Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

---

[355] began collecting on the border, and Federal emissaries were busy among the Cherokees and Creeks, inciting disaffection. Detachments of Federal cavalry penetrated, at will, into various parts of the upper half of Arkansas, plundering and burning houses, stealing horses and slaves, destroying farming utensils, murdering men loyal to the Confederacy, or carrying them into captivity, forcing the oath of allegiance on the timid, and disseminating disloyal sentiments among the ignorant.

Such a condition of affairs could not long be tolerated, although the statements of it were slow in reaching Richmond, and obtaining the just consideration of the Government there. The cruelties and disorders of Hindman-notoriously the favourite of President Davis-became at last so enormous in Arkansas, that it was unsafe that he should remain there longer, when he was brought across the Mississippi River, and assigned to some special duty. It was indeed remarkable that the people of the Trans-Mississippi, with such an experience of maltreatment, and in spite of a conviction that the concerns of this distant portion of the Confederacy were grossly neglected at Richmond, should yet have, even to the latest period of the war, faithfully kept and fondly cherished their attachment to the vital principle of our struggle and the common cause of our arms. It was an exhibition of devotion and of extraordinary virtue in the Confederate States west of the Mississippi River that should be omitted in no historic record of the war.