Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[321] tains. These undulations, covered here and there with brushwood, intersected by ravines where the water does not abound in summer, but the soil of which readily responds to the cultivation of cereals, extend in a north-easterly direction, traversing nearly the whole State, and culminating in the heights of Pilot Knob, in the midst of the lower plains which border the Mississippi. Beyond this point the waters run southwardly into the White River. This vast region only possessed three trunk lines of railway, all starting from St. Louis. The first followed a westerly direction along the line of the Missouri, passing through Jefferson City, and stopped at the village of Sedalia before reaching Kansas. The second followed the great post-road south-westwardly which passes by Rolla, Springfield, and Cassville, and terminates at Fort Smith, in Arkansas; before the war it carried the Texas mail. This line did not extend beyond Rolla, about two hundred and forty kilometres from St. Louis. The third, of about equal length, ran southwardly as far as the mines in the vicinity of Pilot Knob. Sedalia, Rolla, and Pilot Knob were therefore the three heads of lines beyond which the armies could only sustain themselves by living upon the country or by employing immense trains to convey their provisions.

After the combat at Booneville, Lyon had freed the whole of the Missouri valley and prevented Price from making it the base of his operations. The State legislature and Governor Jackson had fled in haste from Lexington, forgetting in their hurry the government seal, together with a considerable amount of money. Price himself fell back towards the southern part of the State, but he was not the man to be daunted by a first reverse, and his name alone sufficed to rally around him all the secessionists of Missouri, who had been for a moment discouraged by his retreat. Choosing his own time to make sudden attacks upon isolated Unionist detachments, and retreating whenever he had cause to apprehend a check, he trained his men to the habits of partisan warfare, and procured, at the expense of the enemy, all the arms, ammunition, wagons, and provisions of which he was entirely destitute. So that when he reached the town of Neosho, at the south-western angle of the State, after a long and fatiguing retreat, he had a body of troops around him more numerous and better