Col. John M. Harrell, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.2, Arkansas
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

For him her poet's lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For him she rings the birthday bells.

The snow which fell on October 27th and had remained for several days, disappeared, and the weather resumed its autumnal, hazy mildness, peculiar to that section. Some scouting and resistance to inroads of marauders from Missouri, kept the cavalry alive to the existence of hostilities until the last of November, when the regiments composing the cavalry brigade of Col. Chas. A. Carroll were ordered to unite on the road from Ozark to Fayetteville, and take up the line of march to Cane hill under command of Brigadier-General Marmaduke. Shelby's brigade of Missouri cavalry had preceded them and were in occupation of Newburg, a pretty village on an elevation known as Cane hill, commanding views of the surrounding region, a fertile and cultivated country to the north, and the site of Cane Hill college, a favorite institution of learning. Shelby had with him Bledsoe's battery of two iron 6-pounders, and four little howitzers under command of Captain Shoup. On the morning of November 28th, having information of the advance of the enemy under General Blunt, from Lindsay's prairie, 15 miles south of Maysville, the brigade was drawn up, dismounted, north of Kidd's mill, on the Fayetteville road, by which the enemy was approaching; Col. Emmet MacDonald was posted northeast of Kidd's mill, and Carroll's brigade was formed across the road, north of the village of Boonsboro, also on Cane hill.

The enemy's artillery, supported by infantry, opened the battle by shelling the positions occupied by Shelby and MacDonald. It was answered by Shelby's two guns promptly for a while, then Bledsoe moved one of his guns from its position covering the Cincinnati road to one giving him a cross-fire on the enemy's position, against which his other gun was playing. Heavy forces of the enemy were rapidly deploying and advancing in numbers sufficient to