be more useful elsewhere, on May 17 Morgan ordered Thomas' men out of the county. The authorities were greatly demoralised by this point, and in June the "compact" of men who had ambushed Applewhite declared they were too exhausted to continue searching for the outlaws. Wishart's campaign With the attempts to suppress the Lowry Band failing, and the Conservative-led local posses frightening nonwhites in their searches, state authorities sought new leadership for their efforts. They ultimately recruited Francis M. Wishart to lead the locals. Wishart was a Buckskin Republican of modest origins who had served in the Confederate Army as an officer. Unlike most of his local Republican colleagues, he held little sympathy for the Lowry Gang and had worked with the earlier "compact". The governor granted him the rank of captain, later colonel, and tasked him with forming a new militia to suppress the outlaws. Like his more Conservative-leaning predecessors, he believed an effective campaign against the gang required the authorities' intervention in Scuffletown and suppression of their supporters there, not just direct action against the outlaws. However, he generally sought warrants for searches and arrests of suspects and attempted to instill discipline in the militia. Wishart planned a campaign to suppress the Lowry Gang for July, the largest-ever concerted effort to capture them. He called upon Robeson's 15 townships to provide 10 men each, ultimately raising a militia of 117 men. The force was divided into smaller detachments ranging from 3–25 men, known as "township companies". Wishart sent scouts into the Scuffletown area to gather intelligence and drew a detailed map of the region, labeling small footpaths in the swamps and appending the names of the local inhabitants to their residences. He also studied Saunders' reports on the gang's behaviors. Despite this refined strategy, the gang continued to elude their pursuers. Wishart eventually settled on arresting the outlaws' wives, who up to that point had been largely ignored by the authorities and had lived their lives publicly. Evans speculated that the purpose of this was to try to bait the gang into mounting a rescue attempt, like the May jailbreak, except that the militia could confront them in an open fight in which they would be destroyed. On 10 July, Wishart dispatched the township detachments to simultaneously arrest the wives and some other prominent Indians before they could be warned. He accompanied the Smith's Township company as it