i'm alice baumgartner.

i'm an assistant professor of history at the university of southern california. and this is my first in-person conference in since the pandemic and after two years where giving a conference paper was basically sitting alone in my apartment justiculating at my laptop. it's really wonderful to i guess be able to justiculate in person to you guys today. so just wanted to give a big thank you to the organization of american historians for putting together this conference and for accommodating all of the different varieties in which people chose to participate even though i know that came at some great logistical challenges. i also want to think raylan barnes who unfortunately can't be here today. but who is really the one responsible for bringing us all together today? she originally conceived of the round table as one that would be focused on the civil war in the

west. but ultimately last year around february decided to focus it on 1862. this is the year when the republican party succeeded and some of passing some of its original campaign promises abolishing slavery in the district of columbia and the western territories as well as passing the homestead act. it achieved legislative victories that would help the union win the war like the direct tax act of 1862 establishing the first federal income tax. this was the year when the fighting and the civil war took a particularly bloody turn with the battles of shiloh and antietam among others. when it seemed increasingly likely that france or england might recognize the confederacy. and when the congress and later lincoln recognized what many african americans free and enslaved had known all along that. this was a war over slavery not just over union. and of course the war in the

west is even more complicated and well, i'm sure be the subject of much of what will be discussing in today's roundtable. all of these decisions events have shaped the world that we live in today. and so it seems particularly apt 160 years later to think about this year together in this roundtable. as you might notice our ranks are somewhat diminished. unfortunately gwen wasserman had a family emergency and couldn't come to the conference at all. ari coleman unfortunately had his flight canceled and if you're wondering what airline it was it was united and wasn't be able to get here in time for this roundtable. they both asked me to say how disappointed they are to not be able to be with us today. so what we're going to do is ask our two the two members of our

roundtable to share some thoughts. i'll introduce each of them before they speak and then we will open the floor up to a broader discussion and i really hope that we'll be able to do that as a conversation. so first up we have manukuruka who is an assistant professor of american studies and affiliated faculty with women's gender and sexuality studies at barnard college. where he has taught since 2014 his work centers a critique of imperialism with a particular focus on anti-racism and indigenous decolonization. he teaches courses on the political economy of racism us imperialism and radical internationalism indigenous critiques of politically economy and liberation. he's the author of empires tracks indigenous nations chinese workers and the transcontinental railroad, which was published in 2019. right i want to echo the thanks

to the organizer of the conference, which i know is a huge amount of work, especially in these conditions and also to ray lane and i feel kind of sheepish because it feels like the from here the big 1862 doesn't feel so big. so i hope we can have a just a a discussion with everyone in the room. thanks so much for making the time to join us. so in my remarks today, i plan to focus on 1862 as a moment of escalation in the destructive power of the us in the world linking the wartime expansion of us military power with the development of us financial institutions, and i'm particularly interested in the relationships between the war or military and financial power in the west so-called and in the caribbean and the links between these two spaces. in its wars in occupations

against the seminals which up until that point where the most expensive wars that the us fought until the civil war and wars at the us was militaryly defeated and also against mexico the us war economy had tied together the production of arms in new england with the stabilization of slavery in texas in the deep south. by the early 1860s the war economy marked a confrontation between northern merchant capital which required a protected national market for its further growth and southern agrarian capital which required international exports to ensure its future. merchant and insurance capital based in new york city and the connecticut river valley began, the war paralyzed and divided undertaking a transition from cotton to a diversified portfolio of investments across ranching agriculture mining and industry. as you expected rapid us victory over the confederacy was

thwarted by a series of battlefield catastrophes the legal tender act passed on february 25th, 1862 authorized 150 million dollars in us treasury notes the so-called greenbacks, which eventually increased the 450 million with an additional half billion dollars in war bonds. raising funds to support military power over land and sea which would be necessary to defeat the confederacy. it provided a windfall for industrial and military contractors launching the careers of robber barons of the coming period in a further effort to raise war funds and in the face of bitter political polarization the revenue act which lincoln signed into law on july 1st, 1862 established both the first federal income tax and the first tax on inherited wealth and the agency, which would eventually become the irs. these laws in turn set the stage for the series of national bank acts past annually between 1863

and 1866 which formed a national banking system giving the us federal government the ability to issue war bonds and authorizing the federal government to regulate and tax the commercial banking system. on april 19th 1861 lincoln had issued a proclamation of blockade against southern ports. the naval blockade was necessary to stop the flow of capital weapons and consumer goods into the confederacy. it was a coercive policy to break the alliance of new york merchants with southern planters, which was running goods by a nassau, bermuda and havana. the us navy began the civil war with 42 ships in active service by the end of 1862. this would increase to 384 ships and by the end of the war the us had the world's largest navy. this navy provided the muscle for an expanded monroe doctrine in the decades following the war

with active us interventions against caribbean and central american nationalist movements in the service of ensuring us returns on investment. in cuba over the coming decades the us would leverage political economic and eventually military pressure to support an alliance of agrarian and finance capital that was based in north america. at the close of the 19th century the cuban revolution would seek to overturn this pressure. two days after the passage of the legal tender act on february 27th, 1862 the us executed nathaniel gordon cyan of a respectable main family. gordon was captain of the slave ship erie, which had been apprehended the previous august at the mouth of the congo river carrying a cargo of 897 african captives. this is the first and only time the us executed someone for participating in the slave trade. six weeks later on april 7th

1862 the british and us concluded negotiations on the leone's sewer treaty, which effectively ended us sanction for participation in the slave trade to cuba and brazil in dubois's analysis. this ended us participation legal us participation in the atlantics and the atlantic slave trade. 1862 also saw a transitions in us assertions of power over land. on july 1st 1862 the same day as the revenue act lincoln signed the pacific railway act into law the act chartered the union pacific railroad and provided land grants to the union pacific and the central pacific railroad, which is chartered in the state of california. in these corporate land grants the us congress violated treaties at its signed with indigenous nations along the path of the railroad the railroad companies use these land grants to raise capital to fund the construction and maintenance of the roads.

and these real infrastructure that they built. you know raise capital through this finance it moved resources out and it moved troops in. and these real develops took place in a on a global stage the end of the year would see the completion of the first the end of 1862 would see the completion of the first rail line in algeria built by the french and the spread of the rail network and restaurant western india built by the british. on july 2nd the day after he signed the pacific railway act lincoln signed the moral act. establishing the structure of the modern us public university through land grants. the moral act was another aspect of continental imperialism. by opening university education to small property owners the act deep in the class collaboration that has shaped settler colonialism. in the analysis of gerald horn by organizing higher education around modern disciplines producing graduates and

engineering accounting administration and management. the university's produced by the act would train in educate the cadre of corporations and a rapidly modernizing and expanding state. the political economy of our own era of crisis continues to operate within the constraint set in place by land grants to corporations and universities over these two days in 1862. at the end of the year on december 26th the us executed 38 dakota prisoners in what remains the largest official mass execution in us history. in historical context of the railway act in the land-grant act the mass execution was another kind of assertion of land-based power. involve the transition in relating to north america as a space of war to a space of policing a transition which remains unfinished in our own day. read together. we see the prioritization of the rights of corporations over and against international treaty obligations.

the expansion of land and sea-based military power was accomplished through the expansion of finance of finance capital. this in turn set the stage for subsequent developments such as territorialization vigilantism and the abrogation of treaty obligations that provided the context for the sand creek massacre on november 29th. 1864. in the subsequent period following the defeat of the confederacy and the demise of the southern plantocracy the war finance nexus fueled the condensation of us power between the, mississippi and california and in the caribbean. the definitive break in the alliance between northeastern merchant capital and southern slaveholding capital around shared investments in cotton led to the development of finance capital investing in industry. by the end of the 1880s us finance capital had in economic terms, nx cuba controlling the production of sugar and mining operations burning down old

growth forests to establish massive sugar estates building rail and road networks to transport raw and finish materials and importing thousands of seasonal workers from haiti and jamaica. have spoken about two executions in 1862 as windows into the transitions in place during that year. i'm particularly interested in how the defeat of southern agrarian capital was accomplished not through a revolution in land relations, but instead through a new alliance between finance capital and agrarian capital particularly on the plains of north america and in the islands of the caribbean. i want to end by calling our attention to the saudi execution of 81 prisoners this past march 12th followed by the us shipment of a significant number of patriot missiles to saudi arabia on march 21st as reported in the wall street journal. while the saudis report that they are unable or unwilling to rapidly increase oil production

to offset sanctioned russian oil for consumers in europe. this is taking place as we witness rapidly unfolding experiments between countries seeking to trade in currencies other than the us dollar. in these recent developments we can see we can also see assertions of power over c and land and attempts to stabilize the petrodollar to project a future for us power. the world remains caught in the grip of the war finance nexus thank you so much. our next panelist is jimmy sweet. who is an assistant professor of american studies at rutgers his current book project the mixed blood moment race law and mixed interest during dakota indians in the 19th century midwest analyzes the legal and racial complexities of american indians of mixed indian and european

ancestry with the focus on kinship family history land dispossession and citizenship. is dedicated to indigenous language revitalization and preservation and as research is driven by a need to understand the full effects of american colonialism on indigenous americans and how those consequences influence native people today doing so with the hope of contributing to the continued fight for indigenous sovereignty and the healing of indigenous communities, jimmy. homidakeby chanteo said not the achieves up, you know, that was a formal dakota greeting. i said hello my relatives and thank you for coming to this my mic not working. that working out. all right. okay. i'll start again. we have the time obviously we've a short few people. i said how many doc efe chante which they are not page use up, you know, and that's a formal dakota greeting and it means hello my relatives and i shake

your hands in a good-hearted manner, you know handshaking is a really a big deal and dakota culture and when i was invited to this panel, i intended to talk about the us dakota war of 1862, which is much closer to my area of expertise, but tuna two of the panelists. we're already going to talk about that which unfortunately they're neither of them are here today. but my thinking lately has been turning a bit more broadly from the from the us dakota war more broadly in scope and and in the time period to think more about native people in the west particularly during the civil war years. so 1862 and the civil war years is a particularly. horrible moments for native americans. i would i would say it's in this moment where the us government really goes all out and makes it you know the full policy to

dispossess native people of their land and replace them with white settlers. this really wasn't something new the us and other colonial powers in north america have been carrying out genocide and and dispossession of native american people for hundreds of years. but the civil war acted as cover for american lawmakers to explicitly make native land dispossession of a policy of the federal government and so in 1862, we've heard about the the congressional acts of that period the homestead act the pacific railroad act the moral act even all of these were legislation that focused on a dispossession of native people and not you know, the dispossession of sovereign indigenous nations, not just individuals but sovereign indigenous nations, and these are sovereign nations at long predates the existence of the united states, but this was a

policy intended to remove them from their homelands and replace them with white settlers. in the same years during the civil war. we also see the creation of a large number of territories, colorado, nevada and the dakota territorial governments were created in 1861, arizona and idaho in 1863 and then montana in 1864 a huge swath of the american west then was now, you know government presence and administration was now dramatically increased over this huge swath of native american territory in native american lands, which all these things coupled together this legislation the creation of these territories was really all about using the what was going on in the civil war has covered to dramatically overtake indigenous land. i mean that had always been kind of the practice unfortunately of you know, the american

government and other settler colonial nations and their southern colonial powers before then, but it really kind of ramped up at this moment. and and we also see the the ramp up in violence in this particular moment in 1862. so some of the ones some of these are better known like i mentioned the us dakota war of 1862, you know was was a major war that depopulated the state of minnesota and resulted in you know hundreds of settlers dead hundreds of native people dead and thousands of native people displace from their homes and eventually removed from their homeland in minnesota and one of our commenters who wasn't able to make it today professor gwen. westerman is actually a descendant of one of the 38 men at least one of the 38 men executed on december 26th. 1862, and i wish she was here to really to give what i know was going to be kind of like a powerful talk about that. but that's one of the better

known ones at least you know for historians are there's a decent historiography of that. another one is the sand creek massacre in 1864 in colorado. most people have heard of that, you know, and there's some some historical literature on that as well. but there are many many other moments of violence in this particular period in the civil war years particularly in california under what was what's known as the california genocide which was going on for a decade or two before the civil war and continued after but was a particularly bloody time during the civil war. so for example a lot of these are lesser known there, there was the the bear river massacre in idaho of where the us army massacred 280 shoshone men women and children. there was another massacre around the same period in california where settlers it wasn't even the military this time. it was local settlers rose up and murdered probably about 300

jana indians in california, and these are just a name a couple, you know of you know, the more extreme ones but so many of these massacres and these kind of violence was going on in the west during the civil war years and many of them are just completely unknown like particularly those in california just completely understudied you know, and there's people who are more expert on california than i but the native population of california was greatly reduced something something like 75 80% i believe not just in the 1860s but on a little bit broader broader timeline in the 19th century from i think something like 300,000 to like 30 to 50,000 or something like that and it's through largely through this settler violence that was going on. but anyway back to the us dakota war in the aftermath of that general john pope, who was the commander of the new department of the northwest.

i was created as a result of the war. he wrote to one of his subordinates henry sibley in september of 1862 writing about his thoughts about the dakota people. and he used the word sue. quote he said quote it is my purpose utterly to exterminate the sioux. if the power to do so and even if it requires a campaign lasting the whole of next year, in fact, it took two years and so he goes on destroy everything belonging to them and forced them out onto the plains. there to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts and by no means as people. with whom treaties are compromises should be made made end quote. of course, not every army officer, you know had of course, not every army officer had the same views but many of them did. most notably colonel john shillington who masterminded the sand creek massacre two

years later but the thoughts of the military officers of the time and some people in the lincoln administration. another aspect of the civil war was that it completely devastated indian territory, what is now oklahoma. this is where the us government forcibly removed thousands of people generation earlier and now the civil war devastated their new homeland and there were thousands of native people who end up serving on both sides, both for the confederacy and on the american side. that gets us to president lincoln. lincoln is someone who scholars in the public often view as one of the greatest american presidents, but the reality is he did little to nothing to curtail violence towards native people during his tenure. he did nothing to curtail the suffering of native people

particularly in the indian territory and places like that. lincoln side native people as a threat to white settler expansion. he perceived the future of the us as one in which indigenous people would be swept aside and white settlers would occupy their homelands and that is why we have the legislation mentioned earlier, the homestead act, and so on. 's political appointees, in the indian service at that time, the office of indian affairs, they were largely incompetent and they were corrupt. that wasn't just something from his administration, this was quite common in administrations before and after this, these were political appointees, people who worked as indian agents or worked directly in washington dc with the office of indian affairs. they weren't appointed because of their skills or their

abilities to work with native people or things like that or even to carry the federal policies of the government in relationships or 3d responsibilities of the federal government, they were appointed purely for political reasons and so often they had no experience with native people whatsoever and they were there to make money. that was a huge problem in the indian service of the period, these indian agents and other workers regularly stole money and stole supplies to go to native people as treaty guarantee supplies or payments sent to the indian agencies to be distributed to native people, very often these lincoln appointees were skimming off the top or sometimes coming from the top

all the way through to the bottom, that's one of the causes of the us dakota war, dakota people literally starving to death because a lot of the local politicians in the state of minnesota who were often worked for the government as part of indian service like for traders like henry simply who was an army officer. they embezzled all the money for the dakota people, left them starving, one of the causes of the us dakota war. this is what's going on during the lincoln administration. so lincoln and his appointees were interested in concentrating native people on reservation lands, taking their land for settler expansion. if authorities or militia groups felt it was necessary to commit genocidal violence to achieve that they did so and

we've seen that with sand creek, bear river, others of these massacres. scholars right of lincoln as being too busy during his administration with the civil war to do anything to help native people or really to carry out policies that would be protective of native people and their lands and those kinds of things, but rather lincoln was the architect of his administration. he was the architect of the policies of his administration. he was the architect of the actions that is appointees carried out. but anyway, i want to wrap up my comments as just thinking about the historical literature

about this period during the civil war and i look forward to a good conversation but i think there's a kind of twofold issue with the historiography here, one, it's a matter of scale. we need small-scale work and more large-scale work, on the small-scale there is deep literature on the us dakota war, there is some work on the sand creek massacre, another one of our members who couldn't make it today has a beautiful book, beautiful and horrifying in the trauma in their of the sand creek massacre, i wish he was here but they have other circumstances and weren't able to make it unfortunately. now i lost my train of thought. there is historical work on things like sand creek but some of the other moments of violence, extreme violence,

these massacres have gone understudied and in some cases completely not studied at all, we might know the names of them. that is one issue, we really need a lot more work of people to study these things, these particular events that were going on in the civil war period. another issue, we also need more work that takes these events as a whole and gives broader interpretation and understanding of why and how these things happened and how they relate to the civil war and what was going on in that period and just before the talk i had lunch with a great scholar who is in the audience today who just had his recent book come out, surviving genocide which gives that broader review but until 1860, we are waiting his second volume which -- we might be waiting a little while which

brings that to a later date but that's just one example of the important work being done, there needs to be a lot more work, not only the small-scale stuff of figuring out what happened but the broad scale, to get more into the meanings of this, how these episodes relate to the creation of the united states and coming out of the civil war and issues of reconstruction or lack of reconstruction in many cases when it comes to indigenous people in the west after the civil war. i'm looking forward to our discussions. [applause] >> thank you for such fascinating talks. it's giving us a lot to think about. i'm going to exercise chair's prerogative and asked the coerced question, after that we will open up the floor to your

audience questions so a quick reminder to go to the microphone in the middle of the room and take the time to think about what questions you might want to ask. i know there's going to be a lot. really fascinating talks give us a very, make the case for why studying the west and looking more broadly at the civil war is so important, whether it is the caribbean or north american west and i am going to follow up on jimmy's point about historiography because what these talks are showing us is to think more expansively about the civil war and reconstruction. there's been a lot of debate among scholars about how to do that. there's the framework of greater reconstruction. think about the west and the south together as periods of a

larger period of debates over federal control. greg down suggested limitations to that, arguing for thinking about the united states as a whole during this time as a coach war, and i'm curious to hear if you have any comments about how we might or to expand on how we think about what is happening in the south and typical textbook depiction of the civil war in relation to everything else and you talked about that, covering -- you were talking about the financial and federal expansion prompted by the civil war in that larger affect i'm curious to hear you reflect more broadly about how we might think about the united states as a whole in this period or whether we should at all.

>> that's a great question and one that i would need to think about a little bit more but some comments, obviously what is going on in the west is very different than what's going on in the eastern united states during the civil war period and obviously the civil war, the civil war directly in the eastern united states has garnered the vast majority of historical attention during this period and there's some great work particularly recently in the past couple decades about the civil war, directly, battles between the confederacy in the united states like new mexico and places like that and there's work thinking about again bringing this up, some of these particular moments with native people, growing historiography

of the civil war as far to in the indian territory which numerous battles, one of the most far over pieces of ground in the civil war was the indian territory, maybe not in terms of numbers of troops on the ground but number of firefights and things like that. and the aforementioned lunch with jeffrey, in our discussion before this, we were kind of using the reconstruction really may not be the right word for what's going on in the west, nothing was reconstructed other than being constructed or in many senses deconstructed, these native sovereign nations were being deconstructed and forced onto reservations. at the same time the united states was constructing and expanding their empire on top

of these other nations. the one place that needed reconstruction, indian territory, was not, lincoln had no real interest in helping the people who were suffering there, we are talking tens of thousands of people who were refugees in indian country, indian territory as a result of the war, flooding into kansas and things like that that he didn't care much about and not much was done after that. and professor mike the green who's in the second half of this panel whose much more of an expert than i am of lincoln and his administration might have more pertinent thoughts but that's one of the things i'm thinking about right now in terms of what that looks like. >> i've been really interested in turning back, to learn from debates in the 30s among

radicals about interpretations of the civil war as a revolutionary period, debates about the nature of that revolution, what kind of revolution, striking, we all know about the analysis of reconstruction as the most revolutionary moment, genuinely revolutionary moment, a proletarian revolution forced by the general strike of the enslaved and other analyses at the time, this is a period in the 30s in the depression which is a systemic crisis, social and political crisis, all kinds of experiments in working-class organizations and out of the use -- out of that moment people are reinterpreting reconstruction not as a proletarian revolution but as a bourgeois revolution, a revolution that opens up with in a battle between different factions of the american capitalist class.

i think maybe that sounds overly abstract but i think it speaks to the political demands of our moment in some ways in interesting ways with anti-eviction movements, experiments in food distribution and also the lessons we are learning more broadly in indigenous histories and understanding the history of this continent through indigenous histories and one question for me, central question is the question of land and land and property. if we go with the latter interpretation of the civil war as a boardwalk revolution there was a revolution between industrial finance capital and southern agrarian capital. it seems like there's an agrarian component to it. there are similar kinds of revolutionary pressures in

developing nations, countries that are developing capitalism. cuba itself in the coming decades there would be periods of times when a capitalist class within cuba would try to assert its own interests and transform policy, more protection so there could be more domestic production and was afforded at a return by us, political, and military power. but in reconstruction across north america we see a different -- there's a very different set of patterns it plays where there's a strengthening, never really a question of agrarian reform accept in pockets of the south we learn from dubois but agrarian reform across this expanded united states is not really on the table. it is the opposite, the

expansion of this industrial capital, expansion of finance capital is achieved through expansion of private property, expropriation of indigenous lands. i believe it at that. >> thank you for responding to that. that is key to think about. i love that idea of deconstruction. we need to have a deconstruction, a book about the construction go along with reconstruction. we will now open the floor to questions from the audience. if you have a question, please just go to the middle aisle and ask away. >> i will be brave. >> thank you.

after our critique of lincoln and various heroes it pushes a lot of buttons that need to be pushed so thank you for your comment. i am wondering about the comment or observation the civil war was a cover for this. it seems that implies a certain now we can do it, no one is paying attention and i want more motivation. more evidence as opposed to just coinciding with the civil war. and there is no civil war, it is counterfactual, there would still be some of these policies might still will be taken. the role of the civil war in these policies was as a graduate of a land-grant university, uc berkeley, i am part of this land confiscation and training of engineers and reorienting financial capital and that is all true, important observations but it seems to me

that there are other things that occurred, the moral act, the landgrab. how do we balance the critique of this holocaust of native americans and the other things that did arise from this progress, this development. >> you are right my comment was too strong a word. some of the evidence we have is for instance, making nevada a state in 1864 when it wasn't even near the threshold that was usually necessary. the number was 50,000 or 60,000 or something, and usually not counting native people, they only had 10,000 so they rushed through making it a state because they could, because there was a civil war and they didn't have southerners to tell

them you can't vote for that. that's one piece of evidence. if we dug deep we could probably find more. but you're probably right, it is a bit of a strong word. to get to your second point, thinking about the moral act and the creation of land-grant institutions and in the united states we tend to look at that as an important point because it does create the public institutions that do a lot of good in terms of education of the populace and a lot of people who would in the past 170 years never would have had the ability to get that kind of education, agricultural education, so we can look at that and why would we say negative to that?

so often so many of the things we look at as the common good did have extreme consequences for other people. there was a recent article by high country times, high country news that came out a couple years ago about the moral act and these schools and the way they dispossessed native people. i teach at rutgers, public university of new jersey, i am in this thing about that, there is that legacy that this university has, a little bit indirect, in that case, compared to the west because new jersey didn't have any public lands so they used land they sold, they didn't have direct access to federal lands.

that is just the legacy of so many things in the united states, so 1776, somehow managed to get roped into that panel as well. i will be making some comments there about the declaration of independence and the constitution which we look at as formative important documents but neither of those had native people in mind and resulted in inconceivable suffering for indigenous people and same with the moral act, yes, it is good but we have to recognize what it did in terms of dispossession of native people and with dispossession comes i hope us -- host of other things like starvation and loss of ceremonial sites and things like that. what i'm trying to say is we need to critique a little bit,

things we uphold as important, doesn't mean we should not see them as important anymore but understand they impacted people in different ways, that need to be explored or addressed. and possibly redressed for people today and what that means for landgrab for indigenous people. >> i will use that opportunity to give two plugs, what robert lee wrote, it is really good about the moral act, colleges and their effect on indigenous people and make a plug of anybody wants to make their way to the central aisle, we've been here all the while, does a good job looking at land redistribution that happened in indian territory and the ways that benefited free people and

african-americans and complicated story that happened in indian territory. interested and not very complicated story. a great place to look if you haven't already. >> if i could jump in briefly, this idea of the civil war's cover, for me, not only cover but content, and two concrete ways, talk about the extension but think about the expansion of the army. the number of divisions and officers, want to keep these careers, many of them. it wasn't going to defend, it was a huge wrecking tool that needed to supply things direct and there's the investments in the army, these investors who had a direct interest on the return on investment, the

growth of the military so the civil wars the context, i don't know about counterfactual but we can imagine various scenarios but the way it unfolded happened in this way. it is interesting to see the accounts of the soldiers themselves who were sent into foreign countries, foreign territory, the territory of other nations who were very bitter, to fight under very difficult, scary for them conditions, and to -- why are we being sent, that is not what we are here for. they are contradictions, in the historical record, in terms of universities, there are contradictions, these are

contradictory sites, i'm not a historian of education but it would be very interesting to look at german higher education in this period which is modernizing and developing and another state which is rapidly developing in an advanced capitalist economy which looks very different from what it looks like in the united states. there might be lessons for us in understanding the development of discipline and the developed of the universities, institutions across these countries. >> a fascinating comparison. our next question. >> thanks very much for these generative remarks here. i want to think about 1862, as a decade in which the united states as a nationstate,

understanding and jurisdiction, in the south and in the west. think about all the things you talked about 1862, 4 end of treaty making a decade later. similarly asserting centralized federal authority over critical matters that had been understood to be nation to nation or state-based or local but in that context, also remaking national citizenship, out of disparate elements, citizenship as the aspirational form we are accustomed to thinking of, african-american and other communities as conquest, the treaty apparatus of 1850s. the place where the divergence becomes clear, as you say, land, because by the end of

this period it is clear that while, this may be goes to your point about forms of capital, aspirations of african-americans for their own acres have been thwarted and mostly relegated alone, allocated into forms of contract wage labor, in the west, need to reduce the acreage they could claim and in that context, allotment which is in a way the cognate of what black southerners are demanding is the tool of conquest rather than the aspirational form. there's a funny contradictory or at least tension in the conversation about land in this period, i would love to hear your thoughts about that and thanks for provoking those ideas.

>> i think those, i would love to hear you talk more about that. those are really great connections. this may be random but hearing you talk, the question of culture, this is the era where historians, the defeat of the radical promise of reconstruction in the south and develop the sharecropping, labor, we often associate this with the beginnings of the blues and with that set of relationships, to eclipse radical possibilities i wonder if the patterns you are checking out, what kind of

cultural shifts are taking place that we could track and read alongside the blues that live with us and stay with us. don't have an answer to that but thinking with you with the comments you made, i appreciate that thread that you laid out for us. >> thinking of the contradictions, in so many ways things have a particular good to them but also devastation for other people to them, there are other contradictory moments to get your mention of citizenship, so for my own research, writing about citizenship, minnesota territory in the early states of minnesota, where it was so contradictory, it became partisan.

using native people who acquired citizenship to use them before political usage so when the organic act was created, it created a new territorial legislature in one of the first things it did was enfranchised native people of native ancestry, or black or native ancestry, and there were a number, in alabama, served in territorial legislature in first years of the minnesota state legislature. so many of them, so many of the white legislatures married to native women, they -- there were so many they were called democracy democrats because of

their connection to native people. and it kind of sounded fascinating, within the constitutional convention in 1857 on the eve of statehood, who to enfranchise but anyway, it is very obvious the democrats were interested in franchising ancestry, they knew they were on their side and would vote for them and if they were, they would have no interest in and franchising these folks, you see how some things that works really good for native folks was intended only for political purposes and 1862 connection is from every session of territorial and

state legislature 1849-1862, with legislatures, the us/dakota war happens in the local populace very much turned against native people, there's not another native person in the legislature until the 1930s so that particular moment, shift of thinking is no, we will not have native people part of this, you get to ideas of citizenship, fascinating because there were debates at the time racially, these are folks of mixed white and native ancestry, we should consider him white or for our purposes and things like that, really kind of weird moments of racial creation but very short-lived, obviously had a political purpose but i came to understand they were only interested in the citizenship for people they perceived as civilized. that was in the legislation,

these native people of mixed ancestry could vote and hold suffrage and be american citizens but only if they were civilized. by doing so they created civilized as a legal category, legal term. what does that mean? from the writings, civilized was meant to mean assimilated into american culture. folks played the part of you where american clothing, cut your hair, you guys can vote. i don't want to go too much on this but you see in these interesting cases where citizenship means different things to different people and how it could be used in different circumstances to the benefit of native people, sometimes these contradictory things worked to the benefit of native people and other times didn't. going the other way, with the reconstruction legislation like

the 14th amendment granting guaranteed birthright citizenship the supreme court case in 1884 made the decision the 14th amendment does not apply to native americans. the citizenship of the american citizenship of native people is in limbo and up in the air and murky until the 1924 indian citizenship act. there were those who acquired citizenship until then through allotments or through having a father who was a citizen who was white or something like that or mixed or something. and the idea was native people, the idea was we are going to hold the sovereignty of native people and say as members of sovereign nations they can't also be a member of us sovereign nations so you see very contradictory where in any kind of case where indigenous

sovereignty was a detriment to united states expansion they would fight and if this case, it worked in the united states's favor to travel sovereignty, works in our favor, we will uphold that but the contradictory nature of all these things that were ongoing in this period, you might get lucky if you are a native person it worked in your favor and very often worked in other ways, very much against you. >> thank you so much. to the center aisle, thank you. >> thank you. i really learned a lot and enjoy your presentations. when we think about historiography we are thinking about writing and words and obviously we've seen in the last few years how words like freedom seekers and water protectors can shift the way we think about things and i get stuck on the word massacre. on the one hand massacre

implies hapless innocents being killed for no reason. but in fact indigenous women and children and men too old to bear arms apparently posed some terrible threat to the united states just by existing. we don't close -- we don't think of the question from that angle. if you have other ways to think about the word massacre. every time i write it i am not satisfied but what other words are worth rethinking, if we are going to rewrite the historiography or narrative of this period and we want that narrative to travel to k-12 and beyond, what are some of the words we might be rethinking and what other words could we be using? >> i share that i don't want to

say a version necessarily but massacre doesn't feel like the right term for the reasons you brought up. i think there's another way of looking at this, part of a concerted military strategy. this is into massacre. it is how the us fights wars. that is grittier's thesis. there is ample evidence in the history of north america and of us wars elsewhere, the us attacks civilian homes. it attacks civilians and attack their food sources and water sources and so i don't know if strategy is a good word to replace cut and paste with massacre but that perspective, this is purposeful even in the case of sand creek where there's a big investigation and a lot of handwringing, this was

not supposed to happen according to the federal government, but this is part of a purposeful pattern that goes back centuries. >> an important question. other conversations like the debate, is something genocide or ethnic cleansing, not going to way into that but thinking of massacre, i could see how it does leave a foul tasting your mouth. is this the right word? it doesn't always fit in other cases but the reason in native american history why it is so important it was counter to the term battle where so many people would want to terms something like sand creek a battle or wounded knee a battle. massacre switches that around, this was not a battle between two opposing military forces who met on the battlefield. this was a massacre in the sense that when the u.s.

army as you bring up, their policy, they weren't attacking armies of native americans, they are attacking villages -- majority noncombatants, on purpose, to either kill them, drive them away, destroy their food supplies knowing full well it will result in starvation and death of noncombatants, women and children, elderly, things like that. that is why it is useful as a way to combat the idea that these things were battles but you are right, there's a better term. i don't have one yet but we always strive to use the best terminology or define the terminology the correct way. that is one that needs more examinations.

>> thank you for the comments. they've been really thought-provoking. i wanted to say, there's a way to think about how it happened in 1848 with the us missile snapple -- the us/mexico war. whatever you want to call it, it is a similar kind of, you know, targeting of civilians and children, homes and villages and so on. i was very interested in the way you were talking about capitalism and different forms of capitalism. the conference has been rethinking 1860s onward, to bring different kinds of powers. i heard about it in terms of plenary power and federalization of immigration policy and thinking of that in

relation to colonialism but there's something about what you are talking about with capitalism and imperial capitalism and capitalist actors that helps us understand settler colonialism, federalization and us empire more broadly and thinking about a broader project of imperial assertions of power. if you could talk a little bit about this moment vis-à-vis what we see come "after words". there's something very particular about this moment. how we think about settler colonialism and the way it changes over time. thank you. >> i really appreciate that question. both questions. i think they are related.

i agree, if we look at the development of capitalism over time, it can help us understand the contradictions it plays, the motive forces, the underlying struggles. in the coming period, this is set in the civil war era, this huge expansion of military power accompanied by a huge expansion of not just financial power but finance capital investments in the institutions of finance capital, securities market, all of these requires new rationality, new ways of thinking, people with money have to make these decisions. the phrase i hate, financial literacy of that time. people had to develop that. the robber barons, the most wealthy people developing this

as they go along. this is tied to the university. it requires new techniques of keeping statistics, keeping accounts, measuring probabilities, measuring the future and this expansion of investments, the expansion of these military instruments, that explains a lot about the coming period. one of the things to be that's very interesting, i turned to lenin and dubois, their analyses of imperialism, they were writing during the first world war, they argue that imperialism, they had a sense imperialism is a stage in the developed of capitalism. dubois in his article the african roots of war is explaining why the first world war broke out, he has a phrase, the dividends of whiteness were more familiar with the wages of

whiteness which he writes about, black reconstruction, but in that earlier essay he writes about the dividends, dividend is a financial term. to me it suggests there is a return on investment, a trans formation underway. what's really interesting to me, if we look at us history and the history of the united states imposing itself over north america and expanding into the caribbean, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century we see these patterns at play much earlier than dubois and lennon were assessing them in other parts of the world. in some ways north america anticipates patterns that were taking place elsewhere. the rail network which was studied and written about, and in that period, the scramble for africa and the scrabble for

africa materially, the construction of railroads, studying the history of north america. modern imperialism taking place elsewhere. the historical changes with settler can only lose some -- colonialism overtime. if we look at the continent of africa, roads explicitly, with north america. and capturing control over the african continent. those ideas of roads, in the rhodesian regime, and apartheid

regime, the people who made their wealth in those regimes at the heart of silicon valley in the united states. those are some of the ways to think about those patterns. i mentioned this in the comments i gave, the nexus of finance, that's the core of how this manifests. thanks for the question. >> this moment was about the commoditization of native lands. that was going on in 1862 through the homestead act, to make native lands a commodity that is something that so many treaties between the federal government and indigenous

nations, land session treaties, a majority of them were coerced or fraudulent in some way. and it was forcing them to then accept cash payments or other goods or services in exchange for giving up their lands to the federal government. that was part of the colonial project, to come modify indigenous lands for the most part, these people didn't come modify their lands, native people brought resources and lands like human beings have always done all over the world. the region i study, the midwest and northern great plains, those tribal nations were based on reciprocal kinship obligations. the most important thing you could do was make kin of

somebody through marriage or ceremony and they had obligations to you to help you out and you had obligations to them. it's a different conception of those economic systems that didn't necessarily, were not commodities, was not capitalism and those kinds of things but that is what this relationship was between the united states and indian tribes, trying to come modify native lands, the us could make money off of or expand onto those people. >> we have a little more than 10 minutes left. those who have remaining questions come up and share their questions and then the last 10 minutes or so to be able to have the panelists reflect on those questions. >> super interested in the panel. one thing i would think of that

makes 1862 better, the emancipation proclamation. i would love to hear some thoughts about the ways lincoln announced the emancipation proclamation, a tie-in of the union army and the defense of black civil rights, slave owners, what role does the familiar narrative play in the story we are hearing, how do you look at these stories? >> any other questions? we've got a lot. >> if there is time. in the current environment we see in addressing complex and controversial history on the national and statewide level, particularly someone like myself whose background or secondary education if anyone would care to comment on how to address these complexities within that context.

>> anything else? >> just briefly to raise up, the conversation we were having earlier on complexity, incredibly fascinating and i would love professors to expand at some point about indigenous men fighting on both sides in those armies, that would be a great piece to hear about. >> jimmy sweet brought up indigenous people as a threat to white settlers but i wonder what we think about indigenous people as a threat to the union war effort, especially if you add up everything you described, confederate treaties and indian territory, plus dakota war, 7000 un troops diverted even though it

requires a lot of material and a broader question is to what extent do you think there needs to be a distinction between the us's fight against indigenous sovereignty in the 1860 period and the fight against the alternative american sovereignty, that the confederacy represents. >> i am wondering, did these events going on in the west that we have so much to learn about have a direct impact on things in the east and the way they played out? >> last call. all right. a lot of interesting questions for the last 10 minutes or so. >> there is a lot. >> addressing you, i can

quickly jump in. on the emancipation proclamation, it is interesting to track corporate personhood which is still corporations are people, corporations are people in the way that you and i, they have more rights as people than most of us do. that person is directly traced to the 14th amendment. it comes back to land in a way, the lack of addressing the question of land. remember slavery itself in terms of property was a form of real estate. you are abolishing, making slavery illegal but keeping realistic and real estate relations. the case of southern pacific, santa clara, over its fences

and land, so it's a question of what is the corporation liable for, around the land so there's a land question. it is related to the abridgment of the radical province of reconstruction in the south, the experiments of black people, freed people and the question of how to address this is really profound and a beautiful one. teaching in public education with universities. and it comes back to the question about the language, what is the purpose of studying

these histories, observing teaching in a us survey. the purpose of the us survey is to create a shared common identity. my colleague at the time would have preferred me to be teaching, there are questions of language, i will stop there. and we need to understand, how these things, more broadly, we have more work on the intersections of african-american and native

american history and things like that, and the recent book, afro indigenous history. there's a lot of work yet to be done, making those connections but we learned a lot in so many important ways if we have more of that study. the k-12 question is one that, i've heard quite a bit, last year i worked with the new jersey historical commission, work at rutgers for a conference on indigenous histories of new jersey and got an inordinate number of questions from a lot of educators, they showed up and had so many questions, at least for me anyway, can't speak to anyone else but you are not

really trained with that, i felt horrible because i feel that something as an academic we should probably add to that conversation and how to do it. i don't have those skills, the case for too epidemics, we don't have those skills of how to make the things we talk about accessible to a younger audience. something we need to work on. a question about fighting on both sides. there were a lot of native men who joined the army, served in the regular army, served as militia groups, in indian territory, thousands of men who joined the confederacy and fought on that side. the last, you know, general, confederate general to surrender was a cherokee.

that an issue and it happens in other places, the us/dakota war, mixed ancestry men who fought on the side of the u.s. army, joined minnesota volunteer regiments to fight against their own people, some of them joined the fight against the confederacy, once the war started they were diverted to fighting against their own people and those things happened and there was a lot more work to be done in terms of native service and things like that. in essence, very much a native civil war there. the question of native people being a threat to the human army, diverted thousands of troops coming in the response they had to create a new military department, to send

leadership and troops and things like that, lincoln than exam to the governor of minnesota from sending his quota of people for the war effort in the east. that's a great question that we need to think more about, don't know exactly how to answer that but native people were a threat obviously. that's why they are fighting them but also they didn't need to be a threat, the us didn't have to expand on their territory. i don't mean to belittle the question, it is an important question but this is what was going on, troops were all over the place, maybe in some cases, shouldn't have been sent at all because they were under white flag of truce but that's a whole other thing, that's an important question that needs to be thought about more and the last question, things that were going on in the west, how

they impacted the east and that's an important question but i don't have an answer to that. the native connection, certainly there were native people in the east to served in the civil war and the galvanized yankees, confederate to were captured and agreed to become union soldiers. interesting east/west connection but that's a question i don't have an answer to. certainly something to think about. >> thank you for such fascinating comments and everyone in our audience for participating in this fascinating discussion. i don't think we answered all questions but we made a lot of progress. if you would like to stay with us to talk about this even more, stay around for the next part of this roundtable. thanks so much.

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