The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War

by Annie Heloise Abel

You have yourself established a tariff of prices exclusively on articles produced by the farmers, including the sweet potatoes raised by old women and superannuated negroes. You leave the Jews and extortioners, some of the former of whom go about in uniforms, claiming to be officers and your agents to charge these same venders of produce, whatever infamous prices they please for wares they need to purchase with the pittances received according to your scale of prices, for the vegetables that supply your and other tables.

You pretend, I learn, that the President gave you discretionary power, in regard to Martial Law, and the Regulations in question. I do not believe it; for, if he did, then he and the Secretary intentionally deceived Congress by the equivalent of a lie. Do you pretend that the President paltered with Congress in a double sense? I put you face to face. Is it your act, in defiance of orders, that continues Martial Law in force in Arkansas, stifles freedom of speech, muzzles the Press, tramples on all the rights at once of the People of that State, and makes the State itself only a congregation of Helots, incompetent to be represented in Congress? Is it merely a contest between you and Phelps, which of the two shall be Military Governor? If it is your act, then justice ought at once to be done upon you, lest the President, winking at the outrage, and not stripping from your back your uniform of Lieutenant General, should deserve to be impeached, as your accomplice.

Or, do you dare assert that it is his act, because he gave you discretionary power on the subject, after informing Congress that Hindman never was Commanding General of the Department, and that you had been ordered to rescind his declaration of Martial Law,—nay, after publicly proclaiming that no General had any power to declare Martial Law? All the Confederacy thanked and applauded

him for so striking at the root of an immense outrage and abuse and an unexpected public course; but if he has authorized or sanctions your course, he is unworthy longer to be President. If he has not, you have defied his orders and justified men in judging yourself authorized and him guilty; and so you are unworthy longer to be General.

When I saw you in August, you were greatly exercised on the subject of my printed address to the Indians, publication of which in Little Rock you had suppressed, as if it could do any harm in Arkansas. You suppressed it, because it exposed those whose acts were losing the Indian Country. You wanted to keep what had been taken from me, and to escape damnation for the probable consequences of the acts, the profit of which you were reluctant to part with. I do not wonder the letter troubled you; for it told the truth, and condemned and denounced in advance more unjustifiable courses of conduct that you were about to pursue.

You pretended that it had produced a great "ferment" among the Indians; and that even many of the Chickasaws had in consequence of it, left the service. It had produced no ferment, and none of the Chickasaws had left us. On the contrary, the Indians were quieted by it, the Creeks re-organized, in numbers, two regiments, and the Chickasaws five companies. That was its purpose, and such was its effect.

But to you, its enormity consisted in its exposure of the conduct of two Major Generals. I told the Indians plainly, that it was not my fault or the fault of the Government, but of these two Generals, that moneys, clothing, arms and ammunition, procured for them, had not reached them; that troops raised for service among them had never entered their country; and that, finally, troops, artillery and ammunition were carried out of it. This censure of my superiors, in vindication of the President and Government, shocked your tender sensibilities. You were ready to follow in their footsteps, and already had the plunder; and you told me that "the act of the officer was the act of the Government." Did you really mean, that the Indians should have been led or left to suppose that these acts were the acts of the Government? That would have been almost as great an infamy, as it was to take the supplies, and so give them cause and reason to believe the robbery the act of the Government, and thus excite them to revolt. Moreover, when I told you that the act of

the officer was not, in the case in question, the act of the Government; that, if I had permitted the Indians to suppose so, they would long have left us; and that, to quiet them, I had been compelled, for three months and more than a hundred times, to explain to them what had become of their supplies, and how and by whom they have been seized, you admitted that "that was right for local explanation." As there could be no objection to telling all, what I had often told part, that they might tell the rest; and as it was no more a crime to print than to say it; I have the right to believe and I do believe that your real objection to its publication was that it exposed to our own people the actual conduct of other Generals, and the intended conduct of yourself. Have you left the Indians to believe that the late seizure and appropriation, by yourself, of their clothing and moneys, is the act of the Government? If you have, you ought to be shot as a Traitor, for provoking them to revolt, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.