During the whole period that I commanded in Louisiana and Texas my position was a most unenviable one.  The service was unusual, and the nature of it scarcely to be understood by those not entirely familiar with the conditions existing immediately after the war.  In administering the affairs of those States, I never acted except by authority, and always from conscientious motives.  I tried to guard the rights of everybody in accordance with the law.  In this I was supported by General Grant and opposed by President Johnson.  The former had at heart, above every other consideration, the good of his country, and always sustained me with approval and kind suggestions.  The course pursued by the President was exactly the opposite, and seems to prove that in the whole matter of reconstruction he was governed less by patriotic motives than by personal ambitions.  Add to this his natural obstinacy of character and personal enmity toward me, and no surprise should be occasioned when I say that I heartily welcomed the order that lifted from me my unsought burden.

CHAPTER XII.

AT FORT LEAVENWORTH—­THE TREATY OF MEDICINE LODGE—­GOING TO FORT
DODGE—­DISCONTENTED INDIANS—­INDIAN OUTRAGES—­A DELEGATION OF CHIEFS
—­TERRIBLE INDIAN RAID—­DEATH OF COMSTOCK—­VAST HERDS OF BUFFALO
—­PREPARING FOR A WINTER CAMPAIGN—­MEETING “BUFFALO BILL”
—­HE UNDERTAKES A DANGEROUS TASK—­FORSYTH’S GALLANT FIGHT—­RESCUED.

The headquarters of the military department to which I was assigned when relieved from duty at New Orleans was at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and on the 5th of September I started for that post.  In due time I reached St. Louis, and stopped there a day to accept an ovation tendered in approval of the course I had pursued in the Fifth Military District—­a public demonstration apparently of the most sincere and hearty character.

From St. Louis to Leavenworth took but one night, and the next day I technically complied with my orders far enough to permit General Hancock to leave the department, so that he might go immediately to New Orleans if he so desired, but on account of the yellow fever epidemic then prevailing, he did not reach the city till late in November.

My new command was one of the four military departments that composed the geographical division then commanded by Lieutenant-General Sherman.  This division had been formed in 1866, with a view to controlling the Indians west of the Missouri River, they having become very restless and troublesome because of the building of the Pacific railroads through their hunting-grounds, and the encroachments of pioneers, who began settling in middle and western Kansas and eastern Colorado immediately after the war.

My department embraced the States of Missouri and Kansas, the Indian Territory, and New Mexico.  Part of this section of country—­western Kansas particularly—­had been frequently disturbed and harassed during two or three years past, the savages every now and then massacring an isolated family, boldly attacking the surveying and construction parties of the Kansas-Pacific railroad, sweeping down on emigrant trains, plundering and burning stage-stations and the like along the Smoky Hill route to Denver and the Arkansas route to New Mexico.