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1861–1865

Slavery / political divisionBook sources

Slavery and Civil War within Indian Territory

Indian Territory; enslaved Black people and Native nations

Slaveholding elites in the Five Nations aligned with the Confederacy, while other Indigenous people opposed it or sought neutrality. Black self-emancipation and Native participation on different sides expose overlapping systems of domination.

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Context / qualification

Do not describe Indigenous peoples as uniformly proslavery or uniformly Unionist.

Sources

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Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction

Emancipation and constitutional change opened a democratic possibility that white terror and political retreat would sharply limit.

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