USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 27
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6 Ibid., September 13, 1862. The number on the muster rolls was 135,440. Adjutant General of Illinois, Report, 1861-1866, 1: 22.
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The same goal of keeping ahead of her quota was adopted by Illinois in the succeeding years of the war. Enlistment, with reenlistment of veteran regiments, was sufficiently heavy to delay the necessity of conscription. With a surplus of 8, 151 under the draft quota, with an additional credit of 10,947 for volunteers discovered in a reexamination of the rolls, and a net credit of 4,373 from the 6,032 Illinois citizens enrolled in Missouri regiments, recruiting placed Illinois on January I, 1864, far in excess of the total quota under all calls of 145, 100.7
Preparations were again made in 1864 for heavy drafts. The people of Illinois, flattered by previous reports, imme- diately set out to maintain this record, spurred on at times by warnings of the danger of conscription. In this way enlist- ments kept well ahead of quotas, reaching an excess of nearly 35,000 in the summer of 1864. This was a noble record; Governor Yates took just pride in the response to his energetic efforts to have Illinois take her full part in fighting the battles of the union.8 When finally the south was crushed and the war record of Illinois was surveyed, it was found that the state had furnished under various periods of service over one-quarter of a million men.9
Great credit for the proud record which Illinois made dur-
7 Adjutant General of Illinois, Report, 1861-1866, 1: 30. Eight hundred and forty-eight Illinoisians were found in the Eleventh Missouri infantry and 670 in the First Missouri cavalry, Illinois State Journal, January 6, 1864; Chicago Times, January 6, 1864. Proclamation of Governor Yates, February 1, and report of Adjutant General Allen C. Fuller, February 1, Illinois State Journal, February 10, 17, 1864; Adjutant General of Illinois, Report, 1861-1866, 1: 29-32. In the closing months of 1863 Adjutant General Allen C. Fuller thought he detected a disposition to hold back recruiting and incite the draft " as a good thing to have in this state."
8 This excess, though large, was not sufficiently large to prevent some con- scription under later calls. Only occasionally did a carping critic interpret the excess as involving a neglect of the welfare of the people, "a wanton waste of the lives and energies of the people of Illinois." Cairo Democrat, July 3, 1864.
9 Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1864, October 20, 1866. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand and three hundred troops were enrolled in 150 infantry regiments, 17 cavalry regiments, and 33 batteries. This did not include Illinoisians enlisted in or recruited for the regular army, or in other organi- zations without the state, nor did it include colored troops. Provost Marshal General Fry of the war department on September 2, 1865, reported a total of 256,297 men furnished by Illinois without reference to periods of service, which varied from three months to three years. The total credit for the state on December 31, 1865, was 226,592 as against a total quota of 231,448. Adjutant General of Illinois, Report, 1861-1866, 1: 157, 216; 8:777 ff. War department statistics published in the newspapers in 1866 placed the total figures at 258,277 and 279,006. Chicago Tribune, October 20, November 20, 1866.
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ing this great national crisis is due to the aggressive leadership of her zealous and industrious commander-in-chief, Governor Richard Yates. His face was grimly set against the southern threats of disunion and when the test came he summoned forth with his eloquence the resources of the state of Illinois. Anxious to crush out the dread specter of disunion, he chafed under the caution exercised by the central government. "If I were Lin- coln," he impatiently stated in February, 1862, "I would lead enough of the Potomac army to take Richmond-and this though Washington could not be saved-I would march to victory or death- Washington is nothing, if we remain an unconquered people with our institutions safe." 10 He was inclined to feel that, while he asked no credit from Lincoln for having gotten up the great Illinois army, the state did not receive full justice from the Washington authorities. Accord- ingly, on July II of that year, simultaneous with his response to Lincoln's new call for three hundred thousand, Yates sent an open letter to Lincoln demanding "the adoption of more decisive measures," the end of mild and conciliatory means to recall the rebels to their allegiance, and "greater vigor and earnestness " in military movements. "In any event," he declared, "Illinois, already alive with beat of drum and resounding with the tramp of new recruits, will respond to your call. Adopt this policy and she will leap like a flaming giant into the fight." 11
So martial was the spirit instilled in the souls of peace- loving Illinoisians by stirring appeals to rally to the colors ! War mass meetings were held in every village and town to encourage enlistments; subscriptions were taken to aid pros- pective recruits in making the decision; funds were raised to contribute to the relief of the families of volunteers; boards of supervisors and city authorities were called upon to offer bounties in addition to those held out by the general govern- ment. Recruits held back to see what bounties would be offered and where they would be most generously rewarded for enlist- ment. After a succession of increases Rockford volunteers in
10 Yates to Trumbull, February 14, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts.
11 Reports General Assembly, 1865, 1: 15-16; Eddy, Patriotism of Illinois, 1 : 124.
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1864 received a bounty of $400 from the city and county authorities. Sixty-nine counties alone had an expenditure of $15,307,074 for bounties in aid of raising troops.12 The pos- sibility of a state bonus even came up for discussion. In the closing months of the war taxpayers began to groan under the burden caused by these bounties. Special prizes were offered by local merchants and manufacturers, and draftees who were men of means were induced to pay the $300 fee, by which they could purchase exemption, to substitutes who would enlist in their behalf.13 Funds were also raised to contribute to the relief of the families of volunteers.
The great spur to enlistment, however, was the desire to avoid the enforcement of the draft. This whip was held over the able-bodied men of the state, and arrangements were made repeatedly for the application of the law. In the summer of 1862 the draft seemed so near at hand that a rush for Canada was only checked by the requirement that traveling could be done only under passes issued by deputy marshals.14 The democrats condemned the conscription law and challenged its constitutionality; they found special fault with the provision making possible exemption for those paying a fee of $300. The Chicago Tribune, which had originally defended this sec- tion as one essentially making for democracy, came to admit that " if the $300 clause is the poor man's fund we don't think they see it." 15 From the winter of 1863-1864 to the end of the war it seemed that the lottery of life and death would be drawn at almost any time; draft protection associations were organized in almost every community to raise funds to procure substitutes for members who might be drafted. The draft was actually ordered and the wheel set in motion in the fourth and
12 Rockford Democrat, August 24, 29, 1864; Ottawa Free Trader, July 26, 1862; Adjutant General of Illinois, Report, 1861-1866, 1 : 137.
13 The Chicago Board of Trade in July, 1863, raised $15,000 bounty money and recruited a full company of artillery in forty-eight hours; besides this Board of Trade battery, two Board of Trade regiments, the Seventy-second and the Eighty-eighth, were recruited. The Chicago Mercantile Association organized the Chicago Mercantile battery. Ibid., 1861-1866, 4: 553, 5: 259, 8:732.
14 Aurora Beacon, August 7, 1862; Ottawa Weekly Republican, August 23, 1862.
15 Chicago Tribune, March 3, 1862, December 25, 1863. Three hundred thousand names were drawn in one instance and all but twenty-five thousand escaped, mainly under this clause.
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tenth districts in October, 1864, and in most districts in March, 1865, when the order arrived in April to stop the draft and recruiting in Illinois.16 Thus it happened that recruiting in Illinois involved a quota of only 3,538 draft men.
Strangely enough, the most satisfactory response to appeals for enlistment came from the democratic counties in southern Illinois. True, there had at first prevailed a disposition to regard the contest as an aggressive war on the part of a new president and therefore a corresponding reluctance to take up arms; but, the war having become a reality, the feeling grew among the people of Egypt that they had to "see the thing through." Even under the first call, the Cairo district in the extreme southern end of the state offered more companies than could be received. When in the summer of 1861 John A. Logan, "the little Egyptian giant," tendered his services to the stars and stripes, following the lead of John A. McCler- nand, who had already become a brigadier general, the tide was turned in favor of the union; the response to Logan's call for a regiment to follow him was immediate. Henceforth, Egypt, following the advice of the lamented Douglas, was tendering troops not by companies but by regiments; it not only filled its quotas but usually piled up a surplus. On the first of October, 1863, the ten extreme southern counties were officially credited with an excess of nearly fifty per cent. Old democratic strongholds charged with copperheadism, offered recruits with a generosity that shamed their oppo- nents.17
Among the Illinois regiments were many representing select groups; they reflected the fact that the responsibility for early recruiting was assumed by individuals -civilians who rallied about them, fellow-workers, friends, and neighbors. Certain regiments consisted almost entirely of countrymen and farmers ;
16 Rockford Register, January 28, 1865; Ottawa Free Trader, February 4, 1865; Cairo Democrat, February 22, 1865; Illinois State Journal, April 15, 1865. 17 Ibid., May 15, 1861; Illinois State Register, August 19, 1861; Jonesboro Gazette, August 31, 1861, October 11, 1862; Belleville Democrat, August 30, 1862, January 23, 1864; Cairo Democrat, February 12, 1864. Within four months Alexander county, with a voting population of 1,047, including only a hundred (106) republicans, furnished seven companies; Union county in eighteen months furnished nineteen companies out of a voting population of 2,030, including but 157 republicans. At the same time Massac county had contributed five-sixths of its voting population.
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the State Agricultural Society undertook in 1862 the organi- zation of an entire brigade.18 Railroad men at the same time took up the work of organizing another brigade; the Chicago railway battalion was part of the response in 1862 to the president's call for three hundred thousand more men. Early in the war Colonel C. E. Hovey, president of Illinois State Normal University, raised the "Normal regiment," to a very large degree composed of school teachers and advanced stu- dents, and he was soon seeking authority to expand it into a brigade. "The high intelligence and social cultivation which prevails among the privates makes discipline an easy task, while the pride of character & esprit du corps which is a matter of course among such men, will make them a very superior and effective regiment," wrote one of his captains.19 Reverend . B. C. Ward, the congregational pastor at Geneseo, raised a company of one hundred young ministers of the gospel "not for Chaplains, but to stand up for Christ on the field of battle;" it was incorporated; however, in a Missouri regiment. A project for a temperance regiment was set on foot with the idea of eliminating the demoralizing influences to which soldiers were exposed in camp.20
The adopted citizens in Illinois made an important con- tribution toward winning the battles of the Civil War. The Germans around Belleville responded enthusiastically from the start; a company was immediately organized by Augustus Mersy, a veteran officer of the Baden army of the German revolution of 1848, who promptly became lieutenant colonel. Friedrich Hecker, who had at first enlisted in Franz Sigel's Missouri regiment as a private, was given authority to raise an independent regiment, so that the Twenty-fourth Illinois infantry became known as the " Hecker regiment." 21 With the return of the three months men in July, Koerner offered to raise
18 Illinois State Journal, August 16, 22, 1862; K. K. Jones to Trumbull, May 22, 1861, Trumbull to Governor Yates, September 27, 1861, Trumbull manuscripts.
19 C. E. Lippincott to Trumbull, December 22, 1861, January 8, 1862, ibid .; Belleville Democrat, August 17, 1861.
20 Rockford Register, September 28, 1861; Joliet Signal, October 8, 1861; Illinois State Journal, August 2, 1862.
21 Koerner, Memoirs, 2: 150-151. A second " Hecker's regiment," the Eighty- second, was recruited later in the war.
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two German regiments, officered by men of experience. After considerable delay Governor Yates gave Koerner the neces- sary authority to raise one independent regiment, which was recruited in a few weeks and placed under the command of Colonel Julius Raith. This was the Forty-third infantry, or "Koerner regiment." 22 Many German recruits of that region joined Missouri German regiments, because of the failure of their leaders to secure prompt organization for exclusive Ger- man regiments. Companies were also organized in Springfield, Ottawa, and elsewhere, while the Chicago Jaegers, the Turner Cadets, and the Lincoln Rifles were ready from the start for incorporation in the union army. The Thirteenth cavalry regiment was the "German guides," organized at Chicago in December, 1861. Within a sixmonth, it was estimated that 6,000 Germans from Illinois were in the federal army.23 This stream kept up during the war; it was possible as late as 1864 to recruit a German regiment in Chicago and vicinity. The Irish were not to be outdone. In a week's time they organized in Chicago the Twenty-third Illinois, otherwise called the Irish brigade, which was accepted as an independent regiment under Colonel James A. Mulligan. Irish companies from Springfield and Rockford also tendered their services. The following year the "Cameron guards" were recruited at the capital, while the " Ryan guards" from Galena and other companies were being organized for a Chicago regiment. The "Irish Legion," the Nineteenth infantry, was mustered into service at Chicago in the late summer of 1862. During the first two years of the war two so-called " Scotch regiments," the Twelfth and Sixty-fifth, were organized.2+ Even the Israelites of Chi- cago were aroused; in 1862 within forty-eight hours they raised a company together with a fund of several thousand dollars to put it in the field. The Portuguese in Springfield and in Morgan county enrolled large numbers in the companies recruited in those regions.
The idea of using Negro troops had long been urged upon
22 Koerner to Trumbull, July 24, 29, 1861, Trumbull manuscripts; Koerner, Memoirs, 2 : 161-165.
23 Rockford Republican, October 10, 1861.
24 The synonyms comprising the local names of military organizations are listed in Adjutant General of Illinois, Report, 1861-1866, 1 : 217-223.
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the national administration by Governor Yates and Senator Trumbull, and in the fall of 1863 the first Illinois regiment of Negro soldiers was finally authorized by the war department. Before this a colored company had been started in Galesburg, and recruits had been secured from Illinois for Rhode Island and Massachusetts organizations; a state wide canvass was now inaugurated which brought together five hundred recruits at Quincy in February, 1864. But failure to give them the same pay and bounty that was paid to white soldiers prevented Negro enthusiasm from developing; as a result less than two thousand colored troops were mustered into service and these naturally played little part in the fighting of this war.25
Back of the serried battalions that marched forth from Illinois there rallied legions of loyal women to minister to the physical and moral well-being of the fighters in the field. Nimble hands were set to work manufacturing the flags and uniforms with which the volunteer companies were outfitted. The scraping of lint and making of bandages was started at a rate that promised an oversupply; energies were thereupon partially transferred to the making of flannel shirts, drawers, socks, and other articles of clothing. The needs of the sick and wounded soldiers and of families left without support in nearly every community were met by local soldiers aid socie- ties ; an Illinois Soldiers' Relief Association was even organized at Washington by the Illinois colony in that city. Sociables and benefit concerts and performances were arranged as means of raising funds for supplies; sanitary stores were collected, funds were solicited from merchants, and farmers were induced to bring in their surplus of fruits and vegetables in the summer and wood in winter for the benefit of soldiers' families. In 1863 ladies union leagues began to spread all over the state. Members of these organizations often ventured into new fields of service, acting as substitutes for clerks who enlisted into service, and in certain instances turning out in a body to plant gardens and small farms in order to send the produce to the
25 Chicago Times, October 6, 1863; Rockford Register, November 7, 1863 ; Chicago Tribune, October 20, 1866; Adjutant General of Illinois, Report, 1861- 1866, 8:777-810. The records at Washington list 1,811 colored troops from Illinois.
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soldiers.26 A soldiers' home at Chicago was maintained during the later years of the war by the Ladies' War Committee; 46,284 arrivals were served during its first year.27
Other agencies also responded to the heavy demands for relief. Wealthy citizens and men in the workshops subscribed to funds for the support of the families of volunteers; the physicians of Decatur pledged their services without compen- sation.28 County boards of supervisors and common councils in the cities designated certain funds for this work. Toward the end of 1863 the relief movement came to be organized more systematically : the Freemen's Aid Society changed its field of operations to that of supplying the wants of soldiers' fami- lies, while a movement was started to raise a fund for the maintenance and education of the children made orphans by the war.29 There were various projects for orphans' homes which in 1867 culminated in the establishment near Blooming- ton of the Illinois Soldiers' Orphans' Home.
Illinoisians also cooperated in the support of two nation wide organizations which made substantial contributions to the physical and moral health of the soldiers. These were the United States Sanitary Commission and the United States Christian Commission. The latter sought to provide every soldier with a testament; it had stations in the army camps and at Cairo, where it maintained reading and writing rooms to counteract the contaminating and debasing tendencies of camp life.30 The Sanitary Commission was extremely efficient in caring for the physical welfare of the soldiers. Governor Yates urged the formation of sanitary associations in each county to supply systematically such articles and funds as were necessary for hospital work. In order to replenish the ex- chequer of the Sanitary Commission, a great Northwestern Fair was held on October 27, 1863, at Chicago, the receipts of
26 Illinois State Journal, May 11, 1861, July 18, 1862; Rockford Register, May 21, October 1, 1864; Rockford Democrat, December 15, 1864; Carthage Republican, January 14, 21, 1864. A grand wood procession was arranged at Carthage, which brought in eighty-eight loads of wood.
27 Chicago Times, June 18, 1864.
28 Illinois State Journal, April 19, 20, 23, 1861.
29 Ottawa Weekly Republican, December 5, 1863.
30 Cairo Democrat, February 9, May 8, 1864; United States Sanitary Com- mission, Statement of the Objects and Methods of the Sanitary Commission,
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which were about $60,000; a year later a State Sanitary Fair was held at Decatur, and another Northwestern Fair arranged for May 1, 1865.31
The long casualty lists for Illinois created heavy demands for hospital facilities. This problem, however, was handled entirely without efficiency. Accommodations were provided only when heavy losses on the battlefield called attention to the need; this was especially true after the bloody battles of Fort Donelson and Pittsburg Landing, after the struggle for Vicksburg, and the battles about Chattanooga. Upon the receipt of the news of the capture of Fort Donelson, the constitutional convention assumed the unique responsibility for appropriating a half million dollars for the relief of the wounded; 32 and a year later the legislature set aside another fund of $10,000. Governor Yates, however, in his zeal for administering relief did not wait long for appropriations but rushed aid to the battlefields. In the fall of 1864, when the fighting in the Mississippi valley had practically come to an end, 700 Illinois soldiers lay in the hospitals about Louisville, 1,000 in Nashville, 1,500 in Chattanooga, and 3,400 below Chattanooga. In fallen heroes Illinois paid its toll to Mars : 5,857 were killed on the field of battle, 3,051 died of their wounds, and 19,934 died from the ravages of disease.33
With her vast levies of troops, Illinois was cast to play an important rôle in the work of suppressing the southern con- federacy; their logical and self-appointed task was first to protect the state and then to carry out an offensive that would drive the rebels from the Mississippi valley. Early in the first summer Governor Yates secured for Illinois a fair repre- sentation in the Grand Army of the East, but the general body of troops remained in the department of the west.
Thirteen regiments, at first with no general officer in com-
31 Ottawa Weekly Republican, September 6, 1862; Chicago Tribune, January 16, October 28, 1863; Chicago Morning Post, October 30, 1863; Illinois State Register, September 21, 1864; United States Sanitary Commission, Financial Report from June, 1861, to October 1, 1865; also What the Sanitary Commission Is Doing in the Valley of the Mississippi.
32 Illinois State Journal, February 17, 1862; Illinois State Register, Feb- ruary 19, 1862; Jonesboro Gazette, February 22, 1862.
33 Illinois State Journal, October 5, 1864; Chicago Tribune, October 20, 1866; Eddy, Patriotism of Illinois, 2:690. Higher figures are given in Bost, Slavery and Secession in Illinois, 79; Moses, Illinois, 2: 731.
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mand, were sent into Missouri to rid it of confederate troops. When finally Grant, Hurlbut, Prentiss, McClernand, and later Palmer were given their commissions as brigadier generals, decisive operations in Missouri as elsewhere were long re- strained by superior officers and frequent changes in commands. General Fremont had been superseded in the department of the west early in November by General Hunter, who in turn ten days later yielded to General Halleck. In July, however, Illinois troops under Colonel Franz Sigel had fought valiantly against great odds at Carthage, and under General Lyons at Wilson's Creek; a little later, after Grant relieved General Prentiss at Cairo, his command faced the murderous confed- erate fire at Belmont, suffered heavy losses, but thereby pre- vented the junction of the confederate forces in Kentucky and Missouri. But for most of this period the western army lay idle, guarding railroad bridges, depots, engine-houses - chafing under their inactivity and reflecting the growing clamor at home for a movement "on to Memphis and New Orleans." General Palmer, complaining of the lack of progress, frankly assigned the blame to the constant change of commanders and to the prevalence in all armies of " Feather bed Generals, who run the machine by Telegraph and trifle away time." 34
In the spring of 1862, however, more satisfactory results were evidenced when the work of saving Missouri to the union was completed, and the federal offensive began against the first confederate line. On January 27, 1862, Lincoln as commander- in-chief ordered the army and flotilla of armed river craft at Cairo to advance- a part of a general movement of the fed- eral forces against the insurgents. The result was the capture first of Fort Henry on the Tennessee, and later of Fort Donel- son on the Cumberland river. The latter feat brought glory to the Illinois troops who constituted a majority of the army of 30,000 men led by General Grant. Back of this victory, however, was the courage and heroism of any army that for three days and nights fought on in the midst of rain and snow and frost, without shelter and almost without food. Far-off Maine could not restrain her admiration for the work of these
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