marshal's office that is injurious to their nefarious trade, but I do not believe the Government is seriously injured thereby. It is not true that any restrictions have ever been placed by military authority in this district on "wood-sawyers or a dealer in newspapers." The statement is untrue where it is stated that "it is not pretended that such measures (Orders, No. 6) are justified by any military exigency." It is untrue that I ever resorted to a public meeting of the loyal citizens of Sedalia or elsewhere or to any other means to have my orders sustained by an indorsement from the people. I have always let my orders stand on their merits, or I would let them fall, but it is a lamentable truth that our loyal citizens have had to resort to such means as public meetings, petitions, and memorials to induce the authorities to extend to them the protection from the outrages of rebels that their allegiance entitled them to demand, and it is still more lamentable that it has frequently happened that more attention has been paid to the falsehoods of rebels than to the remonstrances of loyal citizens. It is untrue that the effect of the restriction will injure the people or destroy the legitimate trade of the district. It was designed to check the contraband and dishonest trade carried on by disloyalists. In that to a great extent it has succeeded. When you called my attention to the complaints that were made at your headquarters in relation to this order, I forwarded you a lot of remonstrances against the revocation of the order that had been received from various parts of this district. Among the rest, I think you will find the proceedings of the meeting held at Sedalia, referred to in the letter to General Price. These papers had been sent in from time to time, and those forwarded you were of the last received. They were laid aside, without any intention of forwarding them to you, but, on the receipt of your letter of inquiry, it was thought they might serve to show you the opinion of the people in relation to the order. They were sent to prevent a repeal of the order, which the Union people did not want done, and because the rebels declared they would have it repealed, as it destroyed their business. To sum up the whole matter in one word, no city, town, village, post-office, or cross-roads in this district can be found where a majority of the Union inhabitants will consent to a revocation of the order. I believe it is an absolute necessity to continue in force the substance of this order as a peace measure. Our loyal people are proverbial for their patient endurance of wrong and injury, in obedience to law and the orders of their officers. They will submit to an almost unlimited amount of wrong and neglect, but there is a limit beyond which even they might be aroused into action, and surely it is enough to make the blood boil in the veins of any honest man to have to perform military duty as an enrolled militia man, without pay or the prospect of any, with his crops ungathered, his stock scattered, his wife and children without the common necessaries of life, that the laws may be guarded and upheld by his privations and sufferings, while those who have induced this war and have voluntarily enrolled themselves disloyal, are allowed to monopolize the trade of the country - such as Government contractors, who furnish the stock had other supplies required by the Government, and those who control the banks, the trade and commerce - and out of the profits indulge themselves and their families in every luxury that wealth can purchase; but when these insolent traitor go a step further and requires this same Government that they scorn and despise to compel these soldiers to protect them in the trade carried on by them with guerrillas, robbers, and thieves, the demand becomes intolerable, and the Government that requires such soldiers to

6 R-VOL XXII, PT II