Selecting the Subjects, 4
Commander-In-Chief of the Northern Armies with something less than reverence. Lincoln, like Jefferson, was a president forced to implement policy decisions required by political pressures rather than personal conviction.
In 1862 he ordered the execution by hanging of 38 Dakota Sioux involved in the 1862 Dakota Trials, retribution for native attacks in violation of treaties. The attacks themselves were reactions to rumors that treaty-insured payments would be suspended due to the Civil War, and the reaction of traders withholding credit from the Native Americans because the Native tribes attempted to remove the traders from their historical role as the indirect distributors of the government payments. While it is true that Lincoln did in fact order the execution of those 38 Sioux prisoners, arguably the largest mass execution in the United States history, Lincoln did make one unpopular political move and pardon 265 other Sioux who were slated for death by hanging as well. (Brown, 59-61) The fact that 265 were spared and 38 died at political cost to Lincoln (the pardon was extremely unpopular at the time) does not reduce the resentment over the loss of the 38, especially since those who died were holy men and tribal leaders who, some maintain, were largely innocent of the crimes for which they were executed.
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was only dead for eight years before he was included in the plans for Mount Rushmore. Gutzon Borglum had worked for Teddy Roosevelt on his reelection
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