Chapter 2

[Footnote 763: Davis to Holmes, February 26, 1863, _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 849-850.]

[Footnote 764: Davis to Holmes, January 28, 1863, Ibid., 846-847.]

[Footnote 765: The necessity was exceedingly great. Take, for instance, the situation at Fort Smith, where the citizens themselves asked for the establishment of martial law in order that lives and property might be reasonably secure [Crosby to Mayor Joseph Bennett, January 10, 1863, _Confederate Records_, chap. 2, no. 270, pp. 33-34].]

political pressure was exerted in Richmond[766] and the Arkansas delegation in Congress demanded Hindman's recall,[767] Holmes's displacement, and Kirby Smith's appointment. The loss of that historic fort, Arkansas Post,[768] also a tardy appreciation of the economic value of the Arkansas Valley and, incidentally, of the entire Trans-Mississippi Department,[769] had really determined matters; but, fortunately, the supersedure of Holmes by Smith did not affect the position of Steele.

Steele divined that the Federals would naturally make an early attempt to occupy in force the country north of the Arkansas River and beyond it to the southward in what had hitherto been a strictly Confederate stronghold. It was his intention to forestall them. The two Cherokee regiments constituted, for some little time, his best available troops and them he kept in almost constant motion.[770] His great reliance, and well it might be, was upon Stand Watie, whom he had

[Footnote 766: Davis to Garland, March 28, 1863, _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement, 861-863; Davis to the Arkansas delegation, March 30, 1863, Ibid., 863-865.]

[Footnote 767: Hindman was not immediately recalled; but he soon manifested an unwillingness to continue under Holmes [Ibid., 848]. He had very pronounced opinions about some of his associates. Price he thought of as a breeder of factions and Holmes as an honest man but unsystematic. In the summer, he actually asked for an assignment to Indian Territory [Ibid., vol. xxii, part ii, 895].]

[Footnote 768: Livermore, _Story of the Civil War_, part iii,