Monroe County, Arkansas, notifying them that they will be held responsible in person and property for any injury they themselves or those raised in their midst might thereafter inflict in the name or under the guise of that savage warfare, outlawed by the civilized world, known as guerrilla warfare.

You will permit me to suggest that your objections to may proclamation come with ill grace from you when accompanied with your own order above referred to, which order is but an encouragement to rapine and murder upon the part of those in this State, if there be such, so lost to all sense of honor as to avail themselves of your permission to commit such depredations. You must be aware that your captains of tens will soon become little else than highway banditti, more terrible to citizens of your own State than to soldiers and sailors of the United States. It was doubtless in pursuance of the policy indicated in your order that your troops, who defended this place on the 17th, fired upon a part of the crew of the Mound City, who were scalded by an accident to the machinery of that boat while helpless in the river, into which they had sprung to relieve their torture. It is believed that no troops of a civilized country would have dared adopt such a course without being assured of being sustained by their commanding officer, especially after the world knew that when a similar accident happened to a Confederate gunboat during the late naval engagement at Memphis the United States soldiers and sailors had risked their lives to rescue those from the Mississippi who from the same cause had sought relief by jumping overboard.

Your threat will not deter me from executing the letter of my proclamation in every case in which my judgment dictates its propriety or necessity.

Very respectfully, yours,

G. N. FITCH,

Colonel, Commanding U. S. Forces.

Major General T. C. HINDMAN,

Commanding C. C. A. Forces, Little Rock, Ark.

HEADQUARTERS INDIANA BRIGADE,
Aberdeen, Ark., June 6, 1862.

SIR: We arrived here yesterday. A scouting party was sent out, who discovered the enemy within 2 miles of the place. One prisoner was taken. The morning of the 6th a reconnaissance was ordered, consisting of about 200 of the Twenty-fourth Indiana, under colonel Spicely, followed at in interval of half an hour by the same number of the Forty-third, under Lieutenant-Colonel Farrow, and again after a like interval by another detachment of the same number, jointly from the Thirty-fourth and Forty-sixth, with a Dahlgren boat howitzer, which last detachment I accompanied. The remainder of the command, under Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness, if required, for support. Colonel Spicely was directed to proceed upon the road on which the enemy had been discovered the evening previous, and attack him whenever he met him and in whatever number. He followed the Devall's Bluff road 4 miles to an open woods, immediately upon the border of Grand Prairie, where his skirmishers discovered and drove in the enemy's pickets. Their main body, all mounted, made an attack upon his front, which was quickly repulsed, but availing themselves of a point of thick timber, which concealed