The Struggle for Missouri Part 16

Gen. Curtis was promoted to Major-General for his victory, and well deserved that honor, in spite of some bitter critics. Sigd was also made a Major-General, with much less reason. Asboth had his withheld Brigadier-Generalcy confirmed to him. Cols. Carr, Davis and Dodge were made Brigadier-Generals, but Cols. Osterhaus, White and Bussey, who had done conspicuous fighting, had to wait some months for their promotion, and Cols. Greusel and Pattison never received it.

Among those who received praise for their gallantry that day was Maj. John Charles Black, of the 37th Ill., later a Colonel and Brigadier-General, Commissioner of Pensions under President Cleveland, Representative-at-large from Illinois, Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, and now President of the United States Civil Service Commission. Maj. Black was severely wounded in the sword arm in the fight, but refused to leave the field until Gen. White ordered him to do so.

Another was Maj. Phillip Sidney Post, of the 59th Ill. He later became Colonel and Brigadier-General; was left for dead on the field at Nashville, but recovered, to be Consul-General at Vienna and represent Illinois for many years in Congress. He was also wounded in the sword arm, and also refused to leave the field until he was peremptorily ordered to do so.

{342} The moral effect of the victory was prodigious and far-reaching. High expectations had been raised by Van Dora, McCulloch, Mcintosh, Price and Albert Pike, which were abjectly prostrated. The ma.s.s of fugitives, white and red, who scattered over Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory, each with his tale of awful slaughter and disheartened defeat, had a blighting effect upon the Secessionists, and greatly strengthened the Union sentiment.

It was a desperate two-days' wrestle between the very best that the Southern Confederacy could produce west of the Mississippi River-the ablest commanders and the finest troops-and a small Union army. It was breaking, test, under the fairest conditions, of the fighting qualities of the two combatants.

Though bitter, merciless, sanguinary fighting was to perturb the State for three years longer, it was no longer war, but guerilla raiding and bandittism, robbery and murder under a pretext of war. Price, indeed, made an invasion of the State two years later, but it was a hurried raid, without hope of permanent results.

At the conclusion of the battle Missouri was as firmly anch.o.r.ed to the Union as her neighbors, Illinois, Iowa and Kansas.

The battle for Missouri had been fought and won.