Union Wins Westport: Last Missouri Campaign Decided

Union cavalry and infantry under Major General Samuel Curtis converged on Confederate General Sterling Price's exhausted army at Westport, Missouri, on October 23, 1864, and delivered the decisive blow in what became the largest Civil War engagement west of the Mississippi River. The battle ended Price's ambitious raid into Missouri, a desperate Confederate gamble to seize a Union state and influence the upcoming presidential election. Price had crossed into Missouri in September with roughly 12,000 cavalrymen, hoping to capture St. Louis, rally Confederate sympathizers, and tip the November vote against Abraham Lincoln. The plan was wildly optimistic. Union forces in Missouri were more numerous and better supplied than Price's intelligence had suggested. After being turned away from St. Louis and suffering a costly repulse at Pilot Knob, Price turned westward across the state, his column swelling with recruits but also with thousands of civilian refugees and plundered wagons that slowed his march to a crawl. By the time Price reached the Kansas City area, Union forces had closed in from three directions. Curtis attacked from the west with the Army of the Border while Major General Alfred Pleasonton's cavalry pressed from the east. The fighting at Westport ranged across open prairies and along Brush Creek, with roughly 30,000 troops engaged. Price's line buckled under the converging pressure, and by midafternoon his army was in full retreat southward. The defeat turned into a rout over the following week. Union cavalry pursued Price across Kansas and into Indian Territory, destroying his supply train and scattering his force at the battles of Mine Creek and Newtonia. Price eventually reached Texas with fewer than 6,000 men, barely half his original strength. Missouri remained firmly in Union hands, Lincoln won reelection twelve days later, and the Confederacy never again mounted a major military operation west of the Mississippi. Westport settled the war in the Trans-Mississippi theater.