Abraham Lincoln's Indian Policy and the Dakota War of 1862

Abraham Lincoln's Indian Policy and the Dakota War of 1862 PDF Author: Janet R. Youngholm
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781267324542
Category : Dakota Indians
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
Native American dispossession provides the fundamental precondition to a fuller understanding of the American Civil War. The future design of western territories, presumed to be vacant and open for development as evidenced in the discourse of white politicians, provoked apparently irreconcilable differences among those politicians who argued over slavery and its extension. Republican Party ideology of the 1850's rested on concepts of free labor, free men, and free land, the promotion of homestead legislation, and the construction of a Pacific railroad through western lands. As the first nationally elected leader of his party, President Abraham Lincoln transformed ideology into policy during his first administration. Lincoln, mythologized after his assassination as the savior of a re-constituted republican government invigorated with "a new birth of freedom" for the formerly enslaved, escapes serious scrutiny from historians for his role in furthering indigenous people's removal from their ancestral lands. The Lincoln administration mustered the power of the federal government behind a national colonization effort predicated on acquisition of land in the West for white settlers. Civil War historiography privileges the liberating aspects of emancipation while maintaining crushing silence on the critical stages of Native American dispossession directed by Lincoln during the Civil War. An analysis of the Dakota War of 1862 demonstrates that Lincoln personified the mindset of the dominant white culture in erasing indigenous peoples from their lands, first in discourse and later in policy. Lincoln's uncompromising insistence upon making western land available to free labor in order to pursue his, and the Republican Party's, vision of the nation's future required the continued removal and dispossession of American Indians. President Lincoln's Indian policies accelerated American Indian dispossession and unleashed frontier violence of an unprecedented nature.

Abraham Lincoln's Indian Policy and the Dakota War of 1862

Abraham Lincoln's Indian Policy and the Dakota War of 1862 PDF Author: Janet R. Youngholm
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781267324542
Category : Dakota Indians
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
Native American dispossession provides the fundamental precondition to a fuller understanding of the American Civil War. The future design of western territories, presumed to be vacant and open for development as evidenced in the discourse of white politicians, provoked apparently irreconcilable differences among those politicians who argued over slavery and its extension. Republican Party ideology of the 1850's rested on concepts of free labor, free men, and free land, the promotion of homestead legislation, and the construction of a Pacific railroad through western lands. As the first nationally elected leader of his party, President Abraham Lincoln transformed ideology into policy during his first administration. Lincoln, mythologized after his assassination as the savior of a re-constituted republican government invigorated with "a new birth of freedom" for the formerly enslaved, escapes serious scrutiny from historians for his role in furthering indigenous people's removal from their ancestral lands. The Lincoln administration mustered the power of the federal government behind a national colonization effort predicated on acquisition of land in the West for white settlers. Civil War historiography privileges the liberating aspects of emancipation while maintaining crushing silence on the critical stages of Native American dispossession directed by Lincoln during the Civil War. An analysis of the Dakota War of 1862 demonstrates that Lincoln personified the mindset of the dominant white culture in erasing indigenous peoples from their lands, first in discourse and later in policy. Lincoln's uncompromising insistence upon making western land available to free labor in order to pursue his, and the Republican Party's, vision of the nation's future required the continued removal and dispossession of American Indians. President Lincoln's Indian policies accelerated American Indian dispossession and unleashed frontier violence of an unprecedented nature.

Lincoln and the Indians

Lincoln and the Indians PDF Author: David Allen Nichols
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN: 0873518764
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
"With a new preface by the author"--P. [1] of cover.

38 Nooses

38 Nooses PDF Author: Scott W. Berg
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307389138
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year In August 1862, after suffering decades of hardship, broken treaties, and relentless encroachment on their land, the Dakota leader Little Crow reluctantly agreed that his people must go to war. After six weeks of fighting, the uprising was smashed, thousands of Indians were taken prisoner by the US army, and 303 Dakotas were sentenced to death. President Lincoln, embroiled in the most devastating period of the Civil War, personally intervened to save the lives of 265 of the condemned men, but in the end, 38 Dakota men would be hanged in the largest government-sanctioned execution in U.S. history. Writing with uncommon immediacy and insight, Scott W. Berg details these events within the larger context of the Civil War, the history of the Dakota people and the subsequent United States–Indian wars, and brings to life this overlooked but seminal moment in American history.

The Wounds of the Dakota War

The Wounds of the Dakota War PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dakota Indians
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
Abraham Lincoln's American Indian policy is often overshadowed by the study of the American Civil War and this study focuses on Lincoln's policy towards the American Indian, specifically his involvement in the Dakota War with deciding the fate of the condemned Dakota men. The uprising's causes are discussed in length as are the specific events of the rebellion. The study also looks at how the uprising is remembered by white and Dakota population. In addition to secondary books and articles, a large amount of newspapers, personal memoirs, and letters are used in the research. Photographs, artwork, and monuments are also used. The Dakota War could have been avoided if the government had maintained better relations with the Dakota but the Civil War further exasperated an already fractured system. Several hundred settlers died at the hands of warring Indians and thirty-eight Dakota men were hung for their participation in the uprising however for over a century hatred continue to exist between the groups. It is only within the last few decades that the Dakota people and Minnesota have come together in order to remember the Dakota War without prejudice.

Lincoln and Native Americans

Lincoln and Native Americans PDF Author: Michael S. Green
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809338262
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
First exploration of Lincoln’s relationship with the Native population in more than four decades President Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution of Indigenous people in American history, following the 1862 uprising of hungry Dakota in Minnesota and suspiciously speedy trials. He also issued the largest commutation of executions in American history for the same act. But there is much more to the story of Lincoln’s interactions and involvement, personal and political, with Native Americans, as Michael S. Green shows. His evenhanded assessment explains how Lincoln thought about Native Americans, interacted with them, and was affected by them. Although ignorant of Native customs, Lincoln revealed none of the hatred or single-minded opposition to Native culture that animated other leaders and some of his own political and military officials. Lincoln did far too little to ease the problems afflicting Indigenous people at the time, but he also expressed more sympathy for their situation than most other politicians of the day. Still, he was not what those who wanted legitimate improvements in the lives of Native Americans would have liked him to be. At best, Lincoln’s record is mixed. He served in the Black Hawk War against tribes who were combating white encroachment. Later he supported policies that exacerbated the situation. Finally, he led the United States in a war that culminated in expanding white settlement. Although as president, Lincoln paid less attention to Native Americans than he did to African Americans and the Civil War, the Indigenous population received considerably more attention from him than previous historians have revealed. In addition to focusing on Lincoln’s personal and familial experiences, such as the death of his paternal grandfather at the hands of Indians, Green enhances our understanding of federal policies toward Native Americans before and during the Civil War and how Lincoln’s decisions affected what came after the war. His patronage appointments shaped Indian affairs, and his plans for the West would also have vast consequences. Green weighs Lincoln’s impact on the lives of Native Americans and imagines what might have happened if Lincoln had lived past the war’s end. More than any many other historians, Green delves into Lincoln’s racial views about people of color who were not African American.

Lincoln and the Sioux Uprising of 1862

Lincoln and the Sioux Uprising of 1862 PDF Author: Hank H. Cox
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 1620452774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
On the bright Sunday morning of August 17, 1862, four Sioux warriors emerged from the Big Woods northwest of St. Paul, Minnesota, on their way home from an unsuccessful hunt. When they came upon the homestead of Robinson Jones, a white man who ran a post office and general store and offered lodging for travelers, the Indians opened fire on the settlers, killing almost all of them. Soon bands of Sioux were rampaging across southwestern Minnesota, attacking farms and trading posts and murdering everywhere they wentósplitting the skulls of men; clubbing children to death; raping daughters and wives before disemboweling them; cutting off hands, breasts, and genitals; and looting whatever could be taken before setting fire to what remained. Perhaps as many as two thousand settlers were brutally massacred, although the number has never been firmly established. Once the uprising was suppressed, 303 Sioux warriors were sentenced to death. The people of Minnesota called for their immediate execution, a sentiment that matched the national mood. Abraham Lincoln suspected that most of those convicted were marginal players in the rebellion and that the worst culprits had escaped, and he carefully reviewed each case before selecting the 39ólater reduced to 38ómen to hang whom he believed to be guilty of the worst crimes. The remainder were committed to life in prison. "I could not hang men for votes," he later explained. On December 26 the 38 were simultaneously hanged on a gallows construction especially for them. The Sioux Uprising of 1862, also known as the Dakota War, sounded the first shots of a war that continued for another 28 years, culminating in the massacre of Indian women and children at Wounded Knee in 1890. Lincoln's death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth ended his intention to reform the government's Indian policy, and both political parties continued to use the system to reward their supporters, a practice that largely continues to this day.

A Welcome Tragedy: Factors that Led to the U.S. - Dakota Conflict of 1862

A Welcome Tragedy: Factors that Led to the U.S. - Dakota Conflict of 1862 PDF Author: Colin Mustful
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1300153334
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description


Massacre in Minnesota

Massacre in Minnesota PDF Author: Gary Clayton Anderson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806166029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
In August 1862 the worst massacre in U.S. history unfolded on the Minnesota prairie, launching what has come to be known as the Dakota War, the most violent ethnic conflict ever to roil the nation. When it was over, between six and seven hundred white settlers had been murdered in their homes, and thirty to forty thousand had fled the frontier of Minnesota. But the devastation was not all on one side. More than five hundred Indians, many of them women and children, perished in the aftermath of the conflict; and thirty-eight Dakota warriors were executed on one gallows, the largest mass execution ever in North America. The horror of such wholesale violence has long obscured what really happened in Minnesota in 1862—from its complicated origins to the consequences that reverberate to this day. A sweeping work of narrative history, the result of forty years’ research, Massacre in Minnesota provides the most complete account of this dark moment in U.S. history. Focusing on key figures caught up in the conflict—Indian, American, and Franco- and Anglo-Dakota—Gary Clayton Anderson gives these long-ago events a striking immediacy, capturing the fears of the fleeing settlers, the animosity of newspaper editors and soldiers, the violent dedication of Dakota warriors, and the terrible struggles of seized women and children. Through rarely seen journal entries, newspaper accounts, and military records, integrated with biographical detail, Anderson documents the vast corruption within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the crisis that arose as pioneers overran Indian lands, the failures of tribal leadership and institutions, and the systemic strains caused by the Civil War. Anderson also gives due attention to Indian cultural viewpoints, offering insight into the relationship between Native warfare, religion, and life after death—a nexus critical to understanding the conflict. Ultimately, what emerges most clearly from Anderson’s account is the outsize suffering of innocents on both sides of the Dakota War—and, identified unequivocally for the first time, the role of white duplicity in bringing about this unprecedented and needless calamity.

Letter to Abraham Lincoln (Classic Reprint)

Letter to Abraham Lincoln (Classic Reprint) PDF Author: Manton Marble
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780656503629
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
Excerpt from Letter to Abraham Lincoln This reprint of Mr. Manton marble's letter to the late President of the United States is made entirely Without the author's knowledge, being undertaken at the instance and expense of gentlemen, two-thirds of whom do not belong to the political party with which Mr. Marble is connected, and who do not even enjoy the pleasure of his acquaintance. As a frank, fearless and manly protest against a gross act of tyranny, it deserves to be read by the descendants of those men who forced a king of England to respect the rights and liberties of his people; as a calm, forcible and logical argument against oppression, it is worthy to be placed side by side with Mr. John Stuart Mill's essay on liberty; as a model of English composition, it is fit to be studied by all those who wish to use their native language courteously, but yet with the vigor which a righteous cause is so well calculated to give. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Savage Conversations

Savage Conversations PDF Author: LeAnne Howe
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566895405
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
“Savage Conversations takes place somewhere in between its sources, between sanity and madness, between then and now, between the living and the dead. It pushes past the limitations of textual sources for telling indigenous history and accounts of insanity.” —Barrelhouse Reviews May 1875: Mary Todd Lincoln is addicted to opiates and tried in a Chicago court on charges of insanity. Entered into evidence is Ms. Lincoln’s claim that every night a Savage Indian enters her bedroom and slashes her face and scalp. She is swiftly committed to Bellevue Place Sanitarium. Her hauntings may be a reminder that in 1862, President Lincoln ordered the hanging of thirty-eight Dakotas in the largest mass execution in United States history. No one has ever linked the two events—until now. Savage Conversations is a daring account of a former first lady and the ghosts that tormented her for the contradictions and crimes on which this nation is founded.