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1000 Series I Volume XLI-III Serial 85 - Price's Missouri Expedition Part III

Page 1000 Chapter LIII. LOUISIANA AND THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI.

rest of your command to Princeton, directing Colonel Newton to communicate with you freely and frequently. Please acknowledge receipt.

I am, colonel, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

ED. P. TURNER,

Lieutenant-Colonel and Assistant Adjutant-General.


HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS,
Camden, October 10, 1864.

Colonel HARRISON,

Commanding Brigade Cavalry, Monticello, Ark.:

COLONEL: The major-general commanding desires that your will send a competent officer and detachment of men to Comish's Ferry, in order to raise the boats at that place (reported to have been sunk) in order to cross the sick which are reported to him to have been left on your side of the river, and to afford them such assistance and escort as they may need. You will also supply from your commissariat the rations that may be needed by the sick train. There are some pontoon boats near McDade's Ferry, which may be poled up and used to cross the sick.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

ED. P. TURNER,

Lieutenant-Colonel and Assistant Adjutant-General.

P. S.-Colonel Parsons' brigade cavalry is ordered to Mount Elba, via Warren. Your present position, Rough and Ready, is said to be a strong one, and if the enemy's force is divided you should be able to hold your own. Colonel McNeill has fallen back four miles from Mount Elba, and reports the enemy to be 1,500 strong, and that they had fallen back also ten miles, but with orders not to unsaddle, and he (Colonel McNeill) thinks they will soon attack him again.

Very respectfully,

ED. P. TURNER,

Lieutenant-Colonel and Assistant Adjutant-General.

CAMP NEAR BOONVILLE, MO., October 10, 1864.

Major General S. PRICE,

Commanding, &c.:

GENERAL: On your verbal assurance at Camden that your chief quartermaster would provide shoes for the horses and mules used by me in the present campaign I omitted to bring any along with me. Repeated applications by my quartermaster to that officer during my stay near your headquarters, and to General Shelby's quartermaster during my stay with him, have failed to produce anything but studied neglect of my necessities in this respect. One horse and two mules of those used by me or my attendants have had (and the others will soon have) to be abandoned as worn out for want of shoes. Every blacksmith shop on the line of march being seized for the use of the Confederate Army, my quartermaster can procure no horseshoes from citizens, and the wholesale pillage of horses and mules, as of goods generally in the vicinity of the army, has made it impossible for him to obtain anything by purchase. In fact, in an expedition designed to re-establish the rightful government of Missouri the Governor of the State cannot even purchase a horse or a blanket, while stragglers and camp followers are enriching themselves by plundering the defenseless families of our own


Page 1000 Chapter LIII. LOUISIANA AND THE TRANS-MISSISSIPPI.