Minnesota and Dacotah

by Christopher Columbus Andrews

1857 · Washington : R. Farnham

Christopher Columbus Andrews (1829-1922), future Civil War general, diplomat, and state official, wrote these twenty-six letters on a trip to the Minnesota and Dakota [Dacotah] territory during the fall of 1856. He traveled by rail as far as Chicago and Dunleith (Jo Daviess County, Illinois), continuing by steamship to St. Paul, and making his way by stagecoach to Crow Wing and St. Cloud before returning east. Each letter describes the trip or discusses the territory's economic and institutional development, governance, and opportunities for pioneers, land speculators, and entrepreneurs. Andrews devotes considerable attention to the Minnesota bar and also takes an interest in such topics as farming, lumbering, railroads, waterways, the potential of Lake Superior and the Red River valley, and efforts to induce the Chippewa [Ojibwe] to adopt a way of life rooted in European cultural traditions. The letters anticipate the establishment of Dakota as a separate territory and review current proposals for demarcating its boundaries. Andrews also comments on slavery and the era's racial attitudes.

Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865

by Christopher P. Lehman

2014 · McFarland

Although the passing of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 banned African American slavery in the Upper Mississippi River Valley, making the new territory officially "free," slavery in fact persisted in the region through the end of the Civil War. Slaves accompanied presidential appointees serving as soldiers or federal officials in the Upper Mississippi, worked in federally supported mines, and openly accompanied southern travelers. Entrepreneurs from the East Coast started pro-slavery riverfront communities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota to woo vacationing slaveholders. Midwestern slaves joined their southern counterparts in suffering family separations, beatings, auctions, and other indignities that accompanied status as chattel. This revealing work explores all facets of the "peculiar institution" in this peculiar location and its impact on the social and political development of the United States.

Too Great a Burden to Bear

by Christopher B. Bean

2016 · Fordham Univ Press

This Reconstruction Era historical study of the Freedman's Bureau in Texas offers a personal view of the lives, struggles and misconceptions of its agents. Formed at the close of the Civil War to provide assistance to formerly enslaved people, the Freedmen's Bureau became the epicenter of the debate about Reconstruction. Though its agents in Texas were vitally important, historians have only recently begun to focus on their operations. Specifically addressing the historiographical debates concerning the character of the Bureau and its sub-assistant commissioners (SACs), Too Great a Burden to Bear sheds new light on the work and reputation of these agents. Focusing on the agents on a personal level, author Christopher B. Bean reveals the type of man Bureau officials believed qualified to oversee the Freedpeople's transition to freedom. This work shows that each agent, moved by his sense of fairness and ideas of citizenship, gender, and labor, represented the agency's policy in his subdistrict. These men further ensured the Freedpeople's right to an education and right of mobility, rights fiercely contested by many in the South.