th every
State and Territory west of the Missouri River appealing for protection,
until President Lincoln wrote to General Grant to try and have something
done to protect that country. General Grant instructed me to make the
campaign in the winter of 1864-65, which was so successful that in forty
days all the overland routes were opened, and the stage, telegraph, and
mails replaced, as shown in my reports, though at the beginning of the
campaign every tribe of Indians from the British Possessions to the Indian
Territory was at war, with captures and murders of settlers along all the
overland routes, in all the frontier States, every-day occurrences; with
women and children captured and outrages committed that cannot be
mentioned. And yet this Cabinet had no knowledge of the conditions, and
concluded from the report of the Doolittle Peace Commission that the
Indian expedition was a complete failure, notwithstanding that this
commission failed to make ponce with a single tribe of Indians and failed
to stop the depredations of any band of Indians; and, upon its report,
declaring that the Indian expeditions were a folly and wickedness gotten
up by some one without the authority or knowledge of the Government.

There never were 22,000 troops on the plains, nor one-half of that number.
The War Department may have sent that number out, but, as I have shown,
they were all mustered out before they reached their work; and the cost of
the campaign with a year's supplies at the posts for all the troops on the
plains or engaged in the campaign was not more than $10,000,000, a very
small amount compared with the trouble and cost of fighting these Indians
for ten years thereafter. Secretary Harlan says that 2,200 troops were
sufficient. When I took command, in January, 1865, there were not to
exceed 5,000 troops guarding trains, stages, and telegraph-lines, and
protecting all the routes of travel across the plains, and they had
utterly failed. All travel had been stopped and no expeditions against the
Indians had been made. The Indians had held the overland routes for three
months in spite of these troops. It shows how little knowledge Secretary
Harlan had of the condition of Indian affairs in his department. From the
statements of Secretary Wells it is evident where the order came from to
stop all operations on the plains and withdraw all troops by October 15th.
When Secretary Stanton states that by October 1st the troops on the plains