JOHN POTTER, NEIGHBOR OF LINCOLN’S AT NEW SALEM.
From a recent photograph. John Potter, born November 10, 1808, was a few months older than Lincoln. He is now living at Petersburg, Illinois. He settled in the country one and one-half miles from New Salem in 1820. Mr. Potter remembers Lincoln’s first appearance in New Salem, in July, 1831. He corroborates the stories told of his store, of his popularity in the community, and of the general impression that he was an unusually promising young man.
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.
BOWLING GREEN’S HOUSE.
From a photograph made for this work. Bowling Green’s log cabin, half a mile north of New Salem, just under the bluff, still stands, but long since ceased to be a dwelling-house, and is now a tumble-down old stable. Here Lincoln was a frequent boarder, especially during the period of his closest application to the study of the law. Stretched out on the cellar door of this cabin, reading a book, he met for the first time “Dick” Yates, then a college student at Jacksonville, and destined to become the great “War Governor” of the State. Yates had come home with William G. Greene to spend his vacation, and Greene took him around to Bowling Green’s house to introduce him to “his friend, Abe Lincoln.” Unhappily there is nowhere in existence a picture of the original occupant of this humble cabin. Bowling Green was one of the leading citizens of the county. He was County Commissioner from 1826 to 1828; he was for many years a justice of the peace; he was a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity, and a very active and uncompromising Whig. The friendship between him and Lincoln, beginning at a very early day, continued until his death, in 1842.
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.
CHAPTER XII.
LINCOLN AN INDEPENDENT RANGER.—MAJOR ILES’S REMINISCENCES OF THE CAMPAIGN.—END OF THE-BLACK HAWK WAR.
