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Why did President Abraham Lincoln commute most of the Dakota death sentences?

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Plains Wars View of the army camp at Hidden Wood Creek during Lieut. Col. George Armstrong Custer's Black Hills expedition, 1874; photograph by W.H. Illingworth.

Following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, a military tribunal sentenced 303 Dakota men to death after brief, summary trials where the defendants were denied legal representation and forced to navigate proceedings in a language they did not understand.1

President Abraham Lincoln intervened by ordering a thorough review of the trial transcripts. His administration concluded that the evidence presented was sufficient to warrant the death penalty in only 39 of the cases. Consequently, Lincoln commuted the sentences of the remaining men, effectively limiting the executions to those he determined had participated in specific acts of violence against settlers rather than those who had merely participated in the broader conflict.1

Ultimately, 38 of the condemned men were hanged in Mankato on December 26, 1862, in what remains the largest mass execution in U.S. history.21