On 26 December 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged simultaneously in Mankato — the largest mass execution in US history. President Lincoln had reviewed 303 death sentences and reduced the list to 38 (those convicted of rape or murder of civilians, not battlefield combatants). The hangings were witnessed by thousands of Minnesota settlers seeking revenge. An additional 265 Dakota men were imprisoned. The collective punishment and forced removal of the entire Dakota nation from Minnesota — including those who had sheltered white captives — was one of the harshest applications of collective punishment in US history.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
38 Dakota men executed
US Army executes 38 Dakota men simultaneously at Mankato
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