commanding regrets that the evil, so far from being diminished, is increasing and threatens serious consequences to this army. "Straggler" and "pillager" are identical terms; they are the cowards that diminish our ranks when confronting the enemy, and swell the list of prisoners captured by the enemy. They shrink from meeting the foe in battle, and content themselves with the plunder of innocent women and children, and when captured are the first to cry for mercy and denounce the flag and Government which they so shamefully abandon and disgrace. Death would not atone for their disloyalty and crimes. Every officer and true soldier of this command is called upon to put a stop to this pernicious habit, and to suppress it by force of arms and at any cost.

The orders regulating the march of columns from these headquarters by placing a field officer in rear of each regiment, and by other regulations, would seem to imply that some of the officers themselves do not do their full duty in suppressing this evil. Hereafter the officer to whose command these stragglers may belong will be held to a rigid accountability for permitting these men to straggle on the march. All men caught absent from their commands without authority, if not punished in the most summary way, on the spot, which the Rules and Articles of War and the practices of armies fully justify, will be turned over to the provost-marshal, stripped of their arms and accouterments, and placed on the fortifications at hard labor.

This order will be read twice each week for one month, at the head of each regiment and company of this command.

By command of Brigadier-General Emory:

FREDERIC SPEED,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

SPECIAL ORDERS, HDQRS. DISTRICT OF LITTLE ROCK, No. 20.
Little Rock, Ark., June 3, 1864.

The Forty-third Indiana Infantry, Colonel W. E. McLean commanding, having been ordered home on veteran furlough, is relieved from duty at the post of Little Rock, and Colonel McLean will turn over the command to Colonel C. W. Kittredge, Thirty-sixth Iowa Infantry. The brigadier-general commanding takes this opportunity to express his obligations to Colonel McLean for his promptness and efficiency while in command of the post, and for the decided improvement in the order and cleanliness of the city while under his administration.

By command of Brigadier General E. A. Carr:

C. H. DYER,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

DEVALL'S BLUFF, June 3, 1864.

Captain C. H. DYER,

Assistant Adjutant-General:

Major Haddock, with a party of 700 men, just in from a six days' scout. He has been all over Arkansas County and to within 4 miles of Arkansas Post . He reports no large force in that region of country, nothing but scattering bands of bushwhackers. Captain Bitner is just in from the neighborhood of Searcy. He saw no large force but heard of parties of from 60 to 100. To-morrow morning I send Major Ensign and his battalion to join Colonel