Posted on 01/07/2004 7:12:30 AM PST by Aurelius
Many have no doubt heard of the valor of the Cherokee warriors under the command of Brigadier General Stand Watie in the West and of Thomas’ famous North Carolina Legion in the East during the War for Southern Independence from 1861 to 1865. But why did the Cherokees and their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws determine to make common cause with the Confederate South against the Northern Union? To know their reasons is very instructive as to the issues underlying that tragic war. Most Americans have been propagandized rather than educated in the causes of the war, all this to justify the perpetrators and victors. Considering the Cherokee view uncovers much truth buried by decades of politically correct propaganda and allows a broader and truer perspective.
On August 21, 1861, the Cherokee Nation by a General Convention at Tahlequah (in Oklahoma) declared its common cause with the Confederate States against the Northern Union. A treaty was concluded on October 7th between the Confederate States and the Cherokee Nation, and on October 9th, John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation called into session the Cherokee National Committee and National Council to approve and implement that treaty and a future course of action.
The Cherokees had at first considerable consternation over the growing conflict and desired to remain neutral. They had much common economy and contact with their Confederate neighbors, but their treaties were with the government of the United States.
The Northern conduct of the war against their neighbors, strong repression of Northern political dissent, and the roughshod trampling of the U. S Constitution under the new regime and political powers in Washington soon changed their thinking.
The Cherokee were perhaps the best educated and literate of the American Indian Tribes. They were also among the most Christian. Learning and wisdom were highly esteemed. They revered the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution as particularly important guarantors of their rights and freedoms. It is not surprising then that on October 28, 1861, the National Council issued a Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.
The introductory words of this declaration strongly resembled the 1776 Declaration of Independence:
"When circumstances beyond their control compel one people to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified."
In the next paragraphs of their declaration the Cherokee Council noted their faithful adherence to their treaties with the United States in the past and how they had faithfully attempted neutrality until the present. But the seventh paragraph begins to delineate their alarm with Northern aggression and sympathy with the South:
"But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions."
Comparing the relatively limited objectives and defensive nature of the Southern cause in contrast to the aggressive actions of the North they remarked of the Confederate States:
"Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they sought only to repel the invaders from their own soil and to secure the right of governing themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted in the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of Northern States themselves to self-government is formed, and altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties."
The next paragraph noted the orderly and democratic process by which each of the Confederate States seceded. This was without violence or coercion and nowhere were liberties abridged or civilian courts and authorities made subordinate to the military. Also noted was the growing unity and success of the South against Northern aggression. The following or ninth paragraph contrasts this with ruthless and totalitarian trends in the North:
"But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In the states which still adhered to the Union a military despotism had displaced civilian power and the laws became silent with arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was at naught by the military power and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men."
The tenth paragraph continues the indictment of the Northern political party in power and the conduct of the Union Armies:
"The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of the cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on the women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion without process of law, in jails, forts, and prison ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet Ministers; while the press ceased to be free, and the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in the battles were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of the Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat, to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by southern hands."
The eleventh paragraph of the Cherokee declaration is a fairly concise summary of their grievances against the political powers now presiding over a new U. S. Government:
"Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past to complain of some of the southern states, they cannot but feel that their interests and destiny are inseparably connected to those of the south. The war now waging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the south, and against the political freedom of the states, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those states and utterly change the nature of the general government."
The Cherokees felt they had been faithful and loyal to their treaties with the United States, but now perceived that the relationship was not reciprocal and that their very existence as a people was threatened. They had also witnessed the recent exploitation of the properties and rights of Indian tribes in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon, and feared that they, too, might soon become victims of Northern rapacity. Therefore, they were compelled to abrogate those treaties in defense of their people, lands, and rights. They felt the Union had already made war on them by their actions.
Finally, appealing to their inalienable right to self-defense and self-determination as a free people, they concluded their declaration with the following words:
"Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident of the rectitude of their intentions and true to their obligations to duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon them, unite their fortunes now and forever with the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and with entire confidence of the justice of that cause and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.
The Cherokees were true to their words. The last shot fired in the war east of the Mississippi was May 6, 1865. This was in an engagement at White Sulphur Springs, near Waynesville, North Carolina, of part of Thomas’ Legion against Kirk’s infamous Union raiders that had wreaked a murderous terrorism and destruction on the civilian population of Western North Carolina. Col. William H. Thomas’ Legion was originally predominantly Cherokee, but had also accrued a large number of North Carolina mountain men. On June 23, 1865, in what was the last land battle of the war, Confederate Brigadier General and Cherokee Chief, Stand Watie, finally surrendered his predominantly Cherokee, Oklahoma Indian force to the Union.
The issues as the Cherokees saw them were 1) self-defense against Northern aggression, both for themselves and their fellow Confederates, 2) the right of self-determination by a free people, 3) protection of their heritage, 4) preservation of their political rights under a constitutional government of law 5) a strong desire to retain the principles of limited government and decentralized power guaranteed by the Constitution, 6) protection of their economic rights and welfare, 7) dismay at the despotism of the party and leaders now in command of the U. S. Government, 8) dismay at the ruthless disregard of commonly accepted rules of warfare by the Union, especially their treatment of civilians and non-combatants, 9) a fear of economic exploitation by corrupt politicians and their supporters based on observed past experience, and 10) alarm at the self-righteous and extreme, punitive, and vengeful pronouncements on the slavery issue voiced by the radical abolitionists and supported by many Northern politicians, journalists, social, and religious (mostly Unitarian) leaders. It should be noted here that some of the Cherokees owned slaves, but the practice was not extensive.
The Cherokee Declaration of October 1861 uncovers a far more complex set of "Civil War" issues than most Americans have been taught. Rediscovered truth is not always welcome. Indeed some of the issues here are so distressing that the general academic, media, and public reaction is to rebury them or shout them down as politically incorrect.
The notion that slavery was the only real or even principal cause of the war is very politically correct and widely held, but historically ignorant. It has served, however, as a convenient ex post facto justification for the war and its conduct. Slavery was an issue, and it was related to many other issues, but it was by no means the only issue, or even the most important underlying issue. It was not even an issue in the way most people think of it. Only about 25% of Southern households owned slaves. For most people, North and South, the slavery issue was not so much whether to keep it or not, but how to phase it out without causing economic and social disruption and disaster. Unfortunately the Southern and Cherokee fear of the radical abolitionists turned out to be well founded.
After the Reconstruction Act was passed in 1867 the radical abolitionists and radical Republicans were able to issue in a shameful era of politically punitive and economically exploitive oppression in the South, the results of which lasted many years, and even today are not yet completely erased.
The Cherokee were and are a remarkable people who have impacted the American heritage far beyond their numbers. We can be especially grateful that they made a well thought out and articulate declaration for supporting and joining the Confederate cause in 1861.
PRINCIPAL REFERENCES:
Emmett Starr, History of the Cherokee Indians, published by the Warden Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1921. Reprinted by Kraus Reprint Company, Millwood, New York, 1977.
Hattie Caldwell Davis, Civil War Letters and Memories from the Great Smoky Mountains, Second Edition published by the author, Maggie Valley, NC, 1999.
How do you get to the proposition that, if the Cherokee had a prior beef with the federal government (and if I thought really hard I might be able to guess what it was!), anything else they said about the federal government and its relationship to the States, which it was then laboring mightily to change to the extreme disadvantage of the States and the Peoples it was waging open warfare upon, would a priori be null and void? Or even discounted?
A guy shoots me. I complain. He shoots someone else, and I complain again. But my second complaint is bogus and I have no beef on account of the second shooting, because the guy shot me first?
Sounds like schoolboy debater's reasoning (or brawling and eye-gouging) to me.
That may be true, and it's a good point to remember. But you are still making what is essentially an argument ad hominem against the Cherokee declaration, rather than accept its face argument, that the Cherokee had suffered mightily at the hands of the U.S. Government. They had also had bloody differences with white settlers even in colonial times, per the comment above about the Cherokee's and other tribes' cooperation with the British, which kept the white settlers in the three prerevolutionary counties of Tennessee forted-up and unable to expand for ten long years, and their population stagnant thanks to disease and malnutrition. That will have been a bitter memory on the other side.
Bottom line, the Cherokee had had concrete experience with the operational policies of the Government and the kind of people who drove them that illuminated their own best interest and guided their choice of allegiance in 1861.
Or is that not a fair statement?
Damn! Where did that happen, s_w?
There's another possibility that General Jackson rented Lewis. That often happened, and if so it would be true that Jackson didn't own Lewis. If he habitually rented servants, then he might never have actually owned slaves. Which is a distinction without a difference, when the question is whether Jackson participated in the peculiar institution.
Anyone know whether Lewis is the slave Jackson is depicted as speaking to about slavery and the future in Gods and Generals?
However, the problem with this article is, continuing with your example, it's ignoring the fact you were shot at all, and simply stating that because you dislike the shooter, it must mean that you totally agree philisophically with the second victim. The article then would be propping you up as "proof" that the shooter is just evil, since if you hate him to when he's done nothing to you, why he has to be a bad guy.
Or, let's use another analogy, albeit a bit of a stretch. Say an Israeli soldier is on trial for a minor offense, say, failure to pay a traffic ticket, and a the jury is full of Hamas terrorists. (And no, I'm not comparing the Cherokee to terrorists nor comparing the Trail of Tears or attempted genocide to a traffic ticket. It's an analogy. Simmer down). If the jury returns a guilty verdict and recommends the death sentence, is it okay to ignore any prejudicial thoughts they may have had which went into the verdict/sentence? That's what the author of this wonderful piece seems to think. "Hey, guys, never mind that the Feds mistreated them for years prior to this and fueled a visceral hatred and mistrust. The truth of the matter is they sided with the Confederates just because the Confederates were right!" Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
As was stated earlier in the thread (post 58, I believe, although I'm too lazy to look back), this was an excuse to make war on the Feds, and this time they had others to help, adding to their strength. My argument is not that the Cherokee had no beef with the Feds, or that the Federal government can do not wrong. Lord knows I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying the author is conveniently leaving out pertinent details which would have the effect of undermining the point he appears to be making, which is that the Confederacy was right because the Cherokee supported them. That's a ridiculously near-sighted argument. Did we support the Soviets and agree philosophically with their system of government simply because we were both fighting the Germans? There's more to this than meets the author's eye.
And you are right... Jackson could only have rented his services. But, according to Anna Jackson, they did own slaves.
Frankly, I don't think the tribes would be united, or even thoughtful, enough to have a reasoned political position such as you describe. I think that they took part against the federals through warrior passion, or from a sense of feeling invaded, than through a rational philosophy.
They probably took arms because their neighbor took arms, and nothing more complicated or theoretical than that.
There is an interesting essay today on "Cold Mountain" on National Review Online--this is the Civil War that I heard about from my own ancestry. Quite a resonation, this particular essay.
I was defending myself from the attacking ducks ;o)
Yes, it is ... we just rented that last week. (Outstanding Lee, very good Jackson, everyone else's beards looked fake, and the women were too treacly, in my opinion!)
$150 would not have purchased any slave, let alone an adult man with skills, on the open market at that time, so it seems likely that was a hire agreement.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
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