course, Price's conduct was not without extenuation. His position
was not identical with McCulloch's. His force was a state force,
McCulloch's a Confederate, or a national. Besides, Missouri had yet
to be gained, officially, for the Confederacy. She expected secession
states and the Confederacy itself to force the situation for her.
And, furthermore, she was in far greater danger of invasion than
was Arkansas. The Kansans were her implacable and dreaded foes and
Arkansas had none like them to fear.

In reality, the seat of all the trouble between McCulloch and Price
lay in particularism, a phase of state rights, and, in its last
analysis, provincialism. Now particularism was especially pronounced
and especially pernicious in the middle southwest. Missouri had always
more than her share of it. Her politicians were impregnated by it.
They were interested in their own locality exclusively and seemed
quite incapable of taking any broad survey of events that did not
immediately affect themselves or their own limited concerns. In the
issue between McCulloch and Price, this was all too apparent. The
politicians complained unceasingly of McCulloch's neglect of Missouri
and, finally, taking their case to headquarters, represented to
President Davis that the best interests of the Confederate cause in
their state were being glaringly sacrificed by McCulloch's too literal
interpretation of his official instructions, in the strict observance
of which he was keeping close to the Indian boundary.

President Davis had personally no great liking for

Price and certainly none for his peculiar method of fighting. Some
people thought him greatly prejudiced[18] against Price and, in the
first instance, perhaps, on nothing more substantial than the fact