USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 19
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Troops of the Perry County Legion had more than: once gone to the defense of Breckinridge and Han- cock Counties against plundering marauders, whose depredations were a menace to every quiet home. The knowledge of this intensified the antagonism of the guerillas, who several times slipped into and out of
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Hawesville, and their bitterest animosity was directed toward Cannelton, as the county seat and centre of Perry County troops, notwithstanding her chief indus- trial plants represented the investment of New Orleans and Louisville capital.
The favourite threat among the fire-eating South- rons was, "We'll come across and burn your cotton mill for you," a taunt repeated with increasing vehemence after John Morgan's spectacular dash across Harrison County in the preceding year. His first defeat, and the imprisonment in Ohio from which he escaped, exer- cised no restraint upon the scouting bands assembled from time to time in Kentucky, and since the geograph- ical position of Cannelton exposed the town with pecu- liar strategic weakness as a possible point of attack, the government detached from the lower flotilla Cap- tain Edmond Morgan's vessel, the Springfield, order- ing him to guard the port of Cannelton during the sum- mer of 1864.
This duty was almost a furlough for Captain Mor- gan, compared with his earlier experiences. Born in an aristocratic English family, his father being Cap- tain Edmond Morgan, Sr., of the Buckinghamshire Guards, he had been at the age of thirteen a commis- sioned midshipman in the Royal Navy, participating creditably in the brief but bloody Crimean War. At its close he came, a soldier of fortune, to America where a near relative, Lord Lyon, was then at Wash- ington as Queen Victoria's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Through Lord Lyon's friend- ship with Admiral Porter young Morgan was given a special position as squadron instructor, to teach sword practice and the sighting and firing of heavy ordnance.
His sympathies being with the North, Morgan soon accepted a commission in the United States Navy and entered a stirring period of his life. He became a blockade runner, commanding a flotilla of twelve steamboats that crept down the Mississippi one stormy night and spiked the batteries of Island Number Ten,
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allowing the bottled-up Federal fleet to steam toward Vicksburg. Following this, he headed an expedition up the Cumberland River to seize the southern iron foun- dries, an exploit of constant fighting and prodigious labour, such as the burning of twelve bridges. For both these feats he received high tribute from the War Department and special recognition from Congress.
Contrasted with such thrilling service the Cannelton appointment seemed mere pastime. Very gay was the social life of the little town during that long summer, its patriotic families vying with each other in the hos- pitable attentions they were pleased to extend to the gallant officers and marines who were their protectors, nor were these lacking in return courtesies, even on board their somewhat austere vessel. The Springfield was a sternwheel boat approximating in size the pres- ent Louisville and Evansville packets, but completely sheathed with iron plates, pierced only by apertures for her guns. Her pilot-house was surmounted by a handsome pair of stag antlers, taken from a deer shot in southwestern Missouri, not far from New Madrid before the capture of Island Number Ten, and these are perhaps the only material souvenir of the Spring- field yet in existence.
Well-nigh forgotten had been the strife of war until one Monday morning, July 25, to be exact, was made memorable by the bombardment of Hawesville, and about ten o'clock some rapid firing called a curious crowd to the river bank for a sight wholly new and ever since without a parallel. There was a deep bass hum-m-m, a sharp whiz-z-z, a beautifully perfect wreath of smoke issuing from the cannon's mouth ; then in the distance, a few feet from the earth, a pure white cloud started out of the clear air, and five seconds later returned the hollow, reverberating boom-m-m.
Nor was sound the only emotion, for the scene was equally exciting. A shell would burst over some Ken- tucky home, driving out half a dozen terror-stricken inmates ; a strong current of women and children was
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setting toward the lower part of town, a goodly num- ber hastening within the thick stone walls of the Ro- man Catholic Church for protection, while many ne- groes, as they were reminded of safe retreat in the Trabue coal mines, fled thither and looked not behind, believing that the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah had befallen their village.
While frightened Hawesville thus sought the shel- ter of distance, rock walls and caves in the earth, open- mouthed Cannelton stood agog to witness the exhibi- tion. Shelling a town was, indeed, a rare show for Indiana citizens. There were the finest facilities for observation, abundant ammunition, and not a whit of danger. About twenty shells were discharged and all was over. A thousand stories were instantly in circu- lation, impossible to record and foolish to deny.
The substance of the affair was that Captain Morgan had received information of guerillas entering Hawes- ville, and with great caution sent into the town a few shells which did no damage to person and none of con- sequence to property. He had no opportunity for warning the residents to leave, but by personal super- intendence of every piece pointed and every fuse fired, saw that no danger should be incurred by inoffensive citizens of the place. His generous offer, immediately made public, to remunerate from his private purse any one whatever, to the full extent of any loss they might have sustained, was an honourable pledge to the careful discharge of his official duty as protector of the peace and dignity of both towns.
Among the attractive young girls of Cannelton were three often grouped together as "belles" in name and fact, Miss Isabelle Beacon, Miss Isabelle Kirkpatrick and Miss Isabelle Huckeby, all of whom eventually wedded army men. Most youthful of the three and the youngest child, as well, of Joshua B. Huckeby, was Miss Huckeby, who was married in after years to Major Thomas James de la Hunt, of General Hovey's staff. Her two brothers were in the Federal army
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(Captain John Lang Huckeby, of the Eighty-first In- diana, and William Lamb Huckeby, engineer on the gunboat Peytona). Their parents took particular pains in entertaining Captain Morgan at their home "Virginia Place," with its square-pillared verandah after an Old Dominion model, and no other guests were more warmly welcomed than Miss Beacon and Miss Kirkpatrick.
With the approach of autumn the wane of the Con- federacy had distinctly set in, so that fear of guerilla annoyance was over. The Springfield was ordered to join her fleet at New Orleans, steaming away down the river, to be seen at Cannelton no more. The ant- lers were Captain Morgan's parting gift to his little friend, Miss Huckeby, but a more tender trophy, his heart, he left behind with Miss Beacon. Before the summer roses bloomed again in Cannelton gardens Richmond had fallen, Lee had surrendered at Appo- mattox, Lincoln had been assassinated, and when Cap- tain Morgan next came, in piping times of peace, he wore uniform no longer but was in citizen's garb to claim his promised bride.
Of the gay wedding party from both Indiana and Kentucky assembled in the old Beacon homestead, only one remains half a century later on the old stamping ground, Colonel Franklin Lander, of Hawesville, per- haps the one man of his vicinity who at all times hap- pily bridged any social gulf between North and South, counting by the score his warm personal friends in the armies of both the Union and the Confederacy. Es- teemed as "Cousin Frank" by young and old alike, he stands an admirable example of the polished gentle- man of the ancien régime. In the old-fashioned, low- ceilinged, long drawing-room of "Virginia Place" the antlers occupy the post of honour above a bay-window looking-today, as it did fifty years earlier-toward the hills of Kentucky, across the Beautiful River, "whence the fleets of iron have fled."
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
CLOSE OF WAR.
THE presidential campaign of 1864 was decidedly spirited all over Indiana, and into Perry County were sent many leading men of both political parties, speeches being delivered by Thomas A. Hendricks and William H. English among others. Owing to the ab- sence of so many voters with the army the number of ballots cast was greater by only fifteen than that of four years previously, although there had been some increase in the actual population of both Cannelton and Tell City. The votes polled gave as a result: Lin- coln and Johnson, 1,112; Mcclellan and Pendleton, 1,042; showing that popular sentiment was still with the administration, despite a certain degree of bitter- ness engendered by the conscription and skilfully nur- tured for partisan ends.
Three full companies-293 men-were the quota re- quired from the county by the staggering draft of July 18, 1864, and conscription was seen to be inevitable, though strenuous efforts were made, under the leader- ship of Judge Charles H. Mason, toward raising a bounty fund in Troy Township, where 176 volunteers were called for. While the Springfield was stationed at Cannelton some seventeen men from the vicinity en- listed for gunboat service; and up to the autumn forty- five recruits had been sent to the Twenty-sixth Regi- ment; ten or twelve to the Thirty-fifth; about fifteen to the Forty-ninth; a dozen to the Fifty-third, and sundry small squads to other commands. But the draft could not be escaped, and late in September 185 men were conscripted, thus distributed among the townships:
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Troy, 123; Oil, 21; Clark, 19; Anderson, 11; Tobin, 11; Leopold and Union having furnished their proportion.
About this time it became evident and was later ac- knowledged that through failure in making proper re- ports to headquarters of all her recruits under the last few calls, Perry County had not received her full credit for men in service, so the omissions were corrected, and some few others similarly discovered were beneficially rectified. The men conscripted went to New Albany during October and were assigned to various regiments. The final call of the war for troops, December 19, 1864, met with but meagre response, another draft being foreseen, though the liberal bounty offered-$640- had its effect in sending some men to the old regiments, as it was felt that Sherman's March to the Sea was the beginning of the end.
About thirty-five men enlisted in Company I, of the One Hundred and Forty-fourth Regiment, mustered in squads during February, 1865, William H. Kyler be- coming second lieutenant when regimental organization was effected March 6, at Indianapolis. By the draft of this same month at Jeffersonville, 44 men were con- scripted from Troy Township, 19 from Clark, 17 from Oil, 8 from Leopold, the remaining townships having fully cleared themselves. But few of these entered actual service, owing to the speedy close of the war, but they were accredited to Perry County, placing her upon the honour roll of fifteen among Indiana's ninety- two counties which filled every call, besides her excel- lent record of no less than nineteen Home Guard com- panies in the Indiana Legion, of which they formed the Fifth Regiment.
Colonel Charles Fournier had maintained his entire command in camp along the river between Rono (Mag- net) and Troy, during the autumn months of 1864, on constant guard and patrol duty, a precaution rendered necessary by the appearance on the Kentucky border of guerilla forces with the presumable purpose of crossing the river to aid malcontents in resisting the draft, a
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plan of invasion which their own safety required them to abandon. A Confederate force under Major Walker Taylor took possession of Hawesville in December, noti- fying the Union commander that if left in undisturbed occupancy of that town they would refrain from molest- ing Cannelton of its citizens. Colonel Fournier met Major Taylor on board the ferry-boat Major Prescott in mid-river to discuss the proposition, but no terms were agreed upon and the interview ended all com- munication.
On December 23 a troop of marauders headed by William Davidson boarded with their horses the Louis- ville and Henderson packet Morning Star at the Lewis- port landing, twelve miles below Cannelton, shooting four Union soldiers, drowning the negro steward, rob- bing the passengers of their money and valuables, after which the captain was compelled to take the guerillas to Hawesville, omitting all intermediate landings. Samuel K. Groves and wife (Eliza Huston Huckeby) of Rome, had ninety-five dollars taken from them, while another passenger, Paul Beisinger, suffered the loss of six hun- dred and ninety-five dollars, Davidson insolently writ- ing out a receipt which he flung in the captains' face: "Received of steamer Morning Star five hundred dol- lars."
Directly upon learning of this outrage, Colonel Four- iner trained his against the Kentucky shore and called out all the companies at his command. A sufficient force could not be rallied during the night to cross the river with any prospect of success against the very considerable guerilla band just then collected there, but the enemy was effectually routed at an early hour the next morning by some few well-aimed shots thrown through the streets of Hawesville from the ten-pound Dahlgren gun which General Love had brought to Can- nelton in September, 1862.
This process so vividly recalled to all the citizens of Hancock County Captain Edmond Morgan's brief bom- bardment only a few months earlier that even most
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ardent Confederate sympathizers cheerfully discon- tinued any extended hospitality toward guests whose presence entailed such calamity upon their entertainers, so the guerillas ate their Christmas dinners elsewhere than in Hawesville.
Doubly joyous, however, through the restored sense of security, was Cannelton's holiday merry-making, and a charity entertainment brought together in Mozart Hall a crowded assembly to witness one of the amateur theatrical entertainments always so popular with a gen- eration who never dreamed that celluloid films would one day supersede the spoken drama in public favour.
Right generous, too, was the carnival programme of- fered-charades, tableaux vivants, and drama, inter- spersed with music. Misses Isabelle Beacon (Mrs. Ed- mond Morgan), Emeline McCollum (Mrs. Alfred Vaughan), and Indiana Vaughan (Mrs. Samuel King), were among the notable charade performers. French history was drawn upon for a tableau in three scenes, "The Divorce of Josephine," rendered with sumptuous fidelity to detail. Mrs. Charles H. Mason (Rachel Huckeby) a woman of superb appearance, imperso- nated the unfortunate Empress with artistic accuracy of costume, attitude and expression, Miss Sallie Mar- shall supporting her in the role of the beautiful Hor- tense. Captain Edward N. Powers represented Na- poleon, with Captain John P. Dunn as Marechal Ney.
Appropriate to the holiday season the principal play staged was the ever-new "Cinderella," in which Miss Mary Jaseph (Mrs. John H. Wade) played the title part, with Miss Mollie Archer (Mrs. Schmuck-Hof- meister) as the fairy godmother whose wand of en- chantment wrought its miracle over the pumpkin. Mrs. John H. Thompson (Margaret Patterson), Misses Hat- tie Patterson (Mrs. Simeon Jaseph, Jr.), and Madge Armstrong (Mrs. Edwin R. Hatfield) enacted the cruel stepmother and haughty stepsisters. Palmer Smith and William Huckeby Ferguson were popular comic singers, and the closing tableau, "The Death of Minne-
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haha" was accompanied by a musical recitative, Miss Isabelle Huckeby (Mrs. de la Hunt) having composed her own setting to Longfellow's poetry, a melody of surpassing pathos, never given to publication.
Several of the same performers, with many others, took part in a similar entertainment during the same winter, in aid of the Methodist Church; and for the benefit of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, which had been damaged by fire, the most ambitious histri- onic effort ever attempted in Cannelton was produced early in May, an abridgment of the "Merchant of Venice," rehearsed and staged under the personal su- pervision of Mrs. Hamilton Smith (Louise Rudd).
A literary club giving particular attention to Shak- spere had existed for one or two winters among the young people, humourously styled "The Parsonage Lit- erary Institute," with the Rev. William Louis Gith- ens at its head, so that Mrs. Smith found plastic ma- terial ready for her moulding hand. Shylock, Joseph W. Snow; Duke, Edwin R. Hatfield; Bassanio, Sidney B. Hatfield; Antonio, Thomas James de la Hunt; Por- tia, Miss Isabelle Huckeby; and Nerissa, Miss Marga- ret Armstrong, were the leading characters of the cast. Contemporary accounts give high praise to the rendi- tion, especially the Trial Scene, where the fair young doctor, the "wise and excellent young man," delivered, with beautiful conception of masculine strength made subservient to the delicate perception and unbounded love of a cultured woman, that matchless appeal for mercy, the noblest lines ever penned by "sweetest Shakespear, Fancies childe." An element of romance underlay it all, by no means lost upon the audience of familiar friends who afterward accused Antonio of being more captivated by the curling ringlets escaping below Portia's hood, and the bewitching sweetness of her undisguised accents, than by the acumen of her legal pleading. A double bill was invariably expected by the audience, so the perennial "Mistletoe Bough" was given as the afterpiece, Miss Mollie Archer win-
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ning unbounded compliments by her charmingly at- tractive delineation of Ginevra the Missing Bride.
The fall of Richmond and removal of the Confed- erate capital to Danville filled all hearts with joy at the beginning of April, as it was realized that the end could be a matter of days only, and the tidings of Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House was welcomed with jubilant demonstrations all over the county. Homes and public buildings were decorated with the national colours by day and illuminated at night, while bonfires lit the heavens, salutes of cannon and mus- ketry rent the air, bands played, and exultant people ran to and fro, shaking each other by the hand in con- gratulation.
Into the midst of this universal rejoicing the news of Lincoln's assassination came like a bolt from the blue, bringing a revulsion of unspeakable terror to all. As after the taking of Fort Sumter, so again the fatal message reached Perry County by boat at an early hour upon a Sunday-April 16, the morning of Easter Day. But not even the spiritual joy of the Risen Lord could comfort the first outbursts of indignant grief over the martyred chief of a mighty nation, nor soften the furious passion felt toward his murderer.
By the following day mourning draperies had sup- planted the tri-coloured bunting, and a public mass- meeting was held pursuant to call, at Cannelton, in the Court House solemnly festooned with black. Joshua B. Huckeby presided as chairman, Gabriel Schmuck act- ing as secretary, and the object of the meeting was im- pressively stated by Judge Charles H. Mason, with a sadness befitting the unprecedented occasion. A com- mittee was appointed to draw up resolutions, during their absence the large audience listening to brief re- marks from Edwin R. Hatfield, Walter Bynum and G. B. T. Carr. The series of resolutions, eight in num- ber, were then read by Judge Mason, eloquently voicing the sorrow of Perry County over the dastardly crime, at the same time expressing a fixed determination to
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spare no effort nor sacrifice toward vindicating the supremacy of the government, reuniting the Union, and accomplishing complete restoration of national au- thority.
After unanimous adoption of the resolutions by a rising vote, Major de la Hunt was called upon and spoke, with deep emotion, of how "all over the land from where 'the mournful and misty Atlantic' moans under the beetling cliffs of New England, to where the sunbeams and zephyrs of California's golden shores sighingly whisper their story to the great Pacific" the people were bewildered with sorrow. "The lover of his country," he said, "has lost the noblest of presidents; the vanquished, the most benevolent of conquerors."
A further brief address was made by Major Nich- olas L. Lightfoot, of Hancock County, Kentucky, who had spoken on the preceding day at the Court House in his own home town of Hawesville, where all other plans for Easter Day had been entirely set aside, flags draped in mourning, and bells tolled incessantly as for a fu- neral. In the morning, the Rev. Samuel C. Helm had preached an appropriate discourse at the Methodist Church South, and in the afternoon a becoming funeral sermon was delivered by the Rev. James H. Brown, in the Baptist Church, the entire community, whether Union or Confederate, acting and feeling truly alive to the great and unexpected calamity which had bereft Kentucky of a native son no less than a national ex- ecutive.
That undaunted loyalty which has been a character- istic of the Switzer race from the days of Walter Fuerst and Herrman-asserting itself in Arnold Winkelried, and again in the deathless courage of ill-starred Marie Antoinette's Garde Suisse, immortalized by Thorwald- sen in his Lion of Lucerne-shone with its olden lustre under Indiana skies, and the valiant colonists of Tell City who went forth in '61 to fight for the altars and fires of their infant community, mourned with pro- foundest sorrow the loss of their beloved president in
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'65. Nowhere in Perry County was deeper sentiment manifested than in the memorial exercises at Tell City, and meetings of similar nature were held in Troy, Rome, Leopold and other places. On the day of the funeral St. Luke's Church, Cannelton, was opened for solemn service which a large congregation attended. The Episcopal burial office was read by the rector, the Rev. William Louis Githens, and the Methodist pastor, the Rev. J. B. Likely, delivered an address which brought tears into many eyes unaccustomed to weep.
No military occurrences followed this, save the re- turn from time to time of the boys in blue, and Inde- pendence Day witnessed a public picnic in their honour, held on "Brier Hill," and managed by a committee of women at whose head were Mrs. Charles H. Mason (Rachel Huckeby), Mrs. Daniel L. Armstrong (Susan James), and Miss Kate Kolb. General Walter Q. Gresham, announced as speaker of the day, was un- able to fulfil his engagement, and Edwin R. Hatfield made an able substitute in the grace of fluent oratory. Ferdinand Mengis, of Tell City, spoke to the Germans present in their mother tongue, and the sounding aisles of the green woods rang once more with the anthem of the free, "The Star-Spangled Banner."
The knowledge that the cruel war was over filled "to its highest topsparkle each heart and each cup," though among the sturdy lads who had gone away in youth's flush of health, some came home as aged men of broken constitution, with perhaps an empty sleeve or frightful scars. Others had crossed the river to rest under the shade of the trees, in the faraway Southland "where all the golden year the summer roses blow." Whether the resting place of their sacred dust is marked today by gleaming marble or lost under the verdure of fifty fleeting years, both North and South have come at length to realize that for Federal and Confederate hero alike,
"Glory guards, with solemn round, the bivouac of the dead."
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CHAPTER XXIX
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT
AN industry which for a time during the sixties promised much to Cannelton, and whose failure in ful- filment came about through outside rather than local causes, was the ship-yard undertaken in the spring of 1863 by Samuel King, who removed at that time from Jeffersonville to Perry County. Although born in Al- legheny County, Pennsylvania (October 16, 1821), he came of seafaring stock, his father, John W. King, having commanded a sailing vessel in the West Indies trade for many years, and his mother, Nancy Shaw, was also of a New England coast family.
Purchasing from Dow Talbot the saw-mill at the extreme upper edge of Cannelton which had been orig- inally owned by the pioneer, Israel Lake, he entered upon the independent trade of boat building which he had followed through twenty-five years of work for others.
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