Bob

I understand your point about authority and orders. The only thing remarkable as I was perusing Milks CSRs is this guy started as a Sargent but seemd to be called for speacial duty all over the place, granted a lot of that was after his promotion to Major but not all. He spent a bit of time in Rolla doing who knows what but took it upon himself to write a note to the Colonel commanding saying I'm here on orders from the Adj Gen in St.Louis. The tone just struck me as if he was being used as kind of an "internal Affairs" investigator. Purely suposition on my case but he seemed to be ramped up in that kind of work after the raid. It just leads me to wonder if he didn't have a better than average working relationship with the PM and AG officials in St. Louis and SE MO and felt as if he could proceed based on that relationship where some othr officer of his rank would be less aggressive. I'll look at the Burroughs papers to see if he showed up on the Cape Girardeau PM's radar screen for the period involved.

John R