On this day in 1862, Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest ever mass execution in American history, hanging 38 innocent Dakota men after sham military trials. The ‘crime’ they were convicted of was resisting their own ethnic cleansing.
After a series of treaties forced the Dakota onto tiny pieces of land and promised US compensation never arrived, Dakota were facing starvation in Minnesota’s long, freezing winter. As a result, some of the Dakota attempted to fight back to save their people and their way of life
The battle of resistance lasted just 2 weeks before the Dakota agreed to surrender. U.S. Col. Henry H. Sibley promised that only those who engaged in attacks on settlers would be punished. Yet, Sibley imprisoned 2,000 Dakota, men, women, and children. Nearly all were innocent.
The detained were subjected to a military trial, where more than 300 were sentenced to death. The trials were a sham. The Dakota didn’t even know what they were charged with and they were convicted by openly racist judges.
Following the guilty verdict, a wagon pulled the prisoners through towns so the shackled Dakota could be pelted with bricks and other objects, seriously injuring some prisoners. A mob attacked other Dakota and one baby was snatched from its mother’s arms and beaten to death.
A massive scaffold had been built in Mankato, Minnesota to hold all 38 sentenced to death. More than 4,000 cheering people crowded the square to watch the hanging.
After dangling from the scaffold for 30 min., the bodies were cut down and hauled to a shallow mass grave on a sandbar in the Minnesota River. Before morning, most of the bodies had been dug up and stolen by physicians for use as medical cadavers.
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