Thanks for the productive reply. Yes I have given a good deal of time to the slave enlistment papers of Cape Co. and made some comparisons. The primary difficulty is that after the 2nd Confiscation Act and the preliminary announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, there is scant notice in available sources to the mention of the marauding I seek. I have made some suprising discoveries, mostly by chance. There are three good newspapers on film for that era and some valuable information has been gleaned and as a clue for other source work. As we speak---I am directing efforts towards accounts from the non-Missouri regiments then in the Cape and New Madrid area with research presently, but not entirely, focusing on 1862, as the practices which I am attempting to identify now seem to have begun in that year. The acts of violence I alluded to in the original post now seem to be but a symptom of a longer standing policy.
This research is but a couple months old and I am still identifying potentially lucrative sources. If the negro marauders in question had regimental help for their actions, which now seems to be the case, the regimental commanders were not apt to brag about it, but could have gotten reprimanded for it---the evidence will be buried somewhere, perhaps allowing for but an accidental discovery which seems to be the norm for now. Thanks for your input.