Abraham Lincoln and the Dakota Thirty-Eight

On the day after Christmas, 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged from a single scaffold in Mankato, Minnesota. It remains the largest mass execution in American history. The man who signed the order was Abraham Lincoln. He signed it the same month he was finalizing the Emancipation Proclamation.This episode is the second in our presidential series, and it's about how mercy and brutality can run through the same hand on the same week. We go back to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, to the broken treaties and stolen annuity money that drove the Dakota to starvation, to the rushed military trials that followed, and to the decisions Lincoln made when 303 death sentences landed on his desk. He saved 265 lives. He sent 38 men to a gallows after trials that averaged less than 15 minutes each.He took a political hit for the men he saved. He moved on quickly from the men he didn't.We also follow what happened after, because the story doesn't end at the scaffold. Bodies dug up by physicians the same night they were buried, including by the father of the Mayo brothers. Dakota women, children, and elders held in a concentration camp at Fort Snelling.The exile to Crow Creek. The names buried in a sandbar, and then in the country's memory.This is an episode about moral compartmentalization, and about what gets lost when we decide a man is too sacred to look at honestly.Have a forgotten historical mystery, disturbing event, unsolved crime, or hidden conspiracy you think deserves investigation?Send your suggestions to [email protected] History is a dark history podcast exploring unsolved mysteries, secret societies, historical conspiracies, lost civilizations, and the shadowy stories buried beneath the surface of the past.Follow the show and enable automatic downloads so you never miss a deep dive into history’s most unsettling secrets.Because sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.