Sterling Price simply let loose his army on the country evacuated by the Union troops, and a reign of indescribable misery ensued for the Union people and those who were vainly trying to keep the neutral middle of the road. The army was spread out as much as possible in order to gather in recruits and supplies and assert its influence most widely.
From Marshall, in Saline Co., Sterling Price issued a most remarkable proclamation to the people, calling for 50,000 volunteers. He reminded them that their harvests had been reaped, their preparation for Winter had been made, and now they had leisure to do something to relieve the people from the "inflictions of a foe marked with all the characteristics of barbarian warfare." He admitted that the great mass of the people were not in the war, and especially the substantial portion of the population, for, he said, "boys and small property-holders have in the main fought the battles." He begged, he implored that the herdsman should leave his folds, the lawyer his office, and come into camp to win the victory. He even dropped into poetry in his tearful earnestness, quoting the school boy's declamation from Marco Bozarris:
Strike, till the last armed foe expires; Strike, for your
altars and your fires! Strike for the green graves of your
sires, God, and your native land!
An infinitely harmful part of the proclamation was the following:
Leave your property at home. What if it be taken—all taken?
We have $200,000,000 worth of Northern means in Missouri
which cannot be removed. When we are once free the State
will indemnify every citizen who may have lost a dollar by
adhesion to the cause of his country. We shall have our
property, or its value, with interest.
This was naturally interpreted as meaning that all those not distinctly favorable to Secession forfeited their property to those who were.
This seemed ample warrant to the Poor White Trash banditti for seizure of the property of any man whose principles might not be of exactly the right shade.
Experience teaches us that that class of people are pretty certain to find heterodox the opinions of any man who has something they may want. It certainly made a very dark outlook for anybody in Missouri to hold moveable property.
The turbid thrasonics of the proclamation shows that it was not written by Price's Adjutant-General, Thomas L. Snead, who was a literary man. He was then absent at Richmond looking after the fences of his General. The proclamation sounds the more as if it came from the pen of our poetical acquaintance, M. Jeff Thompson, the "Swamp Fox" of the Mississippi. It concluded in this perfervid style: