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

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[347] relief and every chance of escape, and, what was still worse, from the only point where they could procure water. There was, in deed, neither spring nor cistern on the hill where Mulligan had taken up his position. Thus, in spite of the check experienced by the Confederates wherever they had attempted to carry the entrenchments by main force, the night, which finally put an end to that bloody strife, found the Federal chiefs full of the gravest anxiety. The heat was intense; the supply of water could only last one day longer; a large number of horses belonging to the regiment of cavalry had been killed, and their carcases would infect the air; provisions were beginning to give out, and the ammunition was nearly exhausted. Mulligan had set an example of the most heroic courage. Wherever there was any danger to be encountered he was seen on the spot, and his zeal alone sustained his men in that emergency. His only hope was in the arrival of reinforcements, so often asked and so impatiently looked for.

This wish was about to be fulfilled; but so far from ameliorating his condition, it was only to render it the more galling by condemning him to suffer the torments of Tantalus. Sturgis had indeed arrived with his troops on the 19th on the opposite side of the Missouri, as Fremont had directed him; but being without cavalry, he had not been able to scout, and instead of the transport-boats he had counted upon, he found the shore where he should have landed lined with the enemy's skirmishers. Having no means of crossing, he was compelled to fall back and give up all hope of revictualling the besieged. At the same time, a steamer with a battalion of troops from Jefferson City stopped on the way, and landed that reinforcement out of reach of the besieged town. The forces of J. Davis, stretching along the line of the Sedalia Railway and around Warrensburg, could no longer arrive in time to save Mulligan. The latter still kept up the fight during the whole of the 19th, the following night, and the morning of the 20th. The numerical superiority of the Confederates enabled them to relieve each other frequently, so as to give no rest to their adversaries. The amateurs, who, without wearing any uniform or belonging to any regiment, came there with their rifles to fire upon the unfortunate men who occupied the summit