Politics, Bureaucracy and the Bogus Administration of Indian Commissioner Lewis Vital Bogy, 1866-1867

less than three months after he was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Nathaniel Green Taylor dispatched a comprehensive analysis of the constitutional status of his office to President Andrew Johnson.'This correspondence came not at the request of the White House, nor was it a response to queries from Capitol Hill.Even less did it carry the blessing of Interior Secretary Orville Hickman Browning.It came because a breach of profound proportions had developed between the Indian Office and the Interior Department.While not as significant as the seemingly endless struggle between the War and Interior Departments over the proper control and execution of Indian policy/ its ramifications did little to enhance the reputation of the federal bureaucracy, let alone the improvement of Indian-white relations in the distant trans-Missouri West.To the perplexing Indian problem of the mid-1860's Taylor was at best a novice.He had the good fortune of being a native of Tennessee, the home of President Johnson, and was available at a time when the politically beleagured chief executive was literally grasping at straws to secure second-line federal appointments that would not further alienate the congressional radicals.Taylor's principal qualifications were that as a lawyer, ordained Methodist minister, member of an affluent Tennessee family, and state politician who had extolled the Unionist cause as early as 1860, he had earned a reputation as a man of honor and integrity.He had delivered a number of significant speeches against secession, and following the disastrous occupation of east Tennessee by the armies of Generals Longstreet, Burnside, and Sherman, had journeyed north where in such cities as Philadelphia, New York, and Boston he had raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars to aid his suffering neighbors and friends in Tennessee.For his