History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 57

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942

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of Huntington County against the regular Demo- cratic ticket, showing rather ludicrously one of the " revenges" brought round by the "whirligig of time." Another convicted Son of Liberty, H. H. Dodd, made his escape from the United States build- ing where he was confined, and went to Canada. He is now said to be the editor of a Republican paper in Wisconsin.

From the 22d of February, 1862, to about the 1st of September of the same year, Camp Morton, as before stated, was made a prison camp in charge of the State, and here were confined the prisoners surrendered at Fort Donelson till an exchange was made in August following. There were three thou- sand seven hundred here at first, but in a few weeks about fifteen hundred more came from Terre Haute and Lafayette, and were accommodated with precisely the same quarters, furniture, and food as our own mnen who were encamped there. After the exchange of prisoners the camp was unoccupied till another large arrival from Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. The camp was refitted, commodious hospitals and other buildings erected, and the Fifth Regiment of the Veteran Reserve Corps, under Col. A. A. Stevens, put in charge. This was all done by the national government, the State having no concern with the prison after the exchange in 1862. From three thousand to six thousand prisoners were kept here during the remainder of the war. Col. Richard Owen, and the Sixtieth and Fifty-third Regiments and Kidd's Battery, and Col. D. Garland Rose and the Fifty-fourth Regiment, had charge of the camp while in the hands of the State.

When the first division of prisoners arrived here from Fort Donelson they were fcarfully afflicted with pneumonia and camp diarrhea. The First, Fourth, and Twenty-sixth Mississippi . Regiments suffered worst, though a number of Tennesseans and Ken- tuekians were severely afflicted, all alike from ex- posure in the ditches and rifle-pits of Fort Donelson, with inadequate food and clothing. The first night they slept on the floor of the Uuion Depot, and all night long there was an incessant storm of coughing, groaning, and implorations for help. The next day the physicians of the city prescribed for more than

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HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

five hundred out of three thousand seven hundred, or one in every seven was helplessly sick. A hospital was made first of the old Atheneum Theatre, in the third story of the northwest corner of Maryland and Meridian Streets. Then Blackford's four-story build- ing, on the east side of Meridian near Washington, was taken entirely for hospital use, under charge of the late Dr. Talbott Bullard, brother-in-law of Henry Ward Beecher. The people of the city, men and women, served as nurses without charge, and with many valuable additions to hospital fare from their own home supplies. But, in spite of all care and effort, hardly an hour passed for the first five days that a death did not occur, and the mortality con- tinued for a month or more till the weather inoder- ated. Then both sickness and mortality almost dis- appeared. The dead were buried, in plain wooden coffins, in a lot on the northern limit of Greenlawn Cemetery, near the Vandalia Railroad, whence they were removed, some to their homes by relatives or friends, many to Crown Hill, in. a few years. All the graves were marked. The other prison eamps, Dennison at Columbus, and Douglas at Chicago, were conducted like that at Camp Morton, and the, con- trast between them and Andersonville and Salisbury and Libby is striking. Visitors from Kentucky to sons and relatives in the camp, after the surrender of Fort Donelson, were so frequent as to make a serious annoyance at the Governor's office with requests for admission.

The prison experience of our Indiana soldiers in the South was not quite so pleasant as that of South- ern men here. Gen. Coburn, of the Thirty-third Regiment, was the first to come home from Libby and enlighten Indianians on the treatment of prison- ers there. The romantic escape of Col. A. D. Streight, of the Fifty-first Regiment, from Libby was known all over the country at the time, and is not forgotten yet.

GEN. ABEL D. STREIGHT .- The family of Gen. Streight are of English extraction, though his father, Asa, was a native of Vermont. He was at the age of five left fatherless, and bound out to a family residing near Elmira, N. Y., where he remained until his majority was attained, when Spencer, Tioga Co.,

N. Y., became his home. Here he married Lydia, daughter of Phineas Spaulding, and had children,- Maria (Mrs. Clark Townsend), Francis (deceased), Abel D., Susan H. (Mrs. Cornelius Ives), James P., Benjamin F., Sylvester W., Charles F., and Jane. Mr. Streight after his marriage settled in Wheeler, Steuben Co., and engaged in farming pursuits until seventy years of age, when he abandoned active labor. His death occurred in June, 1883, in his eighty-fourth year. His son, Abel D., was born June 17, 1828, at Wheeler, Steuben Co., N. Y., and passed his boyhood years upon a farm. He was afforded the ordinary advantages of a common school, and at the age of seventeen purchased from his father his time until twenty-one, paying him sixty dollars per year for the same. Having a taste for mechanics he readily acquired the carpenters' craft without in- struction, and before attaining his nineteenth year had taken the contract for the erection of a large mill, which he successfully completed. At this early period he also owned a saw-mill acquired by the pro- ceeds of his own labor. Gen. Streight then engaged in the lumber business at Wheeler, N. Y., where he remained until his removal to Cincinnati in 1858. The following year found him a resident of Indianap- olis, where he embarked in publishing, and continued thus employed until the beginning of the late civil war. It was at this crisis that the patriotism, earnest- ness, and indomitable purpose of Gen. Streight were brought into prominent notice, and marked him as a man of foresight and possessing all the qualities of a successful leader. Realizing the importance of prompt and energetic measures for the preservation of the Union, he published an exhaustive pamphlet, in which he clearly embodied the cause of the nation's calamity, and indicated the measures necessary to insure the supremacy of the laws, the integrity of the Constitu- tion, and the preservation of the Union. He be- lieved compromise with the enemies of the govern- ment to be a mistake, and advocated forcible means, if necessary, to compel obedience to the laws. He proved conclusively the fallacy of a temporary pacifi- cation policy, and by voluminous quotations from letters written by the founders of the government demonstrated it to be a government of the people

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collectively, and not of the States. In defense of the Union, whose integrity he so earnestly defended with his pen, he entered the army on the 4th of September, 1861, as colonel of the Fifty- first Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and did effective service until March 13, 1865, when he retired with the brevet rank of brigadier-general, having participated in the battles of Shiloh, Perryville, Stone River, Day's Gap, Crooked Creek, Blunt's Farm, engagements with Wheeler's Cavalry at Dalton and Shoal Creek, near Florence, Ala. (in which he commanded five bri- gades), Columbia, Tenn., Franklin, Tenn., Nashville, and again at Columbia, in which he forced the pas- sage of Duck River. He was on the 3d of May, 1863, taken prisoner and confined in Libby prison, Richmond, Va., until Feb. 9, 1864, when, with one hundred and eight of his fellow-prisoners, he escaped by a tunnel dug from the prison-walls to the street, and after an interval of rest re-entered the service. In prison he was like the shadow of some great roek in the desert. Men instinctively gathered round him. He was their counselor, friend, and champion. In him they reposed all confidence, intrusting to him their money and laying before him their grievances, and sharing with. him their every thought. It was Gen. Streight who defiantly wrote the rebel Secretary of War, compelling an increase of rations and more humane treatment. The enemy feared him while they hated him, and if recaptured his life would have paid the forfeit of his daring and patriotism. On returning again to civil life he resumed the business of a publisher, in connection with the en]- tivation of a farm in the suburbs of the city. In 1865 he embarked in the lumber business, making a speciality of walnut and hard-wood lumber, to which was subsequently added chair-manufacturing on an extensive seale.

Gen. Streight, when a resident of New York State, manifested a keen interest in polities, and frequently as a Republican participated in the various local cam- paigns. In 1876 he was elected to the State Senate here, running one thousand ahead of his tieket. Here he was conceded to be one of the leaders of the party. Among other measures supported by him was the introduction of a bill providing for the

erection of a new State-House building, the principal provisions of which were adopted. In 1880 he was one of the Republican candidates for the nomination for Governor. Though not the successful aspirant for gubernatorial honors, the press was unanimous in its endorsement of his irreproachable honesty, iron will, uncommon intelligence, and thorough patriot- ism. Gen. Streight was married Jan. 14, 1849, to Miss Lavina MeCarty, of Bath township, Steuben Co., N. Y. They have one son, John, who is en- gaged in the lumber business at Nashville, Tenn.

The Eleventh Regiment, while reorganizing for the three years' service, was encamped on the west bank of the river, near Cold Spring. Camp Car- rington, near the extreme northwest corner of the eity, on the high ground between the eanal and Fall Creek, was the largest and best arranged camp in the State. Camp Noble was the artillery camp, on the northern limit of the city, west of Camp Burn- side. It was arranged by Col. Frybarger, and oc- eupied by the Twenty-third Battery, Capt. J. F. Myers. The artillery practice-ground was on the farm of Mr. Paddock, between the Bluff road and the bluff of the river bottom. The Second Cavalry, Col. John A. Bridgland, was eneamped four miles north, near Fall Creek. The colored regiment, Col. Charles Russell, was in Camp Fremont, east of the lower end of Virginia Avenue. The Nineteenth Regulars, Lieut .- Col. King, was stationed in Indian- apolis for some monthe in. 1861.

The Soldiers' Home and the State Arsenal remain to be noticed among the more durable preparations for the emergencies of the war. The arsenal was the growth of Governor Morton's determination that the Indiana troops should go to the field fully pre- pared for any service, and as the national arsenals could not supply sufficient good ammunition, he es- tablished the State Arsenal to help. It did that, and often helped the general government, too. The quartermaster supplied the material, and the Eleventh Regiment furnished the workmen, and on the 27th of April the arsenal was put in operation by moulding large quantities of bullets in hand-moulds with a blacksmith's furnace, and packing the cartridges in the next room. It was superintended by Herman

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Sturm, and at first was carried on in Ott's cabinet- factory, opposite the State-House. Then it was re- moved to the temporary buildings north of the State- House, and finally to vacant ground east of the city, on the old Noble farm. In the fall of 1861, Secre- tary Cameron, with Adjutant-General Thomas and Senator Chandler, of Michigan, came to the city from Louisville (where they had seen General Sher- man and decided that he was " crazy," because he wanted two hundred thousand men to take and hold the East Mississippi Valley, from the Ohio to the Gulf), and after examining the State Arsenal, ap- proved it highly. It was discontinued on the 18th of April, 1864, after three years of service, in which it had turned out $788,838.45 worth of work, and had made for the State a profit of nearly ten per cent., or $77,457.32.

The Soldiers' Home, like the arsenal, was the suggestion of Governor Morton's restless solicitude for the welfare of the State's troops. This city was the main depot, recruiting station, drill-camp, and preparatory school of the whole State, and it was the chief resting-place of other troops passing east or west to the front. Of course, they always landed here hungry, dusty, and tired, and a sound slcep or a bath and a good meal were sometimes worth a man's life. The Soldiers' Home was a sort of military hotel in which all the accommodations were free. During the first months of the war the State Sanitary Commission had agents at the Union Depot to supply passing troops and take care of the sick at hotels ; but this was expensive and inconvenient, and a camp was established on the vacaut ground south of the depot, with hospital tents and other conveniences, and maintained until 1862, when the Governor re- solved to establish a permanent home. Quartermas- ter Asahel Stone selected the grove ou the west side of West Street, just north of the Vandalia Railroad, and here temporary, but adequate and comfortable frame buildings were erected, enlarged, and added to till they could accommodate 1800 with beds and 8000 with meals every day. From August, 1862, to June, 1865, the Home furnished 3,777,791 meals, and during the year 1864 furnished an average of 4498 meals a day. The bread was supplied by a

bakery maintained by the quartermaster with such strict economy and wise forecast that the rations of flour, to which the men served in the Home were en- titled, sufficed for all they needed, and for thousands of loaves distributed among the poor besides. The saving in the rations of other articles amounted to $71,130.24. The saving of flour, after all bread supplies were completed, the sale of offal, and a sut- ler's tax paid $19,642.19. Thus the Home was sus- tained in all its expenses almost wholly by the rations of the men provided for in it. On holidays the ladies of the city furnished festival dinners of their own preparation, waited at the table, and did all the service. A Ladies' Home, for the care of soldiers' wives and children, was opened in a building near the Union Depot, in December, 1863, taking care of an average of one hundred a day during the remainder of the war.

The State Sanitary Commission was first sug- gested by the necessities of the State troops in West Virginia among the mountains in the early fall or latter part of the summer of 1861. Governor Morton's endless difficulties in getting winter clothing and supplies through the elaborate entanglement of gov- ernment "red tape" put his mind upon doing the necessary service in a better way, and thus came the Sanitary Commission of Indiana. The late Rob- ert Dale Owen, the State's military agent in New York, made the first step in the scheme by purchas- ing, under the Governor's direction, twenty-nine thousand overcoats, some at seven dollars and seventy- five cents each, some at nine dollars and twenty-five cents. The United States Quartermaster, Meigs, re- fused to pay more than the regulation price for the latter, and the State assumed the extra one dollar and a half. Morton said, " If the general government will not pay at the current rates, Indiana will, for she will not allow her troops to suffer." Socks, shoes, and caps were lacking, blankets were defective and insufficient in quantity. To supply these deficiencies the Governor, on the 10th of October, 1861, issued liis first appeal to the "women of Indiana." The re- spouse came in blankets, shirts, drawers, socks, and mittens, sheets, pillows, pads, bandages, lint, and dressing-gowns for hospital use, to the amount of

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many thousands of dollars. This was the first sani- tary work of the war done anywhere by State or nation. Competent agents were appointed and sent to the best points to carry on this work, which was to " render all possible relief to our soldiers, espe- cially to those who were sick or wounded, whether in transit, in hospitals, or on the battle-field." Sanitary stores were sent to them for distribution. Besides these agents there were special agents, surgeons, and nurses,-many of the latter among ladies of high social position. From this city Mrs. Coburn, wife of Gen. Coburn, and Miss E. H. Bates, daughter of the first sheriff, were largely engaged in hospital service. Combined with the sanitary service there were agents to take care of the men's pay and bring it home free of cost to their families, to write letters for them, to see to the burial of the dead and the preservation of relies, and keep registers of all the men in hospitals, with date, disease, wound, and date and cause of death, if death ensued, for the information of rela- tives and friends, to assist returning soldiers in get- ting transportation, to look after returning prisoners, and iu every way to be careful and affectionate guardians. Dr. Bullard, Dr. Parvia, and Rev. T. A. Goodwin were effectively engaged in these duties at one time or another, while Dr. William Hannaman was chief sanitary agent all the time, assisted by Alfred Harrison. The Commission during the time of its existence, from February, 1862, to the elose of the war, collected in cash $247,570.75 and in goods $359,000, making a total of sanitary contributions made in the State in about three years of $606,570.75. An additional sum of $4,566,898 was contributed by counties, townships, and towns to the relief of sol- diers' families and soldiers disabled by disease or wounds, making a total voluntary outlay in Indiana of over five millions of dollars, besides thousands of which no account was ever made.

Some of the political incidents of the war are worth noting as an indication of the feeling of the people. At the outset there was never a word of sympathy with the rebellion heard. The feeling was all loyal or silent. One of the city papers neglected to hoist the national flag on its building, and the proprietor came near being mobbed by the intolerant patriots.

He and others suspected of Southern sympathies were made to take the oath of allegiance. As the war grew to be a familiar idea, and its conduct showed bad feeling and incompetent management, popular sentiment changed. Opposition began to speak more plainly and to take on a party aspect. That doubly embittered old differences. The loyal men talked of the others as traitors, and treated them as unfit for respectable society ; the latter retorted by censures of the tyranny of the government and the inefficiency of its conduet. At a county convention in the court- house square on the 2d of September, 1862, some of the Democratie speakers, especially the late Robert L. Walpole, bitterly denounced the war, the govern- ment, and the soldiers. There were many of these in the crowd, and they were irritated. A riot fol- lowed, and some of the rebel sympathizers barely es- caped with their lives ; if they had been caught they would have been killed. At the October election the opponents of the war were excluded from the polls by threats of violence. In 1864, while .the Nineteenth Veteran Regiment was here on a fur- lough allowed to re-enlisted veterans, the Sentinel made some allusion to the appearance of the men in a party procession the day before, and an angry crowd assailed the office with the avowed purpose of " clean- ing it out," but were defeated by the resolute obstruc- tion of Provost- Marshal (afterwards Governor) Baker. It was then in all Gen. Butler's operations south of Richmond and was eonspicuous at Wathal Junction. The Democratie State Convention in 1864 came here armed, and kept up a considerable fusilade as it went away in the evening. The Eastern trains were stopped and the jubilant shooters compelled to give up their weapons to the number of several hundred.

The Legislature of 1863 was adverse to the war and the party sustaining the war. It refused to re- ceive Governor Morton's message. It tried to de- prive him of the constitutional command of the State militia. It proposed no less than thirty measures of truee or peace with the Confederate States. It failed to make any appropriations to carry on the State civil government or the military contributions to the gen- eral government. This forced Governor Mortoa to

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raise money by loans and popular contributions both for these purposes and for the payment of interest on the State debt to avoid the rninous imputation of repudiation, which was so disastrous from 1841 to 1846. He constituted a " financial bureau" to meet the emergency, and for two years governed without any connection with the other State offices, which were in the hands of political antagonists and friends of the Confederacy. The Legislature of 1865, how- ever, was of a different complexion, and legalized all the Governor's acts, paid his debts, and reimbursed his loans and contributions.

The most conspicuous feature of the political an- tagonism to the war were the "Treason Trials" of 1864. H. H. Dodd was first arrested on informa- tion, anonymously conveyed to the Governor by a lady in New York, that boxes of revolvers and am- munition had been sent to Dodd, marked " Sunday- school books," which were concealed or stored in the Sentinel building. This was the story at the time. Governor Morton, however, said that while the in- formation came to him anonymously from a lady whom he never discovercd, the boxes, when discov- ered, were merely marked " books" and " stationery." The "Sunday-school" was a humorous addition. Dodd was tried by court-martial, convicted, sentenced to death, and escaped as already related. At the same time William A. Bowles, the reversed hero of Buena Vista and head of the Sons of Liberty in this State, with Lamdin P. Milligan, Stephen Hor- sey, Andrew Humphreys, and the late Horace Heff- ren, were arrested. Later the first three were tried and convicted by court-martial, as above related. Humphreys was convicted, but sentenced to a rc- straint within limits at home, and later was par- doncd; the late Dr. John C. Walker, colonel of the Irish regiment, a leader of the Sons of Liberty, went to England and was never disturbed; Heffren turned State's evidence and convicted his associates.

Several rebel raids were made or attempted into In- diana under the encouragement of the sympathizing associations to which these men and many thousands of others belonged. The first was led by Adam R. Johnson on Newburg, Warrick Co., July 18, 1863. The next was led by Capt. Thomas H. Hines, of

Morgan's division, June 17, 1863, entering this State eighteen miles above Cannelton, with sixty-two men. All but a dozen of them were captured in two days in Crawford County, after stealing a con- siderable number of good horses. The great raid, however, was that of Gen. John H. Morgan, with a brigade of two thousand four hundred and sixty men and four guns. They crossed the Ohio at Branden- burg, Ky., and passed into the interior of the State as far as Vernon. The home troops of the " Legion" and temporary volunteers met in University Square here, and drilled two or three times, the banks sent away their specie, and railroad travel southward was interrupted a little, but that was the worst effect in the city of the great Morgan raid. How it turned to a retreat in one day, and a flight the next day, and a surrender of most of the command in Ohio in a day or two more, everybody knows. A horrible catas- trophe marked the first movement of troops here to meet the raid. A Michigan battery which had been stationed here for some time was hurrying from the artillery camp down Tennessee Street to Indiana Avenue, on its way to the depot, when the jolting of one of the caissons exploded a percussion shell and all the contents of the caisson with it, blowing two of the men over the tops of the shade-trees along the sidewalk, tearing them into fearful fragments, and killing them instantly, and mortally wounding a man and boy of the city who happened to be passing. It was about sundown of the 9th of July.

The worst effect of the political hostility to the war was not the conspiracies of secret orders of rebel sympathizers, the Knights of the Golden Circle and Sons of Liberty, nor the open legislative action in embarrassment of the efforts of the State and nation for the prosecution of the war, but in the encour- agement to desertion, the organized protection of deserters, and the cool, calculating murder of draft- officers in three or four counties, and draft-mobs in a dozen. The soldiers at first did not properly under- stand their relation to the government. They thought that an enlistment was like any other engagement for service, terminable at any moment by giving up all claim to wages for the abandoned time. When the service became hard and the discipline unsparing,

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History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 57

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 942

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942