Born into slavery in free territory, Joseph Godfrey died widely reviled for his controversial role in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Separated from his mother at age five when his enslaver sold her, Godfrey sought refuge in his teens among the Dakota people he had befriended as a child. Godfrey married a Dakota woman and was living with his family on the Lower Sioux Reservation in 1862, when the U.S.-Dakota War broke out. Pressured to join Dakota warriors in the war's opening days, when the six-week conflict ended, he became the first of hundreds of men tried by a military court created by Commander Henry Sibley. Sibley, who was one of Godfrey's former enslavers, approved death sentences for Godfrey and 302 other Dakota soldiers. In this riveting biography, Walt Bachman untangles the thorny questions that haunt Godfrey's story: How was he enslaved in a free state? Did he murder the frontier settlers for which the Dakota dubbed him Otakle ("Many Kills")? Did he turn traitor to save his own life? Did Godfrey's testimony send thirty-eight Dakota men, including his father-in-law, to the gallows? In this carefully researched book, Bachman argues that the 1862 war trials, which ended with the largest mass execution in U.S. history, were both more just and more unfair than we have ever understood.
Walt Bachman is a historian and retired lawyer. He is the author of The Last White House Slaves: The Story of Jane, President Zachary Taylor's Enslaved Concubine; Officer, Gentleman, Slavemaster: Slavery and Racism at West Point and Fort Leavenworth; and Yankee Slaveholders in the Charleston Harbor: The Untold Story of Northern U.S. Army Officers Who Kept Slaves at Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie.
"[Bachman's] extensive endnotes encourage further exploration, providing a real treasure map for researchers. Northern Slave, Black Dakota creates a fascinating picture of slavery in pre-statehood Minnesota. . . . The book provides a balanced, factually based account of the two series of trials conducted by General Henry Hastings Sibley's military tribunal that does much to discount the simplistic sensationalism that usually describes them. . . . An essential new reference on the tragic conflict that may have been the most important event in Minnesota history."--Stephen E. Osman, Journal of Military History "As a former prosecutor [Walt Bachman] excels at untangling and clarifying the trial record. . . . This fresh look at issues of race, identity, and the Dakota War deserves the attention of anyone interested in the conflict and its aftermath."--Kurt Hackemer, Western Historical Quarterly "Bachman, confronting conventional wisdom and bias, gives us a fascinating portrait of a man who for so long lived as a 'man without footnotes.' This book supplies plenty of them. Bachman's research is meticulous. His analysis is sound. And though he writes as one who knows that pitfalls abound, it is quite evident that he values and executes an even-handed approach to telling an otherwise awkward story. . . . Bachman has written an important addition to the canon of Minnesota history and one that should stimulate much conversation."--William D. Green, Minnesota History "I cannot overstate the important contribution that Northern Slave, Black Dakota makes to our understanding of race and class in the formative period of Minnesota history. Through meticulous and wide-ranging research, Walt Bachman has reconstructed the life of Joseph Godfrey, a little-known slave who fought with the Dakotas in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. The result is a fascinating biography, but it is also much more than one man's story. . . . The archival research that undergirds this work is of the highest caliber, and indeed, Bachman has tapped sources unexplored by other scholars of Minnesota history that will be of great benefit to future scholars."--Mary Lethert Wingerd, author of North Country: The Making of Minnesota "To this reviewer's knowledge, no one has ever studied the original record of the Dakota trials and the circumstances surrounding them with the care that Bachman has, nor has any historian brought to the task his familiarity with courtroom procedures and nineteenth-century legal customs. His conclusions about how the trials were conducted are even-handed enough to displease partisans of both sides, and they yield a vivid picture of human feeling, fear, and frailty."--Rhoda Gilman, author of Henry Hastings Sibley: Divided Heart and Stand Up! The Story of Minnesota's Protest Tradition
