of the river. Price believed that of the four most likely targets for this attack, Lexington, if captured, would put the Federals in the most uncomfortable position. Meanwhile in the river port communities, the month of August was one of great excitement.
Early in September, General Fremont's Federal headquarters at St. Louis ordered the Lexington post to secure a forced loan from the Farmer's Bank of Lexington. This seizing of the bank's entire funds of nearly a million dollars further strained the relations between the Union soldiers and the pro-Southern people of Lexington.
Toward the end of August, General Price's steadily growing army began the long march to Lexington, and when Colonel James A. Mulligan, commander of the Union forces there, heard of the approach of a large Confederate army, he sent word to General Fremont urgently requesting reinforcements. Mulligan's forces**, consisting of the First Illinois Cavalry, the Thirteenth Missouri Infantry, the Twenty-Third Illinois Infantry, numbered just short of three thousand, scarcely one-fourth the size of Price's army.
On September 10, the advancing Confederates reached Warrensburg, 34 miles south of Lexington, and the Federal party on its way to Saint Louis with the funds of the Lexington bank, hastily returned to the safety of the entrenchments being constructed around the old Masonic College building on a hill overlooking the river in the north part of Lexington.
Price's advance guard met light opposition as the army approached Lexington, and the Federal defenders were forced back to the prepared entrenchments around the college. The Confederate troops entered the south and east parts of the town on the twelfth and the conflict on this first day of the siege was limited to minor skirmishes and an exchange of artillery fire. Even after Price's entrance into Lexington, Mulligan's men continued throwing up entrenchments and breastworks at a feverish pace, day and night, to protect their position from being overrun.
After the first day of the siege, Price and his army retired to the fairgrounds in the southeast part of town, where the officers decided on a course of watchful waiting with the least amount of bloodshed. "We've to 'em, dead sure ... All we have to do is watch 'em," Price told his men.
In the Union camp, most of Mulligan's officers, with a much less confident outlook, were in favor of retreating across the river in several steamboats at their disposal, but Mulligan replied, saying, "Gentlemen, I have heard what you have to say, but, begad, we'll fight 'em! That's what we enlisted for, and that's what we'll do."
The Federals' first real encounter with the Confederates occurred the next day. In his report, Colonel Mulligan gave a vivid account of the reaction of his men: "Our men had returned the volley, and a scene of the wildest confusion commenced. Each man evidently believed that he who made the most noise was doing the most shooting. Those who were not shooting at the moon were shooting above it, into the earth, or elsewhere at random, in the wildest and most reckless manner." This type of firing could not have continued long, however, for the Union troops had only 40 rounds of ammunition apiece.
The fighting during the next three days followed a similar pattern with no major attacks being launched by either side. Mulligan and his men kept an anxious watch for the expected reinforcements as they worked to strengthen the fortifications. They passed the hours in anxious waiting, not knowing when the Confederates might begin the expected assault.
Mulligan gives an interesting sidelight on the of the stalemate that preceded the Confederate attack: "Sunday, the seventeenth, arrived, and the Catholic chaplain celebrated Mass on the hillside." After the services were over, the men went back to their work of casting shot in the foundry set up in the basement of the college building, of making their defense more secure, and of "stealing provisions from the inhabitants 'round about. Our pickets were all the time skirmishing with the enemy's attack."
Early on the morning of Monday, September 18, the three-day battle, which has earned recognition as one of the largest battles in the Western campaign of the War Between the States, began. Wave upon wave of Confederate soldiers moved toward the Federal encampment from the fairgrounds, and the Colonel, expecting the worst but hoping for the best, paints this picture of the approach of the Rebel army: "At nine o'clock a.m. the enemy was seen through the glass approaching with a force of 28,000 men and 13 pieces of cannon. They came as one dark, moving mass, their polished guns gleaming in the sunlight, their banners waving, and their drums beating. Everywhere, as far as we could see, were men, men, men ... approaching grandly." Mulligan continues: "Our men stood firm behind the breastworks, none trembling or pale, and the whole place was solemn and silent. The chaplains were valiantly doing their duty, blessing the men on their rounds. The enemy came ... upon my poor devoted little band and opened a terrific fire ... which we answered with determination and spirit."
Although Colonel Mulligan speaks of 28,000 men in Price's army, the figure was probably closer to 15,000 to 18,000. The mass of soldiers appeared much larger because of the many hundreds of unarmed volunteers from the surrounding country, who had come to add their small contributions to the defeat of the "Yanks."
Shortly after the battle started, several companies of Confederates were dispatched to complete the encirclement of the Federals by capturing positions below the bluffs north of the college. To cut their enemy's escape route, the troops also captured several steamboats and ferries tied up to the river bank.
At this point, the most controversial incident of the battle occurred. Price says that, as his troops were taking charge of the boats, a heavy fire opened from a large house situated on the bluffs a few hundred yards west of the Federal works. The building was being used as a field hospital by the Union army and had been regarded neutral by both forces. When the Confederates noted that the gunfire was coming from this building, an act which would have been contrary to the rules of warfare, they immediately assaulted and captured it. Later Mulligan insisted that the building had not been fortified and that the seizure of it by the Rebels was "a dreadful and dishonest deed of aggression against the helpless wounded and dying."
A court inquiry held after the war ruled that the Confederate capture of the building was not wholly unjustified since it was proved that, although the Union troops did not actually fortify it, they did fire from close by and even under its cover.
After the Confederates had taken the hospital, they began firing into the Federal entrenchments nearby. After several unsuccessful Federal attempts at recapture of the hospital, Mulligan sent his Irish Brigade, famous for its courage and valor, to storm the structure." They ran up to the hospital, a wild line of irresistible human will, first opened the door, without shot or shout, until they encountered the enemy within, whom they hurled out and far down the hill beyond.
In their apparently hasty exit from the Anderson House, as the hospital, once the gracious home of Colonel Oliver Anderson, has come to be called, the Confederates captured the Union surgeon. "It was a
**Transcriber's note: There is some indication in historical records that Mulligan's forces also included the 27th Missouri Mounted Infantry. Although Civil War pension records indicate that my great-grandfather, Samuel Shanks, served with this unit as a 1st Lieutenant in Company C, I have not yet located a published roster. It is thought that the men of the 27th volunteered in an effort to help protect the railroad. If you have information regarding the names of the men of the 27th, this transcriber would appreciate hearing from you.
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This page revised January 19, 2004.
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