Part 36 (1/2)

100].]

Steele in despair cried out, ”... it does appear as if the Texas troops on this frontier were determined to tarnish the proud fame that Texans have won in other fields.”[760] The Arkansans were no better and no worse. The most fitting employment for many, the whole length and breadth of Steele's department, was the mere ”ferreting out of jayhawkers and deserters.”[761]

The Trans-Mississippi departmental change, effected in January, was of short duration, so short that it could never surely have been intended to be anything but transitional. In February the parts were re-united and Kirby Smith put in command of the whole,[762] President Davis explaining, not very candidly, that no dissatisfaction with Holmes was thereby implied.[763] Smith was the ranking officer and ent.i.tled to the first consideration. Moreover, Holmes had once implored that a subst.i.tute for himself be sent out. As a matter of fact, Holmes had become too much entangled with Hindman, too much identified with all that Arkansans objected to in Hindman,[764] his intolerance, his arrogance, his illegalities, for him to be retained longer, with complacency, in chief command. Hindman and he were largely to blame for the necessity[765] of suspending the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ in Arkansas and the adjacent Indian country, which had just been done. Strong

[Footnote 760: Steele to Alexander, April 23, 1863, _Confederate Records_, no. 270, pp. 210-211.]

[Footnote 761: Duval to Colonel John King, June 30, 1863, Ibid., no. 268, p. 110.]

[Footnote 762: Livermore, _Story of the Civil War_, part iii, book i, p. 255.]

[Footnote 763: Davis to Holmes, February 26, 1863, _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 849-850.]

[Footnote 764: Davis to Holmes, January 28, 1863, Ibid., 846-847.]

[Footnote 765: The necessity was exceedingly great. Take, for instance, the situation at Fort Smith, where the citizens themselves asked for the establishment of martial law in order that lives and property might be reasonably secure [Crosby to Mayor Joseph Bennett, January 10, 1863, _Confederate Records_, chap. 2, no. 270, pp.

33-34].]

political pressure was exerted in Richmond[766] and the Arkansas delegation in Congress demanded Hindman's recall,[767] Holmes's displacement, and Kirby Smith's appointment. The loss of that historic fort, Arkansas Post,[768] also a tardy appreciation of the economic value of the Arkansas Valley and, incidentally, of the entire Trans-Mississippi Department,[769] had really determined matters; but, fortunately, the supersedure of Holmes by Smith did not affect the position of Steele.

Steele divined that the Federals would naturally make an early attempt to occupy in force the country north of the Arkansas River and beyond it to the southward in what had hitherto been a strictly Confederate stronghold. It was his intention to forestall them. The two Cherokee regiments const.i.tuted, for some little time, his best available troops and them he kept in almost constant motion.[770] His great reliance, and well it might be, was upon Stand Watie, whom he had

[Footnote 766: Davis to Garland, March 28, 1863, _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 861-863; Davis to the Arkansas delegation, March 30, 1863, Ibid., 863-865.]

[Footnote 767: Hindman was not immediately recalled; but he soon manifested an unwillingness to continue under Holmes [Ibid., 848]. He had very p.r.o.nounced opinions about some of his a.s.sociates.

Price he thought of as a breeder of factions and Holmes as an honest man but unsystematic. In the summer, he actually asked for an a.s.signment to Indian Territory [Ibid., vol. xxii, part ii, 895].]

[Footnote 768: Livermore, _Story of the Civil War_, part iii, book i, 85. Davis would fain have believed that so great a disaster had not befallen the Confederate arms [Letter to Holmes, January 28, 1863, _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 847].]

[Footnote 769: Perhaps, it is scarcely fair to intimate that the Trans-Mississippi Department was regarded as unimportant at this stage. It was only relatively so. In proof of that, see Davis to Governor Flanagin, April 3, 1863, Ibid., 865-866; Davis to Johnson, July 14, 1863, Ibid., 879-880. When Kirby Smith tarried late in the a.s.sumption of his enlarged duties, Secretary Seddon pointed out the increasingly great significance of them [Letter to Smith, March 18, 1863, Ibid., vol. xxii, part ii, pp.

802-803].]

[Footnote 770: Steele to Cabell, April 18, 1863, _Confederate Records_, no. 270, p. 199.]

brought up betimes within convenient distance of Fort Smith[771] and with whom, in April, Phillips's men had two successful encounters, on the fourteenth[772] and the twenty-fifth. The one of the twenty-fifth was at Webber's Falls and especially noteworthy, since, as a Federal victory, it prevented a convening of the secessionist Cherokee Council,[773] for which, so important did he deem it, Steele had planned an extra protection.[774] The completeness of the Federal victory was marred by the loss of Dr. Gillpatrick,[775] who had so excellently served the ends of diplomacy between the Indian Expedition and John Ross.

Through May and June, engagements, petty in themselves but contributing each its mite to ultimate success or failure, occupied detachments of the opposing Indian forces with considerable frequency.[776] Two, devised by Cooper, those of the fourteenth[777]

and twentieth[778] of May may be said to characterize the entire

[Footnote 771: ”You will order Colonel Stand Watie to move his command down the Ark. River to some point in the vicinity of Fort Smith.”--CROSBY to Cooper, February 14, 1863, Ibid., p. 90.]

[Footnote 772: Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. ii, 37.]

[Footnote 773: Phillips to Curtis, April 26, 1863, _Official Records_, vol. xxii, part i, 314-315; Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. ii, 40-41. Mrs. Anderson, in her _Life of General Stand Watie_, denies categorically that the meeting of the council was interrupted on this occasion [p. 22] and cites the recollections of ”living veterans” in proof.]

[Footnote 774: ”I am directed by the General Com'dg to say that he deems it advisable that you should move your Hd. Qrs. higher up the river, say in the vicinity of Webber's Falls or Pheasant Bluff. He is desirous that you should be somewhere near the Council when that body meets, so that any attempt of the enemy to interfere with their deliberations may be thwarted by you.”--DUVAL to Cooper, April 22, 1863, _Confederate Records_, chap. 2, no. 270, p. 209.]

[Footnote 775: Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. ii, 42.]

[Footnote 776:--Ibid., vol. ii, chapters vi and vii.]