Though he was out of favor with Gen. McClellan and many others who were directing military operations, in some way a Brigadier-General's commission came to U. S. Grant, and he was assigned to the District of Southeastern Missouri, with headquarters at Cape Girardeau, where his duty was to hold in check the poetical M. Jeff Thompson, the noisy Gideon J. Pillow and the prelatic Leonidas J. Polk in their efforts to get control of the southeastern corner of the State and menace Cairo and St. Louis. Maj. Sturgis was promptly made a Brigadier-General to date from Wilson's Creek, and assigned to the command of Northeast Missouri, where he had five or six thousand men under him. Capt. Fred Steele had accepted a commission as Colonel of the 8th Iowa; Capt. Jos. B. Plummer shortly took the Colonelcy of a new regiment, the 11th Mo.; Capt. Totten became Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel of the 1st Mo. Art., of which Schofield was Major. 200 Notwithstanding the feeling of the officers and soldiers who had participated in the battle of Wilson's Creek against Sigel, it was found so necessary to "recognize the Germans" and hold them strongly for the Union cause that he was made a Brigadier-General to date from May 17, 1861, which put him in the same class of Volunteer Brigadier-Generals as Hunter, Heintzelman, Fitz John Porter, Wm. B. Franklin, Wm. T. Sherman, C. P. Stone, Don Carlos Buell, John Pope, Philip Kearny, Joseph Hooker, U. S. Grant, John A. McClernand and A. S. Williams, all of whose volunteer commissions bore the date of May 17. This was subsequently a cause of trouble. There appeared also another of those figures so common among the State builders of this country, and upholding to the fullest the character of a leader of pioneers. James H. Lane was an Indiana man, son of a preacher; had served with credit as Colonel of Indiana troops in Mexico, and had been Lieutenant-Governor of Indiana and Member of Congress, but getting at odds with his party had migrated to Kansas, where his natural talents and fiery, aggressive courage speedily brought him to the front as the leader of the warlike Free State men, who resisted with force and arms the attempts of the Pro-slavery men to dominate the Territory. His instant readiness for battle and the unsparing energy with which he prosecuted his enterprises so endeared him to the Free State men that when the State was admitted there was no question about his election as her first United States Senator. 201