Battles and Biographies of Missourians, by William L. Webb, 1900:

When every possible preparation had been completed and the final messengers had been dispatched, General Price put his army into unexpected motion. The State of Kansas was instantly in a furor of excitement and alarm, fearing an invasion. General Lane, the “Grim Chieftan”, sent swift horsemen to summons reinforcements to Fort Scott. Colonels Jennison and Johnson were sent in the direction of Dry Wood. General Rains, with his southwest Missouri forces, was there waiting and ready to answer for having seized a large herd of Government mules the day before. A furious battle of several hours’ duration was fought, after which the Federals fell back to Fort Scott, whereupon General Lane retreated to a safe distance into Kansas. He threw up breastworks and remained there until Price had passed on; then he fell in behind and burned Osceola. When Lane evacuated Fort Scott, nearly the entire male population accompanied him. Jennison was left to hold the place until Price should arrive in sight. During the night Jennison’s 400 men vandalized the place, according to their custom. General Price marched unopposed to Lexington.

The earliest Confederate camp established for recruiting out of the State Guards was on Sac River, near Osceola, Missouri, in December 1861. After the retreat from Lexington, Price knew his army of State Guards must eventually become Confederate…

Wiley Britton, a Federal soldier and author of “The Civil War on the Border”, says:
”The drunken and lawless acts of the Federal soldiers were believed to have been countenanced from headquarters, instead of being corrected. Union men were insulted and robbed and plundered of their property, and his (Pope’s) policy was regarded as a license for such acts. In one instance it is asserted and not denied that the members of a regiment shipped over sixty head of horses and mules taken from citizens, to Chicago to be sold, the proceeds of which went to the men’s private accounts. In numerous other cases the Federal soldiers appropriated to their private use the property of citizens of the localities through which they marched or where they were stationed. The Federal soldiers also in several cases fired at the citizens from the railroad trains with as little concern as they would fire at a flock of birds. Such abuses tended to alienate all classes instead of making them fast friends of the Government. Bands of Secessionists were allowed to organize and commit depredations within less than a day’s march of the idle Federal troops, and weeks passed without efforts being made to disperse them. General Pope was not alone in the short-sighted policy of punishing the citizens indiscriminately for the war-like acts of the Secessionists. He had a rival in General Lane, commanding the Kansas brigade, then operating in the western counties of Missouri, between Fort Scott and Kansas City. Hearing that a considerable force of Secessionists had been left at Osceola to guard Price’s ammunition train and other supplies collected at that point for his army, General Lane made a rapid march with his command to that place for the purpose of capturing and destroying the train and supplies. When he arrived near town he met with some resistance from a small force of the enemy. He then ordered up his battery of four guns and commenced to shell the woods and town. After a little skirmishing, the Secessionists retreated, and General Lane moved into town, and not only destroyed the stores which had been collected for the Southern forces, but burned the place to ashes. It was the county seat of St. Clair County, was the head of navigation on the Osage, and contained much substantial wealth for a town of its size. Many of the merchants of western and southwestern Missouri and the Indian Territory had their goods shipped from the East to Osceola, and from thence hauled in wagons to their destination. As it was the nearest shipping point to the lead mines of the Southwest, hundreds of tons of lead turned out by the Granby mines were hauled there annually and shipped to St. Louis. In destroying the town, General Lane seemed to be unconscious of the fact that his conduct would be just excuse for retaliation, and that it might possibly come with interest, and he did not seem to realize that he was making a name for his command that should not attach to troops engaged in honorable warfare. Perhaps upwards of one-third of the people of St. Clair County were Unionists, and many of the men were in the Federal army; some, too, in Kansas regiments. General Lane destroyed and appropriated their property with the same recklessness that he did the property of the Secessionists. He was incapable of seeing that the loyal people of Missouri were entitled to the protection of the Federal Government, even if they were fighting its battles.”