellow named Captain Nathaniel Lyon. He was placed
DU BOIS BATTERY HELD TOTTEN'S LEFT FLANK, THE INFANTRY WAS IN FRONT OF THE BATTERIES
Du Bois Battery was heavily engaged in the Confederate assaults originating from Wilson's Creek. in command of the federal arsenal in St Louis.
Nathaniel burst onto the scene on July 14, 1818 in Ashford, Connecticut to a couple named Amasa Lyon and Kezia Knowlton. He had a brother named Bill. It didn’t take him many years into his youth before he realized that he was not at all cut out to be a farmer. In 1837 he entered West Point and graduated 11
th out of a class of 52 in 1841. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Second Infantry and went off to harass the hapless Seminole in Florida. The Seminole that were easy to catch were already in Oklahoma. The rest of them, some of whom were runaway slaves that had been assimilated into the tribe, took to swamps. The army never did catch them after the Second Seminole War and the poor devils were finally left alone. President Polk picked a fight with Mexico in 1846 and Nathaniel went off to fight in it. He was promoted to first lieutenant for gallantry in capturing some Mexican artillery during the Battle of Mexico City, and then breveted to Captain for the fights at Contreras and Churubusco.
TOTTEN'S BATTERY - ANCHOR OF THE FEDERAL POSITION ON BLOODY NHILL
Totten's Battery was in a position to fire on the Confederate attacks before they could engage the the infantry. After the war ended Nathaniel was posted to California. On May 15, 1850 he led his company in an attack on some Pomo Indians near the north end of Clear Lake. Some Pomo had killed a guy named Andrew Kelsey who had enslaved them and was starving them. The village that was attacked turned out to be old people, women and children who were peacefully fishing. It came to be called the Bloody Island Massacre, and was probably not one of Nathaniel’s proudest moments. From California he went to Fort Riley to try and bring order to Bleeding Kansas. In doing so he became an abolitionist.
As commander of the St Louis Arsenal Nathaniel Lyon learned that Governor Jackson was planning to raid the armory and steal the guns for the Confederacy. He responded by moving the guns to another armory near Nauvoo, Illinois. When the guns were safe he moved against the state militia at Camp Jackson that was planning to steal them. He captured them pretty much without bloodshed and was moving them back to the arsenal to lock them up in the empty armory. As the prisoners were being marched through town southern sympathizers started
SAKALSKY'S BATTERY ON BLOODY HILL AT WILSON CREEK
Sakalsky's Battery was at the top of Bloody Hill and held Totten's right flank. Their right flank, however, was in the air because the federal cavalry that was supposed to be protecting it did not show up. This exposed flank was the reason why the federals decided to withdraw from the fight. a riot. When the smoke had cleared 28 of them had been killed and 75 wounded.
General Harney was commander of the federal forces in Missouri and he began negotiations with Jackson over the role of federal troops in Missouri. Jackson wanted them limited to St Louis only. Harney wanted to be able to respond to any location in the state where public safety was concerned. Jackson said his militia could do that and promised to use the militia to repel a Confederate invasion. It was a damn lie. Jackson had been soliciting Confederate troops the whole while. Harney finally capitulated to Jackson and was promptly removed from command. Lyon began to arm federal sympathizers until they could be mustered in to the militia. Jackson named Confederate General Sterling Price to command the state militia. Lyon was promoted from captain to Brigadier General and given command of the Federal Department of Missouri. He along with State Representative Francis Blair called for another conference with Jackson and Sterling Price at the Planters Hotel in St Louis. Neither side would budge from its previous position, and Lyon banged down his fist and declared they were at war. Jackson and Price returned
THIRTY UNION SOLDIERS WERE BURIED IN THIS SINKHOLE
It was the easiest way to dispose of the bodies. I hope they were eventually pulled out and given a decent burial. under safe passage to Jefferson City by train and ordered that all bridges and trestles behind them be destroyed. Lyon gathered his troops and went in pursuit by boat up the Missouri River. They met in an engagement at a little place called Boonville where the poorly armed and poorly organized Confederate militia was roundly defeated when it came under fire from Totten’s Battery. They fled to Arkansas. Jackson’s many lies had been exposed by then and he was deposed as governor by the state legislature. More federal militias were organized and mustered in.
Jackson remained in exile in Little Rock, but Price and his militia joined forces with the Confederate General Ben McCulloch and returned to Missouri. They numbered about 12000 men. Lyon gathered his forces as best he could, numbering about 6000 men, on August 10, 1861 the two armies clashed at a little place called Wilson’s Creek just south of Springfield. The federals were outnumbered, but fought bravely from a strong position supported by artillery on high ground that enjoyed a commanding field of fire. The Confederates launched assault after assault against the strong federal position. By 9 in the morning Lyon had been shot in the leg and grazed in the head and had a horse killed from under him. He commandeered another horse from an infantry officer and returned to the fray. By 9:30 he had become surrounded and run out of ammo, and had begun throwing rocks. He hit a Confederate named Will Morgan in the face with one of them, and Will’s brother John Morgan shot Lyon through the heart with an old style horse pistol. John would later comment that Nathaniel Lyon was the bravest man he ever killed. The federal cavalry had disappeared from the fight, and without them the federal commanders feared they would be flanked and defeated so they withdrew that night back to Springfield. Lyon’s body had somehow been abandoned on the field but he was found by the Confederates and buried on land belonging to a Yankee farmer. It was eventually dug up and returned to Ashford for internment in a family plot near the south end of a road that came to be known As General Lyon Road. Fifteen thousand of his friends and neighbors attended the funeral.
Ben McCulloch had been so badly mauled by the federal that he declined to pursue them and returned to Arkansas. It was a tactical victory for him because he had driven the federals from the field, but it was a strategic victory for the federals because they had driven him from Missouri. Lyon was a great general for a captain, and had he survived, the course of history might have turned out differently. Had he survived neither Fremont, nor Halleck would have ascended to command in the western army, and perhaps Ulysses S. Grant would not have either.
Claiborne Jackson married into the prominent Sappington Family. They made their bones by selling pills for a quack malaria remedy for use in western emigration and along the Santa Fe Trail. Every wagon headed westward carried a few bottle of those dangerous pills. His first wife, Jane Sappington, passed away during the Blackhawk War, and he married her sister, Luisa. When Luisa passed away he married third sister named Eliza. Jane and Luisa were both in poor health from being poisoned by their dad’s quack medicine. In 1862 Claiborne died from stomach cancer down in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those Sappington pills may have got him too. The Sappingtons got lonesome for him though and had his body dug up and reburied in a family cemetery in Saline County a few miles southwest of Arrow Rock, Missouri. It is not far from Boonville where he was driven from the state.
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