where. It would be impossible to describe them in extenso and in all their blackness.
Sensible men prophesied at the commencement of our civil troubles that the people might expect horrible scenes, but without foreseeing probably the full extent. You have read of the horrors of the first French Revolution, histories of civil wars in various ages and countries, where every thing was turmoil and confusion and robbers and assassins had free and open field for murder and devastation of property. All this will give you but a faint idea of the horrible situation to which Missouri finds herself reduced. Her own children, divided between the two great parties, the North and the South, are dipping their hands in blood and cutting one another's throats, burning and sacking one another's dwellings; while enemies from outside enter the State to glut their insatiable vengeance, and to aid eagerly in the diabolical work of devastation and heighten still further the horrors and the misfortunes of the country. To-day it is a Federal leader who is taken and put to death; to-morrow it may be a judge, sympathizing with the South, who will be assassinated in spite of his having a guard to protect
him. At present there is little or no union among the citizens of Missouri; there is only hate and suspicion, and hence brigandages and vengeances without number and of every sort. The general-in-chief of the rebels in Missouri has just issued a manifesto in which he promises $200,000,000 in spoils to 5o,ooo brigands who will enlist under his standard. Means will be found I hope to withstand this wild Secessionist; but in any case he will do much harm. At this moment hundreds of families, poor, miserable and in want of everything are leaving the interior of the State and coming to take refuge in our city, or crossing into Illinois, having been forced to leave their sacked and burned houses and fields. This is what the detestable secession has brought Missouri to, and we are yet only at the first page of its history.