Excerpt from The Indian Campaign of Winter of 1864-65: Written in 1877 by Major General Grenville M. Dodge and Read to the Colorado Commandery of the Loyal Legion of the United States, at Denver, April 21, 1907

In December, 1864, I was assigned to the command of the Department of Missouri. In January, 1865, I received a dispatch from General Grant asking if a campaign on the plains could be made in the Winter. I answered: Yes, if the proper preparation was made to clothe and bivouac the troops. A few days after, I received a dis patch from General Grant ordering me to Fort Leaven worth. Irl the meantime the Department of Kansas was merged into the Department of the Missouri, placing under my command Missouri, the Indian Territory, Kansas, Colo rado, Utah, Wyoming, and all the country south of the Yellowstone river, and embracing all the overland mail routes and telegraph lines to the Pacific.

On reaching Fort Leavenworth I found that General Curtis, the former commander of that Department, had re ported against any campaign during the Winter; that the Indians had possession of the entire country crossed by the stage lines, having destroyed the telegraph lines; and that the people living in Colorado, Western Nebraska and Western Kansas were without mails, and in a state of panic; that the troops distributed along the routes of travel were inside of their stockades, the Indians having in nearly every fight defeated them. This success had brought into hostility with the United States nearly every tribe of In dians from Texas on the south to the Yellowstone on the north. It was a formidable combination, and the friendly Indians were daily leaving the reservations to join their hostile brethren. Two thousand Indians had destroyed over one hundred miles of telegraph, and were in posses sion of the country between the Arkansas and the North Platte rivers.

The. Opinion at Fort Leavenworth before I arrived was that it was impossible to make a successful campaign against these Indians during the Winter and successfully'

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