Chapter XI Outbreak of Sacs and Foxes — Lincoln Volunteers and Is Made a Captain — Incidents of His Service as Captain — Stillman’s Defeat
One morning in April a messenger from the governor of the State rode into New Salem, scattering circulars. These circulars contained an address from Governor Reynolds to the militia of the northwest section of the State, announcing that the British band of Sacs and other hostile Indians, headed by Black Hawk, had invaded the Rock River country, to the great terror of the frontier inhabitants; and calling upon the citizens who were willing to aid in repelling them, to rendezvous at Beardstown within a week.
The name of Black Hawk was familiar to the people of Illinois. He was an old enemy of the settlers, and had been a tried friend of the British. The land his people had once owned in the northwest of the present State of Illinois had been sold in 1804 to the government of the United States, but with the provision that the Indians should hunt and raise corn there until it was surveyed and sold to settlers. Long before the land was surveyed, however, squatters had invaded the country, and tried to force the Indians west of the Mississippi. Particularly envious were these whites of the lands at the mouth of the Rock River, where the ancient village and burial place of the Sacs stood, and where they came each year to raise corn. Black Hawk had resisted their encroachments, and many violent acts had been committed on both sides.
Finally, however, the squatters, in spite of the fact that the line of settlement was still fifty miles away, succeeded in evading the real meaning of the treaty and in securing a survey of the desired land at the mouth of the river. Black Hawk, exasperated and broken-hearted at seeing his village violated, persuaded himself that the village had never been sold—indeed, that land could not be sold.
“My reason teaches me,” he wrote, “that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, as far as is necessary for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it, then any other people have a right to settle upon it. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away.”
Supported by this theory, conscious that in some way he did not understand he had been wronged, and urged on by White Cloud, the prophet, who ruled a Winnebago village on the Rock River, Black Hawk crossed the Mississippi in 1831, determined to evict the settlers. A military demonstration drove him back, and he was persuaded to sign a treaty never to return east of the Mississippi. “I touched the goose-quill to the treaty and was determined to live in peace,” he wrote afterward; but hardly had he “touched the goose-quill” before his heart smote him. Longing for his home, resentment at the whites, obstinacy, brooding over the bad counsels of White Cloud and his disciple Neapope—an agitating Indian who had recently been East to visit the British and their Indian allies, and who assured Black Hawk that the Winnebagoes, Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawottomies would join him in a struggle for his land, and that the British would send him “guns, ammunition, provisions, and clothing early in the spring”—all persuaded the Hawk that he would be successful if he made an effort to drive out the whites. In spite of the advice of many of his friends and of the Indian agent in the country, he crossed the river on April 6, 1832, and with some five hundred braves, his squaws and children, marched to the Prophet’s town, thirty-five miles up the Rock River.
As soon as they heard of Black Hawk’s invasion, the settlers of the northwestern part of the State fled in a panic to the forts; and they rained petitions for protection on Governor Reynolds. General Atkinson, who was at Fort Armstrong, wrote to the governor for reënforcements; and, accordingly, on the 16th of April Governor Reynolds sent out “influential messengers” with a sonorous summons. It was one of these messengers riding into New Salem who put an end to Lincoln’s canvassing for the legislature, freed him from Offutt’s expiring grocery, and led him to enlist.
There was no time to waste. The volunteers were ordered to be at Beardstown, nearly forty miles from New Salem, on April 22d. Horses, rifles, saddles, blankets were to be secured, a company formed. It was work of which the settlers were not ignorant. Under the laws of the State every able-bodied male inhabitant between eighteen and forty-five was obliged to drill twice a year or pay a fine of one dollar. “As a dollar was hard to raise,” says one of the old settlers, “everybody drilled.”
Lincoln a Captain
Preparations were quickly made, and by April 22d the men were at Beardstown. The day before, at Richland, Sangamon County, Lincoln had been elected to the captaincy of the company from Sangamon to which he belonged.
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 with which to move heavy logs. Lincoln had proposed, if Kirkpatrick would give him the two dollars which the cant-hook would cost, to move the logs with a common hand-spike. This the proprietor had agreed to, but when payday 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 make Kirkpatrick pay 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 one they wanted for captain. When the order was given, three-fourths of the men gathered around Lincoln.14 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, and there was a sprinkling of coonskin caps. Each man had a blanket of the coarsest texture. Flint-lock rifles were the usual arms, 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 his early experiences in handling his company is particularly amusing. 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 actions. 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.
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. At Dixon they camped, and near here occurred the first bloodshed of the war.
A body of about three hundred and forty rangers under Major Stillman, but not of the regular army, 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 sallied forth with forty braves to meet Stillman’s band, 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. 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. By the morning of the 15th, Governor Reynolds and his army were 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 on the Rock River, beyond which lay the Indian country, the men under Colonel Zachary Taylor refused to cross, urging that they had volunteered only to defend the State, and had the right 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 knew true grit when they met it. They dissolved their meeting and crossed the river without Uncle Sam’s men being called into action.