Major J. McKinstry of the United States army was appointed provost marshal. He was an able, faithful officer and discharged his delicate and weighty duties with fearlessness and thoughtful discrimination. He at once issued a proclamation, declaring that he should not interfere with the operation of the civil law, except in cases where that law was found inadequate to the maintenance of the public peace and safety.[55] He followed this considerate and reassuring manifesto with orders forbidding under heavy penalties all persons not in the military service of the United States, or in the regularly constituted police of the city, carrying concealed weapons, and prohibiting the sale of all firearms without a special permit from his office. This was striking at the root of all the dangers that immediately threatened the loyal of the city and county, and we retired that night with a deeper sense of security than we had felt for several months. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PASS ISSUED TO THE AUTHOR IN 1861. [_Page 215_ ] [Illustration: Reverse] On the following day, he suppressed _The War Bulletin_ and _The Missourian_, papers that, to the detriment of the loyal, had maliciously and shamefully misrepresented the movements of the Federal troops in the State. But under a government like ours, where all enjoy such unbounded freedom of speech, such acts, whether by the direction of civil or military authority, are usually offensive, whatever public necessity may be urged as a justification of them. And both the right and expediency of suppressing even these virulent secession journals were doubted by very many of the Unionists. But, at a later day, we felt that we could approve, if not applaud, much of what the provost marshal wrote to the editor of the _Christian Advocate_, who had inquired if the rumors were true that the marshal intended to suppress his paper. The suggestive reply was: “Permit me to say that in my judgment, in these times of political excitement, and heated discussion, and civil war, it would be more becoming, as well as more consistent, that a public newspaper, belonging to, and advocating the doctrines and principles of the church of Christ, should abstain from publishing articles of a political character, calculated to inflame the passions of men, and evidently hostile to the government of the country. Let your journal be a religious paper, as it professes to be, and it will never come under the discipline of this department.” After the suppression of these papers, rigorous measures multiplied. The provost marshal, by a general order, forbade any one to pass beyond the limits of the city and county of St. Louis without a special permit from his office. That those born since the war may know under what stringent regulations all of us lived for many months, see the facsimile of both sides of a pass issued to myself, in October of 1861.