Extract from letter to the Racine Advocate.
“Pilot Knob, Mo., Nov. 21, 1861.—On the 5th inst., in company with the 21st Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, the 1st Indiana Cavalry, and Capt. Manter’s Battery of artillery, we left our camp on an expedition to disperse a body of armed rebels said to have collected in Bloomfield, in Stoddard county, about 100 miles southeast of this place.
“We marched through Greenville, Wayne county, to the Indian Ford across the St. Francis river, in the northeast part of Butler county, and about 25 miles west of Bloomfield, where we learned that the rebels had already been dispersed by a force from Cape Girardeau. We accordingly took our our line of march for this place, where we arrived on the 15th inst.
“The country through which we passed is very wild and mountainous, and but thinly settled. The majority of the people are very stupid, ignorant, dirty, and, of course, poor. They are probably a fair specimen of the ‘poor whites’ of the South. It was rarely that we found one outside of the villages who could read and write. Many of them had been made to believe that the Federal troops wherever they went indulged in indiscriminate rapine, violence and murder, and, of course, these deluded people were secessionists; but when they found themselves kindly treated by our troops, their property and all of their rights protected, they straightway became good Union people. With the exception of a few leaders, there is no inveterate hostility to the Government in the minds of the inhabitants here; and when they are disabused in relation to the objects .of this war and the purposes of the Government, they return readily and cheerfully to their allegiance.
“We see much discussion in the papers relative to the removal of Major-General Fremont, some of them predicting disaster and ruin to the Union cause as the result of it. It is proper for me to say that, so far as I can judge (and I have some opportunities to learn the feeling of the army in Missouri on that subject) the army acquiesces in the action of the Government without complaint. We believe here that the success of our cause does not depend upon the rise or fall of any man or set of men, but, under God, upon the justice of our cause and the courage and fortitude of the hundreds of thousands of men who are now in the field defending that cause. In those we trust, and not in the genius of any one man; and we are ready to do battle under such commanders as the Administration of our own choice may place over us.
“In closing this rather desultory communication, I will only add that the men are in excellent spirits and in good fighting trim, and their most earnest desire is that they be sent where they can do their part towards crushing out this rebellion. When the record of this war is made up, be assured that it will be found that the 8th Regiment has done its whole duty.
Respectfully yours,
Wm. P. Lyon.”
