CHAPTER V
LINCOLN IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR
[Sidenote: 1832.]
A new period in the life of Lincoln begins with the summer of 1832. He then obtained his first public recognition, and entered upon the course of life which was to lead him to a position of prominence and great usefulness.
The business of Offutt had gone to pieces, and his clerk was out of employment, when Governor Reynolds issued his call for volunteers to move the tribe of Black Hawk across the Mississippi. For several years the raids of the old Sac chieftain upon that portion of his patrimony which he had ceded to the United States had kept the settlers in the neighborhood of Rock Island in terror, and menaced the peace of the frontier. In the spring of 1831 he came over to the east side of the river with a considerable band of warriors, having been encouraged by secret promises of cooperation from several other tribes. These failed him, however, when the time of trial arrived, and an improvised force of State volunteers, assisted by General E. P. Gaines and his detachment, had little difficulty in compelling the Indians to re- cross the Mississippi, and to enter into a solemn treaty on the 30th of June by which the former treaties were ratified and Black Hawk and his leading warriors bound themselves never again to set foot on the east side of the river, without express permission from the President or the Governor of Illinois.
[Sidenote: Reynolds, "Life and Times," p. 325.]
[Sidenote: Ford, "History of Illinois," p. 110.]
But Black Hawk was too old a savage to learn respect for treaties or resignation under fancied wrongs. He was already approaching the allotted term of life. He had been a chief of his nation for more than forty years. He had scalped his first enemy when scarcely more than a child, having painted on his blanket the blood-red hand which marked his nobility at fifteen years of age. Peace under any circumstances would doubtless have been irksome to him, but a peace which forbade him free access to his own hunting-grounds and to the graves of his fathers was more than he could now school himself to endure. He had come to believe that he had been foully wronged by the treaty which was his own act; he had even convinced himself that "land cannot be sold," a proposition in political economy which our modern socialists would be puzzled to accept or confute. Besides this, the tenderest feelings of his heart were outraged by this exclusion from his former domain. He had never passed a year since the death of his daughter without making a pilgrimage to her grave at Oquawka and spending hours in mystic ceremonies and contemplation. He was himself prophet as well as warrior, and had doubtless his share of mania, which is the strength of prophets. The promptings of his own broken heart readily seemed to him the whisperings of attendant spirits; and day by day these unseen incitements increased around him, until they could not be resisted even if death stood in the way.
He made his combinations during the winter, and had it not been for the loyal attitude of Keokuk, he could have brought the entire nation of the Sacs and Foxes to the war-path. As it was, the flower of the young men came with him when, with the opening spring, he crossed the river once more. He came this time, he said, "to plant corn," but as a preliminary to this peaceful occupation of the land he marched up the Rock River, expecting to be joined by the Winnebagoes and Pottawatomies. But the time was passed for honorable alliances among the Indians. His oath-bound confederates gave him little assistance, and soon cast in their lot with the stronger party.
This movement excited general alarm in the State. General Henry Atkinson, commanding the United States troops, sent a formal summons to Black Hawk to return; but the old chief was already well on his way to the lodge of his friend, the prophet Wabokishick, at Prophetstown, and treated the summons with contemptuous defiance. The Governor immediately called for volunteers, and was himself astonished at the alacrity with which the call was answered. Among those who enlisted at the first tap of the drum was Abraham Lincoln, and equally to his surprise and delight he was elected captain of his company. The volunteer organizations of those days were conducted on purely democratic principles. The company assembled on the green, an election was suggested, and three-fourths of the men walked over to where Lincoln was standing; most of the small remainder joined themselves to one Kirkpatrick, a man of some substance and standing from Spring Creek. We have the word of Mr. Lincoln for it, that no subsequent success ever gave him such unmixed pleasure as this earliest distinction. It was a sincere, unsought tribute of his equals to those physical and moral qualities which made him the best man of his hundred, and as such was accepted and prized.