utmost promptitude and good order, and I deem it a great pleasure to testify especially to the energy, vigilance, and good and orderly behavior of the command of Captain Goss, Ninth Kansas Cavalry, which I had the best opportunity to observe, being constantly near them. We captured during the trip* 5 Confederate officers, 24 Confederate soldiers, 3 bad disloyal citizens, 28 horses of rebel soldiers. We also destroyed a number of small-arms found in the hands of rebel soldiers, and which we could not conveniently carry. Finding that the ferry on the Cache was used more by the citizens for their convenience than by the rebel soldiers, and also that it might hereafter prove of value to our own forces, I did not destroy it. The citizens of Augusta, especially the known loyalists, are suffering much at the hands of jayhawkers.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. MATTSON,

Colonel Third Minnesota Vol. Infty., Commanding Brigade.

Captain GEORGE MONROE,

Asst. Adjt. General, Second Division, Seventh Army Corps.

DECEMBER 14, 1864.--Skirmish in the Cypress Swamp, near Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Report of Colonel John B. Rogers, Second Missouri State Militia Cavalry.

HEADQUARTERS SUB-DISTRICT,
Cape Girardeau, Mo., December 15, 1864.

GENERAL: Captain Tanner, commanding at Commerce, killed 3 guerrillas and took their arms in Cypress Swamp yesterday. One escaped. No prisoners.

J. B. ROGERS,

Colonel, Commanding.

General EWING,

Commanding.

DECEMBER 14, 1864--JANUARY 5, 1865.--Operations in the vicinity of Hermitage Plantation, near Morganza, La.

Report of Captain W. Irving Allen, Thirty-first Massachusetts Infantry.

HDQRS. THIRTY-FIRST MASS. VOL. MOUNTED INFTY.,
Hermitage Plantation, La., January 7, 1865.

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of this command since my report of December 14:

Information has been brought to me that a small party of rebel soldiers was camping during the daytime in the canebrake behind the plantations on College Point and by night committing depredations along the coast. They had even gone so far as to take Doctor Trudeau, a highly respectable citizen, from his bed at night and with a rope about his neck try to extort from him money and valuables. On the night of December 14 I sent a scouting party from the company at

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*Nominal list omitted.

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