The United States-Dakota War Trials: A Study in Military Injustice

Authors

Carol Chomsky, University of Minnesota Law SchoolFollow

Publication

Stanford Law Review

Volume

43

Page

13

Year

1990

Abstract

Between September 28 and November 3, 1862, in southwestern Minnesota, nearly four hundred Dakota 1 men were tried for murder, rape, and robbery. All but seventy were convicted, and 303 of these were condemned to die. 2 After an official review of the trials, the sentences of thirty-eight were confirmed and, on December 26, 1862, these thirty-eight were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, in the largest mass execution in American history. On November 11, 1865, after three additional trials, two more Dakota followed them to the gallows.

Comments

By permission of the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, from the Stanford Law Review, at 43 Stan. L. Rev. 13 (1990).

Recommended Citation

Carol Chomsky, The United States-Dakota War Trials: A Study in Military Injustice, 43 Stan. L. Rev. 13 (1990), available at https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/faculty_articles/226.