John R. Kelso’s Civil Wars:
A Graphic History - Episode 4
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Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy, 82-3, 90-1. Kelso had spoken with General Lyon in his office a few days before the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Lyon faced a difficult situation. Temperatures had soared to well over 100 degrees. The troops were exhausted from marches and from being on alert. Supplies, especially of food, were low, as was morale. He was losing men as the 90-day enlistments of many expired. His new commander, John C. Frémont, had just arrived in St. Louis on July 25 and had told Lyon no reinforcements would be coming because troops were needed in New Madrid.
As Kelso stood in the general’s office on that sweltering August day, Lyon had fewer than 6,000 men in his command and was estimating that the enemy had 30,000 (they actually had about 13,500). The wise choice, critics at the time and since have said, would have been for Lyon to withdraw to Rolla, ninety miles to the northeast, and fight another day. But Lyon had concluded, he said, that “to abandon the Southwest without a struggle would be a sad blow to our cause, and would greatly encourage the Rebels.” He was determined to “fight and hope for the best.” Lyon sent Kelso back to Buffalo with an ammunition wagon and orders for the regiment to move south to Springfield as soon as possible. But the Dallas County Home Guard did not get there in time.
Meriweather Jeff Thompson, brigadier general in the secessionist Missouri State Guard, was nicknamed the Swamp Fox after Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion for his ability to move his forces quickly over difficult terrain, strike suddenly, and then disappear. Thompson and his 2,000 men had advanced north on October 11, hoping to disrupt Federal forces, recruiting for the Confederacy, and taking supplies. A detachment of 500 dragoons on October 15 attacked the Federal force at Blackwell, less than fifty miles south of St. Louis, and burned the Iron Mountain Railroad bridge across Big River. “It was a large three-span bridge,” Thompson reported, “and cannot be rebuilt in months.” Kelso’s regiment was hurriedly sent to the bridge by rail. The train slowed as they neared the town, and they could see the glow from farmhouses the rebels had torched. When they reached the bridge, Kelso saw the Union soldiers dead in a stone pen where they had made their last stand.
More on the Illustration
For me, this was a powerful part of the story. The way Kelso described the dead soldiers he saw—“their ghostly upturned faces and their glassy eyes gleaming in the moonlight . . . ” I felt that it was really important to get the sense of the space, and the environment. I think with the moonlight I was able to capture a pretty dramatic feel. I didn’t want to directly portray those faces. I wanted to stay looser, implying rather than trying to control what the viewer sees. And then with Kelso, we get only a side view of his face again. But we see him looking down, taking in the significance of it, carrying this image with him through the rest of the war, the rest of his life.