Part 32 (2/2)

order declaring my command in the Ind'n country independent.

(Sd) W. STEELE, _Brig. Gen'l_.

[A.G.O., _Confederate Records_, chap. 2, no. 270, p. 65].]

[Footnote 693: _Official Records_, vol. xxii, part ii, 771-772.]

[Footnote 694:--Ibid., 771.]

[Footnote 695:--Ibid., 843; _Confederate Records_, chap.

2, no. 270, pp. 25-27.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF MONTHLY INSPECTION REPORT OF THE SECOND CREEK REGIMENT OF MOUNTED VOLUNTEERS.]

ambition, consequently friction developed between him and his rival highly detrimental to the service to which each owed his best thought, his best endeavor.[696]

Conditions in Indian Territory, at the time Steele took command, were conceivably the worst that could by any possibility be imagined. The land had been stripped of its supplies, the troops were scarcely worthy of the name.[697] Around Fort Smith, in Arkansas, things were equally bad.[698] People were clamoring for protection against marauders, some were wanting only the opportunity to move themselves and their effects far away out of the reach of danger, others were demanding that the unionists be cleaned out just as secessionists had, in some cases, been. Confusion worse confounded prevailed. Hindman had resorted to a system of almost wholesale furloughing to save expense.[699] Most of the Indians had taken advantage of it and were off duty when Steele arrived. Many had preferred to subsist at government cost.[700] There was so little in their own homes for them to get. Forage was practically non-existent and Steele soon had it impressed [701] upon him that troops in the Indian Territory ought, as Hindman had come to think months before,[702] to be all unmounted.

Although fully realizing that it was inc.u.mbent upon him to hold Fort Smith as a sort of key to his entire command, Steele knew it would be impossible to

[Footnote 696: It might as well be said, at the outset, that Cooper was not the ranking officer of Steele. He claimed that he was [_Official Records_, vol. xxii, part ii, 1037-1038]; but the government disallowed the contention [Ibid., 1038].]

[Footnote 697:--Ibid., part i, 28; part ii, 862, 883, 909.]

[Footnote 698: _Confederate Records_, chap. 2, no. 270, pp.

29-30.]

[Footnote 699: _Official Records_, vol. xxii, part ii, 895, 909.]

[Footnote 700:--Ibid., part i, 30.]

[Footnote 701: _Confederate Records_, chap. 2, no. 270, p. 31.]

[Footnote 702: _Official Records_, vol. xiii, 51.]

maintain any considerable force there. He, therefore, resolved to take big chances and to attempt to hold it with as few men as his commissary justified, trusting that he would be s.h.i.+elded from attack ”by the inclemency of the season and the waters of the Arkansas.”[703]

The larger portion of his army[704] was sent southward, in the direction of Red River.[705] But lack of food and forage was, by no manner of means, the only difficulty that confronted Steele. He was short of guns, particularly of good guns,[706] and distressingly short of money.[707] The soldiers had not been paid for months.

The opening of 1863 saw changes, equally momentous, in Federal commands. Somewhat captiously, General Schofield discounted recent achievements of Blunt and advised that Blunt's District of Kansas should be completely disa.s.sociated from the Division of the Army of the Frontier,[708] which he had, at Schofield's own earlier request, been commanding. It was another instance of personal jealousy, interstate rivalry, and local

[Footnote 703: _Official Records_, vol. xxii, part i, 30.]

[Footnote 704: Perhaps the word, _army_, is inapplicable here.

Steele himself was in doubt as to whether he was in command of an army or of a department [_Confederate Records_, chap. 2, no. 270, p.

54].]

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