In this connection it may not be improper to state that from North Fork to Red River we met over 120 wagons, movers from Texas to Kansas and other free States. These people are from Grayton, Collin, Johnson, and Denton, a country beautiful in appearance, rich in soil, genial in climate, and inferior to none in its capacity for the production of the cereals and stock. In disguise, we conversed with them freely. They had proposed by the ballot box to abolitionize at least that portion of the State. Failing in this, we suppose at least 500 voters have returned whence they came. All of which is respectfully submitted this April 23, 1861.... Presumably, the suggestions, contained in the closing paragraphs of the commissioners' report, in so far as they concerned Texas, were immediately acted upon by her. It was very true, as the commissioners had reported, that a change was taking place in the disposition of Federal troops within the Indian country. About the middle of February, a complaint[134] had been filed at the Indian Office by the Wichita agent, Matthew Leeper, to the effect that men, claiming to be Choctaws and Chickasaws, were trespassing upon the Leased District. The Reserve Indians asked for relief and protection at the hands of their guardian, the United States government. Shortly afterwards, perhaps in a measure in response to the appeal or more likely, to a hint that everything was not quite as it should be on the Texan border, Colonel William H. Emory, First United States Cavalry, was ordered, March 13,[135] to take post at Fort Cobb. He was then in Washington and, immediately upon his departure thence, was ordered, March 18,[136] to form his regiment at Fort Washita instead, word having come from the commander at that post,[137] in a report of the third instant, of a threatened attack by Texans. In explanation of a policy so vacillating, Emory was given to understand that the change of destination was really made at the solicitation of the agent and delegation of the Chickasaws. Those men were in Washington, out of reach of and apparently out of sympathy with, the events transpiring at home. Agent Cooper, secessionist though he was, probably did not altogether approve of the interference of the Texans. At any rate, he shared the representations of the Chickasaw delegation that Fort Washita stood in need of reënforcement,[138] and the War Department acceded to their request on the ground that, "The interests of the United States are paramount to those of the friendly Indians on the reservation near Fort Cobb."[139]