military advantage. Moreover peaceful citizens of Missouri quitly working on their farms have been instigated by your emissaries to take up arms as insurgents and to rob and plunder and to commit arson and murder. They do not even act under the garb of soldiers but under false pretenses and in the guise of peaceful citizens.

You certainly will not pretend that men guilty of such crimes although 'specially appointed and instructed" by you are entitled to the righs and immunities of ordinary prisoners of war. If you do will you refer me to a single authority on the laws of war which recognizes such a claim? You may rest assured, general, that all prisoners of war not guilty of crime will be treated with all proper consideration and kindness. With the exception of being properly confined they will be lodged and fed and where necessary clothed, the same as our own troops. I am sorry to say that our prisoners who have come from your camps do not report such tretment on your part. They say that you gave them no rations, no clothing, no blankets, but left them to perish with want and cold.

Moreover it is believed that you subsist your troops by robbing and plundering the non-combatant Union mhabitants of the south western couties of this State. Thousands of poor families have fled to us for protection and support. They say that your troops robbed them of their provisions and clothing, carrying away their shoes and bedding and even cutting cloth from their looms and that you have driven women and children from their homes to starve and perish in the cold. I have not retaliated such conduct upon your adherents here as I have no intention of waging such a barbarous warfare; but I shall whenever I can punish such crimes by whomsoever they may be committed.

I am daily expecting instructins respecting an exchange of prisoners of war. I will communicate with you on that subject as soon as they are receive.

ery respectfully, your obedient servant,

H. W. HALLECK,

Major-General, Commanding Department.

HEADQUARTERS NORTH MISSOURI RAILROAD,
Mexico, January 23, 1862.

Brigadier General BENJAMIN LOAN, Saint Joseph, Mo.:

General Prentiss desires that you station a guard at each one of the bridges from Saint Joseph to Grand River inclusive.

J. M. SCHOFIELD,

Brigadier-General.

HEADQUARTERS NORTH MISSOURI RAILROAD,
Saint Louis, January 27, 1862.

Major W. M. STONE,

Third Iowa Volunteers, Commanding Post, Mexico, Mo.

MAJOR: The commanding geeral desires me to advise you in regard to Colonel Jeff Jones, now held as a prisoner by you, that you will release him from confinement upon the following conditions, viz: He must give Callaway, Mo., without the written permission of Brigadier-General Schofield and that he will report in person at any military post in his