Why the Cherokees Allied With the South in 1861
FROM THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. ~FROM THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes with Those of the Confederate States of America
When circumstances beyond their control compel one people to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified.
The Cherokee people had its origin in the South; its institutions are similar to those of the Southern States, and their interests identical with theirs. Long since it accepted the protection of the United States of America, contracted with them treaties of alliance and friendship, and allowed themselves to be to a great extent governed by their laws.
In peace and war, they have been faithful to their engagements with the United States. With much of hardship and injustice to complain of, they resorted to no other means than solicitation and argument to obtain redress. Loyal and obedient to the laws and the stipulations of their treaties, they served under the flag of the United States, shared the common dangers, and were entitled to a share in the common glory, to gain which their blood was freely shed on the battlefield.
When the dissensions between the Southern and Northern States culminated in a separation of State after State from the Union they watched the progress of events with anxiety and consternation. While their institutions and the contiguity of their territory to the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri made the cause of the seceding States necessarily their own cause, their treaties had been made with the United States, and they felt the utmost reluctance even in appearance to violate their engagements or set at naught the obligations of good faith.
Conscious that they were a people few in numbers compared with either of the contending parties, and that their country might with no considerable force be easily overrun and devastated and desolation and ruin be the result if they took up arms for either side, their authorities determined that no other course was consistent with the dictates of prudence or could secure the safety of their people and immunity from the horrors of a war waged by an invading enemy than a strict neutrality, and in this decision they were sustained by a majority of the nation.
That policy was accordingly adopted and faithfully adhered to. Early in the month of June of the present year the authorities of the nation declined to enter into negotiations for an alliance with the Confederate States and protested against the occupation of the Cherokee country by their troops, or any other violation of their neutrality. No act was allowed that could be construed by the United States to be a violation of the faith of treaties.
But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions. The number of the Confederate States has increased to eleven, and their government is firmly established and consolidated.
Maintaining in the field an army of 200,000 men, the war became for them but a succession of victories. Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they sought only to repel invaders from their own soil and to secure the right of governing themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted by the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of the Northern States themselves to self-government is founded, of altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties.
Throughout the Confederate States we saw this great revolution effected without violence or the suspension of the laws or the closing of the courts. The military power was nowhere placed above the civil authorities. None were seized and imprisoned at the mandate of arbitrary power. All division among the people disappeared, and the determination became unanimous that there should never again be any union with the Northern States. Almost as one man all who were able to bear arms rushed to the defense of an invaded country, and nowhere has it been found necessary to compel men to serve or to enlist mercenaries by the offer of extraordinary bounties.
But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all the rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In States which still adhered to the Union a military despotism has displaced the civil power and the laws became silent amid arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime.
The right to the writ of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was set at naught by the military power, and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the Constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any law warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men. The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed.
Foreign mercenaries and the scum of cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into regiments and brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion and without process of law in jails, in forts, and in prison-ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet ministers; while the press ceased to be free, the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in battle were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of their Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands.
Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past, to complain of some of the Southern States, they cannot but feel that their interests and their destiny are inseparably connected with those of the South. The war now raging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those States and utterly change the nature of the General Government.
The Cherokee people and their neighbors were warned before the war commenced that the first object of the party which now holds the powers of government of the United States would be to annul the institution of slavery in the whole Indian country, and make it what they term free territory and after a time a free State; and they have been also warned by the fate which has befallen those of their race in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon that at no distant day they too would be compelled to surrender their country at the demand of Northern rapacity, and be content with an extinct nationality, and with reserves of limited extent for individuals, of which their people would soon be despoiled by speculators, if not plundered unscrupulously by the State.
Urged by these considerations, the Cherokees, long divided in opinion, became unanimous, and like their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, determined, by the undivided voice of a General Convention of all the people, held at Tahlequah, on the 21st day of August, in the present year, to make common cause with the South and share its fortunes.
In now carrying this resolution into effect and consummating a treaty of alliance and friendship with the Confederate States of America the Cherokee people declares that it has been faithful and loyal to is engagements with the United States until, by placing its safety and even its national existence in imminent peril, those States have released them from those engagements.
Menaced by a great danger, they exercise the inalienable right of self-defense, and declare themselves a free people, independent of the Northern States of America, and at war with them by their own act. Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident of the rectitude of their intentions and true to the obligations of duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon them, unite their fortunes now and forever with those of the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and with entire confidence in the justice of that cause and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.
Tahlequah, C. N., October 28, 1861.
THOMAS PEGG,
President National Committee.JOSHUA ROSS,
Clerk National Committee.Concurred.
LACY MOUSE,
Speaker of Council.THOMAS B. WOLFE,
Clerk Council.Approved.
JNO. ROSS.
Many of you who are interested in the War for Independence, have no doubt heard of the valor of the Cherokee warriors under the command of Brigadier General Stand Watie in the West and of Thomas’s famous North Carolina Legion in the East during the War for Southern Independence from 1861 to 1865. But why did the Cherokees and their breather, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws determine to make common cause with the Confederate South against the Northern Union? To know their reasons is very instructive as to the issues underlying that tragic war. Most Americans have been propagandized rather than educated in the causes of the war, all this to justify the perpetrators and victors. Considering the Cherokee view, it uncovers much truth buried by decades of politically correct propaganda and allows a broader and truer perspective.
In 1861 there were two principal groups of Cherokees in the United States, the Western Band with the population slightly over 20,000 and the smaller Eastern Band in North Carolina with a population of only about 2,000. Both sided with the Southern Confederate, but the larger Western Band made a formal Declaration of Independence from the United States.
On August 21, 1861, the (Western) Cherokee Nation by a General Convention at Tahlequah (in Oklahoma) declared its common cause with the Confederate States against the Northern Union. A treaty was concluded on October 7th between the Confederate States and the Cherokee Nation, and on October 9th, John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation called into session the Cherokee National Committee and National Council to approve and implement that treaty and a future course of action.
The Western Cherokees had at first considerable consternation over growing conflict and desired to remain neutral. They had much common economy and contact with their Confederate neighbors, but their treaties were with the government of the United States. The Northern conduct of the war against their neighbors, strong repression of Northern political dissent, and the roughshod trampling of the U.S. Constitution under the new regime and political powers in Washington soon changed their thinking.
The Cherokee were perhaps the best educated and literate of the American Indian Tribes, and they were also among the most Christian. Learning and wisdom were highly esteemed. They revered the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution as particularly important guarantors of their rights and their freedoms. It is not surprising then that on October 28, 1861, the National Council (of the Western Cherokee) issued: A Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled them to Unite Their Fortunes with Those of the Confederate States of America.
“When circumstances beyond their control compel one people to sever ties which have long existed between them and another state of Confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their actions is justified.”
In the next paragraphs of their declaration the (Western) Cherokee Council noted their faithful adherence to their treaties with the United States in the past and how they faithfully attempted neutrality until the present. But the seventh paragraph begins to delineate their alarm with Northern aggression and sympathy for the South:
“But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions.”
Comparing the relatively limited objections and defensive nature of the Southern cause in contrast to the aggressive actions of the North, the Cherokee remarked of the Confederate States:
“Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they sought only to repel the invaders from their own soil and to secure the right of governing themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted in the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of Northern States themselves to self-government is formed and altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties.”
The next paragraph noted the orderly and democratic process by which each of the Confederate States seceded. This was without violence of coercion and nowhere were liberties abridged, or civilian courts and authorities made subordinate to the military. Also noted was the growing unity and success of the South against Northen aggression. The following or ninth paragraph contrasts with ruthless and totalitarian trends in the North:
“But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In the states which still adhered to the Union a military despotism had displaced civilian power, and the laws became silent with arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was naught by the military power and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men.”
The tenth paragraph continues the indictment of the Northen political party in power and the conduct of the Union Armies:
“The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of the cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit that basest of outrages on the women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion without process of law, in jails, forts, and prison ships, and even women wee imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet Ministers; while the press ceased to be free, and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in the battles were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of the Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat, to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands.”
The eleventh paragraph of the Cherokee Declaration is fairly concise of their grievances against the political powers now presiding over a new U.S. Government:
“Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past to complain of some of the Southern states, they cannot but feel that their interests and destiny are inseparably connected to those of the South. The war now waging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of those states, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those states and utterly change the nature of the general government.”
The Cherokees felt they had been faithful and loyal to their treaties with the United States but now perceived that the relationship was not reciprocal and that their very existence as a people were threatened. They had also witnessed the recent exploitation of the properties and rights of Indian tribes in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon, and feared that they, too, might soon become victims of Northern rapacity. Therefore, they were compelled to abrogate those treaties in defense of their people, lands, and rights. They felt the Union had already made war on them by their actions.
Finally, appealing to their inalienable right to self-defense and self-determination as a free people, they concluded their declaration with the following words:
“Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident of the rectitude of their intentions and true to their obligations to duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon them, united their fortunes now and forever with the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and with the entire confidence of the justice of that cause and with a firm reliance upon the Devine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.”
The Eastern Band of Cherokee made no formal declaration, but considered themselves North Carolinians and were anxious to join Confederate forces in defending their state and the Southern cause. The Eastern Band Chief, Colonel William Holland Thomas, a North Carolins State Senator, gathered two-hundred Cherokee braves to form the core of what later became the Thomas Legion consisting of slightly over four-hundred Cherokees and about 1,900 North Carolina men. Thomas, of Welsh descent, was the adopted white son of the late Eastern Band Chief, Yanaguska (Drowning Bear). He is said to have spoken the Cherokee language better than any white man who ever lived. The Cherokees had come to have great respect for his wisdom and relentless hard work on their behalf in North Carolina. It should be noted that the approximately 416 Cherokee braves that served in the Thomas Legion represented almost every male of military age of their small population. They served faithfully with only about a dozen known to have deserted.
Both bands proved their courage and loyalty. The last shot fired in the war east of the Mississippi was on May 6, 1865. This was in an engagement at White Sulphur Springs, near Waynesville, North Carolina, of part of Thomas’ Legion against Kirk’s infamous Union Raiders that had wreaked murderous terrorism and destruction on the civilian population of Western North Carolina. After returning from the Shenandoah Valley, Thomas recruited the Legion back up to 1200 men, including 400 Cherokee braves. It took some effort at the end of the war for Thomas to persuade his Cherokee braves to surrender rather than continuing guerilla warfare against the Union. Thomas surrounded and captured the Union garrison without bloodshed. He then found out Lee had surrendered several days previously and agreed to surrender the Legion.
In the West, Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie’s mounted infantry regiments became a legend for their guerilla calvary tactics, baffling and diverting far greater numbers of Union troops. In spite of early successes, by the winter of 1862–63 the Confederate hold on the Cherokee Nation was slipping. Nonetheless, Watie's Regiment continued to harass Federal forces. In June and September 1864, he scored his greatest military feats in the capture of the Union steamboat J. R. Williams and the Second Battle of Cabin Creek. In May 1864, Watie was promoted to Brigadier General, and in February 1865 he was placed in command of the Indian Division of Indian Territory. However, by then the war was lost. Watie finally surrendered his predominantly Cherokee, Oklahoma Indian forces to the Union on June 23, 1865, in what was the last land battle of war. He was the last Confederate general to do so. Afterward, he served as a member of the pro-Southern Cherokee delegation to the Fort Smith Council in September 1865.
The issues during the war as the Cherokee saw them were:
Self-defense against Northern aggression, both for themselves and their fellow Confederates.
The right of self-determination by a free people.
Protection of their heritage.
Preservation of their political rights under a constitutional government of law.
A strong desire to retain the principles of limited government and decentralized power guaranteed by the Constitution.
Protection of their economic rights and welfare.
Dismay at the despotism of the party and leaders now in command of the U.S. Government.
Dismay at the total disregard of commonly accepted rules of warfare by the Union, especially their treatment of civilians and non-combatants.
A fear of economic exploitation by corrupt politicians and their supporters based on observed past experience.
Alarm at the self-righteous and extreme, punitive, and vengeful pronouncements on the slavery issue voiced by the radical abolitionists and supports by many Northern politicians, journalists, and social and religious leaders, of which the Unitarians were the most numerous and vocal. It should also be noted here that some of the Cherokees owned slaves, but the practice was not extensive.
The Cherokee Declaration of October 1861 exposed a far more complex set of “Civil War” issues than most Americans have been taught. Rediscovered truths are not always welcomed. Indeed, some of the issues here are so distressing that the general academia, media, and public reaction is to rebury them or shut them down as politically incorrect.
The notion that slavery was the real or even principal cause of the war is very politically correct and widely held, but historically ignorant. It has served, however, as a convenient ex post facto justification for the war and its conduct. Slavery was an issue, and it was related to many other issues, but it was no means the only issue, or even the most underlying issue. It was not even an issue in the way most people think of it. Only about 25% of Southern households owned slaves. For most people, in the North and the South, the slavery issue was not so much whether to keep it or not, but how to phase it out without causing economic and social disruption and disaster. Unfortunately, the Southern and Cherokee fear of the radical abolitionists turned out to be well founded.
After the Reconstruction Acts were passed in 1867, the radical abolitionists and Radical Republicans were able to issue in a shameful era of politically punitive and economically exploitive oppression in the South, the results of which lasted many years, and even today are not yet completely erased.
The Cherokee were and are a remarkable people who have impacted the American heritage far beyond their numbers. We can be especially grateful that they made a well thought out and articulate declaration for supporting and joining the Confederate cause in 1861.
More in depth readings about the Cherokee Nation during the Civil War:
1st & 2nd Regiments of Cherokee Mounted Rifles
Thomas H. Legion: The 69th North Carolina Regiment
The Battle of White Sulphur Springs
Monica, thank you so much for this article. My Momma, never really said much, though I do remember some of what my Grandma and Great Grandma told me. I do still have Frost cousins that live now in Kentucky. I love to read and listen to as much Cherokee information as I can. My Great Grandma Sophie was full blooded Cherokee. I miss her very much....
It warmed my heart to learn of the Cherokee. We spent the month of January last year on Snowbird creek and hiked up and down trails in Western NC.Their declaration is just amazing.. We were recently in WayneSeville and Canton NC.