Lincoln and the Thirteen Indians

History, it has been said, is one long argument. 

And judgment is best reserved once one has "all the facts."

The problem is, when do you know whether or not you have "all the facts."

In science, we think we have all the facts, until new facts are presented in the next paper on the next experiment.

In murder cases, we have all the facts, at least all the facts which the judge will allow us to see, all the facts the prosecutor will allow us to see, until new facts are made known later, as when DNA evidence exonerates the accused.

That alone is enough to abolish the death penalty: Not because certain people do not deserve to die, but because in too many cases, we get it wrong, because we do not have all the facts, and likely never can.

But then there is the case of Lincoln and the 13 Indians.

In 1862, in the middle of the Civil War, an Indian uprising in Minnesota ravaged hundreds of white families and Lincoln sent a more or less disgraced general, Pope, to quell the uprising. This Pope did, using the best 19th century weapons (particularly cannon) on the Indians, who were sounded defeated. Having captured 300 Indians, Pope was then besieged by white Minnesotans, who wanted them all hanged, who threatened lynchings and wholesale slaughter,  even of Indian women and children.

Pope wrote to Lincoln first asking, then demanding, orders to execute the 300 Indians.

But Lincoln, who we are now told, always looked for ways to avoid signing execution orders, demanded more information, demanded the case files of every one of the 300 Indians be sent to Washington for review by 3 Justice Department lawyers. 

Every week, Pope and various delegates from Minnesota demanded the hanging of all 300 Indians, but the more the lawyers examined the "evidence"  the more it was clear the white community could not even keep the Indian names straight and Lincoln emphatically refused to sign the execution orders, until more was known.

Just at this moment, Lincoln was writing his masterful State of the Union address, in which he built, methodically, the case for union.  That he had bigger issues on his mind with respect to the fate of the country than the fate of 300 Indians, which was important in terms of lives, but insignificant in terms of the national storm which was claiming more lives every week in battle and would claim more lives than all the wars the United States would fight put together, was evident in Lincoln's address.

He built the case that geography required the nation to remain intact, saying that any border drawn by surveyors and map makers were just lines on a map; even when a river was the border, slaves seeking freedom would cross as surely as birds can fly across these man made borders. A congressman from New York was pushing an end to the war based on a plan to combine armies, conquer Mexico and make it into 9 new slave states, so there would be plenty of territory for free and slave states alike, but Lincoln rejected all that and he rejected the idea that a continent could be broken up into different countries and live in peace. He had only look to Europe to see the effects of that state of affairs. 

So, in the middle of all this, Lincoln insisted on going slowly on the case of the Minnesota Indians, and eventually gave the crowd the  raw meat it demanded, and executed actually 38  of the 300. How he chose these, the Phantom still has not learned.

The fact is, this case has been a footnote to history--even the number of executed Indians has been variously reported from 13 to the more recent and accurate 38.
And the cause for the Indians' rampage has been recently examined and said to be treaties were broken and the Indians were starving. More "facts" to be examined.

But, for years, knowing about the execution of the 13 or 38 Indians, the Phantom always reminded himself, Lincoln was not as pristine as history has presented him. Lincoln was a product of his time and place, and clearly harbored misgivings about freeing Black men, based in his own experience and ideas about race. And he had seen Indian massacres, in Kentucky in his youth.

Attitudes toward Indians in 19th century white society were pretty hostile. Phil Sheridan an authentic and some would say indispensable hero of the war to free the Black man, later savaged the savages by killing off their buffalo and starving them back to reservations and was quoted or misquoted as saying, "The only good Indian I saw was a dead Indian."

But again, getting more facts about the case of the 13 or 38 Indians, the Phantom now judges Lincoln more positively. The Phantom is chastened, and reminded once again, about the dangers of rushing to judgment, of speaking with too much certainty, or, as the question which headlines this blog, "Why is it the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt?" Perhaps, that is part of what it is to be intelligent.