USA > Wisconsin > An illustrated history of Wisconsin from prehistoric to present periods : the story of the state interspersed with realistic and romantic events > Part 17
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The invitation was gladly accepted. The colonel's wife and daughter were visiting him, and the daughter and the lieutenant met that evening for the first time.
A month later, by previous arrangement, they went from the camp, just back of the Lee mansion, on Arlington Heights, Virginia, to Wash- ington. When they returned that evening the colonel's daughter was the lieutenant's bride.
The young people made no sign, and the colonel and his wife had no suspicion whatever that their only daughter had married without their knowledge and consent, and they did not learn of the romantic marriage until early spring, 1862. Then there was a cloud-burst. The colonel was furious and the situation was painful and exciting. After meeting his son-in-law, and giving him what is supposed to have been one of the bitterest denunciations one officer ever gave another, he refused to look at or speak to the lieutenant for a year or more, and yet they remained in the same regiment, fought together in several hard engagements, both winning distinction. The colonel was a thorough soldier. He was forced to acknowledge that his son-in-law was a brave
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and valuable officer, and when there was a vacancy in his company he was fair enough and manly enough to recommend him for promotion. By-and-by the colonel became commander of the brigade, and his son- in-law was made major and then lieutenant-colonel, and commanded the regiment his irate father-in-law had converted from a band of wild west- ern men into one of the best drilled and best fighting regiments in the Army of the Potomac. At the end of three years the colonel resigned and went home, and at the end of the war his son-in-law was colonel of the Seventh Wisconsin and a brevet brigadier-general. He is now one of the well-known lawyers of Chippewa Falls-General Hollon Richardson -and his honored father-in-law, Colonel W. W. Robinson, respected by everybody who knows him, resides in the same city.
THE robins and bluebirds were singing their inspiring songs, and the violets in the fence-corners were modestly nodding a welcome to spring, in April, 1861, when a commission as captain was sent to George H. Stevens, of Fox Lake, by Governor Randall. At that time there resided in the quiet, pretty village, and about it, a sturdy class of citi- zens, nearly all of whom were native Americans. Captain Stevens had only to make known that he was ready to receive recruits for a company to go the war, to have his office promptly crowded with eager, patriotic, country-loving young men, some of them mere boys, who elbowed their way to the little pine table to sign their names to the roll and swear into the state service. Captain Stevens' company was soon filled up, and early in May he reported to Adjutant-General W. L. Utley that he was ready for rendezvous. In due time it was ordered to Camp Randall, to be a part of the Second Wisconsin Infantry, which regiment was the first troops to enter that famous and now memorable military ground.
Among the first young men who offered their services to Captain Stevens was a quiet, earnest, thoughtful, finely-built fellow, a substantial citizen of the village, who in enlisting made a sacrifice that was much greater than that made by most of his fellow-soldiers of that company.
He had a devoted wife and a sweet little girl of two or three sum- mers, but he felt that it was his duty to enlist, and no argument could dissuade him from doing what he deemed his duty. He was among the first to sign the roll of honor.
Old residents of Fox Lake recall, to-day, nearly thirty-two years after the event, the tearful parting between the patriotic husband, his young wife and their little girl. The wife and mother, after a fond fare- well, blinded by scalding tears, sat upon the steps of a neighbor's house, with the little one in her lap, while the company marched past to the station, and took the train for Madison.
Nothing could have been heavier than the young husband's heart as he glanced over his shoulder and saw his dear ones sitting on the door-step, filled with sorrow too great to be spoken. The wife was
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broken-hearted over his departure. What an afternoon and night of gloom for that soldier's wife!
The next day found the Fox Lake company at Camp Randall. Most of the boys, after their first camp breakfast, were homesick enough to engage in writing letters to mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts.
I can see thoughtful Captain Stevens as he sits on an old-fashioned kitchen chair, with a shingle for a table, writing his first army letter to the wife he never saw again, telling her of their trip, of that first army breakfast, and how bravely his men bore up under the terrible trial of parting with the dearest of earthly friends.
Sitting with his back against the high board fence, on the north side of Camp Randall, his portfolio for a table, is our hero, writing to a , heroine-his wife.
His name? It makes but little difference what it is, but we will call him Bennett-Archie Bennett, though that may not be his real name.
The love and affection he poured out in that letter was pure and grand. There was no dross in it. Three days later he received his first letter from home, and that evening his name was read out as a corporal. The new office, though not a high one, gave him additional duties to perform, and helped him to pass the time that otherwise would have been one of the greatest tasks of his life.
No one can tell how great a hardship it was for him to leave family and business- no one who did not have a like experience -to sacrifice everything he had in the world and give himself to his country.
Great as his sacrifice was, there were tens of thousands of brave men in that war, on both sides, who made equally great sacrifices. Nc word of complaint was heard from him. He knew his country was in danger; he knew that he was strong and abundantly able to do duty as a soldier, and he felt that it was his place to do just what he had done -to enlist at the first opportunity.
We will not follow Corporal Bennett through the early stages of the school of the soldier. The days of great danger to the national capital came in June, and the Second Wisconsin was ordered to move to Washington.
The order came so suddenly, and the movement must be made so promptly, that there was no opportunity for visiting the dear ones at home, nor for having them visit their friends at Camp Randall. Almost before the friends knew of the order, the Second Wisconsin was on its way south. It will be remembered that the Second Wisconsin was the only regiment from this state that participated in the battle of Bull Run, July 21st, 1861. What excitement there was throughout Wisconsin when the report of that battle reached here. Camp Randall then con- tained two regiments in preparation for active service. Every member of these regiments hastened to buy Madison papers giving accounts of what was then one of the greatest battles that had been fought on the
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American continent. How excitedly, eagerly, the new soldiers ran through the list of killed and wounded, and what sober faces there were among those young men who had sworn to aid in crushing a great con- spiracy to destroy their country. What sorrowing and anxiety there was throughout the state, in hundreds of homes from which there were representatives in the Second regiment.
Corporal Bennett distinguished himself in his first battle. He acted as sergeant, giving invaluable aid to the line officers, besides using up his own forty rounds of ammunition.
Nothing unusual occurred to this model soldier at Gainesville, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Fitzhugh Crossing or Chancellorsville, in all of which engagements he was an active and brave participant, but at Gettysburg he was wounded, and quite seriously. Before he would allow the surgeons to dress his wound, or take nourishment of any kind, he insisted upon writing a brief dis- patch to be sent to his wife in far-away Wisconsin. These are his exact words:
"We have had a great battle and won a great victory. I received a little scratch. Don't worry."
That "little scratch" disabled him for some time-until the follow- ing fall.
When his regiment was afforded an opportunity to reënlist for three years more, at Culpeper, Virginia, early in 1864, Bennett, as had been the case at Fox Lake nearly three years before, was well at the head of the roll of reënlisted men, indicating that he was ready to make still greater sacrifices for the country so dear to him.
What happy days those reënlisting days were. The men who had served nearly three years, and then reënlisted for three years more, were conscious that they had done something out of the ordinary- that they had said, while they knew the hardships of war, the horrors of battle, the pains of the hospital, they were ready to risk their lives for three years more.
What a glorious example they gave the country. Who can blame them for feeling a pride in such a step, and who does not, even to-day, honor the men who reënlisted, or, as some of the boys say, veteranized, when the government was in such great need of their continued services:
Besides this consciousness they were made happy in the thought that they were to have a month at home-in the thought that they were soon to meet wife and children, father, mother, sisters, and sweethearts, and all of the other old home friends.
Something comes into my throat as I recall the return of the sur- vivors of that company to Fox Lake-those who reënlisted. The gallant Captain Stevens, who had won his way to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of his regiment, was not with them-he had fallen at Gettysburg. Another captain, whose arm had been shot away, was absent. More
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than half of that gallant band of brave boys and young men, who had left Fox Lake nearly three years before, were sleeping on Pennsylvania, Maryland or Virginia battlefields, or were lingering and suffering in hos- pitals. But what a reception the survivors were given by the people of the quiet old village. Every one of the inhabitants extended both hands in welcome. Nothing was too good for the men who composed the first company to leave that part of the state.
Sergeant Bennett was content to devote his entire time to his wife and little girl, the little girl who did not know her soldier father, but who loved him as well as though she had recognized him among the hardy, brown-faced soldier lads who marched into Fox Lake on that January afternoon, in 1864.
And how quickly those thirty days passed away-the furlough days. They say a cyclone sweeps over a city like a flash. Those thirty days given to the reënlisted soldiers passed more quickly, seemingly, than a rushing, roaring, hustling cyclone, and the day of the second depart- ure to war, hardship, danger, suffering, and mayhap death, had arrived.
How hard it was to part the second time. I will not attempt to describe it; I will not attempt to picture the sorrowful scenes.
Soon after the reënlisted men returned to Culpeper, Virginia, Grant, who was at the head of all of the armies of the Union, came to the Army of the Potomac to join Meade in what was to prove the most memorable campaign known in the military history of America-the bat- tles from Wilderness to Appomattox-during which time, from May 5th, 1864, to April 9th, 1865, the Army of the Potomac was not out of hear- ing, a single day, of booming cannon and cracking muskets.
Do you recall those terrible scenes in the Wilderness, the balmy spring days, the bird songs and the fresh new leaves, when both armies almost fell into each other's arms and slaughtered each other by the thousands? The Wilderness will always be remembered as a very hell by all of the soldiers who were in those memorable engagements.
It was on that first day, the 5th of May, 1864, that a bullet struck First-Sergeant Bennett in the head. He fell prostrate and his captain, next day, entered his name on the roll as "killed in battle."
The news of her great loss was sent to the young wife in a letter full of sympathy and sorrow, by a lieutenant of his company.
The day the letter was received by Mrs. Bennett her little girl was stricken with a fever, and ten days later was sleeping near the village church in the little country graveyard. A widow and childless, clad in mourning and broken-hearted, this poor woman felt that her load was heavier than she could bear, and for two months her life was despaired of. Then she gradually began to improve in strength. In September she was able to take up life's duties again, and bravely she bent to her work. The little home had been sold on a mortgage. She had no reserve fund. Most of her furniture had gone. Two rooms, up stairs,
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were rented, and each day found this mourning widow, mourning the death of a loved husband, weeping over the new made grave of her sweet little girl, going somewhere, each day, to wash, for which service she never received more than seventy-five cents, and most of the time only fifty cents a day. Her pension as a widow was applied for and granted in due time.
Young mothers and wives of to-day, let me ask you to take this poor woman's unfortunate situation into careful account. Did she make a greater sacrifice for her country than you would be willing to make? Can you ever cease to honor her and praise her courage and devotion to family and country? Can you ever, under any circumstances, sneer at the war widow, or think lightly of her, as you see her or hear her name mentioned?
Very soon after Bennett was killed the Union army was driven back in confusion, and our dead and wounded fell into the hands of the tem- porarily victorious confederates.
I have said that First-Sergeant Archie Bennett was killed. Every- one who saw him fall, and knew that he was hit in the head, supposed that he had been killed, and reported accordingly; but he was not killed.
After remaining on the field where he fell thirty-six hours he was conveyed to a confederate field hospital, where a rebel surgeon examined him and pronounced his case hopeless. Within three days Bennett was able to move and could make known his desire for nourishment, and his wound was dressed. Within two weeks he was walking about the narrow confines of the hospital grounds, and within a month he was on his way to prison with many thousands of the Army of the Potomac, captured in the great campaign from Culpeper to Petersburg.
Sergeant Bennett was conveyed to Andersonville. The wound in the head made a great change in the man's conduct. It stunned him, and he never recovered from its effect. While his associates at Ander- sonville planned for comforts in that hell on earth, looked out for their full share of rations, poor Bennett, who was no longer himself, seemed content to take whatever was offered. Night after night he slept in the damp air, on the ground, with nothing under him but mother earth and nothing over him but the blue sky of heaven, when it was clear. Every day added to his already enfeebled state. He could scarcely walk when he reached Andersonville; after he had been there two weeks he could not walk a step, and day after day he sat vacantly staring at his associates in misery, scarcely uttering a word, never making a com- plaint.
One morning when the dead wagon passed through the camp, gath- ering up the bodies of unfortunate Union soldiers whose spirits had crossed the dark river the previous night, confederate attendants picked Bennett up and were about to swing him into the wagon, as they had a score of other poor emaciated, half-naked bodies, when his eyes
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opened, and he wanted to know what they were doing. Of course they dropped him, and then his comrades besought the surgeon to have him taken to the hospital, which was little better than a dead house.
There he received a little better attention than some of his fellows who had gone there before him, and he partially recovered and regained some of his strength; enough so that when a batch of prisoners was transferred to Salisbury, N. C., Bennett was included.
He fared no better at Salisbury than he had at Andersonville. It is not necessary to go into details, but when men are half starved, poorly clad, have been treated worse than the meanest farmer treats his live stock, it is not at all surprising that they look only to their own comfort; that they become extremely selfish and show but little evidence of caring for anyone else. That is the case with nearly all of the prisoners, in such circumstances. So it happened that this quiet, inoffensive man, this brave, model soldier, who had received a wound in the head that came very near to dethroning his reason, received but scant attention. If he received rations he cooked and ate them, when he was able to cook them. If not able to cook them, he ate such of them as he could, raw.
A wreck he was, weighing less than seventy pounds, when, in 1865, he was exchanged and found his way to Washington, where one of his old company met and recognized him, and took the necessary steps to correct the company record -to correct it so that it would show that Archibald Bennett, First-Sergeant of Co. A, was living instead of dead, as the record had shown for almost a year. The same friend put him in a way to draw a portion of the money that was due him from the gov- ernment, and then accompanied him to the Baltimore & Ohio depot, at the national capital, bought a ticket for him, and sent him on his way toward his desolate Wisconsin home.
In his half-dazed condition the poor fellow had not thought to tele- graph to his wife in Fox Lake, or a friend, to notify them he was on his way home, consequently a great surprise awaited the people of Fox Lake.
He reached the little Wisconsin village one morning just as daylight was appearing, scarcely knowing where he was. He was found sitting on the steps of the only hotel in the place, and was kindly taken into the house and given food and a room. No one who saw him knew who he was. People talked to him, but he could not, or at least did not, answer.
This gives the reader something of an idea of the great change that had taken place in the man. A little more than a year before he had been home on a furlough and mingled with his old neighbors and friends who knew him well; who had known him for many years; yet on that chilly April morning, nearly four years after his enlistment and start for the war, he was a total stranger. Is it not pitiful to reflect upon?
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At that time the late Hon. Q. H. Barron was proprietor of the hotel. He had been away from home, but returned about 9 o'clock that morning. He was informed of the presence of the returned soldier and immediately visited his room. The two men recognized each other. Barron drew back in utter astonishment and exclaimed, "Bennett, is this really you?"
In a voice a little above a whisper came the answer, "Yes, all there is left of me."
Twenty minutes from then the news had spread throughout the vil- lage that Archie Bennett had not been killed; that he was alive and at that moment in the hotel.
Friends hurriedly found Mrs. Bennett and broke the good news to her. Quickly husband and wife were together. But the meeting was nearly as sad as the parting had been. Bennett, emaciated, with reason toppling, unkempt hair and beard, sunken eyes, looked so little like the robust, fine-appearing gentleman who had parted from his wife after the thirty days' furlough a little more than a year before, that the poor woman could not be made, for some time, to believe that she was looking at and talking to her husband, and what was sadder still was the fact that Bennett did not recognize his wife.
But weeks and months of gentle nursing partially restored him to health. They continued to live in Fox Lake for some years, but more than twenty years ago located in Milwaukee. Bennett engaged in busi- ness, but his head troubled him to such an extent that it became neces- sary to sell out. This was nearly fifteen years ago, and since then he has not been able to do a day's work. Since then he has been almost as helpless as a babe; since then that devoted, patriotic wife, has given him as kind, gentle and loving care as she would have given a child; and during all of these years has had resting upon her shoulders the responsibility of earning all that was necessary to support herself and her unfortunate hero husband.
Through an inexcusable blunder on the part of an agent who made an application for his pension, fifteen years ago, he was granted the puny sum of two dollars, the claim being based on the wound received in the leg, at Gettysburg, instead of the terrible wound received in the head, at the Wilderness, which was supposed to have killed him. It took years to correct that blunder, but in time it was corrected and a generous sum paid his wife, who is his guardian; yet not a tenth as much as it cost him to give his government the service he did as fight- ing soldier and suffering prisoner for four years, and the years of almost death ever since his return. I see Bennett now and then, tottering along the street, holding the arm of his good wife, but he does not seem any more like to the model Sergeant of Co. A, Second Wisconsin, that I knew in the army a lifetime ago, than black seems like white.
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Who can estimate the sacrifice he and his wife made by his service to the government in the government's darkest hour?
Days at a time the old orderly sergeant sits and looks into the street, and when spoken to says, " I am watching for the boys; it is time to call the roll." As first sergeant it was his duty to form the company and call the roll. .
He belongs to a Grand Army Post. Sometimes his wife leads him to the hall and waits in a convenient drug-store for the meeting to close, when she as tenderly conducts him back to their home-their own home -a home earned by this heroine wife of a soldier hero.
EARLY VOYAGEURS ON THE WISCONSIN RIVER.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.
Conquering the Old Northwest .- Its Gradual Transition.
THE treaty of peace, made in September, 1783, was not accom- panied by the immediate surrender of the British posts to the American authorities. Considerable recrimination occurred between the two governments, each accusing the other of flagrant violations of certain articles of the treaty. More than ten years of diplomatic controversy intervened, on both sides of the Atlantic, before the disputes were set- tled. This was finally done by Jay's treaty in 1794. In the inter- mediate, the British retained possession of the posts on the American side of the Great Lakes, which gave their possessors a great influence over the warlike Indian tribes in their neighborhood. The year of 1784 had nearly passed away before the United States government was aware that the British cabinet had determined not to evacuate the western posts. The reason assigned for the detention of these posts on the lakes was the hostile temper manifested by the Indians. It soon became apparent that the cessation of hostilities with England was not necessarily the end of the warfare with the Indian tribes. The gov- ernment was obliged to submit to the indignity of permitting a foreign power to maintain garrisons within her limits, as well as to ineffectually cope with the horrors of border warfare in the west.
Virginia, as early as October, 1779, had by law discouraged all settlements on the part of her citizens northwest of the Ohio ;* but the prospects of peace, together with the growing spirit of land speculation, soon became stronger than the law, and it now became the great debat- able question, in what manner to throw open the great region lying westward of the mountains without making the Indians more desperate. Washington, in a letter to James Duane, who was a member of congress in 1783, writes with reference to the difficulties which were then before that body, in relation to the public lands, and pointed out to congress the necessity for making the settlements compact, and suggested that it should be made a felony to settle or survey lands west of a line to be designated by congress, which line might extend from the Great Miami to the Mad river, thence to Fort Miami on the Maumee, thence north- ward, so as to include Detroit, and possibly from the fort down the river to Lake Erie. }
Washington also proposed other stringent measures for the preser- vation and tranquility of the northwest, but before congress could take any effectual steps in that direction, it was necessary that the great measures of cession, which were commenced in 1780-81, should be
*Rev. Stat. of Va.
+Sparks' Washington, Vol. VIII., 477.
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completed. On the 13th day of September, six days after the receipt of this letter, congress stated the terms upon which they would receive the proposals of the "Old Dominion" for its cession to the United States all of the territory northwest of the Ohio river.
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