REPORT OF MAJOR GENERAL JOHN POPE, TO THE HON. COMMITTEE ON THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR. PART I.—MISSOURI. ASSIGNMENT TO COMMAND OF THE DISTRICT OF NORTH MISSOURI; CONDITION OF THE STATE; ORDERS ISSUED AND MEASURES ADOPTED TO INDUCE THE CITIZENS TO KEEP THE PEACE; DECLARATION OF MARTIAL LAW BY GENERAL FREMONT: BATTLE OF WILSON'S CREEK; SURRENDER OF LEXINGTON; REMOVAL OF GENERAL FRÉMONT; ASSIGNMENT OF GENERAL HALLECK; CAPTURE OF PRISONERS AT BLACKWATER; OPERATIONS RESULTING IN CAPTURE OF NEW MADRID AND ISLAND NO. 10; CORRESPONDENCE AND REPORTS OF DIVISION AND BRIGADE COMMANDERS. Hon. B. F. WADE, Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 22d of May, 1865, requiring from me, on the part of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, answers to the following questions: Question 1. Please state what positions you have held and what commands you have exercised since the commencement of the rebellion, giving the periods during which those respective commands have been exercised by you. Question 2. Please state such particulars as you may deem necessary to a proper understanding of the several campaigns in which you have been engaged; setting forth the orders and instructions under which those campaigns were conducted, and the principal orders and instructions given by you, with such incidents and circumstances as you consider will be of interest to the public, appending to your statement copies of your reports and those of your principal subordinates, keeping the account of each campaign by itself as far as convenient. In reply to the first question I have to say, that, having been appointed brigadier general of volunteers, to date from May 17, 1861, I proceeded to Missouri and assumed the command of the district of North Missouri on the 17th of July, 1861. I retained this command until the movement of General Frémont, in pursuit of Price, in October of the same year, when I was assigned to command the second division and right wing of that army. After the army withdrew from Springfield, Missouri, to the line of the Pacific railroad, I was directed to assume command of all the troops west of and including Jefferson City, in what was then designated the district of Central Missouri. When the necessity of retaining so large a force in that part of the State had ceased with the retreat of Price into Arkansas, I was recalled to St. Louis, after sending the greater part of the forces under my command in advance. I was then ordered to proceed to Commerce, Missouri, and organize a force for operations against New Madrid and Island No. 10. I commanded the force thus organized, known as the army of the Mississippi, during the reduction of those places and the subsequent operations around Corinth. On the 21st of March, 1862, I was promoted major general of volunteers. In June, 1862, I was ordered to Washington and placed in command of the army of Virginia, which consisted of three army corps, commanded respectively by Generals Fiémont, Banks, and McDowell. On the 14th of July I was appointed brigadier general in the regular army. At the conclusion of the campaign of the army of Virginia, I was assigned to the command of the department of the northwest, and in January, 1864, to command the military division of the Missouri, which embraced the department of the northwest, the department of the Missouri, and the department of Arkansas, and included the whole region west of the Mississippi river as far west as California and Oregon, and as far south as Texas. In reply to your second question, I submit the following narrative, into which I have incorporated such official reports, letters, and telegrams sent and received by me, as are necessary to sustain and explain the statements therein made. NARRATIVE, In accordance with telegraphic orders from Major General Frémont, who had been assigned to the command of the western department, but who was still in New York, I proceeded from Alton, Illinois, with three infantry regiments, and part of a cavalry regiment, all Illinois troops, to St. Charles, Missouri, and assumed command of the district of north Missouri on the 17th of July, 1861. Several other regiments had entered Missouri by way of Quincy and Hannibal, and were distributed along the line of the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad. That the orders issued and the course pursued by me during the months of July, August, and September of that year, for the pacification of northern Missouri, may be fully understood, it will be proper for me to sketch briefly the condition of affairs in the State when first I assumed command. As I still believe that the measures inaugurated in the orders then issued would, if thoroughly carried out, have saved the State of Missouri from much of the suffering, outrage and lawlessness which have characterized its history during the war, and as these measures were overruled and set aside by higher authority than mine, to the detriment, in my opinion, of the Union cause in Missouri, I beg to invite the special attention of the committee to the facts herein stated. The events which swiftly followed the inauguration of President Lincoln, and the capture of Camp Jackson, together with the flight of Governor Jackson and Sterling Price from Jefferson City, and the battle of Booneville, had profoundly affected the public mind in Missouri. While the secessionists in all parts of the State, long prepared for such an issue, were active and confident, the Union citizens, wholly taken by surprise, uncertain what to do or upon whom to rely, fearful for the first time of danger to the government and peril to themselves, were, as a mass, paralyzed and seemingly incapable of thought or action. There is not a doubt that, but for the presence of mind, resolution and boldness of Captain Lyon, in command of St. Louis arsenal, and of F. P. Blair and a few others, Missouri would have been lost temporarily to the government. These few men, bold, energetic, and determined, assembled at night in secret places, with such arms as they could procure, organized themselves, collected around them all the Union men not too timid to take an open stand for the Union cause, and when the time came, struck the blow, from which secession never recovered in |