Shreveport, La. December 24, 1864.
Maj, Gen. Sterling Price,
Provisional Army, Confederate States:
General: The enclosed publication I have deemed necessary, to vindicate Generals Marmaduke and Cabell against injurious charges and to place the late Missouri campaign in a proper light before the public. In performing my imperative official duty in reference to that expedition, I desire to avoid giving unnecessary pain to any one. I therefore frankly state to you that believing myself fully acquainted with all the facts in relation to the return of your son, General Edwin Price, by your advice within the Federal lines in 1862, his subsequent course and the communications between you and him. I design to make a memoir of those facts to the President of the Confederate States and on it and the management of the late expedition to ask from him an order that you cease to be an officer in the provisional army of those states. Such a request (and still more such an order) would perhaps necessitate the giving of more or less publicity to that memoir. With a disposition to enable you to avoid the disagreeable discussions it would occasion, I propose that if you will at once resign your commission in that army, and your position of Missouri bank commissioner (assigning if you think proper, whatever reasons for those steps you may judge best, and such as will not necessitate controversy) and abstain hereafter from any interposition, directly or indirectly, in the military or political affairs of the Confederate States or the State of Missouri, that memoir will be sent as a paper to remain in the secret archives of the government and not used unless necessary to meet such an interposition, or an attack by yourself, or any of your friends, on the Confederate authorities or myself for the action of any of us in this matter. I presume it will be in accordance with your own feelings as it is with mine, that any future intercourse between us shall be only in writing, confined to indispensable official business and an answer to this letter.
I am, general, very respectfully, &c.,
Thos. C. Reynolds,
Governor of the State of Missouri.