assumed command at St. Louis. Fremont's regime had left the
whole department in the most deplorable confusion. Halleck reported that
he had no army, but, rather, a military rabble to command and for some
weeks devoted himself with energy and success to bringing order out of
the chaos left him by his predecessor. A large element of his difficulty
lay in the fact that the population of the whole State was tainted with
disloyalty to a degree which rendered Missouri less a factor in the
larger questions of general army operations, than from the beginning to
the end of the war a local district of bitter and relentless factional
hatred and guerrilla or, as the term was constantly employed,
"bushwhacking" warfare, intensified and kept alive by annual roving
Confederate incursions from Arkansas and the Indian Territory in
desultory summer campaigns.

XIX

Lincoln Directs Cooeperation--Halleck and Buell--Ulysses S.
Grant--Grant's Demonstration--Victory at Mill River--Fort Henry--Fort
Donelson--Buell's Tardiness--Halleck's Activity--Victory of Pea
Ridge--Halleck Receives General Command--Pittsburg Landing--Island No.
10--Halleck's Corinth Campaign--Halleck's Mistakes

Toward the end of December, 1861, the prospects of the administration
became very gloomy. McClellan had indeed organized a formidable army at
Washington, but it had done nothing to efface the memory of the Bull Run
defeat. On the contrary, a practical blockade of the Potomac by rebel
batteries on the Virginia shore, and another small but irritating defeat
at Ball's Bluff, greatly heightened public impatience. The necessary
surrender of Mason and Slidell to England was exceedingly unpalatable.
Government expenditures had risen to $2,000,000 a day, and a financial
crisis was imminent. Buell would not move into East Tennessee, and
Halleck seemed powerless in Missouri. Added to this, McClellan's illness
completed a stagnation of military affairs both east and west. Congress
was clamoring for results, and its joint Committee on the Conduct of the
War was pushing a searching inquiry into the causes of previous defeats.

To remove this inertia, President Lincoln directed specific questions to
the Western commanders. "Are General Buell and yourself in concert?" he
telegraphed Halleck on December 31. And next day he wrote:

"I am very anxious that, in case of General Buell's moving toward
Nashville, the enemy shall not be greatly reinforced, and I think there
i