Battle of Lone Jack - Casualties & Aftermath

Casualties & Aftermath

Federal Capt. Brawner reported Union losses as 43 killed, 154 wounded, and 75 missing/captured, a casualty rate of 34 percent and this was almost certainly too low. Rebel Colonel Hunter reported burying 119 Federals and 47 Rebels, but the true losses are unknown. Excluded from Hunter's total were an unknown number of dead Confederates claimed by their friends and families for burial elsewhere. A recent roll call list of Federals killed at the action as compiled in service records by Wayne Schnetzer reveals 65 killed and at least 29 who later died from wounds received at Lone Jack. The list of known Confederate participation and deaths is less complete, but at least 55 names are listed as killed, with at least 4 others later succumbing to their wounds.

Colonel Cockrell succeeded in locating the two cannon and removed them from the field and back to Arkansas. One was later credited with firing the shot that disabled the Queen City on the White River. Because they were in possession of the field, the Confederate recruits gained a substantial quantity of needed firearms. As many as half of the recruits were initially unarmed.

This was the only Civil War battle fought by future Secretary of War and U.S. Senator Stephen B. Elkins. Elkins was to say that he disgusted of war after what he witnessed in the battle:

Kansas City was the only place in Missouri then that had Union people in it, at least in that part of Missouri. The colonel of the regiment to which I became attached was Kersey Coates, who built the big opera house and hotel in Kansas City. I was in continual danger of being killed, and was marked by Quantrill's men as a renegade who was to be shot as soon as taken. I saw one battle while in the service, that of Lone Jack, and a most awful battle it was. Col. Emory S. Foster had a Union regiment which was attacked by the brother of Senator Cockrell, but Foster thought the Confederates were the guerrilla hands who raised the black flag, and never gave any quarter. So he refused to surrender, and every one of his officers was picked off. The guerrillas were victorious. I went over the battlefield afterward, the blood, the cries for water and death, the naked bodies stripped of their clothing, the dead horses which served for ramparts, gave me a disgust for war, which makes it seem strange that I am here at the head of the war department of this great government.