Lieut.-Col. G. L. Andrews, who in the absence of Col. F. P. Blair,
commanded the 1st Mo., was a Rhode Island man, who afterward entered the
Regular Army, fought creditably through the war, and in 1892 was retired
as a Colonel.
In the 1st Mo. was Capt. Nelson Cole, who was severely wounded. He
served through the war, rose to be a Colonel, became Senior Vice
Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was a
Brigadier-General of Volunteers in the war with Spain.
In the 1st Kan. were Col. Geo. W. Detzler, who later became a
Brigadier-General; Capt. Powell Clayton, who was to become a Colonel,
Brigadier-General, Governor of Arkansas, Senator, and Embassador to
Mexico, and Capt. Daniel McCook, who was to become Brigadier-General,
and fall at Kene-saw.
In the 2d Kan. were Col. Robert B. Mitchell, of Ohio, who rose to be
Brigadier-General and did gallant service in the Army of the Cumberland;
Maj. Charles W. Blair, who became a Brigadier-General, and Capt. Samuel
J. Crawford, who became a Colonel, a brevet Brigadier-General, and
Governor of Kansas.
In the 1st Iowa were Lieut.-Col. W. H. Merritt, a New Yorker, who
commanded the regiment and afterwards became a Colonel on the staff, and
Capt. Francis J. Herron, who became a Major-General of Volunteers and
commanded a division at Prairie Grove, Vicksburg, and in Texas.
166
There were very many in these regiments serving as privates and
non-commissioned officers who afterwards made fine records as
commanders of companies and regiments and became distinguished in
civil life. Taken altogether, Lyon's army was an unusually fine body of
fighting men. The Iowa and Kansas men were ardent, enthusiastic youths,
accustomed to the use of the gun, and who hunted their enemies as they
did the wild beasts they had to encounter. They were free from the
superstition inculcated in the Eastern armies that the soldier's duty
was to stand up in the open and be shot at. When it was necessary to
stand up they stood up gallantly, but at other times they took advantage
of every protection and lay behind any rock or trunk of tree in wait for
the enemy to come within easy range, and then fired with fatal effect.
The older Regulars trained to Indian fighting were equally effective,
and speedily brought the mass of recruits associated with them into
similar efficiency.
Nowhere else at that early period of the war was the fire of the Union
soldiers so deliberate and deadly as at Wilson's Creek.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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