[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, book i, 85.  Davis would fain have believed that so great a disaster had not befallen the Confederate arms [Letter to Holmes, January 28, 1863, Official Records, vol. liii, supplement, 847].]

[Footnote 769:  Perhaps, it is scarcely fair to intimate that the Trans-Mississippi Department was regarded as unimportant at this stage.  It was only relatively so.  In proof of that, see Davis to Governor Flanagin, April 3, 1863, Ibid., 865-866; Davis to Johnson, July 14, 1863, Ibid., 879-880.  When Kirby Smith tarried late in the assumption of his enlarged duties, Secretary Seddon pointed out the increasingly great significance of them [Letter to Smith, March 18, 1863, Ibid., vol. xxii, part ii, pp. 802-803].]

[Footnote 770:  Steele to Cabell, April 18, 1863, Confederate Records, no. 270, p. 199.]