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Lyon is killed at Wilson's Creek; his beaten army falls back on Springfield

Outnumbered more than two to one, the Union commander dies leading a countercharge before his men run out of ammunition.

By August 1861, Missouri was tearing itself apart from the inside, a slave state that had stayed in the Union. It was riddled with secessionist militia, and its governor was working against Washington. Ten miles southwest of Springfield, Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon's Army of the West struck first, attacking a combined Confederate and Missouri State Guard camp along Wilson Creek. The fighting seesawed across a rise soldiers came to call Bloody Hill until Lyon was killed leading his men forward. Major Samuel D. Sturgis took command, found his troops exhausted and out of ammunition, and pulled them back to Springfield. Southwestern Missouri was now in Confederate hands…

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More from August 10
1944

Guam is declared secure; 7,500 Japanese troops are still loose in the hills

Three weeks after wading ashore at Asan and Agat, Marines and Army troops end organized resistance on an island America lost in 1941.
1945

Tokyo says it will surrender, but only if the Emperor stays on his throne

Four days after Hiroshima and one day after Nagasaki, Japan attaches a single condition to Potsdam's terms.
1988

Reagan signs law admitting the internment camps were wrong; $20,000 to every survivor

The bill's number, H.R. 442, was chosen to honor the all-Japanese American regiment that fought in Europe while many of its soldiers' families remained in the camps.
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The awkward National Military Establishment becomes the Department of Defense, with a deputy secretary to help run it.
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More from Civil War & Reconstruction
1862

Lincoln warns the South: free the slaves by New Year's or the Union will do it for you

The order comes five days after Antietam, tying freedom to a battlefield victory.
1868

Logan names May 30 a national day to decorate soldiers' graves; the order goes to every post in the Union

General Order No. 11 puts the commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic behind a practice Southern women began two years ago.
1862

Seward and Lyons sign a treaty giving both navies the right to search and seize slave ships

The Senate ratifies unanimously the same day, ending half a century of U.S. resistance to British calls for mutual search rights on African and Cuban waters.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
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