Missouri, Iron County,

September 26–28, 1864

By Albert Castel

On September 19 CS Major General Sterling Price crossed into Missouri from Pocahontas, Arkansas, with 12,000 troops, all but 1,000 mounted, organized into three divisions commanded by CS Major General James F. Fagan and CS Brigadier Generals John S. Marmaduke and Joseph O. “Jo” Shelby. Price’s goals were to seize St. Louis, gather recruits and supplies, and bring about an uprising against Union domination of Missouri. Unfortunately, many of his men were poorly armed—if armed at all—conscripts lacking adequate training and discipline.

On September 24 Price reached Fredericktown, where he was told that about 1,500 Union soldiers held Pilot Knob and the terminus of the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railroad, eighty-six miles southwest of St. Louis. Unwilling to leave this force in his rear, and believing he could gain an easy victory, he decided to attack it. On September 26 he sent Shelby’s Division to cut the railroad north of Pilot Knob while he marched on the town with Fagan’s and Marmaduke’s Divisions.

US Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, Jr., the brother-in-law of US Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, commanded the Federals at Pilot Knob, who actually numbered 1,456. There were 856 Federal troops, 450 Missouri State Militia Cavalry, commanded by Major James Wilson, and 150 civilian volunteers. Ewing’s instructions from US Major General William S. Rosecrans, head of the Department of the Missouri, were to make a reconnaissance-in-force, but Ewing decided instead to hold the area as long as possible to delay the Confederate advance on St. Louis. He was successful on the evening of September 26 in checking and then driving back Price’s lead division, Fagan’s, at Arcadia.

The superior Confederate strength compelled Ewing to withdraw most of his forces to Fort Davidson, a six-sided dirt parapet nine feet high, surrounded by a ditch ten feet wide and more than six feet deep. Mounted in the fort were eleven cannons, four of them 32-pounder siege guns, which were fired in the battle. Rifle pits about 150 yards long protected the fort’s northern and southern flanks.

Price’s chief of engineers proposed placing artillery atop Shepherd Mountain, which overlooked the fort, and bombarding the garrison into surrender. Instead, Price, at the urging of Fagan and Marmaduke, who insisted that they could take the fort in a matter of minutes, ordered it to be stormed. CS Brigadier General John B. Clark, Jr.’s Brigade of Marmaduke’s 3,700-man division advanced over Shepherd Mountain. One of the four brigades of Fagan’s 5,000-man division, CS Brigadier General William L. Cabell’s, was along Knob Creek, while the brigades of CS Colonels W. F. Slemons and Thomas H. McCray ascended Pilot Knob Mountain. Troopers from Marmaduke’s Division were also sent to attack the fort from the north.

Price demanded Ewing’s surrender, but he refused. Ewing believed he could hold the fort, and he also feared that if he became a prisoner he would be killed by Confederate Missouri troops in retaliation for a decree, General Orders No. 11, he had issued in 1863 expelling civilians from four counties in western Missouri.

At dawn US Captain William J. Campbell and Wilson were in a line south of the mountains. When pressed, they withdrew to a new line extending from Pilot Knob to Shepherd Mountain and then over the summits of the two mountains and down the north slopes.

At about 2:00 p.m., following an ineffectual shelling of the fort by two cannons on Shepherd Mountain, the Confederates advanced on foot, with Clark’s men leading the charge down from Shepherd Mountain, while Cabell attacked from the south. The Confederates on Pilot Knob at tacked the fort from the southeast. Shot and shell, then bullets and canister ripped their ranks. Fagan’s entire right wing broke in a “disgraceful manner,” and most of Marmaduke’s men took cover in a dry creek bed. Only Cabell’s Brigade kept going until the men reached the fort’s ditch. There they stopped, wavered, and fled, having suffered heavy losses. Wisely ignoring pleas from a humiliated Fagan to renew the assault, Price sent orders to the troops to prepare scaling ladders, and to Shelby to rejoin the rest of the army for an attack the next morning.

Ewing did not give Price another opportunity. At 3:00 a.m. on September 28, having accomplished all he had hoped to do and more with his stand at Pilot Knob, Ewing silently evacuated the fort and retreated northward by way of the Potosi Road. For some inexplicable reason, CS Colonel Archibald S. Dobbins’s Brigade of Fagan’s Division, which Price had posted on that road to guard against this eventuality, neither detected nor blocked the Union escape. When the fort’s powder magazine, touched off by a slow fuse, exploded at 3:30 a.m., the Confederates still failed to react.

Not until 8:00 a.m. did Price learn that Ewing had given him the slip. At once he sent Marmaduke and then Shelby in pursuit. On the evening of September 29 Shelby caught up with Ewing, entrenched thirty-five miles from Rolla, but concluded that an attack would cost more than it would be worth, so the Federals were able to proceed to Rolla and safety. Price’s bloody repulse at Fort Davidson revealed the poor quality of most of his army and impaired its already weak morale. It was the first in a series of defeats that turned his Missouri expedition into one of the worst military fiascos of the Civil War.

Estimated Casualties: 213 US, 800–1,000 CS