had the day before made at this point an unsuccessful attack upon General Curtis, was found drawn up in order of battle, and fully prepared for a most stubborn resistance. The battle opened at 7 a.m., and at 1 p.m. the enemy was routed and fled from the field. At first General Curtis, with his Kansas forces, took up the pursuit. He soon gave place, however, to Pleasanton's cavalry. At Marais-des-Cygnes, after a march of sixty miles, the enemy was again overtaken. Aroused in their bivouac, at 4 a.m., by the booming of cannon, the Confederates sprang to their horses, and fled without their breakfasts. After being chased to Little Osage, they faced northward for a final stand against their relentless pursuers. Their line of battle displayed eight guns, the only cannon they had brought back with them. General Pleasanton instantly ordered a charge by two brigades, commanded by Generals Benteen and Phillips. The charge was, of course, most splendidly made, and resulted in the quick rout of the enemy, with the loss of their eight guns, and more than 1,000 prisoners, besides many colours, a great amount of small-arms, and the most of their waggons. Among their prisoners were Major-General Marmaduke, Brigadier-General Cabell, and five colonels. A fresh brigade under General Sanborn. now came up, and took the lead in the pursuit. A few miles farther south, the enemy made another stand. Here they were again put to rout, and driven headlong onward until darkness rendered further pursuit impossible. Burning their waggons and other materials, the enemy now took to their horses, and fled for life. Here, from mere exhaustion, Generals Pleasanton and Smith gave rest to the main portions of their forces.

General Blunt, with a body of Kansas troops, and General Benteen's brigade, followed by that of General Sanborn, moved upon the trail of the foe to Newtonia, in the south-western portion of the State. Here General Blunt encountered a stubborn resistance, and would have been worsted had not General Sanborn, after a march of 102 miles in thirty-six hours, come up and secured a victory. With little left, as Mr. Greeley truly says,-" with little left to lose but their bodies and worn-out horses," the enemy escaped into Western Arkansas. General Curtis followed

on as far as Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he routed, with great loss to them and none to us, a body of 2,000 men, who were besieging a small Union force under Colonel Brooks. Long before this last of that memorable series of victories, which sent General Price a returnless fugitive and exile from the State of which he was Governor at the beginning of the war, General Smith, with a corps about 20,000 strong, was on his way to Tennessee to aid Thomas in destroying the army of General Hood at Nashville. We shall speak of the cause and bearing of this event after we shall have considered the campaign in the State last referred to.

Reflections on this campaign.

According to the fixed principles and precedents of all prior campaigns during this war, Generals Pleasanton and Smith, and their bold coadjutors, deserve the deep reprobation of the army and nation. We refer to the relentless pursuit by these men and their forces of General Price and his raiders, after the first signal defeat of those invaders had rendered their prompt retreat from the State of Missouri a certainty. After that defeat, all heart to fight was taken out of Price and his subordinates, and they became possessed of but one desire, and that was the privilege of a peaceful departure from the State which they had invaded, taking along with them the plunder which they had gathered up during their invasion, and which they would so much need in their banishment. All such considerations their relentless pursuers utterly disregarded, not suffering the pursued to carry back one of the guns which they brought with them out of Arkansas and Texas. What, in all the precedents of all leading commanders during the war up to that time, can be pleaded in justification of the reckless conduct of General Sanborn in pushing his command upwards of a hundred miles in thirty-six hours, in order to perfect the disorganization of the debris of that flying foe? Even this did not satisfy the hungry maw of Curtis, but he must press forward into Arkansas, and perfect the paralysis of the Confederate cause there by the cruel defeat of that besieging force at Fayetteville. In this censure, General Rosecrans must

come in for his full share; because he, from his high watch-tower at St. Louis, witnessed that relentless pursuit, and might have stopped it. Yet he never uttered. a prohibition, rebuke, censure, or expostulation, and that when it was perfectly manifest that the pursuers not only grudged the invaders the plunder they were endeavouring to escape with, but the food which the inen were endeavouring to collect to satisfy their famishing stomachs, and even the wild grass with which they were endeavouring to keep their horses from falling under them, and to keep upon the reeling bodies of those animals the flesh they had on when the invasion began. And then, what shall be said of the promptitude with which General Smith, as soon as the ruin of Price was secured, was sent off to Tennessee to enable Thomas to inflict upon Hood the same relentless form of ruin which. Pleasanton and his coadjutors had perpetrated upon Price? What, finally, can be said in apology for Thomas in his palpable departure from the precedents of his illustrious predecessors, and copying such a new and dangerous example as had just been set him in Missouri? No historian can find in the campaigns of those predecessors a single example that can be pleaded in excuse for the two campaigns under consideration. is absolutely undeniable that those predecessors ought to have been dismissed for their incompetency or neglect of palpable duty, or Pleasanton and Thomas should have been cashiered for their reckless and cruel innovations.

It

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE CAMPAIGN OF GENERAL HOOD IN

TENNESSEE.

We now turn to a consideration of the celebrated campaign of General Hood in Tennessee. We here notice two existing misapprehensions in regard to this campaign. As commonly represented, its prime object was to draw General Sherman back out of Georgia. If this was so, why did Hood tarry upon the Tennessee river, crossing but a part of his army over until he had definite information that Sherman had broken from all his communications, and was considerably advanced on his march through that State? And why did Hood, as soon as he was fully assured of Sherman's real purpose, commence his advance upon Nashville? The truth is, that nothing was less desired than Sherman's return to Tennessee, and nothing was more desired than that he should continue his march south. The plan and purpose of Hood's invasion was, undeniably, what we have represented it to have been, a part of a great movement to restore Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri to the Confederacy, to secure a general uprising in the north-west against the emancipation policy of the national administration, and, if possible, to prevent Iowa taking part in the then approaching Presidential election.

The other mistake is that the advance of Hood to Decatur was "a feint to cover his crossing farther west." General Hood, on the other hand, advanced to that point with the serious intent of crossing there, and was induced to change his plan by the prompt and wise dispositions of General Granger, then in command at that place. Knowing that his forces were too small to withstand a general

assault from the army of General Hood, and being well aware of the importance of time to the Union cause, General Granger, to impose upon his antagonist, advanced his entire force, with all his guns, into his front line, everywhere putting on a bold face, making a sortie on his left, and capturing 120 prisoners. Hood, inferring from what was visible in his front that a very large Union force was in Decatur, drew off, and passed the river at Florence.

We shall not stop to detail the senseless folly which characterized this war as conducted by both sides. We refer to those cavalry raids in which this portion of these armies did a great deal of material damage, but accomplished nothing decisive any way. We shall only refer to the essentials of the campaign itself. When he became fully assured that all danger of General Sherman's return to Tennessee was past, General Hood entered in right good earnest upon his intended campaign. His army was divided into three corps, under Generals Cheatham, A. P. Stewart, and S. D. Lee, while his splendid cavalry, 12,000 strong, was commanded by General Forrest. To meet the invading force, quite 55,000 strong, General Thomas could send forward but five divisions of infantry,their number, as we shall see, being greatly increased near the close of the campaign. Falling back, as Hood advanced, first from Pulaski to Columbia, and from this place to Franklin, our army, all its parts being concentrated, made a determined stand here, General Schofield in command, to resist and turn back the further advance of the invading force.

Battle of Franklin.

To understand the nature of the battle-ground at this place, we would state that the Harpeth river, coming down from the south, passes the place on its east side, and then, turning due west, passes it on its north side, the river thus forming two sides of a square. Our army was so drawn up, that, with the river, it formed a hollow square, with Franklin near its centre, our right wing touching the river at the west, and our left at the north-east of the village. One division of our forces was located over the river to the east of the village; while Fort Granger, from