TO GENERAL SCHOFIELD.

Private and confidential

EXECUTIVE MANSION,
WASHINGTON, October 28, 1863.

GENERAL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD:

There have recently reached the War Department, and thence been laid
before me, from Missouri, three communications, all similar in import
and identical in object. One of them, addressed to nobody, and
without place or date, but having the signature of (apparently) the
writer, is a letter of eight closely written foolscap pages. The
other two are written by a different person, at St. Joseph, Mo., and
of the dates, respectively, October 12 and 13, 1863, and each
inclosing a large number of affidavits. The general statements of
the whole are that the Federal and State authorities are arming the
disloyal and disarming the loyal, and that the latter will all be
killed or driven out of the State unless there shall be a change. In
particular, no loyal man who has been disarmed is named, but the
affidavits show by name forty-two persons as disloyal who have been
armed. They are as follows: [The names are omitted.]

A majority of these are shown to have been in the rebel service. I
believe it could be shown that the government here has deliberately
armed more than ten times as many captured at Gettysburg, to say
nothing of similar operations in East Tennessee. These papers
contain altogether thirty--one manuscript pages, and one newspaper in
extenso, and yet I do not find it anywhere charged in them that any