he knows nothing of pea ridge. he's completely out of the loop, and he encourages van doran to move his command to the east side of the mississippi river, in fact, to kor rit, mississippi to be part of a confederate in the west against u.s. grant's army at pittsburgh landing, a place better known as shiloh. van doran needed a little encouragement. he was determined to salvage his reputation on another perhaps larger stage. it took weeks for the shattered army of the west to recover. heavy spring rains caused additional delays, and so it was that van doran's army did not reach the rendezvous point in mississippi until after the battle of shiloh had been fought. in fact, they arrived at korinth about the same time the demoraliz demoralized, defeated army fell back from shiloh. the troops were certainly welcome at the blood-letting at at shiloh, but to give you an idea how big a catastrophe shiloh was, van doran's entire army did not even come close to making up for the losses incurred in that battle. as they say on i

but curtis discovered that the local farmers, called it pea ridge. so he decided that's -- that would be his blocking position. if the confederates made a move. tried to get back into missouri, threatened his forces. that's where he would dig in. that's where he would make a fight. he knew he could expect no reinforcements, he could barely get supplies. he was on his own. but his mind was made up. curtis, sent hallek another message. we shall be on the alert. holding as securely as possible. the next move was up to the confederates. well, to be more precise, the next move was actually up to confederate president jefferson davis. in faraway richmond. davis, of course, knew by now of the paralyzing feud between price and mcculluck. he decided therefore that he would solve this problem, not by promoting one or the other. he was smart enough to know that would just make things much, much worse. so he decided to bring in ape third officer. promote this officer over both price and mcculluck and essentially re-establish a proper chain of command. and the ma

there's a really good book on pea ridge here. everybody should have a copy. this development is new, and it's going to take a few decades, i think, before we really begin to grasp how important, how interesting, how significant events were in the trans mississippi. now, kurtz advertise was a modest man, a very methodical man. really he had the heart and soul of a civil engineer. he did not like to blow his own horn. he never made much of this revolution in military operations. inside curtis knew what he had accomplished in a private letter to his brother in ohio, a lawyer, and we know it's private because curtis wrote on the outside of the envelope "private" and underlined the word three times, he told what had gone on and so forth and, he conclud concluded, the"i have marched m army further over worse roads than any other general and i have subsisted my army completely in the enemy's country without a line of supply. nobody else has done this." he never lived to write his memoirs. he never lived to demand that his proper place in history be recognized, and s