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.
While you have no way of checking the veracity of any claim I might make to my own ancestry--I wouldn't have any way of checking yours. We only have the words on a screen.
Characterizing the Cherokees during Jackson's time, and during the Civil War, as having some sort of Napoleonic brilliance of military strategy is your variation on the sentimentalized "noble Red Man"-- and is actually far more condescending than characterizing them as savage.
I've watched Gods and Generals about 15 times...but I only watch the Jackson scenes, which means I get done in about 90 minutes.
Stephen Lang is phenomenal as both Jackson and Pickett in Gettysburg. I've seen him in other things. He is a terrific actor. One of the best.
After Jackson, I like JEB Stuart. What a character! LOL!
Total BS! You were referring to them fighting the British then the French, or was it the other way around? Not a historian, but I think they were happy to fight against either side and fought for the side that gave them guns, simple as that. I did not try to make then noble, their voracity was as bad actually worse than the white man, but the white man was better educated and should have known better, but then again it was a more primitive time. Hopefully we as humans will know better the next time. However I do believe that the Cherokees were much better educated than most Indian tribes and their leaders capable of writing a declaration of war, something you seem to doubt. Or was that someone else?
Who had to have drawn his scene from the memoir, was my point. Especially since there were only two people present for the first part of the meeting, before Longstreet took Harrison to see General Lee.
Non-Sequitur's post had to do with Jeff Shaara's book "Gods and Generals." It was Jeff in "Gods and Generals" who did not source Longstreet's book.
The Longstreet/Harrison dialogue was in "The Killer Angels" written by Michael Shaara. I don't know Michael's sources for his book, but I believe it would be safe to say that Michael did read and source Longstreet's book.
You hit on one of the reasons why people quoting slave ownership statistics in the south as a reason why slavery could not have been a reason for the rebellion are so wrong. On the fact of it, if only 6% or 7% of the people owned slaves then how could they go to war over it. But those 6% or 7% had families and those families derived benefit from the chattel so that in the end in some states upwards of half the population probably benefitted directly from slavery. Likewise with your car. Only a fraction of your total family may be a car owner but 100% receive direct benefit from car ownership.
You're welcome.
not a few women served the TRUE CAUSE as well;women have always been accepted as warriors in our tradition.
free dixie,sw
Dora Gray stated to me in 1991 that a survey of the tribal membership in the WBTS period indicates that almost every male, capable of bearing arms, did so for the TRUE CAUSE. MANY Cherokee women also served in the military forces of the CSA.
free dixie,sw
if what you say is truthful, rather than your usual self-serving, arrogant, pro-damnyankee propaganda, why are there NO TAX RECORDS of slave ownership in his county of residence in either the General's or his wife's name????
their complete Personal Property Tax returns are in the records, but alas for you & the other damnyankee propagandists there are NO SLAVES listed for ANY year.
the Commonwealth of Virginia ALWAYS taxed slaves as personal property each year, as did each of the counties, chartered cities & the several independent towns/townships. (FYI, chartered cities,towns & townships in VA are NOT a portion or political subdivision of the county in which the independent city/township is located.)
the short answer is that the concept/construct of "the general's slaves" are a PACK of LIES, dreamed up by the usual clique of southHATERS, liars & wishful thinkers. nothing more, nothing less.
free dixie,sw
i see no need to re-type the same response.
free dixie,sw
my ancestor, William James "Little Thunder" Freeman, late of the 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles & the 4th MO Partisan Rangers, was a traditional Cherokee warrior.
Little thunder was illiterate in English, though he spoke/read/wrote Tslagi after TWBTS (his wife taught him to read & write in the 1870s).
nonetheless, he WELL UNDERSTOOD the NECESSITY of freeing the southland & the Cherokee Nation from the arrogant, hateFILLED, self-righteous,intrusive, imperialist damnyankees, who constantly schemed for any advantage against the people of dixie & the several Indian nations.
from the point of view of the typical Cherokee man there was NO honorable alternative to war, after 1855 in either the South or the Trans-Mississippi West.
that too is TRUTH!
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
a local "lady", who is currently a "guest of the Commonwealth, in a room for which she has no suitable key", is named:
Red Corvette Hazlle.
when i saw that in the local newspaper, i LOL!
free dixie,sw
as the "filth that flowed down from the north" raged through the southland, like a pack of rabid swine,committing robberies, looting,burning & "running off stock", as well as assaulting,raping,torturing,sodomizing & MURDERING the blacks,browns,reds,jews,roman catholics,recent immigrants & the poorest of the poor of the southland on a wholesale basis, much of the Cherokee's (and other tribe's) warlike response to the invasion and avalance of WAR CRIMES was SELF-PRESERVATION!
free dixie,sw
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