February 20, 2024: Prejudicial Non-Favorites: Lincoln’s Mass Execution

[For thisyear’s annualnon-favorites series, I wanted to highlight moments when importantand in many ways impressive Americans gave in to white supremacist prejudices,modeling the worst of our national community in the process. Got grievances ofyour own to air, about anything and everything? Share ‘em for a therapeuticcrowd-sourced post, please!]

I saidmuch of what I’d want to say about this non-favorite moment in Chapter 3 of mybook OfThee I Sing, so will quote that section here:

“Such mythic patriotisms did not only target AfricanAmericans, and indeed the Early Republic myths of expansion and ManifestDestiny remained in force during the Civil War, as illustrated by anotherhorrific historical event: the December 26th,1862 execution of 38 Dakota Sioux Native Americans in Mankota, Minnesota,the largestmass execution in American history. Throughout 1862 white settlers continuedto pour into Minnesota (which had becomea state in May 1858) and onto native lands, while the U.S. govern­mentviolated treaties with multiple tribes and left many such communities starvingafter failing to deliver food in “payment” for that stolen land. In August, Dakota SiouxChief Little Crow led a six-week uprising against these invaders, a revoltframed throughout the U.S. not as an echo of the American Revolution nor as anoppressed people’s quest for liberty and justice, but as an illegal war againstthe expanding nation. When the uprising was put down more than 300 Dakota menwere sentenced to death by Governor HenryHast­ings Sibley; while President Lincoln commuted a number of thesentences, many of those men nonetheless remained imprisoned for life, and 38others were executed on Lincoln’s orders. The Sioux and Winnebago nations weresubsequently removed from the state to distant reservations, once again onLincoln’s authority. The era’s mythic patriotisms did not just divide Northfrom South, but continued to divide the expanding United States into thosecommunities perceived as part of that idealized nation and those overtly andviolently excluded from it.

Lincoln’sprominent role in both that horrific mass execution and the subsequent extensionof the Jacksonian Indian Removal policy reminds us that even Civil War eracelebratory patriotisms which embraced the United States in opposition to theConfederacy could too easily be wedded to their own mythic patriotisms, withthe same potential to discriminate and exclude. That’s an important rejoinderto any attempt to entirely distinguish the pe­riod’s Union and Confederatecelebratory patriotisms.”

Obviouslythis horrific moment connects to deeper and broader (and far more longstandingand ongoing) American issues and histories than just President Lincoln, andLincoln did commute a number of the death sentences. But to my mind neither ofthose things absolves Lincoln of his role in America’s largest mass execution,and one entirely linked to white supremacy (as it was to the subsequent removalpolicy for which Lincoln likewise bears responsibility). Ain’t none of usclean, to quote oneof my favorite lines from one of my favorite cultural works about Americanhistory and white supremacy, and this non-favorite moment is a frustrating but importantreminder that that maxim applies to even our most best president.

Nextnon-favorite tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What doyou think? Other non-favorites (of any and all types) you’d share?