The final full year of combat in Missouri mirrored the previous two twelve-month cycles. From January through August small skirmishes and guerilla activity unsettled the state. It appeared that Missouri would be spared any major conflicts, but in late summer Confederate General Price was ordered to lead a raid on the state. Price's initial goal was St. Louis, but he delayed at Pilot Knob to attack a small contingent of Union soldiers led by General Thomas Ewing, Jr. The Federals barricaded themselves inside Ft. Davidson, an earthwork fortification in the Arcadia Valley. Expecting a quick victory, General Price's army was hurt badly in series of headlong assaults on September 27. Remarkably, the Federals escaped by making a forced march to Leasburg and Rolla. The delay cost Price an opportunity to attack St. Louis, so he turned west to install a Confederate governor in Jefferson City.

       The Confederate raiders discovered that the capitol was stoutly defended, and after their losses at Ft. Davidson the Confederates decided an attack was unwise. The 10,000-man raid advanced into the most pro-Confederate portion of the state, the western Missouri River valley. To forage better General Price divided his army and they fanned out across west central Missouri moving toward Kansas. This portion of the raid was marked by victories over small Federal detachments at Sedalia and Warrensburg. The Confederate raiders captured a Federal supply depot and steamboat, after some significant fighting, at Glasgow on October 15.

        As Price's army slowed to forage the Federals mounted a vigorous pursuit from the east led by General William Rosecrans. In Kansas, General Curtis and General James Blunt rallied the militia in defense of the Sunflower State. Without realizing it General Price was slowly being squeezed between two Union armies. The slow moving Confederates finally collided with General Blunt's Kansas militiamen at Lexington on October 19, but Shelby's Iron Brigade, of Price's army, forced General Blunt to retreat. The two armies clashed again at the Little Blue River on October 21 and in the main square of Independence the next day. Each time General Blunt was compelled to fall back. The Kansans tried to establish a defensive line along the Big Blue River at Byram's Ford on October 22, but the result was the same with the Union men routed, and in retreat to the town of Westport.