Sibley, having reached Fort Ridgely, proceeded at first to reconnoitre and bury the dead, then to follow the Indians and rescue the captives. More than once the tribes had found that it was wise to carry off prisoners, who by serving as hostages might mollify or prevent punishment for the original outbreak. Early in September there were pitched battles at Birch Coolie and Fort Abercrombie and Wood Lake. At this last engagement, on September 23, Sibley was able not only to defeat the tribes and take nearly 2000 prisoners, but to release 227 women and children, who had been the "prime object," from whose "pursuit nothing could drive or divert him." The Indians were handed over under arrest to Agent Galbraith to be conveyed first to the Lower Agency, and then, in November, to Fort Snelling. The punishment of the Sioux was heavy. Inkpaduta's massacre at Spirit Lake was still remembered and unavenged. Sibley now cut them down in battle in 1862, though Little Crow and other leaders escaped. In 1863, Pope, who had been called to command a new department in the Northwest, organized a general campaign against the tribes, sending Sibley up the Minnesota River to drive them west, and Sully up the Missouri to head them off, planning to catch and crush them between the two columns. The manoeuvre was badly timed and failed, while punishment drifted gradually into a prolonged war. Civil retribution was more severe, and fell, with judicial irony, on the farmer Sioux who had been drawn reluctantly into the struggle. At the Lower Agency, at Redwood, the captives were held, while more than four hundred of their men were singled out for trial for murder. Nothing is more significant of the anomalous nature of the Indian relation than this trial for murder of prisoners of war. The United States held the tribes nationally to account, yet felt free to punish individuals as though they were citizens of the United States. The military commission sat at Redwood for several weeks with the missionary and linguist, Rev. S. R. Riggs, "in effect, the Grand Jury of the court." Three hundred and three were condemned to death by the court for murder, rape, and arson, their condemnation starting a wave of protest over the country, headed by the Indian Commissioner, W. P. Dole. To the indignation of the frontier, naturally revengeful and never impartial, President Lincoln yielded to the protests in the case of most of the condemned. Yet thirty-eight of them were hanged on a single scaffold at Mankato on December 26, 1862. The innocent and uncondemned were punished also, when Congress confiscated all their Minnesota reserve in 1863, and transferred the tribe to Fort Thompson on the Missouri, where less desirable quarters were found for them.