western border of their State, and to pray Your Excellency's interposition in behalf of a suffering people. Your memorialist feel that justice and humanity demand at least this much at their hands. They therefore beg Your Excellency's attention to the facts hereinafter appearing.

For more than two years past our western border has been the threader of strife and bloodshed, and has been overrun by lawless bands of desperadoes, who, with a reckless and unrestrained soldiery, have rioted upon the substance of the people and have wantonly destroyed their property and trampled upon their most sacred rights. Theft, robbery, house-burning, and other crimes have been perpetrated with impunity, and to such an extent has this system of plunder and vandalism prevailed that it has improvised and almost depopulated one of the fairest and most wealthy and prosperous parts of our State, and, unless arrested, it will certainly involve in similar ruin many other sections of the State that have hitherto, in a measure, escaped its ravages.

During the past mouth theft, robbery, arson, and murder have been of almost daily occurrence, and the fearful threat that the border shall be made a desolation, it appears, is about to be executed. During the past fortnight these evils have existed in a most fearful and intensified form, and but little has been done to arrest them. Whey they should be allowed your memorialist cannot perceive. They had their original as far back as the fall of 1861, in the burning of Osceola and other small villages along the border, and from that time to the present they have gradually increased, and the horrible barbarities that have uniformly attended them have at last become as appalling as those which characterized savage warfare in the early history of this country. The lives of the people and the material wealth of the country have been wantonly and wickedly destroyed in a manner and to an extent that have hitherto been unknown and unheard of among a civilized people. That which cannot be carried away is committed to the flames, and thus helpless and defenseless women and children are left destitute of food, raiment, or shelter, and without the means of escape from suffering and ruin.

These evils have produced a degree of consternation that language cannot describe, and which none can comprehend save those who have witnessed it; yet it is the natural result of the retaliatory warfare and of the unrestrained lawlessness that have existed in Western Missouri for the last two years, which, if not speedily checked, will involve in ruin by far the greater parts of this State and Kansas, and will be productive of other evils the magnitude of which no one can now estimate. Your memorialist greatly fear that the recent outrages perpetrated in both Missouri and Kansas but faintly foreshadow the future history of these States if some means cannot be adopted to allay the excitement and arrest the lawless violence now prevailing along the border. Whatever may have been the errors of many of our citizens in the beginning of this terrible rebellion, your memorialist entertain no kind of doubt that an overwhelming majority of the masses are now sincerely determined to support the Government of the United States and the provisional government of Missouri, nor the least doubt that they, in good faith, accept the ordinance of emancipation adopted by the late convention as a final an complete settlement of the question of slavery in this State. There can be no question of these facts, nor have your memorialist a shadow of doubt that a firm and just policy in the future conduct of the military affairs of this State will prove more conductive to her peace and to the interests of the Federal Government than any other that can possibly be adopted. It will do more in thirty days, if honestly