CHAPTER XVIII. THE REBELS ON THE OFFENSIVE--SIEGE OF LEXINGTON.
|The morning after their arrival at Rolla, the prisoners taken throughthe instrumentality of Jack and Harry were sent to St. Louis, wherethey were held until an exchange was arranged. Colonel Wyman thoughtthe interests of the service would be advanced by keeping the capturedcaptain and his comrades in ignorance of how their seizure wasaccomplished, and in obedience to his orders the two youths kept out ofthe way of the prisoners, and nothing was said in their presence thatcould enlighten them.
It was several months before the captain found out how cleverly he hadbeen taken. At first he was inclined to be very angry with the boys, andvowed vengeance upon them if he ever met them again; but on reflectionhe remarked that all was fair in love and war, and perhaps he was notquite free from blame in talking so readily with two entire strangers.“They played the game well,” said he; “splendidly, in fact, for a pairof youngsters, and if I can ever give them a helping hand when they’rein trouble I ‘ll do it.” He was n’t at all a bad sort of fellow, thatcaptain, and you can be sure that after that he was n’t quite so readyto confide in persons whom he had never seen before.
Not only did the boys have a selection from the captured horses, butthey had a choice of saddles and also of the pistols which formed thearmament of the prisoners.
All the pistols were old, and some of them were quite as likely to dodamage at the rear as at the business end. The captain had the bestweapon of the lot--a Colt’s revolver, and there was another just aboutas good. Jack and Harry drew lots for the choice. The advantage fellto Jack, who immediately picked up the captain’s revolver and handed itover to Harry. “I’ve got the captain’s horse,” said he, “and you oughtto have something to remember him by, so you must take this along.” Thusthe division was settled, and both were happy.
Thus armed and mounted, the boys were what might be called “swells” inthe garrison of Rolla, and the envy of many of their associates. Therewas not a great deal for them to do for a month or more, as the enemydid not make the attack upon the post they had been threatening to make,nor did they even make a feint of one. The boys went on several scoutingexpeditions on their own account, with the approval of the commandingofficer of the post, and though they made some discoveries and obtainedinformation that was of use, they did not succeed in making captures ofprisoners and horses.
Recruiting for the rebel army was in progress in all the interiorcounties of Missouri, and often almost under the eyes of the Unionauthorities. Now and then an expedition seized a squad or companyof recruits and brought them triumphantly within the lines, but as ageneral thing the most of the men who wanted to join the Southern armiessucceeded in doing so. The fact was, it was not possible to garrisonevery town and village throughout the State, and it was thought bestto allow those with secession proclivities to get away to the fieldwhenever they wanted to go, rather than remain and be a cause oftrouble.
General Fremont had been assigned to the command of the Department ofthe Missouri shortly before the battle of Wilson’s Creek, and it wasto him that General Lyon had appealed so earnestly and so vainly forreinforcements to enable him to hold out against the advancing rebels.After the retreat of the army to Rolla and the occupation of Springfieldby the rebels, General Fremont set about organizing a force to take thefield early in the autumn, with the hope of securing possession of thestate and flying the Union flag all over its territory.
After the battle of Wilson’s Creek the disagreement which had existedbetween the rebel leaders--Price and McCulloch--increased, and finallythreatened to end in warfare almost equal to that which they were tryingto wage together against the Union. McCulloch refused to advance furtherinto the state, in spite of the entreaties of Price. An appeal to theConfederate government did not result in securing a peremptory order forMcCulloch to advance as Price desired, and the result was a separation.McCulloch went back to Arkansas, while Price, whose forces had beenstrengthened by recruits from various parts of the state, marchednorthward in the direction of the Missouri river.
Price’s openly-declared intentions were to capture Jefferson City, thecapital, and re-establish Governor Jackson in authority there. A stateconvention had met there in July, and, of course, there was no governorto welcome it, and no commander-in-chief of the state forces. Theconvention declared the office of governor vacant, and chose a newgovernor, Honorable Hamilton R. Gamble, to fill Jackson’s place. It isneedless to say that Governor Gamble was a Union man, and from thattime onward the power of the state was exerted in favor of the nationalgovernment and against the rebellion of the South.
Jackson, the fugitive and rebel governor, never saw the state capitalagain after he left on the day of the memorable flight to Booneville. Hecontinued with the rebel armies in southwest Missouri and Arkansas anddied in the last-named state long before the end of the war. GeneralPrice survived the war and afterward went to Mexico, where he was one ofthe founders of a colony of Americans who had sworn never to live underthe flag of the United States. He died there in 1867.
With twenty thousand men in his command, and with his numbers increasingevery day of his advance, Price reached Lexington, on the banks of theMissouri, having two or three encounters with the Union forces on hisway, none of which were of much account. The superiority of his numbersgave him the advantage, and his opponents wisely retreated as he movedon. Lexington was garrisoned by about two thousand six hundred Uniontroops, consisting of volunteer infantry and Home Guards, under commandof Colonel Mulligan, of the Irish Brigade. A fortification had beenthrown up around the college buildings, which stood in a commandingposition between the new and old towns of Lexington, and about half amile from the river. The bank of the river was a high bluff, and withthe exception of a small supply from cisterns and springs, water forthe garrison had to be brought by hand or hauled by teams from below thebase of this bluff.
Colonel Mulligan arrived at Lexington on the first of September, and thefortification, which he greatly strengthened, had been laid out by thecommander of the troops already there. The spot was not wisely selected,as we shall presently see. As one of the officers said afterwards, “Itwas a very good place for a peace fortress, but very bad for warfare,especially when the warfare has to be defensive.”
The men worked night and day to complete the intrenchments, which wereten feet high, with a ditch eight feet wide, and capable of inclosingten thousand men. Rumors of the advance of Price were in the air, andit was definitely known that he was moving toward Lexington. Appealsfor reinforcements were sent to St. Louis, but they did not succeed inbringing troops to the aid of the garrison, for the simple reason thatnone could be spared from that city.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, the eleventh of September, the Unionscouts and pickets were driven in by the enemy only a few miles out ofLexington. The rebels followed rapidly and attacked one of the angles ofthe fortifications, but not very vigorously. The fighting was kept up onthe twelfth and following days, while the rebel army was coming upand making its preparations for the reduction of the fortification andcapture of the garrison.
There were nearly three-thousand mules and horses inside thefortifications, and as the rebel shot and shell fell amongst them theycaused a great deal of trouble. Numbers of them were killed and theirbodies lay rotting in the sun, the garrison being too much occupied withdefending the position to give attention to burying the dead animalsor doing any other work of the camp. Frequently some of the affrightedanimals broke loose from their fastenings and ran wildly about the camp,and it was finally found advisable to allow some of them to run outside,as their value was not sufficient compensation for the trouble anddanger of caring for them.
The college building was within the inclosure, and occupied as theheadquarters of Colonel Mulligan. Very naturally, it formed a finetarget for the rebel artillery, and they fired away at it with goodeffect. One night they fired hot shot at it, but did not set it on fire;had they succeeded in doing so it would have creat
ed considerable havocamong the garrison, as the ammunition for the defense of the place wasstored in the cellar, where it was covered with dirt and sods.
The rebels went to work leisurely, as before stated. They planted someof their artillery on the river bank, where they stopped every steamboatgoing up or down. They seized the ferry-boats that connect Lexingtonwith the opposite bank of the river, and thus prevented the crossingof reinforcements which were moving from Kansas to join the threatenedgarrison. Several steamboats were thus taken, and for a while, at least,General Price was certainly master of the situation.
The country around Lexington grows a large amount of hemp, and thousandsof bales of this article were stored in the warehouses of the town.The rebels rolled out this hemp, and with it constructed movablefortifications, with which they proceeded to reduce the earthworks ofthe Union army.
And this is the way it was done: The hemp was thoroughly wetted, so thatthere would be no danger of its taking fire, and then the bales wererolled toward the Union works, one after another, until they formed abreastwork; and all the time not a head of a man could be seen. Thenother bales were brought forward and rolled on the top of the firstlayer, and in this way the assailants had a defense that no bullet couldpenetrate. Even the four or five pieces of light artillery which ColonelMulligan possessed could do but little against such a bulwark as this.
The first of these hemp breastworks was thrown up to the west of thefort; another on the north, where it was partially sheltered by timber,followed it very quickly. In the night they were pushed forward, so thatthey were within very short range, and from the spaces between the balesthe rebels kept up a fire upon every Union head that was shown on thatside of the earthworks. It was a repetition of the trick of GeneralJackson with the cotton bales of New Orleans in 1815.
There were several houses within range of the fort, and these werespeedily occupied by the rebels. Then from every rock, elevation, fence,gully and tree bullets were steadily whizzing, the great numbers of therebels enabling them to keep their lines of attack fully manned at alltimes.
Rations were growing short in the fortifications, and the men were wornout with hard work and the necessity of being almost constantly onduty. The stench from the dead animals within the lines was fearful,and threatened to breed an epidemic; some of the Home Guards weredemoralized and wanted to surrender, but the commander refused toentertain the idea of giving up the place.