[Sidenote: Reynolds, "Life and Times," p. 363.]
At the Beardstown rendezvous, Captain Lincoln's company was attached to Colonel Samuel Thompson's regiment, the Fourth Illinois, which was organized at Richland, Sangamon County, on the 21st of April, and moved on the 27th, with the rest of the command under General Samuel Whitesides, for Yellow Banks, where the boats with provisions had been ordered to meet them. It was arduous marching. There were no roads and no bridges, and the day's task included a great deal of labor. The third day out they came to the Henderson River, a stream some fifty yards wide, swift and swollen with the spring thaws, with high and steep banks. To most armies this would have seemed a serious obstacle, but these backwoodsmen swarmed to the work like beavers, and in less than three hours the river was crossed with the loss of only one or two horses and wagons. When they came to Yellow Banks, on the Mississippi, the provision-boats had not arrived, and for three days they waited there literally without food; very uncomfortable days for Governor Reynolds, who accompanied the expedition, and was forced to hear the outspoken comments of two thousand hungry men on his supposed inefficiency. But on the 6th of May the William Wallace arrived, and "this sight," says the Governor with characteristic sincerity, "was, I presume, the most interesting I ever beheld." From there they marched to the mouth of Rock River, and thence General Whitesides proceeded with his volunteers up the river some ninety miles to Dixon, where they halted to await the arrival of General Atkinson with the regular troops and provisions. There they found two battalions of fresh horsemen under Majors Stillman and Bailey, who had as yet seen no service and were eager for the fray. Whitesides's men were tired with their forced march, and besides, in their ardor to get forward, they had thrown away a good part of their provisions and left their baggage behind. It pleased the Governor, therefore, to listen to the prayers of Stillman's braves, and he gave them orders to proceed to the head of Old Man's Creek, where it was supposed there were some hostile Indians, and coerce them into submission. "I thought," says the Governor in his memoirs, "they might discover the enemy."
[Illustration: A SOLDIER'S DISCHARGE FROM THE BLACK HAWK WAR, SIGNED
BY A. LINCOLN, CAPTAIN. IN THE POSSESSION OF O. H. OLDROTD,
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.]
The supposition was certainly well founded. They rode merrily away, came to Old Man's Creek, thereafter to be called Stillman's Run, and encamped for the night. By the failing light a small party of Indians was discovered on the summit of a hill a mile away, and a few courageous gentlemen hurriedly saddled their horses, and, without orders, rode after them. The Indians retreated, but were soon overtaken, and two or three of them killed. The volunteers were now strung along a half mile of hill and valley, with no more order or care than if they had been chasing rabbits. Black Hawk, who had been at supper when the running fight began, hastily gathered a handful of warriors and attacked the scattered whites. The onset of the savages acted like an icy bath on the red-hot valor of the volunteers; they turned and ran for their lives, stampeding the camp as they fled. There was very little resistance—so little that Black Hawk, fearing a ruse, tried to recall his warriors from the pursuit, but in the darkness and confusion could not enforce his orders. The Indians killed all they caught up with; but the volunteers had the fleeter horses, and only eleven were overtaken. The rest reached Dixon by twos and threes, rested all night, and took courage. General Whitesides marched out to the scene of the disaster the next morning, but the Indians were gone. They had broken up into small parties, and for several days they reaped the bloody fruit of their victory in the massacre of peaceful settlements in the adjacent districts.
The time of enlistment of the volunteers had now come to an end, and the men, seeing no prospect of glory or profit, and weary of the work and the hunger which were the only certain incidents of the campaign, refused in great part to continue in service. But it is hardly necessary to say that Captain Lincoln was not one of these homesick soldiers. Not even the trammels of rank, which are usually so strong among the trailers of the saber, could restrain him from what he considered his simple duty. As soon as he was mustered out of his captaincy, he re-enlisted on the same day, May 27, as a private soldier. Several other officers did the same, among them General Whitesides and Major John T. Stuart. Lincoln became a member of Captain Elijah Iles's company of mounted volunteers, sometimes called the "Independent Spy Battalion," an organization unique of its kind, if we may judge from the account given by one of its troopers. It was not, says Mr. George M. Harrison, "under the control of any regiment or brigade, but received orders directly from the Commander-in-Chief, and always, when with the army, camped within the lines, and had many other privileges, such as having no camp duties to perform and drawing rations as much and as often as we pleased," which would seem to liken this battalion as nearly as possible to the fabled "regiment of brigadiers." With this elite corps Lincoln served through his second enlistment, though it was not his fortune to take part in either of the two engagements in which General James D. Henry, at the Wisconsin Bluffs and the Bad Axe, broke and destroyed forever the power of Black Hawk and the British band of Sacs and Foxes.
After Lincoln was relieved of the weight of dignity involved in his captaincy, the war became a sort of holiday, and the tall private from New Salem enjoyed it as much as any one. He entered with great zest into the athletic sports with which soldiers love to beguile the tedium of camp. He was admitted to be the strongest man in the army, and, with one exception, the best wrestler. Indeed, his friends never admitted the exception, and severely blamed Lincoln for confessing himself defeated on the occasion when he met the redoubtable Thompson, and the two fell together on the turf. His popularity increased from the beginning to the end of the campaign, and those of his comrades who still survive always speak with hearty and affectionate praise of his character and conduct in those rough yet pleasantly remembered days.
[Sidenote: MS. Letters from Thomas, Gregg and others.]
The Spy Battalion formed no part of General Henry's forces when, by a disobedience of orders as prudent as it was audacious, he started with his slender force on the fresh trail which he was sure would lead him to Black Hawk's camp. He found and struck the enemy at bay on the bluffs of the Wisconsin River on the 21st of July, and inflicted upon them a signal defeat. The broken remnant of Black Hawk's power then fled for the Mississippi River, the whole army following in close pursuit—General Atkinson in front and General Henry bringing up the rear. Fortune favored the latter once more, for while Black Hawk with a handful of men was engaging and drawing away the force under Atkinson, General Henry struck the main trail, and brought on the battle of the Bad Axe, if that could be called a battle which was an easy slaughter of the weary and discouraged savages, fighting without heart or hope, an army in front and the great river behind. Black Hawk escaped the fate of his followers, to be captured a few days later through the treachery of his allies. He was carried in triumph to Washington and presented to President Jackson, to whom he made this stern and defiant speech, showing how little age or disaster could do to tame his indomitable spirit: "I am a man and you are another. I did not expect to conquer the white people. I took up the hatchet to avenge injuries which could no longer be borne. [Footnote: It is a noteworthy coincidence that President Lincoln's proclamation at the opening of the war calls for troops "to redress wrongs already long enough endured.">[ Had I borne them longer my people would have said: 'Black Hawk is a squaw; he is too old to be a chief; he is no Sac.' This caused me to raise the war-whoop. I say no more of it; all is known to you." He returned to Iowa, and died on the 3d of October, 1838, at his camp on the river Des Moines. He was buried in gala dress, with cocked hat and sword, and the medals presented him by two governments. He was not allowed to rest even in his grave. His bones were exhumed by some greedy wretch and sold from hand to hand till they came at last to the Burlington Museum, where they were destroyed by fire.
[Illustration: BLACK HAWK]
It was on the 16th of June, a month before the slaughter of the Bad Axe, that the battalion to which Lincoln belonged was at last mustered out, at Whitewater, Wisconsin. His final release from the service was signed by a young lieutenant of artillery, Robert Anderson, who, twenty-nine years later, in one of the most awful crises in our annals, was to sustain to Lincoln relations of prodigious importance, on a scene illuminated by the flash of the opening guns of the civil war. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] The men started home the next day in high spirits, school-boys for their holidays. Lincoln had need, like Horatio, of his good spirits, for they were his only outfit for the long journey to New Salem, he and his mess-mate Harrison [Footnote: George M. Harrison, who gives an account of his personal experiences in Lamon, p. 116.] having had their horses stolen the day before by some patriot over-anxious to reach home. But, as Harrison says, "I laughed at our fate, and he joked at it, and we all started off merrily. The generous men of our company walked and rode by turns with us, and we fared about equal with the rest. But for this generosity our legs would have had to do the better work; for in that day this dreary route furnished no horses to buy or to steal; and, whether on horse or afoot, we always had company, for many of the horses' backs were too sore for riding." It is not hard to imagine with what quips and quirks of native fancy Lincoln and his friends beguiled the way through forest and prairie. With youth, good health, and a clear conscience, and even then the dawn of a young and undefiled ambition in his heart, nothing was wanting to give zest and spice to this long, sociable walk of a hundred leagues. One joke is preserved, and this one is at the expense of Lincoln. One chilly morning he complained of being cold. "No wonder," said some facetious cavalier, "there is so much of you on the ground." [Footnote: Dr. Holland gives this homely joke (Life of Lincoln, p. 71), but transfers it to a time four years later, when Lincoln had permanently assumed shoes and had a horse of his own.] We hope Lincoln's contributions to the fun were better than this, but of course the prosperity of these jests lay rather in the liberal ears that heard them than in the good-natured tongues that uttered them.