President Lincoln and the Sioux Indian uprising in Minnesota in 1862

[David Lockmiller]

(06-06-2017 05:08 PM)Anita Wrote:  David, thank you for the letter you sent to the NY Times. This is not about race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or other life experiences. An artist has no more right to impunity for historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations under the guise of "artistic freedom" than an author of history and should be held to the same standards of critical evaluation for accuracy. I'd like to see some "artistic footnotes."

I might add to what Anita has written that the New York Times has a responsibility to history to correct "historical inaccuracies and misrepresentations" printed in its newspaper articles when pointed out to them. I just checked and the following words are printed each day in the upper left hand corner of the front page by the New York Times: "All the News That's Fit to Print."

I sent a second letter to the New York Times on Friday, June 2 after I checked what the New York Times had itself written about the actions of President Lincoln in this matter on December 12, 1862, which reads in full as follows:


In the article of May 31 titled “[] A Hangman’s Scaffold and a Debate Over Cultural Appropriation,” it is noted therein that Sam Durant’s sculpture “Scaffold” is a composite of the gallows used in seven United States government-sanctioned hangings from 1859 to 2006 [and] 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 NYTimes may itself wish to respond with its own contemporaneous (December 12, 1862) reporting of this same historical incident:

We have this morning a message from President LINCOLN to the Senate in relation to the thirty-nine Minnesota Indians whom he has ordered to be executed one week from to-day. The President was anxious not to act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak of the savages, nor with a degree of severity which should be real cruelty, and therefore at first ordered only the execution of such Indians as "had been proved guilty of violating females;" but only two of this class were found. He then directed that out of the three hundred condemned men, such should be selected as were proved to have participated in massacres as distinguished from participation in battles. These amounted to forty, (including the two of the first-class,) but as one of them had been strongly recommended to mercy, he ordered that only thirty-nine should suffer the death penalty, and has dispatched a messenger to Gen. SIBLEY, in Minnesota, with a copy of the order.

From the statements at first made in regard to these Indian troubles in Minnesota, we favored a policy of even greater clemency than the President has adopted; but the evidence since published, reveals atrocities on the part of the savages so inexcusable, cold-blooded and shocking, that we cannot differ from the decision the President has made after his perusal of that evidence.

And, I might add this entry from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles’ diary on December 4, 1862: "The Members of Congress from Minnesota are urging the President vehemently to give his assent to the execution of three hundred Indian captives, but they will not succeed."

And, I also note: “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.”


It is obvious to me that maintaining a myth of infallibility in its reporting is now more important to the New York Times than is truth itself regarding the history of the actions of President Lincoln in this matter.