THE CONSCRIPTION ACT.
Price's men had not been long on the march before Dick Graham, who
seemed to have a way of finding out things that were hidden from almost
everybody else, told Rodney, confidentially, that their objective point
was Warrensburg, and that Price's motive in going there was to capture
money to the amount of a hundred thousand dollars, which was being
conveyed by a detachment of Federal troops to Lexington. The prospect of
securing so valuable a prize was an incentive, and men who were so weary
that the near approach of an enemy would not have kept them from falling
out of the ranks, marched night and day without a murmur of complaint.
Some of the way they moved at double-quick; but they might as well have
spared themselves the pains, for when they reached Warrensburg they
found the place deserted.
"This shows how impossible it is to trust anybody these times," said
Rodney, in deep disgust.
Their regiment having gone into camp, the two friends were strolling
about the town to see what they could find, and the first thing they
discovered was not at all calculated to allay the indignation they felt
at being outwitted by the vigilant Federals. It was a rough charcoal
sketch on the wall of a building they passed during their walk. It
represented a lean, long-haired, ragged rebel dancing in an ecstacy of
rage over an empty money-box. The soldier who drew the sketch was an
artist of no mean order, and the picture told its story as plainly as
words.
"It proves that the Yankees knew we were coming and what we were coming
for," continued Rodney. "It's an insult, and I hope we will not go back
until we have thrashed them for it most soundly."
The army rested for two days at Warrensburg, and then moved upon
Lexington, whither the money had been conveyed; but Rodney and Dick had
no hopes of wearing the new uniforms and wrapping themselves in the warm
blankets that their share of the hundred thousand would purchase for
them, if they had it. They were afraid they wouldn't get any of it, and
this fear was confirmed when their advance guard was severely repulsed
by less than half a regiment of Home Guards who were found strongly
entrenched at Lexington. The attack, which was renewed on the 12th of
September, after Colonel Mulligan arrived with his Irish brigade,
bringing the strength of the garrison up to twenty-five hundred men, was
even more disastrous than the first, and Price retired to wait until his
supplies of ammunition could be brought up. He waited six days, and
during that time not a soldier was thrown into the garrison, while Price
saw his own army growing daily. Every man in the country for miles
around, and every boy, too, who was strong enough to handle a gun,
"rushed to Lexington to take part in the victory to which Price invited
them." The few Union men there were left in that part of the State came
with the rest, because it was the only thing they could do to save
themselves and their property from the vengeance of the rebels. The real
battle began on the 18th, and on the afternoon of the 20th, after
fifty-two hours of constant fighting, when his ammunition and provisions
were almost exhausted and his supply of water entirely cut off, the
brave colonel, who afterward died on the field of Winchester
"And dying--'Lay me down
And save the flag!' he cried,"
gave up the struggle, and surrendered a worn-out garrison of two
thousand five hundred men to an army of more than twenty thousand. It
was a grand victory--almost as grand as the one Beauregard won over
Anderson at Fort Sumter. By it Price secured "a great number of stands
of arms, a considerable quantity of ammunition, a vast amount of
commissary stores, and nine hundred thousand dollars in hard cash." He
did not abuse his power but paid tribute to the courage of the men who
had so long resisted him by releasing the soldiers on parole, and
keeping the officers only as prisoners.
Having accomplished his object and rallied to his standard all the
scattered bands of partisans in Northern Missouri, and hearing that
Fremont was advancing upon him, while Hardee, who was to support him by
moving up the river from New Madrid, had been driven back, Price turned
and ran, sending his mounted troopers to threaten several points at
once, misleading the Federals who had hastily assembled to harass his
rear, and thus securing an almost unobstructed road for his retreat.
These advance troopers had a few engagements, and Rodney and Dick took
part in the most of them, but Price could neither be overtaken nor
stopped. The two friends were among the first to ride into Neosho, a
little town in the southwestern part of the State, toward which the
march had been directed, and the first man they met gave them some
information that struck them dumb with surprise and indignation. He was
a farmer who had just sold a load of provisions to the soldiers, and he
drove his empty wagon out of the road to let the regiment pass.
"We're into the mud now as deep as the rest of 'em," said he, as
Rodney's company rode by. "If Caroliny gets stretched up by the neck,
we-uns will have to be stretched, too."
"What do you mean by that?" inquired Captain Jones.
"The Legislator is over there in that house," replied the farmer, "and
they've just give out some kind of a paper saying that this State of
Missoury don't belong to the old Union no more, but is one of the
Confedrit States of Ameriky."
"Do you mean that the State has seceded?" cried the captain, while his
men looked at him and at one another as if they could not understand
what the farmer was trying to tell them. "There's cheek for you. Why,
the whole of the State, except this part of it right around here, is
over-run with Yankees."
"I don't know nothing about that," replied the farmer; and he was
obliged to turn around on his seat and shout the words, for Rodney's
company had been riding straight ahead all the time. "It's only what I
heard. Mebbe you'll find somebody up the street that can tell you all
about it."
The story was so improbable that the boys could not make up their minds
to believe it. The Legislature, which had run almost as far as it could
get without going over the line into Arkansas, had no authority over the
State, three-fourths of whose territory was under the control of the
Union forces, and level-headed Dick Graham did not hesitate to say, in
the presence and hearing of his captain, that if the Legislature had
passed an Act of Secession, they were idiots, the last one of them. But
the Confederate authorities Were given to doing foolish things. Read the
proclamation Jefferson Davis issued from Danville while he was running
for his life!
"If that is true we are in a pretty fix," said Rodney, as soon as he
could speak. "I came up here to keep out of the Confederate army, and
now I am made a Confederate in spite of myself. And so are you. You are
under control of the government at Richmond now, and next week you may
be ordered to Virginia."
"But I'll not go," exclaimed Dick. "I'll serve right where I am until my
time is out, and then I'll go home. But look here. The Richmond
government can't order me out of Missouri without violating the very
principle we are fighting for--State Rights. They can _ask_ me to go,
but just see how utterly inconsistent they will be if they try to compel
me to go."
"I hope you are right, but I wouldn't be afraid to bet anything I've got
that you are wrong," answered Rodney; and his friend's words did not in
the least encourage him. "That would be the right way to do things, but
you ought to see that it wouldn't be sensible. What's the use of having
Confederate soldiers if they are not to obey the orders of the
Confederate government? If it suits them to do it, those fellows in
Richmond will ride rough-shod over State Rights."
"Oh, they won't do that," exclaimed Dick, waving his hands up and down
in the air. "They can't do it. Their government will fall to pieces like
a rope of sand if they try it."
The boys wondered what their general would think of the situation, and
when the artillery came into town they found out. A few sections of it
wheeled into line at a gallop, and celebrated the secession of the State
by firing one hundred guns. Rodney and Dick were intensely disgusted.
They listened in a half mutinous way when the adjutant read the act the
next day on dress parade, and tossed up their caps and shouted with the
rest; but they did these things for the same reasons that impelled
hundreds of others in camp to do them--because they knew it would not be
safe to show any lack of enthusiasm.
The fact that they were no longer State troops but full-fledged
Confederates was not fully impressed upon Rodney and his fellow soldiers
until some months later, when the Richmond government was all ready to
put its despotic plans into execution. Probably the general commanding
saw that there was much dissatisfaction among his men, and did not think
it prudent to draw the reins too tight. He drilled his troops a little
oftener and a little harder, and was rather more particular about
granting furloughs, and this gave the boys no ground for complaint; but
they were constantly harassed by the fear that the future had something
ominous in store for them.
Price retreated as Fremont advanced, and a second battle was fought at
Wilson's Creek, during which the commander of the Union forces made a
cavalry charge that is still spoken of as one of the most brilliant
episodes of the war. But when Fremont was displaced by Hunter, the
latter fell back toward Rolla, thus allowing Price to recover the ground
from which he had just been driven. He was prompt to take advantage of
the opportunity, this time directing his columns toward Kansas, with the
intention of getting supplies for his troops, and cutting the State off
from all communication with St. Louis. But Halleck succeeded Hunter on
the 18th of November, and before a month had passed away Price in turn
was compelled to retreat, his men being captured by the thousand,
together with large quantities of arms and supplies of ammunition and
provisions. It began to look now, to quote from Dick Graham, as though
the boot was on the other foot. Instead of running the Yankees out of
Missouri, the Yankees had run them out, fairly and squarely, for when
Price went into camp it was over the line in the State of Arkansas.
Every one of the plans that the Confederates had made for keeping the
State in their possession and capturing St. Louis, had been broken up by
the strategy of the Union generals. The battle of Belmont, which took
place in the month of November, has been called a Confederate victory,
but it was not so in reality. General Grant didn't fight that engagement
because he cared a cent for Belmont, for he knew he could not hold it if
he got it. All he wanted was to keep the Confederates from sending
troops from Columbus, Kentucky, to co-operate with Price in Missouri. He
accomplished his object by keeping Polk busy at home, and Price was
driven into Arkansas.
"And we are here with him," said Dick to his friend Rodney, as the two
lay beside their camp-fire at Cove Creek, talking over the situation.
"We said we never would go out of Missouri."
"That is what you said," replied Rodney. "After the farce those old
women went through up there at Neosho, taking the State out of the Union
when they had no authority over it, I knew we were going to see trouble.
And mark my words: we have only seen the beginning of it."
Either General Halleck's army was not as strong as he would like to have
had it, or else he over-estimated the strength of the enemy, for he fell
back and the Confederates went into winter quarters, Price at
Springfield and McCulloch just over the line into Arkansas. Now the two
friends had time and opportunity for visiting, but there was no one for
them to visit. Dick showed Rodney where his father's house and Mr.
Percival's had once stood, but there was nothing left of them but
blackened ruins. The rebels had "done the business" for one, and Union
men had "cleaned out" the other. Dick fully expected to find it so, for
he had often seen such evidence of vandalism and hatred during his long
marches through the State. The boys afterward learned that Dick's father
and mother had taken refuge with friends in Little Rock, while Mr.
Percival's family had, in some mysterious way, succeeded in reaching St.
Louis. Rodney was depressed by the sight of the ruins, and thanked his
lucky stars that his father and mother lived in a State in which such
things never could be done. The few Union men there were in and around
Mooreville would never dare trouble his folks, and the Yankees would not
be able to penetrate so far into the Confederacy.
Garrison duty, as the boys called their life in winter quarters, was
most distasteful to them, and it was with great delight that they
listened to the rumors which early in February came up from McCulloch's
camp, to the effect that the two armies were to take the field again at
once, but that their campaign was to be in a different direction. These
rumors did not say that the Richmond government had decided to give up
the struggle in Missouri and turn its attention to more important
points, but the men, who talked freely in the presence of their
officers, declared that that was what the new move would amount to. They
were to proceed to New Madrid to operate with the Army of the Center in
checking the advance of the Federals, who were threatening Island No.
10.
For once rumor told the truth and the move was made, though not in the
way Rodney and Dick thought it would be. One Sunday morning there was a
terrible uproar made by a scouting party which came tearing into camp
with the information that General Curtis's army, forty thousand strong,
was close upon Springfield and more coming. This rumor was also true;
and "Old Pap Price," as his men had learned to call him, who was not
much of a fighter but a "master hand at running," made haste to get his
wagon-train out of the way. To quote once more from Dick Graham, it was
hardly worth the trouble, for the oxen were so lean and weak that they
could scarcely walk, and the wagons, which were fit for nothing but
fire-wood, were loaded with a lot of rubbish that was of little value.
But "Old Pap" was bent on saving everything he had, and could not have
worked harder to take this train to a place of security if it had been
freighted with the money he captured at Lexington. The retreat soon
became a rout. The whole country was thrown into a state of alarm, and
people came flocking from all directions, bringing with them the few
household effects that the different raiding parties had left them.
Price kept up a running fight until some of McCulloch's troops came up,
and then the Federal advance was checked.
If General Curtis intended this sudden movement for a surprise he could
not have selected a better time for it, and if he had kept his two
columns together, instead of sending Siegel off with thirteen thousand
men to operate in another quarter, Price's army would have "been
eliminated from the problem of war," and the battle of Pea Ridge would
not have been fought. McCulloch's army was divided, and McCulloch
himself was away in another direction surveying a route for the march to
New Madrid; and Price, relying upon the inhabitants to keep him posted
in regard to the movements of our forces, as well as upon the supposed
impassable condition of the roads in his front, was whipped before he
knew there was an enemy anywhere within reach of him. Then followed a
disastrous retreat of an army without provisions or tents, along a muddy
road, through a snow storm so blinding that one could scarcely see ten
feet ahead of him, and it went on until it was stopped by a telegram
from General Van Dorn, who had been appointed to command the Confederate
Army of the West because Price and McCulloch could not agree. The new
general, who declared that "all retrograde movements must be stopped at
once," and that "henceforth the army must press on to victory," arrived
on the 2d of March, drove Siegel out of Bentonville on the 5th, and on
Friday and Saturday fought the battle of Pea Ridge--a thing that he
might as well have let alone, for he did not do what he set out to do.
He retreated one way, while General Curtis went another and settled down
to await reinforcements. Van Dorn gave his men to understand that he was
not beaten, but he couldn't stop to pursue Curtis, because his orders
compelled him to at once proceed with all his available force to join
the Army of the Center on the Mississippi.
Then came that dreary march to Van Buren of which we have spoken, and
which was a little ahead of anything Rodney had ever dreamed of. The
weary and hungry soldiers had long since ceased to expect anything from
the commissary department, which had disappeared as completely as though
it had never existed, and provisions of every sort were so scarce that
the different regiments and companies were obliged to break into little
squads and forage on their own account, the only instructions they
received being to the effect that they were to get to Van Buren as soon
as they could. As Dick and Rodney had the reputation of being excellent
foragers, and were known to be well supplied with gold, they had no
difficulty in keeping the members of their mess together. The gold
brought them corn bread, chickens and milk when Confederate scrip would
have failed, and when they came to compare notes with the rest of the
regiment at Van Buren, they found that they had fared very well. The
bulk of Price's army had passed on ahead of them, going down into
cellars and up into garrets, and poking about in hay-mows and stacks in
search of provender that had been hastily concealed by the anxious
citizens, and Rodney often wondered how McCulloch's men, who brought up
the rear, managed to keep body and soul together.
It was a dreary time taken all around, but their troubles did not end
when they arrived at Van Buren, as they hoped they would. It is true
they again came within sight of a commissary department with an
abundance of provisions, a quartermaster's department with a lot of
mixed-up baggage and camp equipage, blankets and overcoats that had been
thrown off and left at different places along the route, and here they
were allowed to rest until the stragglers came up and reported; but
their march was not ended. Their destination was Pocahontas, which was
nearly two hundred miles farther on.
It was while they were enjoying a much needed rest in camp at Van Buren
that they heard one piece of news that raised them to the highest pitch
of excitement, and two others that brought their spirits down to zero.
The first was brought to camp by a member of Dick's mess who had somehow
managed to get hold of a paper containing a greatly exaggerated account
of the first day's fight at Pittsburg Landing.
"Listen to this, boys," he shouted, as the mess gathered around him and
the soldiers came running from all directions to see what the excitement
was about. "'If we've been worsted here in the West, our friends in the
East have made up for it by sweeping everything before them. Grant, the
Yankee general, has been surprised at Shiloh, his army driven pell-mell
through their camp and down under the bank of the river, where their
gunboats saved them. Johnston lived long enough to see the Yankees in
full flight and then he was killed; but Beauregard, who took his place,
telegraphs that "certain destruction awaits the enemy on the morrow."'
That would be--let me see. Why, this paper is two weeks old," he added,
in a disappointed tone, glancing at the date.
"No matter; we whipped them," exclaimed Rodney; and when some one
proposed three cheers for the Army of the Center, he pulled off his cap
and joined in with a will.
Captain Jones, who brought with him a longer face than any of his
company had ever seen him wear before, sauntered up while the cheering
was going on, and asked what it was all about. When he learned that they
were happy over the glorious news from Shiloh, he said, as he drew a
couple of papers from his pocket:
"You fellows are away behind the times. That news is old, and Beauregard
hollered before he was out of the woods. Read this later account," he
continued, handing one of the papers to Dick, and placing a finger upon
the column to which he wished to draw attention. "And after you have
read that, take the other paper and see what it says about
conscription."
The captain turned on his heel and walked away, but looked back with an
expression of astonishment on his face when he heard one of his men
exclaim:
"Has the Richmond government really passed a Conscription Act? Then I
say bully for the Richmond government. There are lots of sneaks in our
town who shouted 'sick 'em,' to us, but who were too cowardly to put on
a uniform themselves. If they have got to come in whether they want to
or not, I am a Confederate from this minute. Read about the battle
first, sergeant, and then we'll hear about the conscription law."
Dick complied, and before he got through there were some angry and
astonished men standing around him.