HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI,
Saint Louis, April 27, 1865 - 3. 30 p. m.

General DODGE:

Sully will make a campaign against the Indians northwest of Black Hills, and will establish a post on Powder River. He thinks the post will be 150 miles north of Laramie. He will leave Sioux City about May 12.

JOHN POPE,

Major-General.

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI,
Saint Louis, Mo., April 27, 1865.

Major General G. M. DODGE,

Commanding Department of the Missouri, Saint Louis, Mo.:

GENERAL: This petition, asking for the banishment to the South of disloyal families from certain counties in Missouri, with accompanying letter and indorsements of Governor Fletcher and General McNeil, recommending that it be granted, is respectfully returned to you. * The banishment of residents of Missouri to the South is no longer admissible, if, indeed, it has ever been judicious or just. The Southern armies and State governments are now broken to pieces, and the object of the General Government is to restore peace and reinstate civil government in the Southern States. It is clear enough that there are a sufficient number of disloyal men and lawless vagrants in those States already to make the attempt to restore peace very difficult. What right has the State of Missouri to ask that these difficulties be further increased by re-enforceing the disaffected in the Southern States by the same class of people from Missouri? Certainly the State of Missouri is better able to deal with the comparatively small number of such characters now in the State than is any State of the South, not one of which is not much more grievously affected with the same kind of population. It certainly would not now be proper or judicious or acceptable to the General Government that the small number of disloyal and lawless people referred to in this petition be sent to the Southern States to re-enforce the much larger element of the same kind now there. It would simply be imposing Missouri's burden and her duty upon those States very much less able to bear the one or do the other, and would be complicating and greatly increasing the difficulties which now surround the settlement of affairs in the Southern States. Missouri must herself deal with such people, property residents and citizens of the State. This petition is therefore disapproved, and you will please hereafter refrain and required your subordinate officers to refrain banishing to the South any citizens or residents of Missouri or of any other State within your military department.

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

JOHN POPE,

Major-General, Commanding.

SPECIAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DEPARTMENT OF THE MISSOURI, Numbers 111.
saint Louis, Mo., April 27, 1865.

1. The Fifty-first Regiment Missouri Infantry Volunteers, Lieutenant Colonel N. B. Giddins commanding, having reported at these headquarters

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* See inclosure, &c., to letter of Dodge to Bell, April 25, 1865, p. 192.

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