This text is part of:
[147]
permitted himself to be surprised just before day by Ewing's advance guard, and driven in confusion out of the town.
But the Federal victory was short-lived, for Shelby heard the uproar and, understanding what it meant, ambushed the enemy and cut them up so badly that the pursuit was abandoned then and there.
From the vicinity of Carthage Shelby moved leisurely to White river and camped near Berryville to rest his command and wait for information in regard to Shanks and his detachment.
Shanks had a rough time after he left the field at Marshall, but fortunately he liked a rough time.
He was as sturdy a soldier as ever rode in front of an advancing column or held the rear of a retreating one.
When the melee and confusion resulting from Shelby's charge at Marshall were the greatest, and he swung off to the left, Brown followed him so closely and held to him so tenaciously that he could make but slow progress, and when night came he had got but three miles from the battlefield.
But when the enemy drew off at night he halted, fed his horses, distributed his ammunition and formed his plans.
He followed very nearly the line in retreat that Shelby had followed in his advance.
All night and a part of the next day he moved swiftly on, and luckily, just after he crossed the Pacific railroad, near Sedalia, he encountered a Federal forage train, dispersed the escort and captured the wagons.
This furnished abundant supplies for his men and horses and enabled him to continue his march without much loss of time.
At Florence, which he entered at night, he encountered a Federal force as strong as his own, but charged it out of hand and made short work of it. McNeil was in command of the Federal forces at Springfield, and it was perhaps fortunate for Shelby and Shanks that he was. McNeil was not a fighter.
As far as he ever went in that way was to make a demonstration—a show of fight—to save his reputation and his commission.
As a general thing his soldiers got
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.