A hero's legacy

 

The man may well have been a hero--he was, in fact; there's no denying history. In the very first battle of the Civil War west of the Mississippi, the Battle at Wilson's Creek, General Nathaniel Lyon took a bullet to the heart and became the Union's very first martyr/hero. Thousands attended his body's long ride back to his home in Connecticut. The war had only just begun.

Lyon was no stranger to war in 1861. His war experience included the war against the Seminoles in Florida, the Mexican-American War (where his bravery earned him commendation). Then to California, where he found his way to yet another bloody confrontation, a horrific event called Bloody Island Massacre. 

No one considered him a man of peace, so when he left California, he was sent to Ft. Riley, Kansas, where he found himself at the heart of "bleeding Kansas."  Abolitionist Easterners like John Brown fought pro-slavery forces from the American South after Congress had passed the Kansas-Missouri Act, which allowed extremists from both sides to move west in an attempt to establish the new state of Kansas as either slave or free. 

Then Captain Nathaniel Lyon was given command of the Saint Louis Arsenal, where, in the neighborhood, there lingered a local (and therefore pro-slavery) fighting unit called Missouri Volunteer Militia. Capt. Lyon surreptitiously surrounded then took control of the Militia and marched them through greatly unsympathetic streets of the city. Someone took a shot--and you guessed it, all hell broke loose. Almost 30 civilians were killed.

It was clear that the two sides stood as fortresses against each other. Some historians today are not at all afraid to say that the Civil War didn't begin at Fort Sumter, but in "bleeding Kansas."

Maybe it was his extensive experience at war, but at Wilson's Creek, by then General Lyon broke up his forces, too a hill which that day became "Bloody Hill" then held off three Confederate advances before retreating. When things  were in a stall, General Lyon himself yelled, "Come on, my brave boys, I will lead you!! Forward!!"

 Very soon, he was gone, a bullet to the heart.

Why all of this about a fighting man long forgotten? Well, you can view the battlefield for yourself by way of St. Louis in three hours or so, and on a short hike through the battlefield find a concave pit that was once a mass grave for the Union dead. It will take your breath away. Just over 2500 American boys were dead or wounded or missing.

Really, why the story? 

Because once upon a time some early settlers looked over the land they'd claimed as their own in far northwest Iowa--way, way up in the far northwest corner of Iowa. No one quite knows why, but in the early 1850s the state legislature had named the far corner of Iowa Buncombe County.

Buncombe is/was a word for useless political speech, so in 1862 someone determined to toss that buncombe b.s. into the Big Sioux River and replace it with something less silly, more commemorative. Who thought of what it's named? No one knows.

But it was less than a year since General Nathanial Lyon was killed in the first big battle out west in Missouri. He was leading his troops when he went down, a real hero. That far corner of Iowa needed a name, so they tossed buncombe and determined to forever remember a hero here in Lyon County.