Lincoln and the Indians ─ Civil War Policy and Politics

The Minnesota Historical Society Press has returned this book to print; it was originally published in 1978. The book's treatment of Indian affairs under the presidency of Abraham Lincoln has stood the test of time. Its facts are carefully researched, it fills an important gap in the history of the era, and its analysis is still very relevant. In a thoughtful preface, author David Nichols writes that the book's purpose is to look from a white man's perspective at how and why white men acted as they did in some of the more terrible chapters of US history. He also notes that this book comes from an unusual perspective on US history: that American history, Black history, Civil War history, and so on can't be understood as separate from Native American history. All these groups interacted together to create situations and events. In this book, Nichols reveals the Indian Affairs system as a network of open profiteering and political patronage, which survived because it was vitally important as a career-maker for national politicians. The system also documents Civil War-era definitions of race and citizenship. The book shows the interactions of the Indian Affairs system with whites who fostered it, tried to stop it, and were driven to compromise with it by the expediencies of politics and the desperation of war. First among them was President Lincoln, who simultaneously prevented and allowed the largest mass execution in US history. The accused were Dakota people starved into rebellion by a corrupt and incompetent goods-distribution system first encountering the actual needs of the US in wartime. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)