Buckner decided to espouse the Confederate cause while still acting as Adjutant-General of the State of Kentucky. The commission, presumably, was never tendered to him.

Changes of Union commanders were taking place in the West with such frequency as to alarm the loyal people and shake their faith in early success.

Brigadier-General W. S. Harney, in command of the Department of the West, with headquarters at St. Louis when the war broke out, was relieved, and, on May 31, 1861, Nathaniel Lyon, but recently appointed a Brigadier-General of Volunteers, succeeded him. Lyon lost his life, August 10th, while gallantly leading his forces at Wilson's Creek against superior numbers under General Sterling Price. General John C. Fremont assumed command of the Western Department, July 25th, with headquarters at St. Louis. He was the first to proclaim martial law. This he did for the city and county of St. Louis, August 14, 1861.'

He followed this (August 30th) with an emancipation proclamation, undertaking to free the slaves of all persons in the State of Missouri who took up arms against the United States. or who took an active part with their enemies in the field; the other property of all such persons also to be confiscated. The same proclamation ordered all disloyal persons taken within his lines with arms in their hands to be tried by court-martial, and if found guilty, shot.'

President Lincoln disapproved this proclamation in the main. He ordered Fremont, by letter dated September 2d, to allow no man to be shot without his consent, and requested him to modify the clause relating to confiscation and emancipation of slaves so as to conform to an act of Congress limiting confiscation to "property used for insurrectionary purposes."

Lincoln assigned as a reason for this request that such confiscation and liberation of slaves" would alarm our Southern Union friends and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky." Fremont declining to

1 War Records, vol. iii., pp. 255, 442.

2 Ibid., pp. 466, 469, 485, 553, 567.

modify his proclamation, Lincoln, September 11th, ordered it done as stated.'

But as matters did not progress satisfactorily in Fremont's Department, he was relieved by General David Hunter, October 24th, who was in turn relieved by General H. W. Halleck, November 2, 1861.'

Brigadier-General U. S. Grant, September 1, 1861, assumed command of the troops in the District of Southeast Missouri, headquarters Cairo, Illinois.'

The most notable event of 1861, in Grant's district, was the spirited battle of Belmont, fought November 7th, a short distance below Cairo. Grant commanded in person, and was successful until the Confederates were largely reinforced, when he was obliged to retire, which he did in good order.

The Confederates were led in three columns by Generals Leonidas Polk, Gideon J. Pillow, and Benjamin F. Cheatham.

46

The event, really quite devoid of substantial results to either side, save to prove the valor of the troops, was the subject of a congratulatory order by Grant, in which he states he was in all the battles fought in Mexico by Generals Scott and Taylor, save Buena Vista, and he never saw one more hotly contested or where troops behaved with more gallantry. The Confederate Congress voted its thanks to the Confederate commanders and their troops for their" desperate courage, by which disaster was converted into victory.'

2

General Robert Anderson was relieved, October 6, 1861, and General W. T. Sherman was assigned to command the Department of the Cumberland."

Sherman personally informed Secretary of War Cameron and Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas (October 16th) that the force necessary in his Department was 200,000 men.' This was regarded as so wild an estimate that he was suspected of being crazy, and he was relieved from his Department

1 War Records, vol. iii., pp. 466, 469, 485, 553, 567.

November 13th.' Thereafter, for a time, he was under a cloud in consequence of his estimate of the number of troops required to insure success in a campaign through Kentucky and Tennessee. We next hear of him prominently in command of a division under Grant at Shiloh.

As the war progressed his conception of the requirements of the war was more than vindicated, and he became later the successful commander of more than two hundred thousand men.'

Brigadier-General Don Carlos Buell relieved Sherman of the command of the Department of the Cumberland, and was assigned (November 9th) to the Department of Ohio, a new one, consisting of the States of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, that part of Kentucky east of the Cumberland River, and Tennessee, headquarters, Louisville."

The War Department ordered from the commands of Generals Cox and Reynolds in Western Virginia certain of the Ohio and Indiana regiments, and this order caused the 3d Ohio, with others, to counter-march over November roads via 1 War Records, vol. v., p. 570.

Sherman was, in January, 1861, Superintendent of the Military Academy at Alexandria, Louisiana, over the door of which, chiselled in marble, was its motto: By the liberality of the General Government of the United States. The UnionEsto perpetua."

As early as January 9th, an expedition of five hundred New Orleans militia under Colonel Wheat, accompanied by General Braxton Bragg, went by boat to Baton Rouge and captured the United States arsenal with a large amount of arms and ammunition. The Confederates sent two thousand muskets, three hundred Jäger rifles and a quantity of ammunition to Sherman at Alexandria, to be by him received and accounted for. Finding himself required to become the custodian of stolen military supplies from the United States, and having the prescience to know that war was inevitable, he, January 18, 1861, resigned his position, settled his accounts with the State, and took his departure North.

Later we find him in St. Louis, President of the Fifth Street Railroad, and when, May 10th, the rebels at Camp Jackson were surrounded and captured, he, with his young son, "Willie "-now Father Sherman, and high in the Catholic Church were on-lookers and in danger of losing their lives when the troops, returning from the camp, were assailed and aggravated to fire upon the mob, killing friend and foe alike. Sherman fled with his boy to a gulley, which covered them until firing ceased.—Sherman's Memoirs, vol. i., pp. 155, 174.

3 War Records, vol. iv., pp. 349, 358.