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Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 02:29:23 -0500
To: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
From: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
Subject: America's Disgraceful History Of Military "Trials"
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<<a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo9.html>">http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo9.html></a>
<p>
America's Disgraceful History Of Military "Trials"
<p>
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
<p>
The latest assault on the civil liberties of the American people in
the name of fighting terrorism is President Bush's recent decision to
use U.S. military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorist
attacks and to decide on sentences, including the death penalty. This
is a horrible idea with a horrible precedent: the largest mass
execution in U.S. history.
<p>
In 1851 the Santee Sioux Indians in Minnesota sold twenty-four
million acres of land to the federal government for $1.4 million. By
August of 1862 thousands of white settlers continued to pour into the
Indian lands even though none of the money had been paid to the
Santee Sioux. There was a crop failure that year, and the Indians
were starving. The Lincoln administration refused to pay them the
money they were owed, breaking yet another Indian treaty, and the
starving Sioux revolted.
<p>
A short "war" ensued, with Lincoln putting one of his favorite
generals, General John Pope, in charge of federal forces in
Minnesota. Pope announced that "It is my purpose to utterly
exterminate the Sioux . . . . They are to be treated as maniacs or
wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or
compromise can be made." (Similar statements were being made at the
time by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who said that to all
Southern secessionists, "why, death is mercy").
<p>
The Santee Sioux were overwhelmed by the federal army by October of
1862, at which time General Pope held hundreds of Indian men, women,
and children who were considered to be prisoners of war. The men were
all herded into forts where military "trials" were held, each of
which lasted about ten minutes according to David A. Nichols in
Lincoln and the Indians. They were all found guilty of murder and
sentenced to death even though the lack of hard evidence was manifest
and they were not given any semblance of a proper defense. Most were
condemned to death by virtue o the fact that they were merely present
during a battle, during a declared (by the Indians) war.
<p>
Minnesota political authorities wanted the federal army to
immediately execute all 303 of the condemned men. Lincoln, however,
was concerned that such a mass execution of so many men who had so
obviously been railroaded would be looked upon in a bad light by the
European powers who, at the time, were threatening to support the
Confederate cause in the War for Southern Independence. His
compromise was to pare the list of condemned down to 39, with a
promise to the Minnesota political establishment that the federal
army would eventually kill or remove every last Indian from the
state. As a sweetener to the deal Lincoln also offered Minnesota $2
million in federal funds.
<p>
On December 26, 1862, Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass
execution in American history in which the guilt of the executed
could not be positively determined beyond reasonable doubt. (The
cartel of "Lincoln scholars" actually praises Lincoln for this act,
claiming that it is yet another example of his humanitarianism and
his "culture of life." He may well have killed 39 innocent people,
they say, but it could have been much worse).
<p>
This is not to suggest that the Bush administration, with its
decision to use military tribunals instead of civil courts to try
suspected terrorists, will exercise the kind of tyrannical behavior
that occurred during the Lincoln administration, but it could.
Military men who are influenced by the passions of war are not
suitable as unbiased judges. The administration should use the
current crisis as an opportunity to speed up our sclerotic legal
system and prosecute accused terrorists under the normal rules of
trials that are consistent with the U.S. Constitution.
<p>
November 15, 2001
<p>
Thomas J. DiLorenzo <<a href="mailto:TDilo@aol.com">TDilo@aol.com</a>> is professor of economics at
Loyola College in Maryland. His book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at
Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, will be
published in February.
<p>
Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com
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