Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

Fayetteville was our chief outpost on the Arkansas frontier; and here Col. M. L. Harrison, with the 1st Arkansas (Union) infantry and 1st Arkansas cavalry, was charged¹ by Gen. W. L. Cabell, who, with 2,000 mounted men and 2 guns, had rapidly crossed the Boston mountains from Ozark, intending to attack at daylight, but not arriving till after sunrise. After due shelling, a spirited cavalry charge on our right wing was led by Col. Munroe, but repulsed; and by noon the enemy were on their way back to Ozark. Harrison, having very few horses, was unable to pursue. His loss was but 4 killed, 26 wounded, 16 prisoners, and 35 “missing,” whom he Bluntly reports as “mostly stampeded to Cassville during the engagement.” lie took 55 prisoners, 50 horses, and 100 shot-guns. He says all of his force who did any fighting numbered less than 500.

Marmaduke, after his failure in south-western Missouri and his mishap at Batesville, repaired to Little Rock; where a new campaign was planned, in conjunction with the choice spirits there assembled. South-western Missouri was preponderantly Union; while south-eastern, at least below the Iron mountain, was considered otherwise. It is an unprepossessing, swampy, thinly peopled region, and had been scouted over by each party in turn, and not firmly held by either. Leaving Little Rock about the middle of April, with Price's “1st corps of the trans-Mississippi department,” reported (doubtless, with exaggeration) as 10,000 strong, he moved north-eastward into Missouri;² marching up the St. Francis to Frederickton,³ thence striking south-eastward at Cape Girardeau, a large depot of Union army stores, on the Mississippi, whither Gen. John McNeil had repaired from Bloomfield, with 1,200 men and 6 guns; reaching it, by hard marching, two days before Marmaduke's arrival.⁴ McNeil found here 500 men, mainly of the 1st Nebraska, Lt.-Col. Baumer, with 4 more guns, behind four very rude and simple earthworks. As a measure of prudence, he sent away most of the stores on steamboats, and was then ready for the fight with which Marmaduke, with four brigades, soon accommodated him: the place being first formally summoned “by order of Maj.-Gen. Sterling Price” (who was not within 100 miles)--30 minutes being allowed for an answer; but only one was taken. The enemy next shelled a while; while another summons was sent; but McNeil refused to stop firing or to make any answer. And now gunboats were seen coming up with reenforcements to the besieged, and Marmaduke drew off,⁵ having lost considerably, and commenced his retreat toward Arkansas; which he was enabled, by burning bridges, to prosecute with little loss — McNeil having been ranked by Gen. Vandever, who arrived with the reenforcements, and whose ideas of pursuit were of the slow-and-easy pattern. Two or three ineffective skirmishes occurred between our advance and the Rebel rear: McNeil, in the last, having his horse shot: but Marmaduke got over the St. Francis unharmed, and was