Beginning at 10 a.m., it came to a halt when Marmaduke ordered his forces to withdraw at 2 p.m. According to reports, the Union casualties were 22 enlisted men and one officer killed, and 37 enlisted men and seven officers wounded. It is felt most of these were sustained at Cape Girardeau. In 1951 the local Rotary Club erected a marker near Broadway and Caruthers as an observance of the battle site. During the war it was used as a United States smallpox hospital.
Mystery surrounds the house.
Stories have been handed down for generations that it is haunted, perhaps by one of the soldiers who spent time in the hospital. Legend also tells of a tunnel beneath the structure, possibly leading to Old Lorimier Cemetery or a site near the river. It is believed the tunnel was used to transport the dead from the hospital or was part of the Underground Railroad. Due to the fact that it was the first high ground north of the Ohio River, Cape Girardeau was an important military post at the onset of the Civil War. General John C. Fremont, the Union commander in the Mississippi Valley and headquartered in St. Louis, ordered the fortification of Cape Girardeau in order to resist assault by land and water.