McClure\'s Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 written by Various

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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.

[Illustration: A FACSIMILE OF AN ELECTION RETURN WRITTEN BY LINCOLN AS
CLERK IN 1832. NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.

From the original now on file in the County Clerk's office,
Springfield, Illinois. The first civil office Lincoln ever held
was that of election clerk, and the return made by him, of which a
facsimile is here presented, was his first official document. The New
Salem election of September 20, 1832, has the added interest of having
been held at "the house of John McNeil," the young merchant who was
then already in love with Ann Rutledge, the young girl to whom Lincoln
afterwards became engaged. All the men whose names appear on this
election return are now dead except William McNeely, now residing at
Petersburg. John Clary lived at Clary's Grove; John R. Herndon was
"Row" Herndon, whose store Berry and Lincoln purchased, and at whose
house Lincoln for a time boarded; Baxter Berry was a relative of
Lincoln's partner in the grocery business, and Edmund Greer was a
school-teacher, and afterward a justice of the peace and a surveyor.
James Rutledge was the keeper of the Rutledge tavern and the father
of Ann Rutledge; Hugh Armstrong was the head of the numerous Armstrong
family; "Uncle Jimmy" White lived on a farm five miles from New Salem,
and died about thirty years ago in the eightieth year of his age;
William Green (spelled by the later members of the family with a
final "e") was the father of William G. Greene, Lincoln's associate
in Offutt's store; and as to Bowling Green, more is said elsewhere.
In the following three or four years, very few elections were held
at which Lincoln was not a clerk. It is a somewhat singular fact
that Lincoln, though clerk of this election, is not recorded as
voting.--_J. McCan Davis._]

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.

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE SANGAMON RIVER NEAR NEW SALEM.

The town lay along the ridge marked by the star.]

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.]

[Footnote G: In the New Salem precinct, at the August election of
1832, exactly three hundred votes were cast. Of these Lincoln received
277. The facts upon this point are here stated for the first time.
The biographers as a rule have agreed that Lincoln received all of the
votes cast in the New Salem precinct except three. Mr. Herndon places
the total vote at 208; Nicolay and Hay, at 277; and Mr. Lincoln
himself, in his autobiography, has said that he received all but seven
of a total of 277 votes, basing his statement, no doubt, upon memory.
An examination of the official poll-book in the County Clerk's office
at Springfield shows that all of these figures are erroneous. The fact
remains, however--and it is a fact which has been commented upon by
several of the biographers as showing his phenomenal popularity--that
the vote for Lincoln was far in excess of that given any other
candidate. The twelve candidates, with the number of votes of each
were: Abraham Lincoln, 277; John T. Stewart, 182; William Carpenter,
136; John Dawson, 105; E.D. Taylor, 88; Archer G. Herndon, 84; Peter
Cartwright, 62; Achilles Morris, 27; Thomas M. Neal, 21; Edward
Robeson, 15; Zachariah Peters, 4; Richard Dunston, 4.

Of the twenty-three who did not vote for Lincoln, ten refrained from
voting for Representative at all, thus leaving only thirteen votes
actually cast against Lincoln. Lincoln is not recorded as voting. The
judges were Bowling Green, Pollard Simmons, and William Clary, and the
clerks were John Ritter and Mentor Graham.--_J. McCan Davis._]

[Illustration: EUGENE FIELD TELLING A STORY TO "SISSY" KNOTT AND
'LISBETH AND MARTHA WINSLOW.]

EUGENE FIELD AND HIS CHILD FRIENDS.[H]

BY CLEVELAND MOFFETT.

The form of the expressions of regard and regret called out on all
sides by the untimely death of Eugene Field, at his home in Chicago,
on November 4, 1895, makes clear that the character in which the
public at large knew and loved Mr. Field best was that of the poet of
child life. What gives his child-poems their unequalled hold on the
popular heart is their simplicity, warmth, and genuineness; and these
qualities they owe to the fact that Field himself lived in the
closest and fondest intimacy with children, had troops of them for
his friends, and wrote his poems directly under their suggestion and
inspiration. Mr. T.A. Van Laun of Chicago, who was one of Mr. Field's
closest friends, has kindly given me many reminiscences, and helped
me to much material, illustrating all sides of Mr. Field's life, among
others this fine relation with the children. A characteristic incident
occurred on Field's marriage day. The hour of the ceremony was all
but at hand, and the bridal party was waiting at the church for the
bridegroom to appear. But he did not come; and, after an anxious
delay, some of his friends went in search of him. They found him a
short distance away, engaged in settling a dispute that had arisen
among some street gamins over a game of marbles. There he was, down on
his knees in the mud, listening to the various accounts of the origin
of the quarrel; and it was only on the arrival of his friends that he
suddenly recollected his more pressing and more pleasant duties.

One day, as was often happening, Field received a letter written in
the scrawling hand of a child, which told him how the writer, a little
girl, had read most of his poems, spoke of the pleasure they had given
her, and said that when she grew up she intended to be just such a
writer as he was. Following his usual kindly custom, Field answered
this letter, telling the child of the beauties of nature that
surrounded him, of the twittering birds, and the lovely flowers he had
in sight from his window, and concluding: "Now I must go out and shoot
a buffalo for breakfast."

Dr. Gunsaulus of Chicago, who was one of Mr. Field's most intimate
friends, tells a story of Field's first visit to his house that shows
how quick the poet was to make himself at home with children. For
years the little ones in the Doctor's household had heard of Eugene
Field as a wonderful person; and when they were told that he had
come to see them their delight knew no bounds, and they ran into the
library to pay him homage. It was in the evening, and, presumably,
Field had already dined; but he told the children with his first
breath that he wanted to know where the cookery was. They, overjoyed
at being asked a service they were able to render, trooped out into
the kitchen with Field following. The store of eatables was duly
exposed, and Field seized upon a turkey, or what remained of one from
dinner, and carried it into the dining-room. There he seated himself
at table, with the children on his knees and about him, and fell to
with a good appetite, talking to the little ones all the time, telling
them quaint stories, and making them listen with all their eyes and
ears. Having thus become good friends and put them quite at their
ease, he spent the rest of the evening singing lullabies to them, and
reciting his verses. Naturally, before he went away the children
had given him their whole hearts. And this was his way with all the
children with whom he came in contact.

One day on the cars Mr. Field chanced to sit near a workingman who
had with him his wife and baby. The father, it seemed, had heard Field
lecture the night before, and had been deeply impressed. With great
deference he brought his child up to Field, and said: "Now, little
one, I want you to look at this gentleman. He is Mr. Field, and when
you grow up you'll be glad to know that once upon a time he spoke to
you." At this Field took the baby in his arms, and played with it
for an hour, to the surprise and, of course, to the delight of the
parents.

Of recent years Mr. Field rarely went to the office of the Chicago
"News," the paper for which during the last ten years he had written
a daily column under the title of "Sharps and Flats," but did most of
his work at his home in Buena Park, which he called the Sabine Farm.
Here he began his day about nine o'clock, by having breakfast served
to him in bed, after which he glanced through the papers, and then
settled himself to his writing, with feet high on the table, and his
pages before him laid neatly on a piece of plate glass. He wrote with
a fine-pointed pen, and had by him several different colored inks,
with which he would illuminate his capitals and embellish his
manuscript. The first thing he did was his "Sharps and Flats" column,
which occupied three or four hours, the task being usually finished
by one o'clock. His other work he did in the afternoons and evenings,
writing at odd hours, sometimes in the garden if the weather was
pleasant. He was much interrupted by friends dropping in to see him;
but, however busy, he welcomed whoever came, and would turn aside
good-naturedly from his manuscript to entertain a visitor or to hear a
story of misfortune. After dinner he retired to his "den" to read; for
he read constantly, whatever the distractions about him, and was much
given to reading in bed.

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