Sterling "Pap" Price (20 September 1809-29 September 1867) was a Major-General of the Missouri State Guard and the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He served as Governor of Missouri (D) from 3 January 1853 to 5 January 1857, succeeding Austin Augustus King and preceding Trusten Polk; he had previously served in the US House of Representatives from 1845 to 1846, succeeding John Jameson and preceding William McDaniel.
Biography[]
Born in Prince Edward's County in the state of Virginia, Price attended Hampton-Sydney College in 1826 and 1827 and he established a law practice. In fall of 1831 his family moved to Missouri and in November 1838 he joined the US Army in suppressing the Mormons in the Mormon War. Serving in the US House of Representatives for Missouri from 1836 to 1838 and from 1840 to 1844, he resigned from the US Democratic Party to fight in the Mexican-American War. At the Battle of Santa Cruz de Rosales in 1848 he defeated a Mexican army that outnumbered him three-to-one and he was appointed military governor of Chihuahua. After the end of the war he farmed tobacco on the Bowling Green Prairie, and when the American Civil War began, he joined the pro-Confederate States Missouri State Guard secessionist army in May 1861 and was made a Major-General.
On 10 August 1861, Price decisively defeated Nathaniel Lyon's Union army at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, securing southern Missouri for the secessionist cause. But in March 1862 his army was dealt a crushing blow at the Battle of Pea Ridge, the result of his failure to pursue the shattered Union army of Samuel D. Sturgis after Pea Ridge. Again at the Battle of Iuka, he was defeated, and from summer 1863 to early 1864 fought over hotly-contested Arkansas. An invasion of Missouri late in the year at the Battle of Westport ended the war in the West, as Price was pushed south into Texas. He remained in Texas until the surrender of Edmund Kirby Smith, the supreme commander of the Confederate forces in the West. After the end of the American Civil War, he took the remnants of his army into Mexico, where he sought service with Emperor Maximiliano. He established an exile colony in Veracruz, but when this colony failed, he returned to Missouri. He died of chronic diarrhea in 1867.
Gallery[]
