At the heart of the tensions between Cameron and the Government was his reluctance to take the war back to Taranaki in 1865. He wrote to the Governor expressing his distaste for being made the instrument of greedy settlers. But even here he does not get off lightly. In the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, James Belich says Cameron's qualms about land-grabbing in Taranaki came very late in the piece and coincided with frustration at his failure to achieve a decisive victory.
Yet Tony Sole, in Ngati Ruanui: A History, acknowledges Cameron as a public servant of some integrity reluctant to wield his sword in unjustifiable wrath.
His successor, Major-General Trevor Chute, led a scorched-earth campaign in south Taranaki, burning villages and crops, driving people from their homes and killing those who resisted.
Cameron was making a stand against this kind of conduct and that cannot have been an easy thing in those times. For his restraint as well as his contested moral courage we would still choose him as New Zealander of the Year for 1865.
From the Herald archives:
Criticism of Cameron's Taranaki campaign, New Zealand Herald, 26 April 1865
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