Letters travelled slowly in those days and Randolph’s comforting intelligence did not reach Pike in time to avert the catastrophe of his proclamation and consequent arrest.  And it was just as well, all things considered, for Magruder never reached Little Rock.  He was a man of intemperate habits and, while en route, was ordered back to Richmond to answer “charges of drunkenness and disobedience of orders."[502] His appointment was thereupon rescinded.  The man selected in his place, to the total ignoring of Price’s prior claims, was Theophilus H. Holmes, a native of North Carolina.[503] President Davis was still possessed of the notion that frontier affairs could be best conducted by men who had no local attachments there.  Late events had all too surely lent weight to his theory.  Nevertheless, in holding it, Davis was strictly inconsistent and illogical; for loyalty to the particular home state constituted the strongest asset that the Confederacy had.  It was the lode-star that had drawn Lee and

[Footnote 501:  Magruder to Randolph, July 5, 1862, Official Records, vol. xiii, 851-852.]

[Footnote 502:  Clark to Price, July 17, 1862, Official Records, vol. liii, supplement, 816-817.]

[Footnote 503:  Wright, General Officers of C.S.A., 15-16.]

many another, who cared not a whit for political principles in and for themselves, from their allegiance to the Union.  It was the great bulwark of the South.

Holmes was ordered west July 16;[504] but, as he had the necessary preparations to make and various private matters to attend to, August had almost begun before it proved possible for him to reach Little Rock.[505] The interval had given Hindman a new lease of official life and a further extension of opportunity for oppression, which he had used to good advantage.  The new department commander, while yet in Richmond, had discussed the Pike-Hindman controversy with his superior officers and had arrived at a conclusion distinctly favorable to Pike.  He frankly confessed as much weeks afterwards.  Once in Little Rock, however, he learned from the Hindman coterie of Pike’s Indian proclamation and immediately veered to Hindman’s side.[506] Pike talked with him, recounted his grievances in a fashion that none could surpass, but made absolutely no impression upon him.  So small a thing and so short a time had it taken to develop a hostile prejudice in Holmes’s mind, previously unbiased, so deep-seated that it never, in all the months that followed, knew the slightest diminution.  Conversely and most fortuitously, a friendliness grew up between Holmes and the man whom he had supplanted that made the former, either forget the orders given him in Richmond or put so new a construction upon them that they were rendered nugatory.  It was a situation, exceedingly fortunate for

[Footnote 504:  Official Records, vol. xiii, 855.]

[Footnote 505:  He had reached Vicksburg by the thirtieth of July and from that point he issued his orders assuming the command [ibid., 860].]