Chief John Ross During the Civil War

Chief John Ross During the Civil War Gary E. Moulton Seventy years of life were clearly evident from the whitened hair of Cherokee Chief John Ross. These years, however, had not reduced his able and energetic leadership, and he could look from his home, set in the wooded hills near the Cherokee capital at Tahlequah, upon a people who had known peace and prosperity for more than a decade. Yet the half dozen years after 1860 would prove the most trying of his brilliant career, as the Civil War rekindled factional fires in the Cherokee Nation. During this divisive era, the great theme of his life, unity among the Cherokees, would meet its severest test, and only with his death in 1866 did it become a reality. The Cherokee Nation had been plagued by severe domestic divisions which originated largely with the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. This document was signed by representatives of the "Treaty Party" and was opposed by the "National Party" led by Ross. It required that the tribal homelands in Georgia be relinquished and that the Cherokees remove to lands west of the Mississippi River. The fierce hostilities that marked the first years in Indian Territory were abated by the compromise Treaty of 1846 which allowed the Cherokees a decade and a half of abundance and growth. Yet the Civil War revived the dormant passions and swept the Cherokees into the white man's conflict. The differences which spawned divisions in the Union at large were reenacted in microcosm on the Indian frontier. The drift of secession sentiment reached the Cherokee Nation and widened the existing rift between the party of Ross and the newly reformed Ridge party. The Ross party was composed chiefly of full bloods and non-slaveholders, while the opposition, led by Stan Watie, included mainly mixed bloods and Southern sympathizers. An act of the Chickasaw Legislature forwarded to Ross by Cyrus Harris, the Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, was the first of a long series of communications between Ross and Southern-minded individuals . The act called for a meeting of the Five Civilized Tribes to discuss forming a compact because of impending change in the United States. Ross's answer was guarded, yet he considered it proper to appoint a delegation which consisted of men who were loyal to him and his policies. His careful instructions advised the delegates against any "premature movement, on our part, which might produce excitement 314 or be liable to misrepresentation. . . . We have only to adhere firmly to our respective Treaties."1 A month later, in mid-February, 1861. Henry M. Rector, governor of Arkansas, wrote to Ross of the common interests of the slaveholding states and requested his cooperation in their defense. Ross's reply was a model of ambiguity as he stressed his friendship to the neighboring state but noted his nation's alliance with the Union. That same week he replied to a letter from John B. Ogden, commissioner of the district court at Arkansas, who had inquired about Indian agents who were purportedly advocating a secession policy. Principal among these was Elias Rector, the Federal Superintendent of Indian Affairs and an ardent southerner. This correspondence indicated a problem that Ross often would face in the coming year, as agents partisan to the Confederate cause proselyted among his people.2 During the next two months Ross returned to the normal affairs of the Cherokee Nation and, except for a visit in mid-March by a Texas commission who noted the Chief's neutrality, the coming conflict must have seemed remote.3 By mid-May, however, Ross was compelled by events to issue a public statement. During the second week in May, Ross received a letter from a number of citizens of Boonsborough, Arkansas who insisted on knowing Ross's intentions, as they preferred "an open enemy to a doubtful friend." Later that week Colonel J. R. Kannady, the Confederate commander at Fort Smith, informed Ross that in his position as defender of the western frontier he must know if the Chief intended to support the South. Ross's replies to the Boonsborough residents and Kannady illustrate the dilemma he faced. He stressed his...