But, in the name of God and the attributes of manhood, let me appeal to you by considerations infinitely higher than money! Are we a generation of driveling, sniveling, degraded slaves? Or are we men who dare assert and maintain the rights which cannot be surrendered, and defend those principles of everlasting rectitude, pure and high and sacred, like God, their author? Be yours the office to choose between the glory of a free country and a just Government, and the bondage of your children! I will never see the chains fastened upon my country. I will ask for six and one-half feet of Missouri soil in which to repose, but will not live to see my people enslaved.
Do I hear your shouts? Is that your war-cry which echoes through the land? Are you coming? Fifty thousand men! Missouri shall move to victory with the tread of a giant! Come on, my brave boys, 50,000 heroic, gallant, unconquerable Southern men! We await your coming.
Sterling Price established his headquarters again at Osceola, on the banks of the Osage, but sent forward Gens. Rains and Steen to Lexington, the best point on the Missouri to hold the river and afford a passage for recruits coming in from the northern part of the State.
The results of the proclamation were not commensurate with the desperate urgency of the appeal. Large parties of recruits, it is true, tried to make their way toward Price's camp, but many of them were intercepted, and dispersed; strong blows were delivered against Price's outlying detachments, driving them in from all sides. Meanwhile those he had in camp were melting away faster than hew ones were coming in.
Sterling Price had other troubles. He was not a favorite in Richmond. Jefferson Davis was a man never doubtful as to the correctness of his own ideas, and he was most certain of those relating to military men and affairs. He had had extraordinary opportunities for familiarizing himself with all the fighting men, and possible fighting men, in the country. He graduated from West Point in 1828, 23d in a class of 33; none of whom, besides himself, became prominent. He had served seven years as a Lieutenant in the Regular Army on frontier duty, and as Colonel of a regiment in the Mexican War, where he achieved flattering distinction. He had been four years Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, and four years Secretary of War. It must be admitted that his judgment with regard to officers was very often correct; yet he was a man of strong likes and dislikes. His reputation was that of "having the most quarrels and the fewest fights of any man in the Army."
Undoubtedly his partialities drew several men into the Confederate army who would otherwise have remained loyal, and his antipathies retained some men in the Union army who would otherwise have gone South. His reasons for disliking Price are obscure, further than that Price was a civilian, who had had no Regular Army training or experience, and that he believed Price to be in conspiracy to set up a Trans-Mississippi Confederacy. But little evidence of such intention is to be found anywhere, yet that little was sufficient for a man of Davis's jealous, suspicious nature. Repeatedly, at the mere mention of Price's name, he flew into an undignified passion and denounced him unsparingly.
Price's men were carrying havoc as far as they could reach. Nov. 19 they burned the important little town of Warsaw, the County seat of Benton County and a Union stronghold. In 1860 the people of Benton County had cast but 74 votes for Lincoln and but 100 for Breckinridge, while they gave Bell and Everett 306 votes and Douglas 574. Dec 16 Platte City, County seat of Piatt County, was nearly destroyed by them. This was another Union community, and a large majority of the people were Bell-and-Everett Unionists or Douglas Democrats. Dec. 20 a concerted foray of guerrillas and bushwhackers burnt the bridges and otherwise crippled nearly 100 miles of Northern Railroad. But Halleck's splendid systematizing had begun to tell.