Within ten days after reading Ironton I was prepared to take the offensive against the enemy at Greenville.  I sent a column east out of the valley we were in, with orders to swing around to the south and west and come into the Greenville road ten miles south of Ironton.  Another column marched on the direct road and went into camp at the point designated for the two columns to meet.  I was to ride out the next morning and take personal command of the movement.  My experience against Harris, in northern Missouri, had inspired me with confidence.  But when the evening train came in, it brought General B. M. Prentiss with orders to take command of the district.  His orders did not relieve me, but I knew that by law I was senior, and at that time even the President did not have the authority to assign a junior to command a senior of the same grade.  I therefore gave General Prentiss the situation of the troops and the general condition of affairs, and started for St. Louis the same day.  The movement against the rebels at Greenville went no further.

From St. Louis I was ordered to Jefferson City, the capital of the State, to take command.  General Sterling Price, of the Confederate army, was thought to be threatening the capital, Lexington, Chillicothe and other comparatively large towns in the central part of Missouri.  I found a good many troops in Jefferson City, but in the greatest confusion, and no one person knew where they all were.  Colonel Mulligan, a gallant man, was in command, but he had not been educated as yet to his new profession and did not know how to maintain discipline.  I found that volunteers had obtained permission from the department commander, or claimed they had, to raise, some of them, regiments; some battalions; some companies—­the officers to be commissioned according to the number of men they brought into the service.  There were recruiting stations all over town, with notices, rudely lettered on boards over the doors, announcing the arm of service and length of time for which recruits at that station would be received.  The law required all volunteers to serve for three years or the war.  But in Jefferson City in August, 1861, they were recruited for different periods and on different conditions; some were enlisted for six months, some for a year, some without any condition as to where they were to serve, others were not to be sent out of the State.  The recruits were principally men from regiments stationed there and already in the service, bound for three years if the war lasted that long.

The city was filled with Union fugitives who had been driven by guerilla bands to take refuge with the National troops.  They were in a deplorable condition and must have starved but for the support the government gave them.  They had generally made their escape with a team or two, sometimes a yoke of oxen with a mule or a horse in the lead.  A little bedding besides their clothing and some food had been thrown