The American Indian as Slaveholder and Seccessionist: An Omitted Chapter in the Diplomatic History of the Southern ConfederacyAbel, Annie Heloise
History
The American Indian as Slaveholder and Seccessionist: An Omitted Chapter in the Diplomatic History of the Southern Confederacy
Abel, Annie Heloise
Indian Territory; Slavery -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
There were, however, other intruders that Cowart and Rector and Greenwood
designed to remove and they wanted to remove them on the ground that they
were making mischief within the tribe and interfering with its
institutions, or, more specifically, with slavery. The intruders meant
were principally the missionaries against whom Greenwood had even the
audacity to lay the charge of inciting to murder. Newspapers of bordering
slave states were full of criticism,[55] just before the war, of these
same men and, notably, of the Reverend Evan[56] and John Jones, the
reputed ringleaders. The official excuse for removing them is rather
interesting because it is so similar to that given, some thirty years
earlier, in connection with the removal from Georgia. Ulterior motives can
so easily be hidden under cold official phrase.
That the cause of slavery within the Cherokee country was in jeopardy in
the spring and summer of 1860 can not well be denied. To the men of the
time the evidence was easily obtainable. Almost as if by magic, a "search
organization" started up among the full-bloods, an organization profoundly
secret in its membership and in its purposes, but believed to be for no
other object than the overthrow of the "peculiar institution." Its
existence was promptly reported to the United States government and, as
was to be expected, the missionaries were held responsible for both its
inception and its continuance. It was then that Greenwood made[57] his
most serious charge against these men and prepared, under color of law, to
have them removed. Later, in this same year of 1860, Quantrill, the
Hagerstown, Maryland man of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, who afterwards
became such a notorious frontier guerrilla in the interests of the
Confederate cause, leagued himself with some abolitionists for the sake
of making an expedition to the Cherokee country and rescuing negroes,
there held in bondage.[58] The timely distrust of Quantrill, however,
caused the enterprise to be abandoned even before its preliminaries had
been thoroughly well arranged; yet, had the rescue been carried to
completion, it would not have been entirely without precedent[59] and its
very contrivance indicated an uncertainty and a precariousness of
situation south of the Kansas line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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