160 years ago today, the largest mass execution in U.S. history took place, ordered by A. Lincoln

[WhiskeyGrinder]

There was no due process. No representation, no talk of broken treaties. It was the beginning of exile from the Minnesota area. Most of the bodies were dug up within a day of the hanging, to be used as cadavers, including one stolen by William Mayo, a name you might recognize.

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/traumatic-true-history-full-list-dakota-38

On the day after Christmas in 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged under order of President Abraham Lincoln. The hangings and convictions of the Dakota 38 resulted from the aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in southwest Minnesota.

In addition to the 38 men hanged the day after Christmas, there were terrible injustices committed against 265 others in the form of military convictions and inhuman injustices to more than 3,000 Dakota people who were held captive, then forced to march west out of Minnesota.

https://www.usdakotawar.org/history/aftermath/trials-hanging

As the men took their assigned places on the scaffold, they sang a Dakota song as white muslin coverings were pulled over their faces. Drumbeats signalled the start of the execution. The men grasped each others’ hands. With a single blow from an ax, the rope that held the platform was cut. Capt. William Duley, who had lost several members of his family in the attack on the Lake Shetek settlement, cut the rope. 

This all took place during the same week Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Didn't hear a word of this until very late in life, stumbled across it reading actual history.

Thank you so much for taking the time to point it out.

How much real history has ever been taught to the US public, anyway? Clearly there's a vast history which has been deeply, so deeply buried, while the Trump kind of version has been serving us, instead.

[Wounded Bear]

5. American history has been largely white washed...literally...nt

[reymega life]

2. abe Lincoln wasn't so honest

[malaise]

4. THIS n/t

[stopdiggin]

9. perhaps not. in other particulars.

But this specific incident (while open to charges of being unjust and barbaric) - was not concealed or hidden away - and in fact deliberately made public (and thus a rather poor candidate for 'dishonest'.)

[Delphinus]

3. Oh

I would never have known. 😢

[Polybius]

6. I'm embarrassed to admit that the first time I heard about this was on DU about 2 or 3 years ago

I don't think I ever learned about this in history class.

[niyad]

7. Thank you for that grim reminder. A truly horrific act.

[Progressive dog]

8. from wikipedia

By the end of the war, 358 settlers had been killed, in addition to 77 soldiers and 29 volunteer militia.

In less than six weeks, a military commission, composed of officers from the Minnesota volunteer Infantry, sentenced 303 Dakota men to death. President Abraham Lincoln reviewed the convictions and approved death sentences for 39 out of the 303

[stopdiggin]

10. thanks. instructive. -(nt)-

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. Yes, colonization is violence to just about everyone involved.

https://www.usdakotawar.org/history/aftermath

Of the more than 600 white people killed during the war, just over 70 were soldiers, and about 50 more were armed civilians. The others were unarmed civilians--mostly young men, women, and children who were recent immigrants to Minnesota. Historian Curtis Dahlin, who has extracted figures from public and cemetery records as well as from media reports, estimates that 30 per cent of the civilians killed were children aged ten and under. Another 40 per cent were adults between the ages of 20 and 40.
 
Historians have names for 32 of the estimated 75-100 Dakota soldiers who died during the war (and before the executions on December 26). These names have been gleaned primarily from the testimony of Dakota eyewitnesses.
 
More than one-quarter of the Dakota people who surrendered in 1862 died during the following year.

After their exile from Minnesota, the Dakota faced concentration onto reservations, pressure to assimilate, and opening of reservation land for white settlement.

It's interesting, every year I post this, someone points out the commutations. I find it fascinating, tbh.

[speak easy]

18. The reason ppl mention the commutations is that Lincoln did nor order the executions.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. It's interesting that people are so resistant to the reality and the terminology around it.

Lincoln reviewed every one of these cases, and ordered the executions that were carried out.

President Lincoln and government lawyers then reviewed the trial transcripts of all 303 men. As Lincoln would later explain to the U.S. Senate:
 
"Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I ordered a careful examination of the records of the trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females."
 
When only two men were found guilty of rape, Lincoln expanded the criteria to include those who had participated in “massacres” of civilians rather than just “battles.” He then made his final decision, and forwarded a list of 39 names to Sibley.

https://www.usdakotawar.org/history/aftermath/trials-hanging

[speak easy]

23. I am resistant to mistatements.

A Military Commission, acting as a judicial body, sentenced the 303 men to death. The President, exercising the pardon power, commuted the sentences of 265 of those so sentenced. I have no doubt that the trials were characterized by outrageous injustices, but it was the Commission, not the President who ordered the executions. The OP heading "the largest mass execution in U.S. history [was] ordered by A. Lincoln" is legally and factually wrong.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

24. .

[speak easy]

26. Its this letter kosher?

It is addressed to Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, who resigned from the United States Army in May 1961 to join the Confederacy.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

27. It's addressed to Brigadier General Henry Hastings Sibley, the first governor of Minnesota.

[speak easy]

28. OK Got it.

Brigadier General Henry Hastings Sibley, was the first Governor of Minnesota, and U.S. military leader in the Dakota War of 1862; and Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley, was the Confederate officer.

[The Jungle 1]

34. I think it is a fly shit and pepper mix, picking contest. But I will join in.

Can a Military Commission assert jurisdiction over people who are acknowledged to be enemy combatants who are alleged to have broken civil or criminal laws? Native Americans were not given citizenship until 1924.
I believe the entire Military Commission was illegal. The "enemy combatant" should have been allowed to contest the detention before a neutral party. All this came up recently with the Taliban and our prisons.

I guess our problem is we are using today's standards to judge 160 year old history.
Bottom line there is nothing acceptable about this piece of American history and we need to teach and understand all of it.
The Native Americans involved in this war were brutal. Killing woman and children. Dakota warriors torturing and mutilating bodies, beyond a simple scalping. Reportedly, one woman‟s baby was snatched from her. Bad bad history all around.

[packman]

12. That counts as being "woke"- Thanks

[iluvtennis]

13. I just learned something new today. As a postersaid above, American history has been white washed.

This is so disgusting.

[The Jungle 1]

20. There is even more disgust. See my post below

[iluvtennis]

29. TY. n/t

[Wibly]

14. Ol' Honest Abe

Who freed the slaves but killed the Indians, at least had the integrity to sign his own name to things.
For example, when he sent the small pox infested blankets of armies of the Potomac into "Indian Territory" he himself signed the weigh bills, because he felt it was wrong for him to place the burden of Genocide on any of his underlings.
About 100 of those blankets wound up crossing the Canadian border near modern day Nelway on the Washington border with British Columbia, and wiped out an entire nation of people living in the Kootenay area of BC.
Unlike the most recent Republican President, Lincoln at least did not look to put the blame on others for his misdeeds.

[Jedi Guy]

25. Do you have a source for the claim about Lincoln signing the waybills?

I ask because I'm strongly inclined to doubt the claim. The only documented historical evidence of smallpox-infected blankets being sent/given to Native peoples, to the best of my knowledge, involves two incidents from 1763, nearly 50 years before Lincoln was born.

There was a terrible smallpox epidemic among the First Nations in the winter of 1837-38, but again, decades before Lincoln took office. There were additional outbreaks in the 1870s, and the problem with Lincoln's involvement there should be pretty obvious.

[EX500rider]

32. Yeah the only documented case I ever heard of was done much earlier by a British officer. nt

[nightwing1240]

15. I was unaware of this tragic event until reading your post

Much of American history has been left out as to what is taught and passed down to the public. It seems the powers that be only want the good side to show while hiding the reality of very horrible treatments to large groups of people. Native Americans, African-Americans, Chinese, Japanese etc know that horrible treatment all too well. Not surprising to find that many famous leaders or Presidents did unimaginable deeds in the name of fear. Many of those men we were taught to look up to had very dark sides as we've learned more about them as time goes on.

My apologies to the treatment of the Dakota men that day.

The only solace I take is my grandfathers and grandmothers came to America from another country. One grandfather in 1908 the rest in 1910.

[wnylib]

16. The wars for which the men were executed were self defense wars

against the invasions of people into the Dakota lands.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

17. Descendants of executed Dakota 38+2 ride to Mankato to honor ancestors

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/12/23/descendants-of-executed-dakota-382-ride-to-mankato-to-honor-ancestors

In 2005, Lakota spiritual leader Jim Miller dreamt of Dakota people on horseback returning home to Minnesota. The ride became reality in 2008 with descendants of the executed men in the group. It’s been repeated each December since. 

Now, only four of the original riders remain, and they said this will be their last. So, they say the ride will end.

Josette Peltier of Flandreau, a Dakota elder and Miller’s sister, says the ride fulfilled her brother’s dream, and she’s seen people change over the years. 

“I’ve healed,” Peltier, 69, said. “I’ve gotten a lot of healing from this ride. And, I’m really grateful that my brother had this dream because had I not come on the ride, I don’t think I would have been able to grasp my roots.”

[The Jungle 1]

19. There is even more horror involved in this American history lesson. This is worth your time.

The men were not hung. Hanging breaks the neck and you die quickly. The ropes were to short and the Native Americans strangled to death. To the delight of the assembled spectators. Let there be no confusion, we knew how to hang people.
One Native America was miss identified and should not have been there.

Their trials lasted an average of ten minutes with no translators. They were fighting because of broken treaties.
The bodies were taking down to a river and buried in shallow graves at the waters edge. The river would wash them away because we wanted no martyrs.

However the inhumanity continued. The bodies were dug up and spread around the country for medical experiments and dissection. A doctor by the name of William Worrall Mayo was involved. Ya might have heard of him. He was given Marpiya Okinajin. The body was desecrated and used to educate other physicians. He used Okinajin’s skeleton to teach his sons about human anatomy. Restitution and apologies for his actions were given many years later. I do not know if satisfaction was achived.

The only defense I can offer for Lincoln is that over 100 Native Americans were convicted in sham trails. He only allowed 38 to be hung. A case could be made he had no other political path open to him.

This is the history the American right does not want taught. Mostly it is not taught. WE must teach our history.

[iluvtennis]

31. Thanks for this add'l info. n/t

[jaxexpat]

22. Everywhere on this planet someone has died to get out of the way from what's coming.

If pioneers had foreknowledge of the apocalypse their effort would cause, would they have still settled onto native lands?

About 16% of the estimated 170,000 population of Minnesota volunteered for service in the Union army. Over 10% of those died in the war. Minnesota was the first to respond to Lincoln's call for state volunteers after the firing on Ft Sumter.

Looks like the Dakota were forced to press their points at a horrible time in US history. Lincoln could ill afford foregoing security aid to these settlers or to urge an abundance of charity toward the Dakota in that moment.

There's never a good time to be on the wrong side of history.

[sarisataka]

30. Something we learned about in 6th grade

Our teacher believed state history was important so we spent half a year learning about where we lived.

While there were more than a few atrocities committed against white settlers, the root cause was failure of the US to live up to its treaty obligations. Starvation creates desperation and led to the bloodiest period of the so called Indian Wars.

In Lincoln’s defense, he did do a review and commuted the majority. Against that is the fact the "trials" had no basis or justification under any law, civil or military.

Governor Ramsey advised Lincoln that people would take "peivate revenge" if all 303 were not hung. So in essence Lincoln approved a public lynching of 38 in an attempt to pacify the white population. Reading about Lincoln beyond the mythology is very interesting. He had both great virtues and great flaws but a recurring theme is he was very pragmatic. It is worth knowing he was consciously aware when he did things that did not meet his usual moral standards.

FWIW, he also had questionable authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, and had someone challenged it in court it would have likely been ruled unconstitutional.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

33. important history... DeSantis would not allow this to be taught in Florida schools