was a New Englander and poet, who had joined the Confederate army on the borders of the Indian country with a body of savages whom he had lured into the service. The whole insurgent force now numbered twenty-five thousand; the National troops, soon to measure strength with them, did not exceed eleven thousand men in number with fifty pieces of artillery.

When, on the 5th of March (1862), Curtis's scouts told him of the swift approach of the Confederates in overwhelming force, he concentrated his little army in the Sugar Creek Valley. He perceived his perils, but there was only the alternative to fight or make a disastrous retreat. Choosing the former, he prepared to meet the foe from whatever quarter he might approach. Meanwhile Van Dorn, by a quick and stealthy movement, flanked Curtis and gained his rear; and on the morning of the 7th he advanced to attack the Nationals, not doubting his ability to vanquish them and seize their train of two hundred wagons. He found Curtis in battle order, his first and second division being on his left and commanded by Generals Asboth and Sigel; the third, under General Davis, composing his centre, and the fourth, commanded by Colonel Carr, formed his right. His line of battle extended about four miles, and was confronted by the heavy Confederate force with only a broad and deep ravine covered with fallen trees separating the two armies. The battle was opened toward noon by a simultaneous attack by the Nationals and Confederates. A very severe conflict ensued, which continued a greater part of the day with varying fortunes to each party, the lines of strife swaying like a pendulum. Generals McCulloch and McIntosh of the Confederates were killed, and the slaughter on both sides was dreadful. At night the Confederates fired the last shot, but the Nationals held the field, slept on their arms, and anxiously awaited the dawn to renew the battle.

Both armies lay among the dead and dying that night. At dawn (March 8, 1862) the conflict was renewed, when the Nationals hurled such a destructive tempest of shot and shell upon the Confederates, that the latter soon broke and fled in almost every direction in wildest confusion. The Confederate army, so strong, and confident of victory twenty-four hours before, was broken into fragments. The losses of each were about the same. Curtis's was thirteen hundred and eighty men. Pike's Indians, who had been maddened with liquor before the battle, tomahawked and scalped a number of the Nationals, and were the first to fly from the field, in terror.

While Halleck was purging Missouri of armed insurgents, Hunter, with his headquarters at Fort Leavenworth, was vigorously at work suppressing the insurrection on the borders of Kansas. Active and armed rebellion was now co-extensive with the slave-labor States. Civil War was kindling in General Canby's Department of New Mexico. An attempt was there made to attach that Territory to the Confederacy by the method employed by General Twiggs in Texas, when he betrayed the National forces under his command. Disloyal officers had been sent by Secretary Floyd, for that purpose, a year before the insurrection broke out; but failing to corrupt the troops (for not one of the twelve hundred men abandoned his flag), and incurring their hot displeasure, these leaders fled from their wrath toward Texas. On the borders of that State they found the commander and other officers of Fort Fillmore ready to co-operate with them. These men led out their unsuspecting men and betrayed them into the power of Texan insurgents.

Miguel A. Otero, the representative of New Mexico in the National Congress, was in practical, active sympathy with the Secessionists; and the success of the Confederate cause in that quarter seemed to be assured, until Canby appeared and raised the standard of the Union, in strength. Around it the loyal people of the Territory gathered; and his regular troops, New Mexican levies, and volunteers, gave him a force sufficient to meet over two thousand Texans, most of them rough rangers under Colonel H. H. Sibley, a Louisianian, who invaded the Territory at the middle of February. He had twenty-three hundred followers, many of them veterans who had much experience in fighting the Indians.