The shelling and evacuation of Fort Sumter had taken place only twenty-one months earlier, but by the time 1863 arrived the Civil War seemed to have lasted an eternity. Time now sat as heavy on Abraham Lincoln as any of his other cares; on many days, the future seemed to hold only a slow, endless journey down an ever-widening river of blood. Battle along the lower Mississippi River had turned against the Union. The despondency left in the wake of Fredericksburg refused to abate, and by the end of 1862 haggard Ambrose Burnside had been shuffled off to Ohio after fewer than three months in command and replaced with Fighting Joe Hooker, a career federal officer who was handsome, brash, self-assured, and prone to expressing his distrust of civilian control of military affairs. It was a sign of how farcical and disheartening Lincoln’s search for a ranking field general had become that his letter to Hooker announcing the appointment also included a warning about the evils of military dictatorships.
The president spent New Year’s morning wrapping up his final changes to the text of the Emancipation Proclamation. He had hoped to print and issue the official proclamation by noon, but a single error in wording had created a three-hour delay, a hiccup in the flow of history that Lincoln filled by walking downstairs at eleven o’clock to greet the crowd at the annual White House levee. He found the East Room full of diplomats, Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, generals, veterans of the War of 1812, and the general public, who had begun lining up hours earlier. Three hours of vigorous greetings left his hand trembling and so weak that he’d had to pause for several moments before putting his signature to the final, corrected text of the proclamation. With one painstaking pen stroke, more than three million slaves were made free, a moment that had little immediate effect but filled the air like a sudden change of climate. The prosecution of the war went on much the same, but the stakes were utterly transformed: a Union victory would now mean a country whole and without slavery. Union soldiers were now fighting not to restore the same country they had lived in before but to institute an entirely new one.
And what would happen to the freed slaves? Lincoln continued to occupy himself with the question of where they might most magnanimously be encouraged to go. His hopes for a colony in Panama all but dashed, he now explored possibilities in Africa, South America, and Canada, and even began to listen to suggestions that the freed slaves be concentrated in some western territory. Not on reservations, exactly; not removed, exactly. John Nicolay spent part of his New Year’s Day finishing an editorial that would be published on January 2 in the Daily Morning Chronicle, in which he maintained that one of the proclamation’s great achievements would be the permanent separation of black and white.
The two races cannot live together under the contingencies of future growth and expansion. The white man is the child of the snow, the black man is the child of the sun. One finds his natural and congenial home in the North, the other in the South. The accidents of destiny may confuse and change their abiding place for a time, but the same destiny is in its grander operations always true to nature, and will in due time lead each to his land of promise. We can hardly be mistaken in predicting that the United States are to be the theater of the white man’s achievements for some centuries to come; and we may as confidently hope that a great and useful future may be wrought out by the black race in the equatorial regions of Central and South America.
In a roundabout way, the Emancipation Proclamation also helped to herald a sea change in the Lincoln administration’s handling of Indian affairs, when Interior Secretary Caleb Smith resigned his post just before the new year, in part because of his firm opposition to emancipation. One thing above all recommended John Palmer Usher, the new secretary, over Smith: he seemed to want the job. One of his first steps was to answer Minnesota senator Wilkinson’s resolution asking that Lincoln and his administration supply “the information in his possession touching the late Indian barbarities in the State of Minnesota, and also the evidence in his possession upon which some of the principal actors and headmen were tried and condemned to death.”
Following Smith’s departure, Usher finally received an official report from the Indian agent Thomas Galbraith. Galbraith’s report was sent eastward on February 7, later than Usher would have liked, and the agent had taken extra care in constructing his chronology of events, arranged so as to downplay his absences, his abdication of authority, and the extent of that summer’s unrest among the Dakota. Attached to Usher’s report and running for thirty-one pages, the letter stated, in a vintage Jacksonian phrasing, that the “radical moving cause of the outbreak” was “the ingrained and fixed hostility of the savage barbarian to reform, change, and civilization.” Galbraith also included his contention that certain white agitators had fanned the flames of war: “That there was any direct interference by rebel emissaries with the annuity Indians I do not have evidence sufficient to assert with any degree of certainty,” Galbraith wrote, “yet I am clearly of the opinion that rebel sympathizers did all in their power to create dissatisfaction among the Indians in my agency, and I firmly believe that time will bring out in full relief this fact not only, but more—much more. Let us wait and see; ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ ”
He was willing to blame the traders for the war, in other words, but not yet in public, not until, perhaps, they were delicensed. Galbraith had no doubt that Myrick and the other traders had been “agitating” the Dakota to serve their own interests, encouraging them to distrust the government’s ability to provide the annuities and continue to depend primarily on credit from the traders. “Rebel sympathizers,” in any event, did not mean Southern spies or out-and-out traitors: it simply meant Democrats who bore no love for a war that threatened to take away money from the Dakota, money they viewed in many cases as rightfully theirs. It did not help the traders any more than it helped the Dakota that Galbraith, a Republican functionary, had spent all summer playing soldier, raising the Renville Rangers and exhibiting every sign than he was not long for his own job on the reservation. Galbraith’s contentions that the traders had been “tampering with the Indians and exciting their apprehensions and distrust against the government” may have been correct. But the notion that responsibility for the outbreak belonged more to the traders than to the Indian agent charged with the care and protection of the Dakota bordered on ludicrous.
Usher understood this. He was no distant assessor. He had been in Minnesota in the immediate aftermath of the war and had conferred with many people in positions not so different from Galbraith’s, including their mutual friend Alexander Ramsey. Still, his own conclusions were much less assured. “As to the real cause of the recent Sioux outbreak,” he began, “it is difficult, if not wholly impossible, at the present time, to determine with that degree of certainty which the character and magnitude of its results demands. Conflicting opinions have been expressed, even by those who had enjoyed the best opportunities for an intelligent and correct judgment.” The document went on with an almost meticulous evenhandedness, acknowledging Dakota dissatisfaction with treaties—the “misunderstandings” in treaty provisions, the confusions caused by overlapping treaties, and even the white fraud that had followed behind the treaties in the form of unnamed “unscrupulous and designing persons whose cupidity is ministered to by misrepresentations and intrigue,” all complaints that Little Crow and most other Dakota leaders would have made themselves.
Usher took at face value Galbraith’s contention that “the most ample arrangements” had been made for the Dakota’s “civilization and material advancement,” a statement that was true, at least as far as the agent’s promotion of agricultural husbandry and support of the “farmer Indians” might demonstrate. Galbraith’s accompanying claim—that the Dakota’s “general and cordial co-operation with him afforded reasonable assurance of eminent success, and rendered their future prospects bright & cheering”—was more difficult to believe, but Usher let it pass. In this manner, long stretches of Usher’s report became a gloss on Galbraith’s, alternately supporting and distancing itself from the agent’s explanations. The secretary’s conclusion hinted at a deeper understanding of the forces at play, but ultimately he could not break free of the standard supposition of the Indian’s savage inferiority that prevented any real insight.
From all the inquiry and examination I have been able to make, I am inclined to the opinion that the Sioux outbreak was chiefly caused by the unfortunate affair, in which a few dissolute and reckless young men of the tribe become involved at Acton, through the influence of intoxicating liquor—that fruitful source of embarrassment in the management of our Indian relations, and of loss to the Indians and to the white settlers in their vicinity. This occurrence happened at a time when the minds of the Indians had become restless and agitated by accounts, incautiously or maliciously communicated to them, of the bloody conflict in which the army of the United States had become engaged, and when they had become distrustful and uneasy because of the delay which had occurred in the payment of their annuities,—the reason for which had been misrepresented to them, as is alleged, by evil disposed persons who taught them to believe that the Government had been broken up, and they left to take care of themselves as best they could. Exasperations thus produced, added to their long felt dissatisfaction at having parted with their lands, no doubt led them to attempt to re-possess themselves of their former hunting grounds,—now become fruitful fields in the hands of the industrious whites,—and to wreak, with their accustomed ferocity, vengeance upon all the defenseless inhabitants within their reach, for their imaginary wrongs.
Usher dismissed the idea that Confederate agitators had been behind the outbreak while fully supporting Galbraith’s notion that some whites—the traders and their employees—had been whispering in Dakota ears. But Usher also included a rebuke of Galbraith’s ill-timed decision to abandon his responsibilities as he formed the Renville Rangers.
I cannot but regret, however, the misdirected zeal and patriotism which induced the Agent to leave his post at so critical a moment, nor escape the painful conviction that his continued presence there might possibly have been the means of averting the terrible calamity which so [soon] succeeded his departure … the fact that the Agent—the only officer of the Government to whom they looked for the payment of their anxiously expected annuities, and for counsel and guidance in trouble—had taken many of the employees and most of the able-bodied white men in the neighborhood, and left the Indian country, was not well calculated to remove from their minds the impression that they had been abandoned by the Government.
Finally, the new interior secretary put to rest the notion, still receiving attention in Minnesota, that the Ojibwe and Dakota had entered into a bona fide military pact. He briefly recounted how the death of Indian agent Lucius Walker had tamped down what apparently was a growing personal animus between Walker and the Ojibwe chief Hole in the Day, a conclusion that demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the situation and leads one to assume he had conferred with John Nicolay or William P. Dole before writing his report. In total, Usher’s document was a remarkably clear-eyed refutation of much of the prevailing wisdom that held all Dakota Indians wholly to blame for the events of 1862 in Minnesota. Perhaps it gave too much play to Galbraith’s contentions of the traders’ agitation, especially since it was clear that Galbraith had ample reason to cover his tracks, but of the hundreds of official communications generated during the war, Usher’s was one of the most temperate. In any event, whatever the document’s strengths and shortcomings, Usher’s words would stand as the Lincoln administration’s—and so Lincoln’s—final official statement on the subject.
The Christmas executions did not sit heavily on the president. Wholesale vengeance had been averted. The expectation of the swift disposition of monetary reparations and Indian lands to Minnesotans had clearly mollified important political supporters. In the Mississippi Valley, the specter of Cherokee regiments fighting for the South had instead turned into the reality of thousands of Cherokee refugees who had been driven out of the Indian Territory and were now living in Kansas. John Ross was with his family in Philadelphia, and while Cherokee general Stand Watie continued to make incursions onto Union lands, these represented regional annoyances and not a national military crisis. In the Southwest, after years of armed conflict between whites and Indians, Kit Carson had emerged as the Union’s point man in the fight to bring the Navajo to heel and force them onto reservations. On the ground in New Mexico, the conflict was every bit as stubborn, bloody, and tragic as that in Minnesota, but the view from Washington was different. Lincoln and his cabinet knew that the Southwest would not become another theater of the Civil War, that the Confederates had been driven out of the region and would not be returning. The administration’s Indian matters did indeed “seem well.”
With the executions out of the way, the executive branch could resume, at least outwardly, its more customary ceremonial relationship to the Indian frontier. On March 27, 1863, Lincoln received a resplendent delegation of tribal chieftains from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Apache, and other western tribes. No record remains to say if they had been summoned or had asked to make the long journey east for an audience with the Great White Father, but such gatherings often did not have any official purpose other than to air general grievances. No treaty with these tribes was under immediate consideration, no outright war under way, and the air of the audience was that of a levee, with all the requisite pageantry, regalia, and affirmations of friendship.
Arrayed in a row, fourteen Indians sat in front of a crowd of luminaries including Secretaries Seward, Chase, and Welles, New York attorney general Daniel S. Dickinson, Lincoln’s personal physician Anson G. Henry, and various reporters, dignitaries, and society women. Altogether the assemblage represented a more powerful version of the visitors who had stepped off steamboats to witness the annuity payments along the Minnesota River; gawking at Indians was apparently a pastime that cut across boundaries of class and influence.
John Nicolay did his officious best to keep the whispering onlookers quiet as they waited for Lincoln to arrive. As for the guests, an anonymous writer for the Daily Morning Chronicle—probably Nicolay himself—described “the hard and cruel lines in their faces which we might expect in savages; but they were evidently men of intelligence and force of character.” The same reporter described how the president stepped into the circle at 11:30 and shook each chief’s hand as Commissioner Dole stood by, introducing each by name, after which Lincoln listened to unrecorded speeches by the Cheyenne chief Lean Bear and the Arapaho chief Spotted Wolf. When it was his turn, the president spoke through a translator, addressing the Indian audience in front of him but also well aware of the whites in the crowd and the reading public beyond.
“You have all spoken of the strange sights you see here, among your pale-faced brethren, the very great number of people you see; the big wigwams; the difference between our people and your own,” he began, and then turned to scientific matters. “We pale-faced people think that this world is a great, round ball,” he said, and at this cue a globe was brought into the room. The president then called on Dr. Henry, whom he called “Professor,” to “explain to you our notions about this great ball, and show you where you live.”
Henry stepped forward and obliged his friend with a tutorial, no doubt accompanied by many exaggerated gestures, explaining the formation of the earth, the relative quantities of land and water, and the names and locations of the United States’ foreign trading partners. The lesson complete, Lincoln took the floor once again.
There is a great difference between this pale-faced people and their red brethren, both as to numbers and the way in which they live. We know not whether your own situation is best for your race, but this is what has made the difference in our way of living. The pale faced people are numerous and prosperous because they cultivate the earth, produce bread, and depend upon the products of the earth rather than wild game for a subsistence. This is the chief reason of the difference, but there is another. Although we are now engaged in a great war between one another, we are not, as a race, so much disposed to fight and kill one another as our red brethren.
What the delegation of western chiefs made of this very curious contention is unknown. The Daily Morning Chronicle reported only that “ ‘Ugh’ [and] ‘Aha’ sounded along the line as the interpreter proceeded.” Lincoln then offered some unsolicited advice that harked back to George Washington’s plea to the Cherokees: “I can see no way in which your race is to become as numerous and prosperous as the white race except by living as they do, by the cultivation of the earth.” The United States desired peace with all Indians, he added, and then, beginning to close the audience, offered the most roundabout of apologies. “We make treaties with you, and will try to observe them; and if our children should sometimes behave badly, and violate these treaties it is against our wish. You know it is not always possible for any father to have his children do precisely as he wishes them to do.”
The president and the original inhabitants of the country over which he presided had always known one another at a great distance. What evidence exists does suggest that Lincoln believed in the necessity of reform and was prepared to make such efforts more than a minimal part of his postwar policy. And reform would come, without Lincoln, in the form of parochial schools that taught Indian children to hold their own culture in contempt and land-allotment plans that emphasized individual ownership of property and slowly dissolved reservations from within. Perhaps Lincoln’s considerable compassion might have blunted the effects of such measures; or perhaps, in the most optimistic scenario, he might have guided peacetime policies to more humane destinations. But now, confronted with “bad behavior” on all sides, white and Indian, the allegory he put before the western chiefs traveled in only one direction. Forgive us, he was saying, for our hearts are in the right place, whatever the less scrupulous among us might do to make you doubt the contention. If the same logic had been applied to the Dakota, it would have demanded that the United States absolve those thousands of Indians opposed to the war for the actions of the few hundred warriors most involved. That such a declaration lay beyond the reach of an extraordinary president who was occupied with a crushing multitude of cares, not least the emancipation of African slaves and the preservation of the union, may be understood. But it is no less a tragedy for all of that.