“
[
182]
your property to take care of itself.
Come to the Army of Missouri, not for a week or a month, but to free your country.
Strike till each armed foe expires!
Strike for your country's altar fires!
Strike for the green graves of your sires,
God and your native land!
Be yours the office to choose between the glory of a free country and a just government, or the bondage of your children.
I, at least, will never see the chains fastened upon my country.
I will ask for six and a half feet of
Missouri soil in which to repose, for I will not live to see my people enslaved.
”
This appeal aroused the disaffected
Missourians, and at the time when
Pope was ordered to his new field of operations, about five thousand recruits, it was said, were marching from the
Missouri River and beyond to join
Price.
To prevent this combination was
Pope's chief desire.
He encamped thirty or forty miles southwest from
Booneville, at the middle of December, and after sending out some of the First Missouri cavalry, under
Major Hubbard, to watch
Price, who was then at
Osceola with about eight thousand men, and to prevent a reconnaissance of the main column of the Nationals, he moved his whole body
westward and took position in the country between
Clinton and
Warrensburg, in
Henry and
Johnson counties.
There were two thousand Confederates then near his lines, and against these
Lieutenant-Colonel Brown, of the Seventh Missouri, was sent with a considerable cavalry force that scattered them.
Having accomplished this,
Brown returned to the main army,
which was moving on
Warrensburg.
Informed that a Confederate, force was on the
Blackwater, at or near
Milford, North of him,
Pope sent
Colonel Jefferson C. Davis and
Major Merrill to flank them, while the main body should be in a position to give immediate aid, if necessary.
Davis found them in a wooded bottom on the west side of the
Blackwater, opposite the mouth of
Clear Creek.
His forces were on the east side, and a bridge that spanned the
Blackwater between them was strongly guarded.
This was carried by assault, by two companies of the Fourth Regular Cavalry, under
Lieutenants Gordon and
Amory, supported by five companies of the First Iowa cavalry.
Gordon led the charge in person, and received several balls through his cap. The Confederates were driven, the bridge was crossed, and a pursuit was pressed.
Unable to, escape, the fugitives, commanded by
Colonels Robinson,
Alexander, and
Magoffin (the latter a brother of the
Governor of
Kentucky), surrendered.
The captives were one thousand three hundred in number, infantry and cavalry; and with them the Nationals gained as spoils about eight hundred horses and mules, a thousand stand of arms, and over seventy wagons loaded with tents, baggage, ammunition, and supplies of every kind.
At about midnight the prisoners and spoils were taken into
Pope's camp, and the next day the victors and the vanquished moved back in the direction of
Sedalia,
Pope's starting-place.
In the space of five days the infantry had marched more than one hundred miles, and the cavalry double that distance.
During that time they had captured nearly fifteen hundred prisoners, with the arms and supplies just mentioned.
They had swept the
