Perspective: Die-hard Confederates should be reconstructed

The South's unconditional surrender in 1865 apparently was unacceptable to today's Neo-Confederates.

They'd like to rewrite history, demonizing Abraham Lincoln and the federal government that forced them to remain in the awful United States against their will.

On top of that, now they are opposing the U.S. Navy's plan to bury the crew of the CSS H.L. Hunley under the American flag next year.

The Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. In 1863, it rammed and fatally damaged the Union warship USS Housatonic with a fixed torpedo, but then the manually driven sub sank on its way home, killing its eight-man crew.

It might have been a lucky shot from the Housatonic, leaks caused by the torpedo explosion, an accidental strike by another Union ship, malfunction of its snorkel valves, damage to its steering planes or getting stuck in the mud.

In any case, the Navy found and raised its remains and plans a full-dress military funeral and burial service on April 17, 2004, in Charleston, S.C. The four-mile funeral procession is expected to draw 10,000 to 20,000 people, many in period costume or Confederate battle dress.

But the Sons of Confederate Veterans, generally a moderate group that works diligently to preserve Southern history and heritage, has a radical wing that is salivating with anger.

One Texas Confederate has drawn 1,600 signatures on a petition saying "the flag of their eternal enemy, the United States of America," must not fly over the Hunley crew's funeral.

After all, the search and preservation of the Hunley artifacts, as well as the funeral itself, were paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Also, the Hunley crew was born under the Stars and Stripes. The Confederacy was never an internationally recognized nation, so the crewmen also died as citizens of the United States.

This whole issue is an insult to all Southerners who fought under the U.S. flag before and since the Civil War.

They are also opposing the placement of a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Richmond, Va., the Confederate capital.

According to an article by Bob Moser and published in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine "Intelligence Report," which monitors right-wing and hate groups, the U.S. Historical Society announced it was donating a statue of Lincoln to Richmond.

Lincoln visited that city in April 1865 to begin healing the wounds caused by the war.

The proposed life-sized statue has Lincoln resting on a bench, looking sad, his arm around his 12-year-old son, Tad. The base of the statue has a quote from his second inaugural address.

However, the League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans raised a stink, calling Lincoln a tyrant and war criminal. Neo-Confederates are trying to make Lincoln "a figure few history students would recognize: a racist dictator who trashed the Constitution and turned the USA into an imperialist welfare state," Moser's article says.

White supremacist groups have jumped onto the bandwagon. Their motto is "Taking America back starts with taking Lincoln down."

Actually, if it weren't for the forgiving nature of Lincoln, Richmond would be a smoking hole in the ground and hundreds of Confederate leaders -- including Jefferson Davis -- would be hanging from trees from Fredericksburg, Va., to Atlanta.

Robert E. Lee said, "I surrendered as much to Lincoln's goodness as I did to Grant's armies."

Revisionist history to suit a political agenda is as intellectually abhorrent as whitewashing slavery itself. It's racism under a different flag. While it's not a criminal offense, it is a crime against truth and history.

I'm not talking about re-enactors here. These folks just want to live history. But the Neo-Confederate movement is a disguised attempt to change history.

In the end, the Confederacy was out-fought, out-lasted, eventually out-generaled and totally over-matched. It was a criminal idea to start with, and its success would have changed the course of modern history for the worse.

So I hope that all Neo-Confederates -- 140 years after the fact -- can finally get out of their racist, twisted, angry time machine and join us here in 2003.

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James McPherson

This book must be taken seriously. Bennett gets some things right. ... But Bennett gets more wrong than he gets right. The book suffers from crucial flaws. Least important are the factual errors, for there are not many.

McPherson abjectly admits he could not find factual errors, but buries his admission in partisan puke.

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Edward Steers, Jr.

Bennett begins his book with the notion that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave and that Lincoln deliberately exempted slaves in those areas under Union control to keep slavery alive as long as possible. ... Bennett is correct in concluding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed few if any slaves.

As Steers must admit Bennett is correct, it is not just a notion.

Mr. Bennett's revisionist approach to history is not new.

The Trial, Edited by Edward Steers, Jr., page xxv, Thomas Reed Turner:

It is only in the last twenty years that historians have begun a re-examination of the events of the Lincoln assassination, once again reconsidering issues such as the fairness of the military trial. In taking this new look, revision of previously held views has begun to emerge. In the first place, the military court was not convened with the certainty that it would convict."

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Mr. Bennett's book is not without factual content and many of his quotations drawn from Lincoln are accurate.

A typical example of the putrescent slop served up by Mr. Steers. Mr. Steers notes that Mr. Bennett's work is not without factual content. At nearly 700 pages, it is loaded with factual content, and neither Mr. McPherson nor Mr. Steers were able to cite errors of factual content.

"Many" of his quotations drawn from Lincoln are accurate. There are many, many quotes of Lincoln, with a source provided, many attributed to the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Steers fails to show any quote as being inaccurate. Accordingly, "many" are accurate, as in about 100%.

The Emancipation Proclamation was NOT an executive order or a legislative act. It was a military order whose sole LEGAL justification was under the War Powers granted the President in the Constitution. The reason for this is because the President had no authority to issue such an order except as a military decree to injure the military capability of the Confederacy. Both Bennett and Seward sound as if Abraham Lincoln held the power to abolish slavery at any time he chose.

Where does the President derive the authority to issue such and order to injure the military capability of the Confederacy? Is he imbued with some extra-Constitutional power as commander-in-chief?

If the Confederate states were going to rejoin the Union, they would now do so without slavery.

Steers said it. It must be true.

On July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Confiscation Act that authorized confiscating the property of anyone supporting the rebellion, but only after being given 60 days' notice, allowing sufficient time for them to return voluntarily to the Union. Failing a return, their property was to be confiscated -- but ONLY, and this is SO important -- by the Federal courts.

If Mr. Steers says so, and he does, then it must be true. Once upon a time, the Union confiscated property -- but ONLY, and this is SO important -- with the approval of a Federal court in each individual instance. And they all lived happily ever after.

While it is true that Lincoln supported colonization and even asked Congress to appropriate funds for colonizing Blacks, his support for colonization ended abruptly on January 1, 1863, with the issuance of his final Emancipation Proclamation.

Another putrescent pantsload.

Butler's Book, Benjamin F. Butler, 1892, pp. 903-8

April 11, 1865

"But what shall we do with the negroes after they are free? I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes. Certainly they cannot if we don't get rid of the negroes whom we have armed and disciplined and who have fought with us, to the amount, I believe, of some one hundred and fifty thousand men. I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves.

Lincoln's colonization policy, in my opinion, was not aimed at Blacks as most people believe -- it was aimed at whites!

The man is as certifiably demented as Mary Lincoln and Boston Corbett. To see him try to sell that pile of revisionist slop to a Black audience would be priceless. As it is, one does not find biographies praising Lincoln written by Black historians.

Frederick Douglass said: "Mr. Lincoln takes care in urging his colonization scheme to furnish a weapon to all the ignorant and base, who need only the countenance of men in authority to commit all kinds of violence and outrage upon the colored people of the country." (FD 3:267)

Lincoln denied that slavery "could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the casue of human liberty itself" (CW 2:130, Lincoln's italics).

And what was this envisioned greater evil to the cause of human liberty than slavery?

Abe was not anti-slavery, he was anti-Black. He did not seek to rid the continent of slavery, he sought to rid the continent of Blacks. Indeed, Abe not only sought to rid the continent of Black people, but any non-white color of the rainbow as well.

Abe. Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Abe dreamed of an endless vista of White America. There would be no n-----s, as Lincoln chose to call them without any elision. There would be no Mexican mongrels, as he called them. Nor would we have any of those American Indian savages either. No, Abe was a true White Supremecist.

In Peoria he said he wanted the territories "should be the happy home of teeming millions of free, white, prosperous people, and no slave among them" (CW 2:249)

He said it again. The territories "should be kept open for the homes of free white people" (CW 2:363)

And again. "We want them [the territories] for the homes of free white people." (CW 3:311)

And again. In defense his interest in the territories, Abe the pimp said to Douglas, "I think we have some interest. I think that as white men we have. Doe we not wish for an outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express myself?" (CW 3:311)

Abe said: If Northerners permitted slavery to spread to the territores, "Negro equality will be abundant, as every White laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n-----s" (CW 3:378). There goes Abe with that N-word again.

No sir. We can't be having any of that Negro equality, now can we? The White laborer should never permit such a thing. And Abe had the final solution in hand.

Abe spelled it out: "Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?" (CW 3:79)

Abe believed it was our duty. The duty of the white man. The duty to make labor more respectable. It was the sacred obligation of the superior White race, so ordained by god and Abraham, one and the same, to prevent ALL black competition.

Abe was not just for keeping slaves out of the territories, he was for keeping out or removing all non-whites from the territories. Abe had a White Dream. It did not include Blacks. The rest of the rainbow was excluded as well.

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[Edward Steers, Jr.] Putting dreams in Lincoln's head ("Lincoln dreamed of an all-White nation") or putting someone else's words in his mouth ("the n-----question") will not do the job. While it may titillate the few, it will not convince the many.

ALL LINKS go to the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy. P. Basler. Italics in original.

Here are some of Lincoln's documented words, as they came OUT of Lincoln's own mouth:

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Speech at Carlinville, Illinois

August 31, 1858

He [Lincoln] said the question is often asked, why this fuss about niggers?

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Speech at Elwood, Kansas

December 1 [November 30?], 1859

People often ask, ``why make such a fuss about a few niggers?''

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CW 2:396

Springfield, May 25, 1857.

There is no longer any difficult question of jurisdiction in the Federal courts; they have jurisdiction in all possible cases, except such as might redound to the benefit of a ``nigger'' in some way.

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First Debate with Stephen Douglas
August 21, 1858
Ottawa, Illinois

CW 3:20 When my friend, Judge Douglas, came to Chicago, on the 9th of July, this speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an harangue there, in which he took hold of this speech of mine, showing that he had carefully read it; and while he paid no attention to this matter at all, but complimented me as being a ``kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman,'' notwithstanding I had said this; he goes on and eliminates, or draws out, from my speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the niggers and white people to marrying together.

CW 3:27 There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets and with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet march into Illinois and force them upon us.

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Third Lincoln-Douglas debate.
September 15, 1858
Jonesboro, Illinois

We have seen many a ``nigger'' that we thought more of than some white men.

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August 9, 1856

Lincoln then took the stand and made a three hours speech. It was prosy and dull in the extreme---all about ``freedom,'' ``liberty'' and niggers.

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Then if Mr. Douglas did not invent this kind of Sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what the invention really was. Was it the right of emigrants in Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves and a gang of niggers too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no invention of his, because Gen. Cass put forth the same doctrine in 1848, in his so-called Nicholson letter, six years before Douglas thought of such a thing. Gen. Cass could have taken out a patent for the idea, if he had chosen to do so, and have prevented his Illinois rival from reaping a particle of benefit from it. Then what was it, I ask again, that this ``Little Giant'' invented? It never occurred to Gen. Cass to call his discovery by the odd name of ``Popular Sovereignty.'' He had not the impudence to say that the right of people to govern niggers was the right of people to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were not moulded to the brazen degree of calling the right to put a hundred niggers through under the lash in Nebraska, a "sacred right of self-government." And here, I submit to this intelligent audience and the whole world, was Judge Douglas' discovery, and the whole of it. He invented a name for Gen. Cass' old Nicholson letter dogma. He discovered that the right of the white man to breed and flog niggers in Nebraska was POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY!

Chicago Press and Tribune, September 11, 1858.

Way to go Abe!! Dropped the N-bomb four times in one paragraph in a public speech.

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Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois

September 11, 1858

Then, if Mr. Douglas did not invent this kind of sovereignty, let us pursue the inquiry and find out what the invention really was. Was it the right of emigrants in Kansas and Nebraska to govern themselves and a gang of niggers too, if they wanted them? Clearly this was no invention of his, because Gen. Cass put forth the same doctrine in 1848, in his so-called Nicholson letter---six whole years before Douglas thought of such a thing. Gen. Cass could have taken out a patent for the idea, if he had chosen to do so, and have prevented his Illinois rival from reaping a particle of benefit from it. Then what was it, I ask again, that this ``Little Giant'' invented? It never occurred to Gen. Cass to call his discovery by the odd name of ``Popular Sovereignty.'' He had not the impudence to say that the right of people to govern niggers was the right of people to govern themselves. His notions of the fitness of things were not moulded to the brazen degree of calling the right to put a hundred niggers through under the lash in Nebraska, a "sacred right of self-government." And here, I submit to this intelligent audience and the whole world, was Judge Douglas' discovery, and the whole of it. He invented a name for Gen. Cass' old Nicholson letter dogma. He discovered that the right of the white man to breed and flog niggers in Nebraska was POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY!---[Great applause and laughter.]

Alton Weekly Courier, September 16, 1858.

Way to go Abe!! Quite a stump speech you have going there! Different newspaper, four n-bombs.

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Seventh and Last Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Alton, Illinois

October 15, 1858

We profess to have no taste for running and catching niggers---at least I profess no taste for that job at all. Why then do I yield support to a fugitive slave law? Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it.

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Editor of the Central Transcript. Springfield, Dear Sir: July 3, 1859

Your fling about men entangled with the "Matteson Robbery" as you express it; and men indicted for stealing niggers and mail-bags, I think is unjust and impolitic. Why manufacture slang to be used against us by our enemies? The world knows who are alluded to by the mention of stealing niggers and mail-bags; and as to the Canal script fraud, the charge of being entangled with it, would be as just, if made against you, as against any other Republican in the State.

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Speech at Clinton, Illinois

October 14, 1859 He then spoke of the evils and disasters attending the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, by which the barriers protecting freedom and free labor were broken down and the Territories transformed into asylums for slavery and niggers....

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Speech at Hartford, Connecticut

March 5, 1860

[Daily Courant Version]

They say that between the nigger and the crocodile they go for the nigger. The proportion, therefore, is, that as the crocodile to the nigger so is the nigger to the white man.

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Speech at a Republican Banquet, Chicago, Illinois

December 10, 1856

Their conduct reminded him of the darky who, when a bear had put its head into the hole and shut out the daylight, cried out, ``What was darkening de hole?'' ``Ah,'' cried the other darky, who was on to the tail of the animal, ``if de tail breaks you'll find out.'' [Laughter and cheers.] Those darkies at Springfield see something darkening the hole, but wait till the tail breaks on the 1st of January, and they will see. [Cheers.] The speaker referred to the anecdote of the boy who was talking to another as to whether Gen. Jackson could ever get to Heaven. Said the boy ``He'd get there if he had a mind to.'' [Cheers and laughter.] So was it with Col. Bissell,---he'd do whatever he had a mind to.

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Lincoln said a lot.

"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."

8/24/54

"If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. -- why not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.?

-- You say A. is a white, and B. is black. It is --color--, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? -- You mean the whites are --intellectually-- the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of --interest--; and, if you can make it your --interest--, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."

1854

My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man; this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."

A. Lincoln, 7/10/58

"I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

August, 1858

"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--But I do expect it will cease to be divided. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is the course of ultimate extinctioon; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new--North as well as South. Have we no tendency towards the latter condition?"

1858

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races." These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."

3/1/59

"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not. ....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."

8/23/63

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel...

In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

4/4/64

"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."

4/11/65

sources: "Abraham Lincoln, Mystic Chords of Memory" published by the Book of the Month Club, 1984 and: "Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-65, Library of the Americas, Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed. 1989

Lincoln clearly was preparing the way for black suffrage.

Consider these letters:

Private

General Hunter

Executive Mansion

Washington D.C. April 1, 1863

My dear Sir:

I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at Jacksonville, Florida. I see the enemy are driving at them fiercely, as is to be expected. It is mportant to the enemy that such a force shall not take shape, and grow, and thrive, in the south; and in precisely the same proportion, it is important to us that it shall. Hence the utmost caution and viglilance is necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them; and we should do the same to perserve and increase them.

Yours truly

A. Lincoln

_________________________________________________________

Hon. Andrew Johnson

Executive Mansion,

My dear Sir:

Washington, March 26. 1863.

I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability, and position, to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave-state, and himself a slave- holder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight, if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it please do not dismiss the thought.

Yours truly

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Hon Soc of War

Executive Mansion

Washington

July 21, 1863

My Dear Sir:

I desire that a renewed and vigorous effort be made to raise colored forces along the shores of the Missippi [sic]. Please consult the General-in-chief; and if it is perceived that any acceleration of the matter can be effected, let it be done. I think the evidence is nearly conclusive that Gen. Thomas is one of the best, if not the very best, instruments for this service.

Yours truly

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Lincoln also proposed --privately-- to the new governor of Louisiana that the new state constitution include voting rights for blacks. A year later, in April, 1865 he came out --publicly-- for the suffrage for black soldiers, because his great --political-- skill told him that the time was right.

It was a direct result of this speech, and this position, that Booth shot him.

President Lincoln, besides ordering the army (note that this is only a few months after the EP) to use black soldiers more vigorously, made many public speeches to prepare the people for the idea of black suffrage. "

"When you give the Negro these rights," he [Lincoln] said, "when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood...By the close of the war, Lincoln was reccomending commissioning black officers in the regiments, and one actually rose to become a major before it was over. At the end of 1863, more than a hundred thousand had enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, and in his message to Congress the president reported, "So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any." When some suggested in August 1864 that the Union ought to offer to help return runaway slaves to their masters as a condition for the South's laying down its arms, Lincoln refused even to consider the question.

"Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?" he retorted. "Drive back to the support of the rebellion the physical force which the colored people now give, and promise us, and neither the present, or any incoming administration can save the Union." To others he said it even more emphatically. "This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force which may be measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it."

--"Lincoln's Men" pp 163-64 by William C. Davis

Lincoln's sense of fairness made him seek to extend the blessings of citizenship to everyone who served under the flag.

His great political skill made him realize that blacks --were--not-- leaving -- he played that card and no one was biting, black or white. That being the case, he knew he had to prepare for the future, and that future involved full rights for blacks.

Walt

[Edward Steers, Jr.] Mr. Bennett's distortion of Lincoln's "racial" policy is not restricted to Blacks. An excellent example of Bennett's style of making "white of black and black of white" is his account of Lincoln's actions regarding the Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota. In August 1862, hostilities broke out between the Sioux nation in Minnesota and settlers of that state. When the fighting ended, over 400 white settlers were dead. The army captured over 1,500 Indian prisoners, including 1,000 women and children. A military commission was set up to try those Indians accused of atrocities. In the end, 303 Indians were sentenced to hang. Lincoln objected to what he viewed as wholesale slaughter. He wired the commanding officer to stay the executions and forward the "full and complete record of each conviction." He also ordered that any material which would discriminate the most guilty from the least guilty be included with the trial transcripts.

Let's look at what Steers refers to as a "full and complete record."

http://www.lfc.edu/~mackiag/lincoln.html

Case 178: Na-pay-shne
Camp Release opposite
the mouth of Chippewa River, Minn.
The Military Commission met pursuant to the above order
Present
Col Brooks, 6th Regt. to M.V.
Members
Major Bradley, 6th Regt. to M.V.
Capt. Grant, 6th Regt. to M.V.
Capt. Bailey, 6th Regt. to M.V.
Lt. Olin, 3d Regt. to M.V.
Judge Advocate
Adjutant Heard, McPhail's Mounted Rangers
Recorder
The Military Commission was then duly sworn and Na-pay-shne a Sioux Indian was arraigned on the following charges and specifications.
viz --
Charge and specification against Na-pay-shne, a Sioux Indian--- Charge -Participation in the murders, outrages and robberies committed by the Sioux Tribe of Indians on the Minnesota Frontier.
Specification - In this that the said Na-pay-shne, Sioux Indian did join with and participate in the murders, outrages and robberies committed on the Minnesota Frontier by the Sioux Tribe of Indians between the 18th day of August 1862 and the 28th day of September 1862 and particularly in the Battles at Fort, Birch-Coulie, New Ulm and Wood Lake-- Was wounded at New Ulm-- Said he killed nineteen persons.
By order of Col. H. H. Sibley, Brigadier General Commanding
Witnesses -
Wakinya David Faribault Thomas Robertson
Signed - S.H. Fowler. Lt. Coe - State Militia A.A. _______________
Prisoner states-- I was not at the Fort-- I was not at New Ulm-- I had a sore knee and couldn't go.
Thomas Robertson being sworn states-- I heard the prisoner say the morning after the first massacre that ___ (his gun) was old gun, but that he had killed 19 with it-- This was in front of John Moore's house. His wife and children ____ (seen?) at the Beaver Creek Massacre.
Wakinya being sworn says-- I never knew anything about the prisoner.
Prisoner states I never fired my gun off.
And therefore the case being closed the Commission was cleared and proceeded with findings and sentence.
The Military Commission after due deliberation on the foregoing find the prisoner, the said Na-pay-shne, a Sioux Indian as follows --
Guilty of the specification
Guilty of the charge
and sentence him to be hanged by the neck until he is dead.
We certify that the foregoing are the minutes of the proceedings and testimony on the annexed charge, under order No. 55 of Col. H. H. Sibley.
I. V. D. Heard}
Recorder }
[Signed by the five members of the Commission]

Case 238: Ta-hoh-pe-wa-kan
[The complete record of testimony follows. The charge, specification, and order are in a form similar to the case above (178)]
Prisoner states-- I went with a party which pick up things which the whites left behind.
Louis LaBelle being sworn says-- The prisoner was among those who were on horseback in the battle referred to in case 236-- He had a horse and was up on it when I saw him, belonging to the soldiers. (See case No. 236)
[Ta-hoh-pe-wa-kan was found guilty and was sentenced to be hanged.]

Text of Order to General Sibley, St. Paul Minnesota:
"Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the military commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lt. Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey, and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December, instant, the following names, to wit ... The other condemned prisoners you will hold subject to further orders, taking care that they neither escape, nor are subjected to any unlawful violence.
Abraham Lincoln,
President of the United States"

The Dakota Conflict Trials
by Douglas Linder

A framed photograph of the scene depicted on this homepage, the execution of thirty-eight Sioux on December 26, 1862, used to fascinate me when, as a boy in Mankato, Minnesota, I would visit the Blue Earth County Historical Museum. Apart from its macabre appeal, the picture impressed me because it captured the most famous event in the history of my hometown (easily surpassing in significance the death there of an obscure Vice President who died while changing trains on his way to the Black Hills). The hanging, following trials which condemned over three hundred participants in the 1862 Dakota Conflict, stands as the largest mass execution in American history. Only the unpopular intervention of President Lincoln saved 265 other Dakota and mixed-bloods from the fate met by the less fortunate thirty-eight. The mass hanging was the concluding scene in the opening chapter of a story of the American-Sioux conflict that would not end until the Seventh Calvary completed its massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on December 29, 1890.

In 1862 the Sioux Nation stretched from the Big Woods of Minnesota to the Rocky Mountains. There were seven Sioux tribes, including three western tribes, collectively called the Lakota, and four eastern tribes living in Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas called the Dakota. About 7,000 members of the four Dakota tribes lived on a reservation bordering what was in 1862 the frontier, the Minnesota River in southwestern Minnesota. The Dakota Conflict (or Dakota War or Sioux Uprising) involved primarily the two southernmost Dakota tribes, the Mdewakantons and Wahpekutes. Tribes consisted of bands, each with a leader or chief. The Mdewakantons, for example, were divided into nine bands. A majority of the 4,000 members of the two northern tribes, the Sissetons and the Wahpetons, were opposed to the fighting. A large number of Sissetons and Wahpetons had been converted both to farming and Christianity, and had both moral objections and strong reasons of self-interest for keeping peace with the whites. In addition to pure-blood Indians, there were many so-called mixed-bloods, the products of relationships between Indians and settlers. A majority of mixed-bloods sided with whites or avoided participation in the Conflict altogether.

A decade before the Dakota Conflict, the Minnesota Territory, stretching from the upper Mississippi to the Missouri River, was still mostly Indian country. The conifer forest and lakes of Northern Minnesota belonged to the Ojibway (or Chippewa), while the deciduous forests and prairie of southern Minnesota was shared by the Dakota and a much smaller number of Winnebago. In 1851, however, the Dakota by treaty agreed to give up most of southern Minnesota. The land was ceded to the United States in return for two twenty-mile wide by seventy-mile long reservations along the Minnesota River and annuity payments totaling $1.4 million dollars over a fifty-year period. Seven years later, in exchange for increased annuity payments, the Dakota ceded about half of their reservation land.

The causes of the the Dakota Conflict are many and complex. The treaties of 1851 and 1858 contributed to tensions by undermining the Dakota culture and the power of chieftains, concentrating malcontents, and leading to a corrupt system of Indian agents and traders. Annuity payments reduced the once proud Dakota to the status of dependents. They reduced the power of chiefs because annuity payments were made directly to individuals rather than through tribal structures. They created bitterness because licensed traders sold goods to Indians at 100% to 400% profit and frequently took "claims" for money from individual Dakota paid out of tribal funds. No effective means of legal recourse was available to wronged Dakota, leading some Dakota to talk of another option open to them: robbery and violence. The fact that the Dakota people were squeezed into a small fraction of their former lands made it easy, according to Minnesota historian William Folwell, "for malcontents to assemble frequently to growl and fret together over grievances."

Annuity payments for the Dakota were late in the summer of 1862. An August 4, 1862 confrontation between soldiers and braves at the Upper Agency at Yellow Medicine led to a decision to distribute provisions on credit to avoid violence. At the Lower Agency at Redwood, however, things were handled differently. At an August 15, 1862 meeting attended by Dakota representatives, Indian Agent Thomas Galbraith, and representatives of the traders, the traders resisted pleas to distribute provisions held in agency warehouses to starving Dakota until the annuity payments finally arrived. Trader Andrew Myrick summarized his position in the bluntest possible manner: "So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry, let them eat grass." Unbeknownst to those gathered at the Lower Agency, the long delayed 1862 annuity payments were already on their way to the Minnesota frontier. On August 16, a keg with $71,000 worth of gold coins reached St. Paul. The next day the keg was sent to Fort Ridgely for distribution to the Dakota. It arrived a few hours too late to prevent an unprecedented outbreak of violence.

On Sunday, August 17, four Dakota from a breakaway band of young malcontents were on a hunting trip when they came across some eggs in a hen's nest along the fence line of a settler's homestead. When one of the four took the eggs, another of the group warned him that the eggs belonged to a white man. The first young man became angry, dashed the eggs to the ground, and accused the other of being afraid of white men, even though half-starved. Apparently to disprove the accusation of cowardice, the other Dakota said that to show he was not afraid of white men he would go the house and shoot the owner. He challenged the others to join him. Minutes later three white men, a white woman, and a fifteen-year old white girl lay dead.

Big Eagle, a Dakota Chief, recounted what happened after the young men reached Chief Shakopee's camp late on the night of August 17:

The tale told by the young men created the greatest excitement. Everybody was waked up and heard it. Shakopee took the young men to Little Crow's house (two miles above the agency), and he sat up in bed and listened to their story. He said war was now declared. Blood had been shed, the payment would be stopped, and the whites would take a dreadful vengeance because women had been killed. Wabasha, Wacouta, myself and others still talked for peace, but nobody would listen to us, and soon the cry was "Kill the whites and kill all these cut-hairs who will not join us." A council was held and war was declared. Parties formed and dashed away in the darkness to kill settlers. The women began to run bullets and the men to clean their guns....

At this time my village was up on Crow creek, near Little Crow's. I did not have a very large band -- not more than thirty or forty fighting men. Most of them were not for the war at first, but nearly all got into it at last. A great many members of the other bands were like my men; they took no part in the first movements, but afterward did. The next morning, when the force started down to attack the agency, I went along.... The killing was nearly all done when I got there. Little Crow was on the ground directing operations. I saw all the dead bodies at the agency. Mr. Andrew Myrick, a trader, with an Indian wife, had refused some hungry Indians credit a short time before when they asked him for provisions. He said to them; "Go and eat grass." Now he was lying on the ground dead, with his mouth stuffed full of grass, and the Indians were saying tauntingly: "Myrick is eating grass himself." When I returned to my village that day I found that many of my band had changed their minds about the war, and wanted to go into it. All the other villagers were the same way.

Events moved quickly. Forty-four Americans were killed and another ten captured in the first full day of fighting in and around the Lower Agency at Redwood. Nearly two hundred additional whites died over the next few days as Dakota massacred farm families and attacked Fort Ridgely and the town of New Ulm. Panicking settlers fled eastward from twenty-three counties, leaving the southwestern Minnesota frontier largely depopulated except for the barricaded fortifications at Fort Ridgely and New Ulm. On August 23, a second Dakota attack on New Ulm left most of the town burned to the ground, and 2,000 refugees, mostly women, children, and wounded men, set off in wagons and on foot for Mankato, thirty miles away. On August 26, three days after Governor Alexander Ramsey appointed Colonel Henry Sibley, a former governor, to command American forces that would attempt to suppress the uprising, Sibley advanced from the east with 1,400 soldiers toward Fort Ridgely. The next day, Sibley and his men succeeded in lifting the Dakota siege at Fort Ridgely, and the second phase of the Dakota Conflict-- an organized American military effort to defeat and punish the Sioux-- began.

The Dakota offensive continued to achieve success through early September. At dawn on September 2 at Birch Coulee Creek, Dakota warriors attacked a 170-man party of soldiers sent out to bury the bodies of settlers, killing twenty soldiers and ninety horses. Other Dakota attacks were made at Acton, Hutchinson, and Fort Abercrombie. Little Crow is generally acknowledged to have been the leader of the warring Dakota, but Chiefs Mankato, Big Eagle, Shakopee and others played significant leadership roles.

By mid-September, the initiative had shifted to the American forces. On September 23, in the decisive Battle of Wood Lake, 700 to 1,200 Dakota warriors were forced to withdraw after suffering heavy casualties. Meanwhile, divisions among Dakota on the war increased. To the north, chiefs of the Upper Agency Sisseton and Wahpeton continued to oppose the fighting. Chiefs Red Iron and Standing Buffalo threatened to fire upon any of Little Crow's followers that entered their territory. During the Wood Lake Battle, "friendlies" (Dakota opposed to the war) were able to seize control of white captives and bring them into their own camp. In late September, the friendlies released 269 white prisoners to the control of Colonel Sibley. Penned in to the north and south, facing severe food shortages and declining morale, many Dakota warriors chose to surrender. Together with those taken captive, the ranks of Dakota prisoners soon swelled to 1,250. A decision had to be made soon what to do with them. On September 28, 1862, Colonel Sibley appointed a five-member military commission to "try summarily" Dakota and mixed-bloods for "murder and other outrages" committed against Americans. Whether Sibley had authority to appoint such a commission is a matter of substantial dispute. The commission was convened immediately, meeting in La Bathe's log kitchen near Camp Release. Sixteen trials were conducted the first day, convicting and sentencing to death ten prisoners and acquitting another six. Over the six weeks that followed, the military court would try a total of 393 cases, convicting 323 and sentencing 303 to death by hanging. Reverend Stephen Riggs, a man who spoke Dakota and was not unsympathetic to their plight, reportedly served as a virtual grand jury, gathering evidence and witnesses.

The trials were quick affairs, getting quicker as they progressed. The commission heard nearly forty cases on November 3, the last day it met. The commission believed that mere participation in a battle justified a death sentence, so in the many cases, perhaps two-thirds of the total, where the prisoner admitted firing shots it proceeded to a guilty verdict in a matter of a few minutes. Somewhat more deliberation was required for trials in which the charge was the murder or rape of settlers, because admissions were much rarer in these cases. After the defendant gave whatever response he cared to make to the charge, prosecution witnesses were called. Where prosecution witnesses contradicted the testimony of the defendant, the commission almost invariably found the prisoner to be guilty. The best witnesses for the prosecution turned out to be some of the accused. A mixed-blood named Godfrey, or Otakle, who was the first prisoner tried, gave evidence in fifty-five cases and was described by Recorder Isaac Heard as "the greatest institution of the commission." With his "melodious voice" and "remarkable memory" he seemed to Heard "specifically designed as an instrument of justice."

Critics have challenged the fairness of the trials. In addition to raising concerns about the sufficiency of the evidence supporting convictions and the rapidity of trials, critics have charged commission members of harboring prejudice against the defendants. the critics may have a point. The commission members, though men of integrity, were also military men whose troops had recently been under attack by the very men whose cases they were judging. Critics of the trials also have argued that the commission was wrong to treat the defendants as common criminals rather than as the legitimate belligerents of a sovereign power. Finally, they have suggested that the trials should have been conducted in state courts using normal rules of criminal procedure rather than by military commission.

Colonel Sibley may well have viewed summary trials by a commission as necessary to avoid vigilante justice by angry mobs of Minnesotans. As it was, the 303 condemned prisoners were attacked in New Ulm on November 9 as they being transported to Mankato to await their execution. Another planned attack of the prison camp by several hundred armed local citizens on December 4 was foiled by soldiers guarding the Dakota prisoners.

The final decision on whether to go ahead with the planned mass execution of the 303 Dakota and mixed-bloods rested with President Lincoln. General John Pope, having been sent to Minnesota after his defeat at Bull Run, campaigned by telegraph for the speedy execution of all the condemned. Virtually all of the editorial writers, politicians, and citizens of Minnesota agreed with Pope. One of the few who did not was Henry Whipple, the Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota. Whipple traveled to Washington to meet with Lincoln and discuss the causes of the Dakota Conflict. By Lincoln's own account, the visit impressed him deeply and he pledged to reform Indian affairs. Lincoln knew well that the lust for Dakota blood could not be ignored; to prevent any executions from going forward might well have condemned all 303 to death at mob hands. Lincoln asked two clerks to go through the commission's trial records and identify those prisoners convicted of raping women or children. They found only two. Lincoln then asked his clerks to search the records a second time and identify those convicted of participating in the massacres of settlers. This time the clerks came up with the thirty-nine names included in Lincoln's handwritten order of execution written on December 6, 1862.

In Mankato, at ten o'clock on December 26, thirty-eight (one person was reprieved between the date of Lincoln's order and the execution) prisoners wearing white muslin coverings and singing Dakota death songs were led to gallows in a circular scaffold and took the places assigned to them on the platform. Ropes were placed around each of the thirty-eight necks. At the signal of three drumbeats, a single blow from an ax cut the rope that held the platform and the prisoners (except for one whose rope had broke, and who consequently had to be restrung) fell to their deaths. A loud cheer went up from the thousands of spectators gathered to witness the event. The bodies were buried in a mass grave on the edge of town. Soon area doctors, including one named Mayo, arrived to collect cadavers for their medical research.

In April, 1863, Congress enacted a law providing for the forcible removal from Minnesota of all Sioux. Most Dakota, after suffering through a harsh Minnesota winter at a Fort Snelling encampment, moved to South Dakota. Prisoners previously held at Mankato were transported on the steamboat "Favorite" down the Mississippi to Camp McClellan, near Davenport, Iowa.

On March 22, 1866, President Andrew Johnson ordered the release of the 177 surviving prisoners. They were moved to the Santee Reservation near Niobrara, Nebraska.

Little Crow was not among the Dakota tried by the military commission. He, along with 150 or so of his followers, fled to present-day North Dakota and Canada. In June 1863, Little Crow returned to Minnesota on a horse-stealing foray. On July 3, a farmer shot Little Crow while the Dakota chief picked berries with his son near Hutchinson.

The farmer received a $500 reward from the state.

The Sioux Wars went on for many years. A military expedition carried the fighting into the Dakota Territory in 1863 and 1864. As the frontier moved westward, new fighting erupted. Finally, in 1890 at Wounded Knee, the generation of warfare that began at Acton, Minnesota in August of 1862 came to an end.

FARIBAULT, September, 1862
H.B. Whipple
Bishop of Minnesota

THE DUTY OF CITIZENS CONCERNING THE INDIAN MASSACRE

* * *

The voice of this whole nation has declared that the Indian Department is the most corrupt in the Government. Citizens, editors, legislators, heads of the departments, and President alike agree that it has been characterized by inefficiency and fraud. The nation, knowing this, has winked at it. We have lacked the moral courage to stand up in the fear of God and demand a reform. More than all, it was not our money. It was a sacred trust confided to us by helpless men, where common manliness should have blushed for shame at the theft. . . .

It hardly needed any act of wrong to incite savage natures to murderous cruelty. But such instances were not wanting. Four years ago the Sioux sold the Government part of their reservation, the plea for the sale being the need of funds to aid them in civilization. . . . Of ninety-six thousand dollars due to the Lower Sioux not one cent has ever been received. All has been absorbed in claims except eight hundred and eighty dollars and fifty-eight cents, which is to their credit on the books at Washington. Of the portion belonging to the other Sioux, eighty-eight thousand, three hundred and fifty one dollars and twelve cents were also taken for claims. . . . For two years the Indians had demanded to know what had become of their money, and had again and again threatened revenge unless they were satisfied. Early last spring the traders informed the Indians that the next payment would be only half the usual amount, because the Indian debts had been paid at Washington. They were in some instances refused credit on this account.

It caused deep and widespread discontent. The agent was alarmed, and as early as May he wrote me that this new fraud must bring a harvest of woe, saying "God only knows what will be the result." In June, at the time fixed by custom, they came together for the payment. The agent could give no satisfactory reason for the delay. There was none to give. The Indians waited at the Agencies for two months, dissatisfied, turbulent, hungry, and then came the outbreak. . . . The money reached Fort Ripley the day after the outbreak. A part of the annuity had been taken for claims and at the eleventh hour, as the warrant on the treasury shows, as made up from other funds to save an Indian war. It was too late! Who is guilty of the causes which desolated our border? At whose door is the blood of these innocent victims? I believe that God will hold the nation guilty.

Our white race would not be proof against the corrupt influences which have clustered round these heathen. It would make a Sodom of any civilized community under heaven.

The leaders in the massacre were men who have always been the pliant tools of white men. When men like Little Crow and Hole-in-the-Day desired to open their budget of griefs, they could cite wrongs enough to stir savage blood to vengeance.

H.B. Whipple
Bishop of Minnesota
March 6, 1862

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

* * *

The Indian agents who are placed in trust of the honor and faith of the Government are generally selected without any reference to their fitness for the place. The Congressional delegation desires to award John Doe for party work, and John Doe desires the place because there is a tradition on the border that an Indian agent with fifteen hundred dollars a year can retire upon an ample fortune in four years.

The Indian agent appoints his subordinates from the same motive, either to reward his friends' service, or to fulfil the bidding of his Congressional patron. They are often men without any fitness, sometimes a disgrace to a Christian nation; whiskey-sellers, bar-room loungers, debauchers, selected to guide a heathen people. Then follow all the evils of bad example, of inefficiency, and of dishonesty, ---- the school a sham, the supplies wasted, the improvement fund or curtailed by fraudulent contracts. The Indian, bewildered, conscious of wrong, but helpless, has no refuge but to sink into a depth of brutishness. There have been noble instances of men who have tried to do their duty; but they have generally been powerless for lack of hearty cooperation of others, or because no man could withstand the corruption which has pervaded every department of Indian affairs.

* * *

The first thing needed is honesty. There has been a marked deterioration in Indian affairs since the office has become one of mere political favoritism. Instructions are not worth the price of the ink with which they are written if they are to be carried out by corrupt agents. Every employee ought to be a man of purity, temperance, industry, and unquestioned integrity. Those selected to teach in any department must be men of peculiar fitnesss, --- patient, with quick perceptions, enlarged ideas, and men who love their work. They must be something better than so many drudges fed at the public crib.

* * *

In all future treaties it ought to be the object of the Government to pay the Indians in kind, supplying their wants at such times as they may require help. This valuable reform would only be a curse in the hands of a dishonest agent. If wisely and justly expended, the Indian would not be as he now is, ---often on the verge of starvation. . . .

* * *

I have written to you freely with tll the frankness with which a Christian bishop has the right to write to the Chief Ruler of a great Christian Nation. My design his not been to complain of individuals, nor to make accusations. Bad as I believe some of the appointments to be, they are the fault of a political system. When I came to Minnesota I was startled at the degradation at my door. I give these men missions; God has blessed me, and I would count every trial I have had as a way of roses if I could save this people.

May God guide you and give you grace to order all things, so that the Government shall deal reghteously with the Indian nations in its charge.

Your servant for Christ's sake,
H.B. WHIPPLE,
Bishop of Minnesota.

LETTER TO THE BOARD OF MISSIONS
"Report on the Moral and Temporal Conditions of the Indian Tribes on Our Western Borders"

In every instance the original cause which led to our recent wars was conduct which would have been regarded as ample grounds for war by any civilized country on earth. The first outbreak was in Minnesota in 1862. These Indians had sold us a country as large as the State of New York, as beautiful as the eye ever rested upon; it had everything which the bounty of God could give for the use of wild men. Fish and wild game made it an Indian's paradise. Of the first sale I know nothing; the Indians said that after the bargain was made, their chiefs were bribed to sign a provision, which gave the larger part of the first payment to certain white men. They say they were then kept for months in a starving condition, until many of their people died; and it was this which made red men say to the Governor, "I will leave these bones of my people on the prairie, and some day the Great Spirit will look the white man in the face and ask him what has become of his red brother." For some time they were left without a reservation, and then denied the one which had been promised to them. In 1858 these Indians sold the Government eight hundred thousand acres of their reservation. The plea was they needed money for civilization. The treaty provided that no debts should be paid except as the Indians should acknowledge in open council. No such open council was ever held. There was a provision inserted in the treaty, --- of which the Indians say they were ignorant, --- which provided that the Secretary of the Interior might use any of their money as he thought best for them. After four years they had received nothing except a lot of useless goods sent to the Upper Sioux. Of the entire amount going to the Lower Sioux for this immense tract of land, all was taken for claims except about eight hundred and sixty-eight dollars. They waited four years; the story of our broken faith was often the subject of angry discussion. Old Wabasha said to me: "My father, four years ago I went to Washington. Our Great Father said to us, "If you live as white men I will help you more than I have ever done.' Four winters have passed and the fifth is nigh. It is so long a way to Washington the agents forget their Father's words, for they never do as he told us. You said you were sorry my young men had these foolish dances. I am sorry. The reason their wild life clings to them like a blanket is that their hearts are sick. The Indian's face is turned to the setting sun, and he thinks these are long journeys for himself and children. If your great Council at Washington would do as they promised, our people would believe them. The good Indian would become like his brother, and the bad Indian go away. I have heard of your words for my poor people. You have none of my blood in your veins, and I have none of yours; but you have spoken as a father speaks for his child whom he loves well. Often, when I sit alone in my tipi, your words will come back to me, and be like music to my heart."

* * *

[Walt] Lincoln said a lot.

[nc] A lot of documentable fiction.

[Walt quoting the fiction of Honest Abe]

"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."

That warmth of that story steams from it as the steam from a freshly laid dog turd.

Abe bit his lip. Had he only risen to the level of a William Jefferson Blyth Clinton, Abe would have also felt their pain.

Alas, it is all another one of Abe's fairy tales that you so gullibly accept and regurgitate.

Lincoln's fairy tale is in a letter to his former bedmate, Joshua Fry Speed, written in 1855, fourteen years after the alleged event.

Joyfully, all is not lost. At the time of the actual event, fourteen years before the pile of leading crap written to Joshua Speed, Abe truthfully described the same event to Speed's sister in a letter.

We got on board the Steam Boat Lebanon, in the locks of the Canal about 12. o'clock. M. of the day we left, and reached St. Louis the next monday at 8 P.M. Nothing of interest happened during the passage, except the vexatious delays occasioned by the sand bars be thought interesting. By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness. A gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one at a convenient distance from, the others; so that the negroes were strung together precisely like so many fish upon a trot-line. In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them, from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparantly happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he had been sold was an over-fondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually; and the others danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day to day.

Fifteen years later, this had metamorphosed into a lip-biting source of continual torment for Honest Abe.

|LINK|

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 2.

To Joshua F. Speed [1]

Dear Speed: Springfield, Aug: 24, 1855

You know what a poor correspondent I am. Ever since I received your very agreeable letter of the 22nd. of May I have been intending to write you in answer to it. You suggest that in political action now, you and I would differ. I suppose we would; not quite as much, however, as you may think. You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it. So far there is no cause of difference. But you say that sooner than yield your legal right to the slave---especially at the bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you to yield that right; very certainly I am not. I leave that matter entirely to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations, under the constitution, in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. [2] That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the constitution and the Union.

I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligation to the contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say if you were President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave state, she must be admitted, or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave state unfairly---that is, by the very means for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union be dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about the Nebraska-law. I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was nothing less than violence. It was passed in violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of many members, in violent disregard of the known will of their constituents. It is maintained in violence because the elections since, clearly demand it's repeal, and this demand is openly disregarded. You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing that law; and I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first; else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder [3] is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that any thing like fairness was ever intended; and he has been bravely undeceived.

That Kansas will form a Slave constitution, and, with it, will ask to be admitted into the Union, I take to be an already settled question; and so settled by the very means you so pointedly condemn. By every principle of law, ever held by any court, North or South, every negro taken to Kansas is free; yet in utter disregard of this---in the spirit of violence merely---that beautiful Legislature gravely passes a law to hang men who shall venture to inform a negro of his legal rights. This is the substance, and real object of the law. If, like Haman, they should hang upon the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among the mourners for their fate.

In my humble sphere, I shall advocate the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, so long as Kansas remains a territory; and when, by all these foul means, it seeks to come into the Union as a Slave-state, I shall oppose it. I am very loth, in any case, to withhold my assent to the enjoyment of property acquired, or located, in good faith; but I do not admit that good faith, in taking a negro to Kansas, to be held in slavery, is a possibility with any man. Any man who has sense enough to be the controller of his own property, has too much sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of this whole Nebraska business. But I digress. In my opposition to the admission of Kansas I shall have some company; but we may be beaten. If we are, I shall not, on that account, attempt to dissolve the Union. On the contrary, if we succeed, there will be enough of us to take care of the Union. I think it probable, however, we shall be beaten. Standing as a unit among yourselves, you can, directly, and indirectly, bribe enough of our men to carry the day---as you could on an open proposition to establish monarchy. Get hold of some man in the North, whose position and ability is such, that he can make the support of your measure---whatever it may be---a democratic party necessity, and the thing is done. Appropos of this, let me tell you an anecdote. Douglas introduced the Nebraska bill in January. In February afterwards, there was a call session of the Illinois Legislature. Of the one hundred members composing the two branches of that body, about seventy were democrats. These latter held a caucus, in which the Nebraska bill was talked of, if not formally discussed. It was thereby discovered that just three, and no more, were in favor of the measure. In a day or two Douglas' orders came on to have resolutions passed approving the bill; and they were passed by large majorities!!! The truth of this is vouched for by a bolting democratic member. The masses too, democratic as well as whig, were even, nearer unanamous against it; but as soon as the party necessity of supporting it, became apparent, the way the democracy began to see the wisdom and justice of it, was perfectly astonishing.

You say if Kansas fairly votes herself a free state, as a christian you will rather rejoice at it. All decent slave-holders talk that way; and I do not doubt their candor. But they never vote that way. Although in a private letter, or conversation, you will express your preference that Kansas shall be free, you would vote for no man for Congress who would say the same thing publicly. No such man could be elected from any district in any slave-state. You think Stringfellow & Co [4] ought to be hung; and yet, at the next presidential election you will vote for the exact type and representative of Stringfellow. The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the masters of your own negroes.

You enquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. When I was at Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery.

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ``all men are created equal.'' We now practically read it ``all men are created equal, except negroes.'' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ``all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.'' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty---to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.

Mary will probably pass a day or two in Louisville in October. My kindest regards to Mrs. Speed. On the leading subject of this letter, I have more of her sympathy than I have of yours.

And yet let [me] say I am Your friend forever

A. LINCOLN---

Annotation

[1] ALS, MHi, copy IHi

[2] See Lincoln to Mary Speed, September 27, 1841, supra.

[3] Andrew H. Reeder, appointed governor of Kansas Territory by President Pierce in June, 1854.

[4] Benjamin F. Stringfellow was a leader of the pro-slavery armed forces in the Kansas struggle; his brother John H. Stringfellow edited the Squatter Sovereign at Atchison and was speaker of the territorial House of Representatives.

|LINK|

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 1.

To Mary Speed [1]

Miss Mary Speed, Bloomington, Illinois,
Louisville, Ky. Sept. 27th. 1841

My Friend: Having resolved to write to some of your mother's family, and not having the express permission of any one of them [to] do so, I have had some little difficulty in determining on which to inflict the task of reading what I now feel must be a most dull and silly letter; but when I remembered that you and I were something of cronies while I was at Farmington, [2] and that, while there, I once was under the necessity of shutting you up in a room to prevent your committing an assault and battery upon me, I instantly decided that you should be the devoted one.

I assume that you have not heard from Joshua & myself since we left, [3] because I think it doubtful whether he has written.

You remember there was some uneasiness about Joshua's health when we left. That little indisposition of his turned out to be nothing serious; and it was pretty nearly forgotten when we reached Springfield. We got on board the Steam Boat Lebanon, in the locks of the Canal about 12. o'clock. M. of the day we left, and reached St. Louis the next monday at 8 P.M. Nothing of interest happened during the passage, except the vexatious delays occasioned by the sand bars be thought interesting. By the way, a fine example was presented on board the boat for contemplating the effect of condition upon human happiness. A gentleman had purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky and was taking them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this fastened to the main chain by a shorter one at a convenient distance from, the others; so that the negroes were strung together precisely like so many fish upon a trot-line. In this condition they were being separated forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and many of them, from their wives and children, and going into perpetual slavery where the lash of the master is proverbially more ruthless and unrelenting than any other where; and yet amid all these distressing circumstances, as we would think them, they were the most cheerful and apparantly happy creatures on board. One, whose offence for which he had been sold was an over-fondness for his wife, played the fiddle almost continually; and the others danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards from day to day. How true it is that ``God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,'' or in other words, that He renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing better than tolerable.

To return to the narative. When we reached Springfield, I staid but one day when I started on this tedious circuit where I now am. Do you remember my going to the city [4] while I was in Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it? Well, that same old tooth got to paining me so much, that about a week since I had it torn out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone; the consequence of which is that my mouth is now so sore that I can neither talk, nor eat. I am litterally ``subsisting on savoury remembrances''---that is, being unable to eat, I am living upon the remembrance of the delicious dishes of peaches and cream we used to have at your house.

When we left, Miss Fanny Henning [5] was owing you a visit, as I understood. Has she paid it yet? If she has, are you not convinced that she is one of the sweetest girls in the world? There is but one thing about her, so far as I could perceive, that I would have otherwise than as it is. That is something of a tendency to melancholly. This, let it be observed, is a misfortune not a fault. Give her an assurance of my verry highest regard, when you see her.

Is little Siss Eliza Davis [6] at your house yet? If she is kiss her ``o'er and o'er again'' for me.

Tell your mother that I have not got her ``present'' [7] with me; but that I intend to read it regularly when I return home. I doubt not that it is really, as she says, the best cure for the ``Blues'' could one but take it according to the truth.

Give my respects to all your sisters (including ``Aunt Emma'') [8] and brothers. Tell Mrs. Peay, [9] of whose happy face I shall long retain a pleasant remembrance, that I have been trying to think of a name for her homestead, but as yet, can not satisfy myself with one. I shall be verry happy to receive a line from you, soon after you receive this; and, in case you choose to favour me with one, address it to Charleston, Coles Co. Ills as I shall be there about the time to receive it. Your sincere friend A. LINCOLN

Annotation

[1] ALS, DLC. Mary Speed was the daughter of John Speed by his first wife, and a half sister to Joshua.

[2] Lincoln visited Joshua Speed from early August to the middle of September, at the Speed plantation in Jefferson County, Kentucky, near Louisville, called Farmington.

[3] Joshua returned with Lincoln and stayed until the first of the year.

[4] Probably Louisville, Kentucky.

[5] The future wife of Joshua Speed.

[6] Since Lincoln's reference seems to imply a child, this is probably the two-year-old daughter of Joshua's younger sister Susan Fry Speed Davis. However, Mary's own younger sister (also a child of John Speed's first wife) was named Eliza Davis Speed.

[7] An ``Oxford'' Bible.

[8] Inquiry among descendants of the Speed family elicits the possibility that Lincoln refers to Emma Keats who married Joshua's younger brother Philip. This would account for Lincoln's use of quotation marks to set off the name. Emma Keats was a daughter of George Keats, the brother of the poet John Keats.

[9] Mrs. Peachy Walker Speed Peay (wife of Austin Peay), Joshua's older sister.

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