USA > Iowa > Pottawattamie County > History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa. Containing a history from the earliest settlement to the present time biographical sketches; portraits of some of the early settlers, prominent men, etc. > Part 17
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The total vote of Kane Township, in the fall election of 1855, was 243. The Democratic ticket had a majority of some thirteen votes as the highest, and three the lowest. The ques- tion of prohibition was submitted to a popular vote, and the township gave a majority of twenty-five and the county forty against it. The question of prohibition was not seriously agitated again in Council Bluffs, until, in 1882, when at the special election, on the 12th day of Jnne, on the question of amending the State Constitution so as to prohibit the manufacture of all kinds of alcoholic liquors, the township gave a majority of 806 votes against the amendment, and the county 1,123. The elec- tion was held in August, and W. D. Turner, who afterward kept the City Hotel, which stood immediately east of where the Ogden House now is, was elected County Treasurer ; Thomas Tostevin, County Surveyor ; John C. Fargo, Sheriff, and Joseph Hall, County Judge. The latter resigned after a few months, and A V. Larimer, was appointed until the spring election following, when W. C. James was elected to fill out the unexpired term of Judge Hall.
CHAPTER XXII .*
COUNCIL BLUFFS-GEN. G. M. DODGE-SKETCH-HIS BIRTHPLACE-FATIIER AND MOTIIER- GRADUATES-MILITARY TRAINING-SURVEYS THE MISSISSIPPI & MISSOURI ROAD-PACI- FIC RAILWAY EXPLORATIONS-SETTLES IN COUNCIL BLUFFS -OUTBREAK OF
THE WAR - PEA RIDGE -ATLANTA CAMPAIGN - INDIAN HOSTILITIES.
A T this time and place, it is right and proper to turn the reader's attention to the one who had a marked influence upon the history of Council Bluffs through all its career since the commencement of his residence here, and has also stamped his impress upon the annals of his country by the fame he won, and the sery- ices he rendered in the civil war as a gallant
soldier. The name of Gen. Grenville M. Dodge is endurably impressed upon Council Bluffs. It is also proper to say of him as did Fuller, "a man true to his word. merciful to those under him, and hating nothing so much as idle- ness." The little town of Peabody, formerly Danvers, in the State of Massachusetts, settled in the early days of the colonies and of the repub- lic when in its incipient growth by a pure race
#By Col, John H. Keatley.
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
of true New England stock, has given to the na- tion two men of which any country might be proud; the one, " the friend of all his race," has ended his career of munificence in two hemi- spheres, in the noblest charity of all history, and has canonized the name of George Pea- body in the great and noble roll of philan- thropy; and the other, the subject of this sketch, has won his place among the greatest en- gineers of the world. His genius as a civilian has assisted in subdning the wilderness, and as a soldier, he takes rank among the many great generals whose careers are glorious exemplars to the aspiring youth of all ages. In the pride in which his birthplace takes in such a noble life, the city of Council Bluffs, of which he was a pioneer, and still retains as his home, justly claims an equal right and publie-spirited interest.
Grenville M. Dodge was born April 18, 1831, and consequently, at this writing, is fifty-one years of age, and still in the enjoyment of a fair proportion of physical vigor, considering injuries received in the military service, and the full possession of the mental energy which has characterized his long, ardnous and emi- nently useful career. His father was Syl- vanus Dodge, an active business man of Dan- vers, now Peabody; was at one time Postmas- ter of the South Town. He was of solid, stable New England stock, and a native of Rowley, Mass. The mother of Gen. Dodge was Julia A. Phillips, of Rowley, and she and the General's father were married in 1827. She is also the sister of John M. Phillips, who has been one of the foremost business men of Council Bluffs, engaged in the shoe trade, for many years. Sylvanus Dodge came to Conn- eil Bluffs about the date of the arrival of his distinguished son, and in 1869 was appointed Register of the United States Land Office. This position he held until his death some years afterward at the venerable age of eighty years. The mother of Gen. Dodge still sur-
vives, and has her home in Council Bluffs, on Bancroft street, surrounded by her children, grandehildren and other relatives, in the enjoy- ment of a serene and happy old age.
Gen. Dodge received a fair common school education in such schools as the times then af- forded, but the opportunities then afforded by no means slaked his thirst for knowledge. He was a stout, active, robust and healthy boy. He worked on a farm and at gardening, which toughened and hardened the fiber of his phys- iqne, and fitted him for the arduous duties of the life he afterward lived. He was subse- quently engaged as a elerk in a general store, and here he acquired those rudiments of ordi- nary business which developed in him in the culture of a broader career. Like many an- other New England boy, his ambition was aronsed, and his leisure hours were improved in study. He was fitting himself for college, and at last attained that goal by being matrie- ulated in 1846 at the Vermont Military Uni- versity at Norwich, from which he graduated in 1849, having attained the degree of bachelor of arts and that of civil engineering. His training at Norwich was of a broad, liberal char- aeter, and professional as well. but at the same time he had the advantages of a military course equal almost to the curriculum of West Point, which was of the greatest usefulness to him when his services were demanded by his coun- try in the hour of its greatest peril, in 1861. His mind had a military bent, and when he at- tained high command in the field and among troops and the stirring activities of actual war this quality of mind was manifest in his adapta- tion and success.
His attention was turned toward the West through college associations. The sons of Col. Ransom of the regular army, who fell gallantly fighting at Chapultepec, in Mexico, were his es- pecial friends. and they having come West, he fol- lowed them soon after his graduation, and set- tled at Peru. Ill .. where he adopted the profes-
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sion of land surveyor. He soon, however, re- ceived an appointment in the engineer corps of the Illinois Central Railroad Company. He soon exchanged this position for one in the Chi- cago & Rock Island Railroad Company, whose line of road was then in course of construction toward the Mississippi River, and whose chief engineer was the famous Peter A. Dey, one of the railroad commissioners of the State of Iowa, and who has been such commissioner ever since the organization of the board. Gen. Dodge com- menced service under Mr. Dey simply as an ax- man, but the latter was quick to discern talent and appreciate industry, and soon advanced him to the head of a party and made him re- sponsible for its work. This was the proper position to develop the latent talent of the young and ambitious assistant. It was clothed with that responsibility that he located the Bureau Valley Branch of the Rock Island road, and from that date he was constantly employed in that class of service on other Illinois roads un- til 1851. Enterprise was already looking be- vond the Mississippi into Iowa, and contem- plating the magnificent capabilities of the new State, and even casting its eyes toward the Pa- cific as the goal of the rapidly developing en- ergy of the country and the genins of the people.
That year. the Mississippi and the Mis- souri River Railroad across the State of Iowa, from Davenport, was projected, and Mr. Dey was selected as its Chief Engineer, he at the same time making Gen. Dodge his assist- ant. Here there was a virgin field for the capacity of the latter. Here was the trying time of his life, and here was to be tested the training he had undergone in school and in the field. He was then revolving in his mind a grand inter-continental railway scheme, and his instructions from the contractors of the Mississippi & Missouri Railway Company, Messrs. Durant & Farnham, involved the consideration on his part, of such a grand enterprise and its achievement. They de-
cided that he should ascertain the most prac- ticable route beyond the Missouri River for a Pacific road, in order that the Mississippi & Missouri road in Iowa might have a proper connection. The same year, he entered upon his work with zeal and alacrity, and made a thorough reconnoissance from Davenport, by the way of Des Moines, to Council Bluffs. Every energy of his nature was aroused by the great trust imposed in him, and he faith- fully discharged his duty with a rare intelli- gence. The central and western part of the State at this date was almost wholly unsettled. The only inhabitants between Des Moines and Council Bluff's were the hunters and trap- pers along the streams and those in the scat- tered cabins of the Mormons on the western slope. The latter were mere pilgrims and sojourners, unsettled as to whether they would remain or go beyond the mountains and join their co-religionists. Large game in this section was abundant, and the buffalo had not yet emigrated westward, and fresh provisions were supplied to the explorers by their own rifles. It was a bare, uninviting, lonely prairie then; but the great capacity for future development and the fertility of the soil were abundantly apparent to Gen. Dodge and his companions, as they traversed the rolling country between the Des Moines and the Missouri. They found Council BInff's simply a little Mormon settlement, and the last outpost of civilization on the route to far-off California. Its location on the Missouri River, its admirable surround- ings, its evident possibilities and advantages as an initial point for a great inter-continent- al railway, induced him, after mature con- sideration, to establish here the western ter- minus of the Mississippi & Missouri River line of railway. That decision of his. as the subsequent history of the place and of other railway lines that have come to make up the
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
great system centering here, was of the high- est importance. Without his having so de- cided, the future historian of lhe then little frontier hamlet might have been compelled to indulge in a reverie of "might have beens." He not only thus selected the point to which the railway should tend, in the : course of construction, but he selected it as his future home. No sooner had he deter- mined these matters than he rafted his outfit across the Missouri and began his explora- tions for a Paeific line of the Platte Valley. In crossing the river in the primitive method of a raft, he lost half of his outfit, and had the rest damaged by water; but nothing daunted by these drawbacks, notwithstanding the impossibility to replace the losses, he ad- vanced into the Platte Valley, and unmistak- ably and confidently indicated that as the proper line of the projeeted and to many, merely visionary. inter-continental rail- way. He was unmoved by any speculations of failure and impossibility. He had the faith of an earnest explorer, and his work was performed with a confidence that it would terminate in the highest results. He was among the first to realize, comprehend and appreciate the great fertility of the soil of Nebraska and make it known to the world. His confidence in it was manifested in the selection of a prairie farm, in the Elkhorn Valley, now settled and cultivated as few val- leys on earth are cultivated, and inhabited with all the adjunets and comforts of an ad- vanced civilization. He not only selected this farm, but made it his home for a time.
During the succeeding years up to 1557, he vigorously carried on his railway surveys, in the location of the route of the Mississippi & Missouri River Railroad, now constituting the Iowa Division of the Chicago, Roek Island & Pacific. It is demonstrable from all his work of this character that he has had few
equals and no superiors as a locating engi- neer, instinctively grasping, as he always has, the topography of the country involved, and securing for those railroads the best pos- sible line. This quality of his work was es- pecially manifest and exhibited in this, his first extended location.
During the greater portion of these inter- vening years, he still kept in mind his project of a Pacific railroad, and fondly cherished it, working winter and summer, contending with and overcoming a thousand obstacles, and passing innumerable obstacles in his way, and making extended and careful surveys and reconnoissances in view of the ultimate construction of the road. It was by no means a task free from personal danger. He met these with matchless pluck, energy and patience. His aim was a fixed and definite one, and nothing could deter him. It is only necessary to conceive and recall the character of the wild regions beyond the Mis- souri at that date, and the fact that not a vestige of civilization appeared where States have sinee sprung into populous and unexam- pled existence, except the mere trail made here and there by the trader and the emi- grant. It is only necessary to comprehend the arduousness of the task; to reflect that the country then was the abiding-place of Indian tribes more or less hostile and more or less jealous of every encroachment of the white man, and that the hierarchy of Utali were the sworn enemies of every approach of civilization that even remotely threatened the destruction or the modification of their peculiar and barbarous system. He explored every pass through the Rocky Mountains and every approach, from the British possessions in the North to the Red River in the South, and thoroughly developed the wide expanse of country from the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake Basin, finally settling and
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
determining the location upon which the line of the Union Pacific traverses the great coun- try between the Missouri River and Ogden. This work has been pronounced by both Eu- ropean and American critics, having the proper experience and skill, to be a marvel of railroad engineering.
During the year 1857. Abraham Lincoln. then counsel for a number of Illinois railroad companies, greatly interested in the develop- ment and traffic of the western country, visit- ed Council Bluffs and had frequent and pro- longed interviews with Gen. Dodge with ref- erenee to the Pacific Railroad and its future. These matters were in the mind of Mr. Lin- coln when he became President, and when the Union Pacifie bill was under considera- tion in Congress, in 1863. and when the President was called to act in the matter, Gen. Dodge was in command at Corinth, Miss. He then and there received a tele- graphic communication to visit Washington to confer with the President concerning this gigantic project. The result of their inter- view, after recalling the President's own ob- servations, and impressed by the advice of Gen. Dodge, induced the issuance of the proclamation which fixed the initial point within the limits of the city of Council Bluffs. It must be borne in mind that the act of Con- gress incorporating this railroad company did not undertake to definitely fix this point, but left it to the President to determine by his proclamation, which he did in the man- ner and under the influences just stated.
Gen. Dodge was married, in 1854, to Miss Annie Brown, of Peru, Ill., and who. as his courageous wife, gallantly shared all the per- ils, hazards and discomforts of the camp life that he led in the arduous discharge of duty. His home was actually first made in Coun- cil Bluffs the same year, living at first in a small briek house on Broadway, and after-
ward in a log house on Madison, now known as First street. He, however, soon went to his new farm in the Elkhorn Valley in Ne- braska, and became the first settler in that valley. Here he made his residence until November, 1856, when the Indians drove him and his family away, and he was com- pelled to come to the little village, as it then was, of Omaha for safety and protection. He wintered at this point, and in the spring came back to Council Bluffs and commenced the construction of the Mississippi & Missouri River Railroad eastward. While engaged in making preliminary surveys and explorations. in view of the future Pacific Railroad, he had friendly intercourse with many of the chiefs of the Indian tribes, and traded with the In dians, and thus formed an acquaintance with them and their character, that was of great value to him in the campaign in that country in 1865-66. to reduce their refractoriness, and afterward, when actually locating and finally establishing the route and building the Union Pacific through their country, or along the borders of it. He saw the vast im - portance of the business of freighting across the plains, and, in 1856, he also engaged ex- tensively in that, to California and Utah, on the great overland trail. He also engaged in the banking business during the same period, under the firm name of Baldwin & Dodge, merging the capital thus employed eventually in the Pacific National Bank, and which finally went into voluntary liquidation. and was replaced by the Council Bluffs Savings Bank. Ilis military instinets were always of the strongest, and wherever he was, manifest- ed themselves. When at Peru, he organized a volunteer artillery company, which ren- dered important service in the suppression of a serions riot at Vermillionville. His atten- tion was again called to military matters after his removal to Council Bluffs, and,
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
though unsuccessful, he advocated and urged the passage of a comprehensive and efficient militia bill by the Legislature. He, how- ever, organized a volunteer company, desig- nated as the Council Bluffs Guard, of which he was Captain, and the late Gen. Benton, of the Twenty-ninth Iowa, was one of the Lieu- tenants. By this means. he kept alive his own military spirit, and laid the foundation for a proper response on the part of Council Bluffs, when the trial time of the nation came to determine its strength and its power to cope with its armed internal enemies. In political sentiment, during the period which led up to the civil war and at the birth and through the vicissitudes of the Republican party, he was an earnest member and an ac- tive work of that organization. His atti- tude, when the conflict was impending. could not be mistaken, and he comprehended a single duty in the spirit of the first inaugu- ral of President Lincoln, and never, for a moment, viewed the possibility of a dissolu- tion of the Union. It was too sacred for him to contemplate any such a dire contingency. Before Fort Sumter was fired on, he was vigi- lant and comprehended his duty as a citizen of the Union, without waiting for the com- mands of a superior. He had large inter- ests involved that were of an absorbing char- acter, but his public spirit impelled him to act, according to his best judgment, for the interests and necessities of the Government. The following letter, written by him, discov- ered among the archives of the War Depart- ment at Washington, forcibly illustrates the character and promptness of the man. It is dated at Council Bluffs April 2, 1861, and is addressed to John A. Kasson, Member of Congress, and says:
.
" I arrived home yesterday, and would have telegraphed you at St. Joseph had I dared to do so. There are men from seces-
sion military companies formed at St. Joseph for the purpose of capturing the troops from Fort Randall. They will be down about May 1 on the Omaha, and they propose to take the boat, arms, etc. I have letters from several steady Union men in St. Joseph, and I shall board the boat as she comes down. My information is such that there is no doubt about the matter, and a telegram from the proper source to the officers on the boat would cause them to take the proper action. This letter will reach Washington before the troops reach this place. Union men are leaving Missouri in swarms, and unless matters change within a week, a reign of terror will rest about St. Joseph."
It was not difficult to determine what course he would take should a conflict of arms be precipitated by the events which were hasten- ing with such great rapidity at that moment. Gen. Dodge at once tendered the services of the Council Bluffs Guards to Gov. Kirkwood, but they were not accepted for the reason that in the unsettled condition of the frontier. of which this city was then the almost western limit, he was unwilling to expose it by the withdrawal of what organized military force existed here. This course on the part of the Governor was acquiesced in with reluctance, but no alternative presented itself. The per- sonal services of Capt. Dodge were accepted by Gov. Kirkwood, and he was dispatched to Washington to consult with the military au- thorities there as to the arming and equip- ping of the contingent that Iowa was called upon to furnish for the suppression of the insurrection daily growing into wider propor- tions. His mission was successful, and Sec- retary of War Cameron, appreciating his evident military talents and training, ten- dered him a commission as Colonel of an Iowa regiment to be raised. He accepted the position with much misgiving. and ro-
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HISTORY OF POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY.
turned to Council Bluffs to execute the mis- sion of raising a regiment from among the sturdy and loyal sons of the western and thinly settled section of the State. The writer of these annals of Council Bluffs and of this sketch of Gen. Dodge had the pleasure of riding with him at the head of a column of veterans at the re-union of the old soldiers at Council Bluffs, on the 29th of September, 1882, when he recalled the writer's attention to the fact that he was " soldiering again, after the lapse of almost twenty years," and accompanied this observation with the re- mark that he never had so great misgiving as to his own fitness to command troops as when, in 1861, he marched his old company of the Fourth Iowa Infantry, up these same streets, just before going to the field, where the inen performed such gallant and mer- itorious services. The tear started in his eye as he looked back over the line and saw the same old battle-flag of the regiment wav- ing again over battle-scarred and gray-haired veterans.
At the same time that he was engaged in the raising of the Fourth Iowa Infantry, he also organized what was called, out of com- pliment to him, Dodge's Battery. Recruit- ing progressed rapidly, and, in a short time, one thousand of the young, hardy, athletic young men of Western Iowa, inured to var- ious hardships and accustomed to the use of firearms, were in the ranks, and constituted as fine and as loyal a regiment as shouldered a musket during the civil war. Company B, of the regiment, was made up of Pottawatta- mie County men, with its Captain, S. H. Craig; its First Lieutenant, P. A. Wheeler, and the Second Lieutenant, W. H. Kinsman, who, as Colonel of another Iowa regiment, fell, gallantly fighting, at the battle of Black River Bridge, in Mississippi. The battery : was mainly raised in the county, and was
commanded by N. T. Spoor, as Captain, with J. R. Reed, now District Judge, and C. O. Dewey, as Lieutenants. The camp was es- tablished south of the city, and was desig -. nated as Camp Kirkwood. He began the task of drilling and instructing his command in the arduous and stern duty that was before them, and the making of soldiers out of the raw material of citizenship. He was well fitted for this preliminary work by his mili- tary education at college and otherwise, and it was no long time until men. unused by habits of life to military discipline, and ma- neuvers, and evolutions, became proficients.
In the early summer of 1861. the Confed- erate partisan leader. Col. Poindexter, made an advance toward Northern Missouri and a demonstration against the southern border of Iowa, and particularly, against the line of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad. Col. Dodge's regiment was then only partially or- ganized and instructed, but, recognizing the necessity of prompt action, he moved with snch of his command as was available, and broke up Poindexter's movement, thwarted his plans and rapidly drove him to Southern Missouri, and then returned to Council Bluffs to complete the organization of his regiment. The value of this prompt enter- prise, taken under difficulties that could only be realized and comprehended then, was in- calculable. He not only encountered and overcame difficulties incident everywhere to the formation of veterans from the raw ma- terial of men accustomed solely to the habits and vocations of civil life; but delays of an unusual character were thrown in his way in the trouble at which the Government was in the unsettled state of the country at the outbreak, to obtain the necessary military stores. He received all possible aid from the citizens, regardless of party, and without waiting for the tardy methods of the Quar-
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