In the course of a month or so Van Dorn managed to gather himself together again so as to begin voluminous communications with Richmond, explaining that "I was not defeated, but only foiled in my intentions."
He proposed to return to his old Pocahontas plan, "relieve Gen. Beauregard by marching my army upon the Federals at New Madrid or Cape Girardeau, and thence on to St. Louis." He would turn his cavalry loose on Gen. Curtis's long line of communications, and send Gen. Pike with his Indians to harry southwestern Missouri and Kansas.
The Confederate War Department did not think highly of this, but shortly transferred him and his troops east of the Mississippi.
Gen. Price was also transferred east of the Mississippi, with the Missouri troops he had taken into the Confederate army, and his farewell to the Missouri State troops is worth reproducing as a specimen of the heated rhetoric customary in those days:
Headquarters Missouri State Guard,
Des Arc, Ark., April 8, 1862. (General Orders No. 79.)
Soldiers of the State Guard: I command you no longer. I have
this day resigned the commission which your patient
endurance, your devoted patriotism and your dauntless
bravery have made so honorable. I have done this that I may
the better serve you, our State and our country—that I may
the sooner lead you back to the fertile prairies, the rich
woodlands and majestic streams of our beloved Missouri—that
I may the more certainly restore you to your once happy
homes and to the loved ones there.
Five thousand of those who have fought side by side with us
under the Grizzly Bears of Missouri have followed me into
the Confederate camp. They appeal to you, as I do, by all
the tender memories of the past, not to leave us now, but to
go with us wherever the path of duty may lead, till we shall
have conquered a peace and won our independence by brilliant
deeds upon new fields of battle.
Soldiers of the State Guards! Veterans of six pitched
battles and nearly 20 skirmishes! Conquerors in them all!
Tour country, with Its "ruined hearths and shrines," calls
upon you to rally once more In her defense, and rescue her
forever from the terrible thraldom which threatens her. I
know that she will not call In vain. The Insolent and
barbarous hordes which have dared to Invade our soil and to
desecrate our homes have Just met with a signal overthrow
beyond the Mississippi Now Is the time to end this unhappy
war. If every man will but do his duty, his own roof will
shelter him In peace from the storms of the coming; Winter.
Let not history record that the men who bore with patience
the privations of Cowskln Prairie, who endured
uncomplainingly the burning heat of a Missouri Summer and
the frosts and snows of a Missouri Winter; that the men who
met the enemy at Carthage, at Oak Hills, at Fort Scott, at
Lexington and on numberless lesser battlefields In Missouri,
and met them but to conquer them; that the men who fought so
bravely and so well at Blkhorn; that the unpaid soldiery of
Missouri were, after so many victories and after so much
suffering, unequal to the great task of achieving the
Independence of their magnificent State.
Soldiers, I go but to mark a pathway to our homes. Follow
me!
Very few but those who had already been cajoled into the Confederate service followed.
A great deal of bitterness was developed from the discovery upon the battlefield of a number of Union dead who had been scalped by Pike's Indians. Many of these belonged to the 3d Iowa Cav., and the investigation of the matter was conducted by order of Col. Bussey, by his Adjutant, John W. Noble, afterwards Secretary of the Interior. Col. Bussey became Assistant Secretary of the Interior.