Perhaps one-third of the command went southwest, and halted at the next house beyond Sharps’ on the Fayetteville road, and here Dr. Smith, who was Gen. Rains’ division surgeon, came up, with a long train of wagons and coaches, and was captured, but at once released on my intervention. [After this, Dr. Melcher accompanied Dr. Smith to the battle-field.] * * * The one gun that was abandoned on the Fayetteville road was really saved by Capt. Flagg, whose men drew the gun by hand till they found some horses, and the Confederate prisoners carried the ammunition in their arms. * * * They came into Springfield the same evening by way of Little York. Sigel’s reasons for his defeat must here be given. He states that he tried to obey his orders to attack the enemy in the rear and to cut off his retreat. This he did, but he also cut off his own retreat very nearly, a circumstance he had not counted upon. The time of service of one of his two regiments of infantry, the 5th Missouri, Salomon’s, had expired some days before the battle and they had clamored to go home. On the first of August he had induced them to remain with the army eight days more. This latter term had expired the day before the battle. The men therefore were under no obligations to fight, except that they had marched out to do so, and when the time came, suddenly remembered that “they did not have to fight.” The 3d regiment, Sigel’s own, was not the old 3d, that fought at Carthage; that regiment, its time having expired, had been mustered out, and the new regiment was composed of 400 new recruits and of but a few other men who had seen service. The men serving the artillery were new recruits who knew next to nothing of gunnery, and were commanded by two lieutenants whose only experience as artillerists had been in the Prussian army in a time of peace. Again it is stated that only about half of the companies were officered by men with commissions, which Sigel says, was the fault of the three months’ service. But over all it is claimed that Sigel’s complete defeat was the result of an attack of vastly superior forces, the flower of McCulloch’s army, that was permitted to approach fatally near under the mistake that they were friends instead of enemies. As explaining and detailing something of the retreat of that wing of Sigel’s command which turned to the east, the following statement of Captain (now General) E. A. Carr, who, as previously stated, commanded the advance guard of Sigel’s brigade, may be found of interest:—