Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 3.

[215] sleeping and unsuspecting inhabitants by their horrid yells. The town was wholly without defenders, excepting the citizens, who were mostly unarmed. The guerrillas picketed every road leading out of Lawrence, so that no person should escape; and whenever a citizen emerged from his house with arms in his hands, he was shot dead. The place was speedily pillaged and burnt. Banks, stores, and private dwellings were robbed, and the court-house and many of the finest houses were fired. A band of unarmed Union recruits were butchered. Such also was the fate of every German and negro, and many other unarmed citizens, who fell into the hands of the assassins. At ten o'clock in the morning, when the horrid work ceased, one hundred and forty men had been murdered, and one hundred and eighty-five buildings were in flames.

Among those who escaped from Lawrence at this time was General Lane, then a member of the National Senate. He, with some other citizens; organized a pursuing party, but Quantrell had the advantage of six miles the start in the race, with all the horses he could lay hands on. The pursuers killed or captured about one hundred of the murderers. The remainder escaped. Their special work, the sacking of the “Abolition town” of Lawrence, being finished, they were disbanded, and joined themselves to other organizations. Their crime produced the greatest horror and indignation, and for awhile there was no disposition to give quarter to guerrillas; and when, ten days after the sacking of Lawrence, Colonel Woodson, with six hundred Missourians, swept down from Pilot Knob into Northern Arkansas, and at Pocahontas, on the Big Black River, captured the famous guerrilla chief, General M. Jeff. Thompson, and about fifty of his men,¹ it was difficult to shield them from personal peril.

Soon after the attack on Helena,² the surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and the retreat of Johnston from Jackson,³ by which Grant's army was relieved from pressure, General Frederick Steele was sent to Helena to organize an expedition to capture Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas. His forces gathered there at the beginning of August numbered about six thousand men (including five hundred Indiana and Kansas cavalry), with twenty-two guns. He was soon joined by General Davidson (then operating in Arkansas, under the command of General Hurlbut) with an equal number of men, mostly mounted, with eighteen guns, making his whole force, when he moved from Helena on the 10th of August, about twelve thousand men and forty guns. Davidson and his horsemen took the lead in the march. The White River was crossed at Clarendon,

August 17, 1863.

when Davidson pushed forward, on its western side, on a reconnoissance toward Brownsville, the capital of Prairie County, then held by Marmaduke. Meanwhile Steele sent his extra supplies, and over a thousand sick men, in boats, to Duvall's Bluff,⁴ on the White River, which was considered the most healthful place in all that region.

When Davidson, with a strong vanguard of skirmishers, approached