Rodney The Partisan

CHAPTER XVI

THE CONSCRIPTION ACT

Price's men had not been long on the march before Dick Graham, who seemed to have a way of finding out things that were hidden from almost everybody else, told Rodney, confidentially, that their objective point was Warrensburg, and that Price's motive in going there was to capture money to the amount of a hundred thousand dollars, which was being conveyed by a detachment of Federal troops to Lexington. The prospect of securing so valuable a prize was an incentive, and men who were so weary that the near approach of an enemy would not have kept them from falling out of the ranks, marched night and day without a murmur of complaint. Some of the way they moved at double-quick; but they might as well have spared themselves the pains, for when they reached Warrensburg they found the place deserted.

"This shows how impossible it is to trust anybody these times," said Rodney, in deep disgust.

Their regiment having gone into camp, the two friends were strolling about the town to see what they could find, and the first thing they discovered was not at all calculated to allay the indignation they felt at being outwitted by the vigilant Federals. It was a rough charcoal sketch on the wall of a building they passed during their walk. It represented a lean, long-haired, ragged rebel dancing in an ecstacy of rage over an empty money-box. The soldier who drew the sketch was an artist of no mean order, and the picture told its story as plainly as words.

"It proves that the Yankees knew we were coming and what we were coming for," continued Rodney. "It's an insult, and I hope we will not go back until we have thrashed them for it most soundly."

The army rested for two days at Warrensburg, and then moved upon Lexington, whither the money had been conveyed; but Rodney and Dick had no hopes of wearing the new uniforms and wrapping themselves in the warm blankets that their share of the hundred thousand would purchase for them, if they had it. They were afraid they wouldn't get any of it, and this fear was confirmed when their advance guard was severely repulsed by less than half a regiment of Home Guards who were found strongly entrenched at Lexington. The attack, which was renewed on the 12th of September, after Colonel Mulligan arrived with his Irish brigade, bringing the strength of the garrison up to twenty-five hundred men, was even more disastrous than the first, and Price retired to wait until his supplies of ammunition could be brought up. He waited six days, and during that time not a soldier was thrown into the garrison, while Price saw his own army growing daily. Every man in the country for miles around, and every boy, too, who was strong enough to handle a gun, "rushed to Lexington to take part in the victory to which Price invited them." The few Union men there were left in that part of the State came with the rest, because it was the only thing they could do to save themselves and their property from the vengeance of the rebels. The real battle began on the 18th, and on the afternoon of the 20th, after fifty-two hours of constant fighting, when his ammunition and provisions were almost exhausted and his supply of water entirely cut off, the brave colonel, who afterward died on the field of Winchester

gave up the struggle, and surrendered a worn-out garrison of two thousand five hundred men to an army of more than twenty thousand. It was a grand victory – almost as grand as the one Beauregard won over Anderson at Fort Sumter. By it Price secured "a great number of stands of arms, a considerable quantity of ammunition, a vast amount of commissary stores, and nine hundred thousand dollars in hard cash." He did not abuse his power but paid tribute to the courage of the men who had so long resisted him by releasing the soldiers on parole, and keeping the officers only as prisoners.

Having accomplished his object and rallied to his standard all the scattered bands of partisans in Northern Missouri, and hearing that Fremont was advancing upon him, while Hardee, who was to support him by moving up the river from New Madrid, had been driven back, Price turned and ran, sending his mounted troopers to threaten several points at once, misleading the Federals who had hastily assembled to harass his rear, and thus securing an almost unobstructed road for his retreat. These advance troopers had a few engagements, and Rodney and Dick took part in the most of them, but Price could neither be overtaken nor stopped. The two friends were among the first to ride into Neosho, a little town in the southwestern part of the State, toward which the march had been directed, and the first man they met gave them some information that struck them dumb with surprise and indignation. He was a farmer who had just sold a load of provisions to the soldiers, and he drove his empty wagon out of the road to let the regiment pass.

"We're into the mud now as deep as the rest of 'em," said he, as Rodney's company rode by. "If Caroliny gets stretched up by the neck, we-uns will have to be stretched, too."

"What do you mean by that?" inquired Captain Jones.

"The Legislator is over there in that house," replied the farmer, "and they've just give out some kind of a paper saying that this State of Missoury don't belong to the old Union no more, but is one of the Confedrit States of Ameriky."

"Do you mean that the State has seceded?" cried the captain, while his men looked at him and at one another as if they could not understand what the farmer was trying to tell them. "There's cheek for you. Why, the whole of the State, except this part of it right around here, is over-run with Yankees."

"I don't know nothing about that," replied the farmer; and he was obliged to turn around on his seat and shout the words, for Rodney's company had been riding straight ahead all the time. "It's only what I heard. Mebbe you'll find somebody up the street that can tell you all about it."

The story was so improbable that the boys could not make up their minds to believe it. The Legislature, which had run almost as far as it could get without going over the line into Arkansas, had no authority over the State, three-fourths of whose territory was under the control of the Union forces, and level-headed Dick Graham did not hesitate to say, in the presence and hearing of his captain, that if the Legislature had passed an Act of Secession, they were idiots, the last one of them. But the Confederate authorities Were given to doing foolish things. Read the proclamation Jefferson Davis issued from Danville while he was running for his life!

"If that is true we are in a pretty fix," said Rodney, as soon as he could speak. "I came up here to keep out of the Confederate army, and now I am made a Confederate in spite of myself. And so are you. You are under control of the government at Richmond now, and next week you may be ordered to Virginia."

"But I'll not go," exclaimed Dick. "I'll serve right where I am until my time is out, and then I'll go home. But look here. The Richmond government can't order me out of Missouri without violating the very principle we are fighting for – State Rights. They can ask me to go, but just see how utterly inconsistent they will be if they try to compel me to go."

"I hope you are right, but I wouldn't be afraid to bet anything I've got that you are wrong," answered Rodney; and his friend's words did not in the least encourage him. "That would be the right way to do things, but you ought to see that it wouldn't be sensible. What's the use of having Confederate soldiers if they are not to obey the orders of the Confederate government? If it suits them to do it, those fellows in Richmond will ride rough-shod over State Rights."

"Oh, they won't do that," exclaimed Dick, waving his hands up and down in the air. "They can't do it. Their government will fall to pieces like a rope of sand if they try it."

The boys wondered what their general would think of the situation, and when the artillery came into town they found out. A few sections of it wheeled into line at a gallop, and celebrated the secession of the State by firing one hundred guns. Rodney and Dick were intensely disgusted. They listened in a half mutinous way when the adjutant read the act the next day on dress parade, and tossed up their caps and shouted with the rest; but they did these things for the same reasons that impelled hundreds of others in camp to do them – because they knew it would not be safe to show any lack of enthusiasm.

The fact that they were no longer State troops but full-fledged Confederates was not fully impressed upon Rodney and his fellow soldiers until some months later, when the Richmond government was all ready to put its despotic plans into execution. Probably the general commanding saw that there was much dissatisfaction among his men, and did not think it prudent to draw the reins too tight. He drilled his troops a little oftener and a little harder, and was rather more particular about granting furloughs, and this gave the boys no ground for complaint; but they were constantly harassed by the fear that the future had something ominous in store for them.

Price retreated as Fremont advanced, and a second battle was fought at Wilson's Creek, during which the commander of the Union forces made a cavalry charge that is still spoken of as one of the most brilliant episodes of the war. But when Fremont was displaced by Hunter, the latter fell back toward Rolla, thus allowing Price to recover the ground from which he had just been driven. He was prompt to take advantage of the opportunity, this time directing his columns toward Kansas, with the intention of getting supplies for his troops, and cutting the State off from all communication with St. Louis. But Halleck succeeded Hunter on the 18th of November, and before a month had passed away Price in turn was compelled to retreat, his men being captured by the thousand, together with large quantities of arms and supplies of ammunition and provisions. It began to look now, to quote from Dick Graham, as though the boot was on the other foot. Instead of running the Yankees out of Missouri, the Yankees had run them out, fairly and squarely, for when Price went into camp it was over the line in the State of Arkansas. Every one of the plans that the Confederates had made for keeping the State in their possession and capturing St. Louis, had been broken up by the strategy of the Union generals. The battle of Belmont, which took place in the month of November, has been called a Confederate victory, but it was not so in reality. General Grant didn't fight that engagement because he cared a cent for Belmont, for he knew he could not hold it if he got it. All he wanted was to keep the Confederates from sending troops from Columbus, Kentucky, to co-operate with Price in Missouri. He accomplished his object by keeping Polk busy at home, and Price was driven into Arkansas.

"And we are here with him," said Dick to his friend Rodney, as the two lay beside their camp-fire at Cove Creek, talking over the situation. "We said we never would go out of Missouri."

"That is what you said," replied Rodney. "After the farce those old women went through up there at Neosho, taking the State out of the Union when they had no authority over it, I knew we were going to see trouble. And mark my words: we have only seen the beginning of it."

Either General Halleck's army was not as strong as he would like to have had it, or else he over-estimated the strength of the enemy, for he fell back and the Confederates went into winter quarters, Price at Springfield and McCulloch just over the line into Arkansas. Now the two friends had time and opportunity for visiting, but there was no one for them to visit. Dick showed Rodney where his father's house and Mr. Percival's had once stood, but there was nothing left of them but blackened ruins. The rebels had "done the business" for one, and Union men had "cleaned out" the other. Dick fully expected to find it so, for he had often seen such evidence of vandalism and hatred during his long marches through the State. The boys afterward learned that Dick's father and mother had taken refuge with friends in Little Rock, while Mr. Percival's family had, in some mysterious way, succeeded in reaching St. Louis. Rodney was depressed by the sight of the ruins, and thanked his lucky stars that his father and mother lived in a State in which such things never could be done. The few Union men there were in and around Mooreville would never dare trouble his folks, and the Yankees would not be able to penetrate so far into the Confederacy.

Garrison duty, as the boys called their life in winter quarters, was most distasteful to them, and it was with great delight that they listened to the rumors which early in February came up from McCulloch's camp, to the effect that the two armies were to take the field again at once, but that their campaign was to be in a different direction. These rumors did not say that the Richmond government had decided to give up the struggle in Missouri and turn its attention to more important points, but the men, who talked freely in the presence of their officers, declared that that was what the new move would amount to. They were to proceed to New Madrid to operate with the Army of the Center in checking the advance of the Federals, who were threatening Island No. 10.

For once rumor told the truth and the move was made, though not in the way Rodney and Dick thought it would be. One Sunday morning there was a terrible uproar made by a scouting party which came tearing into camp with the information that General Curtis's army, forty thousand strong, was close upon Springfield and more coming. This rumor was also true; and "Old Pap Price," as his men had learned to call him, who was not much of a fighter but a "master hand at running," made haste to get his wagon-train out of the way. To quote once more from Dick Graham, it was hardly worth the trouble, for the oxen were so lean and weak that they could scarcely walk, and the wagons, which were fit for nothing but fire-wood, were loaded with a lot of rubbish that was of little value. But "Old Pap" was bent on saving everything he had, and could not have worked harder to take this train to a place of security if it had been freighted with the money he captured at Lexington. The retreat soon became a rout. The whole country was thrown into a state of alarm, and people came flocking from all directions, bringing with them the few household effects that the different raiding parties had left them. Price kept up a running fight until some of McCulloch's troops came up, and then the Federal advance was checked.

If General Curtis intended this sudden movement for a surprise he could not have selected a better time for it, and if he had kept his two columns together, instead of sending Siegel off with thirteen thousand men to operate in another quarter, Price's army would have "been eliminated from the problem of war," and the battle of Pea Ridge would not have been fought. McCulloch's army was divided, and McCulloch himself was away in another direction surveying a route for the march to New Madrid; and Price, relying upon the inhabitants to keep him posted in regard to the movements of our forces, as well as upon the supposed impassable condition of the roads in his front, was whipped before he knew there was an enemy anywhere within reach of him. Then followed a disastrous retreat of an army without provisions or tents, along a muddy road, through a snow storm so blinding that one could scarcely see ten feet ahead of him, and it went on until it was stopped by a telegram from General Van Dorn, who had been appointed to command the Confederate Army of the West because Price and McCulloch could not agree. The new general, who declared that "all retrograde movements must be stopped at once," and that "henceforth the army must press on to victory," arrived on the 2d of March, drove Siegel out of Bentonville on the 5th, and on Friday and Saturday fought the battle of Pea Ridge – a thing that he might as well have let alone, for he did not do what he set out to do. He retreated one way, while General Curtis went another and settled down to await reinforcements. Van Dorn gave his men to understand that he was not beaten, but he couldn't stop to pursue Curtis, because his orders compelled him to at once proceed with all his available force to join the Army of the Center on the Mississippi.

Then came that dreary march to Van Buren of which we have spoken, and which was a little ahead of anything Rodney had ever dreamed of. The weary and hungry soldiers had long since ceased to expect anything from the commissary department, which had disappeared as completely as though it had never existed, and provisions of every sort were so scarce that the different regiments and companies were obliged to break into little squads and forage on their own account, the only instructions they received being to the effect that they were to get to Van Buren as soon as they could. As Dick and Rodney had the reputation of being excellent foragers, and were known to be well supplied with gold, they had no difficulty in keeping the members of their mess together. The gold brought them corn bread, chickens and milk when Confederate scrip would have failed, and when they came to compare notes with the rest of the regiment at Van Buren, they found that they had fared very well. The bulk of Price's army had passed on ahead of them, going down into cellars and up into garrets, and poking about in hay-mows and stacks in search of provender that had been hastily concealed by the anxious citizens, and Rodney often wondered how McCulloch's men, who brought up the rear, managed to keep body and soul together.

It was a dreary time taken all around, but their troubles did not end when they arrived at Van Buren, as they hoped they would. It is true they again came within sight of a commissary department with an abundance of provisions, a quartermaster's department with a lot of mixed-up baggage and camp equipage, blankets and overcoats that had been thrown off and left at different places along the route, and here they were allowed to rest until the stragglers came up and reported; but their march was not ended. Their destination was Pocahontas, which was nearly two hundred miles farther on.