No act of any commander, stationed at St. Louis during the war, created more excitement than this. At first both the loyal and disloyal were amazed. Then vengeful resentment and bitterness took possession of the assessed. The order fell chiefly on the “first families,” the _bon ton_ of Southern society, in our city; and was doubly offensive since it both galled their pride and struck at their devotion to the Southern Confederacy. Nevertheless they hardly ventured to protest above their breath, lest their words might justify the general’s order. Most of them having the saving grace of common sense, and regarding discretion as the better part of valor, with compressed and dumb lips quietly paid their assessments. If any hot denunciation clamored for utterance, it was temporarily suppressed and kept for secret fulmination under their own rooftrees. When, however, any one, resenting the exaction, refused to pay his assessment, a sufficient amount of his property to meet this extraordinary military tax was promptly confiscated, and a penalty of twenty-five per cent. was added to the original levy. Mr. Engler, whose tax had been collected in this manner, undertook to recover his confiscated goods through the civil court by a writ of replevin, and was at once apprehended and sent beyond the lines of the Union army,[88] where he had leisure to reflect on the folly of deliberately butting against martial law. Whatever may now be thought of General Halleck’s procedure in forcing men to alleviate the misery that they had helped to produce, at the time by far the larger part of the Unionists of our city heartily sustained it, and it did much toward solving the problem of feeding the multitude of refugees among us; for, by army rations, spontaneous private charity, and enforced assessments, all refugees that were poor, and hungry, and shelterless, were fairly well provided for. But we were constantly agitated by events outside our gates as well as within. During 1861 and the first three months of 1862, there were fully seventy armed conflicts in Missouri. We called them battles then, although only four or five of them really attained to that dignity. And we all knew that St. Louis was the object for which hostile forces were fighting. Although we held the city, the enemy was bending all his energies to snatch it from us. Who at last should permanently hold the prize none could yet determine. But our volunteer army grew apace. Early in 1862 an aggressive campaign was planned against the enemy in the southwest. A force of over ten thousand well-armed men under the immediate command of General Samuel Ryan Curtis, swept Price and his army from our State; and at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, met and defeated the combined forces of Van Dorn, Price, McCulloch and Pike, the last commanding a brigade of Indians.