President Lincoln and the Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota in 1862

[David Lockmiller]

I just sent the following proposed "letter to the editor" to the NYTimes.


“[] A Hangman’s Scaffold and a Debate Over Cultural Appropriation” NYTimes May 31, 2017.

I should like to have the New York Times print the following letter in defense of President Abraham Lincoln. Artistic freedom should not be used as an excuse to misstate history.

Sam Durant’s sculpture “Scaffold” is a composite of the gallows used in seven United States government-sanctioned hangings from 1859 to 2006 includes the 1862 execution of 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minn., ordered by President Abraham Lincoln — the largest mass execution in the nation’s history.

Mr. Durant says that he intended the work “as a learning space for people like me, white people who have not suffered the effects of a white supremacist society and who may not consciously know that it exists.”

The following is an abbreviated history of President Lincoln's response from "Abraham Lincoln: A Life” Volume II, pages 480-84, by Professor Michael Burlingame, 2008:

President Lincoln authorized the execution of only 37 of the 303 condemned men (35 were found guilty of murder and 2 were convicted of rape). Lincoln explained his reasoning: "Anxious not to 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 caused 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." He further sought to discriminate between those involved in massacres and those involved only in battles. At the last minute before the executions, President Lincoln pardoned Round Wind, who had helped some whites to escape.

On December 26, 1862, the convicted rapists and killers died on the gallows while a peaceful crowd of more than 5,000 looked on. In 1864, Minnesota Governor Ramsey told President Lincoln that if he had executed all 303 Indians, he would have won more backing for his reelection bid. “I could not afford to hang men for votes," came the reply.