To correct the record and hopefully educate the vandals who damaged the Abraham Lincoln statue with irrelevant slogans and a half-understood misrepresentation of history, here’s a few facts about Lincoln’s statement and actions around authorizing execution of 38 Dakota men.
From an April 2021 issue of The New York Review: “The most common charge in the current attacks on Lincoln ... concerns his approval of the hanging of thirty-eight indigenous Americans after a bloody, protracted uprising in Minnesota in 1862 in protest against enormous land theft and corruption, which left four hundred white settlers dead. To Bennett, Lincoln’s “hard-hearted” authorization of “one of the largest mass executions in military history” bespoke his racism. Disregarded is the fact that the military commission in charge of the matter, looking to crush the Sioux, sentenced 303 men to death. Lincoln faced intense official as well as popular pressure to sign off on all of the sentences but, appalled by the vengeful proceedings, he instead chose, at a critical moment in the middle of the Civil War, to halt the executions and examine each case with extreme care. ...
“He wound up pardoning or commuting the sentences of 265 — making him responsible for the greatest executive clemency decision of its kind in American history. Local racist whites greeted Lincoln’s intervention with seething resentment, which damaged his already imperiled reelection prospects in 1864. Told later that he would have had a larger margin of victory in Minnesota if he had approved more executions, Lincoln reportedly said, “I could not afford to hang men for votes.”
38/303 = 12.5%. The vandals’ statement that “Lincoln chose to execute the Dakota 38 to cater to white settler communities’ demands for racist violence” is simply a lie and shouldn’t be allowed to stand.
Evan Treborn, Chicago
Indigenous peoples still waiting for redress
I had to shake my head when Ron Onesti of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans said that they are “very hurt, very furious” that issues around statues of Christopher Columbus haven’t been resolved after two years.
“If this was any other ethnic group involved, this would have been taken care of a long time ago,” Onesti said. Really? Tell that to Native Americans that have waited a hundred years and more for their issues to be dealt with.
Chuck Mackie, Lincoln Square
Don’t blame Columbus
Blaming Columbus for the fate of Indigenous peoples is nonsense. He deserves credit for opening up the new world. What came later we all share the blame.
Michael Shepherd, Bellwood
