An end and a beginning December 1861 closed a tumultuous year that saw secession of southern states following the election of a Republican president of the United States and bloodshed after the organization of the Confederate States of America. Perhaps more so than in most years, the close of 1861 was a time to reflect on the meaning of the past and to anticipate the future. Matters military A major change in the Illinois command…
General Benjamin M. Prentiss of Quincy, Illinois Dr. David Costigan When the Civil War erupted in April 1861, Benjamin M. Prentiss of Quincy (Adams County), a colonel in the Illinois militia, was given command of seven companies with which to defend Cairo, located at the critically important junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. In late April his men seized munitions aboard river steamers bound for the South, an indication of his aggressiveness. It was…
Rebels come North: POWs near Springfield On February 1862, the U.S. army commanded by Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Donelson, Tennessee. The loss to the Confederates was great—control of a portion of western Tennessee, dozens of pieces of artillery, and over 16,000 soldiers. Federal officers moved quickly to transfer the captured men to the North, away from friendly territory and potential aid. For the first time a large number of non-resident secessionist sympathizers would…
Illinois boys in blue For 150 years the military service of boys has provided iconic images of Civil War memory. Stories in wartime newspapers and magazines celebrated young—and often unnamed—patriots who served their country. During the postwar period people could hear concerts of war songs by an adult “Drummer Boy of the Rappahannock.” Three of the four groups of statuary placed on the tomb of Abraham Lincoln (designed in 1868) include figures of very young men. The Civil War…
Governor Richard Yates visits the battlefront On April 10, 1862, Governor Richard Yates and a handful of other state officials left Springfield for Cairo. There they would meet dozens of volunteer surgeons and nurses and proceed to Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, to provide care for and evacuate hundreds of Illinoisans seriously wounded during the battle of Shiloh. The governor had arranged such an expedition following the fight at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, several weeks earlier, but the Pittsburg Landing…
“Every thing reminds me of Arthur”: Mourning a lost friend Lieutenant Arthur L. Bailhache of Springfield, adjutant of the 38th Illinois Infantry, died of disease at Pilot Knob, Missouri, on January 9, 1862. His body was sent to Springfield for burial. Bailhache’s death left a void in many lives, including that of Anna Ridgely. The daughter of Springfield banker Nicholas and Jane Huntington Ridgely, Anna kept a journal into which she poured her anxieties, as well as…
Looking for Excitement: The Story of Albert D. J. Cashier Women have served in every war this nation has fought since the Revolutionary War, when Deborah Sampson Gannett took up arms. Ironically, it is only in the 20th and 21st centuries that women have been excluded from the infantry. The number of women who disguised themselves as men to fight on the frontlines in the American Civil War was estimated at about 400. Mary Livermore,…
Cheatham Hill, Georgia: The Illinois Civil War Soldiers and their Monument Brett Bannor It is an easy 200-yard walk from the parking lot at the Cheatham Hill section of the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield to the Illinois Monument. Ironically, the stroll meanders through a placid oak-hickory forest that is so like the woodlands of Illinois that one could imagine the setting is in the Land of Lincoln instead of fifteen miles northwest of downtown Atlanta,…
“We are coming Father Abraham” On July 1, 1862, President Lincoln issued a call for 300,000 new volunteers to join the armies of the Union for a term of three years. That act would result in the composing of one of the great patriotic songs of the war –“We are Coming Father Abraham” – as well as bringing about the largest single influx of Illinoisans into the military during the Civil War. The call Lincoln’s call…
PANIC!! Volunteer soldiers had barely gathered in training camps and organized into units in the summer of 1862 (see August 2012 feature) when Illinois Governor Richard Yates began to receive panicked messages calling for the new regiments to be sent forward to protect Kentucky against rebel invasion. Confederate armies were on the move, hoping to take back territory lost earlier in the year. Rebels resurgent The Confederate government and its armed forces were determined to regain ground…