Conceived in Liberty & Dedicated to The Proposition That all men are Created Equal

Flopping Aces ^ | 10-10-09 | Steven

[Starman417]

The concepts of race, war, and politics have changed immeasurably from the Civil War to the present. Our first African President has tried to emulate the legend of Abraham Lincoln, it is time to dispel some of the myths.

This article will use letters and documents written from 1863 to 1865, borrowed from the ‘The Boisterous Sea of Liberty’ by David Brion Davis and Steven Mintz.

Black soldiers fought for the Union at great personal risk, The Confederacy threatened to summarily execute or sell into slavery any Black soldiers that were captured. Lincoln threatened to reciprocate against Southern prisoners if the threats were carried out.

In July 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first all Black Regiment led an assault on Fort Wagner, a fort that protected Charleston, South Carolina’s Harbor. Two of Fredrick Douglas’s sons participated in the assault. The regiment suffered 40% casualties in their unsuccessful attack, including Col. Robert Gould Shaw, from a prominent anti-slavery family of Massachusetts.

Abram Bogart September 9, 1863 to his wife

“It is with pleasure that I send a few lines to let you know that I am in the land of the living and in the midst of death in every form and shape, some by fever some by dysentery which goes hard here and some by rebel balls for we have drove the rebels off Amorros Island and Port Wagner...

Our folks found a horrible sight when they went into the forts they found legs and arms and pools of blood and pieces of flesh all over the forts and by kicking the sand they would find the dead just out of sight and the smell was too much to bear and they couldn’t occupy the forts”…..

Besides the racial dynamic changing for the Black and White races, it also began to change for the White and Indian races.

While the Civil War was being fought, violence erupted in Minnesota in 1862. The Santee Sioux were confined to an area 150 miles long and 10 miles wide. They were promised agricultural help and equipment by the government, along with a yearly stipend. When the government failed to deliver they rose up and killed 350 civilians at New Ulm.

Lincoln appointed General John Pope to neutralize the situation. General Pope, the Union commander at the Second Battle of Bull Run, stated that he would deal with the Sioux as “Maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made.” When the Sioux surrendered in September of 1862, 1808 were taken prisoner and of those 303 were condemned to death. Defying threats from the governor and a Senator to exact indiscriminate murder on Indians if the executions were not carried out, Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 37. The execution of these 37 became the largest mass execution in the history of the US.

In this letter an Ojibway leader describes relations between Indians and missionaries to the clergyman who had helped persuade Lincoln to commute most of the death sentences.

George Bonga, October 22, 1863, To Rev. Henry B Whipple.

“The Missionaries & the Gov has been trying for many years, to educate and civilize the Indian…..I am one of the many, who think it almost impossible to civilize the Indian as long as he inhabits this thick wooded country without a very large expenditure of money…..I have now been 35 years a pretty close observer…..I have always noted that after the Government has fulfilled its treaty stipulations about farming, never anything was done by Indians, not even to enlarge his own gardens….

The Indian and his father before him have been used to the chase, although hard work he is proud of it & thinks to cultivate the soil is only the work of hirelings & squaws & most of them are ashamed to work that way….Starvation will come to him first, before he will cut down trees and dig up roots; when he very well knows it would much better his condition. ….they can’t perceive, that when their game is killed off, which is disappearing very fast, that they will come down to the very lowest depth of degradation. If they are not exterminated, before that time reaches them.

“The condition of the Freed Negroes…. Is daily becoming worse”

Slaves flocked to the Union Lines, seeking freedom, and often they found death; the Union Army was still fighting a tenacious and dangerous Confederate Army.

James E. Yeatman, Western Sanitary Commission. November 6, 1863, to President Lincoln.

[jessduntno]

He has one thing in common with Lincoln...Federal Usurpation...