make immediate requisition for necessary supplies of all kinds. All possible dispatch will be made in preparation, and as soon as the detachment is in readiness to march the fact will be reported to these headquarters.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

By order of Brigadier General Robert B. Mitchell:

JOHN PRATT,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF NEW MEXICO,
Santa Fe, N. Mex., May 10, 1865.

EDITOR OF THE SANTA FE GAZETTE:

DEAR SIR: Some information has just been received by myself that a band of lawless desperadoes has been forming in the northern part of Texas with the avowed purpose of making a raid into New Mexico.

The people of this Territory will hear the intelligence doubtless in an exaggerated form, and may, perhaps, become unduly alarmed at what they hear. In order that they may know the matter as it is known at these headquarters, I beg that you will do me the favor to publish the following official correspondence on the subject: We as a people have just passed through the greatest civil commotion which has ever threatened the political existence of any nation known to history, and without alluding to the causes which led to it, the terrible energy by which it has been conducted, or the intense vigor and unexampled gallantry shown by the combatants on each side, it is sufficient now to know that the cause of the Republic triumphed. Therefore, although we can never return to the status quo ante bellum, all good citizens of the United States, be they from the North or the South, from the East or the West, are in duty bound to unite in the feeling, as well as in the determination, to let bygones be bygones, and now, to vie with each other in the exercise of forbearance and charity and of all the virtues which will the soonest bind up our wounds, allay feelings of exasperation, and break up sectional prejudices, and go hand in hand in the resolution to make every portion of our common country more orderly, more law abiding, more just, more magnanimous, and therefore more united, powerful, prosperous, and happy than ever before.

These thoughts are suggested on this particular occasion by the threatened approach of this party of ruthless murderers and robbers, who, if they come at all, come not from any desire to help the cause of what was claimed to be the Southern Confederacy, fd the time for that help belong to the past, and such men at any period would bring discredit upon any cause and disgrace upon any flag. They come not to protect any invaded right, not to avenge any public or private injury received from the people of New Mexico, but the come to murder and rob for the same reasons that pirates sail the ocean to murder and rob. It has been the case that consequent upon all great civil wars lawless men, under cover of acting for one side or the other, have enacted the grossest and blackest crimes of bloodshed and rapacity until whole communities have risen en masse to make common cause against them and to exterminate them. Should these ruffians come it is our bounden duty, every man of us, whether that man be from the North or the South, to take up arms ans by day or by night, at all times and at all places, to attack them until they are utterly destroyed. Through this course lies our only road to safety and tranquillity. Let each good citizen show that whatever in this quarrel may