rest. Halleck was the senior general in the West. But the three,
and afterwards four, departments into which the West was divided
were never properly brought under a single command. Then
telegrams went wrong at the wire-end advancing southwardly from
Cairo, the end Grant had to use. A wire from McClellan on the
sixteenth of February was not delivered till the third of March.
Next day Grant was thunderstruck at receiving this from Halleck:
"Place C.F. Smith in command of expedition and remain yourself at
Fort Henry. Why do you not obey my orders to report strength and
positions of your command?" And so it went on till McClellan
authorized Halleck to place Grant under arrest for
insubordination. Then the operator at the wire-end suddenly
deserted, taking a sheaf of dispatches with him. He was a clever
Confederate.

Explanations followed; and on the seventeenth of March Grant
rejoined his army, which was assembling round Pittsburg Landing
on the Tennessee, near the future battlefield of Shiloh, and some
twenty miles northeast of Corinth.

Meanwhile Van Dorn and Sterling Price, thinking it was now or
never for Missouri, decided to attack Curtis. They had fifteen
against ten thousand men, and hoped to crush Curtis utterly by
catching him between two fires. But on the seventh of March the
Federal left beat off the flanking attack of McCulloch and
McIntosh, both of whom were killed. The right, furiously assailed
by the Confederate Missourians under Van Dorn and Price, fared
badly and was pressed back. Yet on the eighth Curtis emerged
victorious on the hard-fought field that bears the double name of
Elkhorn Tavern and Pea Ridge. This battle in the northwest corner