existence of a band of guerrillas "two miles below Poplar Bluff, in Butler County, under Jennings; also that Cache Swamp is the chief resort of guerrillas under Hildebrand and Neighbors. These bands rob and murder the people, scouring the country in small squads, and have even attacked the pickets at Ironton, and unless they are checked or driven off it is feared this coming summer may bring new raids, murder, &c. " The matter is submitted for your information and action.

I remain, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

E. B. ALEXANDER

Colonel Tenth U. S. Infantry and Actg. Asst. Pro. March General

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI,
Saint Louis, March 3, 1865.

Honorable Thomas C. FLETCHER:

GOVERNOR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 2nd instant, asking my views as to "the best uses of the U. S. military forces, and their relation to the present and prospective condition of this State," in view of certain measures contemplated by you for the future security of the people of Missouri. Although in replying to your letter I shall be obliged to notice a condition of things not pleasant to contemplate, I have sufficient confidence in the good sense and practical judgment of the people of Missouri, as exhibited in the late elections and in the measures adopted by your legislature and State convention, to feel confident that they are prepared to meet and settle any questions affecting the welfare and prosperity of the State however grave or unpleasant. Until I reached this city I had supposed that the difficulties which had disturbed the State for the past three years had either been practically settled or were in a fair way of settlement, and that Missouri would soon resume the full exercise of her civil functions, and dispense entirely with the cumbersome, inefficient, and altogether anomalous machinery of the provost-marshals, provost guards, and military supervision. I knew that the Union party at the fall elections had carried the State by an overwhelming majority, and that a loyal governor and a loyal legislature were now in power at Jefferson City. It did not seem too much to expect of the opposition party in Missouri that a large portion of it would at least be opposed to the whole guerrillas system, which has so long afflicted the State and would, like all reasonable men, regard, bushwhackers as the destroyers of all civil organization and the enemies of mankind. I knew that since Price was driven from the State no organized force of the enemy could be found within the borders of Missouri. I fully believed in the capacity of the American people for self-government, and their determination to retain it; and I presumed of course that the people of Missouri had at once and earnestly, assumed the performance of their civil duties, and were rapidly placing the State in the position it ought always to have occupied. I hoped to find the military forces in process of being relieved from the anomalous and anti-American functions which had been forced upon them by the extraordinary necessities of the past three years, and concentrated for service in other fields and against the organized forces of the enemy.

I need not tell you, however, that such is by no means the condition of things which I find in Missouri. On the contrary, there has not been a time since the rebellion began when your civil affairs have been