Dimensions
153 x 234 x 20mm
In this era where traditional Protestant churches have lost their voices and have no national spokesperson, it is hard to recall what powerful moral voices these churches were in the formative years of the nation. Gustav Niebuhr travels back to Abraham Lincoln's 1862 decision to spare the lives of 265 Sioux men sentenced to die by a military tribunal in Minnesota for warfare against white settlers while allowing the military to hang 38 warriors, making it the largest single execution on American soil. The vast majority of Minnesotans wanted all 303 to hang and for the Indians to be expelled from the state. Only one state leader championed the cause of the Native Americans, a man who had only moved to the state four years before to take on the post as their Episcopal bishop, Henry Benjamin Whipple. Bishop Whipple had never met an Indian until he was 37 years old, and yet he took it upon himself to not only befriend them before the massacre and understand their plight at the hands of corrupt government officials and businessmen, but after their trial, he traveled to Washington to plead with the President to extend mercy and implement true justice. That he mostly succeeded is testament to the amazing moral force of mainline Protestant churches of the times, a church that boldly stood against cultural forces of injustice and immorality and birthed many memorable characters who guarded America's conscience, such as the inspiring figure of Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple.
