22. The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War
After the Union lost the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, Congress created the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which continued to operate throughout the American Civil War. In 1865 the committee joined in the investigation of the Sand Creek affair, taking testimony from participants through investigators at Fort Riley, Kansas. Soule was not available to testify, but others that did corroborated his accounts of Sand Creek in their separate testimony. Others gave conflicting testimony which supported Chivington’s account.
After hearing testimony, the Joint Committee addressed the Sand Creek affair in detail, calling it a massacre, and admitting that the United States government was culpable for the actions of its officer. In its statement, the committee called the action at Sand Creek a “foul and dastardly massacre”, deliberately planned and executed. It said of Chivington, “the truth is that he surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand creek, who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United States authorities”.