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.

[222] and a new spirit in the conduct of hostilities. They were to show results in a few months. The campaign of 1862 covered the whole of a huge territory, and could only be decided by movements involving great expenditure of troops and time; while the bitter exhibitions of the North had envenomed the war, aroused the spirit of retaliation, and swelled the sanguinary tide of conflict.

We have seen that the Permanent Government of the Confederate States was inaugurated at a dark period of its fortunes. The military history closely following this event is not a little curious. It may be characterized as an alternation of light and shade; across the tract of disaster there being sudden and fitful gleams of light, such as the undaunted courage of our troops and the variable accidents of war might give in such circumstances of misgovernment as were adverse or embarrassing to a grand scale of successes. Of these, and of the reverses mingled with them, we shall proceed to treat in the resumption of the military part of our narrative; reaching, at last, through this alternation of victory and defeat, the point of that grand effulgence of our arms, that made the year 1862 the most memorable in Confederate annals.

---

The Trans-Mississippi.-battle of Elk Horn.

We left Gen. Price at the close of the Missouri campaign proper, halting his weary column at Springfield. While recruiting and drilling his men, Price watched for the first movements of the enemy, and early in January, 1862, the Federals began to advance. Price had taken up a strong position and fortified it, expecting that McCulloch would move forward to his assistance; but that commander did not stir, or make the slightest diversion in his favour; so that, finding the enemy closing in upon him rapidly, he withdrew from Springfield, and was obliged to cut his way through towards Boston Mountain, where McCulloch was reported to be. This he successfully accomplished, with some desultory fighting. Meanwhile Maj.-Gen. Earl Van Dorn had been appointed by President Davis to take command in the Trans-Mississippi Department, and had arrived