the Federal Army. Not desiring to do get South, but failing to succeed in that I started North and got into Nebraska, where I met Colonel Jeff. Patton, who was on his way to Texas by way of Denver City, and I made up my mind to go with him. It is proper here to remark that I passed under the name of James C. Johnston.

About that time there was a reward offered in Missouri for a man named Johnston, and Lieutenant T. J. Bracken having learned my where-abouts, came there, arrested me and brought me to Saint Joseph, where I was committed to prison; I may here say that I first knew Bracken previous to the war, and he was afterward with me in the same army, General Steen's division, at the battle of Lexington. When I first knew of him as a recruiting officer for the Confederate Army in the spring of 1863, he was not yet a lieutenant in the Paw organization. About the time I left Missouri, some time in the fall, all the men recruited for the Confederate service as aforesaid, or nearly so, and a portion of the recruiting officer, tumbled into the Paw organization then being gotten up, and among the number war Bracken, who, by the time he arrested me, had become a lieutenant in it. On my imprisonment at Saint Joseph I published a letter in the Saint Joseph Tribune exposing the Paw organization and disclosing what I knew of its character and denouncing its members as bad men. On the head of this I received a communication from Platte City and Camden Point advising me to be still and say nothing; that I would be sent to Alton in all probability, to be kept there during the war; that when I arrived at Alton there would not be any trouble to be released and need not have any fears of being kept there; intimating that money would be furnished to assist me in getting away from there. One of these was from James Spratt, at Platte City, and the other from John Daniels, at Camden Point, both of whom I believe, belong to the Paw Paws. Another communication was brought me by Budd Richardson and Green Hackett, stating that a dispatch had just arrived from the South, borne by Helmore Howerson, aforesaid, and that the Paw Paws were all right.

It is proper to add there that though Bracken knew I was aware of the fact that he had been in the Confederate Army, left it, and took the oath of allegiance, he had no idea of my knowledge of his recruiting for the Confederate Army afterward when he arrested me.

Bracken, on one occasion, in reply to an inquiry of mine whether he knew Perry McVey, then and now in the Missouri Twelfth, replied he did; and said he should be very sorry to have McVey turn radical for if he did he would know enough to hang him (Bracken). Colonel J. C. C. Thornton, spoken of as the officer issuing the commission to recruit, is a brother-in-law of Colonel J. H. Moss, of the Paw militia. He has been and is now that locality, having his headquarters in Clay County, and being near at hand to assume command and assist the Paw Paws to escape from any enforcement of the draft upon them. About the 15th of March Confederate forces are to concentrate upon Lexington for this purpose. There are now, it is represented, 1,000 of them in Jackson and Fayette Counties.

A majority of the Paw Paws belong to the Kinghts of the Golden Circle. The facts here recited can be established by the testimony of witnesses, whose names I can furnish if brought here to testify, and not allowed time to confer with each other as to the testimony they shall give, being all or most of them members of the Golden Circle.

The foregoing statement reduced to writing by J. P. Sanderson, provost-marshal-general.