The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

That the Grant administration, the proponent of the peace policy, wanted the army to move against the Lakotas in clear violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty while Grant refused to act forcefully in the South revealed much about how far the Republicans had retreated from their ambitions in 1865. The party had failed to secure the homogeneous citizenry it imagined in the South. It had not secured peace in the West. And the prosperity it had promised had turned to ashes. The bankruptcy of the western railroads created a brief opportunity for the Grant administration to actually pursue the peace that the peace policy promised, but the government squandered it. Railroads, desperate for revenue, encouraged the slaughter of the buffalo, which sparked warfare on the Great Plains, and the administration, at war with itself, ultimately allowed the invasion of the Black Hills, which brought resistance from the Lakotas.