HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF SOUTHWEST MISSOURI,
Springfield, Mo., July 23, 1864.

Colonel JOHN D. ALLEN,

Commanding Seventh Regiment Prov. Enrolled Missouri Militia:

Your favors oft he 20th* and 21st+ came duly to hand and contents are noted. I had communicated with General Rosecrans abut the horses before receiving your letter. My impressions is that it is not the design of the Government to purchase and furnish horses to those regiments or men that prefer to furnish their own, but that Congress simply repealed the law requiring men to furnish their horses and leave it optional with them. This may not be the correct idea, abut if not I shall be corrected soon. If the Government should buy any horses it will be the horses the men have if they would sell them, for it would not do to increase the stock in this section by 1,000 or 2,000 horses. I do not think there will be any trouble about the matter or any change, so I would instruct the men to borrow no trouble until the full instructions came. In regard to the force on the border I thought I would not send from here now but have you get together 100 or 200 men from the posts in the southwest and have a reconnaissance made first to ascertain the number and position of the enemy. You can leave the posts pretty well guarded and get up a force of 200 men for the field from your section, Newtonia, Granby, Neosho, and Carthage, and this better be done. Colonel Harrison's force whipped Pickler's forces and killed Pickler himself last week in Benton County, also Buck Brown's forces,a nd they may be the forces at Baxter Springs driven north. Send me all information you get.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN B. SANBORN,

Brigadier-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF SOUTHWEST MISSOURI,
Springfield, Mo., July 23, 1864.

Lieutenant Colonel HUGH CAMERON,

Commanding Post of Cassville:

COLONEL: Your letter of the 20th instant in regard to the irregular trading in horses, &c., by detachment of the First Arkansas Cavalry is received and contents noted. The necessary instructions and orders will be sent by next mail to the sub- district provost- marshal to enable him, with your aid, to suppress the evil. Both sellers and buyers must be arrested and punished for violation of military orders. I am not certain that I get the exact idea you wish to convey by the words "extra ultra," as applied by you to discipline or to my ideas of discipline. If you suppose that I have an idea that you make too great an effort to secure it or attempt to enforce too rigid discipline you are entirely mistaken. I freely acknowledge that I was very much chagrined at the fact that I had a regiment in my command for the first time since the war that was in so bad a state of discipline as to break out in open mutiny, and was forced to believe either that the officers in command had made no effort to secure discipline, which I could not believe, or that all efforts in this behalf have been made in the wrong direction, and I am still inclined to the belief that if proper efforts to secure and maintain discipline had been made in the right direction, that so disgraceful a manifestation of the want of all discipline as open

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*Not found.

+See Part I, p. 76.

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