HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON

Poetry, at its most acutely observational, can complicate our accepted versions of history. In “Gerontion,” a poem about an old man that, despite its nauseatingly anti-Semitic opening stanza, has permanent residence in the echo chamber of my brain. In the poem, T.S. Eliot memorably writes:

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities.

With Abraham Lincoln’s 212th birthday coming up this Friday and, more pertinently, prompted by “38,” Layli Long Soldier’s 2017 poem, I’m wondering whether the accepted histories of Lincoln have led me down some pretty cunning passages and contrived corridors. Raised on the legends of Abe the forthright railsplitter, the weary and compassionate liberator of the slaves, vanquisher of the enemy Rebels, and holy martyr of the nation, I grew into an understanding that Lincoln acted to preserve the union and the notion of the value of a strong federal government. Later, from Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness Joshua Wolf Shenk’s excellent study, I learned that the sources of compassion and empathy I read into Lincoln’s sad eyes came at a very painful cost.

That pain. and his ability to grow wise as a result of it, has made him all the more appealing. Of great importance to someone like me was his greatness as a writer. The rolling cadences of the periodic sentences in his speeches have delivered perhaps the most memorable rhetoric an American has provided to posterity. And the man wrote poetry.

True, I have come to see that as a railroad lawyer, he advanced the interests of certain industries over others. But as a Yankee (a fan of the team as well as a native of the region) this hasn’t bothered me at all. But overall, I have always idolized the man.

And yet Long Soldier’s poem gives me pause. “The previous sentence is circular, akin to so many aspects of history,” she comments recursively in the middle of her poem, faintly echoing Eliot, though probably not purposefully. She is circling back to a circle, demonstrating in a sentence (each stanza of the poem is a prose sentence) the rhetorical deceptions rendered against the interests of the Dakota tribe of Minnesota by the U.S. Government:

It could be said, this money was payment for the land the Dakota ceded; for living within assigned boundaries (a reservation); and for relinquishing rights to their vast hunting territory which, in turn, made Dakota people dependent on other means to survive: money.

Although her voice is musical, she reads her poem in a flat, documentary tone. Understatement and the gestures of objectivity suit her well here, and this long poem builds in intensity. It is extremely effective in getting under your skin. Behind the tale of barbaric cruelty, a mild-mannered Wizard of Oz may have pulled the strings: my hero, Abraham Lincoln. “You may or may not have heard about the Dakota 38,” she begins her story, matter of factly.

If this is the first time you’ve heard of it, you might wonder, “What is the Dakota 38?”

The Dakota 38 refers to thirty-eight Dakota men who were executed by hanging, under orders from President Abraham Lincoln.

To date, this is the largest “legal” mass execution in US history. The hanging took place on December 26, 1862—the day after Christmas.

This was the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

With quiet yet relentless insistence, the poet incises the story into what may well be the resistant consciousness of many readers: “The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was included in the film Lincoln,” Long Soldier observes, “the hanging of the Dakota 38 was not.”

That is the last we hear of Lincoln, but Long Soldier’s terse statement of Lincoln’s responsibility for the repugnant executions (the 38 warriors were hung simultaneously above a single platform) and displacement of the Dakota people thickens the atmosphere of the entire poem.

We hear how, in the midst of unrelenting expansion, the United States “purchased” land from the Dakota people as well as the other tribes. The quotation marks are the poet’s, and although she attributes the interpretation to others, what she means to say is that “the entire negotiation” was based on “trickery.”

Long Soldier’s language is most penetrating when she describes how hard it is to trace the truth beneath the accumulating obfuscation of the treaties:

As treaties were abrogated (broken) and new treaties were drafted, one after another, the new treaties often referenced old defunct treaties, and it is a muddy, switchback trail to follow.

In the event, the treaties enabled the government and business interests to grab more and more Dakota land for inadequate or non-existant compensation. Lacking money, denied credit to buy food, and deprived of the rights to hunt beyond their ten-mile tract of land, the Dakota people were starving, and they retaliated. War broke out in 1862 after the Federal Government failed to deliver annuity payments that had been promised to the tribe in an 1851 treaty.

To confront the uprising, the U.S. Cavalry came to Mnisota. (Perhaps subtly commenting on the fog of war of these events, the poet tells us the Native American etymology of the state name: “mni” means “water,” and “sota” means “turbid.” ) After their defeat, more than one thousand Dakota people were sent to prison, and 38 Dakota men were hanged. “[W]hat remained of Dakota territory in Mnisota was dissolved (stolen),” the poet writes, supplying a pertinently clarifying parenthesis.

The Dakota people had no land to return to.

This means they were exiled.

Homeless, the Dakota people of Mnisota were relocated (forced) onto reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska.

After experiencing the power of Layli Long Soldier’s poem, I’m finding it hard to maintain my spotless view of Lincoln. True, there are many mitigating factors to explain his actions. The other side of his having ordered the execution in the same week of the Emancipation Proclamation, after all, is that he is responsible for the Emancipation Proclamation. And he had on his back the burden of being Commander in Chief during the Civil War. That must count for something. And while the bald statement that Lincoln ordered the executions of 38 Native American warriors in 1862 is largely true, it is also misleading, according to a Snopes fact check.

The statement “omits to mention that although Abraham Lincoln did approve 39 death sentences (one of the condemned men was ultimately spared), he also prevented the hangings of 264 other Native Americans by commuting their death sentences, in the same order,” according to the fact checker.

“It also fails to make it clear that the death sentences did not originate with Lincoln. Rather, the executions were ordered by a military commission and sent to the president, who had the legal authority to approve or decline to approve any or all of the sentences,” the checker adds.

And yet: is this mere hair-splitting in the face of an atrocity? The ethics supporting the hangings are naggingly questionable. “The Dakota were tried, not in a state or federal criminal court, but before a military commission. They were convicted, not for the crime of murder, but for killings committed in warfare,” wrote University of Minnesota law professor Carol Chomsky in a 1990 paper. It was a punishment not handed down to such other military combatants as Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.

“The official review was conducted, not by an appellate court, but by the President of the United States. Many wars took place between Americans and members of the Indian nations, but in no others did the United States apply criminal sanctions to punish those defeated in war,” she added.

And then there was the forced relocation that has formed part of a history that has shamed the nation through today.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness. To be sure, I haven’t yet dispensed with my admiration for the 16th president. But “38” has made a healthy dent in my hero worship of Lincoln. The power of the poem complicates accepted history.