Chapter 3

His friend Greene gave another reason than ambition to explain his desire for the captaincy. One of the "odd jobs" which Lincoln had taken since coming into Illinois was working in a saw-mill for a man named Kirkpatrick. In hiring Lincoln, Kirkpatrick had promised to buy him a cant-hook to move heavy logs. Lincoln had proposed, if Kirkpatrick would give him two dollars, to move the logs with a common hand-spike. This the proprietor had agreed to, but when pay day came he refused to keep his word. When the Sangamon company of volunteers was formed, Kirkpatrick aspired to the captaincy; and Lincoln, knowing it, said to Greene: "Bill, I believe I can now pay Kirkpatrick for that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook. I'll run against him for captain;" and he became a candidate. The vote was taken in a field, by directing the men at the command "march" to assemble around the man they wanted for captain. When the order was given, three-fourths of the men gathered around Lincoln.[B] In Lincoln's curious third-person autobiography he says he was elected "to his own surprise;" and adds, "He says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction."

The company was a motley crowd of men. Each had secured for his outfit what he could get, and no two were equipped alike. Buckskin breeches prevailed. There was a sprinkling of coon-skin caps, and the blankets were of the coarsest texture. Flintlock rifles were the usual arm, though here and there a man had a Cramer. Over the shoulder of each was slung a powder-horn. The men had, as a rule, as little regard for discipline as for appearances, and when the new captain gave an order were as likely to jeer at it as to obey it. To drive the Indians out was their mission, and any orders which did not bear directly on that point were little respected. Lincoln himself was not familiar with military tactics, and made many blunders of which he used to tell afterwards with relish. One of these was an early experience in drilling. He was marching with a front of over twenty men across a field, when he desired to pass through a gateway into the next inclosure.

"I could not for the life of me," said he, "remember the proper word of command for getting my company _endwise_, so that it could get through the gate; so, as we came near the gate, I shouted, 'This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the gate!'"

Nor was it only his ignorance of the manual which caused him trouble. He was so unfamiliar with camp discipline that he once had his sword taken from him for shooting within limits. Another disgrace he suffered was on account of his disorderly company. The men, unknown to him, stole a quantity of liquor one night, and the next morning were too drunk to fall in when the order was given to march. For their lawlessness Lincoln wore a wooden sword two days.

But none of these small difficulties injured his standing with the company. Lincoln was tactful, and he joined his men in sports as well as duties. They soon grew so proud of his quick wit and great strength that they obeyed him because they admired him. No amount of military tactics could have secured from the volunteers the cheerful following he won by his personal qualities.

The men soon learned, too, that he meant what he said, and would permit no dishonorable performances. A helpless Indian took refuge in the camp one day; and the men, who were inspired by what Governor Reynolds calls _Indian ill-will_--that wanton mixture of selfishness, unreason, and cruelty which seems to seize a frontiersman as soon as he scents a red man--were determined to kill the refugee. He had a safe conduct from General Cass; but the men, having come out to kill Indians and not having succeeded, threatened to take revenge on the helpless savage. Lincoln boldly took the man's part, and though he risked his life in doing it, he cowed the company, and saved the Indian.

THE BLACK HAWK CAMPAIGN.

It was on the 27th of April that the force of sixteen hundred men organized at Beardstown started out. The spring was cold, the roads heavy, the streams turbulent. The army marched first to Yellow Banks on the Mississippi, then to Dixon on the Rock River, which they reached on May 12th. None but hardened pioneers could have endured what Lincoln and his followers did in this march. They had insufficient supplies; they waded in black mud for miles; they swam rivers; they were almost never dry or warm; but, hardened as they were, they made the march gayly. At Dixon they camped, and near here occurred the first bloodshed of the war.

A body of about three hundred and forty rangers, not of the regular army, under Major Stillman, asked to go ahead as scouts, to look for a body of Indians under Black Hawk, rumored to be about twelve miles away. The permission was given, and on the night of the 14th of May Stillman and his men went into camp. Black Hawk heard of their presence. By this time the poor old chief had discovered that the promises of aid from the Indian tribes and the British were false, and, dismayed, he had resolved to recross the Mississippi. When he heard of the whites near he sent three braves with a white flag to ask for a parley and permission to descend the river. Behind them he sent five men to watch proceedings. Stillman's rangers were in camp when the bearers of the flag of truce appeared. The men were many of them half drunk, and when they saw the Indian truce-bearers, they rushed out in a wild mob, and ran them into camp. Then catching sight of the five spies, they started after them, killing two. The three who reached Black Hawk reported that the truce-bearers had been killed as well as their two companions. Furious at this violation of faith, Black Hawk "raised a yell," and declared to the forty braves, all he had with him, that they must have revenge. The Indians immediately sallied forth, and met Stillman's band of over three hundred men, who by this time were out in search of the Indians. Black Hawk, too maddened to think of the difference of numbers, attacked the whites. To his surprise the enemy turned, and fled in a wild riot. Nor did they stop at their camp, which from its position was almost impregnable; they fled in complete panic, _sauve qui peut_, through their camp, across prairie and rivers and swamps, to Dixon, twelve miles away, where by midnight they began to arrive. The first arrival reported that two thousand savages had swept down on Stillman's camp and slaughtered all but himself. Before the next night all but eleven of the band had arrived.

Stillman's defeat, as this disgraceful affair is called, put all notion of peace out of Black Hawk's mind, and he started out in earnest on the warpath. Governor Reynolds, excited by the reports of the first arrivals from the Stillman stampede, made out that night, "by candle-light," a call for more volunteers, and by the morning of the 15th had messengers out and his army in pursuit of Black Hawk. But it was like pursuing a shadow. The Indians purposely confused their trail. Sometimes it was a broad path, then it suddenly radiated to all points. The whites broke their bands, and pursued the savages here and there, never overtaking them, though now and then coming suddenly on some terrible evidences of their presence--a frontier home deserted and burned, slaughtered cattle, scalps suspended where the army could not fail to see them.

This fruitless warfare exasperated the volunteers; they threatened to leave, and their officers had great difficulty in making them obey orders. On reaching a point in the Rock River, beyond which lay the Indian country, a company under Colonel Zachary Taylor refused to cross, and held a public indignation meeting, urging that they had volunteered to defend the State, and had the right, as independent American citizens, to refuse to go out of its borders. Taylor heard them to the end, and then said: "I feel that all gentlemen here are my equals; in reality, I am persuaded that many of them will, in a few years, be my superiors, and perhaps, in the capacity of members of Congress, arbiters of the fortunes and reputation of humble servants of the republic, like myself. I expect then to obey them as interpreters of the will of the people; and the best proof that I will obey them is now to observe the orders of those whom the people have already put in the place of authority to which many gentlemen around me justly aspire. In plain English, gentlemen and fellow-citizens, the word has been passed on to me from Washington to follow Black Hawk and to take you with me as soldiers. I mean to do both. There are the flatboats drawn up on the shore, and here are Uncle Sam's men drawn up behind you on the prairie." The volunteers were quick-witted men, and knew true grit when they met it. They dissolved their meeting and crossed the river without Uncle Sam's men being called into action.

The march in pursuit of the Indians led the army to Ottawa, where the volunteers became so dissatisfied that on May 27th and 28th Governor Reynolds mustered them out. But a force in the field was essential until a new levy was raised; and a few of the men were patriotic enough to offer their services, among them Lincoln, who on May 29th was mustered in at the mouth of the Fox River by a man in whom, thirty years later, he was to have a keen interest--General Robert Anderson, commander at Fort Sumter in 1861. Lincoln became a private in Captain Elijah Iles's company of Independent Rangers, not brigaded--a company made up, says Captain Iles in his "Footsteps and Wanderings," of "generals, colonels, captains, and distinguished men from the disbanded army." General Anderson says that at this muster Lincoln's arms were valued at forty dollars, his horse and equipment at one hundred and twenty dollars. The Independent Rangers were a favored body, used to carry messages and to spy on the enemy. They had no camp duties, and "drew rations as often as they pleased." So that as a private Lincoln was really better off than as a captain.[C]

With the exception of a scouting trip to Galena and back, fruitful of nothing more than Indian scares, Major Iles's company remained quietly in the neighborhood of the Rapids of the Illinois until June 16th, when Major Anderson mustered it out. Four days later, June 20th, at the same place, he mustered Lincoln in again as a member of an independent company under Captain Jacob M. Early. His arms were valued this time at only fifteen dollars, his horse and equipment at eighty-five dollars.[D] The army moved up Rock River soon after the middle of June. Black Hawk was overrunning the country, and scattering death wherever he went. The settlers were wild with fear, and most of the settlements were abandoned. At a sudden sound, at the merest rumor, men, women, and children fled. "I well remember these troublesome times," says one old Illinois woman. "We often left our bread dough unbaked to rush to the Indian fort near by." When Mr. John Bryant, a brother of William Cullen Bryant, visited the colony in Princeton in 1832, he found it nearly broken up on account of the war. Everywhere the crops were neglected, for the able-bodied men were volunteering. William Cullen Bryant, who travelled on horseback in June from Petersburg to near Pekin and back, wrote home: "Every few miles on our way we fell in with bodies of Illinois militia proceeding to the American camp, or saw where they had encamped for the night. They generally stationed themselves near a stream or a spring in the edge of a wood, and turned their horses to graze on the prairie. Their way was barked or girdled, and the roads through the uninhabited country were as much beaten and as dusty as the highways on New York Island. Some of the settlers complained that they made war upon the pigs and chickens. They were a hard-looking set of men, unkempt and unshaved, wearing shirts of dark calico and sometimes calico capotes."

Soon after the army moved up the Rock River, the independent spy company, of which Lincoln was a member, was sent with a brigade to the northwest, near Galena, in pursuit of the Hawk. The nearest Lincoln came to an actual engagement in the war was here. The skirmish of Kellogg's Grove took place on June 25th; Lincoln's company came up soon after it was over, and helped bury the five men killed. It was probably to this experience that he referred when he told a friend once of coming on a camp of white scouts one morning just as the sun was rising. The Indians had surprised the camp, and had killed and scalped every man.

"I remember just how those men looked," said Lincoln, "as we rode up the little hill where their camp was. The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they lay heads towards us on the ground. And every man had a round red spot on the top of his head about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque; and the red sunlight seemed to paint everything all over." Lincoln paused, as if recalling the vivid picture, and added, somewhat irrelevantly, "I remember that one man had buckskin breeches on."[E]

By the end of the month the troops crossed into Michigan Territory--what is now Wisconsin--and July was spent in floundering through swamps and stumbling through forests, in pursuit of the now nearly exhausted Black Hawk. A few days before the last battle of the war, that of Bad Axe on August 2d, in which the whites finally massacred most of the Indian band, Lincoln's company was disbanded at Whitewater, Wisconsin, and he and his friends started for home. The volunteers in returning, in almost every case, suffered much from hunger. Mr. Durly, of Hennepin, Illinois, who walked home from Rock Island, says all he had to eat on the journey was meal and water baked in rolls of bark laid by the fire. Lincoln was little better off. The night before his company started from Whitewater he and one of his mess-mates had their horses stolen; and, excepting when their more fortunate companions gave them a lift, they walked as far as Peoria, Illinois, where they bought a canoe, and paddled down the Illinois River to Havana. Here they sold the canoe, and walked across the country to New Salem.

ELECTIONEERING FOR THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

Lincoln arrived only a few days before the election, and at once plunged into "electioneering." He ran as "an avowed Clay man," and the county was stiffly Democratic. However, in those days political contests were almost purely personal. If the candidate was liked he was voted for irrespective of principles. Around New Salem the population turned in and helped Lincoln almost to a man. "The Democrats of New Salem worked for Lincoln out of their personal regard for him," said Stephen T. Logan, a young lawyer of Springfield, who made Lincoln's acquaintance in the campaign. "He was as stiff as a man could be in his Whig doctrines. They did this for him simply because he was popular--because he was Lincoln."

It was the custom for the candidates to appear at every gathering which brought the people out, and, if they had a chance, to make speeches. Then, as now, the farmers gathered at the county-seat or at the largest town within their reach on Saturday afternoons, to dispose of produce, buy supplies, see their neighbors, and get the news. During "election times" candidates were always present, and a regular feature of the day was listening to their speeches. Public sales also were gatherings which they never missed, it being expected that after the "vandoo" the candidates would take the auctioneer's place.

Lincoln let none of these chances to be heard slip. Accompanied by his friends, generally including a few Clary's Grove Boys, he always was present. The first speech he made was after a sale at Pappsville. What he said there is not remembered; but an illustration of the kind of man he was, interpolated into his discourse, made a lasting impression. A fight broke out in his audience while he was on the stand, and observing that one of his friends was being worsted, he bounded into the group of contestants, seized the fellow who had his supporter down, threw him "ten or twelve feet," mounted the platform, and finished the speech. Sangamon County could appreciate such a performance; and the crowd that day at Pappsville never forgot Lincoln.

His appearance at Springfield at this time was of great importance to him. Springfield was not at that time a very attractive place. Bryant, visiting it in June, 1832, said that the houses were not as good as at Jacksonville, "a considerable proportion of them being log cabins, and the whole town having an appearance of dirt and discomfort." Nevertheless it was the largest town in the county, and among its inhabitants were many young men of education, birth, and energy. One of these men Lincoln had become well acquainted with in the Black Hawk War--Major John T. Stewart,[F] at that time a lawyer, and, like Lincoln, a candidate for the General Assembly. He met others at this time who were to be associated with him more or less closely in the future in both law and politics, such as Judge Logan and William Butler. With these men the manners which had won him the day at Pappsville were of no value; what impressed them was his "very sensible speech," and his decided individuality and originality.

The election came off on August 6th. The first civil office Lincoln ever held was that of clerk of this election. The report in his hand still exists; as far as we know, it is his first official document.

Lincoln was defeated. "This was the only time Abraham was ever defeated on a direct vote of the people," say his autobiographical notes. He had a consolation in his defeat, however, for in spite of the pronounced Democratic sentiments of his precinct, he received two hundred and seventy-seven votes out of three hundred cast.[G]

_(Begun in the November number, 1895; to be continued.)_

[Footnote A: The story of Lincoln's first seventeen months in Illinois, outlined in this paragraph, is told in MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE for December.]

[Footnote B: This story of Kirkpatrick's unfair treatment of Lincoln we owe to the courtesy of Colonel Clark E. Carr of Galesburg, Illinois, to whom it was told several times by Greene himself.]

[Footnote C: William Cullen Bryant, who was in Illinois in 1832 at the time of the Black Hawk War, used to tell of meeting in his travels in the State a company of Illinois volunteers, commanded by a "raw youth" of "quaint and pleasant" speech, and of learning afterwards that this captain was Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln's captaincy ended on May 27th, and Mr. Bryant did not reach Jacksonville, Illinois, until June 12th, and as the nearest point he came to the army was Pleasant Grove, eight miles from Pekin on the Illinois River, and that was at a time when the body of Rangers to which Lincoln belonged was fifty miles away on the rapids of the Illinois, it is evident that the "raw youth" could not have been Lincoln, much as one would like to believe that it was. See "Life of William Cullen Bryant," by Parke Godwin, vol. i. page 283. Also Prose of William Cullen Bryant, edited by Parke Godwin, vol. ii. page 20.]

[Footnote D: See Wisconsin Historical Collections, vol. x., for Major Anderson's reminiscences of the Black Hawk War.]

[Footnote E: Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Noah Brooks.]

[Footnote F: There were many prominent Americans in the Black Hawk War, with some of whom Lincoln became acquainted. Among the best known were General Robert Anderson; Colonel Zachary Taylor; General Scott, afterwards candidate for President, and Lieut.-General; Henry Dodge, Governor of the Territory of Wisconsin and United States Senator; Hon. William L.D. Ewing and Hon. Sidney Breese, both United States Senators from Illinois; William S. Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton; Colonel Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone; Lieutenant Albert Sydney Johnston, afterwards a Confederate general. Jefferson Davis was not in the war, as has been so often stated.]