Though in the midst of a region of wonderful fertility, with its crops gathered in barns, no one seems to have though of utilizing these. They left them for Price to gather in, while they hauled their supplies from Rolla. Our officers as yet were only in the primer class in war.
The letter also shows the firm hold of the prevailing opinion that Secession was only a temporary madness, from which the people would recover when the Winter gave them time to reflect and reason. Probably this would have been the case had the Government put forth its power with crushing effectiveness. But the first year of the war was to end with the Secessionists successful almost everywhere, and big scores to their credit in Missouri. The fresh disaster at Ball's Bluff on the Potomac unnerved many loyal people.
Possibly President Lincoln did not anticipate that his suggestions would be carried out so literally. His best information was that Price's army had virtually gone to pieces, and that by taking post at Sedalia and Rolla the central and southwestern parts of the State could be effectually controlled by parties sent out from there. He could not have conceived that Price had a strong, compact, aggressive army well in hand, and that the new commander of the Department of the West would march away from it without striking a blow or making a manuver to reduce its capacity for harmfulness.
Certainly some shreds of Lyon's mantle must have fallen on that proud array of new-made Generals, and they would insist on striking a quick, sharp blow, as a return for Lexington, for the honor of the Union army, and to curb Price's rising conviction that he was an irresistible conqueror.
But the next day after receiving his assignment to command, Gen. Hunter made a reconnoissance in force to the battlefield of Wilson's Greek, where Fremont had persisted in believing that Price was waiting to give him battle. He found no enemy on the scene of the terrible battle of two months before. Instead, all his information was to the effect that Price was among the rugged fastnesses about Pineville, 50 miles away, with McCulloch still farther off in the Boston Mountains.
Hunter therefore ordered his columns to countermarch and proceeded to carry out the President's instructions promptly and exactly.
This backward movement, without a blow at Price, abandoned the whole of the Union loving country of southwestern Missouri to the Secessionists, and was a measureless calamity.
The Union people, taking heart from the advance of Fremont with his great army, had returned to their homes and attempted to re-establish themselves upon their farms and in their business. All these hopes were suddenly dashed to the ground by the retirement of the army, and they had to flee again in haste before the immediate advance of Price to occupy the abandoned region.