The law authorized the necessary staff and commanding officers for this force, and prescribed that it should be under the command of a Brigadier-General of the United States selected by the Governor of Missouri.
Our old acquaintance, John M. Schofield, Gen. Lyon's Chief of Staff at the battle of Wilson's Creek, who had since done good work in command of a regiment of Missouri artillery, was commissioned a Brigadier-General to date from Nov. 21, 1861, and put in command of the Missouri Enrolled Militia, beginning thus a career of endless trouble, but of quite extended usefulness.
It will be remembered that Brig.-Gen. U. S. Grant, recently promoted from the Colonelcy of the 21st Ill., had been relieved from his command at Jefferson City, and sent to that of a new district consisting of southeast Missouri and southern Illinois. He had made his headquarters temporarily at Cape Girardeau, to attend to M. Jeff Thompson, who was determined to lead the way for Gens. Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow into St. Louis by the Mississippi River route. Grant, as we have seen, organized his movements so well that Thompson was driven back from Fredericktown and Ironton with some loss, and returned to his old stamping-ground at New Madrid, below Columbus, Ky., where Polk had established his headquarters and the fighting center of the Confederacy in the West.
Polk was reputed to have at that time some 80,000 men under his command, and Grant, following his usual practice of getting into proximity to his enemy, transferred his headquarters to Cairo, where, also in accordance with his invariable habit, he begun to furnish active employment for those under him in ways unpleasant for his adversary. An enemy in the territory assigned to Gen. Grant was never allowed much opportunity to loll in careless indolence. This idiosyncrasy of Gen. Grant made him rather peculiar among the Union Generals at that stage of the war.
Two days after Grant arrived at Cairo he learned that Gen. Polk was moving to take Paducah, at the mouth of the Tennessee River, 45 miles above Cairo. This was a most important point, as a lodgment there would have stopped navigation on the Ohio, and absolutely controlled that on the Cumberland and Tennessee. Grant at once decided that he would anticipate him and telegraphed for permission to St. Louis, but his telegram and another one still more urgent received no attention, and he proceeded to act on his own volition, loading his men on the steamers and starting for Paducah in the night, arriving there in the morning, thereby anticipating the rebel advance some six or eight hours. This was characteristic of Grant's other operations around Cairo, and it was not long until he had that point not only free from apprehension as to what Polk might do against it with his mighty army, but he had Polk becoming anxious as to what Grant might do against him at Columbus, which he had proclaimed as the "Gibraltar of the West."
Everywhere in his district Grant had introduced the best discipline into the force of 20,000 men which he had collected. He had looked out carefully for their wants, and had them well supplied, and he was gaining their confidence as well as his own by well directed movements which always led to considerable results.
Fremont, who had at last started out in his grand movement against Price, was fearful that Price's army might be strongly reinforced by Polk from Columbus, and it was made Grant's duty to prevent this.
Grant with his habitual boldness had been desirous of moving directly against Columbus, but the reputed strength of the works and the force there made the suggestion carry shivers to the minds of his superiors, where the memories of Bull Run and Ball's Bluff were so painfully recent. But if Grant was not allowed to do one thing, he would always do another. He heard of a force under M. J. Thompson, numbering about 3,000, on the St. Francois River, about 50 miles to the southwest of Cairo, and promptly started Col. Richard J. Oglesby with about 3,000 men to beat up Jeff Thompson and destroy him.