Lincoln and Native Americans By Michael S.Green, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 2021. pp. 176

Abstract

A historian of the 19th-century United States and the Civil War, Michael S. Green continues his scholarship on the American West with a focus on the relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and Native Americans. In a relatively short book, Green elucidates Lincoln's personal background, his politics, and his actions toward Native people in the United States during the Civil War. What Green has produced is a complicated narrative of Lincoln, a historical actor with power as president amidst a war, who attempted to maintain imperfection while acting foremost as a political figure in the nation. This book focuses on Lincoln and his policies toward Native people. Although Green includes some quotes from tribal leaders, he does not devote much attention to Native voices and scholarship in Native studies. Thus, Green's work makes a solid contribution in the historical field but leaves room for it to develop. Structurally, the book is comprised of six chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion. The chapters are organized chronologically and thematically. The introduction situates this book broadly in the fields of Civil War history, political history, and presidential history. It begins with Lincoln's order of the largest mass execution in US history of 38 Dakota men in 1862. Green compares Lincoln's policies to that of President Andrew Jackson's Indian removal. Chapter 1 identifies the racial project of presuming Native peoples to be “savages” and how this led to failed attempts to convert Indigenous people to Christianity. This chapter also explores Lincoln's family backstory in moving to Illinois, and it identifies books that may have influenced Lincoln's perspective on Black enslavement in the Americas and on Native people. Chapter 2 examines the narrative of the Black Hawk War (1832) as Anglo-Americans seizing Native lands through treaties and removal. Green notes that “new treaties took more Native land, and in a harbinger of the next major removal, relocating Black Hawk's band to modern-day Iowa and Kansas cost more lives than the war did” (p. 17). He identifies Lincoln's relationship to politics and the West envisioned as a space of free laborers where Native Americans lived and where their removal by the government opened white homesteading and railroads. Chapter 3 grapples with Lincoln's treatment of Native Americans and federal Indian policy, including meetings with 12 tribal chiefs. Chapter 4 highlights differences between Lincoln's and Jefferson Davis's approach to Indian territory. Chapter 5 describes the hanging of 38 Dakota men as “America's largest execution ever” (p. 69), while, at the same time, the arguments in the chapter depict Lincoln as navigating a calculus of political decisions, including the rejection of 264 death sentences. Chapter 6 addresses the Sand Creek Massacre (1864) and the Diné (Navajo) Long Walk (1863−1864), and summarizes Lincoln's attitude in not condoning these actions, even if not leading to them directly: “As the troubled Union tried to extend its empire and power westward, Americans saw Indigenous people as in the way, at the time and for decades to come” (p. 103). The photographs in Lincoln and Native Americans are thoughtful, and they balance representation of US imperial figures alongside Indigenous leaders. Some of these images include Native leaders such as Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiah (Black Hawk), leader of the Sauk and Mesquakie, along with a photograph from the Library of Congress of an unidentified delegation of Indigenous leaders at the White House, Chief John Ross (Cherokee), and Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders, including Black Kettle. Green has no easy task in writing this holistic narrative for the Concise Lincoln Library series (http://www.siupress.com/series/concise-lincoln-library). He notes that “any examination of Lincoln and Native Americans reveals much that should disturb his fans” (p. 106). Indeed, there are supporters of Lincoln who idealize him to the point of ignoring acts of violence and genocide directed at the Dakota who died protecting their land from settler encroachment in 1862. Yet, Green also adds, “But a litany of condemnation is unfair to Lincoln” (p. 107). Here, Green attempts to create a balance in highlighting Lincoln's political relationship to Native American leaders and Native people amidst a rise in settler colonial state violence as the United States oriented westward. What is clear is that Lincoln played a large role in the expansion of the US empire during a time of racial and settler colonial hierarchies, all while having the Civil War as the backdrop. The author declares no conflict of interest.