Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

---

[322] equipped than that with which he had left the banks of the Missouri. In drawing near to the Arkansas frontier he knew that he should find important reinforcements there. In fact, General McCulloch was organizing a body of Confederate troops in Arkansas, while a brigade of soldiers from that State was forming under General Pearce; all these, assembled in the neighborhood of the Ozark Mountains, were to enter Missouri to support Price. The troops of the latter were considerably scattered; he was himself encamped at Pools Prairie, between Sarcoxie and Neosho; Governor Jackson, with a brigade commanded by General Parsons, was at Lamar, much more to the northward, while another brigade, under General Rains, which had been left behind near Papinsville, on the upper Osage, was on the march to join him.

Lyon, on his part, was preparing to follow the Confederates into the remote districts whither they had retired, by marching from Booneville in a direct line toward the south; but although his little army did not number more than twenty-seven hundred men, the difficulty in obtaining provisions necessarily caused delays, and he was obliged to have an enormous supply train following him. One of the detached bodies of troops, which he had organized for the purpose of preventing incursions and the depredations of partisans, was in a better position to strike the enemy, whose forces were still scattered; and the enterprising chief who commanded it could not allow such an opportunity to escape him. Colonel Siegel, a German officer, with two regiments and two batteries of four field-pieces each—about fifteen hundred men in all—had left Rolla nearly at the same time that Lyon was marching upon Booneville. He reached Springfield on the 23d of June; and on learning that the Confederates had gone southward, he pushed immediately forward in the hope of surprising some isolated detachment. He arrived at Sarcoxie with one of his regiments on the 28th, but Price, having abandoned the camp of Pools Prairie, had retired beyond Neosho. After occupying this town, Siegel determined to go and attack the troops under Parsons and Rains, who were at the northward. As soon as he had formed his column he took the line of march, imprudently leaving a company of infantry at Neosho with a view of protecting the inhabitants in the event of the return of the Confederates, but their presence