Abraham Lincoln and other politicians

The site of this photo is on my list of places to visit. It’s at a place called Cold Spring, on County Road N north of Whitewater, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, I have not yet visited that site, by bicycle or otherwise. But Peter Jourdain, a fellow member of the Phred touring list, lives and rides in that area and took this photo.

Another photo to go with it shows the roadside park where the sign is located. I see it’s a good place to stop and make coffee. There’s even water, judging from that pump. It’s getting hard these days to find water without paying for some that comes in a plastic bottle, so this is a noteworthy place for that, too.

Before 1996, when you could say this project got started, the only thing I remembered about the Black Hawk war was a history-comic book about Abraham Lincoln that had young Lincoln as a militia captain.

He was indeed elected captain of his company. (And this was his only military experience prior to being Commander in Chief.) By the time his his horse was stolen, his company had been disbanded, so he reinlisted as a private in another company. He reinlisted twice, in fact. But the regular U.S. army was taking over the war, and wanted the militias to go away.

Lincoln wasn’t the only aspiring politician in the war. And such war service was important to anyone with political ambitions.

From Indiana, one regiment, the 40th, was particularly thick with politicians. They travelled to the war from Indianapolis. I’m not sure how far they got — possibly no further than Joliet. After it turned out their services were not needed, they headed back by way of South Bend.

There they took umbrage upon learning they had been mocked by the editor of the local newspaper, John D. Defrees. I have read somewhere that they threatened to throw his press into the St. Joseph River, but I don’t seem to have the source of that information. What I do have in front of me now is a photocopy of a microfilm of the July 4 issue of the paper, after the fuss was over, in which he wrote, under the headline, “Disgraceful Outrage”:

On last Thursday, the 40th Regiment of Indiana militia, arrived at this place via Chicago, and while here, perpetrated an outrage of the most disgraceful character, and which, when known to the world, will be sufficient to stamp the instigators and those who participated in it with eternal infamy. On the day previous to their arrival, our paper was issued containing an editorial which, from its ‘home thrusts’ set too heavy on the feelings of some of the officers of said Regiment. It is not my present purpose to justify these remarks, perhaps they were wrong, and admitting them to be so, it cannot be any mitigation of the course pursued by the troops towards me.– In speaking of the troop, I do not wish to be understood to mean all, for there were some honorable exceptions–somewho had too much honor to countenance the proceedure. A short time after their arrival in town, I was surrounded, in the street, by this military mob, who, marching up to me with more than Spartan courage, said they intended revenging themselves on me for having insinuated that they were on a money making expedition, and were destitute of the essential qualification of soldiers, and by way of demonstrating that they were men of genuine metal, many dirks and butcher knives leaped, with fearful clatter, from their scabbards, and were flourished in dread array around me….

There is more, but I’ll stop here.

There was also a war of words in the newspaper between Defrees and a G.L. Kinnard, who is identified as “Adj’t 40th Reg. I. M”

The Indiana State Library’s web site has this biographical information about Kinnard:

George L. Kinnard was born in 1803 in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1823, where he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law. He served as Lieutenant Colonel in the 40th regiment of the Indiana militia (1826) and Colonel of the 81st regiment (1833). Kinnard held several public offices including Marion County assessor (1826-1827); member of the Indiana House of Representatives (1827-1830); Marion County surveyor (1831-1835); and member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1833-1836). He died on November 26, 1836, near Cincinnati, Ohio, as a result of injuries sustained as a result of an explosion on the steamer Flora on the Ohio River.

Obviously he didn’t get as far in his career as that other militia politician, Abraham Lincoln.

Defrees’ newspaper didn’t last long in South Bend. There just wasn’t enough population to support it. He moved on, and later was given the job of government printer in the Abraham Lincoln administration, as a reward for his work in getting the Indiana vote for Lincoln in the 1860 election. There is a biographical sketch and photo of him here.