Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 3.
Frank Moore, Ed.

Doc. 58. the fall of Lexington.

Lexington is fallen! We write it with sorrow; for it is a heavy reverse to our arms in Missouri--the twin disaster to the reverse at Springfield, and, like that reverse, easily avoidable, had prompt steps been taken to avoid it. The gallant garrison, under its heroic Irish commander, after resisting with unflinching courage for six days, and repulsing the assaults of the quadruple besieging force, beleaguered on every side, penned up within the narrow limits of earthwork defences, wearied to exhaustion, with incessant watching and fighting, was compelled, at last, to yield to that foe more terrible to the brave soldier than bullet or bayonet — Thirst — and surrender its courageous band as prisoners of war.

He might, and, no doubt, would have resisted longer, had not his supplies of water been cut off; but the intrenchments of Lexington were not supplied with wells and other conveniencies of a stone fort, because they were not constructed with the design of resisting a week's siege. Hence, when the garrison was cut off from its supplies of water in the river and the wells in the vicinity, there was no alternative for the famished men but a surrender. They are now in the hands of the enemy, who, by this triumph, secures possession of about four thousand stands of arms, seven hundred cavalry horses, with their equipments, a considerable quantity of [147] ammunition, several pieces of artillery, and the most important city of Western Missouri.

Colonel Mulligan perhaps never dreamed of the possibility of not being reinforced. It never entered into his thoughts that with forty thousand friendly Federal troops within a few days' march of him, he could be neglected, and left to the mercy of a besieging force for a whole week, and finally compelled to surrender for the want of the succor which could have been sent, and which no doubt he confidently presumed, would be sent. It was with the confident conviction of being promptly supported that, when asked to surrender by Price on Sunday, the 15th, he answered with a ringing defiance, and instantly prepared for a desperate combat. He thought that if he should hold out for three days--and he resolved that he would — he would be reinforced from the river, or the enemy attacked in the rear and forced to raise the siege.

But the heroic officer calculated too largely on the cooperation of the authorities at St. Louis. Price arrived at Warrensburg, thirty-five miles from Lexington, two weeks ago yesterday. Everybody knew that he was marching on Lexington, and that he would make a desperate attempt to take it.

But we cannot think that Price himself ever imagined he would be allowed leisurely to march to Lexington, surround the garrison, and beleaguer it for a whole week, without being disturbed in his amateur-like operations by any of the thirty or forty thousand Federal troops that were within a few days' march of him.

He, perhaps, never conjectured that he could, with a ragged, ill-armed, unpaid, half-demoralized army, without a baggage train, and with a poor supply of war material, march all the way from Springfield over a rugged road, and attack and capture a Federal garrison, supported, or that ought to have been supported, by a department that has hundreds and thousands of tons of shot, shell, powder, cannon, artillery, muskets and rifles, and that has command of all the rivers, all the railroads, and all the steamboats in the State, for the speedy transportation of men and material to any point of danger.

But so it is, and Price and Jackson and Parsons, in their exultations over their unlooked — for victory, must feel even more surprise than we do, at being allowed to achieve it without interruption.

Misfortunes seldom come singly; for, in addition to the surrender of Lexington and the repulse of the Federal troops at Blue Mills Landing, we have to chronicle a reverse in Miller County, brought us by despatches from Jefferson City. A portion of Colonel McClurg's regiment of Home Guards, while on their way from Jefferson City to Linn Creek, Camden County, was surrounded by a large force of the enemy, near Tuscumbia, and, it is said, three hundred of them captured.