SHELBY AND HIS MEN

OR.

THE \VAR IN THE WEST

BY

JOHN N. EDWARDS

CINCINNATI: MIAMI PRINTING AND

PUBLISHING CO.

1867

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Chapters 1-6

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year of our Lord 1867, by

ROBERT J. LAWRENCE,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio.

PREFACE.

Believing that the CONFEDERATE WAR was a grand panorama of heroic endurance and devoted courage, I bring this picture as an offering and lay it upon the altar of Southern glory and renown. I have written of SHELBY and his Division because I served with them, and because I desire, if possible, to hang another garland upon the brow of one who gathered his laurels from the close and serried ranks of his enemies.

To the memory of my dead comrades of SHELBY'S MISSOURI CAVALRY DIVISION-to the young and the brave who fell fighting manfully for the proud, imperial South -this monument is erected by the unskilled hands - of the AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

The Secession movement in Missouri-Lyon and Blair-The Arsenal-Gov. Jackson-Camp Jackson-Review of Political Events preceding the Massacre.

CHAPTER II.

After Sumpter-Fight at Little Blue-Boonville-The retreat Southward-Carthage--Shelby returns to the Missouri river-Combats in Lafayette county-Oak Hills-Weightman's death-Lyons' last charge-Dash of the 3d Louisiana.

CHAPTER III.

Occupation of Springfield-Reorganization-Shelby returns to the Missouri river-Price's march on Lexington-Capture of Col. Mulligan and his Irish Brigade Hemp bales for new uses-Retreat of Price from Lexington-Winter quarters at Springfield-Shelby returns again to the Missouri river-Joins Price on his retreat to) Boston Mountain-Pea Ridge-Deaths of McCulloch and McIntosh- Retreat to Van Buren

CHAPTER IV.

Price made a Confederate Major General-Crosses the Mississippi river-Shelby abandons his horses-Memphis days-Corinth-Farmington-Bridge guarding Outpost work-The evacuation-Shelby ordered to Missouri on recruiting service-Crossing the Mississippi-Duvall's Bluff-Imminent danger-Saved by a scratch-Tale of the Mound City-Shelby returns to Beauregard's headquarter" -Evacuation of Duvall's Bluff-A swim for the boats-Little Rock-March to Ft. Smith-Shelby's return-Cockrell's expedition to Lone Jack-Recruiting-The retreat-Coon Creek-Formation of the brigade

CHAPTER V

Shelby's character-Skirmishing about Newtonia-Death of Col. Upton Hays-Elliott's destruction of Pin Indians-First battle at Newtonia-Fight at Granby Second battle at Newtonia-Retreat Southward-Hindman recalled to Little Rock-Coffee's bloody combat-Jeans' brilliant dash

CHAPTER VI.

Fight at Huntsville, Ark.-Snow storm-Marmaduke assumes command of the cavalry-March to. Cane Hill-McCoy's raid upon the Indians-Bledsoe's hot fight -Miss McClellan's adventure-The biters bitten-March upon Ray's Mill-Blunt attacks at Cane Hill-Heavy fighting by Shelby's Retreat over the Boston Mountains-Repulse of Blunt and death of Col. Jewell

CHAPTER VII.

Review of Trans-Mississippi Department-Criticism upon Hindman and Holmes-Magruder the first general selected-Dash of Shanks - Shoup's failure - The bloody battl~unction of Blunt and Herron-Retreat of Hindman-Incidents of the battle-Capture of Shelby, who in turn captures his captors

CHAPTER VIII.

Cavalry expedition to Blunt's rear-McDonald's fight at Beaver Creek-Burning of Ozark-Attack on Springfield-Gen. Brown's bravado-Blackwell's ruse-Capture of forts and artillery by Shelby-Houses fired-Withdrawal after dark March toward Rolla-·Marmaduke's race--Capture of Sand Springs

C:aAPTER IX.

Blackwell's' commercial relations in Marshfield-Porter's encounter with Federals-A race for Hartsville-Shelby captures forty men of the 4th Regulars-Attack on the enemy at Hartsville-Bloody conflict-Loss of officers terrible-Repulse of Porter, and Shelby's charge-Porter wounded-McDonald, Wimer, and Kirtley killed-Flight of the Federals-Pursuit by Elliott-Retreat to Arkansas Reorganization of the brigade-Preparation for another Missouri expedition.

CHAPTER X.

The Cape Girardeau expedition-Its object-Attack on Patterson-Neck or nothing with Leper-Giddings' strange conduct-Gallant charge of Reck Johnson-Capture of Lawrence and Shindler-Splendid dash of Rainwater-Eluded by McNeil-Follows him to Cape Girardeau-Shelby attacks the town-Hard fighting-Collins' splendid artillery conflict-Retreat of the Confederates Two girls bury two Confederate soldiers - Pursuit by the Federals-Fight at Jackson-Fight at Bloomfield-The bridge over St. Francis River-Escape of Marmaduke-St. Clair's bravado-Vandiver abandons pursuit

CHAPTER XI.

Battle of Helena-Failure of attack-Shelby wounded, and how he saved his battery-Price's assault-Bravery of the Missourians-Lewis and his brigade captured -Return to Jacksonport-How Jack Rector and his companions stole a grave and coffin-Fight with gunboats at Searcy-Death of Col. Gilkey-Marmaduke and Davidson meet-Elliott's dash-Fighting and retreating-Heavy fighting at Bayou Metre-Federals repulsed-Desperate nature of the battle-Steele moves against Little Rock-Surrendered without a blow except from the cavalry-Marmaduke's fight south of the river-Brilliant dash of Burbridge-Evacuation of Little Rock-A few comparisons and two incidents in Hindman's battle life

CHAPTER XII.

Shelby's raid to Missouri-Hunter and his ambush-Coffee-Capture of Neosho, Bowers' Mill, Greenfield, Stockton, Humansville, and Warsaw-Journey through Cole Camp-Tipton

CHAPTER XIII.

Raid continued-Booneville-Marshall-Separation of forces-Retreat

CHAPTER XIV.

Raid continued-Shanks' gallop-Fight at Florence-Ambushed-Fight at Humansville-Lost in the woods-Fight upon Wire road-Safe at last-Forces re-unite-Pursuit by McNeil-March southward-Supper at Washington, Ark.-Marmaduke's fight at Pine Bluff

CHAPTER XV.

Winter quarters at Camden-Hog expedition-Elliott's battle-Steele's advance-Attack on his rear-Charge of the Advance-Surprises-A hurricane-Desperate artillery fight on Prairie d'Ann-Poison Spring-Camden

CHAPTER XVI.

Marmaduke's battle at Poison Spring-Rout of Federals-Mark's Mill-Crushing Defeat-Steele's Bight-Pursuit-Jenkins' Ferry and its results

CHAPTER XVII.

Shelby ordered to the rear of Steele-Fighting amid the mountains-Capture of a Beet-Dardanelle surprised-Jackman's brigade-Dash upon Clarksville-Batesville-Review of affairs-Murder of Cols. Brand and Scott-Shelby's proclamation-Peace to the district.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Expedition to Clarendon-Gun-boat surprised and captured-Three others fought-Second day's fight-Retreat-Pursuit-Incidents

CHAPTER XIX.

McCoy's escape-Langhorne's foray upon Searcy-Capture of White-Skirmish.

CHAPTER XX.

Tenth Illinois cavalry surprised-Second expedition to White river-Hurried return-Fight at Augusta-Full ambush-Fulkerson's dash around Duvall's Bluff-Gen. Steele-Raid on Helena plantations-Capt. Rayburn-Marmaduke's operations-Gunboat fight-Ditch Bayou-Preparations for a Missouri expedition

CHAPTER XXI.

Inauguration of Price's expedition-Reasons for the raid-Forces-First blood for Shelby- Railroad destruction-Escape of Ewing-Pursuit-Death of Wilson-Crossing the Osage river-Bloody battle-Shanks wounded-Movements of Cabbell & Del Marmaduke-Investment of Jefferson City-Retreat-Schnable

CHAPTER XXII.

Shelby captures California-Dash on Booneville-Guerrillas-Centralia-Lawrence-McNeil's butchery at Palmyra-Marmaduke's fight at California-Pleasanton attacks Booneville-Is worsted by Jackman-March westward-Glasgow-Concentration by Rosecrans-Salt Fork

CHAPTER XXIII.

McCoy's and Howard's adventure-March continued westward-Waverly-Dover-Redd's and Plattenburg's adventure-Lexington occupied by Lane-Bloody battle-Shelby leads-Lane retreats-Fight at Little Blue-Marmaduke and Shelby engaged-Death of Todd-Langhorne's 'charge into Independence

CHAPTER XXIV.

Shelby in advance-Attacks Westport-Terrible fighting-Captures a battery-Slayback's charge - Marmaduke's Fighting-Shelby surrounded-Cuts through-A race for life-Escape.

CHAPTER LXV.

Price's retreat-Mine Creek-Disaster-Capture of Marmaduke, Cabbell, and the artillery-Shelby besought to save the army-His desperate fighting-The last stand-He succeeds-Tremendous march-Blunt pursues-Shelby's last battle at Newtonia-Price's army saved

CHAPTER XXVI.

Price's retreat continued-Attack on Fayetteville-Crossing the Arkansas river-Famine and pestilence-Shelby halts upon the Canadian-Clarksville, Texas

CHAPTER XXVII.

Magruder commands the District of Arkansas-Reynolds' letter-Price's reply-Reynolds' rejoinder-Shelby's statement-Review of the expedition

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Magruder's fight at Galveston-Sabine Pass-Shelby, Dorsey, and the pistols-Jack A.'s prize-McCoy's partisans-His wonderful daring

CHAPTER XXIX. .

Camp at Fulton-A frolic-Moreland triumphant-Condition of the division-The Advance-Langhorne's body-guard-Casualties among the field officers-Collins' battery-Col. John C. Moore's expedition-How Shelby recruited-His staff officers- Shooting a pardoned deserter- March to Jefferson, Texas-Ovation Marshall-Pittsburg-Condition of the Trans-Mississippi Department-Devotion of Col. W. A. Broadwell-Cotton trade-Surrender of Lee-Confusion-Shelby's address-Price's court of inquiry-Its composition-Mass meeting at Shreveport- Speeches and speculations-Meeting at Marshall-Shelby's visit to Buckner- The change of commanders-War resolved upon-The army disbanded-Surrender-Official documents-Last days

CHAPTER XXX.

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SHELBY AND HIS MEN OR THE WAR IN THE WEST.

CHAPTER I.

THE art of book-making is not a discovery of to-day; its requirements and unyielding laws are not the necessities of yesterday. The information I propose to give may be useful, perhaps,

in a limited manner, to some future historian-it will be interesting to my oId comrades who desire to march again over their trampled battle- fields, and scatter a few flowers upon the lowly graves of the tried and the true. .

With the cold analysis and exhaustive research of standard history I have nothing to do, nor is it the intention of the author to confine his book to bare statements of facts and naked arrays of figures. He desires to decorate it with incidents-some of them romantic and wonderful, perhaps, yet strictly true-enliven the tediousness of its narrative with anecdotes, and sow broadcast over its pages the peculiarities of " Shelby and His Men."

There will be abruptness in its details, digressions that may be buccaneerish, weakness in its descriptions, lack of color in its word-painting, and finish in its rhetoric-yet authorship has no beaten path-and to pass the Spltigen successfully, one should be a Macdonald.

I profess simply to have given the Southern side in all accounts of battles, sieges, marches, raids and campaigns-with a view alwap, though, to truth, justice, and the requirements of reason.

Those who desire to examine an essay upon the ethics of war or a compilation of statistical facts, must seek elsewhere, and read the pages of some other book. .

Intending to deal largely with General Shelby and his command, as separate and distinct actors in a drama which was performed upon half a continent, I shall, in order to preserve perfect unity, and to  follow his career from beginning to end, speak of every battle in  which he was engaged, comment on results, and criticize the genius  and combinations of the chief commander. Other reflections than these must be left for abler historians and for more voluminous works. I only desire to place upon record many bright and glowing facts unknown to all save the actors, and to add another leaf to the great chapter of events which will, in the future years, immortalize the unfortunate Confederates who staked all, and lost all, in

a superhuman struggle against fate and superior numbers. The book endeavors to be history in chronicling the events of the war in which General Shelby took part, and biography in all which relates to the individual acts and exploits of the characters introduced.

It may be well, perhaps, before introducing General Shelby to my readers, that a statement should be made of the intention to deal with him entirely as an officer and a public man, whose military reputation and career belong to the age, and by that age will be judged, either favorably or unfavorably. Claiming Missouri as the land of his choice and adoption, seeking all opportunities to deliver a blow in her behalf, and ever looking fondly and faithfully to the day when she would stand foremost and greatest among the States of the Southern Confederacy, he was always inspired with a kind of fervor in battle-a confidence and enthusiasm almost irresistible. It is not the author's intention to give even a synopsis of General Shelby's earlier life, nor the names of his ancestors, nor the various but commonplace vicissitudes through which he passed, doubtless~ from youth to manhood. He will be spoken of simply as a living, daring, ambitious, successful soldier; whose genius and energy, valor and unconquerable determination, carried him up rapidly from the Captaincy of a Company, to be General of a Division. There is about the man, too, a subtile essence of chivalry-a dash of the daring and romantic, which will have him pictured only as leading his hoops rapidly amid the wreck and the roar of battle; his black plume guiding the men, and his own splendid example nerving them to deeds of immortal endeavor. Like some natures which can be only stirred by strong old wine, he needs the red glare of conflict and the shouts and cheers of victory to make his picture stand out upon the canvas life-like and regal in its warrior-

manhood.

Major General Joseph Orville Shelby was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1831, and after receiving a good education, and some practical experience as a merchant, finally removed to Lafayette county, Missouri, and commenced the manufacture of bale rope in Waverly. Difficulties in Kansas occurring very soon after his settlement in Missouri, he eagerly espoused the Southern side of the question; left a lucrative business; .went back to Kentucky; raised a fine company for service in the Territory, and took the field with Clark, Atchison, and Reid, rendering signal service to the pro-slavery settlers. Quiet having been restored, and abolitionism threatening and driving back the Southern tide of emigration, General Shelby again returned to his manufactory.

The Confederate Struggle for Independence, which came so suddenly upon a nation of farmers and trades people, transforming them into vast armies and columns of attack, found Joseph O. Shelby hard at work in his rope factory in Waverly, Missouri, a little town in Lafayette county, remarkable for being a terror to all Boston Aid-Society emigrants going by river to Kansas, and for· being inhabited by bitter and uncompromising Southerners.

Before commencing the narrative of military events in which the name of General Shelby is so intimately woven, it were well, perhaps, to preface them by some introductory remarks upon the political condition of Missouri, and to inquire briefly how closely the state might have been joined to the fortunes of the Confederacy, and how rapidly a large majority of her people might have been stirred into a great mass of revolution, terrible and overwhelming because of wonderful strength and resources.

The elections late in the year of 1860 revealed the fact that there were about 25,000 Black Republicans in Missouri, of whom a majority were in and around St. Louis. As early as May 10,

1860, the first meeting which ever assembled in a Slave State to consider the question of taking public position with the anti-slavery element of the North, met in St. Louis, and sent delegates to the Chicago Convention. This meeting was followed by others more or less enthusiastic, while clubs of Union Leagues and mysterious Wide Awakes paraded the streets and marched in procession to the places of political gatherings. The germ of Abolitionism had been deposited in St. Louis when Frank Blair shouted his battle cry of Emancipation. It was caught up, expanded, and illustrated, until it became delightful to the Germans, and extremely agreeable to many of their Anglo-Saxon friends and neighbors. At first, some objection was manifested against those gatherings which had for their ambition a complete and radical overthrow of the institutions of the State, and the Republicans were sometimes assailed with bitter abuse, shouts of derision, showers of stones, and now and then a pistol bullet. These manifestations of disapproval failed, necessarily, because they were only indulged in by the rabble, and were discountenanced and condemned by those men of all others having the. most at stake, and who should have risen in their might and swept from St. Louis and the State every vestige of opposition to an institution created by God, and destroyed afterward only that it might be purified and given back in some other shape, with the understanding of mankind clearer as to its nature and to the great part it must yet perform in the political economy of the continent. The means to eradicate the evil were at hand, but the nerve was

wanting. The same effeminacy which looked unmoved upon the strides taken by Abolitionism in Kansas, and blurted out harmless and unfulfilled threats, quietly folded its gouty hands in St. Louis until it was bound hand and foot and delivered over, body and soul, by the very men it had warmed into life and fed into plethora.

When war first reared its ungainly head, the people of Missouri, after a little schooling, would not ha.ve been opposed to Secession, and were not unpatriotic nor unwilling, after awhile, to cast their fortunes with the Southern Confederacy; but they were steeped in a content so lazy that the mustering of Home Guards about the Arsenal and the tramp of battalions, defiling through the principal streets preparing for Camp Jackson, attracted scarcely any attention, and the only internal question hotly disputed among them involved the demand whether there was or was not a desire for any change whatsoever.

It was believed, alas! by the Southern leaders, that in the hour of danger the habits, and traditions, and prejudices, and withes of system which bound the slaveholders of Missouri, would drop from about them like burned flax, and that the children of Virginia and Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas-aristocrats to the core would stand out in an hour fit to sit on Committees of Public Safety and shed blood like water rather than yield an inch. The principle laid down was entirely correct, but the time given was entirely too short. Those in Missouri sympathizing with the war for independence were grieved and bound by prosperity, and habit, and the ignorance of the masses. The politics which hampered them was a faculty incapable of being suspended, and a creed which they were unwilling to abjure or forsake. It was impossible, they thought, to take issue with the sovereignty of State authorities: a week after Lyon landed he would have shot their Governor and dispersed their Legislature had the desire appealed to his reason. But the letha.rgy, in justice, must be attributed to plethora, not starvation to the total absence of that feeling of fear which Continental peoples, who are divided from enemies by a river, and whose fathers remember to have seen horses stabled in their cathedrals, never lose; from a flabbiness of mind which long rest produces in nations as well as men. All that was needed was an organization, States' Rights in its best. sense, an organization by which the genuine strength of the State could, in the hour of need, have been brought easily into play. It was never made. The bayonets, defied and abused beyond the Mississippi river, were powerful engines when brought in direct contact with the masses, and the truth became to be recognized slowly that it docs not take years but months to make a

man a soldier. The opposition, by reason of their skillful leaders, thorough knowledge of the crisis, and unscrupulous and desperate efforts, won the advance, the prestige of sudden attack, the moral force of a first victory, and all the terror inspired by rapid and bloody measures. The Lincoln Government to be respected must be feared, and with a sword stained by the blood of youth and innocence, Lyon smote deadly blows-rapid as the crowding events, and heartless and pitiless as civil strife always demands.

The failure of Missouri to furnish a hundred thousand men to the armies of the South, is due, in a great measure, to the weakness and indecision of her political leaders, who temporized and plotted-incurring all the odium of conspiracy-(if there be any odium attached to men struggling for the right)-without the corresponding merit of success and victory.

The Legislature met on the 2d of January, 1861, and the House of Representatives elected Secessionists to its offices, and shortly afterward the Lieutenant Governor, Thomas C. Reynolds, invited all of the Senators who were in favor of standing up manfully for the South, to his private rooms for consultation.

The inaugural of Governor Jackson was just such a message as suited the people at that time-eminently politic, and sufficiently Southern to satisfy the originals, and stimulate the timid and the procrastinating. Although the fatal dogma of· neutrality was enunciated in the words that "'Missouri and Kentucky should stand by the South, and preserve her equilibrium," no one, however ultra his views, but believed that when the time came, Governor Jackson would tear off this mask, and boldly raise the standard of revolt. His efforts to remain neutral deceived no one, not even himself, and from first to last, the fact was self-evident that he must either drive or be driven.

olitically, Governor Jackson was not a bold man. He belonged to a dominant party in Missouri-a party which was perfect in its routine and machinery, and sought and gained popularity more from the precedents and traditions of the past, than from any bold or original plans for the present or the future. The crisis was new and terrifying. .Revolution had a ghastly look for leaders accustomed to caucuses and ballots; daring measures savored of bullets and gunpowder; while quick decided action seemed the very acme of temerity and despair. He had still a lingering hope that collisions might be avoided, and some fears in relation to personal consequences to himself. The bold and consistent measures his judgment and the unanswerable arguments of his friends forced upon him one day, were destroyed by his doubts and fears upon the next; and while still hesitating and brooding over the great responsibility resting upon him, the capture of Camp Jackson came like a thunderbolt, because, in the ignorance of his military advisers, the sky was asserted to be clear, and the horizon without the shadow of a storm-cloud.

Of the 200,000 voters in Missouri, over 170,000 voted against Lincoln, and of the 17,000 voting for him, nearly all lived in St. Louis, Franklin, and Gasconade counties. But the time soon came when to disagree with the Administration was treason, and when men were to be persecuted and murdered for the crime of opinion.

A determined leader, having his own course marked out, clearly and definitely, yet seeking, as a politician, some encouragement and signs of assistance from the people, had only to cast his eyes over Missouri, after the fall of Fort Sumpter, and learn that a large majority were waiting eagerly for vigorous action. In the principal inland towns, Union meetings were broken up; the "Stars and Stripes" had been persistently torn down and trampled upon; Secession banners were given to the winds in St. Louis, Lexington, Rolla, Kansas City, and Springfield; great gatherings were had in Platte, Lafayette, Ray, Jasper, Boone, Saline, and some thirty or forty other counties, indorsing the capture of Fort Sumpter, and expressing, by stirring resolutions, the most unqualified devotion to the Southern cause. The Bell and Everett party sympathized with the Secessionists, and only awaited some clinching act of diplomacy,

some daring effort or battle, to throw itself into their arms. The Democratic party, containing the bulk of the Secessionists, was ready and ripe for revolt, and looked to the Governor and the Legislature as the proper authorities to carry the State out of the Union.

In times of great revolution, when men's minds are continually stirred by rapid and astounding events, there is but little choice left in the selection of means to control the storm, and but scanty periods afforded for the discussion of political problems bearing upon the questions at issue. Cortez burned his ships, that none might look back oceanward, when faint with the blows and the toils of the strife, and those who guide the elements of civil war in a struggle for life and honor, should seck, possibly, to cover their followers with s ueh a mantle of blood, that peace would bring no respite, and defeat nothing but destruction.

The field offered in St. Louis was ripe for the sickle, yet the harvest might have been bloody, for it was a harvest of death. On conflicting sides were the reapers arrayed-men representing principles that have been antagonistic for a hundred years, though the numbers were unequal and the resources disproportionate. The "Slave power," as it was fashionably called, had the power, the advantage of majorities, the offices, the machinery of the State government the will-but not the intellect and the man.

Twenty thousand Black Republicans in and around St. Louis, composed largely of the German element, overawed, controlled, and finally possessed the State. From insignificant meetings, silently and fearfully held, they grew and strengthened, under the wisdom of Frank Blair, and the cold, grim genius of Lyon, until they broke down the spirit and the loyalty of one hundred thousand voting Southerners, and drove Price and his army across the Mississippi River. Success justifies all means, and victory will gild the bloodiest measures until they blossom as the rose. Defeat finds no consolation in the whisperings of mercy, and the rigors of subjugation are not mitigated by the remembrances of measures abandoned

because they might have been tainted by the smell of powder and of death.

It would be as disagreeable as unprofitable, and altogether unnecessary for the purposes of this book, to trace, step by step, the creation, expansion, and final triumph of the Black Republicans in Missouri. It is intended only in what follows to place the State right before her sisters of the South, and endeavor to explain why so little was given from a source where so much was expected.

The intense excitement created everywhere by the capture of Fort Sumpter was felt as much, probably, in Missouri as in any other State, North or South. War was deemed inevitable, then, by all classes, and preparations were instantly begun for the strife. Taking the initiatory in St. Louis, under the admirable leadership of Frank Blair, the Black Republicans worked hard for success, and even as early as February the Union Guards were formed, a Union Safety Committee established, large amounts of money raised and expended in the purchase of arms, ammunition, and accouterments, while ten regiments of volunteers were being rapidly enrolled to meet the crisis.

The Secessionists were active, also, and thousands of minute men had arms and resolution enough for any work. The St. Louis Arsenal was a prize so valuable that it became at once the object of the greatest concern to both parties, and measures were inaugurated simultaneously for its capture and defense. This arsenal contained, in January, probably 60,000 stands of Springfield and Enfield muskets, 1,500,000 rounds of cartridges, several siege guns and field pieces, together with considerable machinery, and munitions of war in great abundance. The main magazine contained 90,000 pounds of gunpowder. The advantages resulting from a. distribution of all these war materials among the Southern people of Missouri would have been almost incalculable, and the warmest supporters of Governor Jackson must seek in vain for excuses or reasons possibly justifying the failure of its capture.

At this time the only force protecting the arsenal consisted of some staff officers, three or four soldiers detailed from Jefferson Barracks, and the mechanics required for ordinary duty. No preparations had been made, or probably thought of, looking to defense, and fifty good men might have captured and secured the precious prize. It was urged upon the authorities time and again. The very boldness and daring of the act would necessarily have carried with it sufficient weight to overawe many, encourage many, and stimulate to enthusiasm half the population of the State; beside, revolution, with giant strength, was striding over the whole country, events succeeded each other with the rapidity of lightning, and men's minds

needed violent excitement to keep them strung for great emergencies. Better than all, though, the arms were needed for the protection of Missouri, for the assistance of the South, and to save the homes and firesides of the Secessionists from foreign and mercenary soldiers.

The blight of procrastination and timidity, however, was upon the State, and palsied the arms and counteracted the resolutions of those who were eager and anxious for desperate measures. Brigadier I General D. M. Frost, commanding the militia of the First Military District, in a letter to Governor Jackson, dated January 24, 1861, informed' him that an interview with Major Bell (then in command of the arsenal) had just been held, and that Major Bell, who was It Southern man in feeling, advised no haste in the matter, pledging his word that nothing should be removed from the arsenal without first notifying General Frost. Frost also advised the Governor, in his letter, that all his (the Governor's) influence should be used to keep the attention of the United States Government away from the arsenal. Nothing bold was recommended, evidently, by this officer, but there were others who urged its capture in strong appeals, and were almost tempted to risk everything themselves in an effort for the purpose.

"A blunder in politics is worse than a crime," and to be ignorant of the wants and requirements of a people in periods of universal danger, can neither be justified by inexperience, nor be forgiven because of an unwillingness to fight and to shed blood. Governor Jackson believed that the capture of the arsenal would precipitate Secession, and he wanted no such thing as immediate Secession. He urged that the minds of the people were not prepared for such rapid action. The geographical position of the State, surrounded on three sides by a cordon of free territory, was given, too, as a reason against it, and why she should make no hostile movements opposing the United States. Jackson had some idea of making an arrangement with the Governors of Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois, looking to the preservation of neutrality. He dreaded the bloodshed and destruction which would follow war, yet shrank instinctively from any participation in the contest proposed to be waged by the North upon the South, and when a contingent from Missouri was demanded by the Secretary of War, to aid in the coercion of the

seceded States, it was indignantly refused by Governor Jackson, although the uncompromising tone of the refusal was rather due to the counselors surrounding him than to Jackson himself. He shrank, therefore, from the responsibility of taking any violent steps, and preferred the ruinous policy of acting on the defensive, until, step' by step, he was driven from his capital, his State, and his people. '

Major Bell resigned. A Lieutenant Thompson, from Newport Barracks, with a small body of regulars, removed the Government funds from the Custom House and Sub Treasury, January 6th, and then the people were quietly waiting for the Confederates to put forth some strength that they might join them. After the resignation of BelI, and the assignment in his place of Major Hagner, in conjunction with Captain Sweeny, the Secessionists urged Governor Jackson to take the place at once, while those in the country were clamorous for action. The Governor withheld his sanction upon the ground that the time had not yet arrived, and that it would be madness for Missouri to begin the war, although in almost alI the other Slave States every vestige of property belonging to the United States Government had been seized and appropriated for the use of the Confederacy.

Blair and his friends were active, vigilant, and determined. Their armed followers were numerous, not deficient in courage, imbued with a species of sublime fanaticism, and devoted and determined to persevere in the war for the Union.

On the 6th of February, 1861, a splendid company of regulars from Fort Riley, commanded by Captain Nathaniel Lyon, filed into the arsenal grounds and they looked vicious and bold. Even then the place might have been easily taken, and should have been taken most certainly j for the removal of Bell, the reinforcements arriving from Newport and Fort Riley, and the appointment of uncompromising Federal officers to the command, must surely have convinced the most doubting that not only were the eyes of the Government upon it, but the hands of the Government also.

Lyon was speedily reinforced, and looked about him, like a. finished soldier, as he was, for means to defend his charge. He fortified, and drilled, and prepared rapidly for coming events, while his friends on the outside, no less active, organized regiment after regiment, which were as speedily armed and equipped.

At the election held in February, the Union ticket was generally successful throughout the State, but it was a conditional Union, and only in St. Louis were the unconditional Unionists triumphant. On the 4th of February, Commissioners were appointed to the Peace Conference to be held in Washington City for the purpose of arranging " terms of settlement," and the idea still seemed prominent that something would be done to prevent actual war. So thought the members of the Convention, for they assembled in Jefferson City upon the 28th of February, sat three days, and adjourned to meet again in St. Louis. This Convention had just been elected by the people, and contained a majority of conditional Union men.

Meanwhile, the proceedings of the Legislature-which was undeniably Southern-and the operations of the Secessionists throughout the State, had all been placed before Lyon and the Black Republicans of St. Louis, and they determined to hold the arsenal at all hazards, which was now in a complete state of defense.

Fort Sumpter fell at last, and the excitement in St. Louis and Missouri was tremendous, and again fate furnished the authorities with the means to capture Lyon and his prize. Surely the vail of neutrality must have been swept away by the thunder of Beauregard's guns at Charleston, and the leaders could no longer delude themselves with the phantom of procrastination. The city authorities were Southern, the State authorities were Southern, there were officers at the arsenal Southern in feeling, and the first blow in the war had been struck heavily. The President called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress rebellion, and Missouri was required to furnish her proportion, but Jackson manfully replied that she should not" furnish a single man to subjugate her sister States of the South."

About the 18th the arsenal at Liberty was seized by the Secessionists, and its contents distributed among volunteer companies forming for war, and Lyon, fearing a like attack, reinforced his garrison by volunteers. Harney was withdrawn from St. Louis, Hagner was sent to Leavenworth, and Lyon reigned supreme in his . barracks. Five regiments were organized and armed, followed very soon afterward by five more, and when these ten thousand men were thoroughly armed and accoutered, Captain Lyon, having no further use for the surplus arms and ammunition at the arsenal, deliberately, on the night of the 26th of April, loaded them upon the steamer City of Alton, and sent them over to Illinois to be used in subjugating

those very Missourians who had stood silently by to see the coveted prize slipping through their weak and nerveless hands.

On the 22d of April, Governor Jackson issued a proclamation summoning the Legislature to meet in Jefferson City, on the 2d of May, in extraordinary session, but it was too late then to save the arsenal, and the loss of the arsenal lost the State. He also ordered that the militia should go into camp in their respective districts for the period of six days, as provided by law.

On the 3d of May, still hesitating and undecided, Governor Jackson sent in his message to the called session of the Legislature, in which he advised that the State should be put in a proper attitude of defense; that the militia law should be revised and rendered I:lore effective; that a system of drill and discipline should be adopted; and that the people should be placed in such' a condition as to be enabled to defend their rights and honor. He declared Missouri had no war to prosecute; it was not her policy to make any aggressions on any State or people, but that her people must be prepared to defend their honor.

In conformity with law, the troops in the first Military District went into camp in St. Louis, at the western end of Olive Street, in a place called Lindell Grove. True, the United States flag waved over the thronging volunteers, but it was a delusion and a sham and there was but little love for it in the hearts of any beneath its folds. The young men there had been educated to believe that the South was right, that slavery was right-and that the success of any party inimical to these views furnished just cause for actual war. If their leaders had been wise as Blair, and bold as Lyon, St, Louis would have run with other blood and in larger quantities,

Lyon and his adviser, Blair, had only temporize, and made some faint bows to the law from the first, that time might be called to organize and recruit, so when the ten thousand volunteers were armed and drilled, he marched out boldly from his fortifications, surprised, surrounded, and captured Frost and his innocent military. with as much ease, apparently, as a keen sportsman drives him the ready net an entire covey of frightened partridges. In a military sense, General Frost can make some excuse for his surprise, by claiming, as he has a right to do, that the others of his superiors left him no other alternative; but in a political sense, there can be no sufficient reason given for keeping the camp in such an exposed condition that it invited attack from largely superior numbers, made formidable by the very arms lost to the Secessionists through the incomprehensible tardiness of their leaders.

It would, perhaps, be unjust and unreasonable to judge the actions of men by the facts acquired after practical tests have been made, and it would be equally improper to hold them responsible for errors which could only be known when the injurious consequences were felt; but ignorance of any law constitutes no authority for its violation, and those who seek, by political diplomacy, to govern and to lean great parties or States, must suffer, to ll. certain extent, for that default of knowledge, which, if possessed and properly exercise,. secures to their followers the greatest possible amount of good. General Frost, as a subordinate officer, had his duty plain before him-he was to obey. Governor Jackson's duty was equally as clear-he was to create. Within the folds of that broad, good mantle which success ever throws around her chosen ones, many technical forms might have been hid, and many arbitrary

measures laid softly to sleep. If it were deemed best at that time to temporize and procrastinate, and to refuse battle studiously and persistently, it should have been the stated policy of the leaders to have an open field, behind them and ample roads to retreat upon, when the worst came about. The danger, from being constantly avoided, grew larger rapidly, and from being un menaced it became intolerant. General Frost knew nothing of his peril until he was lost, and Governor Jackson had made no preparations to grapple the disaster which destroyed him..

The newt! of the surrender of Camp Jackson was received in Jefferson City about six o'clock, in the evening of the 10th, and created intense excitement. After the dispatch announcing the fact was read, the Military Dill immediately passed both Houses; a portion of the Osage Bridge was destroyed; twelve thousand kegs of powder were sent into the interior, and the State treasure removed to a more distant and safer place. The appearance in the streets, too, of one hundred splendidly drilled soldiers, under Captain, afterward the gallant Colonel Joseph Kelly, served lUuch to restore confidence, and create feelings of safety and protection. The bloody and merciless blows struck in St. Louis, almost broke down the spirit of Governor Jackson, and aroused in him an indignation the more distressing because of its indecision.

At this moment General Sterling Price tendered his sword to Governor Jackson, and was by him appointed Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the State forces. This appointment destroyed the Southern love and loyalty of Colonel A. W. Doniphan, and from that time forward he no longer addressed disunion meetings, nor advocated conditional secession. General Priee had previously served in the Mexican war, having, like President Davis, resigned his seat in Congress for that purpose. His private character was unimpeachable, and his personal integrity eminent and undisputed. He had seen some military service, but it was of such a limited quantity that its remembrances could bring but little pleasure, and its experiences have nothing of value as bearing upon the gigantic contest about to be inaugurated. Up to the massacres in St. Louis, he had been an avowed Union man, and sought sedulously to avert

the impending war. He is reported to have remarked, when learning the news of Lyon's swift attack, "Everything is lost."

Camp Jackson was too bold a stroke to follow up vigorously, for the State was furiously aroused, the Governor called for troops, and from every direction an indignant people were crowding to the capital for battle. The agents of the Administration temporized, and promised to explain why the measures taken had been so violent and bloody. The principal actors

in the drama were kept in the background, and General Harney came between the antagonistic parties as a mediator. The authorities at Jefferson City were amused and cajoled by pacific demonstrations, really sincere and well-meant on the part of General Harney, but ruinous to the hopes and wishes of the Secessionists. The Administration made use of him to gain time by negotiations, and it succeeded admirably.

General Harney arrived on the 11th, and assumed command on the 12th. His presence quieted somewhat the excitement in St. Louis, as his services of over forty years in the regular army, and his high character for energy and impartiality became to be canvassed and appreciated. Harney, in his manifesto, however, denounced the Military Bill, and called it an indirect Secession ordinance, which ignored the forms even resorted to by other States. He advised that it should not be obeyed, because it was in conflict with the laws of the United States, and would, if enforced, take the State out of the Union. Generals Price and Harney met in St. Louis, May 21st, and the interview then held was a long one. It resulted in a declaration which depended for success upon the support given it by the people of Missouri, and the faithfulness of adherence to it by the United States Government. A full and friendly interchange of views was indulged in; the arrangements made by General Price were concurred in by Governor Jackson; the State troops at Jefferson City were disbanded; and the declaration made by General Harney that no incursions by Federal troops would be necessary or advised. The object of the meeting seemingly was to restore peace and good order to the people of the State, in subordination to the laws of the General Government. Jackson declared that the whole power of the militia should be used to support law and order, and urged, in

conjunction with Harney, that the people should go about their business as usual, and hoped that the unquiet elements which threatened so seriously to disturb the public peace, might soon subside, and be remembered only to be deplored. Harney, well manipulated by his Washington masters, published an address to the Missourians, described the object of the conference, and pledged that its stipulations should be faithfully and religiously kept by him. Communications to prominent St. Louisians from prominent politicians at Washington, assured the people also that the Administration would observe neutrality. The people, thoroughly advised and governed by their leaders, did observe this hollow truce, and

waited until Lyon had consolidated his power and strengthened his battalions; until the militia were disbanded, and the horror at Camp Jackson appeased; until the Legislature had recovered from its fright, and the Unionists their old audacity.

This Price-Harney treaty had a. most deleterious effect upon the revolutionary party in Missouri. It restrained, and therefore weakened its ardor; relaxed, and therefore enervated its muscles; parried, and therefore avoided the fatality of its blow. It created a. feeling of security which was false, and shred the locks from the unshorn Sampson, until his limbs were nerveless and his efforts without force. Nothing exceeded the blight of its influence, except the delusion of its victims; and the ills which it entailed were only overmatched by the number of its sacrifices. Conceived as a matter of policy, it was accepted as a necessity, and enforced as a virtue. Guiltless as the Trojan leaders, perhaps, the wooden horse yet

CHAPTER II.

THE echoes of the first guns at Sumpter had scarcely been borne to the West upon the winds of Northern fury and indignation, when a new flag was given to the people of Missouri, and a. new song was sung by the mustering squadrons.

One of the foremost to anticipate the conflict, Joseph O. Shelby, immediately raised a cavalry company in Lafayette county, mounted, armed, and uniformed it with remarkable rapidity, and marched away to Independence, Jackson county, which was threatened by some Federal dragoons from Kansas City.

The State troops, massed at the crossing of the Little Blue river, a strong defensive }Joint, waited in daily anticipation of an attack, while Captain Shelby and his company did constant duty in front. Here Colonel Holloway and young McClanahan, the first victims from Jackson county, which was afterward so lavish of her blood and treasure, laid down their lives thus early upon their country's altar, being killed in a skirmish with some of Sturgis' dragoons. The expected general engagement did not take place; the Federals ceased all threatening movements from the Kansas border, and the troops rendezvoused at Lexington, for organization and information, under the command of General Rains, who visited the camp and addressed the soldiers. To this point, also, General Price, laboring under severe and sudden illness, was advancing by slow and easy stages.

After the mask was torn off; after the Governor and his Legislature were fugitives; and when foreign troops were pouring by thousands into the State to find the inhabitants powerless for good or for evil, General Lyon pressed his advantages characteristically. He led a column up the Missouri river in person; another column was sent to the Southwest under General Sigel; Jefferson City was taken without a blow; and in a few days he attacked and dispersed a hasty assemblage of undisciplined militia who had congregated at Booneville, by armed, and without knowing almost why they came to the town.

This affair at Booneville has been unnecessarily magnified, and persistently spoken of as a disaster. After the evacuation of Jefferson City, Governor Jackson took post at this town, merely to breathe a little, and concentrate a respectable escort for his retreat southward. The troops there (some four or five hundred militia) were placed under the command of the then Colonel John S. Marmaduke, who had absolute military control. He advised, from the first, that no battle should be risked, and Governor Jackson positively assured him that no battle should be made. Orders even had been issued for the march to Arkansas, when some indiscreet civilians persuaded the Governor to try the issue with Lyon. Jackson at once, and

without consultation with Marmaduke, declared his intention of fighting, and required preparations to be made instantly for action. Marmaduke argued that it would be ruinous, and attended with only one result-that of complete overthrow. Governor Jackson insisted, asked Marmaduke to retain command until the issue was decided, and left the plan and its performance entirely to his subordinate. Somewhere in Pettis county, most probably at Syracuse, General Parsons had concentrated a regiment of militia and four pieces of artillery. These Marmaduke desired to have with him at Booneville, and Governor Jackson ordered General Parsons to march instantly to the threatened point with his men and his cannon.

From some cause, the order was not obeyed, and so, with his five hundred by-armed militia, with but little ammunition, and no artillery, Marmaduke met General Lyon and his two thousand volunteers and regulars, and two six-gun batteries. As Marmaduke predicted, so it happened. Captain William Brown's company fought intelligently and well, but nearly the entire mob outside of this company fled, after three or four discharges from the batteries, leaving Governor Jackson almost without a body-guard, and Colonel Marmaduke without a regiment. Two or three were probably killed, and as many wounded. The balance escaped without difficulty, and soon joined the army at Cowskin Prairie.

Having neither organization, arms, ammunition, nor anything which constitutes soldiers, save inherent courage, die forces at Lexington were ordered by General Price to march southward, and form a junction, if possible, with Brigadier General Ben. McCulloch, known then to be advancing from the interior of Arkansas toward the Missouri line with a small but well-organized force. Under the immediate command of State Brigadier General James S. Rains, the forces turned their backs upon Lexington in the midst of a terrific rain-storm, and took the first proud step in the direction which linked their destinies ever afterward with the Confederacy.

Anticipating this movement, General Lyon marched from St. Louis upon Springfield, having returned to the former city after the capture of Booneville, and General Sturgis, with a light, compact body of dragoons, came rapidly down from Kansas City, on the west, to intercept the Southern troops at the crossing of the Osage. This last movement was unsuccessful, and Governor Jackson, who had gone southward from Booneville with General Parsons and a small body of troops, and General Price, from Lexington, formed a junction, with evident feelings of relief and pleasure. United, and in high spirits, the army continued its march. Captain Shelby's company, better trained and better disciplined than any other at that time, was constantly in the saddle, doing much severe and unceasing duty. When within a day's march of Carthage, the county seat of Jasper county, Captain Shelby in advance, the approaching

forces· of General Sigel were discovered, numbering, perhaps, three thousand of all arms, and who had gradually gained the front by  advancing on a parallel line and to the right of General Price.

Preparations for battle were immediately made under the direction of General M. M. Parsons and Colonel R. H. Weightman. The effective infantry were drawn up on either side of Captain Hiram Bledsoe's famous four-gun battery, the cavalry, under General Rains, mustered on the flanks, and in the rear, Governor Jackson, with all the unarmed men, baggage wagons, etc., formed a reserve line, it was the line of spectators.

After the battle opened, a battery belonging to General Parsons' command went into action on the right of Bledsoe, but was soon withdrawn, because of a scarcity of ammunition.

Sigel fired first, Bledsoe replied spiritedly, and for half an hour the artillery duel was hot and bloody. Weightman ordered the infantry to advance rapidly, which was done, and the enemy were engaged at close quarters for a few minutes. General Sigel, hard pressed, and evidently fearful of joining in decisive battle, retreated, throughout the entire day, with eminent ability. Captain Shelby sustained himself well during the contest, and had the honor of receiving the first fire from Sigel's outlying dragoons, when en· countered early in the morning. Night and extreme heat put an end to the race, the victory being with the Missourians, for the enemy had been driven twenty miles, their dead and wounded abandoned, and the outlet southward, a most vital question, completely secured. The forces on both sides were nearly equal, and the losses the same. The advantages to the Confederates were great, because they preserved their organization, got acquainted with artillery, felt confidence in themselves and their leaders, and were within hail almost of succor and supplies.

Bledsoe suffered severely. Some of his best men were wounded, among them the Captain himself, Tom. Young, Charley Young, Lieutenant Charley Higgins, and several other brave volunteer Missourians. This was Bledsoe's first fight since the Mexican War, where he had seen some service, and he distinguished himself greatly. The fire from Sigel's guns was accurate, and concentrated principally upon the battery. One gun, commanded by Bledsoe's gallant Lieutenant, Curtis O. Walbee, seemed the especial object of attack,. and he and his brother Charley, as brave as the Lieutenant, at one time, in conjunction with Lieutenant Frank Trigg, Lee Bradley, Arthur Brown, and Joe Smith, worked their piece alone. In fact, the courage displayed by the officers and men of his battery had much to do with the steadiness of the raw militia, enduring fur the first time in their lives the galling fire of six pieces of artillery, at cannister range. Supporting Bledsoe's guns was hot work for the infantry, and many were killed and wounded. Among the former was Eldridge Booten, a gallant and devoted soldier.

In the first melee after Sigel's retreat commenced, Captain Kelly's company, from St. Louis, particularly distinguished itself, its gallant leader pressing it forward in pursuit with great rapidity, ably assisted by the daring and lamented Rock Champion.

Halting on Cowskin Prairie after a severe and fatiguing march, the army drilled hard, fasted much, living frequently on so many ears of corn daily issued to the troops-and by every species of rigid and extreme discipline prepared itself fur the death-grapple with General Lyon, who had quietly halted at Springfield, gathered up his strength, united with Sturgis and Sigel, and made everything ready with the calm, practiced eye of a soldier and a veteran. While the army labored at Cowskin, Captain Shelby returned rapidly to Lafayette county, intending to recruit and organize a regiment, but Lexington was occupied by a large Federal garrison; Home Guards were in force at every cross-road and village tavern ; and there was but little rest to the soldiers, and but small opportunity for recruiting. Captain Shelby, however, with his one hundred splendidly mounted men, having an experienced surgeon, Dr.

Russell, with him, in case of accidents, kept the entire country in turmoil and commotion. Between Dover and Lexington, and but four miles from the former, a tributary to the Missouri river, Tabo creek, cuts square across the road with banks forty feet in height. Spanning this deep, treacherous stream was a commodious bridge-high above the highest waters. On the Dover side, Captain Shelby had two large rifle-pits constructed, filled them with riflemen! improvised two wooden cannon, and embargoed this bridge and the road. Lexington arose as one man. Lieutenant Colonel White, the commander, marched out with the entire garrison, two huge mortars were mounted on a steam tug and shelled tete du pont from the river; the infantry came down in solid column to attack in front; the Home Guards concentrated angrily upon the left flank, and between the cannonade from the boats and the rattle of the

assaulting lines in front, Captain Shelby quietly fell back twelve miles to Waverly. Here he made another wooden cannon, and proceeded to interrupt the navigation of the Missouri river. His one hundred men were magnified into two or three thousand. The shadows of the cottonwoods along the bank had much credit for hiding vast and wonderful masked batteries. So one fine day the steamer Sunshine came gayly along, relying upon her bright name perhaps to make light about these dark places. She was brought to by twenty .men and duly inspected by Captain Shelby. One hundred army wagons, going to General Canby at Leavenworth, and fifteen hundred sacks of flour were taken ashore. Nothing else was disturbed.

Shelby ever had high regard for steamboat men and steamboat property, and never during his entire career would he permit an unarmed boat to be destroyed. Some grand jurors were on another boat when arrested by Shelby's wary riflemen, and they were greatly exercised. Their consciences were guilty, for they were returning from 8t. Louis where they had been to vote away Southern men's property and take freely from their neighbors' goods and chattels whatever might be coveted. Colonel Casper Gruber of the Federal army, was 0ll board with them, and he was the best of the lot. Shelby, for Gruber's sake, released the jurors after making a declaration which had rather more logic than law in it. After stirring up "great drouble mit the Federals" for two weeks and more, he galloped away again to rejoin the Confederate army advancing upon Oak Hills. It was a week before they believed him gone, and actually pursued for days an imaginary shape and an imaginary squadron.

General McCulloch broke camp in. the Cherokee Nation late in July, and marched directly on Springfield, where General Lyon lay seemingly inactive and awaiting attack. Simultaneously with the movement of the Arkansas forces, General Price also put his column in motion upon the same point and by different roads. Cooperating at Cassville, and being engaged in several insignificant affairs beyond with Lyon's forces who had marched southward to find McCulloch, but had returned on meeting him, the two armies finally bivouacked on Wilson's creek, twelve miles from Springfield and the enemy. Waiting for the issuance of ammunition, rations, and the preparations for a decisive battle consumed several days, during which an unusual quietude prevailed, and skirmishing occurred only at rare intervals. Finally, it was resolved to march at dark on the night of the 9th of August, surprise General Lyon, if possible, and, in any event, to attack him at daylight. The troops were drawn up, the order of march published, and the pickets called in preparatory to advancing in line of battle. Before morning, however, an ominous cloud, with occasional flurries of rain, delayed the march, as it was deemed best not to expose the soldiers, on the eve of an important engagement, to the risk of

wet and damaged ammunition, there being but few cartridge-boxes in the entire army, and so the men lay upon their arms, momentarily expecting the order to advance. The outlying pickets and videttes were not thrown forward, by some inadvertency, again during the night, and between daylight and sunrise the next morning, while many were still asleep, General Lyon's entire army had surprised General McCulloch, taken position, and was advancing directly upon the unprepared and unprotected encampment. Indeed, so complete were the maneuvers of the enemy, that General Sigel actually gained the rear of the Confederates, took a strong position and completely commanded the only road available for retreat and for communication southward.

Unacquainted, and therefore undeterred by the imminent danger, and only knowing it was victory, or defeat and almost annihilation, the Confederates formed rapidly and without confusion. Missourians, Arkansans, and Lousianians rushed side by side to the front, and engaged General Lyon's army at close quarters and with distinguished bravery. For six hours the battle raged furiously, and though the slaughter was great, neither army had gained sufficient advantage to confide in victory. Weightman, at the head of his brigade, led them up to the charge with a recklessness which cost him his life, and he fell pierced by three bullets and, mortally wounded. The carnage on this bloody hill was dreadful. Regiments and brigades, without seemingly having any leaders or organization, yet marched up to it to be cut down, to be repulsed, yet straight and determined they returned again and again to its assault.

Shot-guns, rifles, horse-pistols, revolvers, derringers even, were flashing incessantly upon the Federals, so near together had the lines advanced. Lyon died like the hero he was. The first shot seemed, however, to stagger him and to effect his mind, for he was seen to swerve backward from the front after receiving it and hesitate for some time, a portion of his men meanwhile fighting desperately, but by far the largest portion falling away from the flanks beyond range. It was truly the privates' battle. General McBride's division of southeast Missourians, bore the brunt of the fight, and saved the day undoubtedly. The men of this division, barefooted, hungry, ragged, wretchedly armed, yet seemed devoid of fear and eager for

the hottest place in the conflict. Entire companies, without one single gun of any kind among them, marched boldly to the front, stood to be shot at until the Federal lines were driven back, that they might, in this manner, obtain muskets. History furnishes but few examples of such heroic fortitude; American history not one before.

Near to Lyon, as he lay dead, was a young St. Louisian, Captain Cary Gratz-pale and cold and silent now, as that leader whom he had followed so well. He had joined a Federal regiment at the beginning of the war, and was a brave and accomplished soldier. In the terrible, murderous onset which Lyon had just ordered before being stricken down, Captain Gratz was far to the front, fighting splendidly and well. The huge hot wave came onward and roared and tossed its vicious crest, red with great blood-splashes, high upon the bold, bad hill. Down went Weightman, and Slack, and Hurst, and Gordon, and two hundred other brave Confederates. The baffled tide relaxed the tension of its grim embrace at last, and the ebb came speedily. Borne not backward from the wreck, the dead Captain lay near his leader. In life he had been tender and true; that life was given to his country, as men ever give who are chivalrous and

de\'oted. Sigel's battery and infantry supports, on the Cassville road, were charged by the 3d Louisiana, the cannon taken, and the infantry routed and almost destroyed. Then the entire Confederate line pressed furiously upon the enemy. Bledsoe and Woodruff opened with the cannister taken from Sigel at half range; the shotguns and rifles in the hands of the Missourians told fearfully; and General Lyon, being killed on the field while heading his men for a final charge, the whole Federal army broke into rapid retreat, and pressed on throughout the night in the direction of Rolla, abandoning their dead commander and all their killed and wounded. Pursuit was not attempted by the victors, on account of the scarcity of ammunition, and not until two days after were the dead all buried, the wounded cared for, and Springfield occupied by the entire army of Price. The action had been unusually bloody, the Federals suffering most, and the extreme heat making many slight wounds unavoidably fatal. The Confederates also lost many valuable officers, one of the noblest and the best being Colonel Richard Hanson Weightman-the hero of Carthage, the idol of his command, the peerless soldier, the chivalrous gentleman, and the costliest victim the South had yet offered upon the altar of her sacrifices. Amid the low growls of the subsiding battle, amid the slain of his heroic brigade, who had followed him three times to the crest of" Bloody Hill," and just as the shrill, impatient cheers of his victorious comrades rang out wildly on the battle-breeze, Weightman's devoted spirit passed away from earth, followed by the tears and heartfelt sorrow

of the entire army.

Perhaps no battle ever gained by the Confederates has been so universally distorted and claimed as a Federal victory. McCulloch's forces were never driven from the field, as has been asserted, nor were tents and baggage-wagons destroyed by the Missourians in their ascribed flight and panic. The Federals were probably outnumbered three or four thousand, yet half of Price's men were without guns, and many of them went into the battle side by side with their more fortunate comrades, that weapons might be gathered from the field after the conflict began. McCulloch was completely surprised, and his advantage in numbers more than neutralized by the confusion and terror such maneuvers almost always inspire. Sigel did not

fight, however, and the 3d Louisiana swept him away from the rear almost without a struggle, took his battery, and scattered his German mercenaries. This naturally encouraged one side and depressed the other. The Confederates, too, fought desperately, giving up blood and lives without a murmur, and often with shouts and cries of joy. Many noble and heroic men lay at night upon the torn and trampled field. Those were royal victims, too, and the list contained such names as Weightman, Colonel Ben. Brown, of Ray, Colonel Austin, of Carroll, and that noble old Roman, Colonel Allen, of Saline, who went into the fight calmly, with a presentiment of his own death vivid in his mind. Arkansas had many heroes to fall this bloody day also, and Louisiana was lavish of her best and bravest.

With the army under Price were three St. Louisans-Captain Isaac Fulkerson, and Messrs. Purdeyville and Harris. They were amateur fighters, and joined for a battle simply; but bcfore either of them had performed his morning drill, Borne of Sigel's men surrounded, unawares, the tent of Major Armistead, of 'the Arkansas army, with whom they were messing, and without a word, opened fire on the sleeping inmates. Major Armistead was killed instantly, but the others, led by the daring Fulkerson, fired rapidly, and retreated as best they could, and finally escaped, Captain Fulkerson receiving an ugly wound in the hand. In after days he paid them back again, and commanded the Van Dom, in Jeff Thompson's brilliant and desperate gunboat battle above Fort Pillow, sinking, with his one boat, under a terrific and concentrated fire, two of the enemy's vessels.

This circumstance is mentioned to prove the completeness of the surprise, and how noiselessly and secretly the Federals gained the encampments, and commenced bloody work upon the occupants. After the death of Lyon, retreat was the only salvation for the remnant of his army, and Major Sturgis, then in command, certainly deserves much credit for the mastery manner in which it was conducted. Pursuit was not attempted, because of 'a scarcity of ammunition alone, for the cavalry was intact, and many infantry regiments in perfect order and discipline. General McCulloch, in an article published in the Richmond (Va.) Whig, in a reply to an attack made upon him by J. W. Tucker, of the Missouri State Journal, said: "Immediately after the battle was over, and, in truth, before all my forces had returned from the pursuit of the enemy, orders were issued for the wounded to be brought from the battle-field, the dead to be buried, and the army to be ready to march after the enemy that night. We did not march for the want of ammunition. Several of my officers informed me-when they heard of the order-that some of their men had fired their last cartridge at the enemy, as we had only twenty-five rounds to the man before the battle began, and no more within hundreds of miles. After a conference with General Price, it was thought best to let well enough alone."

CHAPTER III.

GENERAL PRICE moved up to Springfield from Wilson's creek, and commenced reorganizing his army, recruiting, furloughing, and drilling. General McCulloch, refusing to co-operate with the Missourians in a movement northward, assigning as reasons therefor his orders from Richmond, which insisted on a defensive policy, withdrew his forces outside the State, and thereby weakened, to a considerable degree, the military enthusiasm awakened by the victory of Oak Hills. United counsels and a cordial commingling of State banners at this critical period, would certainly have secured. Missouri to the Confederacy, and prevented that fatal division among the people which, later, lost the State, and forced Price across the Mississippi river.

Thus far the fighting had all been in favor of the Southerners, and, ill a military aspect, affairs were hopeful and in a most prosperous condition. Lieutenant Colonel William S. O'Kane, commanding a 'battalion of Missourians, had attacked, charged, and captured a large detachment of German Home Guards, at Cole Camp, near Warsaw, Benton county, and the blow dealt them was brief, bloody, and terribly in earnest. It had a wonderful effect, too, upon that portion of the State for a long time afterward-even when O'Kane and his gallant followers had been transferred to other fields of usefulness.

This Cole Camp battle had a greater effect upon the prolongation of the struggle in Missouri, and did more to secure the success of future operations in the State, than would seem probable from casual attention. Colonel Cook, in constant and direct communication with General Lyon, commanded thirteen hundred and ninety German militia, well armed and passably drilled. When the forces under Governor Jackson retreated southward from Booneville, and the force under General Parsons southward from Syracuse, Colonel Cook threw

his men in their front, and vitally threatened their organization and even existence. At Warsaw, Colonel O'Kane had hastily assembled about four hundred undisciplined volunteers, unfolded his plans, and suggested to them the necessity of attacking Colonel Cook in the rear, and forcing him to abandon the grasp he held upon Jackson's line of march. With a resolution worthy of the old, imperial Roman days, this little band, at daylight on the morning of the 18th of June, precipitated itself upon Cook's command, routed it after an hour of desperate fighting, killed eighty, wounded one hundred and twenty, and captured ninety-three prisoners, losing only nine men killed and three wounded-five of the nine killed being officers. This severe blow checked and staggered Lyon's entire army pressing closely after Governor Jackson, and finally caused it to halt until, by cautious and . timid scouting, General Lyon learned, to his chagrin, that the forces in front of him had been scarcely four hundred rank and file.

About the time of the battle of Oak Hills, General Hardee was operating in Southeast Missouri with about thirty-five hundred men, his depot of supplies being at Pocahontas, a little village situated at the head of navigation upon Black River. Here all the available Arkansas troops had been concentrated, amounting to some five or six thousand men. This force was effective in scarcely any degree, because of the scarcity of its arms and equipments, and because a disease called "black measles" raged among the ranks of the volunteers in the shape of an epidemic, and almost decimated them. As long as General Hardee remained at Pocahontas his supplies were sure, but to do work he must advance .over a. wretchedly broken country, destitute almost entirely of provisions, by Greenville and Fredericktown, upon Ironton, and thus along the Iron Mountain railroad toward St. Louis. He did advance as far as Greenville and made some demonstrations upon Ironton, ll. place of great natural strength, partially fortified, and garrisoned by several regiments. Hardee's idea was rather to advance by Fredericktown toward New Madrid, and effect a junction with General Pillow, then at the former place with seven or eight thousand well armed and accoutered soldiers-the best indeed

of any of the Western Confederate commands. Had there been any concert of action between Hardee and Pillow, the latter could easily have reached Fredericktown from New Madrid-quite as easily as Hardee could from Pocahontas. These forces joined by the eager Missourians, and some two thousand of the State Guard under General Jeff. Thompson, would have been sufficient to take Ironton, until, uniting with Price, whose soldiers were flushed, by a recent bloody and brilliant victory, marched squarely and fixedly upon St. Louis with every probability of success, defeating its garrison if it marched out, and investing the city until the State had risen and her volunteers were organized. General Hardee, in credit be it spoken, was' extremely desirous that such a campaign should be made, and so, also, was General Price, but the Richmond authorities deemed Kentucky and Columbus more important

than St. Louis and Missouri; General Pillow's forces were recalled from New Madrid; Hardee returned to Pocahontas, and was very soon afterward ordered, with the most of his forces, to

Bowling Green, Kentucky, then the point of concentration for General Albert Sidney Johnston's army.

While General Price remained in Springfield, gathering supplies, and placing his army upon a war footing, Captain Shelby was again ordered to the Missouri river with instructions to "recruit and. annoy the enemy in every possible manner, and to keep alive the spirit of resistance by constant and unceasing efforts." Victorious in various severe skirmishes, at Dover, at Tabo creek, and at Salt fork, a united movement was made by several Federal commanders to drive him from Lafayette county, conspicuous among whom was Lieutenant Colonel White, senior officer of the Lexington garrison. Battling all operations inaugurated for his destruction, Captain Shelby thus early gave assurances of those wonderful attributes of genius, intrepidity and activity, which were so eminently displayed during a later period of the struggle. Constantly in the saddle, attacking at strange and sudden hours, now cutting off the pickets and again capturing unwary foragers-his movements defied calculation, and engendered the greatest fear and hatred-for then the. virtues of a manly foe were scarcely appreciated. While thus operating in Lafayette, he received from Lexington, Kentucky, the gratifying assurances that a little ruse he had fixed up in St. Louis before the Camp Jackson affair, had been successful. Captain John H. Morgan, afterward the celebrated raider-general, had a fine company in his native city of Lexington, but found it almost impossible to supply his men with musket-caps. Captain Morgan applied to Captain Shelby for help in the matter. Shelby was equal to the emergency. Enough strong, meek-looking flower-pots were obtained to hold a hundred thousand bright, new hat-caps-the very things for the Kentucky" rebels," and by and with the assistance of one of St. Louis' well-known gun-dealers, whose

name shall be suppressed until the confiscation question is settled -these caps were carefully packed, then earth placed over them, then roses, and lilacs, and dahlias, and dandelions, and what not  were planted in all the pots. These were shipped to Captain Morgan and speedily received by him. General Duke tells elegantly and well how Morgan used them. Morgan and Shelby had been associates from boyhood and were devoted friends. Kentucky has many peerless names upon the pages of her history, and she has had giants, too, whose blows came up from the arena of. life heavy and hard as those struck by Roratius and Spurius Lartius before "the bridge went down;" but the brightest one in all her annals will be the one upon the unspotted surface of which is written the name of JOHN H. MORGAN. Around the grave of the dead hero, the South has not yet gathered to weep. She is no mourner now. Not until the story of his brave, fond life has been told; not un.til pride has had its say; not until history scatters there the thickly gathered laurel leaves; not until poesy decorates her buried love

with rare, sweet, lingering melodies, will affection, with a wealth of wild tears in its eyes, stand pale on the marge of his grave and rear thereon its monument. Shelby's renown belongs to Missouri, yet Lexington should !'eel honored evermore that from her good old shades were launched forth upon the military firmament two comets of such intense brilliancy.

General Price moved from Springfield, and moved suddenly. Lexington was the objective point, now heavily garrisoned by a brigade of Irishmen, a regiment of Illinois' cavalry, and several regiments of Missouri State militia. His advance encountered a large body of Kansas jayhawkers, near Dry Wood creek, across the Missouri line, and after routing them with some loss, pushed on to Lexington, and drove in the outlying grand guards of Colonel Mulligan. Captain Shelby moved up from Dover, burned Tabo bridge by order, which was an unfortunate and unreasonable movement, entailing much suffering upon the county, and invested Lexington from the east. The city and its defenses were doomed. A large succoring detachment from Kansas City was met at Blue Mills Landing by Colonel J. H. R. Cundiff, of St. Joseph, and completely cut to pieces, thus destroying all hope of outside aid or relief. A week of constant perseverance on the part of the besiegers, and honorable endurance on the part of the besieged, culminated in an unconditional surrender of the Federal forces with all their arms and munitions of war. Captain Shelby was distinguished for his untiring energy and intelligence during the investment, and furnished General Price valuable information in

regard to the movements of various detachments marching to the relief of Lexington, and also in watching and guarding the neighboring ferries on the Missouri river. The fruits of the Lexington victory were carefully garnered, and the improved arms received by the troops with evident marks of intense gratification, while the army waited for recruits and supplies upon the scene of its triumph.

At no period, perhaps, before or since, in his military career, did General Price display as much vigor and reliance upon the enthusiasm of his soldiers, and that attraction of .dignity and presence which wins so rapidly upon the young volunteers when coupled with kindness and laxity of military discipline. The success at Lexington had been great, yet the men gathered there were a. mob, and came and went almost as they pleased. To a large extent, General Price was not responsible for this. From the failure to capture the St. Louis Arsenal, he had no arms to give them, and the war was too young, and the personal consequences too remote for the masses to organize, drill, and discipline themselves preparatory to receiving

guns at a future time. When forced to retreat southward from Lexington, his thirty thousand followers fell away so fast that, when he reached the Osage, General Price had scarcely eight thousand effective soldiers.

The victory at Lexington was a substantial one, too, and gained at a saving of life truly marvelous. Colonel Thomas Hinkle, of Wellington, claimed the hemp-bale idea, and whoever originated it certainly had a clear, mathematical head. Behind those impenetrable, moving walls, the doomed garrison saw itself girt about by slowly contracting barriers, until, unable to reach its assailants, discretion was deemed the better part of valor, and Colonel Mulligan surrendered.

The Farmers' Bank, at Lexington, previous to General Price's arrival, had been robbed by the Federals of over one million dollars in Dotes of its own issue and specie. With the exception of some fifteen or twenty thousand dollars that fell into the hands of an enterprising and reticent thief, the entire amount was restored to the bank unconditionally. Fortunately for the stockholders and depositors, the Federal commander had no opportunity to remove his spoils, and having no reservation in the matter of their retention after the surrender, cheerfully gave back the notes and the gold. In the restitution of this property, clearly and justly belonging to the conquerors, General Price was actuated by feelings of pure generosity. Most of the officers of this bank were Southern men, so also were So majority of its directors; and having his mind made up from the first, General Price yet listened to the solicitations of General William Shields, Mr. Robert Aull, Mr. William Limerick, and others, urging a restoration of the money. It had a most happy effect upon the people, and made for General Price additional personal friends.

The incidents growing out of the siege of Lexington were few in number, and altogether commonplace. No brilliant fighting was necessary, and none was, therefore, attempted. In the re-capture of Colonel Oliver Anderson's dwelling-house, a large brick structure near the Masonic College, which had been wrested from the Missourians by a hot charge of an Irish battalion, Lieutenant Green Ball greatly distinguished himself. He led his men three times against the stout fort, taking it, at last, with a rush and a great hurrah. Captain Churchill Clark exhibited here fine fighting qualities, and his own battery and that of Bledsoe were remarked for the great precision and fatality of their fire. Indeed, it was a battle of sharpshooters-

a regular Donnybrook fair of a thing. Wherever a head was seen, the skirmishers shot at it. Soldiers carried rations for the day, and from behind every available obstruction poured a merciless and continued fusilade upon the suffering garrison.

During the march from Springfield, and the necessary time consumed before and after the battle, General Fremont had concentrated a formidable army at St. Louis, and threatened General Price's communication with General McCulloch, rendered vital from the fact of drawing all munitions of war and disciplined reinforcements therefrom. The non co-operative policy under which McCulloch acted was now plainly seen in all of its unfortunate bearings. Price's army, in the center of the State, swelled largely by enthusiastic volunteers, and flushed with victory, would have been formidable, aided by the regulars under McCulloch, but isolated, and five hundred miles from support, it could not hope to successfully encounter Fremont's splendid legions. A retreat was ordered southward from Lexington, and a race began between Price and Fremont, the former to secure his base, the latter to gain the rear of his antagonist. Captain Shelby led the van of the army, and, by his activity and energy, kept General Price duly informed of all movements of the enemy necessary to be known.

Price halted at Pineville, to give battle alone. Fremont was relieved, and Hunter appointed in his stead, who entered Springfield, and threw forward a strong advance to Wilson's creek, all of which was preceded by a reckless charge of General Fremont's body-guard into the town, then held by a small Confederate garrison. The charge was repulsed, and the escort left half its number dead or wounded upon the field. Hunter, without apparent reason, and not menaced by the enemy, suddenly evacuated Springfield, and retreated rapidly upon St. Louis, leaving all Southwest Missouri open to the operations of the Confederates. General Price leisurely moved up and occupied Springfield. The Missouri Legislature met at Neosho,

formally passed an ordinance of Secession, and declared the State's intention to join its fortunes irrevocably with the Southern Confederacy.

General Price marched from Springfield late in the Autumn, and took post on Sac river, where his army was thoroughly reorganized; a proclamation issued calling for fifty thousand men, and recruiting officers sent everywhere throughout the State to enlist soldiers. Captain Shelby again returned to the Missouri river, and brought to aid his efforts against the invaders of his country, a determination hardened by exposure, and a genius expanded by unceasing exercise.

The rigors of an early winter forced Price to abandon his position on Sac river, and retire upon Springfield, where his supplies had been concentrated, and where his troops could obtain shelter and hospital arrangements. The long, cold months were spent in such snatches of drill as the weather permitted, and in organizing from the State troops Confederate regiments and brigades. Slowly and surely the Federals had been concentrating a large army at Rolla, the terminus of the southwest branch of the Pacific railroad, which was viewed with uneasiness, if not alarm, by General Price. General Curtis commanded it, ably assisted by the old antagonist of Carthage and Oak Hills, General Sigel. Early in March, and while

the weather was still intensely cold, Curtis precipitated himself against Springfield, his advance pressing boldly upon the Confederate cavalry covering the town. Unable, perhaps-and certainly unwilling to fight-General Price retreated rapidly toward Arkansas, abandoning many valuable supplies to the enemy. Heavy skirmishing commenced with the rear and advance until General Price took position at Cross Hollows, in Arkansas, a natural barrier of much strength.

During the occupation of the line of Sac river, recruiting officers were busy in the interior of Missouri. Lexington, from its central position, became at once the point of concentration. Two companies were formed there within a. week after Price's proclamation had been issued. Captain Joe. Moreland, the debonair, dashing, devil-may-care soldier-inimitable and fascinating as Crichton commanded one, seconded by such gay and splendid fellows as Lieutenants Yandell Blackwell, Geo. Venable, Charley Anderson, and privates Jerry Bair, Paul Baker, Johnny Arnold, Dan. Veitch, Dick Jaynes, Joel Whitehurst, Tom Thompson, Wm. Hamlet, Wm. Shepherd, Zeke Newman, John Ball, Hunter Jenkins, Chas. Stewart, Bal and Jim Crump, Paul and Pigott Reinhard, Joe Wilson, and twenty others. Captain John P. Bowman commanded the other company, filled with some of the best men in Missouri. Lieutenant Will McCausland was his second in command, and finally went up to Captain. Wellington sent her companies, too; Carroll hers; and from every direction recruits were pouring in. Missouri was thoroughly aroused now, and eager to send her sons forth to battle. General Price, duly informed of the progress made by his recruiting officers, sent a large cavalry detachment, under Colonel Clarkson, to bring the volunteers safely to his lines. The Federals were well posted also, and General B. M. Prentiss, at the head of four thousand infantry, approached Lexington from the west, and shelled the helpless town for an hour and more. Fortunately no one was injured, and after some harmless skirmishing he retired in the direction of Carrollton.

Colonel Merrill, leading his celebrated White Horse Cavalry, came up to Waverly to engage Shelby, and see what might be effected there. Camping for the night near the residence of Mr..

De Moss, just below the town, Merrill bivouacked in line of battle, wary and determined. Ascertaining his exact position, and having in his possession one of the mortars captured at Lexington, with probably two dozen bombs, Captain Shelby concluded to improvise a small display of fireworks for Colonel Merrill's amusement. The mortar had no bed, but that mattered little. An ox-cart was procured, men were harnessed to it, the mortar was lifted in, and, merrily and saucily under the midnight stare, Shelby led his one hundred men to attack one thousand. Dick Collins was the battery captain, and he had for assistants, or artillerists, Steve Fell, Jim Rudd, Will Fell, Jim Evans, and four or five others. Approaching to within good shelling distance, Collins opened fiercely, and the shells went screaming and exploding all about Merrill's camp. Bugles rang out instantly the alarm, the White Horsemen scampered

back in haste beyond range and waited wearily in their saddles for the dawn. They came on then cautiously, for the artillery had confused them wonderfully. Merrill's calculations had not been made to embrace cannon. Unfortunately, while firing the seventh shell, it exploded in the gun, and mortar and ox-cart went up together, so Shelby fought Merrill stubbornly into Waverly, and through the streets and from behind houses. Merrill bargained for no such opposition, and, after remaining in the town for a few moments only, hastened back toward Sedalia, leaving Captain Shelby master of the situation. The volunteers at Lexington, though menaced by that same column under Pope which captured Magoffin's detachment

at Blackwater, made good their junction with Price by tremendous and exhausting marches.

The cavalry covered General Price's retreat from Springfield to Cross Hollows with great credit. Colonel Bill Martin, commanding a splendid regiment of young volunteers, made some desperate fights. At Sugar creek he charged the leading Federal regiment so fiercely that he staggered the entire pursuing division and checked its dash for hours. Disabled by wounds, Colonel Martin was forced afterward to leave the service, but not until Pea Ridge gave him an opportunity to cover himself with unfading laurels. Colonel Gates and Si Gordon also did excellent work in the rear from Wilson's creek to Bentonville. By a rapid gallop of great danger and suffering, Captain Shelby joined the army here, and continued with it on the retreat to Boston mountains, where General McCulloch was concentrating his army, slowly and at a late hour. Curtis halted at Fayetteville and finally withdrew to the battle-field of Elk Horn, or Pea Ridge, to await developments.

General Earl Van Dorn, sent by the Confederate President to assume command of the Trans-Mississippi Department, was at Jacksonport, Arkansas, when informed of Price's retreat, and immediately hurried to the front to take command in person, before the approaching battle. The thunder of artillery announced his arrival, and the rapid preparations for the conflict announced his decision. In the midst of a severe snow-storm, on the 4th of M:arch, 1862, the army, under General Van Dorn, marched northward to engage the enemy. Sigel was surprised and almost captured at Bentonville, but cutting through the thin line of cavalry opposed between his command and Curtis, joined the latter in good time for the morrow's

fight. Captain Shelby was hotly engaged during the day, and followed Sigel's flying column almost within sight of Curtis' position.

General Van Dorn divided his army into two divisions. The Missourians, under Price, attacked Curtis at daylight on the 7th, and McCulloch gained the rear and found Sigel in· position in a dense wood of low, bushy timber. These dispositions were unfortunate, and embracing an extensive field of operations, lost much of that unity and compactness so essentially. necessary in the operations of small armies, and deprived the division separated from the commander of much of his personal supervision and direction.

The battle opened auspiciously for the Confederates. Curtis gave way before the impetuous attacks of the Missourians, and abandoned his position, his camp, and his wounded to the enemy, who slept that night upon the ground thus gained, eagerly waiting for daylight to renew the successful fight. In the rear these advantages were materially neutralized. McCulloch advanced against Sigel with his usual gallantry; a six-gun battery was charged and taken by a dashing attack from Colonel Stone's Texas regiment, and the Confederates were gaining ground rapidly, when McCulloch fell dead at the head of his troops, a bullet through his dauntless breast. The fiery and impatient McIntosh took his place, and led his soldiers once more to the attack, when he, too, fell, mortally wounded, and died almost immediately. The sudden fall of these two popular leaders, had the usual effect upon the soldiers, and they became demoralized and indifferent. The Indians, too, who had been operating with the rear division, were wholly unfit for any warfare on earth, except massacre and plunder, and scattered

beyond all concentration, after a dozen discharges from Sigel's battery. Thus, the darkness which closed in upon Price's victorious soldiers, hid also a disaster and a repulse of McCulloch's wing. Sigel was well informed of all these facts, and finding no enemy in his front, and knowing, perhaps, the extent of the loss inflicted upon his antagonists, moved up during the night and joined Curtis. General Van Dorn learned, with sorrow and dismay, that the attack under McCulloch had signally failed, and that his forces were so beyond concentration, as to forbid all idea of joining them to Price's column in time for the battle of the second day. Retreat was resolved upon that night, but only the commanders knew the extent of disaster, and the next morning Price moved against the enemy at daylight, to cover the withdrawal of McCulloch's forces first. Here Captain Shelby particularly distinguished

himself. Exposed to a heavy fire, he maneuvered with admirable precision, and by a rapid attack upon the head of a cavalry regiment, succeeded in preventing the cutting off and capture

of one of Price's infantry battalions which had remained, without orders, long after the army withdrew. The enemy pursued slowly, evidently ignorant of Van Dorn's movements. Captain Shelby held the extreme rear, and turned suddenly during the day to drive back frequent dashes of the Federal cavalry. Everything was withdrawn with perfect ease. The battle was justly considered a Federal victory, because they held the field and gained possession of the dead and wounded, yet the Federal loss was greater in men and material. General Van Dorn, in dividing his command, left much to chance which could have been overcome by his direct and personal attention. He surrounded Curtis, and left him no alternative but to cut through or surrender at discretion, and the army which enveloped him was less by five thousand than his own. The Indians were a great source of weakness, and the innumerable mounted men on the Bentonville road, not only did not take any part in the fight, but served as a damaging nucleus for all stragglers and camp followers.

The retreat from the bloody field of Pea Ridge to Van Buren was severe, and hunger added its terrors to the misery of the march. The mountain streams, swollen by incessant rains and the sudden melting of the snows, were forded by the ragged soldiers in the bitter, freezing weather, and the oozing blood from the still running wounds of many a poor hero congealed in icicles as it fell.

Throughout all the dreary march, Captain Shelby maintained the high discipline of his company, and from the rear brought up every straggler and broken artillery conveyance. The drooping and repulsed army halted at Van Buren. Curtis, terribly punished, did not advance from his battle-field, but contented himself with writing flaming dispatches to St. Louis, and assuming all the honor justly won by Sigel. Indeed, so hard pressed was Curtis the first day, that a consultation was held with his officers considering the plan of surrender, and but for the resolute firmness of Sigel, the deaths of McCulloch and McIntosh, and the demoralization of their forces, the disgraceful alternative would have been

chosen.

:Many brave and rising officers were killed upon the Confederate side, and Missouri offered up some of her most devoted children. General Slack, of Chillicothe, wounded badly at Oak Hills, received a bullet directly upon the scar of his old wound, and fell mortally shot, leading his gallant brigade upon the enemy. Colonel John S. Boyd, of Platte county, Colonel Ben Rives, of Ray, and Major Hart, of Platte, after winning immortal names, and fighting manfully and well, were left dead upon the field of honor. The boy hero, Churchill Clarke, of St. Louis, commanding a battery with distinguished bravery, was killed almost when the battle was over, down among his guns, cheering on his men, and stimulating them to deeds of desperate daring. General Price also received a severe wound in the arm, but retained command of his troops, and led them from the field in safety. The dead were buried by the Federals, and the wounded cared for in their hospitals. Exposure and fatigue killed many afterward, and the mortality at Van Buren was heavy. Lafayette county mourned one of her best officers-Colonel

John P. Bowman-whose pride and steady courage forced him into battle, when his frame was so exhausted by sickness that he could with difficulty ride at the head of his troops, and Judge Tarleton, an old, gray-haired veteran of sixty, escaped the dangers of the conflict only to die, with hundreds of his comrades, in the

gloom of a hospital.

The brave and devoted :Major Ward, of Lamar, received his death-wound, and his gallant young son James, although shot in the ankle, at Cassville, on the retreat, yet went again into the fight with his father, and was wounded severely the second time in the leg. Another son of this noble old veteran, Ed. Ward, was struck down by his side with a painful wound, and the father and his two boy-heroes were borne from the field-the one to die, and the others to strike, afterward, hard and heavy blows for the Confederacy.

Captain Bledsoe, handling his battery with his accustomed daring was wounded again badly, with many of his battle-tried company. Colonels Burbridge, :Martin, Gates, Slayback, :Macdonald, General Rains, his Adjutant, Colonel :McLean, his aid-de-camp; Colonel Rathbun, and thousands of other officers and men, displayed courage worthy of a better fate, and only abandoned the field when the fighting became useless and hopeless.

CHAPTER IV.

SHILOH'S bloody sunset embers had not faded from the southern sky when an appeal came to the army near Van Buren asking for help at Corinth. The veterans of Oak Hills and Pea Ridge heard it and hastened on to Des Arc to embark for Memphis. General Price was commissioned a Major General in the Confederate army, and requested his soldiers to follow him across the river. The cavalry were all dismounted, and Captain Shelby' giving up his horses with alacrity, commenced the same day the infantry drill, and when the hour for embarkation came, led his company to a man upon the boat.

The golden, pleasant Memphis days passed like a dream, and from the joys and excitements of the city, Captain Shelby marched to the stern realities of the bivouac and trench. Halleck, with his one hundred thousand men, and his one hundred thousand spades and shovels, was besieging Corinth. Every day brought some hot skirmish which would occasionally break into a regular battle, and Farmington came, soon after his arrival, in which General Marmaduke won a victory and a bright chaplet of renown.

General Van Dorn's Missourians were on the extreme right of the Confederate lines, and Captain Shelby's company did incessant outpost duty on the extreme right of the Missourians. Many dark and silent struggles occurred in the pines that hid the skirmishers of the two armies with almost darkness, and very often the hot red waves of battle flowed so fiercely that even the eternal solitude of the great forest could not destroy the shouts and cries and groans of agony.

General Pope came gayly down to measure swords with Beauregard, and a fierce fight was in progress when Van Dorn was ordered to march rapidly to the front. Shelby's company, deployed on the right flank as skirmishers, struck Pope's rear as he ran from Bragg's heavy blows, and shouting that the game was afoot, bore down merrily upon the tried Federals, followed by Van Dorn's impatient soldiers. For twelve miles the race was excitingly continued, and Pope's column was saved from destruction only by the interposition of night and a. deep morass. From the damp and mire of the ditches around Corinth, Captain Shelby was ordered to take post on the Tuscumbia river, at an important bridge twelve miles from the Confederate lines, and to watch his trust as a young knight watches his armor. The entire country here was one vast swamp, filled with enormous reptiles, which fattened and grew upon

the deadly miasma arising from ten thousand dank lagoons and stagnant bayous. For two long weeks watch and ward was kept upon the bridge, but no enemy came, and the boom of heavy guns floated more sullenly upon the winds from Corinth, and the untiring Federal cavalry were busy with other railroads and other bridges, but they avoided this one as if it were heaven-guarded.

Halleck dug and dug, and pushed his immense army forward slowly and painfully as a wounded snake. Steel met steel-gun answered gun in the pines around Hamburg, and the glitter of bright bayonets, away over to the left, told II. busy story of Bragg's adventure and unceasing activity.

But an enemy invaded the heart of Beauregard's camp more terrible, more deadly than Halleck's vast host if it had been doubled-it was the soldier's enemy, disease. The sultry sun, the

putrid water, the unwholesome food, the low, swampy country, the unceasing duty, the long eternal battle, sapped the elan of the young volunteers, and filled the hospitals and the grave-yards with the best blood of the South. Train after train carried the miserable sufferers southward, but train after train was still in demand, and the epidemic increased and the mortality was fearful.

One hot, weary afternoon, Captain Shelby received orders to call in all his outlying detachments, prepare three days' rations, and march directly on Corinth. A battle was deemed inevitable, for latterly the skirmishes had been unusually severe, and ever and often the hoarse voices of the heavy Parrotts could be heard loud above the noisy and more rapid discharges of the field artillery.

Corinth was reached at nightfall, and the weary company slept upon its arms just northward from the town, the sentinels halting in their mechanical beats long enough to catch the echoes of Halleck's distant signal guns, and to watch the outpost cavalry rockets going up among the clouds to break in thousand brighter stars than those so high and so real they could not reach.

Before daylight the next morning, a vast, compact column-sixteen deep-came from Bragg's line on the left and marched away in silence toward Tupelo-followed by artillery, wagons, cavalry. -and a sickly train of pale faces and emaciated bodies. It was Beauregard evacuating Corinth before the pestilence, but not from fear of Halleck. The living tide surged past all the long hot day, and every step was proud, and every gun glistened brightly in the sunlight. A deathlike silence pervaded the deserted streets; the usual cannonading on the left had ceased; Van Dorn's stubborn pickets no longer plied their vengeful rifles, and the prowling cavalry hushed the clank of sabers and the shrill neighing of their lonesome steeds. The last company in the last regiment who left the grave-girdled town, Captain Shelby marched in skirmishing order, with loaded guns and bayonets fixed. That night he bivouacked seven miles from Corinth, the sentinel of Van Dorn's corps-the only thin line of wakeful and vigilant sentinels between the enemy and the sleeping army.

It was a bright southern night, with a sky all stars and the earth all bloom, that the retreating army halted in its march from Corinth. Upon a large hill two miles in rear of Van Dorn's command, a hoary grave-yard stretched away, white in the moonlight, and the mourning aspens and the lonesome monuments stood like silent, tearless mourners against the dewy sky. Captain Shelby was ordered to take post in the solitude of this burial place, and watch the road with his accustomed fidelity. It was a strange and weird sight to see the grim, careless soldiers flitting in and out among the grave stones, or sleeping tranquilly near the fresh-made mound" which but the day before, mayhap, had been heaped' upon some comrade tried and true. The dew came down heavily alike upon the living and the dead. A low, large moon went down in a tide of crimson away beyond the bloody plain of Shiloh, and just at daylight,

a sharp, sudden burst of artillery on the right told that the Federal advance was busy with Bragg's rear on the middle road. The Confederates turned sullenly at bay and swept back the brigade of cavalry with scarcely an effort, from which lesson they took care to apply the moral and gave up the pursuit without another blow. Pope's flaming dispatch had no foundation on earth except in his own heated imagination, and Beauregard continued his march to Tupuelo, at the rate of twelve miles per day-unmolested and unattacked.

The pleasant, healthy woods around this little. Mississippi town, called back the hopes of the army, and day by day it increased in spirit and numbers.

The State service of Captain Shelby expired on the 10th of June, and he was commissioned by the Secretary of War to raise a Confederate cavalry regiment, and ordered to proceed immediately to the Missouri river, a distance of one thousand miles and recruit. Time was nothing, and distance nothing, and danger nothing-so Captain Shelby took the cars at Tupuelo and never drew rein until he landed his company at Meridian. The march to the Mississippi river was rapid and fatiguing. Fort Pillow, Memphis, and every town except Vicksburg and Port Hudson, were in possession of the enemy, and the gauntlet had to be run between innumerable bodies of cavalry and a gigantic fleet of gunboats.

The river was reached by the company exactly opposite Helena, Arkansas, and moving noiselessly to its bank, as Indian warriors on the trail. the blue expanse stretched above and below like two vast arms of living, moving water. One grim iron-clad lay at the Helena wharf, and another was anchored half a mile above-dark sentinels of the stream, silent as the motions of the watching scouts, and inanimate as the vast cottonwoods unswayed by the breeze. The company camped upon the bank, but enough in the shade of the trees to be concealed. Pickets were thrown out on every approach, camp-guards carefully posted, and the tired soldiers not on duty disposed themselves in every attitude and in every place which promised the most shade and the most rest.

Just at sunset the gunboat opposite slowly floated down the river, and the one above, after sending up two brilliant rockets, and firing a gun to leeward, glided along sullenly within twenty rods of Captain Shelby's position, but without a suspicious object being discovered by the lookout man, and in half an hour not a ripple marred the placid bosom of the sleeping river, nor a single dark spot sat upon the azure water as far as eye could reach. Up from the dark cypress trees, where the yellow lagoons shimmered ghastly in the moonlight, came the unceasing hooting of the -restless, hungry owls, and from the drier lands above the melancholy notes of whippoorwills came sadly on the night air. It was too late to cross after the

ironclads were withdrawn, especially as it was very probable the enemy held also the Arkansas shore, and Captain Shelby made preparations to spend the night on the Mississippi side. The guards were relieved and doubled, and volunteers called for to man a little skiff in his possession, cross above Helena, reconnoiter, and, if prudent, enter the town, and report before daylight. Six stalwart, bright-eyed, bronzed soldiers stepped forward merrily, and in ten minutes more their oar-blades threw up diamond sparks in the moonlight, and their swift bark gradually grew dimmer and less distinct. No one slept. Home, and a thousand sweet, familiar fancies filled every heart. The night was delicious, and the gigantic cottonwoods

threw far out upon the river great shadows that lay so quiet anti still it seemed a sin to vex the silence with a Whispered word. But the reckless soldiers were very gay, angery unromantic. Jake Connor was called, the inimitable Irish delineator, the universal chief of all serenading parties, the most debonair flirt who ever forced a. smile or won a heart, and the men gathered around him, intent upon a song. Jake evidently was influenced by the scene around him, and his voice was very fine and very passionate as he sang to a melancholy tune the verses of the FALLEN DRAGOON.

"Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shot

Straight at the heart of yon prowling vidette;

Ring me a ball on the glittering spot

That shines on his breast like an amulet."

"Ah, Captain, here goes for a fine-drawn bead;

There's music around when my barrel's in tune."

Crack went the rifle, the messenger sped,

And dead from his horse fell the ranging dragoon.

"Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes, and snatch

From your victim some trinket to handsel first blood

A button, a loop, or that luminous patch

That gleams in the moon like a diamond stud."

"Oh, Captain, I staggered and sunk on my track

As I gazed in the face of the fallen vidette,

For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back,

. That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet.

"Yet I snatched off this trinket, this locket of gold;

An inch from its center my lead broke its way,

Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold,

Of a beautiful lady in bridal array."

"Ha, rifleman, Bing me the locket! 'T is she,

My brother's young bride, and the fallen dragoon

Was her husband. Hush, soldier, 't was heaven's decree;

We must bury him there, by the light of the moon."

The low, melancholy strains had scarcely floated away upon the midnight, when the little skiff returned with two of the soldiers, bringing news that the coast was clear, and that a large, commodious flatboat would be over in an hour, to cross the entire company. No more sleep until the Rubicon had been passed, which was accomplished safely about sunrise, and the good and beautiful Helena. girls welcomed the hungry soldiers with smiles and eyes as bright as the sunlight which flashes on steel. After a magnificent breakfast, washed down by copious goblets of champagne, although probably such a thing as champagne for breakfast had never been thought of before in Helena, Captain Shelby set about maturing his plans.

The position was still very difficult, and the dangers by no means'  overcome. Little Rock was his objective point, to reach which a. large Federal expedition, holding all of White river to within twelve miles of Duvall's Bluff, had to be passed by strategic ability. The country all around Helena was in possession of Federal cavalry, and the principal interior roads strongly guarded. Six da.ys of hot, heavy marching brought the company to Clarendon, but these laborious days were lightened and rendered exultant by the continued ovations given to the thoroughly drilled, handsomely-uniformed veterans. Indeed, the appearance of a soldier is his best passport through any country, and better meals and better treatment have been received by men whose guns were polished or whose gray jackets were tidy and clean, than if they held a paper indorsed by Adjutant and Inspector-General Cooper. True enough,

many heroic hearts were hid by butternut blouses and blue jeans coats; sure enough, flint-lock rifles and family fowling-pieces have spoken as far in the battle's van, as the costliest Enfield or the better Minnie, but these were all exceptions. There was an inseparable vision of buttermilk and diarrhea. connected with these homespun soldiers-a certain poverty of Southern enthusiasm; a continual wail about going home; and a sickly hungering and credulity concerning news.

So thought Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Lightfoot, as Shelby's one hundred gray-clad veterans, Mississippi-rifle armed, defiled in quick time around the viands-loaded table down amid the heliotropes and the roses in their dainty Southern home, and presented arms afterward to the glorious hostess as she handed them a little silken flag which was soon to receive its baptism of fire and blood. Clarendon was but a short distance below Duvall's Bluff, and from which the Federal gunboats had retired to St. Charles, just below still, only the day preceding Captain Shelby's arrival. It was necessary therefore, to hasten on, and be in time, if required, to protect the Confederate position at which terminated the only railroad in Arkansas.

Fortunately, hidden away above Clarendon in one of the many inlets or bayous putting into White river, was the little steamer Charm, graceful as a ladybird, and frail, and swift, and beautiful. In three hours after his arrival, Captain Shelby had embarked his men without molestation, and up the deep and crooked stream was scudding rapidly among the trees, which almost interlaced their boughs over the river falcon steaming beneath.

Duvall's Bluff was held by Colonel Nelson, of Texas, with a few regulars and some two thousand raw recruits-the regulars being artillerymen detailed to man a heavy three-gun battery. Cautious and wary to a degree rarely surpassed, Captain Shelby closely questioned the Captain of the Charm, as to the position at Duvall's Bluff, Rnd whether he had notified the commander of his approach, knowing well that the trip up from Clarendon would be made in the night, that his point of destination was hourly threatened by the Federal land and naval forces, that the outlying Confederate scouts along the river could not ascertain the identity of the boat in the darkness, and that there was great danger of being fired upon in the confusion of an expected attack by the unskilled and excitable militia. The Captain feared nothing, and qualified his confidence by stating that his boat often plied between the two ports, and was well known to the garrison above.

It was just past midnight. Grouped all about the decks, on the forecastle, and in the steerage, the soldiers were gently sleeping, or musing tenderly as they drank in the delicious harmony of air and sky. The whistle sounded harshly and shrill, and these one hundred quiet forms spra.ng up wide awake and very cool. It was indeed a fearful moment. All up among the pines around Duvall's Bluff, lights were dancing to and fro, and the very water jarred with the ceaseless rattle of drums beating the long roll, and the cavalry bugles further away merrily blowing "to horse." But the darkest danger was nearest and deadliest. Just above the highest spar of the saucy Charm, the heavy earthwork frowned sullenly, tipped with battle-lanterns and cut clear asunder where the three heavy guns ran out to yawn upon the river. The spot had a tawny look in the uncertain light, very fascinating, yet very ghastly, and from the heavy embankments there came quite distinctly the calm words of a veteran commander, and the quick, precise movements of practiced artillerists.

The ramming home of each cartridge thrilled through every bosom upon the boat, and every lip was close pressed in the glare of the lighted port-fires. Long lines of infantry were forming on the crest of the hill behind the fort, and two field batteries were waiting under cover of a strong redoubt to pour in a destructive enfilading fire. Not a word was spoken; the moments

were hours-fearful in their intensity; but just as every match was raised for destruction, and two thousand rifles were concentrated upon the frail craft, her furnace doors flew open by simplest accident. Captain Dunnington's quick, seaman eyes caught her outline in a moment, and, striking down the nearest port-fire to him, shouted in a voice heard above the roar and hiss of escaping steam: "Hold on men, for your lives, hold on-they are friends." The boat and her precious cargo were saved, and from her narrow decks there went up a cheer which shook her like an earthquake from center to circumference. Yet it was a long time before all suspicion became quieted. A guard was placed over the boat until morning, and no communication of any kind permitted with the shore. Captain Shelby, however, soon explained everything in the most satisfactory manner, and when Colonel Nelson's eyes marked

the manly soldiers, he felt he had a host to help him hold his own. He asked them to volunteer while the danger lasted and fight with him, which they did to a man, and the eager spirits marched to a comfortable camp upon the river. Captain Dunnington soon made an explanatory visit, and surely no men ever breathed easier when they understood fully the frightful danger just past. As it was, the (}harm was unknown to any officer at the fort, and coming up so suddenly in the night, from a quarter where danger was imminent, no one believed her aught but an enemy. "Within twenty rods of you," said Captain Dunnington, in his quiet, impressive manner, " and with guns I had trained on every conceivable spot, you must

have been crushed the first broadside; besides, one gun fired would have opened a thousand more, and in the tumult scarcely a man could have escaped. I saw by the light from the furnaces that she was a frail, little craft and I knew she could not be an enemy." In many pleasant dinners, and in many bumpers of generous whisky, did Captain Dunnington receive compliments and good wishes for his great coolness and admirable presence of mind.

It is to be hoped in charity the Captain of the Charm did not meditate treachery, for his wife was on board with other ladies; at any rate he was hung at Little Rock, two weeks afterward, for treason to the Confederacy. A week was spent at Duvall's Bluff waiting for the enemy, but he did not come, and Captain Shelby, wishing to proceed on his way to Missouri, applied to Colonel Nelson for transportation to Little Rock, but Colonel Nelson was not satisfied with the condition of affairs yet on the river, and referred the matter to General Hindman, who complimented the company on its courage and discipline, and insisted on its remaining until all danger had passed. Captain Shelby naturally anxious to hasten on to Missouri that he might accomplish his mission, asked and received permission to return to Mississippi to confer again with General Beauregard, and taking with him Dr. Junius Terry, started on a rapid gallop to Tupuelo.

His departure cast a gloom upon the company not easily shaken off, but soon sterner duties called forth all the energy of the patriotic soldiers. The Federals had really withdrawn from Clarendon the week previous to Captain Shelby's application for release, but now came back in larger force, and with the evident intention of attacking Duvall's Bluff by land and water. Skirmishes with the Confederate outposts were held daily, and the gunboats came almost in sight of the lookouts on the heavy redoubt.

Opposite Duvall's Bluff was a low, flat, densely timbered bottom, which made an excellent cover for riflemen to operate against the-principal battery of the Confederates. Colonel Nelson deemed it a vital point and ordered Captain Shelby's company to occupy it, throw up a strong earthwork, and keep every hostile foot away from the bank of the river. A hundred strong negro arms, exercised by four days of incessant toil, promised well, and the little fort grew into life, and the naked abatis towered defiantly on the approaches from below. The fortification was named" Fort Shelby," and over all and above all were the proud folds of that flag given by Mrs. Lightfoot.

In the damp and the mire of this miasmatic bottom the men watched and worked. The rain came down in torrents, but they built cane houses and kept tolerably dry. By-and-by the ague and the rattlesnakes invaded these and forced their occupants out; and extra duty, and hard rations, and dearth of medicines told heavily upon the devoted soldiers, just from the swamps and lagoons about Corinth. Now and then glorious news swept past the Federal fleet at Clarendon-news of triumph and renown, won by Lee and Jackson among the pines of Richmond; and now and then the nearer puffing of the iron-clads hurried every man to his post•

. The Fourth of July came in a great gush of sunshine and bird music, and while waiting for the threatened attack upon Duvall's Bluff, it may be well to review, briefly, the situation of affairs, and narrate succinctly the events that had transpired recently, bearing directly upon the condition of the Trans·Mississippi Department.

The bloody struggle of Elkhorn, on the line between Benton county, Arkansas, and Barry county, Missouri, in March, 1862, was a gloomy beginning of the campaign in the West. McCulloch and McIntosh, both generals of brigades, had been slain on the field. Pike, also a Brigadier, had retreated with his Indian contingent out of North West Arkansas, unpursued, through the Cherokee country, the Chickasaw country, and the country of the Choctaws, two hundred and fifty miles to the southward, only halting on the" Little Blue," an unknown thread of a stream, twenty miles from Red river, where he constructed fortifications on the open prairie, erected a saw-mill remote from timber, and devoted himself to gastronomy

and poetic meditation, with elegant accompaniments. Van Dorn and Price had retreated across the snowy" Boston mountains" to the banks of the Arkansas, and thence marched eastward to Des Are, on White river, where they embarked with all their troops and material for Corinth, Mississippi, under orders from General Albert Sidney Johnston, who was massing forces there for the lion's spring that ended his career-the won and lost fight of Shiloh. Thus, Missouri, Arkansas and the Indian Territory stripped bare of men and means, were deliberately abandoned to the enemy; and the same policy was extended over the residue of the Trans-Mississippi region, for from Louisiana and from Texas a stream of companies,

regiments and brigades poured continuously toward the east, leaving their own homes defenseless.

It can not well be doubted that Curtis, the nominal victor of Elkhorn, had now the chance to carry his standards, virtually unopposed, to the very gulf coasts of Texas, riveting the links of

subjugation fully two years before history actually made that wonderful record. But when the subtle Dutch mercenary, Sigel, left him his brain had departed and his right arm been lopped off. A forward movement did indeed ensue, but on a circuitous route, bending with White river to Batesville, southeasterly, then diverging toward the Southwest, in the direction of Little Rock; but with such slow and timid marches that the advance of the Federal army was on Bayou Des Are, still forty miles distant, at the end of May. Co-operating forces were waited for by Curtis; one was the so-called "Indian Expedition," seven or eight thousand strong, then moving down from Fort Scott on the line of the Arkansas; the other was a gunboat fleet and some three thousand infantry, to come up White river under Colonel Fitch. With these auxiliaries and his own notorious troops, numbering at least fifteen thousand, the Federal

commander made sure of occupying the Arkansan capital, and reducing all the West to submission.

At this crisis General Hindman, bringing only his staff and an order from Beauregard assigning him to the command, reached Little Rock. Seizing upon fifteen hundred Texas cavalry, en route for Corinth, he constituted them his" army," gave out that heavy reinforcements from the Cis-Mississippi States and from Texas were close at' hand, and pushed at once against the Federal advance, which incontinently fled at his approach: leaving in his possession many arms and an ammunition train, without which he must have failed within a week to keep the field. Attacking Curtis daily in front and flanks, and finally forcing him back on Batesville, he then threw a scouting party in his rear and captured his telegraphic correspondence

with Halleck, the Yankee generalissimo, in which pathetic appeals were made for relief, and dread of destruction expressed.

Hindman, strengthened by numerous recruits, now formed the design of capturing Curtis' army, in which he had almost succeeded, when the failure of General Rust to drive back the enemy's advance at Gage's point, on Cache river, and the failure of the same officer to lay waste the country from which alone the invader's supplies were drawn, disappointed his hopes in this respect, and enabled Curtis to make good his escape to Helena, on the Mississippi river. Rust was soon after relieved from duty, and relapsed into a brawling" Unionist" speedily.

Meantime, Pike was ordered to move up to the Kansas line to resist the Indian expedition, and, when he protested against so "rash" a step, he was also thrown overboard, and the movement was carried out successfully, Hindman leading the troops.

Before the affair at Gage's "Point, an useless gunboat that had escaped into White" river from the wrecked Confederate fleet of the Mississippi, was sunk by Hindman's order to obstruct the channel at St. Charles, the first town above the mouth. Her crew, seventy-nine in number, with two thirty-two pounder columbiads and four field pieces, under Lieutenant Dunnington of the navy, and thirty-five Arkansas riflemen, led by Lieutenant Williams of Hindman's staff, all commanded by Lieutenant Fry, of the navy, contributed the whole force that could then be spared from the operations against Curtis and the essential work of fortifying Duvall's Bluff, the White River terminus of the Little Rock railway. The instructions given were to fight any enemy, of whatever strength, to the last moment possible, and they were obeyed with heroic devotion. Fitch's fleet of gunboats and transports soon hove in sight, and, after a three hour's contest was driven back out of range, except the iron-clad "Mound City," which was destro.ycd, with all on board, by a thirty-two pounder shot perforating her steam pipe. An

eye-witness, one of Dunnington's gunners, thus described that event-the first of its kind in the war. This gunner was a debonair, gallant, sun-browned Scotchman, who had been upon all the seas, and cruised in as many different men-of-war as there were scars upon his rugged frame. Taciturn and sententious, he talked but little, yet infantry of the line know how to unlock these rusty clasps, and they plied him with" white-lightning" manfully. By-and-by he warmed with the night, and after a cordon of fire and smoke had been made around the camp to keep off the mosquitoes and rattlesnakes, he told the story of the "Mound City"-a tragedy more horrible and more revolting than is generally seen or known in war.

I give his words as nea.rly as I recollect them now, after the lapse of so many years, and the hiding of so many fresh, young, eager faces which were grouped around him that night in the glare of the crimson firelight:

"I joined your gunboat Missouri at Little Rock, a year ago, and she being now high and dry, I was ordered here with my company, and thence to St. Charles, which is the second town below Clarendon, on this narrow, snaky river. We had heard many rumors of gunboats below, and very often the outlying scouts rushed into quarters, breathless, with some terrible story of these iron monsters. We had two heavy guns in battery-the only one I relied on, however, was my piece, bright and well served by as reckless a lot of devil-may-care Irishmen as ever lit a port-fire or pulled a lanyard. One morning, sure enough, about ten o'clock, a large dark object turned the nearest bend below, and forged slowly forward-very gloomy and very defiant. Simultaneously with her appearance, the infantry drove in all our detachments, and completely enveloped the little earthwork. When within about five hundred yards or less of our position, the iron-clad turned a full broadside, and I saw painted in neat, white letters, " Mound City."

Not a man was visible, and although she poured in a perfect tempest of shot and shell, no guns could be seen. Our lighter pieces opened first, but their balls rolled off from her sides like hailstones on a slate roof, and I feared then she was invulnerable. Presently a port opened like the mouth of a hogshead, and feeling a kind of inspiration that the opportune time had arrived, I sighted my columbiad, held in reserve up to this time, and pulled the lanyard with a jerk. The thunderbolt sped, entered the yawning aperture, tore through the steam-pipe like an express train, and buried itself in the wood 'lining beyond. There was a sound as of the sharp, shrill hiss of escaping steam, a sudden crash of rent machinery, a terrible, vivid, thundering upheaving of scarred and blackened timbers, mutilated bodies, pieces of iron, muskets, boxes, and then nothing but floating wrecks of the magnificent vessel lay upon the foaming water. Some were blown into shreds, and died without a groan. Some were cut half in two; some, with the flesh hanging about them like garments, and some, unable to swim toward the shore, leaped madly in the water to die. Scarcely a man escaped, and to my dying day, heaven keep me from ever seeing such another sight. War is terrible at best, but when God lays his hands upon his creatures in such awful chastisements, we lose the glory and grandeur of actual conflict, and come face to face with the calm, cold demon of carnage." Thus ended the gunner's story.

The loss of the Mound City, and the injuries suffered by her consorts, put the fleet hors du combat, and left to the Federal infantry the task of dislodging the squad who had defied and whipped the iron-clads. This was effected at the point of the bayonet, the Confederates rolling their artillery down the bluff into the river, and retreating with their faces to the foe. They left on the field six killed and eight wounded-their commander, the gallant Fry, among the latter. The enemy lost, in killed, over three hundred, and perhaps an equal number wounded.

The battle of St. Charles will remain noted in history, not only for the enormous disparity of strength and losses of the contending parties, but because it perfectly effected the main object of the resistance made at that point, forcing Fitch to delay so long for repairs, that Duvall's Bluff was fortified impregnably, and the river impassably obstructed. This defeated the expedition, which with drew without accomplishing its object, enabling Hindman to push Curtis to Helena, on the Mississippi river-to chase the Fort Scott invaders back into Kansas, and to recover all the territory and prestige Elkhorn had lost. Such consequences have seldom flowed from the acts of so small a body of men.

General Fitch delayed too long in attacking Duvall's Bluff, and Hindman made it impregnable. Curtis was driven over Croly's ridge into Helena, followed furiously by General Parsons and his brigade of Texas cavalry. His rear was attacked at L'Auguille, and one regiment cut to pieces. The campaign in eastern Arkansas, having thus been decided in Hindman's favor, he ordered the evacuation of Duvall's Bluff and the retirement of its garrison to Little Rock, on account of health and convenience to supplies, and with the view to take the field against the Fort Scott expedition in the northwest. The evacuation, began in deliberation, ended in disorder. General Rust unused, probably, to such phases of military life, came to the conclusion that the little army was "flanked" or "surrounded" by the enemy, and a stampede naturally ensued. General Hindman remarked, afterward, at-Little Rock, that Rust's dispatches to him indicated that he (Rust), had been misled by false intelligence, and was completely beside himself. But· so it was, rumors, at first gentle and unsuspicious, grew into frightful danger,

and a hundred men there were to swear that fifty thousand Federals had surrounded the whole encampment. The infantry clattered off furiously, and, so uncertain were all movements, that Lieutenant Blackwell received no orders, and the two large flatboats used as means of communication between the garrison and its detachment, were left on the opposite shore with not an oarsman to scull them over. An ominous silence, the morning preceding the night of the evacuation, was curious, for previously a continual shouting, shooting, drilling and drum-beating, told quite vigorously" the flag was still there." To obtain possession of the flats was important, and six lusty swimmers, Whitehurst, Dan Wisely, Ivy, Hale, Herndon, and Hodge, volunteered for the task. Soon reaching the opposite shore and returning with the boats, it was known that the entire garrison, bag and baggage, were marching away to Little Rock,

with good eight hours' start, leaving behind all the artillery, ammunition, quartermaster and commissary supplies. Four or five heroic officers stood by their trusts, and begged Lieutenant Blackwell to stand by them in the discharge of their duty. All that long, hot day, and all that weary night, the devoted men worked, stood guard, did picket duty, and saved for the Confederacy everything intrusted to the charge of an officer disqualified for any military position whatever.

On the arrival of' the company in Little Rock, General Hindman thanked its members in complimentary terms for their coolness and bravery, and gave to them the freedom of the city.

After remaining in Little Rock eight days, Lieutenant Blackwell, was ordered to take charge of a six gun field battery and escort it to Fort Smith. Captain Shelby had not returned, and the time seemed long and dreary. The march to Fort Smith was wearisome and disagreeable to a degree hitherto unexperienced. Among the great trials to be borne was an unusual scarcity of water, and intolerable heat and dust.

Captain Shelby joined his company at Van Buren, about one week after its arrival there, and was welcomed with undisguised shouts of joy and pleasure. General Rains, before introduced as a State brigadier, was organizing as a Confederate officer, an expedition for Missouri, to be commanded by Colonel Vard Cockrell, and to this camp on Frog bayou, a large stream, several miles below Van Buren, Captain Shelby immediately repaired, and offered his services frankly, which were as frankly accepted. Horses and mules of every size, variety and conditon were rapidly picked up; saddles, sheep-skins, and blankets were all used for seats; and bark bridles and rope bridles completed the heterogeneous equipments. Yet the men had their Mississippi rifles and one hundred and forty rounds of ammunition each, and they knew they were going to their own country to rend from the spoiler whatever of costly accouterments were needed.

Two hours before spurring away for the Missouri river, for a division, for a generalship, for immortality, Captain Shelby mustered his company into the Confederate service, each man taking a solemn oath to fight for the South until the termination of the war-even should it last twenty years; and then, one soft, sweet evening, the air heavy with the breath of a thousand flowers, the picturesque and absurdly mounted soldiers rode away northward.

The gallop was sharp and exciting for the first five days. Many attenuated horses gave out and died by the wayside, long ere the gigantic barrier of the Boston mountains was passed, but others were obtained right speedily, and the march went gayly on.

Cane Hill opened its hospitable granaries, and her rebel daughters vied with each other in helping the tired, hungry soldiers. Three days of rest-three days of quiet sleeping and dreaming beneath the oaks about the hill-sides, the apple-trees white and pink with fruit, and a dash was made at Newtonia, a beautiful little town in the midst of a blooming prairie, in Newton county, Missouri, held by a Major Hubbard, of the 1st Federal Missouri cavalry-a rough rider, too, by the way', and pretty well known in that section of the country. Captain Shelby led the advance, as he did, indeed, during the whole march, and struck the enemy's pickets about two hours before sundown, on the evening of the 27th of August. A short rally at the reserve stand-a dropping shot or two as they ran, and the Federals crowded pell-mell into their fortification, a rough, angular looking, stone inclosure, with a large three story rock barn in the

center, quite formidable and quite impregnable without artillery. The advance wave, under Shelby broke out into a spray of skirmishers, and the column behind coming up rapidly, and forming right and left, enveloped the town with a cordon of horsemen. Night came down bold and dark, and a scouting party from the fort was driven suddenly back by Shelby's company, losing three killed and four prisoners. A council was held in the saddle to consider the propriety of assaulting, against which a majority of the officers decided, and in as many minutes as were required to deliver the conclusion, the skirmishers were recalled, the whole column moved away quietly, and the bewildered garrison at daylight saw only the dewdrops glistening above many hoof·marks, and the white faces of three comrades glaring up to the sunlight.

No pursuit was attempted, and the march was continued with a vigor which annihilated fatigue, and a rapidity which consumed distance. Bates, with its dreary waste, and Johnson, with its skeleton chimneys pointing heavenward in mute supplication for vengeance on the spoiler, were traversed without seeing an enemy. Before leaving Johnson county, however, a rumor came from Colonel John T. Coffee, asking for aid, stating that he was hard pressed, and out of ammunition. Colonel Coffee had preceded this expedition several weeks on recruiting service, and was now in trouble. The column countermarched to the Osage river, found Coffee safe, after having eluded a large body of Federals in his rear, and, joining strength, the invigorated and reinforced Confederates bivouacked upon the field, left that morning to succor their friends. Reaching Grand river in safety and unmolested, Colonel Cockrell turned west to Independence and Lone Jack, while Captain Shelby struck immediately for Dover to carry out the letter of his instructions. A night march of great toil brought him to the Lexington and Columbus road, on which, from toward the latter point, Captain Scott Bullard reported a squadron of Federal cava.lry to be moving. To ambush his men required but the work of a moment, and in the dim, gray dawn they waited eagerly for the blue horsemen. None came, and the march went on.

Scouts sent far ahead brought news that Dover had been occupied by a regiment of infantry, and when within three miles of the town, Captain Shelby turned squarely off the road, into the broad cornfields of Mrs. Rebecca Redd, a lady more truly hospitable and more heroically Southern, than many of the far South's daughters. Under the broad, cool tree-shadows of her goodly pasture acres, the tired horses fed and rested; and the matronly mother in Israel, spread upon the glossy leaves a repast, only to be outdone in quality by the soldiers' appetites which devoured it. The horses, too, were wonderful in their appearance. The rich prairies had furnished their best six year olds for these heavy drillers, and the captured Federals had equipped them with as fine McClellan saddles and bridles as ever gleamed upon the Potomac, or went down in the battle's van before Jeb Stewart's reckless raiders. The company was also comfortably supplied. True, it was Federal clothing, but who considers color when freezing-who will fire a flint-lock musket, when Sharpe's best carbine may be had for the asking?

The Federals left Dover by one road: Captain Shelby entered by another. Here again an ovation was offered. In front of Judge Plattenburg's elegant residence, the angels, in everything

except wings, had gathered with the twilight. From the spacious gardens came the delicious perfumes of rare plants, and Mrs. Plattenburg, cunning and skillful in the mysterious management of bouquets, like a queen, had her handmaidens arrayed for the ceremonies. Girls having a State reputation for beauty, scattered flowers upon the road and flags among the soldiers. Mothers held up their children to see the goodly sight, weeping tears of intense joy as they did so. Fathers presented their half grown sons, and bade them join the ranks of one who had marched so far and dared so much to strike the fetters from Missouri's naked limbs. Each maiden had her cavalier, who was required to promise unyielding devotion, first to his country and then to his lady-love. Amulets, rosebuds, talismans, and tresses of hair were given out profusely by fair white hands, and many soft, low prayers went up from sad,

sweet lips, for God's blessing on the brave Confederates. And while all was gayety aud mirth, the devoted hostess and host were not unmindful of their duty. Three manly, fair-haired boys stood by the garden gate, waiting for a mother's kiss and a father's farewell. No tears dimmed the fond eyes then, no passionate yearning over the dear idols given to the soldier-chief for the country's glory. "God keep thee, my children," came cheerily and kind from the mother's tried heart, as her lips kissed the tears from the fresh, young faces. Oh! women of the South, for your sakes heaven might have averted the crushing overthrow. Your love, and purity, and faith, and hope, and courage, were without limit, and worthy of eternal blessings. Man proposes, and God disposes. Guard the sacred memories of the dear, dead past, and keep forever as a priceless heritage the recollections of those immortal deeds done and dared for the love of you.

'Vaverly was selected as the point of concentration, and from every portion of the surrounding country troops came pouring in for enlistment. Ten companies were organized in a day, and the next, Captain Shelby had one thousand men of the best blood of Missouri, The struggle against surprise and complete overthrow was terrible, for Federal garrisons and detachments were on every side, but his old veterans nobly sustained him, and made up by energy and incessant scouting what they lacked in numbers.

The bloody battle of Lone Jack startled the confident Federals like an earthquake, for their choice regiments lay in gory heaps among the burnt and smouldering timbers of the town, and, as one man, they rushed after Cockrell with shouts and cries of vengeance. The race was bitter and unrelenting. Without ammunition, embarrassed by captured artillery, arms and clothing, Cockrell determined to baffle his pursuers by physical endurance and untiring speed. Some of the weaker frames fell exhausted to the rear, to sleep, to dream, to die-for the avengers of blood were behind, who stabbed or shot the unfortunate laggards, and rode on infuriated for the living sacrifices. But Cockrell won! Arkansas and help were gained, and the beaten enemy returned in rage to the unburied bodies of their kindred festering in the hot September sun.

This battle of Lone Jack deserves more than a passing notice, Preceding the attack upon the town, Colonel Gideon W. Thompson, a cool and daring officer, who afterward, for a time, commanded Shelby's old brigade, had captured Independence after a severe fight, Colonel John 'r. Hughes, ably commanding in the assault, and who was one of the most brilliant and efficient officers the war had then developed, having fallen in the very moment of victory, living only a few moments. The forces then under Thompson, who had also been wounded at Independence, Oolonel Upton Hays, Colonel John T. Coffee, and Colonel Yard Cockrell, numbering about eight hundred effective men, mostly recruits-moved upon Lone Jack, little town in Jackson county, held by twelve hundred Federals, with two pieces of rifled artillery. The position was reached about four o'clock on the morning of the 16th of August, the Federals

having no warning of Cockrell's approach until notified by the premature discharge of a. gun in the hands of Private McFarland, of Hays' regiment. Throwing away disguise, then, the Confederates marched boldly to the assault. The advantages of position, arms, ammunition and discipline, were largely in favor of the Federals, their opponents having no artillery and no surplus cartridges. For six hours the conflict raged with obstinate fury. The garrison, thinking itself surrounded by Quantrell, whose war-cry had been extermination, fought desperately, and for life, as it was imagined. The cannon were taken, retaken, and taken a second time by the Confederates, numbers falling on both sides around the guns, in

their efforts to capture and defend. Sectional hate and civil feuds lent their desperation to the combatants, for the Jackson county regiment under Colonel Hays were in sight of their desolated homes, and the spoilers were in front of them.

Many personal acts of reckless bravery were performed, and the regiment of Colonel Hays greatly distinguished itself. The Federals finally retreated, leaving two thirds of their number dead and wounded in. the streets of the town. While the fight lasted, the large hotel there was filled with quite a formidable body of Federal sharpshooters, but it was fired by the Confederates, and aU of its defenders perished in the flames. After caring for his wounded and burying his dead, Cockrell had also to retreat, being without ammunition and threatened by several thousand fresh troops from Lexington, coming too late to rescue their comrades. When the question of attacking Lone Jack was first discussed, a majority of the officers opposed it, and favored an immediate retreat into Arkansas, that the new levies might be disciplined and their organizations preserved. Captain George S. Rathbun. however, was

for an assault upon the town, and such was the fervor of his impassioned pleading, and such the influence of his earnest, impetuous example, that the attack was made and resulted gloriously.

While this pursuit was fiercest, Captain Shelby gathered up his raw recruits and followed after Cockrell, on a parallel and lower line, with speed as great and anxiety as heavy. The cohesive power of danger is probably stronger than any other, and in all that long line of undisciplined horsemen-fresh from balmy breezes and downy beds-not one faltered, not one missed answer in the constant roll calls. Rest and refuge were almost gained. Crazy and blinded from eight days and nights of uninterrupted watching, the command staggered into camp on the little stream of Coon creek, in Jasper county, to snatch a few hours' sleep before nightfall and before the march was resumed, for Captain Shelby had wisely determined to leave nothing to chance that might be accomplished by energy. To those unacquainted with the effects produced by loss of sleep, the sensations would be novel and almost incredible. About the third night an indescribable feeling settles down upon the brain. Every sound is distinct and painfully acute. The air seems filled with exquisite music; cities and towns rise up

on every hand, crowned with spires and radiant with ten thousand beacons. Long lines of armed men are on every side, while the sound of bugles and harsh words of command are incessantly repeated. Often, upon almost boundless prairies, destitute of tree or bush, the tormented dozer turns suddenly from some fancied oak, or mechanically lowers his head to avoid the sweeping and pendent branches. Beyond the third night stolid stupor generally prevails, and an almost total insensibility to pain. Soldiers in Shelby's division have been known to go incurably mad, and not a few cases of hopeless idiocy have resulted from his terrible raids. On the march men have dropped from the saddle unawakened by the fall, while on more than a dozen occasions his rear guard has pricked the lagging sleepers with sabers until the blood spouted, without changing a muscle of their blotched, bloated faces.

The men had scarcely unsaddled their jaded steeds under the grateful trees bordering Coon creek, and before the pickets had advanced beyond the camp, when there came the shots and shouts of the 6th Kansas cavalry all among the weary sleepers. Short time for forming, but to a man they rallied at their leader's shout, and met the on-coming troopers with a deadly volley. For five minutes the conflict raged evenly, the Confederates operating from behind trees, and having the protection of a heavy fence. Colonel Cloud, commanding the Federals, withdrew after the force of his charge and surprise was spent, and tried a. rear attack, but the regulars under Lieutenant Blackwell, and McCoy's detachment from the old 1st Missouri infantry-Turley, Howard, Conklin, McNamara. and Kane, and Edward's and Garrett's companies waded the creek, waist deep, and met them with such a sudden, deadly fire, that they

withdrew altogether from the contest, leaving in Shelby's hands eleven killed and five wounded. On the Confederate side, Orderly Sergeant Oliver Redd, of Shelby's old company, fell badly wounded while mustering his men in the moment of attack, and private John Oliver, of Company" B," and private Hunt, of Company" E" also received severe wounds. None were killed, but many valuable though disabled horses had to be left and the riders forced to walk away. Supper was cooked and eaten in peace, and when the darkness of night had rendered objects invisible, the command moved out four deep, with the regulars deployed right and left of the column, for it was Captain Shelby's intention to attack the enemy wherever found, and cut his way through at any cost. None were encountered, however, and every heart felt inspired with thoughts of coming greatness to a command which had stood so firmly in the midst of sudden danger and attack. Besides, when the fight commenced three rounds of ammunition was the painful average to each man, and during the fire unarmed men were busily engaged in making cartridges.

From Coon creek the command moved unmolested to a beautiful camp in the timber skirting the Newtonia prairies and just four miles from the town of that name, where the work of organization was commenced immediately and in earnest. Simultaneously with the arrival of Captain Shelby, two other regiments had also reached the Southern rendezvous, making, combined, a brigade of satisfactory strength, !lnd composed of materials never surpassed in courage, physical development and intelligence. Colonel Upton Hays commanded the regiment recruited in Western Missouri, and known as the Jackson county regiment, and Colonel John T. Coffee commanded the regiment recruited in Southwest Missouri.

General Hindman, from his headquarters at Ozark, Arkansas, sent to the front a staff officer-Lieutenant Kearney-to organize these three regiments into one Missouri cavalry brigade, place it under the command of Colonel Shelby, and order him to hold his advanced position and scout well to the front in all directions, while the necessary time taken for drill and discipline was consumed. At an election held in the Lafayette county regiment, Captain Shelby was unanimously chosen Colonel, B. F. Gordon, Lieutenant Colonel, and George Kirtley, Major. The Jackson county regiment in turn elected Upton Hays, Colonel, Beal G. Jeans, Lieutenant Colonel, and Charles Gilkey, Major. The Southwest Missouri regiment elected John T. Coffee, Colonel, John C. Hooper, Lieutenant Colonel, and George W. Nichols, Major-thus the organization was completed, and Colonel Shelby assumed command of that immortal brigade which afterward carried its flag triumphantly in a hundred desperate conflicts, and poured out its blood like water from Kansas to the Rio Grande. Step by step I have traced its formation from

a little company in front of the trenches at Corinth-covered with the mud and the clay of the rifle-pits, to the great, broad prairies of Missouri, where it was welded into a compact mass of dauntless men, and led by a young soldier whose fame, yet unknown burst afterward into a brilliant light of glory. Always where danger was greatest and where the red waves swallowed up the truest and bravest, it never wavered beneath the calm eyes of its leader, nor faltered in the charge when his clear voice urged it on. Many times naked, destitute, worn by incessant fighting, freezing, starving-it never abandoned the stern discipline so often inculcated, nor put off for an instant the indomitable pride and chivalry of its organization. Surrounded, it never surrendered j surprised, it never scattered; overwhelmed, it never delivered; decimated, it bled in silence; and victorious, it was always merciful and just. The iron ranks were rent fearfully in many a rugged fight; the premature graves of its best and bravest heaped the earth from Missouri to Mexico, but still it ever marched away to battle proudly and gayly for the land it loved best, looking away to its own Missouri with smiles on the "young, handsome faces just before the horses' hoofs trod them down." Twice it saved a beaten army from destruction,

and fifty times like a hungry lion it barred the path of the victorious foe, standing as a living wall between pursuers and pursued. In its long and bloody C:ll'eer it fought Yankees, Dutch,

Indians, Negroes, iron-clads, alligators, fever, small-pox, starvation, and wintry blasts, and never once retired from any of these without defiance on its battered crest, and ranks closed up and serried.

CHAPTER V.

WHE.>i a man is born with a profound moral sentiment, it is said, preferring truth, justice, and the serving of his country to any honors or any gain, men readily feel the superiority. They who deal with him are elevated with joy and hope j he lights up the house or the landscape in which he stands. His actions are wonderful or miraculous in their eyes. In his presence, or within his influence, everyone believes in the omnipotence of his efforts, and follow his instructions with an implicitness almost bordering on credulity. It happens, now and then, in the ages, that 110 soul is born which has no weakness of self-which offers no impediment to the Divine Spirit-which comes down into nature as if only for the benefit of others, and all its thoughts are perceptions of things as they are, without any infirmity of earth. Such souls are as the apparition of gods among men, and simply by their presence pass judgment on them. Men are forced by their own self-respect to give them a certain attention. Evil men shrink and pay involuntary homage by hiding or apologizing for their actions when under the" scrutiny of that glance which flashes from beneath the awful brows of genius."

Colonel Shelby was one of these men j and united to his firm and incorruptible patriotism, his hatred of everything mean, his unyielding enthusiasm and confidence, his reckless disregard of danger, his passion for incessant fighting, were all the physical and intellectual qualities which make a great cavalry leader. His intellectual qualities were, a cautiousness almost without parallel. Often and often, in dangerous localities, he has been known, after picketing every imaginable road and bypath, to send out again and again during the night additional detachments under his trustiest officers. The expedients of his imagination were inexhaustible, and the fertility of his resources marvelous. His mind was unusually active, and his combinations subtle and intricate to his foes, but burning steadily in his own vision with a clear light. Another trait upon which he constantly relied was intuition-an almost infallible divination of his enemy's designs, and a rare analysis which enabled him, step by step, to fathom movements and unravel demonstrations as if he held the printed programme in his hand. Then, the physical endowments were greater still. Imbued with wonderful nervous energy, bold, reckless, and self-reliant, his face indicates quickness, impulsive daring, wiry alertness, and great bodily endurance. To those who do not know Joe Shelby, who have not seen him in the headlong fight, the rough-and-tumble conflict, the terrible raid, and

the cautious retreat, no correct idea can be formed of his happy improvisations on the bloody field, and his quick, intuitive, and instantaneous combinations, which have never failed to win victory when victory was possible, and, when impossibilities were to be grappled with, have always succeeded in rescuing him from impending peril. When near danger, sleep was almost banished, and the softest bed, and the brightest Peri who ever wore camelias might have wooed him, but in vain. Horse and rider seemed carved from the same block, and day after day, and night after night, he never moved from the head of his silent column. under a tree during bivouac, his feet to a large fire-of which he was remarkably fond-and his head pillowed on his saddle, he snatched what repose he was justified in· taking by circumstances. The rain beat in his face, and plastered his long hair about his brow, but he only turned over, or covered it with the cape of his coat. Wagons were his special aversion, and baggage useless as a woman's wardrobe. His men kneaded their dough on India· rubber blankets, and cooked it upon boards or rocks before the fire. Forked hickory sticks made excellent gridirons, and the savory steaks thus broiled were delightful beyond measure. Whatever reports might be brought concerning an advancing enemy, of their numbers and strength, his infallible question was, "Did you see them?" If this was answered affirmatively, he followed it up immediately with, "Did you count them?' "No, General." "Then we'll fight them, by heaven! Order the brigade to form line, and Collins to prepare for action front." Collins was the heroic young commander of his battery, and one of his old company. Thus he never turned his back upon an enemy without knowing his exact power, and without inflicting more or less injury

upon the advancing squadrons. Cold, nor heat, nor climate had the least effect upon his athletic frame, and intense excitement and fatigue only deepened the lines about his mouth, and hardened the color on his bronzed face. His soldiers idolized him, because he shared their greatest dangers and their sternest privations; because he protected them against the cormorants of the supply departments, and had for them the best the country afforded. Cautious often to what seemed timidity, yet, when the time came, his reckless daring and indifferent hardihood seemed the very acme of temerity. Unincumbered always by wagons, streams had no perils, and mountain passes but occasional difficulties. To be with his artillery was lL byword of safety, for when his horses failed, men were harnessed to the guns, and dragged them, with shouts and songs, for miles and miles. Always in motion, gifted almost with the power of ubiquity, surrounding his camp or column with a cloud of scouts and skirmishers, he invariably knew everybody else's movements, and kept his own like a sealed book.

In his large gray eyes were depths of tenderness; and ambition, and love, and passion all were there. The square, massive lower face, hidden by its thick, brown beard was sometimes hard and pitiless-and sometimes softened by the genial smiles breaking over his features and melting away all anger suddenly. Extremes met in his disposition, and conflicting natures warred within his breast. He was all hilarity, or all dignity and discipline. Lenient to-day. the men sported with his mood; to-morrow his orders were harsh as the clang of sullen drums, and his men trembled and obeyed. In the languor of camp life he might be listless and contemplative, or nervous, energetic, and rapacious for air and exercise as a Comanche brave. He would discuss by the hour, politics, war, famine, crops, and field sports with the good old citizen farmers crowding around his quarters, when a change would come over his desires rapidly, and the auditors were dismissed by a. wave of the hand as he galloped off to where his troops were drilling and maneuvering. Only in battle did the two antagonistic natures unite to make him stern, brilliant, concise and overpowering. The very air seemed to bring him inspiration if it were tainted with the breath of gunpowder. His hearing became more acute as the artillery rolled its resonant thunder over the field, and his sight, had something almost of omniscience when it rested upon opposing lines and rival banners.

He was not a religious man-but he worshiped nature and nature's God. The tiniest flower growing by the wayside attracted his attention, and rugged and picturesque scenery filled him with awe or delight. When the mood. was on him, when the surroundings of earth, air, and sky were in harmony with his feelings-he carried his romance into battle and fought ostentatiously, or in a subdued manner, as the sun shone or the day was cloudy. These were his fancy battles, however, when he had to fight just so long to accomplish a certain purpose, as at Prairie d' Ann and Glasgow. A boon companion and debonair gallant was Shelby, too. There was much of Launcelot's love-passion about him, with all of Launcelot's

chivalry and knightly bearing. Late trysts and later wooing had for him much of glamour and more of witchery. Like Otho, he would have" lingered on his last march, in the very face of Galba's legions, to decorate Popprea's grave."

Around his own camp-fire, however, when the day's hard work was done, would his generous, social qualities stand out hest, and the emotions and sentiments of his brave, fond heart woo to him every' one in his presence. Accessible, kind, and bluff, and free-spoken, he sympathized with the troubles of his soldiers, made their cause his own, and promised them that all differences should be smoothed away and adjusted. A skillful diplomatist was Shelby, too-in its best sense-and his knowledge of human nature seldom failed him. The key-note to

the affections of mankind is struck only through self-interest, and the roughest metals, under practiced, rapid hands, can be formed and fashioned into objects of beauty and perfect usefulness. The quality which adds harmony and adhesion to conflicting elements must be valuable, and the skill which softens the fierce passions of ambition and vanity, and unites rival chieftains as brothers under a single banner, must be rarer than diplomacy, perhaps, and possessed only by the few. This power was his in a wonderful degree, and first in his old brigade and later in his large division, there were banished from the commencement those petty jars and C:1Useless rivalries from which other and efficient commands suffered without

a. remedy. He rewarded the deserving, promoted the brave, encouraged all in the exercise of laudable, healthy ambition-and assigned to each officer his position in the military list-merit ever the standard of favor, and soldierly qualities more powerful than rank.

But as an account of his exploits, as they will be detailed in these pages, can best give the key to his character, together with those he sought for, tried, and gathered around him, a.s Arthur did his knights, I prefer that my rearlers shall wait for the continuation in natural order.

Lying in front of Newtonia in the warm September sunshine was delightfully pleasant, and the cavalry drill, which was new to the soldiers generally, went merrily on. Now and then a dashing scouting party from the Confederate lines galloped into Granby or Carthage, and shot a few outlying Pin Indians or skulking Federals; and now and then a heavy column of Federal cavalry would come in view of the outposts and air their new uniforms just long enough to call out the camp in full force, but invariably retreating when the gray jackets came stretching away over the undulating prairies in a round smart canter.

One day, however, the Federals laid aside their dress parades for the amusements of the Confederates, and occupied Newtonia about four or five hundred strong, throwing forward outposts two miles toward Colonel Shelby's encampment. Colonel Hays with his regiment was sent out to drive them from the town and back to Mount Vernon, as it was not thought at at all probable that they could be captured, being freshly and splendidly mounted. No braver nor better man than Colonel Upton Hays drew his sword for the South, and he marched out gayly at the head of his dashing regiment in the full flush of manly pride, too soon, alas! to be brought back by his sorrowful comrades pale, and quiet, and sleeping his last sleep.

The circumstances of his death were these: After gaining the prairie surrounding Newtonia, he discovered the enemy's extreme outpost-consisting of two dragoons-directly before him, distant half a mile. Wishing to capture them, if possible, for information, and relying upon his personal prowess, he dashed off alone to encounter them, first ordering none to follow except with his regiment then moving at common time. Upon reaching the two sentinels. he demanded authoritatively to what command they belonged, and on being answered a Federal regiment, he instantaneously levele(l his revolver and attempted to shoot the nearest man. Unfortunately the night before a heavy rain had so dampened his pistol that it merely snapped, and the Federal dragoon by a motion almost II.!' rapid, fired his carbine full in Colonel Hays' face, the bullet crashing through the brain, and destroying life as suddenly as the flashing

of an eyelid. His regiment, which had been coming up all the time, saw him fall with a shout of horror, and as one man it sprang away in pursuit of the pickets who galloped back to Newtonia like the wind. Eager for revenge, and furious at the loss of a Colonel they idolized, the soldiers rushed on swiftly to the town, but found the garrison in full retreat toward Mount Vernon. A long stern chase was pursued for ten miles, and many unlucky Federals too badly mounted for the terrific speed, were captured or killed, and leaping over the still bleeding bodies of the dead, the destroyers pressed the flying foe. More than thirty fell victims in the race, and the sorrowful regiment returned at nightfall to mourn and bury their dead leader. Victor in several hot engagements in Jackson county previous to his organization in the regular service, he had thus early given evidences of many rare and heroic qualities. Brave, daring, devoted, and intelligent-with a life of fame and usefulness very bright before him, Colonel Hays fell a victim to the impetuous chivalry of his frank and generous nature.

The sudden and violent death of this beloved officer cast a dark spell upon all hearts for a long time, and the soldiers went about their duties very sternly and very quietly-hoping for a day of vengeance. News came at length by one of Colonel Shelby's innumerable scouts that a large body of Pin Indians and runaway negroes were camped in a skirt of timber near Carthage, levying black-mail indiscriminately upon the inhabitants, and murdering right and left with habitual brutality. These Pin Indians were all members of the Ross party among the Cherokees, and had from the beginning of the war taken up arms and joined the Kansas Federals. Skulking about their old homes in the Nation and making forays into Missouri was the principal part of their warfare, varied frequently by innumerable murders of old men, and the wholesale pillage and destruction of farm-houses. To crush them at a blow was Colonel Shelby's ardent desire, and he selected Captain Ben. Elliott, Company I, of his own regiment, for the work, giving to him strong detachments from other companies. By a forced march

of great rapidity and caution, Captain Elliott surrounded their camp by daylight on the morning of the 14th of September and charged from all sides to a common center. Surprised, ridden over and trampled down, the Indians and their negro allies made but feeble resistance. Everywhere amid the heavy brushwood a silent scene of killing was enacted, none praying for mercy, well knowing that their own previous atrocities had forfeited it, and often, with the stoical hardihood of their race, uncovering their breasts to the unerring revolvers. But one prisoner was taken and few escaped.

In two hours this band of two hundred and fifty savages was exterminated almost completely, everything they possessed falling into Captain Elliott's hands, the most acceptable articles being about two hundred new Minnie muskets just issued to them by the authorities at Fort Scott. A dozen or more of the scalps of their white victims were found upon the dead, and one, a woman's, was particularly noticed. The long, soft hair had still its silken gloss, though tangled all amid the curls were clotted drops of blood.

General Rains, commanding some two thousand infantry, had taken post upon the old Pea ridge battle-field, fifty miles from Newtonia, and was covering the transportation of lead from the Granby mines to the Little Rock arsenal. The Federals objected to their enemies obtaining munitions of war in this manner, and occupied Granby in strong force. Major David Shanks, who had been promoted upon the death of Colonel Hays, was ordered by Colonel Shelby to drive them out, cost what it would, and this clear-headed and rising officer made a forced night march of thirty miles, charged the town at daylight on the morning of the 23d, routed the garrison completely, killed twenty-seven, captured forty-three, and had himself only two men wounded. Vast quantities of lead were then loaded in wagons and sent directly to Rains' camp, while a force was left to protect the workmen and hold the town.

The two heavy blows struck by Elliott and Shanks gained an uninterrupted rest until the 29th of September, when the scouts from every road hurried in with news of the advance of a very heavy Federal force. Colonel Shelby knew a storm was gathering, und drew in every exposed detachment except the one in Newtonia, which he strengthened by two pieces of artillery from Captain Joe Bledsoe's battery, for it was necessary to hold the large flour mill there at all hazards.

Preceding these operations, Colonel Douglas H. Cooper had marched from the Cherokee nation with a motley force of Texans, Southern Indians and half-breeds-numbering about four thousand, and took post immediately on the left of Colonel Shelby's position. As Cooper held highest rank, he assuredly assumed command, and threw, forward to Newtonia an additional force under Colonel Haupe -a battalion of Texan cavalry.

General Schofield, l.ike his predecessors, Fremont and Curtis, had quietly assembled an army ten thousand strong, and was marching boldly down from Springfield, secure in his overwhelming numbers, to drive "every rebel," as was boastingly proclaimed, " from the sacred soil of Missouri." Eager to flesh his maiden sword, which had been idle, perhaps, in its Republican scabbard since those days in Germany when he fought against the crown "mit Sigel," Colonel Solliman, leading the advance, marched away from the more phlegmatic Schofield, and moved to the assault of Newtonia with five thousand as pretty Dutch as ever bolted a bologna or swallowed the foaming lager, excepting, certainly, the old antagonists of the the 6th Kansas cavalry, who were again doomed to go down before the charge of Shelby's stalwart horseman.

Early on the morning of the 30th of September, the pickets were driven slowly in, and the deep boom of artillery announced to Shelby that the battle had commenced. For two hours previously he had been waiting, and his formed brigade held its ready horses for the word. Solliman advanced gallantly to the attack, and drove every thing before him into the town, when his two six-gun batteries opened at point blank range, and hurled a tempest of balls upon Bledsoe's devoted head. For an hour the artillery duel was deadly, and fought upon a naked prairie, green and bare as a silent ocean. Bledsoe exhausted his ammunition and stood between his silent guns watching for the coming help. Solliman, eager to finish at a blow,

deployed the 9th Wisconsin infantry-all Dutch-as skirmishers, and hurled them against the town, held by two hundred Texans. This finely-drilled regiment, one thousand strong, spread out like a fan, and when the fan closed it had encircled Newtonia. Fighting manfully, the Texans were driven from the outskirts, and the bullets form the 9th were hissing spitefully about Bledsoe's patient horses. The battery was in danger.

Cooper had galloped to the front early in the fight, first ordering Colonel Shelby to assume command of the two camps and hold everything in readiness to advance or retreat. He sent to Shelby for a regiment and Shelby sent his own. Lieutenant Colonel Gordon took the road at a gallop, and gained the town not a moment too soon. The 9th Wisconsin saw the fierce Missourians coming up, dark as a thunder cloud, and it gathered in its groups of skirmishers and tried to retreat upon its reserves standing upon the crest of a distant hill clear cut and massive as an iron wall. Too late! The 9th knelt as one man and poured a fierce fire upon the tide of oncoming horsemen, but it only emptied a few saddles, and surging forward as some mighty tide, the 1st Missouri burst their ranks like stubble. Then one wild cry went up for mercy in strange and unknown tongues, answered by the fierce hurrahs of Cooper's Choctaws

rushing up for the scalp scene. But the generous Confederates marched off their prisoners to the rear unhurt, and carefully removed those inevitably wounded in the first shock of meeting. More was to be done. One of the six-gun batteries had unlimbered upon a distant hill and was pouring a murderous fire upon the 1st Missouri, now dressing its ranks for another charge. Hedged in by innumerable fences, Colonel Gordon yet made a bold dash for the guns, and only failed in their capture from the rapidity with which they were hurried behind the reserves. Seeing their comrades swallowed up, and anxious, perhaps, to make a diversion, the 6th Kansas came up boldly on the left-flank and tried to gain the rear of the

advancing regiment. By a half wheel Gordon precipitated himself upon this line, and they were also only too glad to seek safety behind Solliman's reserves, now formed in solid square, with a battery on every wing. Moving thus solidly down, Gordon was forced back under a heavy fire again to the town, where Bledsoe, with replenished ammunition, opened the second time upon the advancing foe.

There was a long lull in the conflict, only broken by the fierce bursts of artillery, and the wild songs of the Indians coming up to join in the battle. Cooper's battery had also arrived, and went vigorously into action. The Choctaws attacked again, late in the evening, Solliman's right, resting on a heavy strip of timber, while Gordon, joined by Lieutenant Colonel Jeans and two Texas regiments, advanced rapidly upon the Federal left and center, while the artillery took nearer positions and kept up a hot fire. The whole line gave way almost immediately, and Solliman was driven furiously twelve miles, and long after midnight-his soldiers abandoning in their flight wagons, guns, blankets and provisions. The victory won by the Confederates was decisive. Solliman was driven back upon Schofield, less one thousand men, and with the loss of much material, while his dead and wounded dotted the prairie with blue heaps for weary miles. Everything was secured; the prisoners sent South; the wounded cared for, and the Indians restrained from all acts of violence upon the dead. The 1st Missouri suffered severely, and among the seriously wounded were Captain J. A. Boarman, Lieutenant Henry Wolfenbarger, Captain C. G. Jones, privates Ed. Ward, McDonald, Dooley, H. C. Yerby,

Robt. Allen, any many others, while many cold forms of the young and gallant dead were brought back at night and buried upon the field by their comrades.

Early the next day, Colonel Shelby, with his entire brigade, made a reconnaissance in force almost to Granby, but while the route traveled gave evidence of the haste with which Colonel Solliman fled, no enemy was found except the wounded deposited in every house by the roadside, and the command went again into camp upon the margin of the prairie.

The unlooked·for defeat of Colonel Solliman and his enormous losses, aroused General Schofield from his apathy, and he hurried forward his army by forced marches to Newtonia. Colonel Shelby nailed the Confederate flag-the one given by Mrs. Lightfoot, and now thoroughly baptized in blood-upon the highest building . and calmly awaited General Schofield's approach, determined to fight if the odds were not too unequal. General Schofield evinced great skill in .his advance, and at a given signal every Confederate picket upon every road was hurled back upon the main body so rapidly that only one fire could be delivered.

The morning of October 4th, came in calm and delightful. The yellow glories of an Indian summer filled the air with haze and melancholy softness. Over the vast prairies around Newtonia,

Schofield deployed his magnificent army, and with the blare of bugles and the thunder of impatient drums, it moved slowly to the attack. Batteries all along the front poured a hurricane of shells upon the town, and a heavy column of cavalry maneuvered far to the left to gain the rear of Shelby's brigade, skirmishing furiously with Schofield's advance. Colonel Cooper had early resolved not to give battle, and the trains with all his Indians and Texans were well on their retreat before Shelby slowly withdrew fighting from the front. No pursuit was attempted. General Holmes recalled his advanced infantry under Rains; Cooper turned off squarely into the Indian nation, and Colonel Shelby remained face to face with Schofield.

Previous to these operations, which culminated in the retreat of every Confederate command from Missouri, and while General Hindman was in the field upon the border, the Southern troops had constantly and successfully advanced. Hindman's headquarters had been at Pineville, and dispositions were' being made to advance upon Fort. Scott and Springfield simultaneously, when Holmes ordered him peremptorily to fall back into Arkansas and assume the defensive. Against this order Hindman urgently remonstrated, and begged to be allowed to carry out the plans he had matured before Holmes came West, which were to move boldly into Missouri, with thirty-five thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry;

take Springfield and garrison it j press on vigorously toward the Missouri river j and at the Same time throwing five thousand Indian troops into Kansas. Most of the troops for the Missouri expedition were then in camp at Little Rock, and doing literally nothing besides, they had been raised and equipped by the inexhaustible energy of Hindman. Holmes repeated his order and reasons were still found by General Hindman for disobeying it-unwilling naturally to forego his darling scheme. Holmes repeated it the third time more fiercely than before-instructing him to tum over the command to Rains and proceed at once to Little Rock to lead the troops there against the pretended advance of the enemy from Helena. Against his most strenuous efforts, Hindman was retained about Little Rock upon one excuse and another, until Schofield had concentrated his army, driven out Rains and Cooper, cutting up the latter. at Maysville, and causing the former to hide in the mountains of Madison county, Arkansas, with a demoralized remnant of men less than three thousand strong, without supplies, and nearly . destitute of' ammunition. Receiving news of these misfortunes, which were the inevitable results of his ignorance and his indifference, General Holmes ordered Hindman back to the northwest, where he secured a position on the War Eagle mountains, covering the passes in the Boston chain.

Shelby's brigade took post at Cross Hollows, Arkansas, very vigilant and defiant. A strong detachment of Federal cavalry soon came prowling about their position, and finding no enemy, went back three miles to forage, scattering themselves loosely over a large cornfield, and making a vigorous attack upon the fodder and chickens: Colonel Shelby learning almost immediately of their occupation, sent Lieutenant Colonel Jeans, with his regiment, to break into their country arrangements. It was done admirably. The detachment was scattered in every direction, losing thirty-eight killed, seventeen prisoners, many wounded, and nearly every horse that had been fastened while their riders were foraging.

The next day, Colonel Coffee was sent with his regiment toward Cassville, and meeting a Federal regiment about half-way, there occurred one of those hot, sudden conflicts, so frequent among isolated bodies coming in contact with each other unexpectedly. Coffee finally drove everything before him, and returned with forty-three prisoners, fifty-seven horses, and many guns, besides killing and wounding fifty-four of the enemy. His own loss was seven killed and thirteen wounded.

Fighting was now of hourly occurrence, and the Federal cavalry, with a large auxiliary force of Pin Indians, ravaged the country in every direction. Captain William Edwards, of Company H, Shelby's regiment, during one of his many and daring scouts, came suddenly and late one evening upon fifty-five Pin Indians, dancing their infernal war dance around a strong double log cabin, in the vicinity of Huntsville. The inmates were two young ladies, an idiot boy, and the old grandfather, perhaps seventy years old. Wishing to save his children from a fate worse than death, the old man strongly barricaded the door, and, in true pioneer fashion, was shooting away from an upper window with his flint-lock rifle, probably as old as himself. Disappointed in forcing an entrance, and paying dearly for their temerity, the Indians had piled dry brushwood around the dwelling, and when Captain Edwards, arrived, it was beginning to burn quite fast. Dismounting his men, just fourteen in all, they stealthily advanced to within twenty feet of the yelling demons, when, each one selecting his mark, they opened a close and deadly fire upon the savages. The revolvers finished the bloody work. Seven Indians alone escaped, and with tears of joy and gratitude, the fair girls knelt and gave thanks to God and their preservers. . Another incident growing out of the operations around Newtonia, and before Colonel Shelby retreated, may be read with interest by those who were conversant with the circumstances, and were acquainted with the parties in the sad tragedy. A young man, brave, skillful, and intelligent, joined Coffee's regiment as a private, and was on duty in front of the lines at Newtonia. This young soldier had a sweetheart, as most young soldiers had, and solicited and obtained a pass from Colonel Shelby to visit her at her father's home,

near Granby. While there, a shout was raised by the young lady's mother that an owl was devouring the chickens at roost upon an apple tree in the front yard. The young man seized his gun, ran from the house, and seeing a white object in the tree, took deliberate aim and fired. The bullet sped truly, and the girl of his heart, his worshiped and idolized one, fell dying almost within his arms. It seemed that on his arrival, the poor, kind country girl had determined to give him a good supper, and having no one to assist her, had actually gone up into the tree herself to catch a chicken for his meal, and while there received her lover's bullet. When the terrible fact came home to him, his sufferings were pitiful indeed. Tried afterward by a military investigating committee and acquitted-the parents of the girl interceding and imploring in his behalf-he suddenly rode from the ranks fronting Schofield at Newtonia, dashed

recklessly upon the enemy, and fell, pierced with six bullets, a victim to his remorse, and to the consequences of a fearful, yet accidental act.

CHAPTER VI.

FOR forage and supplies, Colonel Shelby lingered around Huntsville until the frosts painted the forests yellow and sere with falling leaves, and now and then fettered the mountain streams with ermine too dear for an earl. Amid bare woods stripped of all their leafy plumage, and old orchards bending beneath the weight of luscious apples, the tired command rested for three long, mellow Autumn days. The fourth came with the sounds of strife again, and the extreme outposts about Huntsville were driven in. Two hours' hard gallop over as rough a road as ever existed, perhaps, on earth, brought the brigade upon the enemy, quietly preparing their morning's meal in the streets of the town, and that, too, with the plank and furniture taken from the houses of known Confederates. The fires were quenched in the blood of the builder!!, and the half-cooked meal fell into the hands of the pursuers. Fighting in the streets

lasted an hour, and proved as deadly, too, as all such encounters generally are. The Federals, however, were driven from house to house, and finally to the woods beyond the town, when they hastily broke into column, and fled rapidly back toward their main body at Cross Hollows. The Indians, miserably mounted on their diminutive ponies, made poor time, and many fell victims to the relentless pursuers. Feathers, women's garments, bacon, crinoline, little children's clothes, household furniture, and even jewelry, were scattered along the road for ten miles. One gigantic Illinois Yankee, killed in the race, had a large eight-day clock before him on his horse, and another had a bridal bonnet, decked out in all its coquetry of flowers

and plumes. Night ended the chase, and the tired command had scarcely unsaddled before one of those sudden and early mountain snow-storms commenced, with occasional wind and hail, which Instead, without intersession, (luring the entire night. A large and comfortable church, fortunately found, sheltered the wounded, and the frozen earth was wearily opened in more than a dozen places to receive the dead of the day's fight. The Confederate loss was fifteen killed and nineteen wounded, the Federal loss forty-nine killed, seventy-three wounded, and twenty-seven prisoners remained to share the freezing bivouac.

General John S. Marmaduke, a young and gallant Missourian, who had won his spurs amid the gloom and glory of Shiloh, and who had recently arrived in the Trans-Mississippi Department, was ordered by General Hindman to assume command of all the cavalry and go at once to the front. He, from his position at McGuire's store, on the main telegraph road connecting Mud Town with Van Buren, sent rapid couriers to Colonel Shelby in his snow-clad camp, informing him that a large force of all arms was marching toward him, and that he wanted immediate reinforcements. In twenty minutes the brigade was in motion-shivering, freezing, perhaps-but eager and determined. The advancing enemy halted within five

miles of the position taken by General Marmaduke, showed signs of uneasiness, and finally returned to Mud Town without a blow-a large scout from Colonel Shelby's command, under Captain Scott Bullard, following them into camp and bringing back fifteen horses and four prisoners.

By another order from General Hindman, Colonel Coffee was here relieved from his regimental command, and Colonel G. W. Thompson appointed in his stead.

General Schofield very soon withdrew his army back to Springfield fur winter quarters, and left all the country open to the operations of the Confederates; but incessant service and scarcity of forage had much reduced the horses of Shelby's Brigade-so much so, indeed, that he was forced to go into camp below Van Buren, on the Arkansas river, where supplies for men and beasts were abundant. General Hindman slowly concentrated an infantry force at Ozark, and certain unmistakable signs about headquarters gave sure indications that the year would not close without a heavy fight. Two weeks were Spent with great benefit at Van Duren, and the horses  improved wonderfully during the time. Winter was approaching,

however, on frozen feet, and the long nights grew severe and uncomfortable. Orders for marching broke the dreary idleness, and Cane Hill became the objective point. Every heart bounded at the thoughts of an expedition to this delightful town, for the memory of its hospitable people, and its rich and teeming farms, gave promise of plenty and abundance. Its apples, too, were unsurpassed, and who will deny that visions of delightful peach and apple brandy, made by two huge stills in the neighborhood, did not mingle with the soldier's visions, and help to render palatable the dirty Arkansas waters?

At sundown, on the evening of November 17th, General Marmaduke being remarkably noted for night marches-Colonel Shelby, at the head of his brigade, moved solidly through Van Buren and up along the great wire road leading to Fayetteville, camping about one o'clock the next morning fifteen miles from the camp previously occupied near the river. On and on over the rugged road, the swollen and rocky streams, through the eternal solitude of the Boston mountains, whose gigantic peaks, pine·crowned and majestic, rose up into the cold, gray clouds, winter on their hoary heads, but not upon their feet; and down again to the lovely city of Cane Hill, nestled in among great blue hills as costly as a domestic housewife.

Rapid as the march had been, General Blunt hovered very near, and held Fayetteville, only twelve miles away, with seven thousand troops. The 6th Kansas Cavalry, dissatisfied with their two previous defeats, were raiding about Ray's Mill; and still further to the left the Pin Indians were pursuing their usual avocations. Associated with Colonel Shelby in this expedition was a brigade of Arkansans under Colonel Carroll, composed of really good looking; men, well mounted, fine, brave soldiers, but utterly misrepresented and kept back by their leader, as the sequel proves-both brigades forming a division commanded by General Marmaduke. Shelby broke ground first with unceasing activity. The second  day after the arrival at Cane Hill, Lieutenant Arthur McCoy, with fifty picked men, was sent to look up one hundred Pins, reported to he encamped near a little town twenty miles in the Cherokee Nation. This Arthur McCoy was a gay, dashing, devil-may-care St. Louisan who joined the old 1st Missouri Infantry, Bowen's immortal regiment, Duffee's company, in St. Louis, and had won laurels at Shiloh, but being attracted by the rising star of Shelby's genius, came over to join his galaxy of knights. Like Rome of the' cuirassiers of Napoleon's Old Guard, he always doffed his plumed hat to his adversary just as he murmured through his moustache, "En Garde." McCoy, above all others, suited exactly for the enterprise, and ferreting out, by good luck, an excellent guide, he succeeded in completely surprising the Indian encampment. The sleepy pickets were cut off and sabered silently. The doomed warriors lay rolled up in their blankets alongside of a heavy rail fence. which had been fired in a hundred corners to give heat during the night, when the silent horsemen rode upon them without the ringing of a musket. The work, short and bloody, lasted only a few moments. McCoy sabered seven with his own hand, and but ten of the whole number escaped. The next morning he rode quietly into camp with not a rose on his fresh, blooming face withered or fled. On his return, Lieutenant J. L. Bledsoe, of Rathbun's company. was sent out with twenty men to beat up the 6th Kansas amI find how their position stood. The 6th, however, turned suddenly on this small scout and drove it in quite hurriedly, Bledsoe fighting like a tiger and forming to fire on every convenient hill. Jeans' regiment swarmed out thick as bees to succor Bledsoe, and the 6th was attacked in turn so furiously, that they were fain to scamper away under the shadow of Blunt's somber shield, leaving nineteen of their jayhawkers pale and bloody along the roadsides.

Again the next morning, even before the most industrious soldier would have risen in all probability from his frosty blankets, a young and beautiful girl, Miss Susan McClellan, a fair rebel living four miles to the west of Cane Hill, came tripping into camp, bareheaded and en dishabille, to inform Colonel Shelby that six hundred Federal cavalry, from the direction of Fort Smith had just passed her father's house to surprise him. The roses on her cheeks deepened beneath the admiring gaze of her auditors, but her fine eyes never quailed nor her patriotic earnestness wavered. Giving her a guard of honor, ten stalwart cavaliers, Colonel Shelby said to her that the enemy's movements were known, and that his men were concealed behind a large fence bordering a level cornfield through which the Federals must advance. Bledsoe's battery, well loaded with grape and cannister, stood, half hidden, to the right, and a mounted regiment under Colonel Carroll was held in hand to charge when the enemy's ranks were broken. Sure enough, Miss McClellan had not preceded their arrival more than thirty minutes, and her preparations to see the fight had been scarcely completed before the Federals entered the cornfield in fine style and advanced in line of battle upon the crouching Confederates. They were terribly deceived, and only expected to find two companies of militia, when every salient they touched was a regiment, and every fence corner a garrisoned stockade. Avoiding the Confederate pickets on the main road only confirmed their ignorance and led them on blindly to a bloody welcome. When within point-blank range, the snaky fence, lit up by the flash of three thousand muskets, revealed a line of sullen men pouring death into the shattered ranks, while Bledsoe's four-gun battery hurled an iron tempest into their very faces. The well-dressed line melted away like snow in a thaw, and shivering to the pitiless shock every living man turned and fled in one rushing, frenzied mass-order, command, discipline, aU gone, and

the yelling Confederates following on foot until distanced in the race.

Nothing was wanting to complete the destruction except a vigorous charge from Carroll's horsemen, but strangely he followed feebly and at a distance, never getting near enough to deliver a good fire or pick up a single straggler. The evil destiny of the Federals still followed them. Rushing down the same road on which were stationed the pickets, avoided by them in coming to General Marmaduke's camp, they were ambushed and lost fifteen men from a close fire as they galloped by, which, with twenty-three left upon the field at Cane Hill, made a large aggregate of slain. The heroic girl received wild cheers from the returning regiments, and not one heart amid all the rugged soldiers but would have risked much for her. This successful episode lifted the brigade to the skies in its own estimation, and made each man feel himself a hero. General Marmaduke thanked Colonel Shelby for his watchfulness and vigor, and made known the fact that the ladies of Little Rock, had presented him with two beautiful banners, to be given to that company and regiment which most distinguished themselves in the next battle.

Meanwhile Blunt threw a ll\rg<:> detachment around Ray's Mill to secure its advantageous position and cut off its supplies from the Confederates. Shelby's brigade made a forced march to attack it, but the enemy fled without fighting, and Shelby returned to Cane Hill. Then General Marmaduke resolved to fight Blunt at Fayetteville, and ordered Colonel Shelby to march at dark, but upon receiving information that a large body of Federals had gone west toward Fort Smith, and receiving orders at the same time from Hindman to follow them, he changed his dispositions and started westward. A night march of dreadful fatigue and suffering brought Colonel Shelby to the little town of Evansville, where it was reported the enemy were bivouacked. The nest was found very warm, but the birds had flown, and only a few outlying Indians were picked up. Enduring incessant rains, swimming innumerable streams, and eating fresh meat without salt, made Cane Hill again a delightful camp for the wearied soldiers, where four days were spent quietly.

General Blunt, reinforced to eight thousand strong, moved against General Marmaduke slowly on the evening of the 3d, so slowly that time was secured to send every wagon across Boston mountain, and to strip the brigade to the waist for fighting. All the day of the 4th, the men lay in line of battle waiting quietly, but Blunt did not come, though only fourteen miles away. The next morning about sunrise, and before a scouting party sent out to reconnoiter had cleared the limits of the camp, the blue caps of the 3d Kansas gleamed among the trees on the northern road, driving in the stubborn videttes. Everything had long been ready. Shelby formed his line on the crest of a hill just beyond his camp, and Collins took position in a large graveyard below, his dark guns and stalwart artillerymen flitting like specters among the white tombstones, suggesting, surely, unpleasant memories on the eve of a desperate battle. Marmaduke, notified of danger by the thunder of Shelby's cannon, galloped immediately to the front with his glittering staff. In 800th, it was a glorious sight. A strong northwest wind tore down the yellow leaves in great gusts of broken pinions, and flared the rival flags in broad defiance above the rival armies. Every movement of Blunt could be plainly seen in the valley below, and his long lines came gleaming on,

" Ere yet the life-blood warm and wet

Had dimmed a glistening bayonet."

Collins opened first and shot a great gap in the leading regiment, while the stars and stripes went down dimmed in the battle's van. A hundred eager hands grasped the fallen banner, but a fresh discharge scattered the regiment like chaff to the shelter of the woods behind. There went up a fierce yell from the Confederates, and their skirmishers ran swarming down the hill to engage at closer range. Battery after battery rolled up to the front and poured a terrible fire upon Shelby's devoted brigade, waiting for the onset-a. fire rarely if ever surpas.sed for terrible accuracy and precision. Ahead of all, Rabb's notorious six James' guns plied their bloody trade, and shredded life and limb away like stubble to the lava tide. In after days they paid him back again, and in that furious charge at Mark's Mill, where veteran infantry went down like apple-blossoms in a sweet south wind, this well-known battery was swept so bare of men and horses that it could be removed with difficulty after the field was won. The artillery fight lasted an hour, when Blunt threw forward a large force of infantry for the assault. Three

times they came to the death grapple and three times Shelby's lone brigade hurled them back in confusion. Both parties took breath and glared upon each other with earnest hate. Shelby could not leave his strong position, and Blunt could not carry the hill by a front attack. Suddenly, two heavy columns broke away to the right and left, and General Marmaduke knew further resistance to be useless, as his vastly inferior force could not engage the enemy on equal terms. The bugles sounded retreat, and Shelby moved off in magnificent

style, bringing with him his dead and wounded. Massing his cavalry in solid column, Blunt hurled them upon Shelby's brigade in one long, continuous charge, supported promptly by the rapid infantry. Furious at being baffled by such small numbers and stimulating his Indians and jayhawkers by drink, Blunt led them on in person, bent upon destroying all before him. The pursuit and retreat were equally determined and deadly. Here Shelby inaugurated and put in practice his own peculiar system of fighting on a retreat, afterward carried to such bloody perfection by all his officers. It was this: stationing his regiments by companies on each side of the road, he had thirty positions for the thirty companies in his brigade. The company next the enemy was only to fire at point blank range, break rapidly into column, and gallop immediately behind the other twenty-nine still formed, and take position again

for the same maneuver. Thus, the advancing forces met continually a solid, deadly tempest of lead driving into their very faces, and the companies delivering their fire in rotation had ample time to reload carefully and select most excellent positions.

Blunt took his punishment like a glutton, and hurled wave after wave of cavalry upon the stubborn rocks dotting his pathway at every angle. Right up from the bosom of the trampled road, a great hill rose splendidly, for two hundred feet, bare and pointed as a pillar. Round its summit Colonel Shelby clustered a. regiment, and two guns under the heroic Collins, while the dashing McCoy planted the banner of the bars in the firm earth. About its base the cavalry surged in wild eddies and fell off from the rocky sides before the steady fire of its defenders, while Collins poured a destructive volley upon the advancing infantry. The sun, hitherto obscured all day, shone out suddenly like a ball of fire, and seemed to crest the waving banner with a crown of golden radiance. Colonel Shelby pointed to the blazing sky and said: "It is sun of Austerlitz." A wild shout hailed the happy omen, and beneath its fiery rays the battle raged with steady violence-one regiment fighting ten. Blunt had encircled the hill before Shelby moved, and his skirmishers were almost between the guns before they were retired.

Then the whole tide poured down in fierce pursuit and pressed the isolated regiment fearfully.

The young and gallant Captain Martin, just recruited two days before, formed his company to receive the shock, and fell dead the first fire, his blood spurting in Shelby's very face, while eleven of his comrades lay beside him, a proud defiance on their fresh young faces.

Shelby's horse was killed, and the black plume in his hat carried away by a pistol ball. The yells of the drunken Indians and Kansans were fearful as they pressed like very demons in pursuit. Always with his rear company, encouraging by his presence and stimulating by his example, Shelby seemed endowed with a charmed life. Another horse fell beneath him, pierced by eleven balls, and his uniform was torn by bullets and streaming with blood from his wounded horses. Fearfully pressed, he sent from the gloom of the mountains a swift order to Gordon and Thompson to form by regiments in supporting distance. He had been fighting up to this time with Jeans' alone. These devoted officers joined hands square across the road, and drove back Blunt's heavy advance by a hot volley and a hotter charge. Colonel Shelby here had his third horse killed, being almost rode over by the enemy, but extricating himself quickly, he joined his command and made another furious stand. It was the last, and in a dark mountain gorge, flanked on the left by a rapid torrent, and on the right by a perpendicular cliff of rugged rocks. Up this the men climbed; waist deep in the freezing water, they crouched behind the bank; while further to the rear, in the road, a few mounted men showed themselves as decoys. Hooting, yelling, swearing-Lieutenant Colonel Jewell at their head -the 6th Kansas in advance, galloped down upon the ambush with sabers drawn. From tho rocks above the road, from the zig zag banks of the creek, from the pine's on every side: a deadly fire poured upon them from the concealed foe. Jewell, fell mortally wounded, in the middle of the pathway, and in their frantic attempts to rescue his body, twenty-nine men and nineteen horses were blended together in one solid heap of agony.

Again and again did fresh troops pour up to the front, but they were all driven back with loss, and Shelby never for one moment relaxed his hold upon the gorge. Night came down suddenly from the mountain tops, and the sound of battle gradually grew faint and fainter, but very soon Blunt opened fiercely with his artillery, and shelled the position for half an hour without effect. Here Colonel Shelby lost his fourth horse-all of them sorrels-and ever after he would only ride a sorrel horse into battle; saying, a little superstitiously, I thought, "that he would never be hit bestriding an animal of this color." In after days his confidence was rudely shocked, but not enough to strip the idea from his mind. The stand made here was necessary for salvation. Blunt's troops took no prisoners, and had broken through the rear by one long, bloody, tenacious charge. The narrow road, rough and filled with huge stones, was crowded by a rushing, thundering, panic stricken mass, riding for life, as imagined, down a huge hill and oyer a deep stream at the bottom. It was a fearful moment. The ground shook and sounded 88 if undergoing some terrible internal convulsion. Sabers were whirling, pistols cracking incessantly, the peculiar Indian yell-a wailing, mournful song, loud above all-and thus the human avalanche rushed down. It was swallowing up Shelby's lines as it came. He could erect no barrier strong enough to check it. In a moment then he ordered his rear regiment to open its ranks for the tide to sweep through, which it did with the rush of a hurricane, knocking men right and left, over precipices and into deep pools. Hall Shindler, attached to the staff of Colonel Shelby, while bravely attempting to bring some order out from the confusion, was literally ridden over, and finally knocked by a blundering horse down a steep place into deep water below Shelby's presence of mind and the devotion of some of his officers and men immediately around him, saved General Marmaduke's division from irreparable over· throw. With the darkness came a flag of truce from General Blunt, (which was received by the heroic Emmet McDonald, who had been fighting all day with the stubborn rear), asking for Colonel Jewell's body, and permission to bury his dead and take the wounded from the field of the Confederates. It was cheerfully granted, and General Marmaduke and Colonel Shelby met him on neutral ground, and conversed as freely and calmly as if but two hours before they had not sought each other's lives with fell tenacity.

"Whose troops fought me to-day?" asked General Blunt. "Colonel Shelby's brigade," replied the generous Marmaduke. "How did they behave, General?"

"Behave," answered Blunt, "why, sir, they fought like devils.

Two hundred and fifty of my best men have fallen in this day's fight, and more heroic young officers than I can scarcely hope to get again. I don't understand your fighting," he continued, "when I broke one line, another met me, another, another, and still another, until the woods seemed filled with soldiers, and the very air dark with bullets." Just then the body of Colonel Jewell was carried tenderly past by his sorrowful soldiers, and a frown passed swiftly over the face of General Blunt, but it cleared instantly, and he said in a troubled voice :" Ah ! there goes a model soldier-and far away in Kansas he leaves a poor old mother who will look long for his return."

" How many men did you fight us with to-day?" asked Shelby. "I am ashamed to tell," replied Blunt, evasively, "but more than you had to meet me." After holding some further conversation the generals separated to their dreary bivouacs.

The battle had been more than usually severe, and lasted for the entire day over fifteen miles of mountainous country, amid rocks, trees, and upon the banks of a stream which crossed the road at least one hundred times, each crossing more difficult than the one preceding it. Carroll's brigade, owing solely to the inefficiency of its leader, never rallied after the first fire, and thundered away to Van Buren, carrying tidings of defeat and disaster. Two honorable exceptions must be made to this disgraceful event, and those were the gallant examples of the officers of the little howitzer battery attached to Carroll's command. These young officers, Huey and Shoup, reported from the first to Colonel Shelby, and stood by him during all the dark hours of the fearful retreat. General Marmaduke thanked Colonel Shelby for saving the division trains and artillery, and as he was constantly in the rear himself, he fully appreciated the desperate nature of the struggle. Resting without eating during the night, the brigade next day marched to Dripping Springs to recruit its energies, and wait for General Hindman's advancing army.

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