How a bishop moved Lincoln, and saved 265 Dakota Indians

From The LA Times-

The Founding Fathers had good reasons for explicitly barring government from inserting itself into matters of religion. But nothing in the Constitution forbids a president from consulting with clerics, and meetings between presidents and religious figures have, on occasion, helped shape history.

One such time came when an Episcopal Church bishop traveled to Washington from Minnesota to try to persuade Abraham Lincoln to make wholesale changes in the corrupt and brutal ways the federal government treated Native Americans. The entreaty may well have saved hundreds of Dakota Indians from execution — and the nation from a huge injustice.

Whipple ... gave Lincoln a lens through which to evaluate the Dakota War.

Bishop Henry B. Whipple, a native of upstate New York, was an unlikely advocate for Native Americans. A missionary priest in Chicago until he was elected Minnesota's first Episcopal bishop in 1859, he didn't even know a Native American until he was 37 years old.


More here-


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-niebuhr-abraham-lincoln-religion-indians-20140718-story.html