up from the
southeast.

Maj.-Gen. Leonidas Polk, C. S. A., who had been placed in command of
the Mississippi River, and subsequently had the States of Arkansas
and Missouri added to his Department, had gathered about him in the
neighborhood of Memphis some 25,000 or 30,000 Mississippi, Louisiana,
Tennessee and other troops, with which, scorning Kentucky's claim of
neutrality, he advanced to Columbus, Ky., the terminus of the Mobile &
Ohio Railroad, and 20 miles from Cairo, Ill. Upon the high bluff there
he proceeded to construct one of those "Gibraltars" so numerous in the
early history of the war.

With the force at his command and the opposition he was likely to meet
from the Union commanders in southeast Missouri, a march on St. Louis
by the roads indicated was a promising venture. Besides the forces
immediately around him, he had control of McCulloch's, Pearce's and
Hardee's columns in Arkansas, and potential control of Price's and
Thompson's Missouri forces, making altogether an aggregate approaching
70,000 men.

244

But he hesitated, while Pillow fretted and fumed, and wrote that while
he honored his superior officer as a prelate and admired him as a
patriot, he had small opinion of his military judgment.

M. Jeff Thompson, who had no mean opinion of his own abilities, wrote
to Jefferson Davis that what the Southern Confederacy needed in that
quarter was "a first-class leader," and he cast a unanimous vote for
himself for that position.

In the meantime an event occurred as to the significance of which Polk,
Pillow and Thompson were as unappreciative as the country at large.

In August, U. S. Grant, lately commissioned a Brigadier-General, was
sent down to Cape Girardeau to look after matters in southeast Missouri,
including Cairo, Ill., and he took with him his former regiment,
the 21st Ill., to the command of which Col. John W. S. Alexander had
succeeded. A peculiarity of Gen. Grant, which President Lincoln speedily
noticed, was that wherever he was "things kept moving." There were no
grand reviews, no sounding proclamations, no sensational announcements
of plans, but somehow everybody about him was found to be speedily
employed in an effective way against the enemy. But little clamor ever
came from Grant for reinforcements or additional strength. If he was
given a thousand men he at once set them to work doing all that 1,000
men were capable of. Given 2,000 men he would do twice as much, and
so on