Note (return) — IX. THE REMOVAL OF THE REFUGEES TO THE SAC AND FOX AGENCY
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conspicuously and well, the northern regiments so well,617 indeed, that shortly afterwards two additional ones, the Fourth and the Fifth, were projected.618 Towards the end of the year, Phillips, whom Blunt had sent upon another excursion into Indian Territory,619 could report
Footnote 616:
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(cont.) Bishop wrote, "After the battle of Prairie Grove, and the gradual retrogression of the Army of the Frontier into Missouri, Fayetteville was still held as a military post, and those of us who remained there were given to understand that the place would not be abandoned ... The demoralized enemy had fallen back to Little Rock, with the exception of weak nomadic forces that, like Stygian ghosts, wandered up and down the Arkansas from Dardanelle to Fort Smith...." [Loyalty on the Frontier, 205]. Schofield was of the opinion, however, that the Battle of Prairie Grove was a hard-won victory. "Blunt and Herron were badly beaten in detail, and owed their escape to a false report of my arrival with re-enforcements." [Official Records, vol. xxii, part ii, p. 6].