A History Lover's Guide to Kansas City by Paul Kirkman

Author:Paul Kirkman [Kirkman, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, General
ISBN: 9781467144407
Google: EML4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2020-06-15T00:42:12+00:00

Battle of the Little Blue Civil War, marker placed by Civil War Round Table of Western Missouri. Courtesy of Paul Kirkman.

Colonel Alfred Pleasanton had been pursuing Price with a veteran cavalry force of over four thousand men. While Price’s forces pushed across the Big Blue River at Byram’s Ford, Pleasanton was driving his rearguard out of Independence. The citizens of Independence witnessed two fierce battles, with thousands of men, back-to-back in the streets of their town. The Confederate retreat and Pleasonton’s advance, which took place on the opposite ends of town, could be seen from the second floor of the Bingham-Waggoner Home.

On the morning of October 23, 1864, Price entered the field with fewer than ten thousand men against a combined federal force of more than twenty thousand men. He had hoped to defeat Curtis—maybe turn north, toward Kansas City or Leavenworth—but he was checked on three sides. As he scrambled to move his wagons and cattle south, toward Military Road, Price left Major General John S. Marmaduke to defend the Confederates’ right flank, along the Big Blue River. He left Brigadier General Joseph O. Shelby to lead the attack on Curtis’s forces along Brush Creek. General Curtis watched the battle unfold from the roof of the Harris House in Westport (which survives today as the Harris-Kearney House Museum).

The union forces advanced and were repelled twice; they were forming for a third try when a local farmer showed them a path to flank the Confederate left, near the Bent-Ward Home. The plateau and fields south of Brush Creek became killing fields as Pleasanton clawed his way across the Big Blue River, the thirty Union cannons tore up the center of the Confederate lines and Curtis turned the Confederate left. The Confederates were outnumbered, outgunned and out of options. Shelby fought and regrouped; then he fought some more to give the rest of Price’s troops time to retreat, but the battle and the campaign were lost. The Confederates had been using the home of John Wornall as a hospital (also surviving as a museum today), but the Union troops took it over as they drove the Confederates out of town; they immediately used it for the same purpose.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.