Today in History:

963 Series I Volume XIII- Serial 19 - Missouri - Arkansas Campaign

CHAP. XXV.] CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.-CONFEDERATE. 963

down, and was left. The others were taken as far as Doaksville. Having them in charge some six days, then turned them off without giving them any discharge to show their time of service; but they were eight days out before they returned to the plantation; that is, four of them. Please inform me if I am to be compensated for this; by whom, &c.

These wagons were in use hauling corn for the troops at this post, which Mr. Jones was furnishing on credit. Colonel Dawson had been allowed to furlough one half his effective men until the 25th of June, to return home and reap the wheat crop. He applied to the general commanding for permission to scud the regimental wagons to convey them home, and was answered that such permission could not be legally given. He sent them, nevertheless, and when unexpectedly ordered to march to Little Rock they had not returned, and the general refused to let him have others in their place, as there were none that could be spared. To supply his needs, caused by his so sending his wagons away with his furloughed men, he, or some officer of the command, seized those of Mr. Jones. The brigadier-general commanding directs me to say that he hopes the regulation prohibiting the impressment of property will be more strictly enforced in this case, for the reason that the offense was committed in the Indian country and the property of an ally was seized. If it is passed over in silence, great discontent will justly be the consequence. If he had known it in time, and could have seized the offender, he would have treated the act as pillaging and marauding, and tried the party by a military commission. And he also directs me to ask that steps may be immediately taken to compensate Mr. Jones, and that information be given that gentleman of any satisfactory action in the premises. His post office is at Doaksville.

I am, very respectfully, yours,

G. A. SCHWARZMAN,

Captain and Assistant Adjutant - General

FORT SMITH, ARK., July 5, 1862.

DEAR GENERAL: I am very much dissatisfied with the way affairs are being conducted out West, and I desire to exclude Colonel Carroll from this general complaint. He is active as his health, which is bad, will permit, and doing all that a man can do with the means at hand and to be had.

To-day I saw Mr. F. E. Williams, of Scullyville. He has just come in from Pike's headquarters. I asked him if Pike had left, and his reply was that Pike did not intend to leave; that he had ordered Colonel Cooper to take his regiment to Gibson, and that the major of the regiment stepped out and said that their time would be out in a month ; that the treaty did not require them to leave their nation, and that he would not go, and the regiment coincided with the major in his views, and acted accordingly. Cooper went on to Gibson alone, and the only force he has is two companies that he ordered from the vicinity of Scullyville that had been on furlough.

For the last twenty-four hours men have been coming in from Clarkson's headquarters, 30 miles north of Tahlequah; horses broken down; without arms, and many minus their hats, and report that Clarkson and some 100 men, and the trains of both Clarkson and Stand Watie's commands, have been taken by the Federals - taken by surprise, and we not firing a gun, the enemy being right in camp before they had any intimation of their approach. In this train, which must have consisted of