Opposing Forces
Price assembled a force he named the Army of Missouri, consisting of 12,000 men and fourteen artillery pieces. His army was divided into three divisions, under Maj. Gen. James F. Fagan, Maj. Gen. John S. Marmaduke, and Brig. Gen. Joseph O. "Jo" Shelby. However, the infantry units originally assigned to Price were ordered elsewhere, changing his mission from an invasion into a cavalry raid. Price's men were a mixture of the best and the worst, a quarter of his force being deserters who had been returned to duty. Hundreds of Price's men were barefoot, and most lacked basic equipment such as canteens or cartridge boxes. Many carried jugs for water and kept their ammunition in shirt and pants pockets. Nevertheless, Price hoped the people of Missouri would rally to his side. In this he proved to be mistaken, as most Missourians did not wish to become involved in the conflict. Only Confederate guerrillas joined his army--perhaps as many as 6,000 altogether.
The Union fielded thousands of Missouri militia, who would play a key role in defeating Price's raid, together with the XVI Corps of Maj. Gen. Andrew J. Smith, augmented by Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton's cavalry division, detached from William S. Rosecrans's Department of Missouri. As Price commenced his campaign, Smith's corps was on naval transports leaving Cairo, Illinois to join General William T. Sherman's army in Georgia; Rosecrans requested that these troops be assigned to Missouri to deal with the threat, and Army Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck immediately complied. By mid-October, more troops had arrived from the Kansas border under Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis, Price's old adversary at the Battle of Pea Ridge; now commander of the newly activated Army of the Border. Curtis had the divisions of Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt (cavalry), Maj. Gen. George W. Dietzler (Kansas Militia), Pleasonton's cavalry, and two infantry divisions from Smith's Corps under Colonels Joseph J. Woods and David C. Moore–about 35,000 men in all.
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“As one who knows many things, the humanist loves the world precisely because of its manifold nature and the opposing forces in it do not frighten him. Nothing is further from him than the desire to resolve such conflicts ... and this is precisely the mark of the humanist spirit: not to evaluate contrasts as hostility but to seek human unity, that superior unity, for all that appears irreconcilable.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)