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but he did not arrive until after sunrise.
About five hundred of the Unionists kept up a spirited fight with the assailants until about noon, when the latter were repulsed, and returned over the mountains as swiftly as they came.
Harrison, for lack of horses, could not pursue.
His foe had inflicted on him a loss of seventy-one men (four killed), and he had received in exchange fifty-five prisoners, fifty horses, and a hundred shot-guns.
Meanwhile
Marmaduke had gone to
Little Rock, and there, with the chief Conspirators and military leaders in
Arkansas, he planned a raid into
Missouri, having for its chief objective the capture or destruction of a large depot of National stores at
Cape Girardeau, on the
Mississippi River.
With a force of about eight thousand men, in four brigades, known as “
Price's First Corps of the Trans-Mississippi Department,” he pushed rapidly into
Missouri, and following the general line of the
St. Francis River, reached
Fredericton, between
Pilot Knob and
Cape Girardeau, on the 22d of April.
There he turned quickly to the southeast, and marched on
Cape Girardeau; but
General John McNeil, who, at
Bloomfield, in Stoddard County, had heard of the raid and divined its object, beat him in a race for that point, and, with his twelve hundred followers, reached
Cape Girardeau two days before
Marmaduke's arrival.
McNeil found there about five hundred men, mostly of the First Nebraska, under
Lieutenant-Colonel Baumer, with four guns rudely mounted.
The works were immediately strengthened, a greater portion of the stores were sent away in steamboats, and when
Marmaduke appeared and demanded a surrender of the place, giving
McNeil only thirty minutes to consider an answer, the latter was well prepared to fight, and told the
Confederate leader so. Early the next morning
Marmaduke shelled his adversary for awhile, and then again demanded a surrender.
McNeil answered with his guns, when the assailant, seeing some armed vessels in the
Mississippi coming to the aid of the besieged, beat a retreat
across the
St. Francis River, and hurried on toward
Arkansas, burning the bridges behind him.
McNeil was now ranked by
General Vandever, who was of a different temperament, and the pursuit was made so cautiously under his orders, that
Marmaduke escaped, after his rear-guard had skirmished several times with
McNeil's pursuing column.
1
On the 20th of May,
Fort Blunt, not far from
Fort Gibson, in the
Cherokee country west of
Arkansas, was menaced by about three thousand Confederates, under
Colonel Coffey.
The fort was commanded by
Colonel William A. Phillips, and garrisoned by about eight hundred white men and a regiment of Creek
Indians, some of the latter being employed as scouts.
These were treacherous, and failed to give notice of the approach of the foe.
Coffey found
Phillips too strongly posted to warrant an attack, so he crossed the river (
Arkansas), and seized cattle grazing there, belonging to the garrison.
The Indian regiment refused to join in a charge for the recovery of the animals, and only a part were saved.
Coffey encamped in a strong position, about five miles from the fort, where
Phillips attacked him with energy.
The Confederates fled across the river with their
