They had

it was necessary to carry on conversation in whether the scalp was peeled from the brow of whispers. The braying of the mules through friend or foe. All would alike count as trothe long hours of the night was painful to hear. phies of their prowess around their camp-fires. Many of them had been without water for forty-The rebels complained that they rendered but eight hours, and without food for twenty-four. little efficient service; that they were bewilThe patriot commanders passed a sleepless dered by the deafening roar of battle. They night. Though Curtis kept up good courage had been accustomed to the rifle. and was sanguine of ultimate success, the su- heard the war-whoop. But when they saw periority of the foe in numbers was so great 12-pounders running around on wheels, causthat most of the officers, though prepared for a ing the forest to tremble with their thunderings, desperate fight, silently and anxiously awaited while shells shrieked through the air, prostrated the dawn. The long-looked-for light at length large trees, and exploded with carnage which appeared in the east; and the sun, like a fiery swept away whole platoons, their amazement ball, shone portentously through the murky passed all bounds. No power could hold them clouds. The enemy held the only road by to the discipline essential in modern warfare. which we could retreat. The woods and hills The Texan Rangers were more fierce and swarmed with their troops. They outnum- savage even than the Indians. Probably a bered the patriots three to one, and a thousand more desperate set of men never existed. The of our men had already fallen dead or wounded. Richmond Whig speaks, with much complacenSoon after the dawn there was some skirm-cy, of the Texans, "with their large, heavy ish firing, and at eight o'clock, as the can- knives, driving skulls in twain, mingling blood noniers stood to their guns along the entire and brains and hair." This spectacle, the Whig line, the fire was opened. Sigel arranged his amiably declares, "was not devoid of satisfacbatteries in a way which elicited the highest tion." admiration from the most scientific observers. He soon had thirty pieces of artillery opening upon the enemy a fire which no human courage could endure. Canister and grape tore through the crowded ranks of the foe with awful destruction. An officer in the regular army, who was a witness of this scene, writes:

"For two hours and ten minutes did Sigel's iron hail fall thick as autumn leaves, furious as the avalanche, deadly as the simoom. One by one the rebel pieces ceased to play. Onward crept our infantry. Onward crept Sigel and his terrible guns. Shorter and shorter became the range. No charge of theirs could face that iron hail, or dare to venture on that compact line of bayonets. Again Sigel advanced his line, making another partial change of front. Then came the order to charge the enemy in the woods; and those brave boys, who had lain for hours with the hail and shot of the enemy falling upon them and the cannon of Sigel playing over them, rose up and dressed their ranks as if it were but an evening parade. And as the Forward' was given the Twenty-fifth Illinois moved

in compact line, supported on the left with the Twelfth Missouri acting as skirmishers, and on the right by the Twenty-second Indiana. As they passed into the dense brush they were met by a terrible volley. This was answered by one as terrible and far more deadly. Volley followed volley; yet on and on went that line of determ

ined men. Steadily they pushed the rebel force until they gained more open ground. Here the Confederate forces broke in confusion and fled. The day was ours. And the battle of Pea Ridge was added to the already long list of triumphs clustering around the old starry flag."

The rebels retreated precipitately through the gullies and ravines, pelted by round shot and shell from such batteries as could be brought to bear upon their rapidly-vanishing lines. Sigel pursued them some miles toward Keitsville, firing on them as they ran away. M'Culloch, a rebel of reckless daring and much military skill, fell in this engagement. His loss was greatly deplored by his comrades.

The Indians, goaded on by Albert Pike, were roused, like wolves having once lapped blood, to demoniac ferocity. They gratified their savage propensities by scalping the wounded; and it is said that it made no difference to them

The patriot loss in killed, wounded, and missing, as given by General Curtis, was 1351. The rebel loss has not been ascertained; but it must have been far more severe, from their crowded masses and the terrible accuracy and destructiveness of our fire. The rebels retired south of the Boston Mountains, to repair damages and to recruit their forces. General Curtis established himself at Keitsville, and received reinforcements from Kansas and Missouri. Then ensued for many weeks a series of marchings and countermarchings to baffle the designs of the rebels. The story of these arduous campaignings through darkness and storms, traversing with weary footsteps wide and miry prairies, and fording swollen streams, can probably never be told.*

These movements, though all-important, though accomplishing great results, though accompanied with the heroic endurance of fatigue, exhaustion, and death, were uneventful in those incidents which give so dreadful an interest to the carnage of the field of battle. By the middle of April General Curtis was marching through the State with the strides of a conqueror. In that sunny clime the chilling winds of winter had passed away, and every where verdure and summer's bloom cheered the eye. Foraging and scouting parties were moving in all directions, sweeping vehemently before them every form of opposition. now set out for Little Rock, the capital of the State, on the Arkansas River. Leaving the Boston Mountains on his right he marched by the way of Salem and Batesville. At Bates

Curtis

For this narrative of the great victory at Pea Ridge I am indebted to the official reports of Generals Curtis and Sigel, and of the subordinate officers, Colonels Jeff. C. Davis, Pattison, Washburn, White, and others; also to an admirable description given by an officer in the regulat army, and a very minute detail from the correspondent of the New York Herald. I have also examined the rebel narrative given in the Richmond Whig.

ville he expected to meet a gun-boat expedition, which was fitted out at Memphis under Colonel Fitch, to descend the Missouri, and steam up the White River with supplies and reinforcements. But this expedition, consisting of three gun-boats and a transport, having on board the Forty-sixth Indiana Regiment, met with disaster, and failed to accomplish its object.

through the State, and in great danger of being surrounded, cut off from his base of supplies at Springfield, and starved into surrender. He therefore decided to move his army across the State to Helena, on the Mississippi. That river, then traversed above Vicksburg by our gun-boats, could be his line of communication with the North.

But such a march as this, through an almost pathless wilderness, where there were scarcely any opportunities for forage, and all necessary supplies were to be transported with the army; where forests were to be penetrated, vast plains traversed in the blaze of a July sun, and rivers forded or bridged; while guerrillas were hovering on his flanks, and a vigilant and daring foe, familiar with the country, was throwing every possible impediment in his way, and often gathering in strength to give him fierce battle, involved difficulties which required the highest

The boats successfully entered the White River, and had ascended the stream some fifteen miles, to a point near Saint Charles, when they encountered a concealed battery. Though the troops landed and captured the battery, it was not until a shot had pierced the steamdrum of the Mound City, filling the boat with scalding vapor, which drove the men into the river. Nearly every one was scalded. Out of a crew numbering 175 but 23 escaped uninjured. After the explosion took place the rebels fired upon the scalded men who were strug-qualities of genius and heroism to surmount. gling helplessly and drowning in the stream.

The loss of the Mound City, and the necessity of sending two other steamers back to Memphis to convey the wounded there arrested the immediate progress of the expedition, though it subsequently reached its place of destination. The scene of suffering witnessed as these scalded men were collected is too painful to record. Awful has been the price of misery and of death through which our country has been redeemed from the assaults of rebellion. Thirty-seven of these unhappy men died on their passage to Memphis. This disaster and victory-for the batteries were taken, and White River thrown open-occurred on Tuesday, June 17, 1862. Among the many incidents of the disaster may be mentioned that a sailor by the name of Jones leaped, badly scalded, through one of the port-holes into the river. As he was swimming around to get to some one of the boats he received three gun-shot wounds-one in the leg, one in the shoulder, and one in the back. Still he kept afloat, and not being able to reach any of the small boats was swept down the rapid stream nearly half a mile, where he was taken on board the Lexington, and is probably still living.

Even before the army commenced its march it was exposed at times to severe deprivation for want of food.

The distance to be traversed was nearly two hundred miles, and the march occupied about eighteen days. On the 24th of June Curtis abandoned his communications with Springfield, Missouri, which had been for some time his base of supplies, called in his guards, and commenced his adventurous march. At Jacksonport, twenty-five miles from Batesville, where the Big Black River enters into the White, a delay of five days occurred to make still more efficient preparations. He then again put his columns in motion, to push forward with the utmost possible rapidity.

There was a band of about twelve hundred rebels in front of him, to destroy the bridges, barricade the roads with trees felled by the forced labor of the negroes, to fire upon his trains from the cane-brakes as they could get opportunity, and to place every possible obstacle in the way of his advance. There were frequent skirmishes as our troops fought their way along, until, on the 7th of July, they encountered a force of six Texan regiments upon the banks of the Cache River, who were pre

ade of fallen timber. But few have heard of the battle of Bayou Cache; and yet there was exhibited there military discipline and bravery which could not have been surpassed on the world-renowned arenas of Austerlitz and Waterloo.

The situation of Curtis was now very alarm-pared to dispute our advance behind a blocking. He was nearly destitute of provisions, far distant from his sources of supply, and surrounded by envenomed foes. To add to the embarrassments of this heroic leader it became necessary just at this time to concentrate all our forces for the siege of Corinth. Curtis received dispatches calling for ten regiments to be sent immediately, by forced marches, to Cape Girardeau. Without a murmur, though it must have been with deep pangs of regret, he yielded to a necessity which frustrated all his plans. But for this in a few days the flag of the Union would have floated over Little Rock, and Arkansas would have stood forth redeemed. Curtis thus found himself with a very feeble band, altogether too weak to prosecute a vigorous war against twenty thousand rebels dispersed

Colonel Hovey, of the Thirty-third Illinois regiment, was ordered to open the road. Parts of four companies of the Eleventh Wisconsin, under Colonel Harris, were in the advance. Cautiously they moved forward with one small rifle piece, belonging to the First Indiana cavalry, under Captain Potter. As this little band reached a turn in the road they came suddenly upon two Texan regiments of cavalry, with a regiment of infantry. Their first greeting was a volley of bullets, which killed five of our men

and wounded both Colonel Harris and Captain | tumbled twenty-five of the foe from their sadPotter. The fire was promptly returned from dles, and caused the whole column to real and both musketry and the rifle-gun. But now, stagger; and as volley followed volley from with loud yells, the rebels came rushing on in their concealed assailants the rebels broke and an impetuous charge. Our men fell back, but fled, utterly panic-stricken. still pouring volley after volley into the ranks of the foe.

It was now about half past ten o'clock in the morning. Just then Colonel Wood, who had been sent fifteen miles from the camp to save a bridge from being destroyed at Bayou de Vieu, and which enterprise he gloriously ac

Hovey, who was at some distance in the rear, hearing the firing, and seeing the clouds of dust which rose above the trees and filled the air, pressed forward with the Thirty-third Il-complished, came up at full speed with the linois, and very sagaciously placed his men in ambush by the side of the road. Our overpowered troops, still firing as they retreated, were pursued by the rebels, who uttered loud yells as they rushed furiously forward. Suddenly there was poured in upon them a crash of musketry from the patriots in ambush which

First Indiana. They were greeted with cheers, which added to the dismay of the disordered foe. Colonel Hovey rode up to Wood, exclaiming, "You will find the rebels down there. Colonel, thick enough. Pitch into them!" No second word was needed. With cheers the cavalry plunged forward, the horses leaping a