Both commands were to start from the Red River —Shreveport
and Alexandria—being the respective initial
points—and in organizing the columns, to
the mounted force already on the Red River were added
several regiments of cavalry from the east bank of
the, Mississippi, and in a singular way one of these
fell upon the trail of my old antagonist, General
Early. While crossing the river somewhere below
Vicksburg some of the men noticed a suspicious looking
party being ferried over in a rowboat, behind which
two horses were swimming in tow. Chase was given,
and the horses, being abandoned by the party, fell
into the hands of our troopers, who, however, failed
to capture or identify the people in the boat.
As subsequently ascertained, the men were companions
of Early, who was already across the Mississippi,
hidden in the woods, on his way with two or three
of these followers to join the Confederates in Texas,
not having heard of Kirby Smith’s surrender.
A week or two later I received a letter from Early
describing the affair, and the capture of the horses,
for which he claimed pay, on the ground that they were
private property, because he had taken them in battle.
The letter also said that any further pursuit of
Early would be useless, as he “expected to be
on the deep blue sea” by the time his communication
reached me. The unfortunate man was fleeing from
imaginary dangers, however, for striking his trail
was purely accidental, and no effort whatever was
being made to arrest him personally. Had this
been especially desired it might have been accomplished
very readily just after Lee’s surrender, for
it was an open secret that Early was then not far
away, pretty badly disabled with rheumatism.
By the time the two columns were ready to set out
for San Antonio and Houston, General Frank Herron,—with
one division of the Thirteenth Corps, occupied Galveston,
and another division under General Fred Steele had
gone to Brazos Santiago, to hold Brownsville and the
line of the Rio Grande, the object being to prevent,
as far as possible, the escaping Confederates from
joining Maximilian. With this purpose in view,
and not forgetting Grant’s conviction that the
French invasion of Mexico was linked with the rebellion,
I asked for an increase of force to send troops into
Texas in fact, to concentrate at available points
in the State an army strong enough to move against
the invaders of Mexico if occasion demanded.
The Fourth and Twenty-fifth army corps being ordered
to report to me, accordingly, I sent the Fourth Corps
to Victoria and San Antonio, and the bulk of the Twenty-fifth
to Brownsville. Then came the feeding and caring
for all these troops—a difficult matter—for
those at Victoria and San Antonio had to be provisioned
overland from Indianola across the “hog-wallow
prairie,” while the supplies for the forces at
Brownsville and along the Rio Grande must come by way
of Brazos Santiago, from which point I was obliged
to construct, with the labor of the men, a railroad
to Clarksville, a distance of about eighteen miles.