of his most barbarous atrocities. He declared himself to be operating under orders from Sterling Price, and by the official recognition of Anderson by Price at Boonville, October 11, and from equally indubitable evidence that Holtzclaw, Perkins, Thrailkill, and other guerrilla leaders were also under orders from Price, there can be no duct but that the rebel authorities sent the villains to Missouri to murder our loyal people and to steal or destroy their property. A large number of disloyalists residing in the Missouri River counties of this district, who had been during the spring and summer of the year enlisted and organized into companies for the rebel service through the instrumentality of the O. A. K. societies, reported to Price as his plundering horde moved leisurely across the State. I have taken the necessary steps to procure a carefully prepared list of all who from this district have, during the year 1864, joined themselves to the Confederates under Price, or have been attached to his more intolerable and wicked organizations within the district. Man who were deluded into the belief that the rebels were to " hold and occupy" Missouri, since the expulsion of Price by the combined forces of Missouri and Kansas, are deserting from their retreating chief and returning upon us with a well-told tale of conscription. Of the 5,000 rebels who went to Price from this district 4,990 were doubtless cheerful volunteers, and they and theirs, and all who aid, comfort, feed, conceal and inform them, should go out from among us, and all the loyal people will say amen.

I have the honor to be, colonel, with great respect, your obedient servant,

CLINTON B. FISK,

Brigadier-General.

Colonel JOHN V. DU BOIS,

Chief of Staff, Department of the Missouri, Saint Louis.

Numbers 43. Report of Lieutenant Colonel Dennis J. Hynes, Seventeenth Illinois Cavalry,. Chief of Cavalry, District of North Missouri.

BRUNSWICK, MO., September 26, 1864.

GENERAL: In accordance with Special Field Orders, Numbers 2, headquarters District of North Missouri, of date Glasgow, September 23, 1864, to investigate and report upon the late disgraceful surrender of Keytesville Mo., I have the honor to submit the following report:

Keytesville, the county seat of Chariton County on the 20th day of September, 1864, was commanded by Second Lieutenant Anthony Pleyer, Company I, Thirty-fifth Enrolled Missouri Militia, in the absence of First Lieutenant Berry Owen, of same company (who had absented himself from his command without authority some time previous), under orders from Colonel W. E. Moberly, commanding Chariton County militia, "to command the post and defend it against all attacks, and to protect the neighborhood." On the morning of the 20th instant the garrison consisting of twenty-five effective and ten non-effective men, were surrendered by Lieutenant Pleyer to one John Thrailkill, who called himself "major, commanding recruits," whose force consisted of sixty-five men by actual count of some of the citizens. The circumstances attending the surrender are set forth in the following deposition of Lieutenant Pleyer.*

---------------

*See inclosure Numbers 3, p. 428.

---------------