im from the power of the Union men at Truman's house (that
fifteen thousand Confederates would be enough to meet and whip the
twenty thousand Federals that Lyon was supposed to be concentrating at
Springfield), Price began falling back toward Cassville, striving as he
went to increase his force by fair means or foul. His mounted troopers
carried things with a high hand. If a citizen, listening to their
patriotic appeals, shouldered his gun, mounted his horse and went with
them, he was a good fellow, a brave man, and his property was safe; but
if he showed the least reluctance about "falling in," he was at once
accused of being a Union man and treated accordingly. Price wanted fifty
thousand men; but, as he afterward told the people of Missouri, less
than five thousand, out of a male population of more than two hundred
thousand, responded to his calls for help. It may or may not be a fact
that that small number comprised all the men that were sworn into the
State service; but it is a fact that he commanded more than eight
thousand men at the battle of Carthage, and more than twenty thousand at
the siege of Lexington. Price's object in falling back toward Cassville
was to meet McCulloch with his seven thousand four hundred men who were
coming up from Arkansas to reinforce him, and to draw Lyon as far as
possible from his base of supplies. These forces met at Crane Creek, and
almost immediately there began a conflict of authority between Price and
McCulloch, the former urging and the latter opposing an attack upon the
Union troops at Springfield. The dispute was finally settled by General
Polk, who sent an order all the way from Columbus, Kentucky, commanding
McCulloch to advance at once. Observe that he did not include Price in
the order, for at this period of the war the Confederate authorities
respected State Rights after a fashion of their own (they did not even
remove their capital from Montgomery to Richmond until Virginia had
given them her gracious permission to do so), and gave no signs of a
leaning toward the despotism which they established in less than twelve
months.

Meanwhile General Lyon, whose position was one of the greatest danger,
could not wait to be attacked. He had weakened his army by garrisoning
all the places he seized during his advance and now he had only seven
thousand troops left. Even this small force was rapidly growing less,
for as fast as their terms of enlistment expired, they were permitte