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29 1 Of Conquest and Liberation From Arkansas into Missouri On Monday, September 26, a column of blue-clad riders galloped down the gravel road between Shut-in Gap toward the village of Arcadia disrupting lunch for a small group of pickets watching from a roadside shade tree. Although the others mistook the riders coming toward them as militia on their way to Fort Davidson, Sergeant Azariah Martin, a Kentucky-born twenty-fiveyear -old Confederate volunteer, insisted otherwise. Only the previous winter, Union troops had found Martin wounded in the military hospital at Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Paroled, he had returned home, enrolled in the state’s militia to fight guerrillas, and, finally, joined the newly organized Forty-seventh Missouri . Martin had only worn the Federal uniform for three weeks when he saw the men in blue and insisted,“They are rebels! I’ve seen too many rebels to not know rebels when I see ’em!”1 No enemy column that size would not be entering the valley without a big fight in the works. Although the Confederate movement of September 1864 aimed at one of the largest cities in America but moved through some of the most-isolated and sparsely populated terrain in the region. The invaders scattered to permit easier foraging through the countryside. This also disguised the scale of their forces, which seemed to appear piecemeal at various points in southeastern Missouri near the Arkansas line. Yet, the expedition could not risk concentrating to deal with the fortified enemy garrison in the Arcadia Valley. The first attempt to test Union strength in the area is what surprised Sergeant Martin and his comrades. Opening Moves The Federal authorities had an ample forewarning. In early September, Arkansas rumors of an imminent invasion reached General Cadwallader Colder Washburn at Memphis. On September 2, he proposed to hold at Cairo units of 30 The Beginning General Andrew Jackson Smith’s Sixteenth Corps on their way from Louisiana to Georgia. Grant and others in the national command chose to err on the side of caution, permitting advance detachments of Smith’s men to wait at Cairo.2 The arrival of these troops in St. Louis would minimize the dependence of the Department of Missouri on the militia, but Smith’s men turned up only in drips and drabs themselves. Other indications of Confederate intentions turned up. The Federal authorities in southwestern Missouri intercepted a September 7 letter from Confederate colonel Frank Gordon to his wife, stating that General Jo Shelby would be leaving for Missouri the next day, and detailed a plan focused on central Missouri , whereby 12,000 Confederates under Price would “march by way of Rolla direct to Jefferson City.”3 Although it included the correct size of Price’s force— which Gordon and Shelby may have mistakenly expected the Federals to learn from scouts—the disinformation as to their route caused no end of confusion for weeks. However, while Federal commanders accepted such information about the route, they remained utterly incredulous about the numbers involved. They rightly questioned rumors of 20,000 and upward, doubting the presence of so many thousands “where there is scarcely subsistence for as many hundred, is simply preposterous.” Remarkably, General Frederick Steele of the Federal District of Arkansas contributed almost nothing to understanding the enemy force that had passed through his chain of garrisons. Although Steele had an army several times larger than either Price or the threatened Unionists in Missouri , he diverted roughly 4,000 of Smith’s men to his own purposes on September 8. Until September 17, Steele used General Joseph A. Mower’s division of Smith’s corps not to probe the forces to his north but to bolster his own positions on the Arkansas River.When Steele finally did send Mower’s men looking for Price, they moved as infantry in pursuit of a largely mounted Confederate column and never got within a hundred miles of Price.4 In short, those military organizations with the most men and resources siphoned off what was destined for those with the least. Mid-September brought the first of Smith’s men to St. Louis.A former slaveholder and Indian fighter, Smith had actually mustered Sterling Price into the U.S. Army many years before. The previous July, he had bested Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest at Tupelo in Mississippi, but, as an old regular army man seemed to have been regarded as a political ally of the most conservative currents. The Democrats in...

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