excited people there to leave one another alone. Under your recent orders, which I have approved, you will arrest only individuals and suppress assemblies or newspapers when they may be working palpable injury to the military in your charge, and in no other case will you interfere with the expression of opinion in any form or allow it to be interfered with violently by others. In this you have a discretion to exercise, with great caution, calmness, and forbearance. With the matters of removing the inhabitants of certain counties en masse, and of removing certain individuals from time to time, who are supposed to be mischievous, I am not now interfering, but am leaving to your own discretion. Nor am I interfering with what may still seem to you to be necessary restriction upon trade and intercourse. I think proper, however, to enjoin upon you the following: Allow no part of the military under your command to be engaged in either returning fugitive slaves or in forcing or enticing slaves from their homes, and, so far as practicable, enforce the same forbearance upon the people.

Report to me your opinion upon the availability for good of the Enrolled Militia of the State.

Allow no one to enlist colored troops except upon orders from you or from here, through you.

Allow no one to assume the functions of confiscating property under the law of Congress, or otherwise, except upon orders from here.

At elections see that those, and only those, are allowed to vote who are entitled to do so the laws of Missouri, including, as of those laws, the restriction laid by the Missouri Convention upon those who may have participated in the rebellion.

So far as practicable, you will, by means of your military force, expel guerrillas, marauders, and murderers, and all who are known to harbor, aid, or abet them. But in like manner you will repress assumptions of unauthorized individuals to perform the same service because, under pretense of doing this, they became marauders and murderers themselves.

To now restore peace, let the military obey orders, and those not of the military leave each other alone, thus not breaking the peace themselves.

In giving the above directions, it is not intended to restrain you in other expedient and necessary matters not falling within this range.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

SAINT LOUIS, MO., October 1, 1863-3 p.m.

Major General H. W. HALLECK,

General-in-Chief:

I am compelled to relieve Major-General Blunt from his command. I would send Brigadier-General McNeil to take his place, but have no competent officer to relieve General McNeil. Can you send me an efficient officer to command either of these districts?

J. M. SCHOFIELD,

Major-General.

KANSAS CITY, MO., October 1, 1863.

Captain L. D. JOY,

Leavenworth City:

Ascertain and telegraph me as to the truth of the report as to the Union men being driven from Platte County. Send reliable men to