A week after the Wood Lake affair the President appointed Colonel Sibley a brigadier-general. His confirmation by the Senate was long delayed, but he exercised the command of that rank from the date of appointment. Up to the time of leaving Fort Ridgely for the upper country Colonel Sibley had been carrying on a state war. On the 6th of September Governor Ramsey sent this peremptory telegram to the President: “These Indian outrages continue.... This is not our war. It is a national war. Answer me at once. More than five hundred whites have been murdered.” That very day the Secretary of War ordered Major-General John Pope to take command of the Department of the Northwest. That officer had seen service in the Indian country and was at the time not otherwise employed. His first order to Colonel Sibley was received September 19, the day of his departure from Fort Ridgely. It made no change in the dispositions of the subordinate commander, but urged him to push forward, and promised all the support he could control. General Pope, persuaded that Sibley had some twenty-six hundred Sioux warriors in his front, made requisitions for troops and supplies on a scale which called out a rebuke from the secretary. His demand for mounted troops rather than infantry was reasonable. His stay in the department was brief, and at its close Brigadier-General Sibley was put in command of a distinct district of Minnesota. That Sibley was thus promoted and assigned was possibly due to a remonstrance addressed by Pope to Halleck against the appointment of Senator Henry M. Rice as major-general to be assigned to the department. It is remarkable that Sibley, writing to his wife, expressed his preference for Rice, if any stranger was to be placed over him. It was not till after the close of the campaign that the Sixth and Seventh regiments were mustered into the service of the United States.
The line of forts maintained by Colonel Flandrau from the big bend of the Minnesota southward effectively protected Sibley’s left; and it restrained the Winnebagoes from breaking out of their reserve, if they had any such intention, which was very doubtful, although so believed at the time. The right flank of the expedition was not for some time protected. Here were two dangers. Fort Abercrombie had been occupied since spring by Company D of the Fifth Minnesota, under command of Captain John Van der Horck. A newspaper clipping received on August 20 gave him warning of the outbreak of the lower Sioux. He immediately called in his outpost and the few settlers of the Red River valley, proceeded to surround the separate buildings which formed the post with breastworks, and placed three howitzers in the salients. On the last day of the month but one a party of Indians stampeded a herd of stock which had been sent out in anticipation of a treaty with the Red Lake and Pembina Chippeways. On September 3 an Indian force, considerable in number, appeared about the post and maintained a desultory fire for some hours. On the 6th a still larger force made a determined but vain attack, charging with boldness unusual for Indians, first one quarter of the inclosure and then another. The command suffered a loss of two killed and three wounded in the two days’ actions. The Indians were not driven from the neighborhood till September 23, when Captain Emil Burger arrived from below with a relieving force of five hundred men. The mooted question whether these attacks at Abercrombie were made by upper Sioux, lower Sioux, Yanktonnais, or by a mixture of all these, has not been conclusively answered. The capture of this post would have exposed a wide territory to Indian slaughter and depredation.