To be taken to the execution ground and the following order then read to him:

In consideration of the nobel stand taken for the right by your brother, Captain McFarland, of the Ninth Missouri State Militia, the commanding general is pleased to order that your life be spared and your sentence commuted to confinement during the war. This is a tribute to the patriotism and sense of duty of your brother, and not out of consideration for a man who has not only committed the crime of unlawfully and in violation of all the rules of civilized war taking up arm against his Government, but who had added to that crime the fearful offense of blackening with perjury a soul already stained with crimes which no right-minded man can view except with horror and disgust. Let the awful example before you teach you the lesson you evidently so much needed, and show by your earnest repentance of your crimes that you are again worthy to be called brother by an honest man.

LEWIS MERRILL,

Brigadier-General, Commanding Northeast Missouri Division.

3rd. Solomon Donaldson, to be shot to death on Friday, the 5th of September, between the hours of 10 o'clock a. m. and 3 o'clock p. m., at Mexico, Mo.

LEWIS MERRILL,

Brigadier-General, Commanding Northeast Missouri Division.

HEADQUARTERS NORTHEAST MISSOURI DIVISION,
Macon City, Mo., September 2, 1862.

General J. B. HENDERSON, Louisiana, Mo.:

GENERAL: In carrying out my plans for Northeast Missouri I wish to appoint a board of five or seven good men, selected from different parts of the section, as a general board, whose duty it shall be to divide between the several counties the amount to believed upon them to repay the damages sustained by the last raid of Porter and his gang and Poindexter and his thieves. Many of the counties, Marion for instance, have done three or four times as much mischief as most of the others, while for various reasons, sometimes from the paucity of Union men, sometimes, as in Saint Charles, no gangs have visited them, the damages sustained by Union men has been small, and if the county were assessed only for the damage done within its own lines it would not be near its share.

In order to come as near as possible to doing justice in making the amount I wish to have the aid of some good men, who know the relative badness of the counties, to divide among them the proportion to be paid by each.

You know my acquaintance with men in North Missouri is not extensive, and I wish to ask your assistance in naming the proper men for the duty, being well aware that you will endeavor to select the proper men, and that your acquaintance with the people of this section makes you competent to do so.

Will you have the kindness at the same time to name in each of the following counties proper persons for the other county boards: For Ralls, Pike, Lincoln, Audrain, and Monroe.

These boards in each county will be two:

1st. A board of three men, whose duty shall be to assess among the Southern sympathizers their share of the burden of pubic defense in