WAR DEPARTMENT,

WASHINGTON CITY, D. C, March 19, 1862. 
MAJ.  GEN.H.W.  HALLECK,

Commanding the Department of Mississippi: 

General:  It is the desire of the President, on the application of the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, that you should detail two regiments to act in the Indian country, with a view to open the way for the friendly Indians who are now refugees in Southern Kansas to return to their homes and to protect them there.  Five thousand friendly Indians will also be armed to aid in their own protection, and you will please furnish them with necessary subsistence.

Please report your action in the premises to this Department.  Prompt action is necessary.

By order of the Secretary of War: 

L. THOMAS, Adjutant-general[226]

[Footnote 223:  Two thousand was most certainly the number, although the communication from the War Department gives it as five.]

[Footnote 224:  Dole to Halleck, March 21, 1862 [Indian Office Letter Book, no. 67, 516-517].]

[Footnote 225:—­Ibid., 517-518.]

[Footnote 226:  Official Records, vol. viii, 624-625.]

Steele inferred from what passed at the interview with Halleck that the commanding general was decidedly opposed to arming Indians.  Steele found him also non-committal as to when the auxiliary force would be available.[227] Dole’s letter, with its seeming dictation as to the choice of a commander for the expedition, may not have been to Halleck’s liking.  He was himself at the moment most interested in the suppression of guerrillas and jayhawkers, against whom sentence of outlawry had just been passed.  As it happened, that was the work in which Dole’s nominee, Colonel Robert B. Mitchell,[228] was to render such signal service[229] and, anticipating as much, Halleck may have objected to his being thought of for other things.  Furthermore, Dole had no right to so much as cast a doubt upon Halleck’s own ability to select a proper commander.

A little perplexed but not at all daunted by Halleck’s lack of cordiality, Steele proceeded on his journey and, arriving at Leavenworth, presented his credentials to Captain McNutt, who was in charge of the arsenal.  Four hundred Indian rifles were at hand, ready for him, and others expected.[230] What to do next, was the question?  Should he go on to Leroy and trust to the auxiliary force’s showing up in season or wait for it?  The principal part of his mission was yet to be executed.  The Indians had to be enrolled and everything got in train for their expedition southward.  Their homes

[Footnote 227:  Steele to Dole, March 27, 1862 [Indian Office General Files, Southern Superintendence, 1859-1862, S 537 of 1862].]

[Footnote 228:  Robert B. Mitchell was colonel, first of the Second Kansas Infantry, then of the Second Kansas Cavalry.  He raised the former, in answer to President Lincoln’s first call, 1861 [Crawford, Kansas in the Sixties, 20], chiefly in Linn County, and the latter in 1862.]