Their hostile campaign had been manifestly skilfully planned. Their open and aggressive movement began in the latter part of June. All at once guerrillas swarmed in every part of the State. It is estimated that there were full ten thousand of them.[89] They were first in northeast, then in central and western, Missouri; now here, now there, they looted and burned the houses of Union men; plundered farms and villages; tore up railroad tracks; destroyed bridges; attacked different detachments of militia; were by turns victorious and defeated; but on August 13th, having massed their forces, they won a signal victory over the Union troops at Independence, and two days later ambushed eight hundred of them in Jackson County. No one now cares for the rebel Colonels Porter, Quantrell, Cobb, Poindexter, Coffee, McBride and Hughes; but they were then the chief figures in these scenes of desolation. But when they were at the height of their success, the scale turned. General Blunt from Kansas appeared with a small but well-appointed army and drove them with their ill-gotten plunder into Arkansas. But as flies when brushed away at once return again, so they appeared again in September, in northeast Missouri, and so effective were their movements that for the time being they took possession of that part of the State, except posts adequately garrisoned by United States troops. But during this period of turmoil General Schofield was wide awake. On June 22d, very soon after these devastating raids began, he issued an order in which he held “rebels and rebel-sympathizers responsible in their property, and, if need be, in their persons, for damages thereafter committed by guerrillas or marauding parties.” And while this had no immediate effect the order was not in vain. It was the precursor of energetic action. On the 22d of July, Governor Gamble authorized the general to organize the entire militia of the State, and to order so much of it into active service, as he should deem necessary to put down all marauders, and to defend the peaceable citizens of the commonwealth. On the same day, Schofield commanded the immediate organization of the militia “for the purpose of exterminating the guerrillas infesting the State.” This difficult work was pushed with great rapidity and was soon effected.