“John Reynolds, Commander in Chief.”
John Ewing of Franklin County and John A. Wakefield and Robert Blackwell of Fayette County were the trusted messengers selected to carry this call over the state. At the same time, Col. James M. Strode, colonel and commander of the Jo Daviess County militia, was empowered and requested to organize his county for immediate action.
Governor Reynolds also sent word of the defeat to Colonel Dodge at the camp of the latter on the north side of the river some distance above, with the request that he forthwith take measures to protect the frontier of Michigan Territory (now Wisconsin).
Major Horn[[126]] of Reynolds’ staff was dispatched to St. Louis with a message to Colonel March, who was at that place, to forward the supplies for the new levy to Hennepin. With his conspicuous vigor the order was executed, but not by leaving the provisions at Hennepin. Fort Deposit, or later Fort Wilbourn, so-called from Captain John S. Wilbourn of the militia from Morgan County, was a point on the south bank of the Illinois River about midway between the present cities of Peru and LaSalle. It was nearer the seat of action at Dixon’s Ferry and was accordingly chosen by Major Horn, and there he deposited the provisions. Thither, too, the troops marched, and, as Albert Sidney Johnston wrote in his journal on June 12, 1832: “General and staff arrived at this place this evening. The Illinois volunteers having arrived here in great numbers, the General decided upon organizing them at this point, supplies for the troops having been placed in depot at this place, and the route to Dixon’s quite as good and as near as the mouth of Fox River.”
That explains the erection of this base, and in the same connection it may be said that the old army trail subsequently became known as the “Peru road,” was the one traveled by Abraham Lincoln on his return home via Peoria, and was the route traversed by Colonel John Dement, Receiver of the Dixon Land Office, when subsequently he carried the public moneys from Dixon to Peru to be shipped by boat to St. Louis, the industrial and financial center of the times.
Another message was sent to General Atkinson, not yet arrived from Fort Armstrong, and finally Major Adams[[127]] was dispatched to Quincy to procure corn for the horses. By daylight the various expresses were hurrying on their respective ways over the state.
With the abandonment of the baggage and supplies down the river, the improvidence of the troops with the provisions brought along and the destruction and confiscation of Stillman’s by Black Hawk, there was imminent danger of a famine, but Mr. Dixon came to the rescue by slaughtering his oxen, milch cows and young stock, which the troops devoured without bread or salt. After a hasty breakfast, a general march for the battlefield to bury the dead was begun, and by evening finished.
The sight of the mangled remains of their comrades did not inspire the majority of the men with a wish to prolong their service. Dissatisfaction, much of it unexplained, prevailed, and nothing but a demand for a discharge from further service was heard.
