Note (return) — XI. INDIAN TERRITORY IN 1863, JANUARY TO JUNE INCLUSIVE

The Trans-Mississippi departmental change, effected in January, was of short duration, so short that it could never surely have been intended to be anything but transitional. In February the parts were re-united and Kirby Smith put in command of the whole,762 President Davis explaining, not very candidly, that no dissatisfaction with Holmes was thereby implied.763 Smith was the ranking officer and entitled to the first consideration. Moreover, Holmes had once implored that a substitute for himself be sent out. As a matter of fact, Holmes had become too much entangled with Hindman, too much identified with all that Arkansans objected to in Hindman,764 his intolerance, his arrogance, his illegalities, for him to be retained longer, with complacency, in chief command. Hindman and he were largely to blame for the necessity765 of suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in Arkansas and the adjacent Indian country, which had just been done. Strong