is
duty was to hold in check the poetical M. Jeff Thompson, the noisy
Gideon J. Pillow and the prelatic Leonidas J. Polk in their efforts to
get control of the southeastern corner of the State and menace Cairo and
St. Louis.

Maj. Sturgis was promptly made a Brigadier-General to date from Wilson's
Creek, and assigned to the command of Northeast Missouri, where he had
five or six thousand men under him.

Capt. Fred Steele had accepted a commission as Colonel of the 8th Iowa;
Capt. Jos. B. Plummer shortly took the Colonelcy of a new regiment, the
11th Mo.; Capt. Totten became Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel of the 1st
Mo. Art., of which Schofield was Major.

200

Notwithstanding the feeling of the officers and soldiers who had
participated in the battle of Wilson's Creek against Sigel, it was found
so necessary to "recognize the Germans" and hold them strongly for the
Union cause that he was made a Brigadier-General to date from May 17,
1861, which put him in the same class of Volunteer Brigadier-Generals as
Hunter, Heintzelman, Fitz John Porter, Wm. B. Franklin, Wm. T. Sherman,
C. P. Stone, Don Carlos Buell, John Pope, Philip Kearny, Joseph
Hooker, U. S. Grant, John A. McClernand and A. S. Williams, all of whose
volunteer commissions bore the date of May 17. This was subsequently a
cause of trouble.

There appeared also another of those figures so common among the State
builders of this country, and upholding to the fullest the character
of a leader of pioneers. James H. Lane was an Indiana man, son of a
preacher; had served with credit as Colonel of Indiana troops in Mexico,
and had been Lieutenant-Governor of Indiana and Member of Congress, but
getting at odds with his party had migrated to Kansas, where his natural
talents and fiery, aggressive courage speedily brought him to the front
as the leader of the warlike Free State men, who resisted with force and
arms the attempts of the Pro-slavery men to dominate the Territory.
His instant readiness for battle and the unsparing energy with which he
prosecuted his enterprises so endeared him to the Free State men that
when the State was admitted there was no question about his election as
her first United States Senator.

201

Kansas had promptly raised two regiments, which had fought superbly
at Wilson's Creek and afterwards joined in the retrograde movement to
Rolla. This left Kansas without any protection, and the people naturally
reasoned that in the advan