After some destruction of property, McCulloch sullenly returned to his old position in Arkansas, where, leaving his command to Col. James Mcintosh, lately Captain in the United States Army, he departed for Richmond to give the Confederate War Department his version of the occurrences in his territory.
Sterling Price had learned the same day, Nov. 16, of the departure of the Union army, and set his columns in motion northward, announcing that he was going to winter on the Missouri River. Again he sent an appeal to McCulloch to cooperate, but Col. Mcintosh declined, on the ground that the troops were not properly clad for the rigorous weather so far north, and, besides, he did not think that the expedition would do any good.
Sterling Price simply let loose his army on the country evacuated by the Union troops, and a reign of indescribable misery ensued for the Union people and those who were vainly trying to keep the neutral middle of the road. The army was spread out as much as possible in order to gather in recruits and supplies and assert its influence most widely.
From Marshall, in Saline Co., Sterling Price issued a most remarkable proclamation to the people, calling for 50,000 volunteers. He reminded them that their harvests had been reaped, their preparation for Winter had been made, and now they had leisure to do something to relieve the people from the "inflictions of a foe marked with all the characteristics of barbarian warfare." He admitted that the great mass of the people were not in the war, and especially the substantial portion of the population, for, he said, "boys and small property-holders have in the main fought the battles." He begged, he implored that the herdsman should leave his folds, the lawyer his office, and come into camp to win the victory. He even dropped into poetry in his tearful earnestness, quoting the school boy's declamation from Marco Bozarris:
Strike, till the last armed foe expires; Strike, for your altars and your fires! Strike for the green graves of your sires, God, and your native land!
An infinitely harmful part of the proclamation was the following:
Leave your property at home. What if it be taken--all taken? We have $200,000,000 worth of Northern means in Missouri which cannot be removed. When we are once free the State will indemnify every citizen who may have lost a dollar by adhesion to the cause of his country. We shall have our property, or its value, with interest.