the celebrated saying of
"moss-backs."

A part of my Corps fought under that gallant General, A. J. Smith, in the
Banks campaign up the Red River, and there is no doubt but that his
generalship and the fighting of the two Divisions of the Sixteenth Corps
saved that Army from a great defeat. The commander of one of his
Divisions, General T. E. G. Ransom, was a school-mate of mine, and
afterwards came to me in the Atlanta campaign and commanded a Division
under me in the Sixteenth Corps.

When I look at the history of all of the operations west of the
Mississippi River, and see their results, it is a great gratification to
me to know that all the campaigns, except possibly the one of Banks, were
victories for our side.

When I returned to the command of the Department of the Missouri, in
November, 1864, I found all the Indian tribes on the plains at war,
occupying all the lines of communication through to the Pacific, and there
was a great demand from the people upon the Government that those lines
should be opened. General Grant sent a dispatch, asking if a campaign upon
the plains could be made in the winter. Having spent eight or ten years of
my life upon the plains before the war, I answered that it could, if the
troops were properly fed and clothed. His answer to that was to place all
the plains and Indian tribes within my command, instructing me to make an
immediate campaign against them, and I had, therefore, to move the troops
that were at Leavenworth, Fort Riley, and other points, onto the plains in
mid-winter, and I think it was the Eleventh Kansas that had thirteen men
frozen to death on the march to Fort Kearney. Those troops on that winter
march up and down those stage- and telegraph-lines, in forty days opened
them up, repaired the telegraph, and had the stages running. Then came the
longer campaign of the next summer and next fall, where General Cole's
command suffered so much, and also where General Conner fought the Battle
of Tongue River. I remember of the Indians capturing a company of Michigan
troops that were guarding a train that was going to Fort Halleck, loaded
with rations and bacon. They tied some of the soldiers to the wheels of
the wagons, piled the bacon around the wagons, and burned them up. A band
of this party of Indians was captured by a battalion of Pawnees, who were
far north of them and got on their trail and surrounded the band that had
committed these atrocities. The chief of them,