Heritage Renewal

News from the Center for Heritage Renewal, North Dakota State University

Monday, November 26, 2012

Teamster Shotguns at Fort Abercrombie in 1862

Throughout history, forts established along perceived and real frontiers provided the invading culture with places to garrison and resupply troops, and they were also created as points of gravity that lured in supply trains. A local historical example of this came in the form of a wagon train of teamsters that happened to be bringing a load of shotguns through Fort Abercrombie during the beginning of the US-Dakota Wars in August-September 1862. The post surgeon reported that a wagon train of goods, along with sixty double barrel shotguns, made its way into Fort Abercrombie just before bands of Sisseton and Yanktonai laid siege to it. The teamster supplies were in transport up to Red Lake in northern Minnesota for eventual trade in that area, but when the siege commenced, the teamsters decided to arm themselves with the shotguns to defend the fort.

This is a tid-bit from page 3 of a report put out by the Surgeon General's Office, Washington, D.C., dated May 14, 1868. The document can be found on microfilm at the State Historical Society of North Dakota (Bismarck), North Dakota Series 31132.

posted by Aaron Barth # 9:36 PM

Fort Abercrombie Local Post Surgeon History from 1857-1861

On Friday, November 23, 2012, I combed over some microfilm at the State Historical Society of North Dakota (Bismarck) that pertained to the local history of Fort Abercrombie, northern Dakota Territory (North Dakota Series 31132, Microfilm). Of interest within this were notes from the Surgeon General's Office, "Instructions for Keeping the Medical History of the Post," from 1857 up through 1863 and beyond.

On March 3, 1857, the United States Congress appropriated up to $20,000 to establish Fort Abercrombie on what then was considered one of the western edges of Anglo-American settlement. Abercrombie's construction would be placed on or near Graham's Island, and it would be built with new and reused timber and supplies from Fort Ripley. The post was entirely deserted from November 1859 until July 1860, and reoccupied by Major Hannibal Day and the 2nd Infantry (with three companies). On July 20th, 1861, Major Day marched with his battalion of the 2nd Infantry to the front lines of the Civil War, joining the Union Army against the Confederacy at the First Battle of Bull Run. The 2nd Minnesota, commanded by Captain Peter Mantor, Captain Markham and with surgeon W.B. Simonton, took the positions at Fort Abercrombie that Major Day and company had left.

posted by Aaron Barth # 5:42 PM

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Fort Abercrombie and Great Plains World History

A German lithograph from 1849 depicting the Aristocratic
crackdown on the democratic revolutionaries. Note the
coast of western France, and the two boats loaded with
Europeans preparing to cross the Atlantic.

In working as a graduate research historian on the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program grant awarded to the Center for Heritage Renewal, North Dakota State University (Fargo), I have been thinking more than usual about what Fort Abercrombie in August and September of 1862 meant when placed in a global historical context. This is leading me to several works, and one of which was the final chapter in Mischa Honeck's 2011 work, We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists after 1848 is titled, "A Revolution Half Accomplished: Building Nations, Forgetting Emancipation" (Athens & London: The University of Georgia Press, 2011). To capture the opening point of this title, a Thomas Nast cartoon illustration is included from a November 20, 1869 issue of Harper's Weekly, "Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner." The illustration shows a global thanksgiving table with a "Universal Suffrage" centerpiece. Surrounding the table are representative cartoons from a variety of ethnicities, including African-American, Chinese, Russian, Native America, and so on. This cartoon does not capture the realities of U.S. policy toward Native America at that time, but it does reflect Nast's personal ideals. This tension between the ideal (or the way things ought to be) and reality (the way things are) is a crucial element to setting down a good piece of history, and in this vein Honeck delivers.

During the American Civil War, Anglo-America battled with one-another over abolition and that "peculiar institution." This struggle between brothers and cousins is captured by the ever-growing and all-important industry that is Civil War historiography, nostalgic Ken Burns documentaries notwithstanding. If wanting to think about the Civil War in the context of the Atlantic World, or in the context of Global or World History, however, Honeck is where to find it. Numerous immigrants arrived to the United States in the years preceding the Civil War, and Honeck's history focuses on the German element.

By the late 1840s, population dynamics contributed to the upheaval of existing institutions throughout Europe, and political factions in Germany induced the revolutions of 1848 — revolutionaries had these crazy ideas about democracy, social egalitarianism, and voting on their brains. On the ground in the cities of Europe, street fighting was the norm. In order to escape this, individual Germans started chain migrations, or emigrations out of Germany and into the United States. By the 1850s, numerous pockets of German-Americans had settled the Great Plains, including liberal German thinkers and the North American Turnerbund (New Ulm, Minnesota is an example of a free-thinking Turner Society settlement).

Yet there is a paradox with the arrival of German-American idealists settling in the territories and states throughout the Great Plains, and Honeck only hints at it (in his defense, his study is mainly concerned with the eastern 3/8s of the United States and the broader Atlantic World). That paradox is this: while German-Americans carried with them democratic ideals, their physical settlement on the Great Plains invariably contributed to the protracted displacement of indigenous populations.

Many German-Americans became part of the Union fighting force during the Civil War, and after the war Honeck references the words of radical Eduard Schläger. In 1871, six years after the end of the Civil War, Schläger noted how German-Americans had abandoned those — ahem — silly 1848 notions of egalitarianism, and gained, "...a growing respect for 'Anglo-American business methods,' particularly the disagreeable ones, such as 'the greed for the dollar.'" Schläger's grumpiness reflected his disdain toward the post-Civil War German-American abandonment of philosophical foundations for a little or a lot of money. Honeck concludes with German-America's appropriation of industrial capitalism, and this is a ground-level view of how Max Weber's nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial capitalism overrode Adam Smith's eighteenth-century notions of moral sentiments, empathy, sympathy, and compassion.

In Dakota Territory and Minnesota, we are well aware of what happened in August 1862, from Fort Abercrombie, Dakota Territory to New Ulm, Minnesota and everywhere in between (including Mankato, Minnesota, the December 1862 site of the largest mass execution in United States history). Native America would indeed feel the brunt and shock-wave of industrial capitalism throughout the Great Plains, and there is definitely more work for Native and non-Native historians and archaeologists to carry out. In this way much of the past has yet to be considered and written. Honeck's concluding chapter is an excellent starting point to push scholarship in needed directions, at least as it concerns how Anglo- and German-American ideals gave way to the nation-making processes within the continental interior during and following the American Civil War. [Note: cross posted with slight modification from the blogspot, theedgeofthevillage.com].

posted by Aaron Barth # 8:51 AM

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Jimmy Mulligan's Story

Small Collection 180 in the NDSU Institute for Regional Studies comprises a typescript by one W. J. Wiltse, a resident of Lisbon ND. Wiltse recounts how in 1900 he picked up a harvest hand in Kent, Minnesota, named Jimmy Mulligan. Mulligan, it turned out, had been a fur trader among the Dakota, then been involved with the events of the Siege of Fort Abercrombie in 1862. He had acted as a scout and messenger during the siege. Wiltse's account of what he heard from Mulligan is suspect on several obvious counts. In various places, a knowledgeable reader is led to think that Wiltse has misrecollected or misunderstood what Mulligan told him. Still, this is another valuable narrative of the siege, and it contains certain details that ring true. For instance, the issue of water supply in the fort during the siege is perplexing. There was no well within the defenses. The only way to fetch water was to go down the high river banks to the north or east of the fort. This would have been most perilous, for the riverbed was beneath the line of sight or fire from the defenses. Dakota fighters easily could have picked off men going for water. The first solution was to use a shield. One man would carry buckets, and two others would protect him with a bison hide. This stopped arrows pretty well, but the hands and feet of the guys carrying the shield still were exposed to arrows. Moreover, some of the attackers had firearms. So this method of obtaining water was hazardous at best. Mulligan recounts that the solution was to dig a tunnel down from within the defenses and out the north side of the fort with exit at the riverbed. This was an improvement, but it still exposed those getting water to fire from across the river. So, the defenders angled the tunnel deeper, to go under the running river. The tunnel then filled with water, and men could enter the tunnel from within the defenses, fill buckets, and bring them back without exposing themselves. So the defenders were able to keep themselves supplied with water. The Mulligan narrative also carries other, incidental information. For instance, its wording, and the circumstances of fetching water, both indicate that the Dakota besieging Fort Abercrombie had only a few firearms. Mostly they were fighting with bows and hand weapons. This is important information both as to how likely it was they could take the post and as to identification of who the attackers were.

posted by Tom Isern # 8:10 PM