Did Lincoln Show The Same Compassion For Native Americans As African American Slaves?

March 1, 2012
Written by Russell Roberts in
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The Lincoln family is posed in front of the White House as it appeared in 1861. Generals McClellan and Grant stand on one side of the portico veranda, eyeing each other with suspicion. On the other side, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth wait for the opportunity to speak with the president. And, around to one side, John Wilkes Booth keeps watch on Lincoln’s back. Information/Photo Credit: lincolnlibraryandmuseum.com

Abraham Lincoln and his freedom of African-Americans from the bonds of slavery looms over any other subject associated with him. Thus, we all think we know Lincoln — kind, charitable, funny, wise, and compassionate, a good and decent person who acted toward everyone else the same benevolent way.


But did he? How does Lincoln measure up when it comes to another oppressed race of the day…Native Americans?


To be sure, Lincoln was a product of his time. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that Native Americans were bullied and pushed off their ancestral lands through deceit, trickery, lies, and military force. However, to most people in the mid-19th century, Native Americans were primitive savages blocking civilization, so anything used to dispatch them was acceptable. Lincoln felt the same. As Lincoln historian, David Herbert Donald said, “In general, like most whites of his generation, he considered the Indians a barbarous people who were a barrier to progress.”


Although he came from the rural west and not the more-developed east, Lincoln had little familiarity with Native Americans. He had served in the Black Hawk War of 1832, but saw no combat except for “…a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes.” Lincoln was a member of the Whig political party before he became a Republican. As such, his mentor and idol was Henry Clay, who believed Native Americans inferior to whites. When Whig president General Zachary Taylor died in 1850, Lincoln eulogized Taylor’s Indian-fighting. And Native-Americans killed Lincoln’s grandfather in 1784, so surely, all these things together means that Lincoln disliked native peoples.


However, there is evidence that Lincoln felt no particular animosity toward Native-Americans, such as told in this story: During the Black Hawk War, an old and harmless Native-American wandered into the soldier’s camp. The others wanted to kill him immediately, but Lincoln prevented this and made the others back down.


Lincoln barely had time to move into the White House before the Civil War started. During his tenure as president, the war dominated his attention, and he was not involved in the cesspool of deceit and corruption that was the Indian Affairs department. The reservation system resulted in terrible hardships for natives. As one reservation observer noted, “Nearly every family is out of provisions, living scantily on one meal a day. Women and children look particularly thin & hungry now. I have never seen so poor and so miserable a community of people before.”


altComplaints by native peoples about these miserable conditions fell on deaf ears. Finally, in October 1862, resentment at this callous treatment erupted in the Great Sioux Uprising in southwestern Minnesota. In the end, the rampaging Sioux braves, killed 350 whites — mostly farmers, women, and children — in horrible and brutal ways. It was the largest massacre of whites by Indians in American history.


Quick trials (10-15 minutes each) of the more than 1500 natives captured by the army resulted in an execution list of 303 Sioux men for inciting the outbreak. Many of the worst offenders had already escaped further west, but it didn’t matter; the public and press howled for blood.


Lincoln, however, refused to cave into public pressure. Although the war was going badly at the time, he painstakingly went over the list one by one, reviewing each case. Eventually he pardoned all but 39, but it was still the largest public execution in American history.


The pardons were a tremendously courageous — and unpopular — a decision that cost Lincoln political support. In his 1864 re-election bid, Lincoln just barely carried Minnesota. When told that hanging more Sioux would have made him more popular, Lincoln replied, “I could not hang men for votes.”


Like others before him, Lincoln had used Indian Affairs as a political patronage reward. However, after listening to accounts of the abuses Native-Americans routinely suffered, Lincoln vowed to reform the government’s Indian system if he survived the war. Unfortunately, John Wilkes Booth got to him first.


Throughout his life, Lincoln never expressed the rabid anti-Indian feelings so prevalent at the time, in fact, while President, Lincoln enjoyed the visits of Native-Americans to the White House. He liked playing the Great Father and talking to the tribal chiefs in Pidgin English.


So, we are left with perhaps the biggest clue to his feelings towards native peoples being his pardoning of so many when it was easier not to do so. Involved in the maelstrom of death that was the war, Lincoln chose life — even for an unpopular race that many wanted exterminated.


Compassion, decency, tolerance…in an era when so many public figures have feet of clay, it’s nice to know the mythical Lincoln and the real Lincoln may be one and the same.



Sources
1. Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald
2. Lincoln and the Indians, by David A. Nichols
3. Lincoln and the Sioux Uprising of 1862, by Hank H. Cox
 

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