In 1864, during Price's Expedition to liberate Missouri from federal control, a Confederate brigade of Arkansas cavalry under General William Cabell was sent near St. Clair to Pacific, still called Franklin by many, to destroy railroad facilities. After burning the railroad bridge over the Meramec River at Moselle, Cabell's men entered town at sunrise on October 1, 1864, burned the depot, car shops, and water tanks, looted stores, and sent a detachment east on the St. Louis road to burn another railroad bridge two miles from town. Union authorities in St. Louis responded quickly by sending forward a brigade under Col. Edward Wolfe from Gen. A.J. Smith's 16th Army Corps, troops that had been diverted from joining Sherman in Atlanta. Arriving by rail at 9:00 a.m. at the destroyed bridge east of town, Wolfe's brigade advanced west against Confederate pickets while Cabell's artillery, likely posted on the bluff, shelled the Union force. The Battle of Pacific produced light casualties, with Union officers reporting 8 wounded and several Confederates believed killed. Cabell's rear guard held until noon, then withdrew west after the destruction was largely complete, later burning Gray Summit before rejoining Price's main force at Union as the campaign moved toward Hermann and Jefferson City. On October 4, 1864, Smith moved his headquarters to Pacific with 8,000 Union troops before pursuing Price across Missouri, and two months later Smith and Wolfe were at Nashville, where the 16th Corps helped break the Confederate line on December 16 at Shy's Hill. On October 8, 1864, Private Hawley V. Needham of the 134th Illinois Infantry wrote from a high hillside overlooking Franklin, recalling Price's men entering the place a week earlier, pillaging property belonging to the federal government or the railroad, and praising the valley, river, ridges, and rail lines as one of the most beautiful scenes he had seen.
