In San Francisco, Virus is Contained but Schools Are Still Closed

[David Lockmiller]

I sent the following email to the Mayor of San Francisco yesterday.

Subject line of email reads: Renaming of Abraham Lincoln High School by SF Board of Education

Dear San Francisco Mayor London Breed,

As I understand the situation, the SF Board of Education Committee is citing Lincoln’s involvement in the Dakota Uprising as their source of meeting the criteria listed.

The following is Lincoln's 11 Dec. 1862 statement to the Senate on the Indians to be executed:

Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on the one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records of trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females. Contrary to my expectations, only two of this class were found. I then directed a further examination, and a classification of all who were proven to have participated in massacres, as distinguished from participation in battles. This class numbered forty, and included the two convicted of female violation. One of the number is strongly recommended by the commission which tried them for commutation to ten years' imprisonment. I have ordered the other thirty-nine to be executed on Friday, the 19th instant.

[hyperlink to Lincoln's 11 Dec. 1862 statement to the Senate provided to Mayor.]

Lincoln commuted the death sentences of 265 of the 303 Dakota men condemned. He also later pardoned one of the 39 mentioned in the letter to the Senate after evidence came to his attention questioning the man's guilt.

After the 1864 midterm election, Minnesota Senator Alexander Ramsey told Lincoln that Republicans could have gotten a larger electoral majority in the state if Lincoln had allowed the execution of more Indians.

Lincoln told Ramsey, simply: "I could not afford to hang men for votes."

Episcopal Bishop Henry B. Whipple lobbied the President to reform the corrupt Indian agency system. In the spring of 1862, the bishop had recommended more humane treatment of the Minnesota Sioux. Lincoln promptly asked the secretary of the Interior to investigate, which he did and suggested numerous reforms.

The President told a friend that Whipple "came here the other day and talked with me about the rascality of this Indian business until I felt it down to my boots."

[President Lincoln] pledged to Bishop Whipple that "[i]f we get through this war, and if I live, this Indian system shall be reformed."

(Henry B. Whipple, "Light and Shadows of a Long Episcopate, etc.," pages 136-137.

President Abraham Lincoln made it through the war but did not live long enough thereafter to reform the Indian system as he wanted to do.

Mayor Breed,

Please put a stop to this travesty of justice in renaming Abraham Lincoln High School for clearly invalid and unjust reasons.

Yours truly,
David Lockmiller