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FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2003

"[President] Lincoln's armies, after decimating and destroying the South in the War for Southern Independence, turned its war criminals loose on the Indians of the Great Plains and the Southwest. The tactics of murder, rape and pillaging, perfected in such places as Atlanta, the March to the Sea and the Shenandoah Valley, were repeated in places with names like Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. Small wonder one of Lincoln's favorite Generals was William T. Sherman, who wrote to his wife in 1862 that his goal was the "extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least of the trouble, but the people of the South." He said while campaigning against the Indians: "The only good Indian I ever saw was dead," and lamented to his son shortly before his death that he had been unable to kill all of the "Red Sob's."

Abraham Lincoln's "American System," adopted from Henry Clay, brought about the necessity for the removal of the Indians from the west. This concept of government had been vetoed as unconstitutional by virtually every president, beginning with James Madison.

The system called for the subsidizing of the railroads with stolen taxpayer money. Lincoln had long been the primary attorney representing the railroads before being elected President. For the railroads to complete their lines into the west, the Indian had to be either "neutralized" or eliminated. Thus, Lincoln left his fingerprints on the campaign against the Indian well into the 19th century."

Get the Story:
Michael Gaddy: The American Indian And The "Great Emancipator" (The Sierra Times 1/9)