Part 10 (1/2)
Major-General Commanding. Col. E. D. Townsend, a.s.sistant Adjutant-General, Headquarters of the Army, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.
Headquarters Western Department, Sept 23, 1861. Nothing since my dispatch of this morning. Our loss 39 killed, 120 wounded. Loss of enemy, 1,400 killed and wounded. Our non- commissioned officers and privates sworn and released.
Commissioned officers held as prisoners. Our troops are gathering around the enemy. I will send you from the field more details in a few days.
JOHN C. FREMONT, Major-General Commanding. Hon. S.
Cameron, Secretary of War.
The patient and much enduring President answered as follows: Headquarters of the Army, Was.h.i.+ngton, Sept. 23, 1861. John C. Fremont, Major-General Commanding, St Louis, Mo.: Your dispatch of this day is received. The President is glad that you are hastening to the scene of action. His words are ”He expects you to repair the disaster at Lexington without loss of time.” WINFIELD SCOTT.
Fremont began to topple to his fall.
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CHAPTER XIII. FREMONT'S MARVELOUS INEFFECTIVENESS.
Gen. Sterling Price had scored a victory which gave him an enduring hold upon the confidence and esteem of the Missourians. With the least means he had achieved the most success of any Confederate General so far. His conduct at the battle of Wilson's Creek had endeared him to the men he commanded. He exposed himself with utmost indifference to the fiercest firing, showed good judgment as to movements, was not discouraged after repeated repulses, and was everywhere animating and encouraging the men and bringing them forward into line of battle.
He sympathized with those who were wounded, and had them cared for, and immediately returned to the fighting with fresh troops.
It is true, however, that he had shown no generals.h.i.+p, but merely demonstrated himself a good Colonel, in leading up one regiment after another and putting them into the fight.
Lexington brought an immensity of prestige to Price and encouragement to the Secessionists and did a corresponding injury to the Union cause. It added immeasurably to the burdens which President Lincoln had to bear. He could make Brigadier-and Major-Generals, but he could not endow them with generals.h.i.+p.
The Senate could confirm them, but they were still more confirmed in the dull, unenterprising routine of camp and administrative regulations.
{218} The modest bars of a Captain on their shoulder straps had been, as it were, changed in the twinkling of an eye into the refulgent stars of a General, but they seemed to take this as a deserved tribute to their personal worth, rather than as an incentive and opportunity for the greater things which had made their predecessors ill.u.s.trious.
Fremont, in the palatial Brandt Mansion, for which the Government was paying the very unusual rent of $6,000 per year, was maintaining a vice regal court as difficultly accessible as that of any crowned head of Europe. His uncounted and glittering staff, which seemed to have received the Pentecostal gift of tongues-in which English was not included-was headed by a mysterious ”Adlatus,”-a t.i.tle before unknown in America or to the dictionaries, and since retired to oblivion. Naturally, the Adlatus's command of English was limited. His knowledge of Missouri was even more so. Though commanding Missouri and dealing intensely with Missouri affairs, the men surrounding Fremont were everything but Missourians or those acquainted with Missouri affairs. It would have been surprising to find one of them who could bound the State and name its princ.i.p.al rivers.
This, too, in the midst of a mult.i.tude of able, educated, influential Missourians who were ardent Unionists and were burning with zeal to serve the cause. Not one of them appears in the Fremont entourage.
{219} Gens. Pope, Sturgis, Jeff C. Davis, Hunter,-all Regulars and trained to war; Sigel, with his profound theoretical knowledge and his large experience; Curtis, lately returned to the Army with his military training supplemented by wide experience in civil life; Hurlbut, the brilliant orator and politician, were all busily engaged in something or other that kept them from interfering with Price while he lingered on the Missouri River gathering up recruits and stripping the Union farmers of that rich agricultural region of cattle and grain sufficient to feed his army during the coming Winter, and of horses and wagons to haul off his spoils and thoroly equip his army with transportation.
The only really soldierly thing done at this time was by the ”political General,”-the erratic, demagogic, trumpet-sounding ”Jim” Lane. He was commanding men who had come out from home to do something toward fighting the war and not to stay in camp and be drilled into automatons. He could only maintain his hold on them and his ascendency in Kansas politics by action.
Learning that Price had left a large stock of ammunition at the important little town of Osceola, the head of navigation on the Osage River, under strong guard, Lane led his brigade a swift march from Kansas upon the town, and succeeded in surprising the garrison, which, after a brief resistance, retreated and left it to Lane's mercy, whereupon he proceeded to not only destroy the very considerable quant.i.ty of stores which Price had acc.u.mulated there, but to burn down the town. This was an exceedingly ill-advised ending to a piece of brilliant soldiers.h.i.+p, because not only was it injustice to an enemy, but it was a severe blow upon Union men who owned full one-third of the property destroyed.
{220} A large number of these were engaged in the trade of the Southwest, for which Osceola was a distributing center. Goods were brought up the river during the high water and then s.h.i.+pped through the country by wagons. The town was also the County seat of St. Clair County, and contained the public records, etc.
Still more unfortunate was it that Lane's act was taken as an excuse for the Missouri guerrillas to retaliate upon Kansas towns and the property of the Union people in their own State. Lane says in his report: ”The enemy ambushed the approaches to the town, and after being driven from them by the advance under Cols. Montgomery and Weer, they took refuge in the buildings of the town to annoy us. We were compelled to sh.e.l.l them out, and in doing so the place was burned to ashes, with an immense amount of stores of all descriptions. There were 15 or 20 of them killed and wounded; we lost none. Full particulars will be furnished you hereafter.”
This shows that even he felt the necessity of apologizing for the act, but the apology is too transparent. The fact was that the Kansas men saw an opportunity to pay back some of their old scores against the Missourians and did not fail to improve it.
In spite of Gen. Fremont's promise to the President to ”take the field himself and attempt to destroy the enemy,” he moved with exceeding deliberation. It is true that he left St. Louis for Jefferson City, Sept. 27, a week after Mulligan's surrender, but that week had been well employed by Price in gathering up all that he could carry away and making ready to avoid the blow which he knew must fall.
{221} After arriving at Jefferson City, Fremont, instead of taking the troops which were near at hand and making a swift rush upon his enemy, the only way in which he could hope to hurt him, began the organization of a ”grande armee” upon the European model, and that which McClellan was deliberately organizing in front of Was.h.i.+ngton.
The impatient people, who were paying the $3,000,000 a day which the war was now beginning to cost, and who had begun to murmur for results, were amused by stories of plans of sweeping down the Mississippi clear to New Orleans, taking Memphis, Vicksburg and other strongholds on the way, severing the Southern Confederacy in twain, so that it would fall into hopeless ruin.
This was entirely possible at that time with the army that had been given Fremont, had it been handled with the ability and boldness of Sherman's March to the Sea.
Two weeks after Mulligan's surrender Fremont announced the formation of this grand ”Army of the West,” containing approximately 50,000 men. This was grouped as follows: The First Division, to which Gen. David Hunter was a.s.signed, consisted of 9,750 men, and was ordered to take position at Versailles, about 40 miles southwest of Jefferson City, and became the Left Wing of the Army.
Gen. John Pope was given command of the Second Division of 9,220 men and ordered to take station at Boonville, 50 miles northwest of Jefferson City. His position was to be the Right Wing of the army.
The Third Division, 7,980 strong, was put under command of Gen. Franz Sigel, and made the advance of the army, with its station at Sedalia and Georgetown, 64 miles west of Jefferson City.
{222} The Fifth Division, commanded by Gen. Asboth, had 6,461 men, and const.i.tuted the reserve at Tipton, on the railroad, 38 miles west of Jefferson City.
The Fifth Division, 5,388 men, under Gen. Justus McKinstry, formed the center and was posted at Syracuse, five miles west of Tipton.
Beside these, Gen. Sturgis held Kansas City with 3,000 men and Gen. Jas. H. Lane, with 2,500 men, was to move in Kansas down the State line, between Fort Scott and Kansas City, to protect Kansas from an incursion in that direction, and as opportunity offered attack Price's flank.
Thus, there were 38,789 effectives in the five divisions, which with Sturgis's and Lane's forces made a total force of 44,289, not including garrisons which swell the total of the army to over 90,000.
Among these Division Commanders were two whom Fremont had discovered and created Brigadier-Generals out of his own volition, without consultation at Was.h.i.+ngton.
These were Gens. Asboth and McKinstry. Gen. Alexander (Sandor) Asboth, born in 1811, was a Hungarian and an educated engineer, with considerable experience in and against the Austrian army. He had entered ardently into the Revolution of 1848, and built a bridge in a single night by which the Revolutionary army crossed and won the brilliant victory of Nagy Salo. He became Adjutant-General of the Hungarian army, and when the Revolution was crushed by Russian troops, escaped with Kossuth into Turkey, came to this country, and became a naturalized citizen. He was by turns farmer, teacher, engineer, and manufacturer of galvanized articles. He sided with the Union Germans, went on Fremont's staff, and was appointed a Brigadier-General. The Senate refused to recognize the appointment, but in consideration of his good service he was reappointed, served creditably through the war, was brevetted a Major-General, and after the war sent as Minister to the Argentine Confederation, where he died in 1868.
{223} The other, Justus McKinstry, was born in New York and appointed to the Military Academy from Michigan, where he graduated 40th in the cla.s.s of 1838, of which Beauregard, Barry, Irvin McDowell, W. J. Hardee, R. S. Granger, Henry H. Sibley, Edward Johnson and A. J. Smith were members. He had served creditably in the Mexican War, receiving a brevet for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco, and at the outbreak of the war was a Major and Quartermaster at St. Louis, where he did very much to frustrate Lyon's plans and was regarded by him as a Secessionist at heart. He continued to hold his position, however, as Chief Quartermaster of the Department of the West until Fremont appointed him Brigadier-General.
Shortly after Fremont's removal he was placed under arrest at St. Louis and ordered before a court-martial, which did not convene, and he was at last summarily dismissed for ”neglect and violation of duty, to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” He became a stock broker in New York City, and afterwards a land agent at Rolla, Mo.
It will be seen by the map that the disposition of the troops was good, and that Fremont had the advantage of short lines from Sedalia and Rolla to cut Price's line of retreat, recapture the spoils he was hastening to a place of safely, and destroy, or at least disperse, his army.
{224} Fremont, however, made no use of this advantage, and Price seems to have had no apprehension that he would. Price remained in Lexington until Oct 1, serenely contemplating the gigantic preparations made for his destruction, and then having gathered up all that he could readily get, and reading Fremont's order for a forward movement of the Army of the West, thought, like the prudent meadow lark, that probably something would be now done, and the time had come for moving. He began a deliberate retreat, crossing the Osage River at Osceola, and reaching Greenfield, 150 miles away, at the very comfortable pace of 15 miles a day.
Gen. Fremont ordered the Army of the West forward, but the so-called pursuit was very much like hunting a fox on a dray. He was enc.u.mbered with immense trains, for which bridges had to be built over numerous streams and roads made thru the rough country. The trains seemed to contain a world of unnecessary things and an astonis.h.i.+ng lack of those necessary. Apparently almost anybody who had anything to sell could find purchasers among the numerous men about Fremont's headquarters who had authority to buy, or a.s.sumed it.
One astonis.h.i.+ng item in the purchases was a great number of half barrels for holding water, rather an extraordinary provision in a country like Missouri, where in the month of October water is disposed to be in excessive quant.i.ties.