We know all too well the unconstitutional acts which Lincoln committed during his term in office including invading the Southern states which he considered to still a part of the Union and waging a total war on the Southern civilian populace, starting the War Between the States without congressional approval, suspending the writ of habeas corpus, imprisoning thousands of political prisoners without trial, shutting down opposition newspapers and of course ignoring the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution which provided for the sovereignty of the states and was the basis of the Southern states secession. It is illustrative that Lincoln similarly infringed upon the Native American Indians similar atrocities in an effort again to marginalize those outside his Republican political machine and to destroy those who stood in the path of his imperial ambitions and industrialization as his vision of the Union.
“In
fact, Abraham Lincoln is not seen as much of a hero at all among many American
Indian tribes and Native peoples of the United States, as the majority of his
policies proved to be detrimental to them. For instance, the Homestead Act and
the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 helped precipitate the construction of the
transcontinental railroad, which led to the significant loss of land and
natural resources, as well as the loss of lifestyle and culture, for many
tribal people. In many cases, government-appointed Indian agents (from the
Bureau of Indian Affairs) outright stole resources that were supposed to go to
the tribes.” (https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/janfeb-2013/lincoln-no-hero-to-native-americans/)
This can be viewed as a parallel with the Republican platform which largely
precipitated the Southern states secession, that prohibiting slavery in the
western territories which would have permanently shifted the balance of power
in the federal legislature. Lincoln
also prosecuted the War in order to retain his revenue stream from the tariffs
collected at the Southern ports and viewed these funds as well as the natural
resources and agricultural goods from the Southern states as fuel for the
Northern factories and industrialization and infrastructure.
“In
other cases, the Lincoln administration simply continued to implement
discriminatory and damaging policies, like placing Indians on reservations.
Beginning in 1863, the Lincoln administration oversaw the removal of the
Navajos and the Mescalero Apaches from the New Mexico Territory, forcing the
Navajo to march 450 miles to Bosque Redondo—a brutal journey. Eventually, more
than 2,000 died before a treaty was signed.
Several massacres of Indians also occurred under Lincoln’s watch. For
example, the Dakota War in Minnesota in 1862 led to the hanging of thirty-eight
Indian men. The Sand Creek Massacre in
southeastern Colorado in 1864 also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of
Cheyenne and Arapaho.” These policies
and incidents parallel the campaign of total war against the South and the
civilian populace which many historians have compared to war crimes. The South during the Reconstruction period
was subject to carpetbagger policies which confiscated the Southerners wealth
and damaged the Southern economy and families’ livelihoods for
generations.
W.
Dale Mason describes Lincoln’s policy toward Native Americans in his essay “The
Indian Policy of Abraham Lincoln.” “President Lincoln … continued the policy of
all previous presidents of viewing Indian as wards of the government while at
the same time negotiating with them as sovereigns,” Mason writes. “He made no
revolutionary change in Indian-white relations as he did in black-white
relations with the Emancipation Proclamation. While he called for reform of the
Indian system in his last two Annual Messages to Congress, he provided no
specifics and he continued the policy, already in place, of confining Indians
to reservations after negotiating treaties.”
It should not be surprising to see Mason’s erroneous view of the
Emancipation Proclamation as conforming to the main stream yankee narrative of
the Great Emancipator when in fact we know that proclamation freed no slaves in
Union held territory and only sought to incite a rebellion of slaves in the
Southern states as a war measure. No
mention of Lincoln’s desire and actions to relocate freed slaves back to
Africa. But, Mason’s summary of
Lincoln’s policies toward the Indians as “wards of the (federal) government”
and insincere negotiations certainly parallels Lincoln’s view toward the
Southern states, attempting to pacify them with the hollow words of his
inaugural address and offering a 13th Constitutional Amendment preserving the
institution of slavery all the while inciting the War to “preserve the Union”
and federal authority at the sake of the founder’s ideals of state
sovereignty.
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