In some districts there is a move afoot to strip Lincoln’s name off schools. Lincoln’s detractors point out that he said at the beginning of the Civil War that he was would accept the South if slavery were not expanded and that he was not an abolitionist when the war began. All of that, of course, ignores his change of heart. If Frederick Douglass thought he was a good guy, that is enough for me.
Some of our “woke” brethren will give him that, but they point out that Lincoln approved the hanging of 38 Sioux men after an uprising in Minnesota in 1862 that left about 400 white settlers dead. This may have been the largest military mass execution in American history.
What these critics don’t mention is that the military commission in charge had sentenced 303 Sioux to death. Lincoln was under pressure to sign the order. He instead halted the executions and examined each case. (This was in the middle of the Civil War.) He singled out those Sioux who were convicted of rape (on good evidence) and those who had participated in massacres of civilians as opposed to those who were captured in battles.
He commuted the sentences of 265 men, which was the greatest executive clemency decision in American history. This damaged his re-election chances in the northwest, and he did lose votes. When he was told about this, Lincoln reportedly said, “I could not afford to hang men for votes.” He also vowed to reform government policy toward Indians, “if we get through this war and I live.”
We ought to be naming more schools for Lincoln.
Some of the information for this post came from an essay by Sean Wilentz in The New York Review of Books, (April 29, 2021), p. 25.
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