was at this place when your communication arrived for the purpose of surrendering all the C. S. forces that Remained in Arkansas, all the offices senior to him having abandoned the department and their men. They have been coming in squads at nearly all our posts. I have agreed to have commissioners at Washington, Camden, and Monticello on the 20th instant to parole all that General Dockery can assemble. They are already so scattered, and communication is so difficult at present in this State, that an earlier day could not be fixed.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. J. REYNOLDS,

Major-General, Commanding.

HDQRS. ELEVENTH MISSOURI CAVALRY VOLUNTEERS, CAVALRY BRIGADE, SEVENTH ARMY CORPS, Little Rock, Ark., June 5, 1865.

Colonel JOHN LEVERING,
Assistant Adjutant-General, Department of Arkansas:

SIR: In view of the recently reported surrender of Brigadier General Joseph Shelby, rebel army, included in General Kirby Smith's capitulation, and of Captain John Raibon,* partisan leader (lately reporting to Brigadier-General Shaler, at Devall's Bluff), I have the honor to make the following report, and respectfully ask the action of the commanding general upon the facts set forth. In the month of July last a scouting party of the Eleventh Missouri Cavalry (then stationed at Devall's Bluff), consisting of 120 men and officers, under command of Captain Charles A. Williams, was sent northward toward Searcy. On the 27th of July, near West Point, a portion of the command, consisting of Captain George W. Weber (Company M), Lieutenant James S. Bainum (Company C), and twenty men, were surrounded and captured by a party under Raibon. + Three of the men were killed in the fight; three made their escape, and Captain Weber, Lieutenant Bainum, and fourteen men were taken off prisoners. The prisoners were taken to Jacksonport, then held by the forces under Brigadier-General Shelby, and some time after the enlisted men were paroled and forwarded to Benton Barracks, Saint Louis. Captain Weber and Lieutenant Bainum were held for a time in prison at Jacksonport, and it was supposed in this regiment for a long while that they had been transferred to the rebel prison at Tyler, Tex. Later, however, from one of the guard which took the party of Jacksonport (a deserter), from a Mrs. Prince, living between Jacksonport and Batesville, and from information derived from various and numerous sources by our scouting parties, a very different state of affairs has been developed. It is shown so clearly that those most acquainted with the circumstances entirely credit the story, that about the 1st of September, 1864, Captain Weber, Lieutenant Bainum, and Perry Fenlason, orderly sergeant of E. Squadron, Eleventh Missouri Cavalry, were removed from the prison at Jacksonport by order of Brigadier-General Shelby (then having his headquarters about four miles up the White River), were taken up the north bank of the White River by a sergeant in command of guard, and near the house of Mrs. Prince, on Magginni's farm, about eight miles from Jacksonport (a place known as the Island) were shot and killed. I have never learned that there was pretense that these unfortunate men were tried by any

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*Reference is probably to M. V. Raibon. See Shaler to Levering, May 22, 3. 25 p. m., p. 543.

+See Vol. XLI, Part I, pp. 174,175.

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