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.

191

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.

While this brought to their ranks a great many of the more pliant
neutrals, it drove away from them a great number, and put into the ranks
of the Union many who had been more or less inclined to the pro-slavery
element.

The soreness between Price and McCulloch which had been filmed over
before the battle by Price subordinating himself and his troops to
McCulloch, became more inflamed during the stay at Springfield. In spite
of the fact that the Missouri troops had done much better fighting, and
suffered severer losses in the battle than McCulloch, he persisted in
denouncing them as cowards, stragglers and mobites, without soldierly
qualities.

The following extracts from a report to J. P. Benjamin, Confederate
Secretary