e not connected with the Union Pacific
Railroad, with which the Secretary of War must necessarily have
large transactions, he would choose him, but as the case stood, and
remembering the very excellent speech made by General Belknap at
the Chicago reunion of December, 1868, he authorized me to
communicate with him to ascertain if he were willing to come to
Washington as Secretary of War. General Belknap was then the
collector of internal revenue at Keokuk, Iowa. I telegraphed him
and received a prompt and favorable answer. His name was sent to
the Senate, promptly confirmed, and he entered on his duties
October 25,1869. General Belknap surely had at that date as fair a
fame as any officer of volunteers of my personal acquaintance. He
took up the business where it was left off, and gradually fell into
the current which led to the command of the army itself as of the
legal and financial matters which properly pertain to the War
Department. Orders granting leaves of absence to officers,
transfers, discharges of soldiers for favor, and all the old
abuses, which had embittered the life of General Scott in the days
of Secretaries of War Marcy and Davis, were renewed. I called his
attention to these facts, but without sensible effect. My office
was under his in the old War Department, and one day I sent my
aide-de-camp, Colonel Audenried, up to him with some message, and
when he returned red as a beet, very much agitated, he asked me as
a personal favor never again to send him to General Belknap. I
inquired his reason, and he explained that he had been treated with
a rudeness and discourtesy he had never seen displayed by any
officer to a soldier. Colonel Audenried was one of the most
polished gentlemen in the army, noted for his personal bearing and
deportment, and I had some trouble to impress on him the patience
necessary for the occasion, but I promised on future occasions to
send some other or go myself. Things went on from bad to worse,
till in 1870 I received from Mr. Hugh Campbell, of St. Louis, a
personal friend and an honorable gentleman, a telegraphic message
complaining that I had removed from his position Mr. Ward, post
trader at Fort Laramie, with only a month in which to dispose of
his large stock of goods, to make room for his successor.

It so happened that we of the Indian Peace Commission had been much
indebted to this same trader, Ward, for advances of flour, sugar,
and coffee, to provide for t