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If you extend your kindness and permit me to fall back into the ranks as a high private, my cup will be full. "In closing, let me call upon the 'Wild West, the Congress of Rough Riders of the World, to voice their appreciation of the kindness you have shown them to-day." At a given signal the "Wild West" gave three ringing cheers for Nebraska and the Trans-Mississippi Exposition.
Before I came into command, these troops had been scattered over the trans-Mississippi department in such a way that they could not be, or were not, gotten back in time to take any part in the original movement; hence the consideration, which had caused Mobile to be selected as the objective point for Sherman's army to find his next base of supplies after having cut loose from Atlanta, no longer existed.
It was this statement that induced me to insert in the terms that he was to draw rations for his men from his own supplies. On the 4th of July General Holmes, with an army of eight or nine thousand men belonging to the trans-Mississippi department, made an attack upon Helena, Arkansas. He was totally defeated by General Prentiss, who was holding Helena with less than forty-two hundred soldiers.
Led by Grant, Sherman, Rosecrans, Sheridan, Thomas, McPherson, and Logan, they press steadily toward the heart of the Confederacy. The rosy dreams of empire in the great West fade away. Farragut, Porter, and the giant captain, Grant, cut off the Trans-Mississippi from active military concert with the rest of the severed Confederacy. To and fro rolls the red tide of war.
From the representations of Polk and Price, the Confederate Government organized all the country west of the Mississippi River into a department known as the Trans-Mississippi District, and placed it under the command of General Earl Van Dorn, who assumed command early in February, 1862.
I disapproved of Sherman's going himself, because I had other important work for him to do, but consented that he might send a few troops to the aid of Banks, though their time to remain absent must be limited. We must have them for the spring campaign. The trans-Mississippi movement proved abortive.
As striking evidence of the "urgent need of our country's making an effort to do something like its share of its own carrying trade on the ocean," he directed attention to the address of Secretary Root before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress at Kansas City, Mo., the previous November, giving the results of the secretary's experiences on his recent South American tour.
At a recent Trans-Mississippi Congress held in Denver, I sat with ex-Senator Patterson to hear Mr. Prince still proposing resolutions in support of statehood for New Mexico. Franklin S. Richards and John T. Caine and others among their old associates in that party.
I suggested to the General-in-chief the idea of a campaign against Mobile, starting from Lake Pontchartrain. Halleck preferred another course. The possession of the trans-Mississippi by the Union forces seemed to possess more importance in his mind than almost any campaign east of the Mississippi.
Besides, Sherman could control force enough to garrison Chattanooga and Nashville, and, if time were allowed him to accumulate supplies at Atlanta by his one line of rail, could abandon everything south of Chattanooga, and with fifty thousand men, in the absence of Hood's army, march where he liked. The President asked what assistance might be expected from the trans-Mississippi. I replied, none.
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