Captain Curtis Johnson of the 15th Kansas Cavalry saw the Confederate attack forming and immediately moved to intercept. Johnson and McGhee personally engaged each other with their revolvers; both commanders were badly wounded, but survived. The fight continued to rage until Union reinforcements secured the battery. Shelby sent a brigade under Colonel Sidney D. Jackman to secure his wagon trains, but these had already been removed by order of General Price. Jackman was instead intercepted by General Fagan, who alerted him to the massed Union cavalry (Pleasonton's) which had just crossed the Big Blue River to the east. Seeing Pleasanton's close proximity to the Confederate flank and rear, General Curtis had ordered a general advance of the entire Union line, with Blair's and Jennison's brigades leading the charge. Shelby, meanwhile, had only Thompson's Iron Brigade to hold off this massive assault. When one of Pleasonton's batteries arrived in support of Curtis's men, Thompson's Confederates finally broke and fled. Price's men set fire to prairie grass in the area to create a smoke screen to cover their withdrawal. Witnesses reported that the road was strewn with debris from the fleeing Rebel army. The following day, Blunt and Pleasonton took up their pursuit of Price's remaining forces. They would chase Price through Kansas and southern Missouri, engaging him at the Marais des Cygnes, Mine Creek, the Marmiton River, and finally at Newtonia, forcing Price to withdraw into Indian Territory, from which he eventually returned to Arkansas via Texas, and ultimately leaving the Confederate leader with less than 6,000 survivors from his initial force of 12,000 when his campaign officially ended on November 1, 1864. Aftermath The Battle of Westport was one of the largest battles west of the Mississippi River, with over 30,000 troops involved. The Union victory put an end to Price's campaign for Missouri, and the battle has accordingly been referred to as "The Gettysburg of the West". Curtis wrote to Henry W. Halleck after the battle that "the victory at Westport was most decisive." This greatly contested border state was now firmly under Union control, and would remain so until the end of the war. Although never capturing Price or the tattered remnants of his army, Federal forces did manage to render the Army of Missouri incapable of any future significant operations. Indeed, Price's campaign would prove the last in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. According to a recent book on