faithful to the flag after Sumter was fired upon, and among these was the immortal Virginian patriot and soldier, George H. Thomas, who was senior major of the Second Cavalry when rebellion began. He was stationed at a western fort in the Indian Territory. Sturgis was at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Both officers brought their commands into the Union lines. In the central territories there was some disaffection, but the loyalty of the rank and file saved the public property and territory. Colonel Canby at Santa Fé, held the southwest territories. The loyal volunteers of Colorado held the centre, and to the northwest as far as the Pacific there was scarcely any disaffection. Longstreet, Jordan, Ewell, and a few others made their way to the Confederacy through Arizona and New Mexico. The far-reaching nature of the plot by which the free states and territories were to be rendered helpless can be seen in the fact that Fort Kearney, Nebraska, then an isolated and unimportant post out on the great plains, was made for nearly or quite a twelve months before, an entrepot to which, under orders from the War Department, arms of all kinds, ordnance supplies, munitions and stores of all sorts, with wagons, artillery carriages, etc., were sent from the various army posts east as far as Fort Leavenworth and west as far as California and Oregon. So also Fort Wise on the southwest border of Kansas Territory, was used. Its site is now known as Fort Lyon. The march of Major Sedgwick, afterward the gallant commander of the famous Fifth Army Corps, saved the stores and arms at Fort Wise. Those at Fort Kearney were saved by the prompt and loyal courage of an orderly sergeant, afterwards a lieutenant-colonel of volunteers. Sergeant Schultze he is a German-American and served in Captain Nathaniel B. Lyon's command, Company B, Second Infantry resisted the efforts of a party of deserting officers to carry off the guns and munitions stored at Fort Kearney. There were nearly one hundred twelve-pound howitzers massed at this point. They were left to the care of a handful of soldiers under an ordnance sergeant. All the frontier troops in the early summer of 1861 were ordered to concentrate at Fort Leavenworth and at Omaha, from the posts on the plains and among the Rockies. Sergeant Schultze arrived at the same time that the southern army officers reached Fort Kearney. By a bold appeal to his men and a determined front on the soldiers' part, the fleeing officers decided that their safety was to be found in a more rapid flight.

These incidents of the early days of the war "out West" are necessary to make clear the reason why officers like Sheridan were not sooner

ordered into the scenes of great military activity. It became necessary to make quite sure of our Pacific coast before the much needed and well-trained regular officers who were stationed there could be relieved.

The Pacific coast officers, though removed from the scene of hostilities when the war broke out, had plenty of patriotic ardor. General Sumner, who arrived at San Francisco early in June, as department commander, issued an order that "all officers charged with the care of public property will hold themselves in readiness at all times to protect it at any hazard. No public property will be surrendered in this department"; and on the heels of this order came another, that " any citizen in the employment of the army in this department who is opposed to the Union will be instantly discharged." This was the spirit of the army administration out there. It was efficient in covering the real intentions of the general government, through which the loyal Pacific States and Territories finally took almost entire charge of their own defense, organizing an army or National Guard of volunteer militia in California and Oregon, fully equipped by the general government. The "regulars" stationed there were all kept busy till the close of 1861, assisting in the organization indicated. The story of the Civil War from the Missouri to the Pacific coast remains to be told, but an incident thereof was the delaying of Sheridan's transfer to a more active field.

In October, 1861, Brevet First Lieutenant Sheridan was commissioned captain in the Thirteenth Infantry, and soon after ordered to report to General Halleck at St. Louis for assignment to duty. He arrived there late in the year, and at the beginning of the New Year was ordered to report to Brigadier Samuel R. Curtis for duty in the field as chief quartermaster and commissary of the Army of Southwest Missouri, then in camp at Springfield, and preparing for a forward movement to the southwest against the Confederate troops of Missouri, Arkansas, Northern Louisiana, and Texas, then concentrating in the Ozark Mountains under Sterling Price, Van Dorn, Ben McCullough, Raines, Marmaduke, Fagan, and Albert Pike, among others who afterwards became distinguished. On the 2d of January, 1862, General S. R. Curtis reported from Rollo to department headquarters at St. Louis, that Captain Sheridan had reported and been assigned to duty. Staff-officers and others associated with Captain Sheridan in that army recall his indomitable, tireless activity and administrative ability. His post was no sinecure, but on the contrary bore in its execution far more than the usual burden of difficulties accompanying such important branches of military organization. West of the Missouri, the Union

forces were, from the beginning till the close of the war, more inefficiently and poorly supplied than was elsewhere the case. The State of Missouri, especially its western and southwestern portions, was intensely disloyal. The Kansas conflict had embittered the people, free soil and pro-slavery, to the utmost. It was hard work to keep the Kansas volunteers within bounds on the soil of Missouri. It was far harder work to make the southern sympathizers resident in Missouri understand the laws of war. They were generally ready to turn bushwhackers on the slightest opportunity, and on all occasions, within or without the lines of the Federal forces, were utterly unscrupulous enemies of the Union. There was a phrase in use out there which humorously embodied the bitter antagonism felt towards a policy that dealt with the people of the border states, especially those of Missouri, as loyal citizens. It was applied generally to the Kansas volunteers, who were commonly known and sneered at for the first two years of the war as " Jayhawkers." The conservative regular army officers, especially, cherished bitter prejudices against the soldiers of that state with whom they came in contact, no matter how soldierly and valorous were their conduct or acts. The term "jayhawker" was originally applied to the Seventh Regiment (cavalry) of Kansas Volunteers, whom Fremont first assigned to duty in Western Missouri with orders to live on the country. That term thus came to represent a distinct view of army policy. In the east the opposite view was taken by McClellan; in the centre by Buell and Rosecrans, and in the west to some extent by Halleck. General Curtis was a graduate of West Point, who early in his army life had resigned to practice law. He settled in Iowa, and was sent to Congress from the Keokuk district as a Republican. He was an intimate friend of Mr. Lincoln's. At the beginning of the Civil War, he entered the army again. Halleck assigned him to the command of the army which was to be the right wing of the great field wherein he proposed to operate, extending from Western Arkansas to Northern Georgia.

With a meagre army chest and insufficient supplies, General Curtis, knowing that if he did not make use of the stock, grain, etc., to be found in Southwest Missouri the rebel guerrillas and cavalry raiders would do so, ordered his chief quartermaster to supply deficiencies from the country so far as possible, and to give vouchers therefor, payable on proof of the bearer's loyalty. Captain Sheridan demurred to this policy, which he called " jayhawking,” and at last made his opposition so obnoxious, that when General Curtis finally began the forward

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movements and field operations which eventuated in the hard-fought battle and victory of Pea Ridge, in the march across Arkansas, and in the capture and occupation of Helena on the Mississippi as an important basis among others for the great operations by which, a year later, the "Father of Waters" was allowed to run unvexed to the sea," that commander felt himself obliged to relieve Captain Sheridan and order him to report to General Halleck at St. Louis for duty. This apparent slight became the turning point in the young soldier's famous career. He was taken by Halleck to the army before Corinth as chief commissary, and in that way came again under the notice of the cavalry commander, General Stanley, by whose suggestion he was appointed colonel of the Second Michigan Cavalry, just one month after he arrived in Northern Mississippi. As for his conservative antagonism to "jayhawking," it vanished when he entered on cavalry service. The Captain Sheridan who resisted in Southwest Missouri, early in 1862, the policy of the commander on whose staff he served, blossomed under the conditions of the war into the stern general, who, in 1864, declared while fighting in the Shenandoah Valley, that he "proposed to make it so bare that a crow flying over it would have to carry his rations."

An incident of Sheridan's quartermaster service in Southwest Missouri, told after the war in Household Words, a magazine that preceded Scribner's, deserves a brief mention here, as it illustrates Sheridan's character and courage. An army wagon with its team was stalled on the road some distance south of Springfield. The teamster, a burly six-footer, was engaged in brutally whipping his mules. Riding near by on the left of the road was a stout but low-statured man, clad in a fatigue suit of army blue, without any insignia of rank or staff buttons, and wearing a battered army hat. He drew rein at the stalled wagon, and in a few moments asked the teamster authoritatively, why he beat the mules so severely. The ruffian replied with a savage oath, and immediately struck the near animal with the heavy butt of his "black-jack,” as the wagoner's whip is called. To a shout from the horseman the burly teamster replied with a threat to serve him the same way. An eye-witness, who wrote the magazine article, says that the threat was scarcely made before the rider shot from his saddle, for all the world like a stone projected from a catapult, and in a second was at the ruffian's throat. It was seen that this assailant was a smaller man, but somehow he brought the big teamster at once to his knees, and poured upon his head, neck, and chest such a rain of savage blows, ending in twisting the whip out of the man's hand and applying it vigorously

"Who

over arms and shoulders, until the fellow fairly blubbered for mercy. His assailant let him up, applying a vigorous kick as he arose. the devil are you?" asked the amazed and cowed bully.

"Captain Sheridan, quartermaster of this army, and if you don't get to work d — quick to get this wagon out of the way, by I'll thrash you again.”

It is needless to say that the man went to work under Sheridan's orders. The mules had recovered their strength. In a few minutes the team and wagon were on the dry road. With a parting admonition and objurgation, "Little Phil" mounted his patient horse, which had watched the rencounter with seeming approval, and rode away.

Captain Sheridan's experiences with the army of Southwest Missouri, though not altogether satisfactory to him at the time, must have been productive of fruitful knowledge. General Curtis, speaking of his whilom quartermaster, when the latter was rising so rapidly to the zenith of his fame, declared that Captain Sheridan was one of the ablest and most indefatigable of staff officers. No labor was too great, no exertion too severe for him to undertake in the line of duty. But his prejudices were as stubborn as his independence was marked. He allowed nothing for any one's superior knowledge of the region, and in the matter of their differences as to the impressment of stock, etc., was so determined in his opposition as to compel General Curtis, much to his regret, to relieve his rather insubordinate subordinate from duty on the staff, and order him to St. Louis. In a personal letter to the department commander, General Curtis strongly urged Captain Sheridan's assignment to active field service, assured that he would win renown for himself and credit to the cause. As to the policy of making war, Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley carried out the course indicated by Curtis nearly three years before, only the younger and greater soldier made it more sweeping and rigorous.