Doc. 46.-Brigadier-General Loan's order.
1. It has become manifest that rebels returning from the armies of the insurgents, and other disaffected and disloyal persons, are, throughout this military district, organizing bands to act during the ensuing season as guerrillas and banditti.
It is intended to resort to the most vigorous measures to suppress these outlaws; and to this end it is enjoined upon all commands, scouting parties, officers and soldiers, when these out-laws are detected in bushwhacking, marauding or committing other depredations, as guerrillas or bandits, upon the peaceable inhabitants of the country, to shoot them when found.
All able-bodied men in the vicinity where acts of murder, marauding, robbery or larceny, shall be committed by guerrillas or bandits, are required to make immediate pursuit, and render all the assistance in their power to secure the destruction or capture of the criminals.
Those who are known to have heretofore sympathized with the rebels, and who fail to render such assistance, will be arrested, and the facts reported to these headquarters for final disposition.
Murderers, robbers and thieves have become so numerous on the border, and so bold and daring in the commission of crime, that it is utterly impossible for the civil tribunals to punish the perpetrators of crime with sufficient promptness and severity to deter them from committing further outrages, and to furnish protection to the citizens.
Hereafter the perpetrators of such crimes, when arrested, will be tried and punished at the discretion of a military commission.
