Lauchlan Allan MacLean (1820–1864)

A native of Scotland, Lauchlan Allan MacLean served in the United States Army, the Missouri State Guard, and the Confederate army. While serving as the assistant adjutant general to Major General Sterling Price, MacLean was stabbed and killed by a fellow Confederate officer while in Arkansas.

Lauchlan MacLean was born on the Isle of Mull on May 6, 1820, to Colonel Hector MacLean of the British Army and Ann MacLeod MacLean. Little is known of his early life. He reportedly attended the Edinburgh Civil Engineer College and, by his early twenties, resided in the United States. During the Mexican War, MacLean served in the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers and participated in the capture of what is today New Mexico. The unit fought at the Battle of Sacramento River, near Chihuahua, Mexico. MacLean used his drawing skills to create images of the battle that were published in the United States.

At the conclusion of his service, MacLean returned to Missouri and married Elizabeth Nelson Smith. She died in 1854, shortly after their only surviving child, Nelson Robert MacLean, was born. Elizabeth is buried in Lexington, Missouri. In the 1860 federal census, Nelson MacLean appears with his maternal grandparents in Missouri. He later moved to Illinois and died in 1917.

By the mid-1850s, Lauchlan MacLean was heavily involved with pro-slavery forces in Kansas during the conflict that became known as Bleeding Kansas. He served as the chief clerk of the surveyor general, the office responsible for recording land claims. In this role, he was interviewed following the disappearance of multiple ballots following the 1857 election, which saw free-state candidates triumph over pro-slavery forces.

At the outbreak of war in 1861, MacLean joined the Missouri State Guard, a pro-slavery military unit allied with the Confederacy. He served as a lieutenant colonel on the staff of Brigadier General John S. Rains and saw service early in the war at the Battle of Carthage, Missouri, where MacLean received special praise for his efforts during the engagement. He also saw action at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and at the Battle of Pea Ridge. The exact trajectory of his military career is unclear, but he remained in staff roles and, by the summer of 1863, served on the staff of Major General Sterling Price as an assistant adjutant general. In this role, he composed much of the correspondence credited to Price and also created maps used by the army. With an initial appointment as a lieutenant colonel in the Missouri State Guard, by the time of the Battle of Helena, MacLean was serving as a major in the Confederate army. During that battle, he received praise from his commander for helping lead troops in the fight.

Continuing his service, MacLean saw action during the Camden Expedition and in the unsuccessful invasion of Missouri launched by Sterling Price in late 1864. Before moving northward from southern Arkansas, MacLean was named as the senior assistant adjutant general on Price’s staff with the rank of lieutenant colonel. During the effort to capture a Union fort at Pilot Knob, Missouri, Price sent MacLean to the Union commander under a white flag. Recognizing the Union commander of the fort during his time in Kansas, MacLean quickly returned to the Confederate lines, where he demanded an immediate frontal assault be launched. The Confederate attack ultimately failed, and Union forces evacuated the fort in the middle of the night.

The Confederate forces were repeatedly defeated in multiple battles across Missouri and Kansas and eventually retreated to southwestern Arkansas in late 1864. Encamped at several locations, MacLean and other officers were stationed in Richmond (Little River County). On December 19, MacLean and Lieutenant Robert Wood of the Fourteenth Missouri Cavalry Battalion argued after MacLean refused to sign a leave order for Wood, who stabbed MacLean. Surgeon William McPheeters treated MacLean, who lived until sundown on December 22. The news of MacLean’s death appeared in both Confederate and Union reports. A postmortem examination of the body revealed that the stabbing penetrated a lung. MacLean was buried in the Richmond Cemetery on December 23. Wood was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of MacLean, but his sentence was later commuted. A marker was placed on MacLean’s grave in 2011.

For additional information:
Brownlee, Richard S. “The Battle of Pilot Knob, Iron County, Missouri, September 27, 1864.” Missouri Historical Review 59 (October 1964): 1–30.

Ewing, Thomas. The Struggle for Freedom in Kansas. New York, 1894.

MacLean, Lauchlan. “Charge of Captain Reid at Sacramento.” University of Texas at Austin, https://libraries.uta.edu/usmexicowar/node/6156 (accessed April 29, 2025).

McPheeters, William. I Acted from Principle: The Civil War Diary of Dr. William M. McPheeters, Confederate Surgeon in the Trans-Mississippi, edited by Cynthia DeHaven Pitcock and Bill J. Gurley. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002.

Moneyhon, Carl H., and Virginia Davis Gray. “Life in Confederate Arkansas: The Diary of Virginia Davis Gray, 1863–1866, Part II.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 42 (Summer 1983): 134–169.

Napton, William B. Past and Present of Saline County, Missouri. Indianapolis, IN: B. F. Bowen & Company, 1910. Online at https://archive.org/details/pastpresentofsal00napt/page/n7/mode/2up?q=maclean (accessed April 29, 2025).

Sinisi, Kyle. The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition Of 1864. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

David Sesser
Southeastern Louisiana University