Today in History:

380 Series I Volume XLI-III Serial 85 - Price's Missouri Expedition Part III

Page 380 LOUISIANA AND THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI. Chapter LIII.

are true to their State and nation. Bring arms, if you have any, horses if you can ride, and fight as scouts. Let ever arm be nerved, every brain active.

III. Officers and soldiers now discharged, or on veteran furlough, are appealed to in this crisis. Such officers and men as are in the city will report to Colonel Laiboldt, at Schofield Barracks, Numbers 2. Colonel Laiboldt will organize them into companies and combine them with his troops into battalions, forming a veteran brigade for the defense of the city, and to punish Price, Shelby, and their companions, as well as the traitors at home who are waiting to join them and who have aided and supplied them with horses stolen from their neighbors during the last few weeks and sent South. The case admits of no delay.

IV. Colonel Laiboldt will make requisitions on the chief of ordnance for necessary equipments, arms, and ammunition.

The chief commissary of subsistence and the chief quartermaster will provide the supplies necessary from their respective departments. Colonel Merrill, chief of the Cavalry Bureau, Western Division, will organize, arm, and mount every man in his command for active service, and report at these headquarters.

The chief quartermaster will have all employes that can bear arms organized into companies. Those who can act as cavalry will be mounted and reported to Captain C. H. McNally.

V. The Governor of the State has been informed of the threatened raid and requested to call the militia to serve until the militia to serve until the invaders are destroyed or driven from the State. I rely upon their courage and patriotism, and have only to say let your assembling be prompt, and let the commissioned officers see that proper steps are at once taken to secure for their commands all needful supplies of arms, equipments, ammunition, camp and garrison equipage, and blankets.

Brigadier General E. Anson More, chief quartermaster of the State, will furnish these supplies on requisitions made according to his instructions.

The Chief commissary of the department will furnish subsistence.

VI. District commanders will at once give such orders to the citizen guards as will best secure the public property and records of their district, and, if possible, save private property from destruction or pillage.

VII. The general commanding takes this occasion to say to troops under his command that lawlessness and violence toward unarmed citizens, wasting and appropriating property to private uses have done more harm to the cause of the nation than the loss of a great battle. Every soldier should remember that he is armed and clothed with authority to preserve and defend law. Any violation of law wrongs his county; and a soldier who does so discharges his flag, and commits a great crime. Officers are under still higher obligations to avoid and prevent these crimes and disorder. While the laws of war and of our country permit the seizure and conversion of private property for public uses, under order, in certain cases, it denounces the waste or conversion of it to private use as a high crime, and affixes the penalty of death to pillage and plunder. The penalty is the same whether the offenses is committed in our own or in an enemy's country. Any officer or soldier who shall enter a private house or inclosure and call for food, or take any property whatsoever, without orders from a proper officer, shall be promptly and severely punished.

By command of Major-General Rosecrans:

J. F. BENNETT,

Assistant Adjutant-General.


Page 380 LOUISIANA AND THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI. Chapter LIII.