A circular very similar in nature and partially exact in wording was issued before Phillips' men attacked the detachment at Middle Boggy in the Choctaw nation.

Pres. Lincoln ordered the army to take the war to the people who were supporting the "rebels". In this particular expedition they covered the area from the Arkansas to the Red in a swath 60 miles wide.

At the end of the expedition, he left a strongly sarcastic message nailed to the door of Chief Winchester Colbert's home. "You were not here when I came to call. Is it perhaps that you are a coward?" (or something to that effect).

One of the Vann granddaughters, 12 years of age in 1864, describing the events at the Vann plantation west of the Arkansas (near Webber's Falls?) is quoted in the "Indian-Pioneer Papers" as saying "The soldiers came to our house. The colonel [Phillips] ordered the men to burn our fields and our barns. Then he told them to stack our furniture in the yard. My mother said to him, 'Oh! Sir! Cannot I at least keep my bed and my dining table?' And the colonel replied, 'Oh, no, madam! They're much too fine to spare!' Then he ordered the men to light the fire."