It was loyal John Butterfield of New York, who artfully bid for a DOUBLE service from Memphis and St. Louis, uniting at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and virtually defeated this sly move of slavery.
Judge Hardin, pausing in pride, could not foresee that Daniel Butterfield, the gallant son of a loyal sire, would meet the chivalry of the South as the Marshal of the greatest field of modern times—awful Gettysburg!
While Hardin plotted in the West, Daniel Butterfield in the East personally laid out every detail of this great service, so as to checkmate the Southern design, were the Mississippi given over to loyal control.
The afterwork of Farragut and Porter paralyzed the Southern line of advance; and on the Peninsula, at Fredericksburg, at Resaca and Chancellorsville, Major-General Daniel Butterfield met in arms many of the men who listened to Hardin's gibes as to the outwitted Yankee mail contractors.
Hardin, complacent, and with no vision of the awful fields to come, secure in his well-laid plans, resumes:
"Thus aided through Arizona we will admit a strong column of Texan dragoons. We shall take Fort Yuma, Fort Mojave, and the forts in Arizona, as well as Forts Union and Craig in New Mexico. We will then be able to control the northern overland road. We will hold the southern line, and our forces will patrol Arizona. Mexico will furnish us ports and supplies.
"Should the Northerners attempt to push troops over the plains, we will attack them, in flank, from New Mexico. We can hold, thus, New Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah, and all of California, by our short line from El Paso to San Diego. We are covered on one flank by Mexico."
The able brethren are ready with many suggestions. Friendly spies in the Department at Washington have announced the intended drawing East of the regular garrisons. It is suggested that the forts, and in fact the whole State, be seized while the troops are in transit.
Another proposes the fitting out of several swift armed steam letters-of-marque from San Francisco, to capture the enormous Yankee tonnage now between China, Cape Horn, Australia, and California. The whaling fleet is the object of another. He advises sending a heavily armed revenue cutter, when seized, to the Behring Sea to destroy the spring whalers arriving from Honolulu too late for any warning, from home, of the hostilities.
A number of active committees are appointed. One, of veteran rangers, to select frontiersmen to stir up the Indians to attack the northern overland mail stations. Another, to secretly confer with the officers of the United States Mint, Custom-House, and Sub-Treasury. Another, to socially engage the leading officers of the army and navy, and win them over, or develop their real feelings. Every man of mark in the State is listed and canvassed.