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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[554] properly place here a brief record of what was the most important of the detached military operations of 1864. This was a movement in the Trans-Mississippi, the invasion of Missouri by Gen. Price. It appears to have been altogether a detached operation, having no relation to the campaigns east of the Mississippi, and with but little effect on the general issues of the war. It is therefore narrated in a small space.

About the middle of September, Gen. Price entered Missouri, crossing the State line from Arkansas, by the way of Pocahontas and Poplar Bluff. He had about ten thousand men under the command of Gens. Shelby, Marmaduke, and Fagan. From Poplar Bluff, Price advanced, by the way of Bloomfield, to Pilot Knob, driving before him the various outpost garrisons, and threatening Cape Girardeau. Pilot Knob was evacuated, and Price thus obtained a strongly fortified position, eighty-six miles south of St. Louis, the terminus of the railroad, and the depot for supply of the lower outposts.

Gen. Rosecrans, the Federal commander in the Department of Missouri, was largely superiour in force to Price; but he appears to have been unable to concentrate or handle his troops, and the country was surprised to find Gen. Price moving almost without molestation through the large State of Missouri, doing incalculable mischief, and kindling the hopes of the Confederates with another campaign of wonders in this remote region of the war. From Pilot Knob Gen. Price moved north to the Missouri River, and continued up that river towards Kansas. Gen. Custis, commanding the Department of Kansas, immediately collected such forces as he could to repel the invasion; while four brigades of Federal cavalry, numbering about eight thousand men and eight rifled guns, were operating in Price's rear. On the 23d October, Gen. Price was brought to battle on the Big Blue, and defeated, Gens. Marmaduke and Cabell being taken prisoners, and the Confederates losing nearly all of their artillery. On the following day, Price was again attacked, near Fort Scott, and obliged hurriedly to retreat into Kansas. He then turned down to the south, and crossed the Arkansas River, above Fort Smith, into the Indian Territory. He subsequently went into winter quarters in the south of Arkansas, his men in worse plight than when they started from that State, and the conclusion of his campaign an undoubted failure.

The fact is that Gen. Price had retreated from Missouri, not so much under the stress of the enemy's arms as from inherent faults in his own enterprise. He had declared that his invasion was not a raid, that he came to possess Missouri; but the breadth of the excursion, its indefiniteness, and the failure to concentrate on important points, ruined him. While his command roamed through the State, his men, brought to the vicinity of their old homes, which they had not seen for several years, were exposed