Note (return) — IV. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST INDIAN EXPEDITION

Halleck's plans for remodeling the constituent elements of his department were made with a thorough comprehension of the difficulties confronting him. It is not surprising that they brought General Denver again to the fore. Hunter's troubles had been bred by local politics. That Halleck well knew; but he also knew that Indian relations were a source of perplexity and that there was no enemy actually in Kansas and no enemy worth considering that would threaten her, provided her own jay-hawking hordes could be suppressed. Her problems were chiefly administrative.201 For the work to be done, Denver seemed the fittest man available and, on the nineteenth, he, having previously been ordered to report to Halleck for duty,202 was assigned203 to the command of a newly-constituted District of Kansas, from which the troops,204 who were guarding the only real danger zone, the southeastern part of the state, were expressly excluded. The hydra-headed evil of the western world then asserted itself, the meddling, particularistic spoils system, with the result that Lane and Pomeroy, unceasingly vigilant whenever and wherever what they regarded as their preserves were likely to be encroached upon, went to President Lincoln and protested against the preferment of Denver.205 Lincoln weakly yielded and wired to Halleck to suspend