The hopes of many Southern-leaning, mostly farming-dependent, families, including Jesse James and family in Liberty, Missouri, rose and fell by news of Price's battles. "If Price succeeded, the entire state of Missouri might fall into the hands of the Confederacy. For all anyone knew, it would force Lincoln to accept the South's independence, in light of earlier rebel victories. After all, no one expected the war to last much longer." The Siege and Battle of Lexington, also called the Battle of the Hemp Bales, was a huge success for the rebels, and meant rebel ascendancy, albeit temporarily, in western and southwest Missouri. Combined with the loss of such a pivotal leader of the federals' western campaign in Nathaniel Lyon, and the Union's stunning defeat in the war's first major land battle at Bull Run, Missouri's secessionists were "jubilant." Exaggerated stories and rumors of Confederate successes spread easily in this era of slower, often equine-based communication. St. Louis' (ironically named) Unionist-Democrat "Daily Missouri Republican" reported some of the secessionist scuttlebutt a week after the rebel victory at Lexington: