their own number, armed with Colt's rifles and commanded by Col. Zagonyi. A conflict ensued, in which fifty of the enemy were killed, and twenty-five captured, including a major. The loss of the Missourians was one killed and three wounded.

At Pineville, General Price made preparations to receive Fremont, determined not to abandon Missouri without a battle. His troops were enthusiastic and confident of success, notwithstanding the fearful superiority of numbers against them. They were in daily expectation of being led by their commander into the greatest battle of the war, when they received the unexpected intelligence that Fremont had been superseded as commander of the Federal forces. This event had the effect of demoralizing the Federal forces to such an extent, that their numbers would have availed them nothing in a fight with their determined foe. The Dutch, who were greatly attached to Fremont, broke out into open mutiny, and the acting officers in command saw that a retreat from Springfield was not only a wise precaution, but an actual necessity. They accordingly left that town in the direction of Rolla, and were pursued by Gen. Price to Oceola. From Oceola, Gen. Price fell back to Springfield, to forage his army and obtain supplies; and here, for the present, we must leave the history of his campaign. We have now traced that history to a period about the first of December.

From the 20th of June to the 1st of December, General Price's army marched over 800 miles, averaging ten thousand men during the time. What they accomplished, the reader will decide for himself, upon the imperfect sketch here given. They fought five battles, and at least thirty skirmishes, in some of which from fifty to hundreds were killed on one side or the other. Not a week elapsed between engagements of some sort. They started without a dollar, without a wagon or team, without a cartridge, without a bayonet-gun. On the first of September, they had about eight thousand bayonet-guns, fifty pieces of cannon, four hundred tents, and many other articles needful in an army; for nearly all of which they were indebted to their own strong arms in battle and to the prodigality of the enemy in providing more than he could take care of in his campaign.

Notwithstanding the great exposure to which the Missouri

troops were subjected, not fifty died of disease during their six months' campaign, and but few were on the sick list at the close of it. The explanation is, that the troops were all the time in motion, and thus escaped the camp fever and other diseases that prove so fatal to armies standing all the time in a defensive position.

SKETCH OF GENERAL PRICE.

The man who had conducted one of the most wonderful campaigns of the war-Sterling Price--was a native of Virginia. He was born about the year 1810 in Prince Edward county, a county which had given birth to two other military notabilities-General John Coffee, the "right-hand man" of General Jackson in his British and Indian campaigns, and General Joseph E. Johnston, already distinguished as one of the heroes of the present war.

Sterling Price emigrated to Missouri, and settled in Charlton county, in the interior of that State, in the year 1830, pursuing the quiet avocations of a farmer.

In the year 1844, Mr. Price was nominated by his party as a candidate for Congress, and was elected by a decided majority. He took his seat in December, 1845; but having failed to receive the party nomination in the following spring, he resigned his seat and returned home. His course in this respect was dictated by that conscientious integrity and high sense of honor which have ever distinguished him in all the relations of life. He argued that his defeat was caused either by dissatisfaction with his course on the part of his constituents, or else by undue influences which had been brought to bear upon the people by ambitious aspirants for the seat, who could labor to a great advantage in their work in supplanting an opponent who was attending to his duties at a distance from them. If the former was the case, he was unwilling to misrepresent his constituents, who, he believed, had the right to instruct him as to the course he should pursue; if the latter, his self-respect would not allow him to serve a people who had rejected him without cause, while he was doing all in his power to advance their interests.

At the time of Mr. Price's retirement from Congress, hostili

ties had broken out between the United States and Mexico, and volunteers from all parts of the South were flocking to the defence of their country's flag. Mr. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, bred a soldier, who, like Mr. Price, was serving his first term in Congress, resigned his seat about the same time, and was soon marching at the head of a Mississippi regiment to the field, from which he was destined to return loaded with many honors. So, too, did a brave Missouri regiment call to its head her own son, who had just doffed his civil robes to enter a new and untried field of duty and honor. The regiment to which Col. Price was attached was detailed for duty in what is now the Territory of New Mexico. It was by his own arms that that province was subdued, though not without several brilliant engagements, in which he displayed the same gallantry that has so distinguished him in the present

contest.

Soon after the close of the Mexican war, a violent political excitement broke out in Missouri. The slavery agitation had received a powerful impetus by the introduction into Congress of the Wilmot Proviso and other sectional measures, whose avowed object was to exclude the South from any portion of the territory which had been acquired principally by the blood of Southern soldiers. The people of the South became justly alarmed at the spread of Abolitionism at the North, and no people were more jealous of any encroachment upon the rights of the South than the citizens of Missouri, a majority of whose leading statesmen were as sound on the slavery question as those of Virginia or South Carolina. In order to cause Col. Benton, who had become obnoxious to a large portion of the Democratic party by his course on the Texas question, the Wilmot Proviso, and other measures of public policy, to resign his seat, and for the purpose of casting the weight of the State against the surging waves of Abolitionism, a series of resolutions, commonly known as the "Jackson resolutions," was introduced into the Senate at the session of 1848-9, by Claiborne F. Jackson, the present governor of Missouri, which passed both houses of the General Assembly. These resolutions were substantially the same as those introduced the year before, by Mr. Calhoun, into the Senate of the United States. From the Legislature Col. Benton appealed to the people, and

made a vigorous canvass against the Jackson resolutions through out the whole State, marked by extraordinary ability and bitterness towards their author and principal supporters. The sixth resolution, which pledged Missouri to "co-operate with her sister States in any measures they might adopt," to defend their rights against the encroachments of the North, was the object of his special denunciation and his most determined opposition. He denounced it as the essence of nullification, and ransacked the vocabulary of billingsgate for coarse and vulgar epithets to apply to its author and advocates. But his herculean efforts to procure the repeal of the resolutions proved abortive. Colonel Benton was defeated for the Senate the next year by a combination of Democrats and State-Rights Whigs; and the Jackson resolutions remain on the statute book unrepealed to this day. Their author is governor of the State; their principal supporters are fighting to drive myrmidons of Abolitionism from the soil of Missouri; and how nobly the State has redeemed her pledge to "co-operate with her sister States," the glorious deeds of her hardy sons, who have fought her battles almost single-handed, who have struggled on through neglect and hardship and suffering without ever dreaming of defeat, afford the most incontestible evidence.

In the canvass of 1852, the Anti-Benton Democrats put forward Gen. Sterling Price as their choice for the office of governor, and the Bentonites supported Gen. Thomas L. Price, at that time lieutenant-governor, and now a member of Lincoln's Congress and a brigadier-general in Lincoln's army. The Anti-Bentonites triumphed, and the nomination fell on Gen. Sterling Price, who, receiving the vote of the whole Democratic party, was elected by a large majority over an eloquent and popular whig, Colonel Winston, a grandson of Patrick Henry.

The administration of Gov. Price was distinguished for an earnest devotion to the material interests of Missouri. At the expiration of his term of office, he received a large vote in the Democratic caucus for the nomination for United States senator, but the choice fell on Mr. James Green.

In the Presidential election of 1860, in common with Major Jackson, who was the Democratic candidate for governor, and a number of other leading men of his party, Ex-Governor

Price supported Mr. Douglas for the Presidency, on the ground that he was the regular nominee of the Democratic party. He moreover considered Mr. Douglas true to the institutions of the South, and believed him to be the only one of the candidates who could prevent the election of the Black Republican candidate. The influence of these men carried Missouri for Douglas.

Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Border States were unwilling to rush into dissolution until every hope of a peaceful settlement of the question had vanished. This was the position of Missouri, to whose Convention not a single Secessionist was elected. Governor Price was elected from his district as a Union man, without opposition, and, on the assembling of the Convention, was chosen its President. The Convention had not been in session many weeks before the radicalism of the Black Republican administration, and its hostility to the institutions of the South, became manifest to every unprejudiced mind. The perfidy and brutality of its officers in Missouri were particularly observable, and soon opened the eyes of the people to the true objects of the Black Republican party. The State authorities decided upon resistance to the Federal government; the Governor issued his proclamation for volunteers; and of the forces raised under this call, who were denominated the Missouri State Guard, Governor Price was appointed major-general, and took the field.

The period of history has scarcely yet arrived for a full appreciation of the heroic virtues of the campaign in Missouri, especially as illustrated in the character of the chieftain whom no personal jealousies could distract or unmerited slights turn from the single course of duty and devotion to his country. He had given the government at Richmond a valuable, but distasteful lesson in the conduct of the war. He did not settle down complacently into one kind of policy, refusing to advance because he was on the defensive, but he sought the enemy wherever he could find him, fought him when ready, and retreated out of his way when not prepared. His policy was both offensive and defensive, and he used the one which might be demanded by the exigencies of his situation. He was something better than a pupil of West Point-he was a general by nature, a beloved commander, a man who illustrated the Ro