Canby’s plan would not come to fruition, not exactly, not in the way he envisioned. History would have played out quite differently, for Edward Canby was above all a practical man, and the campaign he was planning, however ruthless, would have been far better for Navajos and non-Navajos alike than what was to come. But in the summer of 1862, Canby was promoted to general and recalled to serve in the East. His plodding but sensible mind was needed in the frantic halls of wartime Washington. That fall, Canby was replaced by another career frontier soldier, a formidable figure of the West who had
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