roceeded to
execute this order with good hearts. A large number of the offenders
were shot down in the neighborhoods where they had committed their
offenses; others were taken before a military commission and condemned
to the same fate.

Gens. Pope, Prentiss, Schofield and Henderson were given sufficient
forces and ordered to move directly upon the more important bodies of
Secessionists who formed a nucleus and support for these depredators.
They all did so with good effect.

Gen. Prentiss moved against a force about 3,000 strong operating in
Howard, Boone and Calloway Counties, and succeeded in striking them very
heavily at Mount Zion Church, where they were dispersed with a loss of
25 killed, 150 wounded, 30 prisoners, 90 horses, and 105 stands of arms.

257

Gen. Pope operating from Sedalia achieved even better success, capturing
Col. Robinson's command of 1,300 men and about 60 officers, 1,000 horses
and mules, and 73 wagons loaded with powder, lead and supplies and 1,000
stands of arms.

Gen. Prentiss very effectually cleaned out the State north of the
Missouri River, and in conjunction with Gen. Pope's operations south of
it, made it so threatening for Gen. Price, who had advanced to the Osage
River to support the Secessionists there, that he broke up his camp and
rather hurriedly retreated to Springfield.

The year 1861 therefore ended with the Union men again in possession of
nearly four-fifths of the State, with their hands full of prisoners and
supplies captured from the enemy.

The Secessionists of St. Louis had been encouraged by the untoward
course of events in the East. After Bull Run had come the shocking
disaster of Ball's Bluff, and with Gen. Price only a short distance away
on the Osage threatening Jefferson City and north Missouri, they felt
their star in the ascendant, and became unbearably insolent. Gen.
Halleck repressed them with a vigorous hand, yet without causing
the wild clamor of denunciation which characterized Gen. Butler's
Administration of New Orleans.

258

It will be remembered that at that time it was thought quite the thing
for young Secessionist women to show their "spirit" and their devotion
to the South by all manner of open insult to the Yankee soldiers.
Spitting at them, hurling epithets of abuse, and contemptuously
twitching aside their skirts were regarded as quite the correct thing
in the good society of which these young ladies were the ornaments.
This had be