In Command of the “Army of the Frontier”
The old department, called Department of the Mississippi, was divided, and Major-General Samuel R. Curtis was assigned to command the new Department of the Missouri, composed of the territory west of the Mississippi River. For some months the radicals had it all their own way, and military confiscation was carried on without hindrance.
When this change occurred I was in the field in immediate command of the forces which I had assembled there for aggressive operations, and which General Curtis named the “Army of the Frontier.” My official report of December 7, 1862, gave a full account of the operations of that army up to November 20, when sickness compelled me to relinquish the command.
As will be seen from that report and from my correspondence with General Curtis at that time, it was then well known that the enemy was concentrating in the Arkansas valley all the troops he could raise, and making preparations to return across the Boston Mountains and “dispute with us the possession of northwestern Arkansas and southwestern Missouri”; and I had placed my troops where they could live to a great extent on the country, and quickly concentrate to meet the enemy when he should advance. But General Curtis ordered me to move north and east with two divisions, leaving Blunt with one division to occupy that country. It was on this return march that I was overtaken by a severe attack of bilious fever.
As my official report of December 7, 1862, is published in Volume XIII of the War Records, I make no reference here to the operations covered by it. That able and impartial historian, the Comte de Paris, published a very accurate history of the operations in Missouri in the summer of 1862, in which he paid me the compliment, which a soldier values so highly, of saying that I was free from partizan passion.
It was during my absence through illness that Hindman made his expected advance. Blunt’s division was encamped at Cane Hill, and Hindman crossed the mountains at Lee’s Creek, aiming to reach Blunt’s rear, cut off his retreat, and overwhelm him.