For two and one-half years companies A and I of the Fifth Infantry continued to garrison Fort Dearborn. Major Fowle remained in command until December, 1830, when he was granted six months' leave of absence and Lieutenant Hunter succeeded to the command. He later became prominent in his profession and during the Civil War rose to the rank of major-general. At this time he was a West Point graduate of eight years' standing, who since his arrival at Fort Dearborn in the autumn of 1829 had wooed and married Maria Indiana, the daughter of John Kinzie. Captain Martin Scott, another member of the little group of officers in this period, was noted for his eccentricities.[803] He was famous for his skill as a marksman and passionately fond of hunting. Probably because of this trait, he maintained a numerous array of dogs. Both Scott and Hunter had been stationed at Fort Snelling, where each acquired a reputation for firmness, not to say obstinacy, in adhering to views which had once been formed. Upon one occasion they determined to find out by actual experiment which could abstain the longer from eating. At the end of two days Scott surrendered unconditionally; it was the general opinion of the garrison that Hunter would have perished rather than yield.
[803] For an intimate characterization of Captain Scott see Van Cleve, Three Score Years and Ten, chap. iii.
Notwithstanding the scare which had caused the regarrisoning of Fort Dearborn, the months passed into years without any occasion for the actual services of the soldiers arising. In the spring of 1831 the fort was again abandoned, the garrison being ordered to Green Bay.[804] Less than a year later, however, Major Whistler, who had seen the first Fort Dearborn built in 1803, was ordered from Fort Niagara to Chicago with two companies of the Second Infantry.[805] He arrived on June 17, 1832, and for the third time since its rebuilding, less than a score of years before, Fort Dearborn housed a garrison. The order for its reoccupation was issued in February, but before Whistler's force arrived the Black Hawk War had begun and Chicago and Fort Dearborn were crowded with panic-stricken settlers. The disaffected Sac leader. Black Hawk, on April 6, at the head of five hundred warriors and their squaws and children, had crossed the Mississippi River and begun the invasion of the state of Illinois. Therewith began for Illinois her last Indian war, and for Chicago and Fort Dearborn a period of excitement and activity on a greater scale than the place had ever known.
[804] Wentworth, Early Chicago, 30. An account of the breaking-up of the garrison is given by Mrs. Kinzie in Wau Bun, chaps, xxiii and xxiv.
[805] Wentworth, Early Chicago, 30.
The Black Hawk War constitutes one of the saddest chapters in all the long story of the spoliation of the red race at the hands of the white. Notable for the number of men of national prominence in American history who participated in it, it is no less notable for the blundering and unworthy course pursued by the whites, first in bringing it on and second in waging it to a conclusion. The names of two Presidents of the United States, Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor; of the only President of the Southern Confederacy, Jefferson Davis; of a presidential candidate, and for a full generation the most notable soldier in America, Winfield Scott; of senators and governors and generals in profusion—A. C. Dodge, Henry Dodge, John Reynolds, George W. Jones, Sidney Breese, Henry Atkinson, Albert Sydney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, David E, Twiggs, S. P. Heintzelman, John A. McClernand, E. D. Baker, William S. Harney, and Robert Anderson, among others—furnish ample evidence that no other Indian war in American history was participated in by so many notable men.[806]
[806] This list of participants is drawn from the Drennan Papers, Fort Dearborn post returns, and Stevens, Black Hawk War, passim.
The history of the war may be found in many places, and the design of the present narrative is limited to a recital of it from the point of view of its bearing upon Chicago and the results for Chicago's development which proceeded from it.[807] Black Hawk had planned his return to Illinois under the belief that the Winnebagoes, Pottawatomies, and other tribes and even the British would ally with him against the Americans.[808] Before the actual crossing he was partly disabused of this idea, but only in part. His immediate purpose was to raise a crop of corn on Rock River, with the Winnebagoes of that locality, and prepare for active warfare in the fall. This design was frustrated by the action of the whites. Governor Reynolds promptly called out the Illinois militia, and early in May four regiments, numbering sixteen hundred men, accompanied by Governor Reynolds himself, were at Fort Armstrong, ready to co-operate with the small force of regulars under Atkinson in the pursuit and overthrow of Black Hawk's band.[809]
[807] Many contemporary' narratives are printed in the volumes of the Wisconsin Historical Collections; for the most part they should be used with discrimination. For a sane and useful brief account of the war see Thwaites, "Story of the Black Hawk War." in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XII, 217-65. Stevens, Black Hawk War, is a detailed and valuable narrative. In using it due allowance must be made for the author's too evident anti-Indian bias.
[808] Wisconsin Historical Collections, XII, 227, 231.