On the 26th of August a convention met at Stillwater, where measures were taken for the formation of a separate territorial government, and Henry Hastings Sibley (1811-1891) was sent to Congress as a delegate of " Wisconsin Territory."
Sibley decisively defeated Little Crow, the principal leader of the Kaposia band, at Wood Lake.
Expeditions of Sibley in 1863, and General Alfred Sully (1821-1879) in 1864, eventually drove the hostile Indians beyond the Missouri and terminated the war, which in two years had cost upwards of a thousand lives of settlers and volunteers.
Lexington succeeded Sibley as the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe trade, and was in turn displaced by Independence; it long owed its prosperity to the freighting trade up the Missouri, and at the opening of the Civil War it was the most important river town between St Louis and St Joseph and commanded the approach by water to Fort Leavenworth.
During the Civil War it was occupied, late in February 1862, by Confederate troops under General Henry Hopkins Sibley (1816-1886), who soon afterwards advanced with his main body into northern New Mexico.