d very anxious about the fate
of his flanking column under Sigel, whose attack from the rear
was defeated, he expressed his forebodings to his staff. But the
light of battle shone bright as ever in his eyes; he was killed
leading a magnificent charge; and when, after his death, his little
army drew off in good order, the Confederates, by their own account,
"were glad to see him go."

On the twentieth of September the Confederates under Sterling Price
won a barren victory by taking Lexington, Missouri, where Colonel
James Mulligan made a gallant defense. That was the last Confederate
foothold on the Missouri; and it could not be maintained.

In October, Anderson, who had never recovered from the strain of
defending Fort Sumter, turned over to Sherman the very troublesome
Kentucky command. Sherman pointed out to the visiting Secretary of
War, Simon Cameron, that while McClellan had a hundred thousand
men for a front of a hundred miles in Virginia, and Fremont had
sixty thousand for about the same distance, he (Sherman) had been
given only eighteen thousand to guard the link between them, although
this link stretched out three hundred miles. Sherman then asked for
sixty thousand men at once; and said two hundred thousand would
be needed later on. "Good God!" said Cameron, "where are they to
come from?" Come they had to, as Sherman foresaw. Cameron made
trouble at Washington by calling Sherman's words "insane"; and
Sherman's "insanity" became a stumbling-block that took a long time
to remove.

Grant, in command at Cairo, began his career as a general by cleverly
forestalling the enemy at Paducah, where the Tennessee flows into the
Ohio. Then, on the seventh of November, he closed the first confused
campaign on the Mississippi by attacking Belmont, Missouri, twenty
miles downstream from Cairo, in order to prevent the Confederates at
Columbus, Kentucky, right opposite, from sending reinforcements to
Sterling Price in Arkansas. There was a stiff fight, in which the
Union gunboats did good work. Grant handled his soldiers equally
well; and the Union objective was fully attained.

Halleck, the Federal Commander-in-Chief for the river campaign
of '62, fixed his headquarters at St. Louis. From this main base
his right wing had rails as far as Rolla, whence the mail road
went on southwest, straight across Missouri. At Lebanon, near the
middle of the State, General Samuel R. Curtis was concentrating,
before advancing still f