of our conversation. The whole matter must be referred to Washington for such orders as the Government may deem proper to issue.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. HALLECK,

Major-General.

[Inclosure Number 3.]

WASHINGTON, February 26, 1862.

Honorable E. M. STANTON,

Secretary of War, United States:

SIR: On the 6th instant you were pleased to acknowledge the receipt of my letter and other papers touching the lawless action of United States military forces in Jackson County, Missouri, which papers you kindly informed me would be submitted to the President for instructions, &c.; since which time, at great inconvenience to my private affairs at home, I have remained anxiously, though patiently, for an answer, satisfied that sickness and other matters of great public interest had so intervened as to preclude on your part a more prompt attention to mere local matters to which I called your aid and kind consideration; hence I now make complaint of delay in that regard. When I left the city of Saint Louis I had reason to hope from what passed between General Halleck and myself that the good people of my county would be entirely free from all further lawless violence on their property at the hands of United States military forces, and so notified them by letter; but from information since received I regret to inform you I was mistaken in that grateful hope.

It now appears that although the Kansas volunteer troops, in obedience to orders, did leave the State of Missouri, the substituted United States forces in that county have made no change in their mode of warfare for the better; the same wanton and lawless violence on the rights of private property have continued without check or hinderance. Bands of negroes, slave and free, and clans of white men, thief and jayhawker, from the State of Kansas, with the knowledge of that United States force thus substituted, are permitted in open day to enter our county and freely gratify their savage lust of plunder and private revenge on defenseless and terror-stricken people.

One of the great causes of this horrid state of things is the old border Kansas was grudge, aided by a few bad men in our county, who heretofore were rejected from social and political position by the better class of our population, and in order to gratify their malice and revenge become willing informers and guides of the United States forces whenever they enter our county; consequently false representations of the thought, feeling, and action of loyal men and women subject them and their property to violence and outrage.

It is true all this savage mode of warfare is in direct violation of the express rules, orders, &c., of that military department, and certainly does not receive your approbation, yet the question forces itself for consideration, why in that small portion of Missouri where civil law is suspended, no rebel force in arms, the people quiet, peaceful, and submissive to the United States power, such gross wrong, injustice, and outrage are tolerated?

I know and fully appreciate the many and great difficulties you have to contend with in order to crush this great unnatural rebellion, and at the same time satisfy the wants of men of all sections, parties, and factions;