Volume 6, Number 6 - Winter 1978
Bowen's Cavalry Made the Gravel Fly
The Battle of Crane Creek February 14, 1862
by Hardy A. Kemp Colonel AUS Rtd.
"Battle of Crane Creek?"
"Yes, Crane Creek -- where the Old Wire Road crossed it -- way back in the eighteen - sixties. And ‘way up in the northwestern corner of Stone County."
"There was a battle there?"
"Yes, a Civil War battle." "The Union victory in the battle near the head of Crane Creek was of little strategic importance. No influential center of the Union’s economy was saved for the Union. No valuable link in the Union’s transportation system was gained or even made secure for military purposes.
"Tactically, Bowen’s battalion of Union cavalry did not set new examples to be imitated by other cavalry units ‘for all to come.’ His cavalry did demonstrate, and clearly, the utility and the soundness of the long-established basic rule which governs the use of cavalry in combat, namely: to remain mobile and to probe, thus forcing an enemy’s withdrawal before an advancing column. Or, if the enemy strongly resists the probing, to test that strength, fall back and report what had been found.
Bowen’s success in the use of his cavalry battalion was not a new departure in the military. That early in the Civil War, however, it was new to Union troops and to secessionists alike, all of them new to war itself. The importance of this cavalry exercise steadily increased throughout Curtis’ campaign leading up to the great two-day battle at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, and on through his march across northern Arkansas to Helena later that same year, 1862. As the War became more a national happening thus involving thousands where before Squadrons’ only, had been fighting, the simplicity of the basic rule in cavalry tactics seems to have become lost in the shuffle. But that’s another story: the story of our great and costly Civil War, and this particular essay is the story of a ‘battle’ near the head of Crane Creek, tactically unimportant, but in the long view of considerable importance strategically.
"The ‘battle" came about when a hard-riding Union Cavalry unit, the pilot-point of the advance guard of a powerful Union force, caught up with General Price’s Missourians in their retreat from Missouri, February, 1862. They were hurriedly leaving their winter quarters in and near Springfield for the security they hoped to find in a larger Confederate camp in Cross Hollows, Arkansas. And they were more than in a hurry, they were running pell-mell! A newly organized and newly supplied Union Army of the Southwest had been put together and sent from Rolla, Lebanon and Sedalia to meet in Springfield to drive the Rebels from the State."
The secessionists had had their way ever since the Battle of Wilson Creek. Yet, so far, not a great deal had happened to end the War by Christmas of 1861, anywhere, much less Missouri.
In Missouri, Fremont, the Great Imponderable, had utterly messed up the Union’s military effort. Following General Lyon’s death and defeat at Wilson Creek, Fremont had spent thousands of dollars and weeks of time moving impatient volunteers from place to place in Missouri, ‘fortifying’ St. Louis against attack (which was never seriously threatened), establishing guard posts and garrisons at towns and hamlets far from vital points, and in patrolling the Hannibal and St. Louis railroad, all to no very useful purpose."
Meanwhile, Gen. Price, unsupported by his Confederate allies, had roamed around in Missouri to suit himself, gathering recruits and supplies, kicking up skirmishes here and there, capturing the garrison at Lexington-on-the-River, by siege and by storm, urging, successfully, the formal secession of Missouri by its refugee assembly huddled together in a minority of its members in Cassville. Incidentally, Price lost an undefended town and its contents - Osceola - to ‘Wild Jim’ Lane and his marauders from Kansas.
But with winter coming on and with no meaningful end of the War in sight, ‘Old Pap Price’, as he was called, had about decided to call it good
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and settle down in the Sac River country above Springfield for a long winters nap: Winter quarters, limited fighting, inaction, nothing much until warm weather and dry roads.
The Lincoln Administration, by then more or less recovered from the shock of Bull Run and Wilson Creek, had grown sick and tired of unproductive generals, hordes of partisan politicians, masses of militarily unemployed soldier-volunteers, and endless parades getting, and going, nowhere. Someone with military brains and studied courage had to be found to ‘take over.’ George B. McClellan, Lincoln’s Number One General at the time, had not been the ‘compleat’ answer, but he had an answer -- part of one -- in his nominations for new Departmental Commanders, (1). His recommendation for the Department of the Missouri--to replace Fremont -- was Henry Wager Halleck, one of McClellan’s better guesses.
"Halleck was a distinguished graduate of West Point, a military scholar, an author of military text books and translations, and had served on assigned duty overseas as a student at French military institutions.
"He had also served with distinction in California during the War with Mexico. At the close of that war he had remained in California and had become highly successful in personal business enterprises, notably mining and railroads, and in the private practice of law. When the Civil War came he sincerely offered his services in October, 1861. His ‘captaincy’ was promptly restored. Shortly afterward, with the command of the Department of the Missouri, he was given a Brigadier Generalship.
For all his military scholarship and experience, he was never any part of a field-soldier. He found no satisfaction in military field work. Later in the Civil War he proved unsatisfactory in his handling of large troop-bodies in field campaigns, the one involving Corinth, Mississippi, for example.
But he had brains, and the sort of courage that comes from cool determination -- whether he liked war or not -- and he did not!
None the less, Grant regarded Halleck as "a man of gigantic intellect, well studied in the profession of arms." Sherman was of the same opinion. Said he, ‘Halleck possessed a knowledge of the principles of war far beyond any other officer in our services." First and last, Grant and Sherman acknowledged Halleck as the organizer, the co-ordinator, the planner and the manager who advised and suggested, and sometimes ordered when and where to make a move. In short, Halleck was the administrator of the Union forces in the Civil War."
His first administrative job in heading the Department of the Missouri was to bring about the summary relief of Fremont, as its commanding general, and the subsequent transfer of David Hunter, Regular Army, who, technically, had succeeded Fremont for the time being. That done, his next move was to take cognizance of the military mess in Missouri and to take steps to correct that situation.
On Halleck’s arrival from California, McClellan had briefed him on the situation in Missouri as the War Department in Washington saw it at that particular time.
"Halleck was more concerned at the moment about civilian affairs in Missouri, and the ways and means of correcting the mistakes Fremont had made so that he would not add to them. But true to his cool headed and cold hearted make-up Halleck assumed that burden without going into bureaucratic monkey business and palaver. In no time he had not only straightened out business matters and had so much impressed Civil War leaders with his clear and decisive actions that the Confederate President himself, Jefferson Davis, said of him, ‘the Federal forces are not hereafter to be, as heretofore, commanded by pathfinders or holiday soldiers, but by men of military education and experience in war,’ (4).
A week after his arrival in St. Louis, Halleck received an urgently forwarded message from (then) Colonel Frederick Steele out in Sedalia that Price and thousands of ‘rebels’ were bearing in toward Jefferson City with St. Louis their ultimate goal. Halleck did not leap on a special locomotive and ‘streak out’ for Sedalia to repress the onrushing enemy. He simply ordered his officers out there to prepare to resist attack, (5). It was up to them. That was Halleck-and-the-military in Halleck’s earlier days, and so on into later days of the War.
In Missouri, State politicians had taken over. The fiery Hamilton R. Gamble, Missouri’s provisional Governor, had been ‘provisionally’ placed by the State Convention, and both ‘Governor’ and Convention -- not the elected legislature - -were running the State’s government in the absence of the elected legislature which had fled Jefferson City on Lyon’s approach six months before. In any case, both ‘Governor’ and ‘Convention’ had lost
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no time in becoming boldly assertive and strongly demanding. In less than a year they had worn the ‘cool headed and coldhearted’ Halleck down to a nub! By that time Halleck was more than glad to escape to the Corinth battle-front. (But that’s a long way from the Battle of Crane Creek.)
"Returning to military affairs in Missouri, General W. T. Sherman, himself working with Halleck in St. Louis in the effort to put a powerful Union force in Southwest Missouri, became alarmed by another urgent message from the ‘Interior’ which had Price and his Rebels again on the march northward. Halleck, unperturbed by wild rumors, promptly gave Sherman an assignment which was, in actuality, a three-weeks’ vacation--a cooling-off period which no doubt saved an already frazzled Sherman for the trying years ahead. (6)."
While all this was going on Halleck had not put aside his concern for driving Price out of the State. After due consideration, he had made up his mind to place the Union’s offensive in the hands of volunteer Colonel Samuel Ryan Curtis.
Curtis was a senior-sort of citizen, a West Pointer, an Iowan, a veteran of the Mexican war with a distinguished record, a lawyer, an engineer and an ex-member of Congress. At the time, Curtis was commanding the 2nd Iowa Infantry regiment then at work guarding the Hannibal and St. Louis railroad that, among Curtis’ other duties included recruit-reception and drill plus the usual ‘whole host of things appertaining thereto.’ Curtis was a stern, rather ‘a tough old gentleman’, (age fifty-four, then) but he was still fully able to take command of a tough assignment in the very depths of a Missouri winter and prosecute the job to the sort of victory the Union had long sought after. Thus, on Christmas Day, 1861, Halleck ordered his field officers to prepare for the drive on Price, and ordered Curtis to Rolla "to begin the movement." (7)
"Halleck Out of hand had created a Southwestern Military District of Missouri for Curtis. A Brigadier’s star came with it. No special orders, which would have included strategy and tactics, were issued to Curtis. It was simply: ‘Drive Price and the Rebels out of Missouri.’ That was already understood between two of them.
To begin with in Rolla, Curtis was given some 1500 well organized and well drilled cavalry-men under (then) Colonel Eugene A. Carr, a Regular Army Captain who had properly distinguished himself at Wilson’s Creek and had had over eleven years of service following his graduation from West Point in 1850. At Halleck’s suggestion this mobile force was to be kept well out in front of the advancing main body of infantry and artillery -- "like the fingers of your hand," he told Curtis. And that was the way the expedition worked, all the way to its climactic victory at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, three months later.
"Moving forward, Carr ‘spread his fingers,’ to Lebanon, Missouri, and with little difficulty sent a ‘long finger’ on toward Springfield. The others were sent reaching into the country-side, searching for provisions and paying for them.
A moderately stubborn amount of rebel resistance was encountered beyond Lebanon, but Carr’s men were flexible enough to pull back for support. That clash hardly merited a report, and the ‘fingering’ went on ahead while Curtis’ troops to the rear made a sub-base depot at Lebanon thus shortening the distance from Rolla.
"All was not smooth-and-fast sailing at the time. Washington was screaming for ‘more troops, more troops up East’ and the venerable Colonel Phelps, in Springfield, was in deep anxiety over the return of Sigel and his Germans. Undisciplined and unpredictable in their earlier sojourn downstate, they had made enemies of Union and Rebel-folks alike."
But those matters, too, were taken care of, and Halleck re-enforced Curtis’ expedition by replacing the Army’s railroad guards along the South Pacific railroad west from St. Louis to Rolla with U.S. Reserves (Home Guards, from St. Louis) there-by increasing Curtis’ total numbers from 12,000 to 15,000 combat-ready troops: infantry, with artillery units in proportion. All of those were not in Rolla, or even in Lebanon, but ‘pipe-lined’ from St. Louis all the way to points within only a few miles of Springfield where the extended ‘fingers’ were beginning to probe that far away from the main body. Carr, still in command of the ‘fingers’ was beginning to become concerned about subsistence and supply at far distances, (8). A veteran of Wilson’s Creek, he had learned to worry there.
"Curtis, too, was worried, but Halleck was not. Deferring and, in a sense, disdaining the War Department’s demands for more men to be shipped to the Eastern theaters, Halleck called upon John Pope, commanding in northeast Missouri, to send a full division down to Curtis from the central part of the Missouri River area.
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Pope responded -- tardily -- with Colonel Jefferson
C. Davis’ division barely managing, even with everyone’s help, to get across the flooding Osage before Price’s light-troops and guerillas could fall upon Davis’ large body then thoroughly mixed up in the process of being ferried across the widened river, (9).
"By that time, General Price had become well aware of the Union’s plans and determination regarding his future in the Confederate ‘military’, and for that reason Price began pulling in his outer pickets in addition to calling all of the State Militia who would venture to go with him to Arkansas. Thus he started the first of his units through Springfield and down the Old Wire Road. The calendar then said, ‘Only two more days in January’ -- meaning, two more weeks before ‘The Battle At Crane Creek’, and three more weeks after that, ‘Pea Ridge,’ the second major engagement in the Civil War in the West, March 6th and 7th, 1862.
"By the end of the first week in February, all of Curtis’ main body was in or near Lebanon. Curtis then issued Special Order No. 80, grouping the various units into four divisions for ease of handling. The two Germans, Franz Sigel and Alexander Asboth, were given a division each: Sigel, the 1st; Asboth, the 2nd; ‘Union Jeff Davis, (Colonel Jefferson C. Davis) the 3rd, and Carr and his indispensable cavalry, the 4th, (10)."
"On February 13, the bulk of Carr’s Cavalry was waiting some five miles east of Springfield for elements of the main body to catch up in the line of advance. While they were waiting, one company of the 4th Iowa Infantry, thrown forward as skirmishers from the advancing column, marched unopposed into Springfield. They did not know that Price’s army had marched Out of Springfield the night before abandoning large quantities of staple food, forage and ordnance stores, (11).
"Carr’s cavalry, directly behind the Iowans, did not wait to enjoy the capture of Springfield. Instead they pushed on down the Wire Road past memorable Wilson’s Creek, some of them doing even farther.
"The next day, February 14, 1862, Major William D. Bowen’s battalion of cavalry made the gravel fly as they galloped on ahead bringing Captain John W. Stephens and his two mountain-howitzers thumping along behind them -- ‘Standard Operating Procedure’ -- and useful those small artillery pieces had been, both in clearing the way for exploration and for holding back small and even relatively large bodies attempting a counterattack.
"In this ‘hurry-up’, the Dug Spring area was soon passed. The McCullah settlements lay ahead: McCullah Store and Chapel -- the site, earlier, of Curran Post Office -- Wesley McCullah’s Stage Stop and then a bit farther on, James Alexander McCullah’s place where the Wire Road crossed Crane Creek not far below the big spring which was its head.
There Bowen’s Battallion suddenly came upon a fairly large body of Confederate irregulars which, the Official Record says, were bivouacked there under the command of a Colonel Freeman, (12). (Other such names are to be found, but lack official authentification.)
"Bowen wasted no time in formalities: Stephens simply brought up his two howitzers and ‘let ‘em have it’ - ten shells, it is said, which left 15 men dead, 9 wounded, and the rest running for cover.
"Soon afterward, however, the attacked began to show signs of fight and began to return the ‘Howitzer Valentines’ with small-arm fire, moving all the while toward surrounding Bowen’s cavalry-men then deployed laterally across the Road and, most of them, firing dismounted in returning the gunfire they were beginning to receive.
"Bowen, operating under his orders to probe and not to ‘play hero’, began to fall back in the direction of southard column coming from Springfield. They were not far behind him. (The North Column of Curtis’ army had been ordered West from Springfield on the Springfield-Mt. Vernon Road.)
Thus, the Battle of Crane Creek: the first notable fight in Price’s first retreat from Missouri. (It took place in the area where Leonard and Mildred Williams now live.)
The second day following, the two Union columns joined each other near McDowell, in Barry County, on the Flat Creek side of the ‘Big Ridge’. Once the Union force came within cannon range of the retiring rebels, both sides paused for an artillery duel-no room for infantry and cavalry maneuvering. That allowed General Price’s men more time to put distance between them and Curtis’ powerful and determined force still pressing forward in their effort to keep the war in Arkansas -for the time being, at least," The End.
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References
1. Williams, T. Harry, "Lincoln and His Generals", p. 47, Grosset and Dunlap. New York, 1952.
2. Ambrose, Stephen E., "Halleck, Lincoln’s Chief of Staff", p. 3. (Quoting Gen’l. U.S. Grant.) Louisiana State Univ. Press, Baton Rouge, La., 1962.
3. Ibid. (Quoting Sherman to Halleck in O.R., 32, part3, p.469) p.4.
4. O.R., 8.701.
5. Ibid. 8, p. 375.
6. Ambrose, Stephen E., "Halleck, Lincoln’s Chief of Staff", pp. 15-17. Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1962.
7. Ibid. pp. 17-18.
8. O.R., 8, 572. Letter, Carr to Headquarters, S.W. Missouri Military District, 26 January 1862.
9. O.R., 8, 538. Letter, Curtis to Headquarters, S.W. Missouri Military District, 31 January 1862.
10. O.R., 8, 550. Special Order No. 80, Headquarters, S.W. Missouri Military District, 9 February 1862.
11. O.R., 8, 257. Carr’s short report on "Crane Creek" in his "Pea Ridge" report.
12. O.R., 8, 269. Bowen’s report, "Crane Creek", included in his report of the Battle of Pea Ridge.
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