rained all day, and having in addition to my artillery a supply train, heavily loaded, of forty-six mule wagons, I became fearful lest General Price might anticipate me in reaching the fords of the Osage. I ordered the column to commence moving at daylight, giving General Sanborn's brigade the advance, and succeeded in crossing the Osage with artillery and train the same day, nearly twenty-four hours in advance of General Price, making Jefferson City from Rolla in two days, a distance of seventy miles. I reported to General Brown, in command of the Central District, Department of the Missouri, and by his orders moved my brigade on the 6th of October into the works then in active state of preparation for defense of the city, where they cheerfully labored for thirty-six consecutive hours in completing the defenses of the line. Upon the assumption of command by General Fisk I was appointed to the command of the right wing of the defenses of the place, and the following troops assigned me as my brigade: Third Regiment Cavalry Missouri State Militia, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews; Fifth Regiment Cavalry Missouri State Militia, Lieutenant-Colonel Draper; Seventeenth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, Colonel John L. Beveridge; one regiment of infantry (Gasconade County Militia), Colonel Poser; one section of Battery B, Second Missouri Light Artillery; one section of 12-pounder mountain howitzers. General Sanborn having the strongest position on the south side of the town, I sent him Captain Sutter with his section of Napoleon guns. The enemy having crossed Moreau demonstrated on this position, and this section opened upon the main column of the enemy. For particulars I would refer to the reports of General Sanborn. Toward evening the Fifth Regiment Missouri State Militia, posted on my left wing, had some skirmishing, but elicited nothing of importance; my whole force labored industriously the entire night in strengthening the defenses of the line; nd learning from scouts that the rebels were massing their whole force in my front, I had all hands ready for the fight at early dawn, but with the appearance of day came the disappearance of Price's army. During the night a rebel emissary of his from Jefferson City informed him of my arrival the day before with 2,800 men and eight pieces of artillery, whereupon, after consultation with his chief of engineers, General Shelby, and others, it was decided to abandon the attack and immediately move west. This news I obtained early in the morning, it coming from the gentleman at whose house Generals Price and Shelby quartered that night, and who was in the room during the consultation. The enemy no longer threatening an attack, I was ordered to turn over the cavalry force under my command to General Sanborn for service in the field, and subsequently in the day I was ordered back to Rolla, via Saint Louis, by Major-General Pleasonton, commanding troops in the field. I immediately started on horseback, accompanied by an escort of twenty men, and the consciousness that by the promptness of my movements from Rolla, although without orders from headquarters, I had saved the capital of the State from the pollution of rebel occupation, and thwarted the enemy in his fondest scheme of establishing a Confederate government and issuing from the capital an order for the election of a Confederate legislature.

I cannot sufficiently commend the promptness of my officers and men on this expedition and the zealous industry displayed by them in working on the fortifications at Jefferson City. To Brigadier-General Brown, commanding the Central District, and to Captain Case, assistant quartermaster,