he wrote to one of his subordinates henry sibley in september of 1862 writing about his thoughts about the dakota people. and he used the word sue. quote he said quote it is my purpose utterly to exterminate the sioux. if the power to do so and even if it requires a campaign lasting the whole of next year, in fact, it took two years and so he goes on destroy everything belonging to them and forced them out onto the plains. there to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts and by no means as people. with whom treaties are compromises should be made made end quote. of course, not every army officer, you know had the same views but many of them did like, you know, probably most notably colonel john chippington who's, you know, masterminded the sand creek massacre two years later. but this gets to the the thoughts of the military officers of the time and and some of the people in the lincoln administration. another aspect of the civil war was that it completely devastated indian territory. what's now, oklahoma? and this is where the us government had forcibly removed, you know thousands of peo

tempting to view this campaign as sort of an errant into the wilderness the general who led it henry hopkins. sibley was was famously inept in underprepared. he was he was basically drunkenly incapacitated during some really key moments in the campaign. and his invasion was turned back decisively in the spring of 1862 by the time his army finally limped back to texas it had suffered in astronomical 30% casualty rate. and simply himself soon conceded that the region wasn't worth a quarter of the blood or the treasure that his men had sacrificed. and this i think is one of the reasons why historians like gary gallagher see the sibley invasion as a complete sideshow and to be perfectly fair and frank gary landed some pretty good punches on some of my earlier writing about this facet of the war and so he's completely right to say, i think that jefferson davis was preoccupied with the major military theaters on the eastern half the country. where as we know the war would ultimately be won or lost. but before we completely dismiss this campaign, i think it's sort of helpful to shift our framework and i'd