the balance of his command to Saint Louis. I turned over the command at Franklin to Colonel D. Q. Gale, commanding Fifty-fourth Regiment Enrolled Missouri Militia, and on the 1st instant arrived in Saint Louis with my staff and Company A, First Battalion Cavalry.

For detailed report of the operations of the militia of this district under Generals Miller and Wolff while detached from my command, i respectfully refer to their returns at district headquarters United States.

In closing this report of a brief and hastily inaugurated campaign of the militia under my command I cannot mention in terms of too high praise the valuable assistance rendered me by the following officers: Brigadier General George F. Meyers; Lieutenant Colonel L. F. Fix, volunteer aide-de-camp; Colonel John Knapp, aide-de-camp to the Governor; Major Julius Pitzman; Captain Gustav Cohrs, assistant provost-marshal. Many others are worthy of all praise, and I am sure that if my division had been so fortunate as to meet the enemy all would have done nobly.

Very respectfully,

E. C. PIKE,

Brigadier General, Commanding First mil. Dist., Enrolled Missouri Militia.

Colonel JOHN V. DU BOIS,

Chief of Staff.

Numbers 64. Report of Major General Samuel R. Curtis, U. S. Army, commanding Department of Kansas.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF KANSAS,
Fort Leavenworth, January --, 1865.

GENERAL: I present a general and full report of the circumstances connected with my recent campaign against the rebel General Sterling Price, believing the dangers, incidents, conflicts, and final success deserve a special record.

The former conflicts I have had with Price's force made me familiar with his purpose, often declared to his followers, of making another effort to establish himself on the Missouri River. His recent success on the Red River and at Camden, in Arkansas, inspired him with new energies and induced him to attempt this design, by following up his campaign through Louisiana and Arkansas by operating through Missouri and Kansas. He therefore moved northward through Arkansas with an army of about 15,000 men and twenty pieces of artillery, augmenting his forces by conscripting, and by voluntary acquisitions, induced by prospect of plunder and revenge. His force was all mounted, and, except his conscripts, very well equipped. I had taken most of my troops far west of the Missouri border, where I had been in pursuit of indians on the plains; and I had ordered Major-General Blunt to continue the search beyond Fort Larned, returning myself to these headquarters on the 17th of September, 1864. Most of my forces were therefore engaged in active operations several hundred miles west of the portion of Kansas threatened by Price's movements. On the day of my arrival I telegraphed yourself, General Rosecrans, and Governor Carney the substance of the dispatches concerning Price's movements which I found on my table, from General Thayer and others, on the Arkansas, "that General Price, with 15,000 men, had crossed the Arkansas River near Dardanelle," and suggested to the Governor that I might