CHAPTER XXI. ARMY SCOUTING--REFUGEES AND THEIR SUFFERINGS.
|For some time there had been rumors that General Fremont was about tobe removed from the command of the Western Department. It was said thatthe authorities at Washington were greatly dissatisfied with the wayhe had managed affairs, and thought he gave more attention to making agrand display than in pushing operations against the enemy. Rumors ofthe impending change grew more and more numerous, and finally, on thesecond of November, General Fremont was officially notified of hisremoval from command and the appointment of General Hunter in his place.
Then on the third came the report that the enemy was in force atWilson’s Creek, and the plan of battle was formed. But the arrival ofGeneral Hunter at midnight caused the order for the troops to march atdaybreak to be countermanded, and so the army did not move out to fight,greatly to the disappointment of our young friends.
It was fortunate for Fremont’s reputation that the army did not makethe proposed march, as the fact would have been revealed, which wasdiscovered next day by a reconnoitering party which General Hunter sentout, that there was not a rebel camped on the old battleground or anywhere near it. A scouting party of about fifty men had been in theneighborhood, but they did not remain an hour; they had simply satisfiedthemselves that the Union army was still in Springfield, and thenreturned to their army at Cassville.
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“How could General Fremont have been so deceived?” was the very naturalinquiry of Jack when it became known exactly how little foundation therewas for the report of the near presence of the enemy.
“He was deceived by his scouts, I presume,” said Harry. “Suppose we askone of our friends, who ‘ll know more about it.”
So they referred the matter to one of the soldiers attached to thecommissary department, and the latter explained as follows:
“You understand,” said he, “that a general must depend a good deal onwhat his scouts tell him, and to avoid being deceived by them he iscompelled to use a great deal of judgment. There are three classes ofscouts: those who are really brave, cool and truthful; those who intendto be honest, but are timid and credulous, and lastly those who are bornliars and boasters. The first are not always to be had, and at bestare scarce, and so a general’s scouting force is largely made up of thesecond and third classes. The second class get their information fromthe frightened inhabitants, and the fifty or so that composed thescouting party of rebels which came as far as ‘Wilson’s Creek wereeasily magnified into five or ten thousand; the imagination and fearsof the scouts doubled the numbers given by the inhabitants, and thusthe fictitious army was created. As for the liars and boasters, they arealways, if their stories could be believed, doing prodigies of valor andwhipping ten or twenty times their number of the enemy.
“What they principally do is to scare the people through whose countrythey ride, and many of them are not above plundering after a fashion nobetter than downright robbery. Generally they are in no hurry to meetthe enemy face to face, but confine their scouting to places that areentirely safe.”
The soldier knew what he was talking about. Among Fremont’s followerswere several men of this sort with the rank of captain or lieutenant,and several who were unattached to any command and had an air of mysteryabout them. One of them used to ride out of camp about sunset as thoughbent on an important mission. He would return in the morning with athrilling story of a night’s ride, in which he had several times beenfired upon by rebel scouting parties, and had used his revolver withsuch effect as to leave five or perhaps ten of his enemies dead upon theground.
The fact was he went only a mile or two, and there spent the night at afarmhouse, having previously informed himself as to the entire safety ofthe place.
Another so-called scout was a forager whose equal is rarely to be seen.Whenever the army went into camp he would take half-a-dozen companionsand start on a foraging expedition, from which he returned with a variedassortment of things, most of which were utterly unsuited to the uses ofan army in the field and had to be left behind. One day he brought backa wagon drawn by two oxen and two cows, and with a horse attached behindit. Inside the wagon he had a pair of bull-terrier pups about threemonths old, a hoopskirt, and other articles of the feminine wardrobe,a baby’s cradle and also a grain-reaping one, a rocking-chair, somebattered railway-spikes, three door-mats and a side-saddle. Anothertime he returned with a family carriage drawn by a horse and a mule, andcontaining a litter of young kittens without the mother-cat, a bird-cagewith a frightened canary in it, an empty parrot-cage, several boundvolumes of sermons by celebrated English divines, and a box ofgarden-seeds.
This same scout got into trouble afterwards in a queer sort of a way.While on a foraging tour at one time he secured a lot of ready-madeclothing, which he found in a trunk where some salt belonging to therebel authorities had been stored. The quartermaster refused to receivethe trunk and contents, and so the captain carried it to St. Louis andtook it to the hotel where he temporarily stopped.
It so happened that some detectives were hunting for a suspected thief,who was said to be stopping at the hotel. They got into the captain’sroom by mistake and searched his trunk while he was absent; they didnot find the articles they sought but they did find thirteen coats ofdifferent sizes, without any waistcoats or trousers to match. This wasconsidered such a remarkable wardrobe for a gentleman to carry, thatthey did not hesitate to arrest him on general principles. He was lockedup over night and did not succeed in obtaining his liberty until thequartermaster could be found to show that the goods were not stolen, butwere simply the spoils of war.
Immediately after his removal, General Fremont, who had been in commandjust one hundred days, returned with his staff to St. Louis, and thearmy was ordered back to the line of the railway. On the ninth ofNovember it evacuated Springfield, which was soon after occupied byGeneral Price, and the second campaign of the Southwest was over.General Hunter remained only fifteen days in command and was succeededby General Halleck, who proceeded to undo pretty nearly everything thatFremont had established.
Late in November Jack and Harry found themselves once more in Rolla,where a part of the army of the Southwest went into winter quarters. Therebels were content to remain in Springfield, though they sent scoutingand foraging parties at irregular intervals to scour the country betweenthose two points and gather whatever supplies could be obtained.The commander at Rolla also sent out similar expeditions, which werefrequently accompanied by our young friends, and thus each army wasfairly well informed as to what the other was doing.
The retirement of the Union forces gave the rebels great encouragement,and they pushed their recruiting through the interior country with greatactivity. They threatened to capture St. Louis, at least in words, andso loud were their promises that many of their sympathizers believedthem.
During January, 1862, the camp at Rolla was increased by the arrivalof troops from Illinois, Iowa and Kansas, and it was evident that thespring was to open with another campaign. General Samuel R. Curtisarrived and took command, transportation was cut down as much aspossible, stores were accumulated and sent forward as far as theGasconade river, a cavalry division under General Carr was pushedforward, and by degrees the country was occupied to within fifty milesof Springfield, where Price’s army was known to be in force. It wasascertained that McCulloch’s army had gone into a winter camp at CrossHollows, in Arkansas, and would probably move north in the spring tojoin Price, or in case of a Union advance would wait where it was untilPrice could fall back to that position.
Among the regiments that came to Rolla was the Ninth Iowa, whichcontained several officers and many men of the First Iowa, which hadbeen mustered out of service after its return from Wilson’s Creek, itstime having expired. Its colonel, William Vandever, was assigned to thecommand of a brigade, so that the control of the regiment fell to itslieutenant-colonel, F. J. Herron, who had fought at Wilson’s Creek as acaptain in the First Iowa.
Jack and Harry were ov
erjoyed to see so many of their old acquaintances,and at the request of Colonel Vandever the two youths were turned overto his care. They had made such a good record in their scouting servicesduring their stay at Rolla, that Colonel Vandever, whom we will now callgeneral, as he was shortly afterward promoted to that rank, decided tomake use of them as scouts and orderlies whenever occasion offered. Theywere allowed to retain their horses, of which they had taken excellentcare. The animals showed much attachment to their young masters, andevidently were quite reconciled to serving under the Union flag insteadof the rebel one, beneath which they were captured.
Orders to advance were impatiently waited, and at last they came. Earlyin February the army of General Curtis moved out of Rolla with drumsbeating and trumpets sounding, and every indication of a determinationto push on to victory. Sixteen thousand men, in the proper proportionsof infantry, artillery and cavalry, composed the force which was tocarry the flag across the borders of Missouri and into the rebelliousstate of Arkansas.
But before we follow the army of the Southwest and make note of itsfortunes, let us briefly turn our gaze elsewhere.