HEADQUARTERS,
Bloomfield, Mo., April 17, 1865.

Lieutenant J. c. THOMSON,

Actg. Asst. Adjt. General, Cape Girardeau, Mo.:

I have reliable information that Nath. Bolin is on Hickory Ridge with thirty or forty men. Yesterday he was at Saint Luke with fifty or sixty men. My men have gone for the portion of his men below. I think it advisable that you send men to the ridge immediately.

ED. COLBERT,

Captain, Commanding Post.

HEADQUARTERS SAINT LOUIS DISTRICT,
Saint Louis, Mo., April 17, 1865.

Brigadier-General BEVERIDGE,

Pilot Knob:

Send the Seventeenth Illinois Cavalry to Cape Girardeau at once. Make such disposition of your remaining force as will cover Pilot Knob, Centerville, and Patterson. The company at De Soto will be relieved and ordered to the Regiment. Will you require any more infantry to effectually cover those points?

By order of Brigadier-General Wagner:

H. HANNAHS,

Major and Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

IRONTON, April 17, 1865.

Mr. MORGAN MACE,

Ironton, Mo.:

SIR: According to your request, I would submit the following statement in reference to the raid to be in contemplation by Shelby, Jeff. Thompson, Revers, and others into Southeast Missouri. Some time in January last I was ordered to report for duty near Augusta, Woodruff County, Ark. I then belonged, as they told me, to Captain Butler's company, of Lieutenant-Colonel James' Regiment, McCray's brigade. However, as I was decided not to go, I left there and came to Pilot Knob, Mo., where I surrendered to Captain Lonergan January 14, 1865. At the time I left it appeared to me that the rebels held undisputed possession of the territory north of Little Rock, in Arkansas, and small bands of them are roaming over the country even in Missouri to but a little distance from Patterson and Bloomfield. Since I came up here my family followed me, having left there about the 1st of April. I hear from my wife that about the 1st day of this month Jeff. Thompson and Tim Reves had their headquarters at Powhatan, having only a few men with them; that most of the men in our neighborhood had returned home, some of them belonging to the different brigades of Jackman, McCray, and Freeman; that all those men had been ordered again to report for duty on the 1st day of May, 1865, at Powhatan, Ark., and that it was for the purpose of meeting Shelby, who, as it was rumored, was on Crowley's Ridge, some seventy or eighty miles below Powhatan, and that thereupon the combined force was to go on another raid into Southeast Missouri. My wife obtained passes from Captain Henderson, of rebel army, near Old Jackson, Randolph County, Ark., and also from Lieutenant-Colonel James, at Smithville, Ark., and, provided therewith, was permitted to come up, not, however, without having been jayhawked several times on the road. James Parker, John Morris,