the informers. Is it expected that the troops, thus of necessity groping in the dark, can put down these outlaws when the very men needing, perhaps, certainly asking, the protection of a military force, will not even give the slightest information necessary to identify the guilty or the dangerous parties? That this is really the condition of facts I think you know. That it was so in 1861 and 1862 I know by my own experience in Missouri in those years. What ground is there for believing that a military force, in the face of such inaction and fear on the part of the people, will ever be able to find out who the bushwhackers are, to say nothing of finding out where they are, or of exterminating them? The fact is, that in many parts of the interior of the State the people are living under a reign of terror, dominated over and paralyzed by a ridiculously small number of outlaws and vagabonds. It is useless to comment upon such an exhibition of-I will not say what-on the part of a large body of American people. It is only necessary here to express the conviction that just as long as this strange paralysis continues, just so long will the people of Missouri be harassed and plundered by bushwhackers or by any other lawless vagabonds. All the troops in the world could not, under present circumstances, prevent it.

We come back, then, to the same question, do the people of Missouri intend to arouse themselves and execute, as well as make, their own laws? A single example of the trial of one of these outlaws before your courts, and his execution by your civil authorities, would do more to put an end to bushwhacking in Missouri than a thousand military executions. Strip these rogues of respectability borrowed from the notion that hey are armed enemies and Southern soldiers, and reduce them, by actual trial and punishment before your courts, to their true status as outlaws and ruffians, guilty of theft and arson, and you will deal them and their sympathizers such a blow as will go far to end the business. In this undertaking you shall have all the assistance the military can render you. The military forces employed shall act under the direction of your civil officers, according to law and the practice in time past. They can thus render you as much assistance as in any other manner, and the result of a success achieved under such circumstances will be of infinitely more benefit to you than a thousand successes achieved by the military alone.

I trust I shall be pardoned for so much reiteration but plain as are the principles set forth, and familiar as they ought to be, and doubtless are, to all Americans they seem to me to be regarded in Missouri as mere abstractions, which are true, certainly, but hardly vital enough to control the action of the people. I stand ready to aid the people of Missouri by all the means at my command to resume their status as citizens. I will render them both by word and deed every assistance which will tend to restoent in Missouri, and most promptly and cheerfully when they have done this will I withdraw the troops under my command to their true position, under the Constitution and laws of the United States. It is only necessary to put reliable men into every civil office and to enact such laws as are necessary to restore peace and civil rights in Missouri. The soldiers under my command stand ready at all times to respond to the call of your civil officers and to act under their direction in helping to enforce the laws of the State. Such is the position they ought now to occupy, and such is the position which under the action of your State convention and of the State government at Jefferson City I trust they will be permitted to occupy in the shortest possible period.

Of course I cannot indicate to you what I intend to do, because you may readily understand from the foregoing remarks that any measures