Posts Tagged Politics

Robert Smalls was born on Ashdale Plantation on Lady’s Island, South Carolina. As a descendent of Guinea slaves, Smalls was hired as a deckhand on the CSS Planter, an armed Confederate military transport in 1861. He served under Brigadier General Roswell Ripley, commander of the Second Military District of South Carolina. Smalls was promoted to pilot of the Planter within a year.

On May 12, 1862, the Planter’s officers decided to have the crew spend the night ashore. In the early morning hours, Smalls, then 23, commandeered Planter. At that time, the ship was loaded with weapons and equipment for the rebel forts. Along with seven of the eight enslaved crewmen, Smalls stopped by a nearby wharf to pick up Smalls’ wife, children and twelve relatives of the other crewmen. They sailed towards the nearest Union blockading ship, Onward, with a raised white flag. Dressed in a captain’s uniform, Smalls reported shouted, “Good morning, sir! I have brought you some of the old United States’ guns, sir!”

Regarded as a national hero in the north, Smalls and his associates were given prize money from President Lincoln for their efforts and information regarding rebel locations. Smalls continued to fight in the Civil War for the Union and became the first black captain of a United States vessel. After the war, he learned to read and write and participated in the drafting of South Carolina’s state constitution. Smalls went on to serve five terms as a U.S. Congressman representing South Carolina. He moved back to Beaufort, South Carolina and served for nearly 20 years as U.S. Collector of Customs and lived, as the owner, in the same house in which he had been a slave.

Further Reading
The Atlantic
Robert Smalls on the Biographical Directory of the US Congress
RobertSmalls.org

“Your coming and asking me for my country makes me sad, and your saying I am not able to do anything with my country makes me still more sad.”

- Sleepy Eyes, Dakota Chief, July 19, 1851

Photo source here.

Henry Ward Beecher

Kansas was in an uproar following the 1854 Kansas- Nebraska Act that gave territories the power to choose to be either a free state or a slave state. The problem with this act was that it negated the Missouri Compromise of 1920, which stated that any new state in the West or north of Missouri’s lower state line was entered into the Union as a free state.

Leading up to the Civil War, Kansas experienced bloody battles between abolitionists, who wanted no slavery, and those who supported Kansas as a slave state. Because of the fighting, Kansas was nicknamed “Bleeding Kansas.” Ultimately, Kansas entered as a free state in January 1861.

During Kansas’ upheaval, abolitionists across the Union sent supplies, and in some cases, fighters to help establish a free state. One of these abolitionists was New York preacher Henry Ward Beecher. He, along with his congregation, wanted to help anti-slavery agenda. The one thing he believed the new Kansas emigrants needed most was guns. His group raised around $625 and bought Sharps rifles, costing $25 each, and 25 Bibles. The crates of weapons were labeled “Beecher’s Bibles,” so it would not arouse suspicion. On February 8, 1856, the New York Tribune ran a article on Beecher in which it discusses the ideology behind the guns.

He [Henry W. Beecher] believed that the Sharps Rifle was a truly moral agency, and that there was more moral power in one of those instruments, so far as the slaveholders of Kansas were concerned, than in a hundred Bibles. You might just as well. . . read the Bible to Buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp’s rifle.

Beecher’s sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a powerful anti-slavery novel still popular today.

Information

Patrick, E.J. The Civil War Reader: Facts, Trivia, Legends, and Lore. New York: MJF Books, 2008, 5-7.

Information and Photo – Kansas Historical Society website.

Wilma Mankiller

The daughter of a full-blood Cherokee father and a Dutch-Irish mother, Wilma Mankiller became the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She was the first woman to hold that title.

Her paternal Cherokee ancestors were participants in the 1838-1839 forceful and deadly removal known as the Trail of Tears. In her youth, Mankiller and her family were a part of the federal relocation program aimed at “urbanizing” rural Indians. They relocated to a low-income housing project in San Francisco. Mankiller married and had a family as well as studied sociology at San Francisco State University. In November 1969, students associated with the Red Power Movement famously took over Alcatraz Island and claimed the deserted federal prison land as American Indian land. This event influenced Mankiller into changing the direction of her life. She later wrote, “Every day that passed seemed to give me more self-respect and sense of pride.”

After doing volunteer work among American Indians around San Francisco in the 1970s, Mankiller moved back to Oklahoma and continued to work in communities to further develop the 200,000-members of the Cherokee Nation. After a life-altering car crash in 1979, Mankiller became a more vocal advocate on issues affecting the tribe.

Her National Woman’s Hall of Fame biography describes her rise to the Principal Chef position and the impact she had on social and economic issues.

In 1983 she ran for deputy chief of the Nation, and in 1985 Mankiller became Principal Chief. Mankiller brought about important strides for the Cherokees, including improved health care, education, utilities management and tribal government. Future plans call for attracting higher-paying industry to the area, improving adult literacy, supporting women returning to school and more. Mankiller also lived in the larger world, active in civil rights matters, lobbying the federal government and supporting women’s activities and issues.

In 1998, President Clinton awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mankiller for her social and economic work with Cherokee Nation.

She battled lymphoma in 1995 and breast cancer in 1999 along with two kidney transplants in 1990 and 1998, Mankiller succumbed to pancreatic cancer on April 6, 2010. At the news of Mankiller’s passing, President Obama released the following statement:

I am deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Wilma Mankiller today.  As the Cherokee Nation’s first female chief, she transformed the Nation-to-Nation relationship between the Cherokee Nation and the Federal Government, and served as an inspiration to women in Indian Country and across America.  A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she was recognized for her vision and commitment to a brighter future for all Americans.  Her legacy will continue to encourage and motivate all who carry on her work. Michelle and I offer our condolences to Wilma’s family, especially her husband Charlie and two daughters, Gina and Felicia, as well as the Cherokee Nation and all those who knew her and were touched by her good works.

Further Reading
Lisa, Laurie, “Wilma Mankiller” in Gretchen Bataille, ed. Native American Women. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993, 161.
Nelson, Andrew, “Wilma Mankiller,” Salon, November 20, 2001, found online here.
President Obama’s statement found at the White House website.
Photo and additional information – “Wilma Mankiller,” National Women’s Hall of Fame website.

Eugenie Anderson pictured at a DFL State Convention in Minnesota, 1954.

Eugenie M. Anderson (1909-1997) was the first woman appointed as a United States Ambassador. In 1949, President Truman selected Anderson to be the Ambassador to Denmark. She was the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark from October 20, 1949 to January 19, 1953.

She had been involved in local and state politics leading up to her appointment by Truman. After a trip to Europe and seeing the Communist state of Germany, Anderson joined the Democratic Party on her return to Minnesota. Anderson, along with Hubert Humphrey (future U.S. Vice President), eliminated the Communist sections within the party. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party formed out of these efforts, the DFL is still a leading political party in Minnesota today. This political activity earned Anderson the Ambassador role.

Information:
U.S. Department of State, Women in Diplomacy.
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.
Binder, David, “Eugenie Anderson, 87, First Woman to Be U.S. Ambassador,” New York Times, April 3, 1997.
Photo via Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection.