Pike, Albert

Life Span
to
    Full name
    Albert Pike
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    South
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    No. of Children
    10
    Family
    Benjamin Pike (father), Sarah Andrews (mother), Mary Ann Hamilton (wife)
    Occupation
    Politician
    Businessman
    Educator
    Journalist
    Other
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Whig
    American Party (Know Nothings or Nativists)
    Other Affiliations
    Masons
    Nativists (Know Nothings)
    Military
    US military (Pre-Civil War)
    Confederate Army

    Albert Pike (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    Pike's ties to the Indians led to the events that transformed his life. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was named commissioner of Indian affairs for the Confederacy. He succeeded in winning most of the Arkansas tribes over to the Confederacy, and, after being commissioned brigadier general, he organized and armed several Indian regiments. In early March 1862, over his objection that the Indians had agreed to fight only in defense of their territory, Pike's regiments were ordered to take part in a Confederate offensive. On 7 March, during the battle of Pea Ridge, in northwestern Arkansas, the Indians mutilated some Union dead, an infamy that haunted Pike for the rest of his life. On 15 March 1862, the Boston Evening Transcript doubted that "a more venomous reptile than Albert Pike ever crawled the face of the earth."

    Pike, meanwhile, became embroiled in controversy closer to home. On 31 July 1862, confronted with an order to release his units to another command, he published an open letter to the Indians in which he announced his resignation and indicted the Confederacy for neglecting its treaty obligations. Jefferson Davis accused Pike of treason. In November Pike's commanding officer, Major General Thomas C. Hindman, sent 200 soldiers to arrest him, but as the Confederate position in the West collapsed, Pike was released.
    Mark C. Carnes, "Pike, Albert," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/05/05-00614.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Pike, Albert," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/12846.