Stories from the First Cathedral 19: Bishop Whipple Meets President Lincoln
Stories from the First Cathedral 19: Bishop Whipple Meets President Lincoln
"Abraham Lincoln sat in his office in the White House on the afternoon of September 10, 1862. His desk was piled high with reports from military officers, cabinet members, legislators, and civil servants. A series of humiliating defeats had been followed by a reshuffling in the high command, and now General Robert E Lee's army was encamped north of the Potomac, on the banks of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, barely fifty miles from the capital. The next day's battle of Antietam would produce unprecedented numbers of casualties on both sides, but would result in Lee's withdrawal to Virginia.
Lincoln was awaiting a visit from the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, Henry B Whipple. Whipple was a cousin of Lincoln's commander-in-chief, Major General Henry Wager Halleck, who had requested this meeting on his cousin's behalf. Bishop Whipple wanted to discuss the recent Dakota Indian war in Minnesota, which had come as an unpleasant distraction to a president preoccupied with a far larger conflict" (And the Wilderness Shall Blossom by Anne Beiser Allen, 2008).
It took days for Bishop Whipple to travel from the First Cathedral to Washington DC to act as an advocate for the Indian people after the Dakota conflict in August of 1862. After the war, there was a list of over 300 Indian warriors who were to be executed! Bishop Whipple pleaded for these warriors to be released because they were essentially prisoners of war [if not completely innocent of the conflict]. President Lincoln reviewed the records of these men and reduced the count to 38 prisoners to hang on Dec 26, 1862 on the gallows in Mankato, MN. This act of meeting with President Lincoln on Sept 10, 1862, caused many death threats on Bishop Whipple's life that year. The threats were overridden by the courage of Bishop Whipple to seek justice and mercy for his Dakota flock in the Diocese of Minnesota. The hanging of the Dakota 38, as they are known, remains the largest mass execution in United States history.