In the latter part of October General Fremont took the field in person
and moved from Jefferson City against General Sterling Price, who was
then in the State of Missouri with a considerable command. About the
first of November I was directed from department headquarters to make a
demonstration on both sides of the Mississippi River with the view of
detaining the rebels at Columbus within their lines. Before my troops
could be got off, I was notified from the same quarter that there were
some 3,000 of the enemy on the St. Francis River about fifty miles west,
or south-west, from Cairo, and was ordered to send another force against
them. I dispatched Colonel Oglesby at once with troops sufficient to
compete with the reported number of the enemy. On the 5th word came
from the same source that the rebels were about to detach a large force
from Columbus to be moved by boats down the Mississippi and up the White
River, in Arkansas, in order to reinforce Price, and I was directed to
prevent this movement if possible. I accordingly sent a regiment from
Bird's Point under Colonel W. H. L. Wallace to overtake and reinforce
Oglesby, with orders to march to New Madrid, a point some distance below
Columbus, on the Missouri side.
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