s giving the services to the Government
of about 13,000 very good soldiers. It brought into the ranks many
wavering young men who did not want to fight against the Union, nor did
they want to fight against the South. To enlist for the "defense of the
State" satisfied all their scruples.

261

The time had come when every young man in the State had to be lined up
somewhere. He could not remain neutral; if he was not for the Union he
would inevitably be brought into the Secession ranks.

The law authorized the necessary staff and commanding officers for
this force, and prescribed that it should be under the command of a
Brigadier-General of the United States selected by the Governor of
Missouri.

Our old acquaintance, John M. Schofield, Gen. Lyon's Chief of Staff at
the battle of Wilson's Creek, who had since done good work in command of
a regiment of Missouri artillery, was commissioned a Brigadier-General
to date from Nov. 21, 1861, and put in command of the Missouri Enrolled
Militia, beginning thus a career of endless trouble, but of quite
extended usefulness.

It will be remembered that Brig.-Gen. U. S. Grant, recently promoted
from the Colonelcy of the 21st Ill., had been relieved from his command
at Jefferson City, and sent to that of a new district consisting of
southeast Missouri and southern Illinois. He had made his headquarters
temporarily at Cape Girardeau, to attend to M. Jeff Thompson, who was
determined to lead the way for Gens. Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow
into St. Louis by the Mississippi River route. Grant, as we have seen,
organized his movements so well that Thompson was driven back from
Fredericktown and Ironton with some loss, and returned to his old
stamping-ground at New Madrid, below Columbus, Ky., where Polk had
established his headquarters and the fighting center of the Confederacy
in the West.

262

Polk was reputed to have at that time some 80,000 men under his command,
and Grant, following his usual practice of getting into proximity to his
enemy, transferred his headquarters to Cairo, where, also in accordance
with his invariable habit, he begun to furnish active employment for
those under him in ways unpleasant for his adversary. An enemy in the
territory assigned to Gen. Grant was never allowed much opportunity to
loll in careless indolence. This idiosyncrasy of Gen. Grant made him
rather peculiar among the Union Generals at that stage of the war.

Two days after Grant ar