The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Volume...

The headquarters ofthe military department to which I was assigned when relieved from duty atNew Orleans was at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and on the 5th of September Istarted for that post. In due time I reached St. Louis, and stopped there aday to accept an ovation tendered in approval of the course I had pursued inthe Fifth Military District—a public demonstration apparently of the mostsincere and hearty character.
From St. Louis to Leavenworth took butone night, and the next day I technically complied with my orders far enoughto permit General Hancock to leave the department, so that he might goimmediately to New Orleans if he so desired, but on account of the yellowfever epidemic then prevailing, he did not reach the city till late inNovember.
My new command was one of the four military departments that composed thegeographical division then commanded by Lieutenant-General Sherman. Thisdivision had been formed in 1866, with a view to controlling the Indians westof the Missouri River, they having become very restless and troublesomebecause of the building of the Pacific railroads through theirhunting-grounds, and the encroachments of pioneers, who began settling inmiddle and western Kansas and eastern Colorado immediately after the war.