the Confederates and engaged them. With many of Price's troops in pell-mell retreat, Joseph Shelby's division—including his Iron Brigade—rode to the front, dismounted, and engaged the Federals while the remaining Southerners retreated towards the Indian Territory. Brigadier General John Sanborn later appeared with Union reinforcements, convincing Shelby to retire. Union troops had once again forced the Confederates to retreat, but failed to destroy or capture them. This was the final battle in Price's Missouri campaign. Casualties Aftermath Hoping to avoid Fort Smith, Arkansas, Price swung west into the Indian Territory and Texas before returning to Arkansas on December 2. He had lost more than half of his original force of 12,000, including thousands of the guerrillas who joined him. He reported to Kirby Smith that he "marched , fought 43 battles and skirmishes, captured and paroled over 3,000 Federal officers and men, captured 18 pieces of artillery ... and destroyed Missouri property ... of $10,000,000 in value." Nevertheless, Price's Missouri Expedition was a total failure and contributed, together with Union successes in Virginia and Georgia, to the re-election of President Lincoln. A second unintended consequence of Price's Missouri Expedition was that it had largely cleared Missouri of the pro-Confederate guerrillas who belonged to no one's army, since almost all of those who had joined him were either killed or followed him out of the state. Price's Missouri Expedition proved to be the final Confederate offensive in the Trans-Mississippi region during the war. Retrospective assessment In his 2004 paper Assessing Compound Warfare During Price's Raid, written as a thesis for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Major Dale E. Davis postulates that Price's Missouri Expedition failed primarily due to his inability to properly employ the principles of "compound warfare." This requires an inferior power to effectively use regular and irregular forces in concert (as was done by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong against the French and Americans during the Vietnam War) to defeat a superior army. He also blames Price's slow rate of movement during his campaign, and the close proximity of Confederate irregulars to his regular force, for this outcome. Major Davis observes that by wasting valuable time, ammunition and men in fairly meaningless assaults on Fort Davidson, Glasgow, Sedalia and Boonville, Price gave Union General Rosecrans time to organize an effective response he might not otherwise have had. Furthermore, he says, Price's insistence on guarding an