Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[328] were nearly empty; and while at headquarters everybody signed orders for expenses without authority, the disbursing officers refused to make any transfers of funds. Hence the perpetual conflicts which embarrassed the service and delayed the supplies of which the army stood in need. To all these difficulties were added the demands of the central government, which interfered with the measures adopted by Fremont. Thus, for instance, a few days after his arrival, he was ordered by Scott to send immediately to Washington five thousand men, formed into regiments, armed, and equipped. This would rob him of the only organized forces at his disposal; consequently, this order, prompted by the disquietude which followed the battle of Bull Run, was soon revoked, but it nevertheless caused the suspension for several days of all the movements of troops in the department of the West.

In the mean time, the defeat of the Federals in Virginia had revived the confidence and daring of the secessionists throughout the State of Missouri. The Confederate leaders saw the number of their adherents increase in every direction. In the northern section numerous bands were organizing, persecuting the Unionists, and extending their incursions into the State of Iowa. Along the borders of the Missouri a few partisan bands kept the Federal garrisons of Jefferson City, Booneville, and Lexington in constant alarm. In the south-west McCulloch and Pearce had crossed from Arkansas into Missouri; they were ready to sustain Price, and rendered the situation of Lyon at Springfield very precarious, while the positions occupied by the Federals in the south-east were also seriously threatened. Confederate bands of partisans, gathered and organized by Jefferson Thompson, showed themselves sometimes in the vicinity of Pilot Knob, trying to cut the railway, and sometimes in the neighborhood of Cape Girardeau or Bird's Point. At the same time considerable forces were assembling in East Tennessee, and a small army under General Pillow had already passed over from Tennessee to New Madrid, in Missouri, on the other side of the Mississippi, where it was preparing to take the field. The positions commanding the large navigable streams of the centre of the continent seemed to be in danger. Cairo, the most important, was indeed strongly defended, and its fortifications well supplied with cannon; but