hip. With him and Van
Dorn it was the story of Wilson's Creek over again. Instead of lining up
their superior force and sending all forward with a crushing solidarity,
they had personally led detachments, and when these had been fought out,
gone back and brought up fresh forces, Van Dorn had shown generalship
only in the concentration of his artillery. He had been so engrossed
in this, and in pushing forward detachments he had better left to the
Missouri leadership that he neglected his powerful right wing, which had
gone to pieces, as there was no one left to take the place of McCulloch
and Mcintosh. He hoped, though, with the aid of 3,000 men whom Greer was
bringing to him, to complete his victory in the morning.

There was much to depress Curtis's men in their tireless bivouac south
of Elkhorn Tavern. Dodge's and Vandever's Brigades had been very roughly
handled in the long struggle. Rebel bullets had made sad havoc in their
ranks. They had lost two guns and over a quarter of their force in
killed and wounded. Osterhaus's and Davis's Divisions, in the center,
had had costly encounters with the enemy, and had lost five pieces
of artillery. They did not then know that in reality the victory was
theirs, but believed that most of the enemy had merely left their front
to augment the mass which was formed across their line of retreat They
therefore looked forward to the morrow with well-grounded apprehension.
They had no rations in their haversacks, and their animals had been
without forage for two or three days. Unless the enemy could be driven
from their "cracker line" the very next day, starvation for man and
beast stared them in the face.

332

CHAPTER XIX. THE VICTORY IS WON.

Gen. Curtis's army was far from realizing as the night closed down on
that exciting March 7 how completely it had whipped the overwhelming
numbers of Van Dorn, Price, McCulloch, Mcintosh and Pike. Those of Jeff
C. Davis's and Osterhaus's Divisions, who had done the heavy fighting on
the Leetown front, knew that they had driven away the mass of the enemy
in their front until there was no longer any show of opposition. They
of Carr's Division, on the extreme right, the brigades of Dodge and
Vandever, realized that they had had a terrible fight, in which they had
generally defeated the enemy, inflicting great slaughter, though they
had suffered heavily themselves. Still, the enemy had gained a little
ground. The men of Carr's Division fel