The American Indian as Slaveholder and Secessionist"[Abel's] story is a tragic one, but leaving it untold would be a greater tragedy. Native American southerners shared the experience of the Civil War with other Americans, and their involvement in that upheaval had as profound an effect on their subsequent history. Abel's was the first serious telling of that story." Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green. The secession of southern states in the winter and spring of 1861 62 brought about a crisis for the