place day before yesterday with the design of occupying Paris, the county seat of Monroe, and thence upon New Loudon and Hannibal; Captain McNulta with 100 cavalry upon Bowling Green, the county seat of Pike County, from Montgomery City, on the line of North Missouri road. Captain Peck, Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers, with 300 infantry from Warrenton on this road marched yesterday and occupies to-day Troy, the county seat of Lincoln. Five companies of infantry under Major Goddard occupy Fulton, the county seat of Callaway County. Lieutenant-colonel Johnson with 400 men occupies Huntsville, seat of Randolph County, to-day. Macon City, the junction of Hannibal and Saint Joe road, is held by five companies of Sixteenth Illinois Volunteers, and Sturgeon on line of North Missouri road by four companies of the Fourteenth.

If these movements have been made promptly and vigorously by to-morrow morning the forces will occupy all those points, and as no place of retreat for armed parties of secessionists will be left in all that region without the certainty of encountering some portion of the U. S. forces it is expected that they will either be taken or dispersed. The object of these movements was as much to put in operation the policy marked out in Special [General] Orders, Numbers 3, from these headquarters, copies of which are inclosed, as with an expectation of finding any considerable force in arms against the United States. I inclose also copy of instructions issued to officers in command of these various columns as also copy of a letter addressed to J. H. Sturgeon, Esq. * These various papers will explain fully the policy I am pursuing and the reasons therefor. In addition to the reasons thus assigned I have to say that by pursuing the system of hunting out these guerrilla parties the whole force under my command will be as much demoralized and as little fitted for active service in campaign as the marauding parties themselves. I am compelled to pursue some policy however harsh which will enable me to assemble my forces in a camp of instruction that I may establish that discipline and habit of service essential to any efficiency in the field hereafter. Raw troops such as these grow worse every day by this system of small detachments scattered over the county on police duty, and if it be pursued for two months I shall have a mob and not an army to command.

I have selected a point near Brookfield, on the Hannibal and Saint Joe Railroad, for a camp for all the forces under my command. Water is abundant and good and the ground fine rolling prairie with timber at hand on both sides. I shall move to that point as soon as the quartermaster in Saint Louis can send forward transportation. It is my design in moving to that point to occupy in succession Columbia, Fayette, Glasgow and Kaytesville.

I am, captain, respectfully, your obedient servant,

JNO POPE,

Brigadier-General, Commanding in North Missouri.

HDQRS. MILITARY DISTRICT OF NORTH MISSOURI,
Mexico, August 5, 1861.

Major-General FREMONT, U. S. Army,

Commanding Department of the West, Saint Louis.

GENERAL: I send down Colonel Grant, of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers, to inform you more fully than can be done by letter of the

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*See pp. 196-199, respectively, for these inclosures.

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