163 years ago today, the largest mass execution in the U.S. took place. Ordered by Abraham Lincoln.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

There was no due process. No representation, no talk of broken treaties. It was the beginning of exile from the Minnesota area. Most of the bodies were dug up within a day of the hanging, to be used as cadavers, including one stolen by William Mayo, a name you might recognize.

https://ictnews.org/news/traumatic-true-history-full-list-dakota-38/

On the day after Christmas in 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged under order of President Abraham Lincoln. The hangings and convictions of the Dakota 38 resulted from the aftermath of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 in southwest Minnesota.

In addition to the 38 men hanged the day after Christmas, there were terrible injustices committed against 265 others in the form of military convictions and inhuman injustices to more than 3,000 Dakota people who were held captive, then forced to march west out of Minnesota.

https://www.mnhs.org/usdakotawar/stories/history/aftermath/trials-hanging

As the men took their assigned places on the scaffold, they sang a Dakota song as white muslin coverings were pulled over their faces. Drumbeats signalled the start of the execution. The men grasped each others’ hands. With a single blow from an ax, the rope that held the platform was cut. Capt. William Duley, who had lost several members of his family in the attack on the Lake Shetek settlement, cut the rope. 

This all took place during the same week Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

If you enjoy poetry, this poem about the hangings, 38, by Layli Long Solider is devastating.