Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

Along the immense line which separated the hostile parties, from the Atlantic to the prairies of the far West, however, the effect produced by the conflict of July 21st was less felt in proportion to the distance from the spot which had witnessed it. The State of Missouri especially, situated beyond the Mississippi, was a kind of enclosed battle-field, where the struggle, embittered by old animosities, was carried on with scarcely any knowledge of the vicissitudes of the fighting in the neighboring States.

In this portion of the narrative, where we propose to relate the military events which occurred during the period intervening between the first defeat of the army of the Potomac and its new entrance in the field in the spring of 1862, we shall begin by speaking of the war of which the distant plains of Missouri were the theatre during the latter half of the year 1861. The inveterate animosity of the Abolitionists and the pro-slavery men was to impart to that war an altogether peculiar character. The settlers from the North and from the South were scattered over the whole surface of the State. The former were in the majority in the northern part and along the borders of the Mississippi, which separates Missouri from Illinois, and which the inhabitants of the latter free State cross yearly, in large numbers, on their way to the West to seek their fortunes. The latter predominated along the fertile borders of the Missouri River, which flows from west to east through the country to which it gives its name; but they were so completely commingled everywhere that not a town, village, or hamlet could be found which was not divided into two hostile camps. To the westward, along the boundary of the great desert, was the new State of Kansas, where, after many bloody strifes and cruel persecutions, the Abolitionists had finally come off triumphant. To the southward extended the long frontier of Arkansas, which was exclusively occupied by pro-slavery men devotedly attached to the Confederate cause. The pioneers, adventurers, and outlaws who had gone to seek their fortune by means more or less legitimate in those two States, yet scarcely under cultivation, did not fail to challenge each other, weapon in hand, in