The timing is interesting. Now to find the content of the specific special order, and see if it ties into the statute. Trouble with special orders is that they were written by anybody from the senior military commander in Missouri to local military commanders. Each military commander wrote orders, and they started out with Order #1 and progressed. As such, if Special Order 126 still exists somewhere, it is anybody's guess where it might be, ranging from the personal papers of some general, to who knows where.... We do have a clue though--somebody who wrote at least 126 special orders would have had to have been around for a while--and Bruce's statement that S.O. 126 had a pervasive and far-reaching effect across the state would seem to indicate that it was generated at the highest levels of the Union military command in Missouri.

I note that Section 4 of the statute that has been tracked down that might relate to the special order required the clerk of the county court "to keep a correct and perfect register" of those taking the oath. Gotta love a legal requirement to be perfect. If one of you who lives around Columbia is willing to dig through dusty old records at the courthouse, coming up with that register might be revealing in this matter, and might be a treasure trove of information for researchers and historians on other matters. From experience in other Missouri county courthouses, tracking down where those records are resting in the courthouse is ninety percent of the work.

Looking for those records in a different direction is also possible, since a lot of these types of county records ended up in the state archives. Going trolling through their indexes might end up being productive. And how would that index entry be worded? No idea, but hopefully this might be one of those things that you'll know it when you see it.... Certainly the words oaths and 1864 would be something to key on, and those two words with the words Boone County would be nice.