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.

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[352] and memorable tribute to the private soldier of the Confederacy. He wrote: “To the private soldier a fair word of praise is due, and though it is so seldom given and so rarely expected, that it may be considered out of place, I cannot, in justice to myself, withhold the opinion ever entertained, and so often expressed during our struggle for independence. In the absence of instructions and discipline of our armies, and of the confidence which long associations produce between veterans, we have, in a great measure, to trust to the individuality and self-reliance of the private soldier. Without the incentive or the motive which controls the officer, who hopes to live in history, without the hope of reward, actuated only by a sense of duty and patriotism, he has in this great contest justly judged that the cause was his own, and gone into it with a determination to conquer or die, to be free or not to be at all. No encomium is too high, no honour too great for such a soldier. However much of credit and glory may be given, and probably justly given, to the leaders in the struggle, history will yet award the main honour, where it is due, to the private soldier, who, without hope of reward, and with no other incentive than a conscientiousness of rectitude, has encountered all the hardships, and has suffered all the privations. Well has it been said: The first monument our Confederacy raises, when our independence shall have been won, should be a lofty shaft, pure and spotless, bearing this inscription: ‘ To the unknown and unrecorded dead.’ ”

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Operations in the Trans-Mississippi.

In other quarters of the war less important than Virginia and Tennessee, the latter part of the year 1862 was without considerable interest. Since the commands of Price and Van Dorn had moved east of the Mississippi, the campaign in the extensive country west of that river had become feeble and irregular. It was marked, however, by one battle-that of Prairie Grove — the dimensions of which were large for that campaign, and the results of no little importance to the country of the Trans-Mississippi.

In the latter months of 1862, Maj.-Gen. T. C. Hindman was commanding what was known as the District of Arkansas. Lieut.-Gen. Homes was commanding the Trans-Mississippi department, with his headquarters at Little Rock. Gen. Blunt, commanding about seven thousand Federal troops, had advanced from Springfield as far as Cane Hill, Arkansas, driving Gen. Marmaduke, who was commanding a small division of cavalry. Gen. Hindman, with about eight thousand Missouri, Texas, and Arkansas infantry and artillery, was at Van Buren. It was considered necessary to oppose the further advance of Blunt; and accordingly, on the