President Hayes, thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a military aide-de-camp, from General Schofield, he silently passed the president the promised précis of the Patrick memorandum. At a polite, nod from his president, the aide left the room and made sure that the president would not be disturbed for several minutes, till he had read and had time to digest at least the broad scope of the memorandum and it's implications. The précis ran to well over fifty pages, so lord knew what the actual memorandum was like, Hayes thought absently, as he began to dive into it's contents.
Hayes noted ruefully, that Major-General Logan Patrick, did not pull his punches with his assessments of the political and military situation in the Disputed Territories. They were blunt, hard nosed and aimed at achieving practical solutions especially those concerning overall strategies,increasing available manpower and allocations of logistical support as quickly as possible. The problem was, the very things he was advocating while they would probably solve most of the problems that were vexing both his administration and the US Army in the Disputed Territories, would cause Congress to go into convolutions! Which might not be a bad thing, Hayes thought, though his cabinet officers might disagree with him on that.
In the first part of the précis, General Patrick detailed each of the five departments in the Disputed Territories and the particular problems confronting them.
Covering some three territories, was the second largest of the five departments, and the problems facing General Pope were legion, he had to police this considerable area, establish permanent garrisons and pro-unionist administrations, providing, transport and distribute all sorts of goods and services. Pope had to pacify a collection of stubbornly independent enclave states within the region, deal with truculent ranchers, cattle rustlers and desperadoes forming virtual private armies roaming the region.
Countering and repelling the I.S.A. advance into Idaho and providing support to The increasingly isolated Department of the Pacific were two other vitally important tasks, that General Pope had also to consider and deal with. Further, raids and skirmishes with war parties of the Lakota Nation Indians or allied or just hostile Indian tribes were endemic to the area and also had to be continously dealt with. Further Pope was expected by Congress to energetically attack the Lakota Nation in co-ordination with the Department of the Dakotas and force it's submission. Pope had repeatedly stated to Congress and his military superiors that he had enough forces to deal with only one or two problems besetting his department at a time, not the dozen or so that he was routinely confronted with.
Carrington despite being an abysmal and incompetent Indian Fighter, was a magnificant organizer, disciplinarian and drillmaster and had worked with success at keeping his department protected from repeated Indian raids across the Missouri River, from the Lakota Nation and keeping open a direct land route to the Department of the North West and providing it with much needed munitions and other essential supplies, via the heavily patrolled and fortified North Dakota panhandle. Patrick, felt that Carrington, had done as well as could be expected of him, in securing the two Dakota Territories, in the circumstances. His complete lack of success in penatrating and subduing the Lakota nation along the Missouri was due to a lack of overwhelming manpower and sustained logistics to do the task being made available to him by Congress. To balance this, Carrington has been vigorously successful in stamping out any tendency to independent Enclavism, within his department, although some in Congress have accused him of rather too vigorous or heavy handed methods of accomplishing this important part of his departmental mission. Regardless, General Carrington at least does not, unlike some of his fellow departmental commanders have to continously look over their shoulder for enemies behind their lines, while dealing with the enemies to his front.
The Department had fewer U.S. regular regiments assigned to it then perhaps any other, save perhaps the Department of the Mid West. The majority of the troops at Carrington's command were troops he had actively organized or raised himself from the two Dakotas territories: Territorial national guards, territorial militia and volunteers assisted by a small number of U.S. regular regiments or detachments and U.S. Volunteer regiments or battalions. Like Pope, Carrington had to safeguard and police various cities, towns and settlements, maintain and protect the transport of goods and services to those communities, by road, rail, air and water routes that were often contested by the Lakota. He and his troops had to repel or resist numerous raids, by Lakota war parties that had gotten over the Missouri. Meanwhile while attending to all this General Carrington was expected to assist the two territorial governors in their efforts to prepare North and South Dakota for their organization and admission into the Union as states, as well as safe-guard the preliminary elections for the two territories planned representatives and senators to the U.S. Congress.
Actually one of the quietest of the five departments, all things considered, due to both the states being largely loyal to the Union government. Although a large portion of Western Nebraska was and still is effectively Lakota Nation territory as well as a very small northwestern corner of Kansas. Outbreaks of independent enclavism amougst Nebraskans and Kansasians had been very minimal and easily dealt with by local pro-Union military force directly or through careful and effective civil-military negotiations early on in the Second Civil War. However a considerable portion of the western half of the state of Nebraska has fallen under the control of the Lakota Nation as well as a small corner of Northwestern Kansas, and Lakota war parties regular mad raids across the department, though in most cases, these raids have been regularly halted or driven back into Lakota held lands.
General Brooke's hard work, careful organization, concern for logistics and good working rapport with both military and civilian subordninates and especially his concern for building a good working relation with the various pro-unionist Indian tribal factions that had stayed loyal to the Union during the first civil war (and consequently had to flee the Indian Territory, now the Confederate State of Oklahoma) and been resettled in pro-unionist Kansas. They had been stalwarts in keeping Kansas in the Union ever since. General Brooke is unusual amoungst his five departmental peers as his military administration is both respected and appreciated by local, district and state authorities and the great majority of pro-unionist inhabitants whether long established residents, new settlers or resettled Indian tribes (excepting the Lakota of course). Further he is in a personal sense generally liked and respected by both his soldiers and subordinates, although his relations with General Miles, the Commander of the Department of South West, have recently undergone a severe strain.
The Unionist Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctow, Chickasaw, Muscogee/Creek, and Seminole) and other tribes that had decided to throw in their lot with the Union, had proven under Brooke's direction to be indispensable and highly effective in keeping the various postal, trade caravan and supply or settler wagon train routes as well as railroads in the area open or at least protected from Lakota war parties or other hostile groups both in Kansas and in Nebraska deployed as regiments or battalions of U.S. Indian Home Guards or Indian Scouts alongside Brooke's U.S. regular troops and Kansas and Nebraska National Guards, State Militia and Home Guards.
Brooke's primary concern other then policing and administering to his department is maintaining and protecting the various supply lines, that pass through his department, from the logistical centers of the Union proper to the extended U.S. armies, garrisons and detachments deployed all over the Department of South West (and a lesser extent to the Departments of the Dakotas and the North West), something that Brooke and the troops under his command have done with commendable diligence and perserverence. Brooke has been largely responsible (much of it on his own incentive) for the construction of two new Central and Southern Pacific Railways from railway hubs in Kansas to better assist General Miles's field troops and garrisons and connecting the massive primary Union Army supply depots at Denver, Colorado and Sante Fe, New Mexico directly with supply and logistical depots in Kansas and the vital industrial and military support of the rest of the Union in the east.
One of the two largest departments, if not thee largest in terms of sheer land area covered, and the one that that has seen the most heavy fighting of one sort of another in recent years other then the Department of the Pacific. General Miles has enjoyed considerable if not great success in personally overseeing the surpression and pacification of the Indian tribes in the region that his department covers. His two chief subordinates, Major-Generals James Henry Carleton and Joseph Rodman West being cited as energetically assisting him in this task in Arizona and New Mexico respectively.
Patrick felt that Miles was wasting more time on this then was politically or militarily or even ethically necessary, being more concerned to be seen as the most successful Indian Fighter (and discredit and eclipse the accomplishments of General Crook) particularly against the virtually ungovernable and skilled warriors of the Apache Tribes in Union military history by the various newspapers both in the region and back east. Fighting the I.S.A.'s advances into the Union Arizona Territory, stamping out the independent Enclaves in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado (and in re-establishing and assisting any working pro-union administrations in the virtuly defunct Union state of Colorado or for that matter the Arizona and New Mexico territories) or dealing with the continued Mormon resistence in the state of Utah had recieved by comparison only the most peripheral of his attentions or been left in the hands of otherwise unsupervised or under supported departmental subordinates.
With no less then five Union armies tied up (without overall direction by Miles as departmental commander) around Salt Lake City and a very real drive by the I.S.A into Union Arizona developing, all seemed incrediblely low on Miles's list of military priorities. This excessive concern on Miles's part with dealing solely with the Indians was extremely worrying. Further Miles efforts to actually subdue the fiercely independent Navajo Nation itself on the otherhand have been absolutely and consistently disasterous. The Navajo and other allied tribes within that Indian nation's well established borders that sprawled across four states or territories being well organized, extremely well armed and highly motivated to defend themselves and their families and tribes. They had consistently snapped to pieces any of the numerous expeditions lead or sent by General Miles or General West to break them. Miles's efforts against the Lakota Nation occupied section of Colorado has been marked by a dysmally similiar lack of success.
More then one person in the General Staff and the Commanding General-in-chief's Office of the Union Army, thought, Miles had developed unhealthy political ambitions and desires for either a seat in Congress as a representative or senator or even the presidency if he could win the nomination and planned to use his anti-Indian successes for valuable political capital. Either that or he is aiming to position himself towards being the next nominee for the post of the General-in-Chief of the Union Army, given the extremely poor health of the current incumbent, the ailing General of the Armies Philip Henry Sheridan. Miles's was thought to be planning to utilize his record of military accomplishments both in the First and the early part of the Second Civil Wars, as well as being a protege of General-in-Chiefs U. S. Grant, W.T. Sherman and Sheridan, his well crafted and well publicized reputation as a successful and accomplished Indian fighter (if one omits his more recent and frequent failures against the Navajo and Lakota Nations). Further, Miles was married to a niece of General Sherman (who, although officially retired since 1884 at his own request, still wielded enormous influence within the Union government and U.S. Army High Command, while Sherman's many Ewing family relations commanded just as much policial influence in various state governments, the U.S. House of Representatives and especially the U.S. Senate) and also having impeccablely solid connections within the Republican and Radical Republican Parties, he might not be wrong in thinking that the post is his for the taking.
Miles had further made an alarming and dangerous point of driving any tribe in the region that he couldn't subdue and place onto a government designated and controlled reservation, over the borders of the Independent States of America, the Mexican Empire, and the Confederate States of America. The immediate and long-term political and military complications of that practice were extremely unpleasant for Hayes to dwell on. Miles, also tried dismissing from service and placing the members (and their families) of the Indian Scouts raised by General George Crook onto a reservation, despite written promises from Crook and the U.S. government that they would not be so treated at the end of their service. This consequently started a bitter feud (or rather it exaserbated the bad relations existed between the two from the time Crook was Miles's superior and predessor in the department) between Crook and Miles. General Brooke, who has come to value his Indian Home Guards and Indian Scouts and was friendly to Crook, intervened personally in the affair and offered the Apaches and other members of the Indian Scouts in Miles's department, refuge and resettlement rights in Kansas for themselves and their families, if they were willing to relocate there and if they had no objections to serve in his department. The right of refuge and resettlement would be acted on by General Brooke and his administration, whether they elected to serve or not.
This department, was the most critcally endangered of all the departments and had only narrowly beaten off the I.S.A.'s previous 1888 autumn and winter land offensives. It was frequently isolated from the nearest department to it, that of the North West. It's logistical support had to come either directly from the resources of the State of Washington or be delivered by the Union Governement via long nautical routes from the Union's Atlantic coast, through the Carribbean Sea via the Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec interoceanic ship railway lines which had been constructed and opened for business in 1884 or the Panama Canal which was due to close for improvement and repairs this year.
The other alternative nautical route was the long trip around, South America and Cape Horn into the Pacific Ocean and up past the hostile Californian and Oregonian coasts of the Independent States. Deliveries of men and supplies via aeronautical routes using air or sky ships from Minnesota or Kansas were possible but frequently haphazard at best due to aerial raiding parties from the Lakota Nation, air pirates or sky privateers hired by the I.S.A. The most direct overland U.S. rail route, the Northern Pacific Railway was cut by the Lakota Nation, as much of it passed through territory they claimed and had some active control of and thus unworkable as a reliable transport route.
The only sustained supply route rail or otherwise, was via the Canadian Pacific Railway, through the British North Americas, which was connected by a special railway by-pass from Minnesota into the Canadian Pairies, directly to the C.P.R. line. The British had allowed this dispite their official stance of studious neutrality in the Second Civil War since it had started in 1885, as a favour largely brought about by the perusasion and sustained lobbying within the British parliament by the former Liberal prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (1880-1883 and 1886-1886), though it had been unsuccessfully opposed by both the following Whig and Conservative prime ministers, the Duke of Darkmoor (1883-1885) and the Marquess of Salisbury (1885-86 and 1886 til the present). Though there were several severe conditions attached to it by the British Foreign Office to settle the nerves of both the British Empire's Canadian subjects and the British Empire's Imperial Defense General Staff.
Military logistics could travel in secrecy along the C.P.R. to reach Seattle, Washington, but the munitions and other supplies had to travel on separate trains, covertly guarded by Royal Canadian Mounted Police and selected detachments of British troops. Union Army and Navy personel bound for Washington State had to travel, in plain dress, unarmed and on seperate trains from the weapons and munitions consignments. This route while complicated worked fairly effectively and had delivered a steady stream of much needed troops, equipement and munitions to the embattled Union forces. While the folllowing British governments had chosen not to alter the largely unwritten arrangement even though they detested it, they could at anytime they chose cancel it: with dire military and logistical implications for Washington State.
