Lawrence taliaferro autobiography

Maj.
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He never became fluent in the Dakota language, and he speculated in his autobiography about the inscrutable “savage heart.” A believer in.

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Taliaferro, Lawrence (1794‒1871)

Lawrence Taliaferro, the wealthy scion of a politically connected, slave-owning Virginia family, was the US government’s main agent to the Native people of the upper Mississippi in the 1820s and 1830s. He earned the trust of Dakota, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk (Winnebago), Menominee, Sauk (Sac), and Meskwaki (Fox) leaders through lavish gifts, intermarriage, and his zeal for battling predatory fur traders. In a series of treaties, he persuaded these leaders to cede tracts of land in exchange for promises that the government would later break.

Lawrence Taliaferro was born in 1794 on a plantation in King George County, Virginia. At the outbreak of the War of 1812, he enlisted as a volunteer militiaman. Before turning twenty, he had earned an Army commission. He served on the Niagara frontier, rising to the rank of first lieutenant and helping prepare for the American invasion of Canada.

In 1819, at the request of his “patron friend” President James Monroe, Taliaferro agreed to quit the Army and start a new career heading the St. Peters Indian Agency in the

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Lawrence Taliaferro was a son of a Virginia slave-owning family and an Indian Agent on the Minnesota frontier from 1820 to 1839. Recuperating in Bedford after a probable injury in the War of 1812, he met Eliza Dillon. Eliza was the daughter of Humphrey Dillon, a local hotel owner. They married and Lawrence `gave` one of his slaves, Harriet Robinson, to his new wife. They took Harriet with them when they later moved to the Minnesota territory.

Soon, Harriet met and married another slave named Dred Scott. They filed multiple suits in a trail of trials attempting to win their freedom, which culminated in 1857 in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. This trial was widely recognized as a major factor in the coming of the Civil War. The majority opinion, written by Roger Taney, found that no African Americans, free or enslaved, could be citizens with rights that the U.S. Constitution was obligated to recognize or respect. Taney was a friend of President James Buchanan. The President was a frequent visitor at the Bedford Springs,

After many years of service

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Auto-Biography of Major Lawrence Taliaferro: Written In 1864

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