page_190 < previous page page_190 next page > Page 190 rangements for the Trans-Mississippi Department or District, whichever it may have been at the period, were intended to militate against that fundamental fact.508 Despairing of accomplishing anything by lingering longer in Little Rock, Pike applied to Holmes for a leave of absence and was granted it for such time as might have to elapse before action upon his resignation could be secured.509 The circumstance of Hindman's having relieved Pike from duty was thus ignored or passed over in silence. General Pike had come to Little Rock to see his family510 but he now decided upon a visit to Texas. Exactly what he expected to do there nobody knows; but he undoubtedly had at heart the interests of his department. He went to Warren first and later to Grayson County. At the latter place, he made Sherman his private headquarters and it was from there that he subsequently found it convenient to pass over again into Indian Territory. Pike was in Arkansas as late as the nineteenth of August and probably still there when Randolph's letter of the fourteenth of July, much delayed, arrived.511 If angry before, he was now incensed; for he knew for a certainty at last that Hindman had been a sort of usurper in the Trans-Mississippi District and, with power emanating from no one higher than Beauregard, had never legally possessed a flicker of authority for doing the many insulting things that he had arrogantly done to him.512 Next, from some source, came the 508Official Records, vol. xiii, 861, 864, 868. 509 Holmes to the Secretary of War, November 15, 1862 [ibid., 918]. 510 For an account of Pike's movements, see Confederate Military History, vol. x, 126. 511 Abel, American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist, 356. 512 Pike to Holmes, December 30, 1862, "Appendix." Â < previous page page_190 next page >