OPERATIONS IN THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI. 353 1st December, Gen. Hindman put his whole force in motion to meet the enemy, and, if possible, drive him back, as a large supply of quartermaster and commissary stores had been collected at Van Buren. Owing to delays occasioned by crossing the river and the bad condition of our transportation, the command did not reach the camp on Cove Creek until the evening of the 5th. The position was six miles from Cane Hill, the same where Gen. Price halted on his retreat from Springfield in the winter of 1861. When Gen. Hindman reached this place, he learned that Blunt was camped at Cane Hill, and that Gen. Herron, with five thousand men, was pushing on rapidly from Springfield to reinforce him. It was immediately determined by Hindman to meet this latter force, and, defeating it, to turn upon Blunt, and force him to surrender. He issued an extravagant address to his soldiers, and designated the enemy opposed to them as a combination of "Pin Indians, free negroes, Southern tories, Kansas Jayhawkers, and hired Dutch cut-throats." He declared that unless this ruthless force was defeated, the country would be ruined. In order that Gen. Hindman's plan of operations might be effectual, it was necessary to engage Blunt's attention so as to prevent his falling back to Fayetteville, and forming a junction with Herron. For this purpose, early in the morning of the 6th December, a regiment of cavalry was sent to drive in the enemy's outposts nearest us. At sunrise, the 11th Missouri infantry were pushed forward as far as the cavalry had advanced, to deploy as if to invite attack. It only succeeded in developing a party of Indians, who declined attacking. In the evening, Hindman's whole force was moved up to the ground occupied by the 11th Missouri infantry, and a regiment of cavalry was ordered to drive in the skirmishers, and feel the main body. Some desultory fighting ensued, and continued until nightfall. Hindman's whole command, resting on their arms, were ordered to move at two o'clock in the morning on the roads towards Fayetteville, to attack Herron's force approaching the field of battle. A regiment of cavalry was ordered to remain with one battery of light field pieces, and to commence shelling the enemy in front at daylight. The next morning, the command struck the Fayetteville and Cane Hill road, and surprised the advance-guard of Herron's force, capturing two hundred prisoners. This success appears to have confused Gen. Hindman, and, instead of atacking Herron immediately and with vigour, he divided his force, sending Parsons' brigade in the direction of Cane Hill, as if expecting an attack from Blunt. Meanwhile, Blunt, anticipating a flank movement, had fallen back, and Hindman made a new disposition of his forces. But valuable time had been lost, and the attack was not made on Herron's force until half-past three o'clock in the afternoon. In our line of battle, the Arkansas troops were on the right flank, the First Missouri brigade forming the centre, the Second Missouri brigade the left, and the Texan troops the reserve. The action had scarcely commenced, when Gen. Blunt, who, having burned his stores and his train, had made a rapid movement, by an obscure road leading through a valley, reached the battle-field. The new force appeared upon the Confederate left. It was necessary for the First Missouri brigade to change its front from the east to the north, to meet the charge which the enemy was now preparing to make. Just as the evolution was completed, the combined forces of the enemy advanced to the charge. It was gallantly met by the two Missouri brigades. As night fell, the action was decided. The enemy was driven from the field; Blunt swinging around, uniting with Herron, and both retreating. The Federal forces fell back six miles. The evidences of victory were with the Confederates. Their loss was about two hundred killed and five hundred wounded; that of the enemy, by his own accounts, exceeded a thousand. It appears, however, that Hindman, who had blundered during the day, although he had yet succeeded in driving the combined forces of Herron and Blunt, was so impressed with the fact they had formed a junction, that he determined to retreat during the night. The wheels of his artillery were muffled, and the Confederates actually retreated from a field of victory. Thus terininated the battle of Prairie Grove (as it was called by the Confederates); the importance of which was that it virtually decided the war north of the Arkansas River. The country of the Trans-Mississippi suffered from peculiar causes in the war. A great part of it not only laboured under military incompetency; but singular disorders affected the whole population, and an enormous despotism cursed the land. Gen. Hindman, who had but a weak head in military matters, exhibited an iron hand in the management of other affairs, usurped all authority in the country he occupied, and exercised a tyrannical rule, that only finds a parallel in antique despotism. His conduct was made the subject of a special investigation in the Congress at Richmond. It was discovered that he had established within his military lines what he was pleased to call a "government ad interim." He superseded the entire civil authority; he deliberately amplified the conscription law by proclamation; he declared martial law throughout Arkansas and the northern portion of Texas; and he demanded, under the penalty of death, the services of all whom he had tyrannically embraced in his conscription lists. Crops were ravaged; cotton burned, or appropriated to unknown purposes; while straggling soldiers, belonging to distant commands, traversed the country, armed and lawless, robbing the people of their property under the pretence of "impressing" it for the Confederate service. To a great part of the country within the limits of his command Hindman extended no protection whatever. Hostile Indians CRUELTIES AND DISORDERS OF GEN. HINDMAN. 355 began collecting on the border, and Federal emissaries were busy among the Cherokees and Creeks, inciting disaffection. Detachments of Federal cavalry penetrated, at will, into various parts of the upper half of Arkansas, plundering and burning houses, stealing horses and slaves, destroying farming utensils, murdering men loyal to the Confederacy, or carrying them into captivity, forcing the oath of allegiance on the timid, and disseminating disloyal sentiments among the ignorant. Such a condition of affairs could not long be tolerated, although the statements of it were slow in reaching Richmond, and obtaining the just consideration of the Government there. The cruelties and disorders of Hindman-notoriously the favourite of President Davis-became at last so enormous in Arkansas, that it was unsafe that he should remain there longer, when he was brought across the Mississippi River, and assigned to some special duty. It was indeed remarkable that the people of the TransMississippi, with such an experience of maltreatment, and in spite of a conviction that the concerns of this distant portion of the Confederacy were grossly neglected at Richmond, should yet have, even to the latest period of the war, faithfully kept and fondly cherished their attachment to the vital principle of our struggle and the common cause of our arms. It was an exhibition of devotion and of extraordinary virtue in the Confederate States west of the Mississippi River that should be omitted in no historic record of the war. CHAPTER XXI. REVIEW OF POLITICAL QUESTIONS IN THE WAR.-THE THREAD OF ANTI-SLAVERY LEGISLATION -PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S HESITATION. THE OPPOSITION TO HIS ADMINISTRATION.-SCHEME OF COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION.-HOW VISIONARY.-MR. LINCOLN'S MOTIVES IN SUGGESTING IT.-THE PRESIDENT AND THE CHICAGO DEPUTATION. HIS CHARACTERISTIC DISCOURSE ON SLAVERY.-HIS REFERENCE TO THE POPE'S BULL AGAINST THE COMET.—POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE BATTLE OF SHARPSBURG.—THE MASK DROPPED. THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION.-MISREPRESENTATIONS OF IT.-AN ACT OF MALICE TOWARDS THE MASTER, NOT ONE OF MERCY TO THE SLAVE.-PRETENCE of MILITARY NECESSITY." 66 --DISHONOUR OF THE PLEA.--PROOF OF ITS FALSEHOOD.-EFFECT OF THE EMANCIPATION THE beginning of the year 1862-when the heavy operations of the war on land were suspended by the rigour of winter-presents a convenient period for review of some political questions in the war. The thread of Anti-Slavery legislation appeared for some time to have been broken with the decree of emancipation in the District of Columbia. President Lincoln evidently hesitated to identify his Administration further with the radical party in the war. A formidable opposition was gath ering in the North with especial reference to the Anti-Slavery acts of the Government at Washington; it was declared that these acts were divert THE ANTI-SLAVERY LEGISLATION. 357 ing the war to the ends of fanaticism, and that the Government had deliberately violated the pledge contained in the resolution offered by Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky, and passed almost unanimously in the House of Representatives at the beginning of the civil conflict, to the effect that the war should not be waged in hostility to the institutions of any of the States. President Lincoln, as we have already seen, had been advised, in the summer of 1862, that McClellan disapproved of any infraction of the laws of civilized and Christian warfare; that he disapproved of arbitrary arrests in places where the insurrection did not prevail; that he did not contemplate any seizure of private property for the support of the army, or measures for punishing or desolating the region invaded; but that he earnestly desired that the war should be carried on as a duel between organized armies, and not against non-combatants; that the institutions of the States. should be protected; that no proclamation of freedom, incensing a servile race to indiscriminate massacre of helpless whites, and inviting the destruction of unoffending blacks, should be permitted; in fine, that, wherever it was possible, the military should be subordinate to the civil authority, and the Constitution alone should be the guide and glory of heroic sacrifice. It is remarkable that President Lincoln, in the summer of 1862, gave no distinct and decided evidence that this plan of action was obnoxious to him. His course at this time on the slavery question was rather disposed to conciliate both parties in the North; and he did nothing more than make a bungling experiment at compromise in proposing a scheme of compensated emancipation, which being excessively visionary and impracticable, soon passed out of the public mind. It was readily seen by men of all parties that this scheme would create a pecuniary burden which the Government would be utterly unable to carry along with the expenses of At the rate of $300, it was calculated that the slaves in the insurgent States would be worth $1,049,508,000; and adding the cost of compensation to the Border States, at the same rate, the aggregate expense of emancipation would be $1,185,840,300. There was no disposition on the part of the tax-paying public to meet such liabilities in addition to the war debt; and the scheme of compensated emancipation never went further than a record of votes in Congress. That body passed a resolution that "the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such a change of system." In pursuance of this resolution, President Lincoln transmitted to Congress the draft of a bill upon the subject. The bill was referred to a committee, but no action was taken upon it, nor did any of the Border States respond to the President's invitation to take the initiative in his scheme, and try the virtue of the resolution adopted by Congress. |