March 3, 1862. |
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| Pope's Headquarters near New Madrid. |
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forces, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther;” but, like most of their calculations, this one signally failed.
While Johnston was pressing southward through Nashville with his fugitive army from Bowling Green, and Polk was trembling in his menaced works at Columbus, Halleck was giving impetus to a force destined to strike a fatal blow at the Confederates at New Madrid.
He dispatched General Pope from St. Louis on the 22d of February, with a considerable body of troops, chiefly from Ohio and Illinois, to attack that post.
Pope went down the Mississippi in transports, and landed at Commerce, in Missouri, on the 24th.
He marched from there on the 27th, and three days afterward two companies of the Seventh Illinois cavalry, under Captain Webster, and a company of independent cavalry, under Captain Noleman, encountered the guerrilla chief M. Jeff. Thompson with about two hundred mounted men. These were routed, and pursued with great vigor to Thompson's lines at New Madrid, losing in their flight three pieces of artillery, and throwing away guns and every thing else that might lessen their speed.
In the mean time Pope's main column moved on, traversed with the greatest difficulty overflowed miry swamps,1 and on the day when the National standard was unfurled at Columbus
it appeared before New Madrid.
Pope found the post occupied by five regiments of infantry and several companies of artillery, with Hollins's flotilla on the river.
Satisfied that he could accomplish very little with his light artillery, he encamped out of range of the gun-boats, and sent Colonel Bissell, of the Engineer Corps, to Cairo for heavy cannon.
While Pope was waiting for his siege-guns, the Confederates were strengthening New Madrid by re-enforcements from Island Number10; it and on the 12th, when the cannon from Cairo arrived, there were about nine thousand infantry, besides artillery, within the works in front of Pope, commanded by Generals McCown, Stuart, and Gantt.
Meanwhile, three gun-boats had been added to Hollins's flotilla.
Fearing the Confederates might be re-enforced from below, Pope sent Colonel J. B. Plummer, of the Eleventh Missouri, to Point Pleasant, ten or twelve miles down the river, to plant a battery, and blockade it at that
1 “The men,” said a newspaper correspondent, “waded in mud, ate in it, slept in it, were surrounded by it, as St. Helena is by the ocean.”
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