onversant with
the campaigns of all the great captains, so far as covers
their main strategic features, and also seems familiar with
the duties of the staff; but in tactics, great and small
logistics, and discipline he is greatly deficient. These
defects are so apparent as to make it absolutely impossible
for him to gain the confidence of American officers and men,
and entirely unfit him for a high command in our army. While
I do not condemn Gen. Sigel in the unmeasured terms so
common among many, but on the contrary see in him many fine
qualities, I would do less than my duty did I not enter my
protest against the appointment to a high command in the
army of a man who, whatever may be his merits, I know cannot
have the confidence of the troops he is to command.

I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. M. SCHOFIELD, Brigadier-General. U. S. Volunteers.

This was accompanied by a statement embodying the same facts and signed
by substantially all the higher officers who had been with Lyon.

186

At the first halt of the army, about two miles from the battlefield,
while the dead and wounded were being gathered up, it was discovered
that Gen. Lyon's body had been left behind. The Surgeon and another
officer volunteered to take an ambulance and return to the battlefield
for it They were received graciously by Gen. McCulloch; the body was
delivered to them and they reached Springfield with it shortly after
dark. The Surgeon made an attempt to embalm it by injecting arsenic
into the veins, but decomposition, owing to exposure to the hot sun, had
progressed too far to render it practicable, and they were compelled to
leave it when the army moved off.

Mrs. Phelps, wife of the member of Congress from that District, and
a true Union woman, obtained it and had it placed in a wooden coffin,
which was hermetically sealed in another one of zinc. Fearing that it
might be molested by the Confederate troops when they entered the city,
Mrs. Phelps had the coffin placed in an out-door cellar and covered with
straw. Later she took an opportunity of having it secretly buried at
night.

Thinking that the remains had been brought on, Mr. Danford Knowlton,
of New York, a cousin, and Mr. John B. Hasler, of Webster, Mass., a
brother-in-law of Gen. Lyon, came on at the instance of the Connecticut
relatives to obtain the remains. Not findin