By that time, also, the entirely changed
conditions justified a complete change of policy; but, above all, the
supreme reason of military necessity, upon which alone Mr. Lincoln based
the constitutionality of his edict of freedom, was entirely wanting in
the case of Fremont.
The harvest of popularity which Fremont evidently hoped to secure by his
proclamation was soon blighted by a new military disaster. The
Confederate forces which had been united in the battle of Wilson's Creek
quickly became disorganized through the disagreement of their leaders
and the want of provisions and other military supplies, and mainly
returned to Arkansas and the Indian Territory, whence they had come. But
General Price, with his Missouri contingent, gradually increased his
followers, and as the Union retreat from Springfield to Rolla left the
way open, began a northward march through the western part of the State
to attack Colonel Mulligan, who, with about twenty-eight hundred Federal
troops, intrenched himself at Lexington on the Missouri River. Secession
sympathy was strong along the line of his march, and Price gained
adherents so rapidly that on September 18 he was able to invest
Mulligan's position with a somewhat irregular army numbering about
twenty thousand. After a two days' siege, the garrison was compelled to
surrender, through the exhaustion of the supply of water in their
cisterns.
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