Edward William Johnston to the US Authorities, St. Louis, August to September, 1863

St. Louis, August 4th / 63
To Major General [John] Schofield
Commanding the Department of Mo.

Sir,

By the very respite from immediate banishment which your humanity yielded, at first to my necessity of disposing of my property and soon afterwards to my bodily condition, I am unexpectedly placed in a difficulty from which you will, I trust, see good to relieve me.

My personal affairs and my health have, for now some some two weeks, been brought to a condition which would permit me to set out on my enforced journey. But when I so reported at the Provost Marshal General's office, I was informed that it was uncertain how soon I could be sent away; and this uncertainty, I learn to-day, remained just the same.

We are thus left in very serious embarrassment, as to closing or not closing one conditional sale of land and effects and breaking up or not one household; which, though but a poor one, we can very ill afford to quit for any dearer mode of living. In short, we are incurring both a danger of releasing, by too much delay, our contracts of sale, and of consuming, before we start, a very undue portion of the scanty resources with which we are thrust forth into a land said to be of famine.

While such necessities make us anxious to go, we have no opposing inducements to stay. For I am shut out of all employment; have no quiet and little safety; am, indeed, made an alien, if not an outlaw. What should I stay for? Nay, how can I stay?

Send us, then, General, away, me and my wife. Let us go without a guard. For none can be so sure as our own desire to be among our own hard-beset people, and to share their fate, no matter what.  Give us passes (say) to the lines beyond Maysville Ky.; and we can thence easily make our way up the Sandy into South-western Virginia, where we have many connexions [i.e. connections]. The route would cost the Government much less, while it is safer from bullets and from fever than that of New Orleans. The two latter considerations will, I am sure, be of weight with you, where a lady is one of the involuntary travelers.

Very respectfully
Your very obedient servant
Edward W. Johnston

[p.s.] The MS is my daughter's [possibly Margaret Jewett, perhaps his step daughter?] 
Edward W. Johnston  

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Head Quarters Department of the Missouri
St. Louis, Mo. Sept. 21st, 1863

Lieutenant

The Major General commanding directs that Edward W. Johnston who was to leave this afternoon under an order of banishment, be permitted to remain in the city until Col. Broadhead returns some matters in his case requiring further investigation.

Resp'y
Yr Obdt Servt
Lucien J. Barnes
Asst. Adj't Genl

Lt. H. H. Hine Asst Provost Marshal*
St. Louis Mo. 


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My rough transcription. Originals in Records of the Provost Marshal General's Bureau (Civil War), National Archives.


*Apparently quite a character at the Gratiot Street Prison.