of every movement of our troops. It was impossible to kill the guerillas or drive them out of the border while these country people stayed there as their spies and purveyors. Therefore, after full conference with General Schofield, then commanding the Department of the Missouri, and now the honored head of the army, General Ewing ordered the few remaining inhabitants in these desolated districts to remove to the nearest military post, or back to the second tier of counties from the State border, and the order was subsequently ratified by President Lincoln. In a letter published since the war, General Schofield said: “The responsibility for that order rests with President Lincoln, myself, and General Ewing, in the proportion of our respective rank and authority.” About half of the people affected by the order removed to the posts under the protection of our troops, and the remainder further back in Missouri. They moved in summer—were subjected to no physical force or hardship, and were generally glad to get out of reach of the wild storm which was about to burst on them from Kansas, in revenge for the Lawrence massacre, and which the Government had not troops enough there to quell. Within two or three months after the issuance of this order, Quantrell having lost his spies and purveyors, and finding it impossible therefore to continue the vendetta, led all his guerillas south, and the border war was thus forever ended. General Ewing’s most distinguished service during the war was in fighting the battle of Pilot Knob on the 27th and 28th of September, 1864. The Confederate General, Sterling Price, having effected an unlooked for and unresisted crossing of the Arkansas above Little Rock, with his army of over twenty thousand men, marched on St. Louis, where General Rosecrans was in command of the Department of the Missouri, and General Ewing of the District of Southeast Missouri. All the Federal troops of the department were scattered in small detachments, with bases in earthworks or stockades in or near the chief towns of Missouri, which were the places of refuge of the Union men and neutrals from the savage warfare of the guerillas. These scattered troops could not be withdrawn from their posts without enormous sacrifice of the people and property they were protecting, and it was, moreover, impossible to assemble them at St. Louis in time and numbers sufficient to defeat Price’s large army, which was increasing rapidly by accessions of guerillas from all parts of Southern Missouri. There was but one possible means of preventing the capture of St. Louis and the vast loss of prestige and resources which would follow. That was to delay Price a few days until re-enforcements could arrive from Little Rock, by occupying and holding fast to Fort Davidson, a small hexagonal work capable of being manned by about one thousand men, situated ninety miles south of St. Louis, at the village