Shortly after three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, October 29, 1864, six Confederate prisoners of war were taken from their cell in Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis and executed by a military firing squad by order of Federal Major General William S. Rosecrans at the urging of Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, Jr. The execution was retaliation for the deaths of Major James Wilson and six enlisted men from the 3rd Missouri State Militia Cavalry (U.S.), who had been executed by Confederate soldiers of the 15th Missouri Cavalry (C.S.A.) under Colonel Timothy Reves, after those Confederates had likewise acted in retaliation for atrocities committed by 3rd Missouri State Militia soldiers in Ripley County, Missouri. The six condemned men learned of their fate only hours beforehand; visited by Union chaplains, five were baptized, while Asa Ladd was already a member of the Methodist Church. Private Asa V. Ladd had joined Confederate service on May 5, 1862, in Bloomfield, entering Captain Joseph J. Miller's Company A of Burbridge’s 4th Missouri Cavalry Regiment with many friends from the Bloomfield community. In the little time left to him, he wrote a farewell letter to his wife and children, urging them not to grieve, to meet him in heaven, to teach the children piety, to remember their father, and to seek help in managing the family's affairs, and he closed by entrusting them to God and expressing confidence in his faith as he faced death.
