Smith, for no attention is paid to us there whatever. These bad men have been retained around certain headquarters for the last twelve months and are a terror to our people. They can commit any offense they choose with perfect impunity, even to the extent of taking our teams and provisions in the streets of Van Buren and personally abusing and maltreating our citizens in the broad light of day, and they have been to our houses in the neighborhood at night committing unheard-of atrocities. It is the universal opinion among citizens that certain officers are interested and copartners with them. The evidence warrants the conclusion. The same are at this time engaged in hunting what few horses and cattle we have left to us in the bottoms. They hitch them out in the brush, or yard them, until they get the requisite number, and then driven them off toward Kansas. We are powerless and feel alarmed of personal safety. Every facility seems to be given to these abominably wicked and dangerous men by the provost-marshal here, who is a brutal man in his actions and treatment of our citizens. Such, governor, is a faint and insufficient outline of the manner in which people here are treated, and we implore you to lay the subject of our complaints before the commander of the Department of Arkansas, and failing in obtain redress we earnestly hope you will entreat the President of the United States to interpose his authority in our behalf. Hundreds of our fellow-citizens have been compelled to leave the country for the North after having been made miserably poor and helpless, thus leaving what was once their comfortable homes. We prefer to remain in our own country, where there exist so many remembrances of former contentment and prosperity. It is wrong that we should be driven away and be made to leave the graves of our relations, our fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, and our children. Our enemies, or those who ought to be our friends, treat us as if we had no right here, and they tell us to go away. There must be a change here to insure our safety. We do not speak of even a moiety of our sufferings at the hands of these officers, soldiers, and their camp followers.

Our citizens meet together and talk in whispers of these enormities, being afraid to offend and wondering what will come next. We appeal to the proper authorities for mercy and protection, and at the same time we have to request that our names shall not be exposed in connection with this movement for amelioration, for we are in the hands of unscrupulous men, who, we believe, would take our lives for our temerity, as they often threaten to do if we expose them or complain. If there is not a change soon to our advantage and to the advantage of decency and morality we shall be compelled to leave the State. We have forborne to trouble you in this matter before, hoping that General Thayer himself would wake u to a sense of the sinfulness of such conduct as we protest against, but we have lost all hope in him. It is the firm belief of all people here, so far as we can judge--and there is no doubt as to the sentiment of the people--that so long as these Kansas regiments remain here it will be impossible for any commander to create a much better state of things. The soldiers are to far demoralized, and the truth is that they have learned too much from many of their officers. There is one other thing, Your Excellency, that is of great importance to us. Nearly 100 men (our best men), to be increased to upward of 200, have signed a paper agreeing to form a colony in the bottom near Van Buren for agricultural purposes the present year, provided they can obtain adequate assurances of protection against the wickedness of these soldiers and others. They feel that they can protect