Battle of the Big Blue
Near Kansas City, Missouri
On October twenty-second, eighteen sixty-four, this ground along the Big Blue River became the hinge of one of the Civil War's final western campaigns. Union General Samuel Curtis stretched a defensive line fifteen miles south from the Missouri River, determined to stop Confederate General Sterling Price from breaking through to Kansas City.
Price had led a bold but exhausted raid across Missouri for weeks, hoping to swing the state toward the Confederacy before the November election. Curtis held the line here long enough for Union reinforcements to converge. The next day, at the Battle of Westport, Price's army was routed and never recovered. It was one of the largest Civil War engagements west of the Mississippi, and the Big Blue was the last serious Confederate threat to Missouri.
