
On another part of the field, his opponent, Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon, also led from the front, wearing a worn captain’s coat rather than the finery entitled by his rank. Calling on his soldiers to “give them hell,” McCulloch ordered a charge, leading his army from the very front. Gentiles had killed the lone Union sentry guarding the Federal position at the Sharp farm just as the man was about to shoot McCulloch.

Gentiles, a corporal in the 3rd Louisiana Infantry. “That was a good shot,” McCulloch said to Henry H. Now he led the Western Army in desperate battle among the oak-covered hills and creek bottoms of southwestern Missouri. Although he was a brigadier general in the Confederate army, the former Texas Ranger disdained uniforms and there was little other than his determined manner to indicate that he commanded the largest Confederate force west of the Mississippi River.

African Americans During the Revolutionary War.The First American President: Setting the Precedent.
