of the Nation with being tyrannical and a partisan, and I am not afraid to say that when such charges are made against me, I feel in my heart they are untruthful."

He did not return to New Orleans until 1875, when the operations of the White League were dangerous and murderous enough to induce President Grant to send Sheridan down there. His presence was enough to cause a sullen submission at least. It was, taken altogether, a strange chapter in a soldier's career. The needs of the hour proved him capable, and time has certainly justified both his motives and his judgment.

From this date onward, until his death, Sheridan remained clear of all political entanglements. His position in the army made this the only proper course, if policy alone had guided his actions, but it was also the course which his own convictions of duty dictated. No one who could have had the right to know of General Sheridan's opinions on public affairs, would have long been in doubt of his personal attitude towards them and the party divisions into which they were necessarily divided. He was, like Grant and Sherman, in sympathy with the Republican party, in its historic attitude towards the Union, and in its relations to the economic problems that are a part of its principles, purposes, and policy. Of this there can be no question.

But General Sheridan was no politician. As an American citizen he held sternly to his convictions of public duty. As a soldier he was honorably and properly a non-partisan, serving the whole people whose defender he was, and keeping true watch and ward over all interests intrusted to him. But he always felt keenly over the reconstruction period and the severe responsibilities which it thrust upon him in larger degree than on any other one of the soldiers who were called to the execution of trusts so repugnant to the general cast of a soldier's life and duty. He felt then that he was right in the course he had pursued. He knew afterwards that results fully vindicated his acts.

SHERIDAN'S PREDECESSOR AS GENERAL OF THE ARMY-HERO OF THE MARCH TO THE SEA, AND ONE OF THE THREE GREAT CAPTAINS UNDER WHOM THE WAR WAS

BROUGHT TO A SUCCESSFUL CLOSE.

CHAPTER XXVII.

IN COMMAND AT FORT LEAVENWORTH AND CHICAGO.

COMMANDING THE DEPARTMENT OF MISSOURI - INDIAN WARS AND DISTURBANCES SERIOUS MILITARY OPERATIONS NECESSITATED-REMOVING TRIBES FROM THE GREAT PLAINS-CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE KIOWAS, COMANCHES, AND CHEYENNES-MADE A LIEUTENANT-GENERAL WHERE AND HOW THE NEWS WAS RECEIVED- HEADQUARTERS IN CHICAGO VISIT TO EUROPE SHERIDAN AT SEDAN-HOB-NOBBING WITH BISMARCK THE GREAT FIRE -MARRIAGE AND REMOVAL TO WASHINGTON.

MAJOR-GENERAL SHERIDAN was assigned by the general-in-chief, on the 12th of September, 1867, to the command of the Department of the Missouri. It was a grateful relief from the terrible strain of reconstruction responsibilities, ably borne though they were. It was also a command of considerable military importance, involving as it did heavy conflicts with the Indian tribes of the region, as well as the execution of a policy of concentration and removal which was designed to clear the central portion of our western region from the hindrances to settlement and railroad progress which the presence therein of strong Indian tribes necessarily created. The recognition of Sheridan for this command was in the line of Grant's course towards him. Sherman as the senior and ranking officer, was relieved largely of severe departmental service, and was then engaged as a member of the Indian Peace Commission in the inquiries and negotiations that were needed to achieve the policy indicated.

Sheridan's new headquarters were at Fort Leavenworth — the post which had become the most important in what might have been termed the frontier West. He found there his old comrade of the regular army, and of the Army of the Cumberland, General Elliott, who succeeded to the command of Sheridan's old division on his transfer to the Potomac. The department included the Indian Territory, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and that portion of Dakota now known as the Territory of Wyoming. This region was more or less disturbed by Indian hostility when Sheridan took command at Fort Leavenworth.

The Indian Territory had not quite settled from its war divisions, and constant watchfulness was needed to prevent disorders which might readily have grown serious. The great problem involved in Sheridan's department administration was mainly confined, however, to the territory lying between the Platte in Nebraska and the Canadian River in the western portion of the Indian Territory, and of the southern line of Kansas, further east. It extended as far west as the Rocky Mountains. In that region the Utes were restless, but not openly hostile.

In the region to which Sheridan's main efforts and operations were directed there was a considerable body of Indians. In the Missouri Valley itself was a number of semi-civilized tribes, nearly all of whom have since been removed to the Indian Territory or become incorporated in the general body politic. In Nebraska were the Otoes and other tribal remnants; in Eastern Kansas were the Delawares, Kickapoos, Shawnees, Peorias, Weas, Pinkeshaws, Osages, Pottawatomies, and Kaw or Kansas Indians, numbering in all between six and seven thousand souls. The Nebraska bands were not removed. About eighty per cent. of all the Kansas Indians have been removed and settled again, where the semi-civilized bodies all form part of the Cherokee nation, so far as organized civic action on their part is concerned. The work of removal was begun under Sheridan's department administration. West of Fort Riley, serious work was before him and the troops under his command, which included besides regular white and colored regiments and batteries, at least two regiments of Kansas volunteers, the Seventeenth and Eighteenth, raised for Indian service. These regiments were commanded by veteran soldiers, ex-Governor S. J. Crawford, formerly colonel of the Eighty-third, United States Colored Troops, and Thomas J. Moonlight, ex-colonel of the Fourteenth Kansas Volunteers (cavalry), and now governor of Wyoming Territory, being the colonels respectively of these organizations. In what is now known as Wyoming, the Cheyennes, Blackfeet, Northern Comanches, and some Sioux bands required constant watching. In Southwest Nebraska the Pawnees were restless. But in Western Kansas, the Kiowas, Arapahoes, Comanches, Apaches of the Plains, and the Cheyennes, the latter the most warlike and valorous of all Indians on the plains, were openly hostile in feeling, and from the outset more or less actively so.

These Indians, the Kiowas especially, during the last year of the Civil War kept the feeble frontier settlements in continual danger. They were unquestionably influenced in this hostility by old traders

and " squaw men," who were generally in sympathy with the South at the time. It is also known that the Confederate military authorities endeavored to organize their hostility to the whites as a direct menace to the Union cause in that vast and sparsely protected region. The activity of the Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico military authorities prevented these intrigues from making any great headway. But the infamous affair at Sand Creek, Southern Colorado, where, in the early fall of 1864, Colonel Chivington with a regiment of Colorado 100-day men attacked and slew the inmates of a Kiowa camp under Black Kettle, an Indian chief who had always been esteemed by frontiers-men as friendly to the whites, caused a general irruption of this tribe and the other Indians of the plains against the settlers of Western Kansas, in September and October of that year. The raiders were met and driven back by a force under General J. G. Blunt. Next year they were checked by volunteers and regulars under Crawford, Moonlight, Elliott, and others. General Hancock was in command and had a severe fight in 1866, before he was ordered by President Johnson to supersede Sheridan. When the latter assumed his new command, as Grant had foreseen, he found his work already cut out for him.

The Indians against whom he had especially to direct his forces numbered in all about eleven thousand persons. The Comanches were a warlike tribe, who generally roamed over the head waters of the Red and Canadian rivers and across the staked plains of Texas as far south as the Rio Grande. The Kiowas and Arapahoes hunted and lived about the Upper Arkansas and as far north as the Smoky Hill branch of the Kansas River. The Cheyennes roamed and hunted through the whole of Kansas, west of the 100th meridian of west longitude. They were unyielding foes, and the bands known as DogSoldiers, then under Mo-ke-ta-ve-tah, had not been at peace for at least twenty years preceding Sheridan's operations. The last terrible drubbing they received before the new commander annihilated them, was given by the gallant Colonel Summer, who with the Fifth Cavalry in the late summer of 1857 took up their trail from Fort Riley, and never left it until he had reached their camp and defeated them in a terrible fight, utterly routing and killing a considerable proportion of the tribe. During the war they recovered their old strength and spirit, and once more became a terror to the growing settlements. The progress of railroad construction increased their hostility, and necessitated increasing vigilance and activity against them. When the Civil War closed there was not a single mile of railroad north of Jefferson City and west of the Missouri