President Lincoln and the Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota in 1862

[My Name Is Kate]

I wonder if Lincoln ever questioned the decision he made. As a lawyer, he knew justice required that each of the accused be given access to impartial counsel and a fair trial (most could not even speak or understand English). He did order that two attorneys attempt to find out the facts about the charges against the 300+ defendants, but suppose he had ordered they all be assigned an attorney, as would (supposedly) have been done had they been deemed by popular opinion to be citizens of this country, and therefore entitled to those rights? Did he ever entertain that thought, or did he immediately dismiss it, and on what grounds? Was it a certainty that he would have been impeached, or worse, and did he berate himself for picking Andrew Johnson as his running mate, with the threat of war looming throughout his campaign for president (due mainly to his stance against the spread of slavery in the territories), or did he justify his choice as the politically expedient thing to do at the time? Did he believe that he, as President (with an incompetent second-in-command), was too indispensable to this country fighting a civil war for its continued existence (and the future of representative government), to risk ending his term prematurely over the possible wrongful deaths of a few starving Indians? Was he afraid of the lynching mob screaming for the deaths of all the accused, and does the fact that he allowed 38 of the accused be put to death without a fair trial, indicate that he "respected" their opinion to some degree, even if he knew it to be wrong, and how did he reconcile that apparent contradiction?

All this may sound judgmental or cynical to some, but I don't intend for it to be that way. These are some of the thoughts that would haunt me, had I been in Lincoln's shoes. I would like to know how he resolved them, or pushed them to the back of his mind so he could continue to function. I would especially like to know if he cursed the day he decided to become a politician, or did he not foresee until it was too late, situations such as this, that would drive the average conscientious person insane? Surely he did.