original task, may be found in that fact. On the twenty-second of May,
the Arkansas State Convention instructed Brigadier-general N. Bart
Pearce, then in command of the state troops, to coöperate with the
Confederate commander "to the full extent of his ability"[13] and,
on the twenty-eighth of the same month, the Arkansas Military Board
invited that same person, who, of course, was Ben McCulloch, to
assume command himself of the Arkansas local forces.[14] Sympathetic
understanding of this variety, so early established, was bound to
produce good results and McCulloch henceforth identified himself most
thoroughly with Confederate interests in the state in which he was, by
dint of untoward circumstances, obliged to bide his time.

It was far otherwise as respected relations between McCulloch and
the Missouri leaders. McCulloch had little or no tolerance for the
rough-and-ready methods of men like Claiborne Jackson and Sterling
Price. He regarded their plans as impractical, chimerical, and their
warfare as after the guerrilla order, too much like

[Footnote 12: _Official Records_, vol. liii, supplement,
698-699.]

[Footnote 13:--Ibid., 687.]

[Footnote 14:--Ibid., 691.]

that to which Missourians and Kansans had accustomed themselves
during the period of border conflict, following the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill. McCulloch himself was a man of system. He
believed in organization that made for efficiency. Just prior to the
Battle of Wilson's Creek, he put himself on record as strongly opposed