Minnesota, the North Star State

by William Watts Folwell

The Fourth Minnesota regiment was called at the same time as the Third, but for service on the Indian frontier. The muster began October 2, and was complete before the close of the year. For colonel Governor Ramsey chose John B. Sanborn, his adjutant-general, as yet inexperienced in warfare, but his appointment was later abundantly justified. Two companies were sent to Fort Ridgely and two to Abercrombie to overawe the restive Sioux. A fifth company went to Fort Ripley to insure the good behavior of the Chippeways. The remaining five companies spent the winter of 1862 at Fort Snelling, where they were thoroughly instructed. On April 20, 1862, the Fourth Regiment, its absent companies having been recalled to Fort Snelling, embarked for the South. It reached Halleck’s army in May in front of Corinth, Mississippi, in time to partake in the siege which the enemy terminated by a timely evacuation. After some months of inaction, during which one third of its men got into the hospital, the regiment participated gallantly in the affair at Iuka on September 18, losing three killed and forty-four wounded. At the battle of Corinth, October 3 and 4, the Fourth was actively engaged, with the surprisingly small loss of two killed and ten wounded.

The muster of the Fifth Minnesota began December 19, 1861, and was completed on the 29th of March following. Three companies were sent to the frontier forts to relieve companies of the Fourth called in. To encourage recruiting Governor Ramsey proposed to appoint to the field and staff positions such gentlemen as the line officers should nominate to him. For colonel their choice fell upon a gentleman, German born, who had seen service in the Prussian army. The experience of a few months proved to him and his friends that a mistake had been made. Lieutenant-Colonel Lucius F. Hubbard, afterwards governor of Minnesota, succeeded and held command until assigned to a brigade. Leaving behind the three companies on duty in the frontier forts, the regiment went south in May, 1862, in time to participate in the operations which resulted in the occupation of Corinth, Mississippi. The summer was passed in quiet, diversified by the affairs at Farmington and Iuka. When Price and Van Dorn undertook, on October 8, to dislodge Rosecrans from his intrenched position at Corinth, it fell to the Fifth Minnesota to take a most honorable part in their repulse. Recalled late that night from outpost duty, the men bivouacked in a street of the town. In the forenoon of the 4th, after a furious bombardment, the Confederates assaulted and pushed a column of attack through the Union line near its right. Colonel Hubbard saw the impending danger, and without waiting for orders threw his regiment on the flank of the Confederate column, broke it into fragments, and drove it back in complete disorder. The batteries temporarily lost to the enemy he retook, and restored the shattered battle line. Such is the willing testimony of Rosecrans himself. Survivors of the Fifth delight to recall the gallant and fearless behavior of their young Catholic chaplain on that field. He is now the Most Reverend John Ireland, Archbishop of St. Paul, known everywhere for splendid services in church and state.

In addition to the five infantry regiments recruited under the calls of 1862, five minor organizations were formed, one of which, the Second Company of Minnesota sharpshooters, has been mentioned. The First Sharpshooters were mustered in at Fort Snelling, October 5, 1861, and sent to Washington to become Company A of the Second Regiment of United States Sharpshooters. That command participated in the battles of second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, doing effective work with its Sharps rifles. The Minnesota company had ten wounded at Antietam.

Brackett’s Cavalry Battalion of three companies, to which a fourth was added January 1, 1864, was recruited in the fall months of 1861, and remained in service till May, 1866. The command, by services appropriate to its arm, contributed not a little to the victories of Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Corinth. It accompanied Sully’s Indian expedition to the upper Missouri in 1864, and took part in the battle of Killdeer Mountain. Stationed on the right of the line, the battalion checked a fierce flank attack, which it followed with a gallant counter-charge, inflicting heavy loss on the savages.

The First Battery of Light Artillery was mustered in at Fort Snelling, November 21, 1861, and sent south in midwinter to join Sherman’s division at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. In the battle of Shiloh, April 6, 1862, this battery, forced back with Prentiss’s routed division, united in the heroic stand at the point known as “the hornet’s nest,” which held back the enemy’s advance till Grant’s disordered regiments could be formed for final and effective defense. Captain Emil Munch had his horse shot under him and was severely wounded. The Second Light Battery was not accepted till March 21, 1862. Its commander, Captain William A. Hotchkiss, had seen service as an artilleryman in the Mexican War. At Perrysville and Stone River this command played a gallant part, fortunately with small loss.

The passage of the enrollment act of April 16, 1862, indicated an expectation that to reëstablish the authority of the government over all territory, an increase of the army would be necessary, and that the raising of new troops might not be left to the pleasure or convenience of the states. On the day of McClellan’s escape to the James River (July 2) President Lincoln called for 300,000 volunteers. Minnesota’s quota was 5362. On August 4 this call was followed by an order for drafting 300,000 men from the loyal states. Volunteering, which for some months had gone but languidly forward, revived. Public meetings were held in all the towns; bounties were offered by citizens and municipal bodies; splendid examples of patriotic sacrifices were set by men who could ill afford them, and could ill be spared by the communities. The actual recruiting was mainly done by gentlemen who were promised commissions in consideration of their services. The distribution of the quotas to counties and towns really set the whole people at work, with the result that before the harvest was over five new regiments, the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth, were substantially filled. However, it was not till November 19 that the announcement could be made that every local quota had been filled and that all danger of the draft, from time to time deferred, was averted. The immediate employment of all these regiments was, as we are to see, far different from the expectations of the recruits. The appointments to the field and staff positions were no easy task for Governor Ramsey. It was well known that he would desire the legislature of 1863 to elect him to succeed the Hon. Henry M. Rice as United States senator, and that another aspirant was at least equally desirous. His personal admirers urged him to distribute the military “plums” in a way helpful to his political success. His political opponents were prophesying that he would certainly do so, and charged him with selfishness, heartlessness, and disregard of experience. To the head of one regiment he appointed William Crooks, an experienced civil engineer, who had been two years at West Point and was his political opponent. For three other regiments he took Lieutenant-Colonels Miller, Wilkin, and Thomas from the First, Second, and Fourth Minnesota regiments respectively.

CHAPTER XI
THE OUTBREAK OF THE SIOUX

While the whole people of Minnesota were striving night and day to fill up the new regiments with volunteers to reinforce the national armies, there was trouble brewing within their own boundaries. The reader will have observed that small garrisons had been and were still maintained on the Indian frontiers. There was one at Fort Ripley, below Crow Wing, to protect the Chippeway agency; there were two on the borders of the Sioux reservations. Of these one occupied Fort Ridgely, situated on the north bank of the Minnesota River in the extreme northwest corner of Nicollet County. It was begun in 1853 when the lower Sioux were arriving on their reservation. The garrison had for its purpose the support of the authority of the government agents thereon. Another post had previously been established on the west bank of the Red River, some fifteen miles north of Breckenridge, chiefly for the purpose of protecting the Red River trade, carried in hundreds of single ox carts, from depredations of both Sioux and Chippeways, whose hunting parties waylaid not only one another, but the white man’s caravans. Fort Abercrombie, although at some distance from the upper reserve, was near enough to keep the upper Sioux aware of the Great Father’s power. Although called forts, no one of the three was in any sense a strong place. Each consisted of a group of detached buildings standing on the open prairie. The lapse of years in quiet seemed to justify the assumption that it would be a useless thing to form a proper inclosure and fortify it.

The Minnesota Sioux betook themselves to the reserves designated in the treaties of 1851 in no comfortable frame of mind. They believed that they had been obliged to abandon their ancient homes for an inadequate compensation, and that government agents had conspired with the traders and half-breeds to cheat them of money promised to be paid to their chiefs. Two years passed before they were assured by act of Congress that they would be allowed to remain in Minnesota and not sent to some far-off unknown country. The treaty commissioners of 1851 congratulated the government on the establishment of a policy of “concentration,” under which the Indian would be induced to abandon the chase and get his living from the soil. The Pond brothers, foreseeing that this policy was premature, decided not to follow the tribes among whom they had labored to the reservations. Concentration of wild Indians averse to cultivation only gave opportunity for unceasing grumbling in council over the general rascality of the white man, the tyranny of the agent, the immorality of his employees, the extortions of the traders, and the imbecility of the missionaries, who worked for nothing.

In the buffalo season these Sioux swarmed out into the Missouri valley to make boot upon the still countless herds. At times some wandered back to their old homes below. The reservations, while ample in area for eight thousand Indians, were in shape ridiculously ill-adapted for concentration. Originally they formed a “shoestring” one hundred and fifty miles long and twenty miles wide. That width had been reduced by the treaties of 1858 to ten miles. There was no privacy for the Indian. An easy morning walk took him to the boundary, where the accommodating white man met him with a keg of illicit whiskey. This opportunity for “business” doubtless had no little effect in attracting settlers to the lands fronting on the reservations. The citizens of Brown County in 1859 publicly denounced the criminal practice, and the county commissioners offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for evidence leading to conviction in any prosecution. While generally harmless, the Indians annoyed the settlers by untimely visits for food, and occasional thefts of horses and cattle.