GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. MISSOURI STATE GUARD, Numbers 79.
Des Arc, Ark., April 8, 1862.

Soldiers of the State Guard:

I command you no longer. I have this day resigned the commission which your patient have made so honorable. I have done this that I may the better serve you, our State, and our country-that I may the sooner lead you back to the fertile prairies, the rich woodlands, and majestic streams of our beloved Missouri-that I may the more certainly restore you to your once happy homes and to the loved ones there.

Five thousand of those who have fought side by side with us under the Grizzly Bears of Missouri have followed me into the Confederate camp. They appeal to you, as I do, by all the tender memories of the past, not to leave us now, but to go with us wherever the part of duty may lead, till we shall have conquered a peace and won our independence by brilliant deeds upon new fields of battle.

Soldiers of the State Guard! Veterans of six pitched battles and nearly twenty skirmishes! Conquerors in them all! Your country, with its " ruined hearts and shrine," calls upon you to rally once more in her defense and rescue her forever from the terrible thraldom which threatens her. I know that she will not call in vain. The insolent and barbarous hordes which have dared to invade our soil and to desecrate our homes have just with a signal overthrow beyond the Mississippi. Now is the time to end this unhappy war. If every man will but do his duty, his own roof will shelter him in peace from the storms of the coming winter.

Let not history record that the men who bore with patience the privations of Cowskin Prairie, who endured uncomplainingly the burning heat of a Missouri summer, and the frosts and shows of a Missouri winter; that the men who met the enemy at Carthage, at Oak Hills, at Fort Scott, at Lexington, and in numberless lesser battle-fields in Missouri, and met them but to conquer them; that the men who fought so bravely and so well at Elkhorn; that the unpaid soldierly of Missouri were, after so many victories and after so much suffering, unequal to the great task of achieving the independence of their magnificent State.

Soldiers! I go but to mark a pathway to our homes. Follow me!

STERLING PRICE.

GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. ADJT. General 'S OFFICE, Mo., S. C., Numbers 26.
Des Arc, Ark., April 8, 1862.

I. Brigadier General M. M. Parsons is hereby specially detailed to the command of all the Missouri State Guard now in the field, and will immediately organize them into companies, battalions, and regiments, according to law.

II. The army corps to be thus organized will consist exclusively of infantry and artillery.

III. The general commanding will report as soon as practicable the entire force in the Missouri State Guard now remaining, rank and file.

By order of the Governor:

WARWICK HOUGH,

Adjutant-General of Missouri.