He counseled with his principal officers and they decided to retreat.
The order to withdraw was given at once and promptly obeyed, Steele
's battalion of regulars bringing up the rear.
For five hours the fight on Bloody Hill
had lasted, and the dead of both armies lay upon it in piles.
When it became known that the Federals
were retreating and that the day was won, a great shout of exultation and relief went up from the men who had fought there, which reached the ears of Weightman
where he lay dying, and he asked those around him what it meant.
‘We have whipped them—they have gone,’ he was told.
‘Thank God,’ he said.
In another moment he was dead.
Of him in his report, General Price
said: ‘Among those who fell mortally wounded on the battlefield, none deserve a dearer place in the memory of Missourians than Richard Hanson Weightman
, colonel commanding the First brigade of the Second division of this army.
Taking up arms at the very beginning of this unhappy contest, he had already done distinguished service at the battle of Rock Creek
, where he commanded the State
forces after the death of the lamented Holloway
, and at Carthage
, where he won unfading laurels by the display of extraordinary coolness, courage and skill.
He fell at the head of his brigade; wounded in three places, and died just as the victorious shouts of our men began to rise upon the air.’
The losses of the armies, killed, wounded and missing, were about equal.
The total Federal loss was 1,317; the total Confederate loss, 1,28.
In the engagement between McIntosh
, the Federals
lost 80 and the Confederates
In the attack on Sigel
, the Confederate
loss was small, but Sigel
's loss was heavy—not less than 300.
The loss of the Missourians on Bloody Hill
was 680; the loss of the Arkansans there—Churchill's and Gratiot
's regiments and Woodruff
's battery—was 308.
The loss of both sides on Bloody Hill
was, Missourians and Arkansans, 988; Federals, 892.
Well may the historian