potential warriors in all, and that he might better devote himself to suppressing them, Sheridan followed the Kansas Pacific to its terminus at Fort Hays and there established his headquarters in the field. The war of 1868 ranged over the whole frontier south of the Platte trail. It influenced the Peace Commission, at its final meeting in October, 1868, to repudiate many of the pacific theories of January and recommend that the Indians be handed over to the War Department. Sheridan, who had led the Commission to this conclusion, was in the field directing the movement. His policy embraced a concentration of the peaceful bands south of the Arkansas, and a relentless war against the rest. It is fairly clear that the war need not have come, had it not been for the cross-purposes ever apparent between the Indian Office and the War Department, and even within the War Department itself. At Fort Hays, Sheridan prepared for war. He had, at the start, about 2600 men, nearly equally divided among cavalry and infantry. Believing his force too small to cover the whole plains between Fort Hays and Denver, he called for reënforcements, receiving a part of the Fifth Cavalry and a regiment of Kansas volunteers. With enthusiasm this last addition was raised among the frontiersmen, where Indian fighting was popular; the governor of the state resigned his office to become its colonel. September and October were occupied in getting the troops together, keeping the trails open for traffic, and establishing, about a hundred miles south of Fort Dodge, a rendezvous which was known as Camp Supply. It was the intention to protect the frontier during the autumn, and to follow up the Indian villages after winter had fallen, catching the tribes when they would be concentrated and at a disadvantage. On October 15, 1868, Sherman, just from the Chicago meeting of the Peace Commissioners and angry because he had there been told that the army wanted war, gave Sheridan a free hand for the winter campaign. "As to 'extermination,' it is for the Indians themselves to determine. We don't want to exterminate or even to fight them.... The present war ... was begun and carried on by the Indians in spite of our entreaties and in spite of our warnings, and the only question to us is, whether we shall allow the progress of our western settlements to be checked, and leave the Indians free to pursue their bloody career, or accept their war and fight them.... We ... accept the war ... and hereby resolve to make its end final.... I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands, but will use all the powers confided to me to the end that these Indians, the enemies of our race and of our civilization, shall not again be able to begin and carry on their barbarous warfare on any kind of pretext that they may choose to allege."