The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist. Annie Heloise Abel

Little Rock, January 29, 1861.

      To His Excellency John Ross,

       Principal Chief Cherokee Nation:

      Sir: It may now be regarded as almost certain that the States having slave property within their borders will, in consequence of repeated Northern aggressions, separate themselves and withdraw from the Federal Government.

      South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana have already, by action of the people, assumed this attitude. Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland will probably pursue the same course by the 4th of March next. Your people, in their institutions, productions, latitude, and natural sympathies, are allied to the common brotherhood of the slaveholding States. Our people and yours are natural allies in war and friends in peace. Your country is salubrious and fertile, and possesses the highest capacity for future progress and development by the application of slave labor. Besides this, the contiguity of our territory with yours induces relations of so intimate a character as to preclude the idea of discordant or separate action.

      John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees

      It is well established that the Indian country west of Arkansas is looked to by the incoming administration of Mr. Lincoln as fruitful fields, ripe for the harvest of abolitionism, free-soilers, and Northern mountebanks.

      We hope to find in your people friends willing to co-operate with the South in defense of her institutions, her honor, and her firesides, and with whom the slaveholding States are willing to share a common future, and to afford protection commensurate with your exposed condition and your subsisting monetary interests with the General Government.

      As a direct means of expressing to you these sentiments, I have dispatched my aide-de-camp, Lieut. Col. J. J. Gaines, to confer with you confidentially upon these subjects, and to report to me any expressions of kindness and confidence that you may see proper to communicate to the governor of Arkansas, who is your friend and the friend of your people. Respectfully, your obedient servant,

      Henry M. Rector, Governor of Arkansas.176

      Lieutenant Gaines duly started out upon his mission and upon reaching Fort Smith interviewed Superintendent Rector and received from him a letter of introduction177 to John Ross, which was, in effect, a hearty endorsement of the governor’s project. An inkling of what Gaines was about soon came to the ears of A. B. Greenwood, an Arkansan, a state-rights man, and United States commissioner of Indian affairs. At the moment he was the official, intent upon doing his duty, nothing more. It was then in his official capacity that he straightway demanded of Agent Cowart an explanation of Gaines’s movements; but Cowart was privy to Governor Rector’s plans undoubtedly, a Georgian, a secessionist, and one of those illiterate, disreputable, untrustworthy characters that frontier or garrison towns seem always to produce or to attract, the kind, unfortunately for its own reputation and for the Indian welfare, that the United States government has so often seen fit to select for its Indian agents. More than that, Cowart was a man of such base principles that he could commercialize with impunity a great cause and calmly continue to hold office under and to draw pay from one government while secretly plotting against it in the interests of another. On this occasion he attempted a denial178 of the presence of Rector’s commissioner at Fort Smith; but the Indian Office had soon good proof179 that a commissioner had been there and that he had proceeded thence to the Cherokee country. It was no other than Gaines, of course, who, when once he had delivered the Rector letters to Ross, saw fit, in the further interests of his mission, to attend the inter-tribal council at the Creek Agency.

      John Ross did not reply to Governor Rector’s communication until the anniversary of George Washington’s birthday and he then expressed the same ideas of concern, of sympathy, but also those of positive neutrality that had characterized his advice to the Indian conferees. He scouted, though, the very idea of the incoming administration’s planning to abolitionize the Indian country while at the same time he manifested his utter disapproval of it. This is what he said:

      Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, February 22, 1861.

      His Excellency Henry M. Rector, Governor of Arkansas:

      Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency’s communication of the 29th ultimo, per your aide-de-camp, Lieut. Col. J. J. Gaines.

      The Cherokees cannot but feel a deep regret and solicitude for the unhappy differences which at present disturb the peace and quietude of the several States, especially when it is understood that some of the slave States have already separated themselves and withdrawn from the Federal Government and that it is probable others will also pursue the same course.

      But may we not yet hope and trust in the dispensation of Divine power to overrule the discordant elements for good, and that, by the counsel of the wisdom, virtue, and patriotism of the land, measures may happily be adopted for the restoration of peace and harmony among the brotherhood of States within the Federal Union.

      The relations which the Cherokee people sustain toward their white brethren have been established by subsisting treaties with the United States Government, and by them they have placed themselves under the “protection of the United States and of no other sovereign whatever.” They are bound to hold no treaty with any foreign power, or with any individual State, nor with the citizens of any State. On the other hand, the faith of the United States is solemnly pledged to the Cherokee Nation for the protection of the right and title in the lands, conveyed to them by patent, within their territorial boundaries, as also for the protection of all other of their national and individual rights and interests of persons and property. Thus the Cherokee people are inviolably allied with their white brethren of the United States in war and friends in peace. Their institutions, locality, and natural sympathies are unequivocally with the slave-holding States. And the contiguity of our territory to your State, in connection with the daily, social, and commercial intercourse between our respective citizens, forbids the idea that they should ever be otherwise than steadfast friends.

      I am surprised to be informed by Your Excellency that “it is well established that the Indian country west of Arkansas is looked to by the incoming administration of Mr. Lincoln as fruitful fields ripe for the harvest of abolitionism, free-soilers, and Northern mountebanks.” As I am sure that the laborers will be greatly disappointed if they shall expect in the Cherokee country “fruitful fields ripe for the harvest of abolitionism,” &c., you may rest assured that the Cherokee people will never tolerate the propagation of any obnoxious fruit upon their soil.

      And in conclusion I have the honor to reciprocate the salutation of friendship.

      I am, sir, very respectfully, Your Excellency’s obedient servant,

      Jno. Ross, Principal Chief Cherokee Nation.180

      The Arkansas state convention, sanctioned by popular vote, met, by authority of the governor’s proclamation, March fourth. Its members were inclined to temporize, however; for, as Harrell says, they were coöperationists181 rather than secessionists and their policy of temporizing they carried out even in the provision made for reassembling after adjournment. David Walker, the president of the convention, was out of sympathy with this; and, at the first news of the attack upon Fort Sumter and while passion and excitement were still at fever heat, called182 an extra session for the sixth of May. The regular session was not to come until the nineteenth of August. Coincidently Governor Rector again showed where his sympathies lay by refusing183 President Lincoln’s call for troops.

      The Arkansas Ordinance of Secession was passed on the sixth of May. S. R. Cockrell had proved himself a good prophet; for, writing jubilantly to L. P. Walker, on the twenty-first of April, on the progress of secession, he had said,184 “Arkansas will go out 6th of May before breakfast. The Indians come next.” His closing remark had some foundation for its utterance. Intelligent and prominent Indians were to be found in the very ranks of the Arkansas secessionists. E. C. Boudinot, a Cherokee, an enemy and rival of John Ross, and later Cherokee delegate in the Confederate Congress, was secretary185 of the convention. M. Kennard, a leading and a principal Creek chief, seems