Guerrilla Operations At The West

published in Scientific American September 6, 1862

The States of Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee continue to be infested with numerous small predatory bands of rebels.

On the 24th of August Major Leppert, with two hundred men, met a body of rebels three hundred and fifty strong in Missouri, between Bloomfield and Cape Girardeau, and after a fierce engagement routed them. Thirty were killed, fifty wounded, and sixteen taken prisoners. A number of horses, several wagons, a quantity of sidearms, ammunition and their camp equipage were taken. The rebels scattered in utter confusion through the woods, and it is not probable they will again join together. Parties of national troops, thoroughly equipped for guerrilla chasing, are after other rebel bands. General Blunt has driven three famous guerrilla leaders, Coffee, Quantrall, and Rains, out of Missouri into Arkansas. On the 24th of August, two hundred guerrillas, encamped on the Shelby farm, six miles from Danville, Ky., and near the line between Boyle and Lincoln counties, were eating and feeding their horses, when the Harrodsburg and Danville Home Guard, sixty strong, surprised them, killing three and wounding eight, some of them fatally, and took thirty horses. The Federal loss was one killed and two wounded.