By Pauline Masson –
Civil War historians have been reluctant to call it a battle, preferring instead to refer to it as a raid. But to Pacific residents, fleeing refugees and visiting journalists, it looked like war.
In the early morning hours of Oct.1, 1864, Confederate Cavalry thundered into downtown Pacific, set fire to the Pacific Railroad passenger depot and 16 other railroad buildings, pillaged stores, and took prisoners.
After Union troops arrived and battle lines were drawn and redrawn, so much gunfire issued that bullets and cannonballs were still being dug out of Pacific buildings and back gardens for a hundred years.
What is known locally as the Battle of Pacific started in the early weeks of September, 1864 in Camden, Arkansas. Confederate Major General Sterling Price, a former Missouri governor and avid southern sympathizer, cobbled together three regiments – 12,000 cavalry and infantry troops – remnants of failed battles, for an eleventh hour attempt to capture Missouri for the Confederacy.
A key target was the Arsenal in St. Louis, which was located due north.
One thing in the path was the rail center at Pacific, Missouri, identified on the outdated military maps as the town of Franklin. There, two railroads, along with engines and rolling stock could bring Union forces and arms from St. Louis to thwart Price’s forward movement. Orders were to capture or destroy the railroads.
Pacific residents always knew the railroads were significant to both Union and Confederate armies. Throughout the war years Union forces were stationed here, new Union regiments were formed here, two Union Army Camps were located here, and an Army hospital and Union Army Headquaters were establised here. All with the single purpose of protecting the Pacific and Frisco railroads, which converged here.
Once Price and his army reached as far north as Ironton, hub of the Iron Mountain Railroad, the railroad telegraph – the Internet of the day – clacked out over the telegaph wires that parallelled the railroad tracks the location of the swiftly moving Confederate forces.
In Pacific, railroad telegrapher Kinsey read the dits and dahs of Morse code that pinpointed the location of the advancing troops. He relayed details first to provost marshal Williams, and then to the growing crowd that gathered at the station.
News reporters from the St. Louis Globe Democrat and the Daily Missouri Democrat joined the Pacific editor of the Meramec Valley Transcript at the Depot to follow the advance and report skirmishes and atrocities along the way.
By Tuesday, September 27, bands of refugees dragged themselves and what few belongings they could carry into downtown Pacific to escape the ravages of the marauding army. Pacific families offered them food, took them into their homes or gave them blankets as protection from the October cold.
On Wednesday, October 28, wealthy Pacific vintner, William Stuhlman, who was serving in the 55th Missouri Regiment in Union got word that Price’s army was nearing Pacific. He remembered the wine he had stored in his cellar on West Osage Street in Pacific, asked for and was granted leave to return home to Pacific where he dumped 1,000 gallons of wine into the street to prevent the frenzied Rebel troops from drinking it and doing more harm.
On Thursday evening September 29, a red glow in the southern sky told the alerted citizenry that the railroad bridge over the Meramec River at Mozelle was burning.
In Catawissa on Friday, September 30, after looting stores and farm houses of anything edible and confiscating all the horses, the converging force camped overnight, setting up a command center on Signal Hill. They left a hand written chit listing the merchandise they took from the store operated by John Ryan, a known Southern sympathizer, promising to return after they won the war and pay for it.
On Saturday morning, October 1, at roughly 6:15 a.m., according to military dispatches, the front onslought of the Confederate cavalry arrived at the rail center at South First and St. Louis streets in Pacific. They set fire to the all the wooden structures belonging to the railroads – the passenger depot, freight depot, ice house, refectory, round house, repair shop, storage buildings and four full water towers. All were burned to the ground. Some were still in flames and smoke engulfed the town when Union troops arrived.
They charged into the stores along St. Louis Street that were operated by Union sympathizers. The Daily Missouri Democrat reported that the Rebels stationed guards at the stores of Southern sympathyzers to protect them. Private homes in the downtown were not burned, but many were ransacked and robbed. Civilians were unharmed, but one reporter described a perceived atrocity as one Rebel soldier stomped his heel into the head of small girl’s doll as the stunned girl watched.
Union troops arrived from St. Louis at about 11:00 a.m. and disembarked at the Dozier Crossing, proceeded down the Franklin Road where they encountered a battle line of Confederate troops stretched across the road two men deep, with two pieces of artillary. After some cannon fire from both armies, the overwhelming Union force drove the Rebels back toward town where they formed a second battle line. That was eventually pushed back and a third battle line was stretched across St. Louis Street in front of the old mansion known as the Blue Goose (later the site of the Bank of America and presently under renovation for a new Pacific Post Office.)
Armed conflict of both gun fire and cannon fire followed for upwards of an hour
At about 1:00 p.m. the Confederate forces, estimated at 1,500, were driven out of town. They fired on anyone they approached and burned all the railroad bridges behind them. One reported noted that as they exited the town, one Rebel soldier clumsily carried a bolt of cloth that unraveled as he rode, leaving a fabric ribbon waving in his wake.
They took seven men prisoner, who were kept for several days, then released, unharmed except for the loss of their shoes. One, Uncle Peter Morrison, a lifelong employee of the Pacific Railroad station and rail yard and a town favorite, would spend the next 40 years telling the story of his time with General Price, whom he referred to as “Old Pap.”
Union Officers picked up their wounded and dutifully reported them, man, rank, regiment and injury, in daily dispatches and transported them to hospitals in St. Louis. Union forces reported no deaths in the armed conflict.
The Daily Missouri Democrat reported that nine Rebel soldiers were killed and left where they lay. But I could find no confirmation of that is in any military dispatches or other news reports.
By Sunday, Oct. 2, both the Pacific and Frisco railroads were again moving, bringing reinforcements from St. Louis to follow in the chase for Price’s regiments.The trains were stopped west of Pacific as the Confederate troops burned the wood truss railroad bridges over every river, creek and gulley as they passed.
One regiment was left stationed in Pacific for the remainder of the war. According to the late Neil Brennan, renown history aficionado. A Union Army Camp was set up where present day Denton Road south of Fourth Street borders Brush Creek. Creamer’s vegetable garden presently occupies the site.
There were two previous Union Army Camps here. The first was Camp Herron, located approximately where the East Osage Business Park joins the Pacific Bluff. The second military base, a temporary encampment whose name has not survived, was located in the near vicinity of present day Resurrection Hill Cemetery. The 22nd and 17th Missouri Volunteers and the 10th Missouri Cavalry were organized in that camp over the winter of 1861-62. In 1891, the town welcomed a much publicized reunion of Union men who mustered in at that camp.
The hastily thrown up wooden barracks for that camp were abandoned as the troops were assigned to battles in Mississippi. It is not clear how the transfer took place, but reports at the 1891 reunion noted the Black families, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation were allowed to live in the abandoned, scantily constructed buildings and bury their dead in the adjoining site, which later became the city owned Resurrection Hill Cemetery.
In 2010, as an Eagle Scout project, local Boy Scout Zach Myers, researched and raised funds to purchase a replica of the cannon that Union forces would have placed on Sand Hill in October, 1864. The 12-pound Howitzer set within a stone walled patio, at approximately where the Union Army cannon would have stood, remains a popular visitor attraction.
In 2011, the Meramec Valley Genealogical and Historical Society invited Pacific families, whose acestors had been affected by the Civil War, to share the stories carried down in their families. A public program was presented at the Pacific Presbyterian Church and repeated in the 300-seat Pacific High School (a video of that presentation is available at the Red Cedar History Museum).
First hearing of this local historical event….Thanks.