ripe for the harvest of abolitionism, freesoilers, and Northern mounte-banks.

We hope to find in your people friends willing to co-operate with the South in defense of her institutions, her honor, and her firesides, and with whom the slaveholding States are willing to share a common future, and to afford protection commensurate with your exposed condition and your subsisting monetary interests with the General Government.

As a direct means of expressing to you these sentiments, I have dispatched my aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Gaines, to confer with you confidentially upon these subject, and to report to me any expressions of kindness and confidence that you may see proper to communicate the governor of Arkansas, who is your friend and the friend of your people.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

HENRY M. RECTOR,

Governor of Arkansas.

SAINT JOSEPH, MO., April 15, 1861.

His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS,

President of the Confederate States, Montgomery, Ala.:

SIR: Not knowing the name of your adjutant-general or any other proper person to make the inquiries of which I desire, I have taken the liberty of addressing you direct.

I am anxious to know whether the Confederate States desire volunteers from the border States, and if there is any regular arrangement for their reception, or whether it is necessary to have any authority from your Government before volunteers should be raised.

My object in asking is that, should Missouri refuse to join her Southern sisters, I desire and intend to move South, and I can, if acceptable, bring one, two, or three companies of as good and true men as the Southern sun ever shone on, if I can assure them that their officers will be confirmed and commissioned by your Government.

I would respectfully refer you to Honorable Luther Glen, commissioner from Georgia to Missouri, or Honorable Russell, commissioner from Mississippi to Missouri, or his Excellency C. F. Jackson, governor of Missouri.

Yours, respectfully,

M. JEFF. THOMPSON,

Colonel, Inspector Fourth Military District Missouri Militia.

WAR DEPARTMENT, C. S. A.,

Montgomery, April 16, 1861.

Honorable T. C. HINDMAN, Helena, Ark.:

SIR: In reply to your inquiries in regard to the policy of this Government on the subject of accepting military aid from Southern States which are not yet members of the Confederacy, and especially as to Arkansas, I beg leave to state that thus far this department has through proper to decline for the present all tenders from those States, simply because the forces easily and rapidly raised in convenient proximity to the scenes of operation have been ample for all the needs of the country.

Since the forced surrender of Fort Sumter to the forces of the Confederate States, followed by a most warlike proclamation from the Exec-