Tag: Civil War

Freedom Seekers in Indiana: A Study in Newspapers

Despite its status as a free state in the federal union, Indiana maintained a complicated relationship with the institution of slavery. The Northwest Territory, incorporated in 1787, banned slavery under Article VI of the Articles of Compact. Nevertheless, enslaved people were allowed in the region well after lawmakers organized the Indiana Territory in 1800. As historians John D. Barnhart and Dorothy L. Riker noted, there were an estimated 15 people enslaved in and around Vincennes in 1800. This number only represented a fraction of the 135 slaves enumerated in the 1800 census. When Indiana joined the Union as a free state in 1816, pockets of slave-holding citizens remained well into the 1830s.

Underground Railroad Routes through Indiana and Michigan in 1848, from Wilbur Siebert’s book, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom. Internet Archive.

Fugitive slave laws, a core policy that before the Civil War, perpetuated the “dreaded institution.” The U.S. Congress passed its first fugitive slave law in 1793, which allowed for slave-owning persons to retrieve their human property in any state and territory in the union, even on free soil. Indiana, both as a territory and a state, passed legislation that ensured compliance with federal law. The controversial Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 exacerbated the problem, with many arrests, enslavements, and re-enslavements of African Americans in Indiana. Scholars estimate that 1,000-5,000 freedom seekers escaped bondage annually from 1830-1860, or roughly 135,000 before the Civil War.

Indiana’s revised Constitution from 1851. IARA.

Making matters more complicated, Indiana ratified a new constitution in 1851 that included Article XIII, which prohibited new settlement of African Americans into the state. Article XIII also encouraged colonization of African Americans already living in the state. The Indiana General Assembly even passed legislation creating a fund for the implementation of colonization in 1852. It stayed on the books until 1865. This, along with a litany of “black codes,” limited the civil rights of free African Americans and harsher penalties for African Americans seeking freedom. As historian Emma Lou Thornbrough observed, Indiana’s policies exhibited an “intense racial prejudice” and a fear of free, African American labor. One window into understanding complex history of fugitive slaves is by analyzing newspapers. Ads for runaways, fugitive slave narratives, and court case proceedings permeate Indiana’s historic newspapers. This blog will unearth some of the stories in Indiana newspapers that document the long and uneasy history of African American freedom seekers in the Hoosier state.

Indiana Gazette, September 18, 1804. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Runaway advertisements predominantly chronicled fugitive slavery in Indiana newspapers during the antebellum period. These ads would provide the slave’s name, age, a physical description, their last known whereabouts, and a reward from their owner. One of the earliest ads comes from the September 18, 1804 issue of the Indiana Gazette, while Indiana was still a territory. It described two slaves, Sam and Rebeccah, who had run away from their owner in New Bourbon, Louisiana. Sam was in his late twenties and apparently had burns on his feet. Rebeccah was a decade younger than Sam and “was born black, but has since turned white, except a few black spots.” This might have been a case of vitiligo, a skin pigment disorder. In any event, their owner offered a fifty dollar reward for “any person who will apprehend and bring back said negroes, or lodge them in any jail so that the owner may get them.”

Western Sun, December 9, 1807. Hoosier State Chronicles.

On December 9, 1807, the Western Sun ran a similar ad with a small, etched illustration of a runaway slave. Slaveholder John Taylor offered thirty dollars for the capture and return of three slaves (two men and one woman) who had taken two horses and some extra clothes. “Whoever secures the above negroes,” Taylor said, “shall have the above reward, and all reasonable charges if taken within the state; or ninety dollars, if out of the state . . . .”

Western Sun & General Advertiser, June 27, 1818. Hoosier State Chronicles.

These ads escalated after Indiana’s statehood in 1816, leading to expansions of the role of local officials. As Emma Lou Thornbrough noted, African Americans “were sometimes arrested and jailed on the suspicion that they were fugitives enough though no one had advertised them.” For example, the Western Sun & General Advertiser published a runaway ad on June 27, 1818 asking for the return of Archibald Murphey, a fugitive from Tennessee who had been captured in Posey County. Sheriff James Robb, and not Murphey’s supposed owner, took it upon himself to run an ad for the runaway’s return. “The owner is requested to come forward [,] pay charges, and take him away,” the ad demanded.

Western Sun & General Advertiser, October 26, 1822. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Owners understood the precarious nature of retrieving their slaves, so some resorted to long ad campaigns in multiple newspapers. A slave named Brister fled Barren County, Kentucky in 1822, likely carrying free papers and traveling north to Ohio. His owner offered a $100 reward for his return for at least three months in the Western Sun & General Advertiser. He had also advertised in the Cincinnati Inquisitor, Vincennes Inquirer, Brookville Enquirer, Vandalia Intelligencer, and Edwardsville Spectator.

Leavenworth Arena, July 9, 1840. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Other ads provided physical descriptions that indicated the toll of slavery on a human being. Two runaways, named Ben and Reuben, suffered from multiple ailments. Ben had his ears clipped “for robbing a boat on the Ohio river” while Reuben lived with a missing finger and a strained hip. Lewis, a fugitive from Limestone County, Alabama, had a “cut across one of his hands” that caused “one finger to be a little stiff.” They could also be rather graphic. The Leavenworth Arena posted an ad in its July 9, 1840 issue requesting the return of a slave named Smallwood, who scarred his ankles from a mishap with a riding horse; reportedly a “trace chain” wrapped around his legs, “tearing off the flesh.” The pain these men, among many others, endured from the years of their bondage was sadly treated as mere details in these advertisements.

Western Sun & General Advertiser. November 21, 1818. Hoosier State Chronicles.

While ads represented a substantial portion of newspaper coverage, articles and court proceedings also provided detail about the calamitous lives of fugitive slaves. First, court cases provide essential insight into the legal procedures regarding fugitive slaves before the Civil War. The Western Sun & General Advertiser published the court proceedings of one such case in its November 21, 1818 issue. John L. Chastian, a Kentucky slaveholder, claimed a woman named Susan as his slave and issued a warrant for her return. Corydon judge Benjamin Parke ruled in favor of Chastian on the grounds that Susan had not sufficiently demonstrated her claim to freedom and the motion for a continuance on this question was overruled. Even if Susan had been a free person, the legal system provided substantial benefits to the slaveholders, and since she could not demonstrate her freedom, she was therefore obligated to the claimant.

Richmond Palladium, September 30, 1843. Hoosier State Chronicles.

As for abolitionists, they faced court challenges as well. In 1843, Quaker Jonathan Swain stood before a grand jury in Union Circuit Court, “to testify in regard to harboring fugitive slaves, and assisting in their flight to Canada.” When asked to testify, Swain refused on grounds of conscience. The judge in the case granted him two days to reconsider his choice. When Swain returned, “he duly presented himself before the Judge, Bible under his arm, and declared his readiness to abide the decision and sentence of the Court.” The judge cited Swain in contempt and jailed him, “there to remain until he would affirm, or should be otherwise discharged.” This episode was one of many that demonstrated the intense religious and moral convictions of Quakers and their resistance to slavery.

Evansville Tri-Weekly Journal, October 7, 1847. Hoosier State Chronicles.

By contrast, many of those who sought slaves faced little challenge. The Evansville Tri-Weekly Journal reported that Thomas Hardy and John Smith, on trial in the Circuit Court of Gibson County for kidnapping, were acquitted of all charges. The judge’s ruling hinged only on a fugitive slave notice. This notice provided “sufficient authority for any person to arrest such fugitive and take him to his master.” As with the case involving Susan, the alleged slaves procured in this case received less legal protection than the two vigilantes that captured them. These trends continued well into the 1850s through the end of the Civil War.

Evansville Daily Journal, January 18, 1859. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Second, numerous articles and narratives concerning fugitive slaves and free persons claimed as fugitives were published during the antebellum period. The passage of the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, of which Indiana kept its obligation to enforce, exacerbated coverage. Some articles were merely short notices, explaining that a certain number of alleged fugitive slaves were passing through a town or getting to a particular destination. The Evansville Daily Journal ran a brief description in 1859 about two men “who had the appearance of escaped slaves, came upon the Evansville road, last night, and passed on to Indianapolis.” It was also reported that they “had a white adviser with them on the cars,” supposedly a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. In another piece, the Journal wrote uncharitably about a “stampede of slaves” that:

. . . left their master’s roofs, escaped to the Licking river where they lashed together several canoes, and in disguise they rowed down the Licking river to the Ohio and crossed, where they disembarked and made a circuitous route to the northern part of Cincinnati.

After their travel to Cincinnati, the twenty-three fugitives began their route to Canada via the Underground Railroad.

Evansville Daily Journal, June 19, 1854. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Articles covering the arrest of fugitive slaves also filled the headlines. As an example, the New Albany Daily Ledger ran a piece in 1853 about two fugitive slaves captured in the basement of local Theological Seminary. Jerry Warner, a local, arrested them both and received $250 in compensation for their capture. The Evansville Daily Journal reported of the arrest of three fugitive slaves in Vincennes who were on their way to freedom in Canada. Two men, one from Evansville and another from Henderson, Kentucky, pursued and captured the fugitives nearly eight miles outside of the city. The fugitives defended themselves against capture, with one of them brandishing a pistol who “snapped it twice at the officer, but it missed fire.” The officers then transferred the fugitives to Evansville, who were supposedly returned to Henderson.

Evansville Daily Journal, June 2, 1854. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Conductors of the Underground Railroad also faced arrest for the aid of fugitive slaves. Another article from the Evansville Journal chronicled the arrest of a man known simply as “Brown” who aided four female slaves to an Underground Railroad stop at Petersburgh, Indiana. A US Marshal and a local Sheriff “charge[d] on the ‘worthy conductor,’ and he surrendered.” The officers returned Brown to the Henderson jail for processing. It was later discovered that he received $200 from a free African American for his last job. The Journal described Brown as a “notorious abolitionist, and if guilty of the thieving philanthropy with which he is charged, deserved punishment.” Indiana’s free state status did not lessen the prejudice against African Americans and abolitionists; it only obscured it.

Evansville Daily Journal. April 13, 1858. Hoosier State Chronicles.

One of the more elaborate, yet challenging methods fugitive slaves used to seek freedom involved shipping boxes. The Evansville Daily Journal reported of a fugitive slave captured aboard the steamer Portsmouth, a shipping vessel traveling from Nashville to Cincinnati. He was in the box, “doubled up like a jack-knife,” for five days before authorities discovered him and took the appropriate actions. The ship docked at Covington, Kentucky and they “placed the negro in jail to await the requisition of his owner.” It was learned later that the fugitive slave had an agreement with a widow to move to Ohio on condition that he work for her for a year. “He had fulfilled his part of the contract,” the Journal wrote, “and she was performing her stipulations, and would have enabled him to escape had it not been for the unlucky accident.” This story was also covered in the Terre Haute Daily Union and similar stories ran in later issues of the Journal, the Nashville Daily Patriot, and the Richmond Palladium.

Crawfordsville Weekly Journal, August 16, 1855. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Sadly, the ultimate risk for a fugitive slave was death, and Indiana newspapers chronicled these events as well. The Crawfordsville Weekly Journal published an article on August 16, 1855 detailing the death of a fugitive slave by drowning. It appeared to the authorities that the fugitive, resting near Sugar Creek in Crawfordsville, was discovered by a group of men and questioned about his status. Under pressure, the fugitive leaped into the water and tried to flee, which spurred one man to shoot off his gun in an attempt to stop him. As the Journal wrote, “this alarmed the negro, and he plunged beneath the waters, and continued to rise and then dive, until exhausted, and he sank to rise no more until life was extinct.” His body was discovered a few days later. While some deemed his death a mere drowning, others thought it more “suspicious.” The Journal continued:

Putting the most favorable construction on the circumstances, there was a reckless trifling with human life which nothing can justify. He was doubtless a fugitive, but they knew it not, and had no right to arrest him or threaten his life. They knew of no crime of which he had been guilty, and only suspected him of an earnest longing after that freedom for which the human heart ever pants; and because he acted upon this feeling, so natural and so strong, they threaten to tie and imprison, and when struggling with overwhelming waters, he is threatened with being shot if he does not return ; and then when strength and life were fast failing, stretched not forth a helping hand to save him from immediate death.

If the facts as stated be true, (of which we have no doubt,) there is high criminality, of which the laws of our country should take cognizance; and when the news of the negroe’s [sic] death shall have reached his owner, he will doubtless prosecute those men; it may be for murder in the second degree, or at least for the value of the slave.

The Journal eloquently elucidated why the application of fugitive slave laws, especially by vigilante citizens, harmed the civil rights and lives of both free people and those still in servitude (of which there were a mere few).

Terre Haute Journal, September 2, 1853. Hoosier State Chronicles.

Free African Americans additionally faced threats to their lives and livelihood from the enforcement of fugitive slave laws. A well-known instance in Indiana regarded the arrest and release of John Freeman. Arrested and jailed on June 21, 1853, Freeman faced a charge from Pleasant Ellington of Missouri that he was one of his slaves. Freeman hired a legal team and after a lengthy trial that testified to his status as a free-born African American, he was released on August 27, 1853. It turned out that Ellington misidentified Freeman as a slave named Sam, who fled from servitude in Greenup County, Kentucky and likely escaped to Canada. Due to the diminution of his character, Freeman sued Ellington in civil court for 10,000; it was later ruled in favor of Freeman and he received $2,000 and additional unnamed damages. What Freeman experienced is but a snapshot into how fugitive slave laws harmed the rights of free people as well as slaves.

Indiana State Guard, June 8, 1861. Hoosier State Chronicles.

After the Civil War began, fugitive slaves continued to elicit concern, and coverage, in Indiana newspapers. In the spring of 1861, the Sentinel reprinted a piece from the Jeffersonville Democrat about the rise of fugitive slaves traveling through the Ohio River region: “the number of fugitive slaves caught on the Indiana side of the river, and returned to Kentucky within the past three months, is greater than that of any like period during the past ten years.” Kentucky’s government still offered a reward of $150 for each returned slave. That summer, the Indiana State Guard published President Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the issue. Lincoln, in a manner characteristic of his own political calculus, declared that Union soldiers were not “obliged to leave their legitimate military business to pursue and return fugitive slaves” but also cautioned that “the army is under no obligation to protect them, and will not encourage nor interfere with them in their flight.” The new President offered a nuanced position that possibly placated the Border States while satisfying the abolitionist wing of his own party. Realistically, it was a long way away from the Emancipation Proclamation.

Greencastle Banner, December 23, 1865. Hoosier State Chronicles.

The end of the Civil War brought the end of slavery as a federally-protected policy, and thus eliminated the need for fugitive slave laws. Their end brought a larger fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence’s commitment to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Yet, the history of fugitive slaves often fell into tales of folklore and hyperbole. Looking at a primary source like newspapers helps to dispel many of the myths and provides nuance to the controversial subject of human enslavement in the United States. These stories represent a small fraction of the larger narrative about American slavery. To learn more, visit the Library of Congress’ page about fugitive slave ads in historical newspapers: https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/fugitiveAds.html. You can also search Hoosier State Chronicles for more fugitive slave ads and articles.

Other Resources

Indiana Historical Bureau: Slavery in Indiana Territory

Indiana Historical Bureau: Indiana and Fugitive Slave Laws

Indiana Historical Bureau: The Underground Railroad

“Yes, the Road Has Been Long:” Dr. George Buckner’s Journey from Enslavement to Prominence

Dr. George Buckner, Gift of Zachariah Buckner (Son of George Washington Buckner), 1965.136.0000, Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science, accessed emuseum.org.

Lauana Creel approached the porch and rang the doorbell of a prominent Evansville citizen she had arranged to interview. The WPA’s Federal Writer’s Project had tasked her with interviewing formerly enslaved Americans in order to document their experiences and perspectives. On this particular day, Dr. George Buckner would be the subject of a series of interviews.

Creel learned that George Washington Buckner was born into slavery on a small farm in Greensburg, Kentucky around 1853. He lived in a single-room cabin with his mother, step-father, and many siblings. In poor health and lacking surgical or medical assistance, his mother became bed-ridden. Given these circumstances, the trajectory of his life was seemingly implausible. From obtaining higher education, to becoming a physician and political activist, to building up his own community, Dr. Buckner exemplified what was possible despite being born into that “peculiar institution.” The Evansville Press aptly noted that he experienced “a world which offered few opportunities for men of his race. He overcame these severe handicaps and his influence for the improvement of the lot of all Negroes has been powerful.”

A one floor, wooden slave cabin near Lexington, which would be similar to the one George Buckner spent most of his childhood in. Photo courtesy of the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center, accessed uky.edu.

During his childhood, George was “presented” to his master’s son, “Mars” Dickie Buckner. Despite being roughly the same age, George was required to do whatever Mars requested, like polishing his boots and putting away his toys. Although his “master,” Mars also served as a playmate and companion of George, who later described their relationship as sympathetic and loving. Unfortunately, George’s only playmate passed away from illness. Mars’s death caused George Buckner great sadness. He claimed to have seen Mars’s ghost one night, pressed against the window of the room in which he died. The death of Mars affected George deeply, and drove him to become a physician.

Compounding his loneliness, Buckner’s sister was sold to another family when the master’s daughter got married. Buckner told Creel, “It always filled us with sorrow when we were separated either by circumstances of marriage or death. Although we were not properly housed, properly nourished nor properly clothed we loved each other and loved our cabin homes and were unhappy when compelled to part.”

While Buckner experienced personal tragedy, the nation had also plunged into crisis. Several of Buckner’s uncles fled North to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War. In his interview, Buckner talked about the night they decided to escape enslavement and join the war effort, stating:

I had heard my parents talk of the war but it did not seem real to me until one night when mother came to the pallet where we slept and called to us ‘Get up and tell our uncles good-bye.’ Then four startled little children arose. Mother was standing in the room with a candle or a sort of torch made from grease drippings and old pieces of cloth . . . and there stood her four brothers, Jacob, John, Bill, and Isaac all with the light of adventure shining upon their mulatto countenances. They were starting away to fight for their liberties and we were greatly impressed.

Ultimately, Jacob was too old to serve and Isaac too young, but George’s two other uncles were accepted into the Army. According to the WPA interview, one was killed in battle and the other fought and returned home unwounded. Black individuals like George’s uncles, helped end the war and the institution of slavery.

When the war ended, George was not yet a teenager and struggled to survive. He taught himself to read with a spelling book, and his literacy became a valuable skill. In 1867, he furthered his education by taking courses through the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency created immediately after emancipation to help Black individuals get jobs, learn basic skills like reading and writing, and help them understand their rights. He began working for the Bureau in Greensburg, Kentucky, teaching other young, formerly-enslaved individuals to read and write. Buckner told Creel that he boarded with a family in a cramped cabin, sleeping in a “dark uncomfortable loft where a comfort and a straw bed.”

Freedmen’s School in New Bern, North Carolina, collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, accessed nmaahc.si.edu.

Buckner furthered his education after moving to Indianapolis, where he encountered Robert Bruce Bagby, principal of the only Black school in the city. Buckner said Bagby was the “first educated Negro he had ever met.” Bagby himself was born into slavery in Virginia, and his parents purchased their family’s freedom in 1857. He then earned a college degree and joined Indiana’s only Black regiment during the Civil War. After studying at Bagner’s school, Buckner made ends meet by working at restaurants and hotels as a “house boy,” or domestic servant. After earning enough money working menial jobs, Buckner went on to study at the Terre Haute Normal School (later Indiana State University), graduating in 1871.

He went on to teach Black students at Vincennes University. While he was earnest about advancing his educational career, another part of him longed to do something else. He wanted to provide essential medical care, motivated by the loss he experienced in his own life. He recalled:

I was interested in the young people and anxious for their advancement but the suffering endured by my invalid mother, who had passed into the great beyond, and the memory of little Master Dickie’s lingering illness and untimely death would not desert my consciousness. I determined to take up the study of medical practice and surgery which I did.

Image of Terre Haute Normal School, courtesy of William Elmer Henry, Legislative and State Manual of Indiana for 1903 (Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, State Printer, 1903), p. 324, accessed Internet Archive.

In 1890, Buckner earned his M.D. from the Indiana Eclectic Medical College in Indianapolis (which became part of Indiana State University). Dr. Buckner practiced medicine in the city for a year, cultivating a positive reputation among the Black community. He transferred his practice to Evansville, where he spent the rest of his life. This likely made him the first licensed Black doctor to practice in the city. Buckner’s role as a physician was crucial, since Black patients could only be treated by Black doctors, many of whom lacked the same resources as white practitioners. According to a UCLA study, Black men comprised only four percent of all doctors and physicians in the U.S. during the time Buckner practiced. He was a vital member of the Black community, someone who they literally could not have lived without.

He also aided his community in other ways. Understanding the importance of education through his own experiences, Buckner dedicated himself to helping other young people get an education. He helped establish the Cherry Street YMCA to give Black children a place to play and learn. He was also the principal of the Independence Colored School, putting his educational background to good use. Buckner served as a trustee at the local Alexander Chapel AME church. He enlisted the help of hundreds of Black residents in the Colored Akin Club in preparation for a local municipal election.

While Evansville provided a change of pace for Buckner, from the hustle and bustle of Indianapolis, there he encountered not only casual racism, but threats against his life, for some of his political views. Buckner was an ardent Democrat, which made him a minority in the Black community. In a local Democratic newspaper, he wrote a column called “Colored Folks” and became well known for his outspoken views. He staunchly supported Woodrow Wilson and, later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A contentious issue that he fought against during his time was vote-buying, a process whereby a local political machine used intimidation or bribery to sway voters to their side. Black Americans were often a target for their perceived desperation. According to Bucker’s interview, he viewed vote-buying as a serious roadblock for self-determination and encouraged them not to be persuaded by bad actors, stating:

The negro youths are especially subject to propaganda of the four-flusher [fraud; huckster] for their home influence is, to say the least, negative. Their opportunities limited, their education neglected and they are easily aroused by the meddling influence of the vote-getter and the traitor. I would to God that their eyes might be opened to the light.

Buckner’s Democratic leanings were not always looked on kindly, as he describes having to hire a bodyguard to keep him and his family from harm. He told Creel that he brought security to professional and social events to:

prevent meeting physical violence to myself or family when political factions were virtually at war within the area of Evansville. The influence of political captains had brought about the dreadful condition and ignorant Negroes responded to their political graft, without realizing who had befriended them in need.

Despite criticism and threats, his bravery and moral conviction also opened new avenues for advancement. He caught the attention of several prominent Democrats in Indiana, including John W. Boehne, with whom he would develop a friendship. Boehne was a Congressman and Mayor of Evansville from 1905 to 1908. This connection helped further Buckner’s burgeoning political career.

Dr. George Buckner, courtesy of Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division.

In 1913, the Wilson Administration tasked U.S. Senators from Indiana with selecting the Minister to Liberia. According to the Indianapolis Star, Dr. Buckner was appointed because he “stands high among members of his race, while his Democracy is vouched for as the right brand by the Democratic leaders of the Indiana ‘pocket.’” The paper noted that the “number of negroes who would be willing to fight and die for the Democratic party” was notably small. In fact, former Rep. John W. Boehne, who endorsed Buckner for the appointment, stated that Buckner was loyal to the party “’at times when it almost cost a negro his life to be a Democrat.’”

The Star reported a few months later that “Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo is hearing echoes of a political insurrection among Indiana negroes over the appointment” of Buckner, whom they felt was “not entitled” to “this big job.” Other Black residents cheered the announcement, throwing a reception to celebrate Dr. Buckner’s breaking of racial barriers, regardless of political affiliation. His appointment occurred, fittingly, just days before Evansville’s Emancipation Day celebration, at which the “newly appointed United State Minister to Liberia” spoke.

In the early 1800s, the American Colonization Society sought to establish a colony, Liberia, in Africa in which thousands of freed Black individuals could establish a community.* By the time Dr. Buckner arrived in Liberia, it was known as “the negro republic.” The Tacoma Daily News described it as “the only country in the world that is owned and governed by negroes.” To say Black Americans thrived in Liberia would be inaccurate. According to the Daily News, the Afro-American League of Evansville submitted a petition to U.S. Congress, alerting legislators to challenging conditions, which included the climate, predatory animals, diseases, resistance from natives resulted in hardship, and even death. Additionally, Liberia was caught in the crosshairs of international conflict that would culminate in World War I.

In its petition, the Afro-American League noted that Liberia was situated between “the British and the French possessions, which are continuously encroaching upon her territory.” War exacerbated the conditions in Liberia, especially as “merchant vessels have ceased to appear upon the coast of Liberia, where our own people in the dark continent are struggling for existence and where this war is causing untold numbers to perish.” The League appealed to Congress, asking that “the European and American capitalists be prohibited, if possible, from plunging Liberia into the yawning abyss they have apparently created for her.”

George Buckner’s son showing off a gift his father received in Liberia. “The King’s Chair” is hand-carved and is meant to symbolize honor. “Gifts to a Slave Turned Diplomat Given to Museum by His Son,” Evansville Press, May 10, 1965, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.

It was this backdrop from which Dr. Buckner began his diplomatic career. Many foreign actors were trying to change Liberia’s nominally “neutral” stance on the war. The Evansville Courier reported that although Buckner did not witness war actions, “he saw evidences of war all along the trip. On the west coast of Africa he saw the remains of a wrecked German cruiser, sunk early in the war, and at Gibraltar he saw the British battleship Inflexible, which was damaged in the engagements in the Dardanelles.” Buckner tried to maintain an independent attitude, difficult, considering his inexperience with diplomacy.

He was frustrated with the rampant corruption and gerrymandering of the political system, which exacerbated dysfunction and unrest. This was something that past ministers to Liberia also noted. Dr. Buckner also suffered from two attacks of African Fever. He resigned from the post prematurely in 1915. Despite some hardships, he told Creel that he “cherishes the experiences gained while abroad.” According to one newspaper, Buckner told a friend privately, “I had rather make less money and remain where I can give my children a father’s advice.” Buckner had four children and clearly prioritized raising them over his diplomatic post. This was quite the sacrifice to make, considering his post granted him a salary of $5,000 (about $154,619 today). The Evansville Press praised his work as a diplomat, noting his “honesty and integrity are unassailable.” Similarly, the Pennsylvania Altoona Tribune marveled that although born into slavery, “Today he is a physician with a splendid practice and a diplomat chosen by the administration to look out for its interests in the African country most identified with the negro race in the United States.”

Buckner’s children at the opening of The Buckner Tower senior citizens apartment complex, courtesy of Evansville Press, January 27, 1969, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.

After resigning from the post, the Evansville Courier reported that Dr. Buckner served as a member of a medical board that “examined Negro registrants during World War I.” He continued his work as an Evansville physician, working fulltime into his 80s. Buckner died in 1943 and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery. The City of Evansville, which had at times been hostile to him, helped cement his legacy by dedicating a public housing project for the elderly in his name. The building was located at the former site of the Buckner family home. In 2022, his alma mater, Indiana State University, named him a Distinguished Alumni Honoree. He is remembered as an influential and accomplished Black man at a time when people of color were treated with overt discrimination. He told interviewer Lauana Creel “Yes, the road has been long. Memory brings me back to those days.” But, despite the hardships he faced throughout his life, Dr. Buckner cherished his freedom and maintained, “Why should not the negroes be exalted and happy?”

Sources:

Much of the information regarding Buckner’s life come from his interviews with Lauana Creel. It was through her work with the Federal Writer’s Project that firsthand accounts of Buckner’s life are available.

“George W. Buckner,” 1880 United States Federal Census, accessed Ancestry Library.

William Elmer Henry, Legislative and State Manual of Indiana for 1903 (Indianapolis: Wm. B. Burford, State Printer, 1903), p. 324, accessed Internet Archive.

Louis Ludlow, “Indiana Negro Selected for Liberian Post,” Indianapolis Star, June 29, 1913, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Intends to Lash Capitalist and Labor Lobbies,” Indianapolis Star, September 17, 1913, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Receives Instructions: New United States Minister to Liberia,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), September 20, 1913, 14, accessed Newspapers.com.

Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), September 23, 1913, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.

“An Honor to the Colored People,” Evansville Courier and Press, October 10, 1913, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.

“George W. Buckner, Minister Resident and Consul General to Liberia,” Altoona Tribune (Pennsylvania), January 2, 1914, 2, accessed Newspapers.com.

“A Letter from Liberia,” Evansville Courier, June 6, 1914, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Will Liberia Survive?,” Tacoma Daily News (Washington), March 2, 1915, 6, accessed Newspapers.com.

Louis Ludlow, “Negro Republic is Bumping the Rocks,” Fort Wayne News, March 5, 1915, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Glad to See the Good Old U.S.,” Evansville Courier, June 6, 1915, 4, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Dr. Buckner May Resign,” Indianapolis News, June 15, 1915, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.

“George Buckner Sr.,” 1920 United States Federal Census, accessed Ancestry Library.

Interview with George Buckner, conducted by Lauana Creel, Ex-Slave Stories, District #5, Vanderburgh County, “A Slave, Ambassador and City Doctor,” Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, vol. 5, Indiana, Arnold-Woodson, 1936-1938, Federal Writer’s Project, United States Works Projects Administration, accessed Library of Congress.

“George W. Buckner,” 1940 United States Federal Census, accessed Ancestry Library.

“Dr. G. W. Buckner, Former Minister to Liberia, Dies,” Evansville Press, February 18, 1943, 3, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Dr. Buckner,” Evansville Press, February 19, 1943, 8, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Gifts to a Slave Turned Diplomat Given to Museum by His Son,” Evansville Press, May 10, 1965, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.

Kathie Meredith, “New Building for Elderly to Get Name of Slave-Born Envoy-Doctor,” Evansville Press, May 9, 1968, 29, accessed Newspapers.com.

“Dr. Buckner Gifts Shown at Museum,” Evansville Press, August 17, 1968, 12, accessed Newspapers.com.

Evansville Press, January 27, 1969, 11, accessed Newspapers.com.

Edna Folz, “Dr. Buckner, a Dynamic Revolutionary,” Evansville Press, February 14, 1972, 13, accessed Newspapers.com.

John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (Oxford University Press, 1979).

“Evansville Doctor Was a Democrat during Unpopular Era,” Evansville Press, June 5, 1987, 19, accessed Newspapers.com.

Darrel E. Bigham, We Ask Only a Fair Trial: A History of the Black Community of Evansville, Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), accessed Scholarworks.

“Dr. George Washington Buckner,” Indianapolis Recorder, March 31, 1990, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

Roberta Heiman, “An Evansville Ambassador,” Evansville Courier and Press, February 22, 1998, 46, accessed Newspapers.com.

Enrique Rivero, “Proportion of Black Physicians in U.S. Has Changed Little in 120 Years, UCLA Research Finds,” UCLA Newsroom, April 19, 2021, accessed UCLA Newsroom.

A Skeleton’s Odyssey: The Forensic Mystery of Watson Brown

John Brown gravestie
John Brown’s grave, courtesy of Alamy.

When the fiery abolitionist John Brown, “The Meteor” who tried to ignite a slave rebellion in the South, was hanged for treason, authorities turned the body over to his family.  In December 1859, Brown’s remains traveled north by train from the hanging grounds in Charles Town, Virginia, to the family farm in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Around Christmastime, he was laid to rest next to a huge chunk of Appalachian granite.

Twenty-three years later, a Hoosier geologist who studied such rocks for a living helped ensure that one of John Brown’s fellow raiders at Harper’s Ferry — his son Watson, who was gunned down during the raid — would finally be buried next to his father.  In the meantime, Watson’s bones went on a long odyssey out to the Midwest.

Watson Brown was born October 7, 1835, in Franklin Mills, Ohio. His father, the great abolitionist, moved back and forth between northern Ohio and his native New England several times.  After John Brown went out to “Bleeding Kansas” to fight the extension of slavery into the West, Watson left home, too, though he apparently didn’t join in the combat on the Plains.  His father and brothers, however — considered terrorists by some — waged war on pro-slavery factions with guns, fire and on one occasion, with broadswords used to brutally murder their enemies to death.  A letter from Watson to his mother Mary, written in Iowa in 1856, mentions that on his own way west with a team of emigrants — armed with “Sharp’s rifles and cannon” — they met with ex-slave Frederick Douglass and the reformer Gerrit Smith.  Smith, a failed presidential candidate, secretly financed the later raid on Harper’s Ferry.  Watson himself may have helped carry caches of firearms out to the Great Plains, guns paid for by New England anti-slavery committees.

John Brown
John Brown in Springfield, Massachusetts, 1846.
Watson Brown 2
Watson Brown, circa 1859, courtesy of West Virginia State Archives.

John Brown traversed the Midwest many times on trips back East to win the support of reformers like William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and even Henry David Thoreau.  In 1859, Brown and a small band of followers — sixteen white and five black — tried to pull off their most spectacular assault on slavery yet, an attack on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, where the Shenandoah flows into the Potomac.  The target: 100,000 muskets, to be handed over to slaves for use in a massive insurrection.

Harpers Ferry
Harpers Ferry, Virginia, now West Virginia, 1865, courtesy of National Archives, accessed Wikipedia.

Optimistic supporters in the U.S. and Canada originally planned for 4,500 men to participate in the raid.  Instead, just twenty-one attacked Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859.  After cutting telegraph wires and taking hostages on nearby farms, Brown’s band moved into town.  Local militia, farmers and shopkeepers, opening fire, quickly pinned down the abolitionists, driving them into a brick engine house.  Under siege, John Brown sent his son Watson and another man out with a white flag.  The crowd shot them.  Watson, aged twenty-four, with a bullet just below his stomach, struggled back to the engine house, fatally wounded.  He begged his father and comrades to “dash out his brains,” then tried to commit suicide.

The Liberator (Boston, Mass), November 18, 1859
The Liberator, Boston, Massachusetts, November 18, 1859.
John Brown raid
Brown’s son Oliver was also killed in the raid, while Watson lay in agony. “With one son dead by his side, and another dying, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other.” (James Redpath, The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, 1860)

The outbreak of the Civil War was still a year and a half away.  In fact, the raid was put down by Colonel Robert E. Lee — of the U.S. Army.  John Brown was hanged for treason in December.  Spectators at his execution included Stonewall Jackson, John Wilkes Booth, and the poet Walt Whitman.

Ten of Brown’s men died in the raid, including two sons.  What became of their mortal remains is a fascinating and rarely told part of the tale.

Eight of the bodies were gathered up by townspeople of Harpers Ferry.  The locals didn’t want the raiders buried in the town’s cemetery.  They gave a man named James Mansfield five dollars to take care of the corpses.

Packing eight men into two large wooden store boxes, Mansfield buried them along the Shenandoah River about a half-mile from town.  The grave, half forgotten, remained there until 1899, when Dr. Timothy Featherstonehaugh, Captain E.P. Hall, and Orin Grant Libby, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, exhumed the corpses for transfer to the Brown family farm in upstate New York.  Professor Libby took femur notes while examining the skeletal remains, comparing them for size against his own leg.  On August 30, 1899, the mingled raiders’ bones were re-interred at the Brown plot — in a single silver-handled casket.

New England Magazine, April 1901(New England Magazine, April 1901.)

This wasn’t the first time, however, that a box of old bones was brought to North Elba, New York, to lie next to John Brown’s. Two of his followers were never initially buried at all.  One of them was his son Watson.

Remarkably common in the nineteenth century, body-stealing was a feature of reality at a time when medical schools had trouble acquiring corpses for anatomy classes.  Rarely able to do so legally, they had to steal them, giving rise to the “resurrectionists” who nabbed the dead out of fresh graves.

Yet other examples of body-theft involved mere curiosity seekers and bogus scientists. During the heyday of phrenology — the long-discredited pseudoscience of bumps on the skull, which, it was believed, actually determined one’s personality, creative genius, or propensity to crime — “cranioklepty” (the theft of skulls) was far from rare.

The more famous the head, the better.  When the composer Joseph Haydn died in Vienna in 1809, wealthy robbers paid a cemetery attendant to open up the new grave and cut off his head, which “scientists” later examined.  Until 1954, the famous skull remained on display in a glass case in Vienna, when it was reunited with the rest of Haydn’s bones.   After the coffins of Beethoven and Schubert were exhumed for relocation in the 1860s, their skulls were also examined, as was the entire mummified body of American naval hero John Paul Jones, unearthed in subterranean Paris in 1905 — a hundred-and-thirteen years after he died.

Watson Brown and Jeremiah Anderson — two Midwesterners gunned down at Harpers Ferry — were considered “fine physical specimens.”  Southern doctors took them to Winchester Medical College in Virginia, where, like Joseph Haydn, they had (most of) the flesh stripped off them.  John Brown’s 24-year-old son, who had left behind a widow, Isabella, and a young child who died in 1863, was turned into a model skeleton for the instruction of future Southern medical men.

Dr. Jarvis Johnson
Dr. Jarvis Johnson, surgeon of the 27th Indiana Volunteers.

Yet Winchester, Virginia, just thirty miles from Harper’s Ferry and the Potomac River, changed hands several times during the Civil War.

In the spring of 1862, two and a half years after Watson Brown’s death, the 27th Regiment of Indiana Volunteers marched into town with the Union Army.  Among them was regimental surgeon Dr. Jarvis Jackson Johnson.  Born in Bedford, Indiana, in 1828, Johnson practiced medicine in Martinsville, half way between Indianapolis and Bloomington.  He would have been 34 when he walked into Winchester Medical College and found out what doctors had done to the remains of Watson Brown — an action for which, Virginians believed, Union troops burned down the college, the only case of arson during Winchester’s military occupation.

In 1882, the Indianapolis Journal printed the most widely-accepted version of the tale.  It came in the aftermath of a visit by John Brown, Jr., who visited Morgan County, Indiana, with several other investigators to examine a set of human remains there.

Dr. Johnson had stated that while serving as commander of a military hospital in Winchester, he acquired Watson Brown’s body from the museum of the medical college — then shipped it on a train to Franklin, Indiana, the nearest railroad depot to his home in Martinsville.  Like the Virginia doctors, Johnson kept the body in a case at his medical office.  For twenty years, the raider’s bones were a strange part of the life of a Hoosier country town.

Indianapolis Journal, September 11, 1882

Indianapolis Journal, September 11, 1882 (2)
Indianapolis Journal, September 11, 1882.

In 1882, word of the skeleton’s whereabouts came to John Brown, Jr., Watson’s elder brother and the abolitionist’s oldest son, after Jarvis Johnson put a notice in the Chicago Tribune looking for family members.  The doctor claimed, probably disingenuously, that he hadn’t realized any of the Brown brothers were still living, and he hadn’t wanted to upset Watson Brown’s mother.  Though John Brown, Jr., had fought in “Bleeding Kansas,” he in fact wasn’t part of the raid on Harpers Ferry.  During the Civil War, he helped recruit troops for the famous “Jayhawk” border fighter James H. Lane. (Before Lane became an anti-slavery senator from Kansas and a famous target for Confederates, he had been the lieutenant governor of Indiana.)

Brown, Jr., visited Indiana in September 1882, having already moved back east to Ohio, where he grew grapes for the wine business on South Bass Island in Lake Erie and took an interest in geology.

John Brown, Jr.
John Brown, Jr., accessed Kansapedia, Kansas Historical Society.

The other main forensic investigator to come to Martinsville that September was one of Indiana’s most prominent scientists, the impressively-bearded State Geologist John Collett.  Remembered as a beloved “Santa Claus” figure, Collett was a Wabash Valley native who lived in Indianapolis and often weighed in on scientific and agricultural questions — from the study of caves and killer meteorite hoaxes to how to improve celery crops.  Collett traveled to Martinsville with several doctors to look over the badly-treated remains of the bygone Harpers Ferry raider.

John Collett
Hoosier geologist John Collett, who drew the first maps of Wyandotte Cave, helped Watson Brown get back to New York.

The Indianapolis Journal printed this description of the scene at Dr. Johnson’s office:

The body has received careless treatment during the last few years. It has been carted about from place to place, and has been doing duty in all the anatomical exhibitions about town. During the first few years it was in the possession of Dr. Johnson it was in a remarkably fine state of preservation, but ill usage has ruined it. For several years, it has been lying in the Knights of Pythias hall, and, it is whispered, was used in the mystic ceremonies of the order. The best of care had not been bestowed upon it, and it was infested with worms and insects. Knowledge of its ill-usage was sedulously kept from Mr. Brown. When he intimated that he would like to see the body, he was considerately kept in waiting until it could be removed from the lodge-hall to the residence by way of a back street, and there placed in better condition for the examination.

At the time, it wasn’t clear whether the skeleton was that of Watson or 22-year-old Oliver, John Brown’s other son killed in October 1859.  Watson and Oliver looked alike.  Both stood six feet tall.

An office assistant of Dr. Jarvis’ showed John Brown, Jr., a “coffin-shaped box standing against the wall.”  Then he removed a cloth covering, exposing “a bare and hideous skeleton.”

“Gentlemen, if it is either of my brothers, I am now inclined to think that it is Oliver,” Brown exclaimed after picking up and poring over skeletal fragments and examining the shape of a half-missing skull.   Yet the more he looked, the more he came to think he was looking at his other brother, Watson.

Indianapolis Journal, September 11, 1882 (3)

Geologist John Collett wasn’t a qualified expert in forensic facial reconstruction, a process that would actually be pioneered in the next decade. After comparing all the forensic evidence available, however, including written descriptions of Watson Brown’s gun wound, it was John Collett’s opinion that the cadaver standing before him in Martinsville, Indiana, was, in fact, the man in question.

True to the often bogus science of the time, though, some of the “professor’s” statements expose how ludicrous phrenology was.

The Inter Ocean, September 14, 1882 (2)
The Inter Ocean, Chicago, September 14, 1882.

Then came a fascinating insight.  Dr. Jarvis Johnson’s written affidavit, notarized by Morgan County lawyers, also shed light on why doctors in Virginia wanted to preserve Brown’s corpse in the first place.

When he was put in charge of local Union Army medical operations, “A number of the prominent citizens of Winchester called upon me at the hospital, and each and all declared that [these were] the remains of a son of John Brown.”  Amazingly, the doctor who “prepared” the body, whom Johnson never identifies by name, also stopped by — and pleaded with Johnson to give him back this “exceedingly valuable piece of property.”

Like the medieval Europeans who condemned criminals to be drawn-and-quartered, Virginia doctors held up the corpse as a warning to  their state’s enemies.  Sic semper tyrannis?

The Inter Ocean, September 14, 1882
(The Inter Ocean, Chicago, September 14, 1882.)

Who was this doctor, then?

He was surely on the faculty list — and it’s a small one.  Founded by Dr. Hugh Holmes McGuire, Winchester Medical College had only four instructors in 1859, including the founder’s son, Hunter Holmes McGuire (1835-1900).  At age 24, Hunter McGuire, already a professor anatomy at his father’s school, would have been an exact contemporary of the “fine specimen” killed at Harpers Ferry.

Hunter McGuire, however, was probably not the culprit. In late 1859, he was studying medicine in Philadelphia.  The young doctor was even there during the famous walk-out of Southern medical students, which occurred after John Brown’s body was paraded through the streets by Northern admirers.  Insulted, McGuire led an exodus of about three-hundred Southern students from Jefferson Medical College, who dropped out, went down to Richmond, and re-enrolled at the Medical College of Virginia.  Some sources say that he financed the trip of all these students with his own savings.

Dr. Hunter McGuire later enlisted in the Confederate Army and even served as Stonewall Jackson’s personal surgeon, amputating the general’s arm after Chancellorsville.  He went on to become the president of the American Medical Association.  In the 1890s, McGuire would contribute to the debate over eugenics, racial purity, and the castration of rapists, especially African Americans — arguments that eventually led to Virginia’s “Racial Integrity Act” of 1924, a major victory for the controversial eugenics movement and one of the worst misapplications of science in history.  He also strove to ensure that Southern school textbooks “would not poison the minds of Virginia schoolchildren” by teaching a northern revisionist history of the Civil War.

The Medical Pickwick (1918) states that Watson Brown was “dissected by students.”  McGuire, as stated, was in Pennsylvania in the aftermath of Harper’s Ferry.  But did he have anything at all to do with this man’s bizarre fate?

Faculty of Winchester Medical College

It seems that he did.  Mary Greenhow Lee, a famous diarist in Winchester during the Civil War, wrote  that when Union soldiers torched the medical school on May 16, 1862, “They buried in the yard what they supposed were [Oliver Brown’s] bones, but the genuine ones had been removed by Hunter McGuire, thus foiling their malicious designs.”  Were the bones buried those of Jeremiah Anderson, a native of Wisconsin who fought with John Brown?  Lee might have been mistaken about the identity of the bones.  It’s harder to believe she was mistaken about Dr. McGuire.  After all, he was fighting in northern Virginia and may have been the doctor who approached Jarvis Johnson.

Twenty years later, Johnson willingly handed over to the Brown family the cadaver he claimed to have shipped by train from the Shenandoah Valley to the Midwest.  In October 1882, Watson Brown’s strange post-mortem odyssey finally came to an end.  On an autumn day in the Adirondacks, he was laid to rest in a patch of soil near his famous father, who — as the old Union song put it — had long lain “mouldering in the grave.”

John Brown's body 2
Courtesy of Watkins Museum of History, accessed Bleeding Kansas.

Isabella Thompson, aged just 22 when the Harpers Ferry raid left her a widow, married Watson’s cousin, Salmon Brown.  For decades, the couple lived in Kilbourn City, Wisconsin — later renamed Wisconsin Dells.  Isabella may have died near Traverse City in northern Michigan in 1907.  Her second husband died in neighboring Antrim County, Michigan, in 1921.  “Bella” was buried at Wisconsin Dells with Salmon, far away from her first husband, his final whereabouts pinned down at last.

John Collett passed away in March 1899 and was buried in Terre Haute.  Dr. Johnson died that September, just a few weeks after the mass re-interment of Brown’s other missing men, among whom was his son Oliver, who had lain in a merchant’s box on the Shenandoah for forty years.  Johnson rests at East Hill Cemetery in Morgantown, Indiana.

“The Most Righteous War:” The Leadership and Sacrifice of Lt. Col. William Swaim

Wells County Memorial, Erected William Swaim Post No. 169, Department of Indiana, Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), Oaklawn Cemetery, Ossian, Wells County, Indiana, accessed American Legion.

When we look at statues and oil paintings of Civil War leaders today, it’s easy to see them all as career military men trained in strategy and combat tactics with a lifetime of professional experience. But most of those who served in the Civil War were just regular people, not trained soldiers. They were farmers and laborers, trying to make ends meet and provide for their families. And yet when President Lincoln called for volunteers at the outbreak of the conflict in 1861, hundreds of thousands answered, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. Why? What would inspire a Hoosier farmer to leave his wife, children, and homestead to fight an ideological war from which he might never return?

Eight Unidentified Soldiers of 34th Indiana Infantry Regiment (“Morton Rifles”) in Zouave Uniforms, circa 1861-1865, Liljenquist Family Collection, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov.

While some have argued that the average soldier did not understand the causes of the Civil War, leading scholars, notably including the Pulitzer-Prize winning historian James McPherson, have shown otherwise. With literacy rates and newspaper circulation on the rise, Americans were tapped into current events and politics, including ideological clashes over slavery. They formed debating groups and joined political clubs. They had strong opinions about the democratic experiment and preserving the Union. Indiana residents volunteered in great numbers and encouraged their neighbors and family members to do the same. Many expressed a patriotic duty to serve their country, but some also explicitly fought to end slavery. The battlefield letters of one Hoosier farmer, William A. Swaim of Wells County, provide insight into why one such man served and sacrificed.[1]

William Swaim, copy of photograph, n.d., in The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Colonel William Swaim,  Indiana Collection, Indiana State Library.

William Achsah Swaim was born in New Jersey in 1819. He married Hannah Toy in 1844 and the couple moved to Ohio. There, he worked as a blacksmith and, for a time, manufactured steel plows. In the late 1850s, Swaim moved to a farm just north of Ossian in Wells County, Indiana. From his personal letters it is clear that he was a loving husband and father of five children and that he managed a successful farm, growing corn, rye, wheat, apples, and clover, and raising cows and pigs. He was leading a peaceable, simple, and secure life. But the nation was in turmoil.[2]

Oliver P. Morton to Abraham Lincoln, April 9, 1861, Oliver Morton Papers, accessed Indiana Historical Society Digital Collections.

In the summer of 1861, just days after Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton wrote to President Abraham Lincoln promising to send tens of thousands of Indiana troops, William Swaim enlisted in the Union Army. Swaim also helped raise a company of volunteers from Wells County, mainly from the small towns of Ossian, Murray, and Bluffton. His ability to inspire these men to enlist attests to his prominence in the community. Among the men who formed Company A of the 34th Regiment Indiana Volunteers was Swaim’s son James who was only sixteen years old.[3]

James “Jim” Swaim, copy of photograph, n.d., in The Civil War Letters of Private James Swaim,  Indiana Collection, Indiana State Library.

Recognizing his natural capacity for leadership, the men of the 34th Regiment elected William Swaim as their captain. The regiment mustered in Anderson in September 1861. Almost immediately Swaim identified issues with the camp and areas in which the men needed to improve and he stepped into a leadership position – even above his official rank – to make the necessary changes. With a dearth of experienced military leaders in the Army at the time, this is something that he would do throughout his service.

He often wrote about serving in such leadership roles in letters home to his wife Hannah. (Modern readers will have to excuse Swaim’s spelling and try to absorb the crux of his words.) Upon arriving at Anderson, he began ordering soldiers to clean up their clothing and belongings. He wrote, “I yesterday acted as comander of the camp[.] You better believe I feelt some what awkerd but I done the best I could have.” He continued, “One consulation, there is plently as green as I am and worse than myself.” His words demonstrate that Swaim was one of many average citizens who would have to rise to the occasion and become military leaders.[4]

W. Stengel, Camp Joe Holt, Kentucky, illustration, New York Illustrated News, July 29, 1861, p. 204, accessed WikiCommons.

Swaim and the 34th soon travelled to Indianapolis before setting up at Camp Jo Holt in Jeffersonville, just across the Ohio River from Louisville. Here, they waited for rifles and orders. He wrote, “We expect to go to Kentucky soon as we get our guns and in all probility will find something to do and that is what we all want.” It was important to Swaim to prove his bravery and he wanted to see action. He continued:

In [skirmishes] all places of honor are the most dangerous but that is just the place for me[.] If I come out of this war let me come out honorable.[5]

While commendable, this bravery was not uncommon during the war, largely because of the bonds the men built together. Historian James McPherson argued that because regiments were composed of men from the same region, they were motivated to uphold the reputation of themselves, their families, and their hometowns. This was certainly true for Swaim who instructed his wife to tell the folks back home in Ossian that the company was anxious to join the fight and that when they hear about the regiment “you will hear that [we] maintained our honour.”[6]

By November 1861, the weather had turned cold with three inches of snow. The 34th still hadn’t seen any action but remained in good spirits and eager to serve. The Indiana Herald (Huntington) published “The Hoosier Thirty-Fourth,” a poem, or perhaps song, composed by the men. Among the stanzas was this ode to Swaim:

Capt. Swaim will meet them on the field,
And show them that we fear
No Southerner when they fight
The Hoosier Volunteers.[7]

Oliver P. Morton, photograph, n.d.,
Ostendorf Collection, Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library, accessed Indiana Memory.

The 34th also expressed their devotion to Governor Morton and became known as the “Morton Rifles.” They even appealed to the Indiana General Assembly, encouraging their legislators to provide Morton with whatever manpower and resources needed for the war effort. They wrote:

Then we ask of you that you work earnestly and unitedly to do what you can to crush this rebellion, furnishing all the means necessary, and looking at no expense, so that it may save our country and give our children an undivided inheritance and a permanent peace. Especially we do ask that you would sustain our present worthy Governor, who, since the commencement of this struggle, has devoted himself entirely to the great work of preserving intact the greatest and best republic that ever existed.

They asked their legislators to earmark money for Governor Morton to call up more troops and create hospitals for sick and wounded soldiers and they asked for a “resolution of thanks” to Morton, whom they called “the soldier’s friend.” Swaim wrote that “the document was Signed by Every officer and nearly every man in the Regt.”[8]

“Sibley Tents as Winter Headquarters,” photograph, 1861, Wallach Division Picture Collection, New York Public Library Digital Collections.

The 34th finally crossed over into New Haven, Kentucky in late November 1861, marching to Camp Wickliffe in December and remaining until February 1862. During this stay, it rained often, camp was muddy, and many men caught colds. Swaim and his son James, whom he referred to as Jim, made the best of it, sharing a Sibley tent, eating well, and writing home. Swaim often answered his other children’s questions about camp life, giving detailed descriptions of their dinner – bean soup, crackers, pickles, and black coffee with sugar.[9]

While stationed at Camp Wickliffe, the Wells County men of Company A often performed picket duty, surveilling the enemy lines for any movement. Swaim also rode out to evaluate the men of other companies on picket duty, moving or replacing them as he saw fit. Sometimes this travel allowed him to stay and eat at the home of a local woman. He made sure to write and let Hannah know that he found his host to have a “homely” appearance. Swaim sent Hannah such assurances on several occasions, a sign of his ongoing affection for his wife. He also wrote that he was sure it seemed like the regiment was moving slowly, but that they were indeed preparing for a battle that would be “a grand Sight and one that I have long wished to see.” He explained that he knew “many men will have to be left buryed in the Solders grave but it will be a gloryious death if we conqurer in the end.”[10]

The Army of the Potomac – The Picket Guard, engraving, 1861, published in Harper’s Weekly, November 2, 1861, p. 694, Library of Congress.

As various leaders of the 34th resigned, moved to other regiments, or fell ill, Swaim again acted in positions above his rank as captain at Camp Wickliffe. On January 19, 1862, he told Hannah that he had been acting as colonel for the past week, drilling the regiments and meeting with the “Brass.” And a week later, he wrote that he was acting as “Captain, Major and Colonel and shall have to till the staff is filled.” He stated that he would not be surprised if Governor Morton approved a higher appointment for him very soon. He was correct. On February 16, Swaim was commissioned the rank of Major.[11]

Meanwhile, Hannah Swaim ran the farm, cared for the children, and arranged business deals – selling corn and grain and making payments on their house. She often wrote to William for his advice, but never asked him to come home. He praised her for this support and told her how much he wished he could see her and “the little ones,” but stood firm in his desire to do his duty to his country.[12]

Map showing the system of Confederate fortifications on the Mississippi River at Island No. 10 and New Madrid, map, 1862, Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, accessed https://lccn.loc.gov/99447227.

In March 1862, the 34th Regiment finally saw action, joining the Siege of New Madrid (Battle of Island Number 10) on the Mississippi River at the border between Tennessee and Missouri. The 34th joined the siege, but Swaim reported that their field guns were too light compared to the Confederate gun boats firing on them from the river. He wrote to Hannah about shells passing over their heads in their wooded position three-quarters of a mile from the main action, where they were stationed to protect a battery of field guns. He said that as the shells “howeled pass they make a screaming noise” until they “burst in pieces and fly in every direction.” He reported that while some of the boys turned pale, “give them a chance and they will fight to all distruction.” Before signing off, he told Hannah: “If we shall fall in battle it would be a gloryious death and an honorable one.”[13]

Harper’s Weekly 6, no. 275 (April 5, 1862): 212, accessed Archive.org.

Larger artillery soon arrived and Union forces took New Madrid before combined Army and Navy operations led to the capture of Island Number 10. (Learn more about how “Union Army and Navy commanders maneuvered their forces to capture the most formidable Confederate river strongpoint north of Vicksburg” from the U.S. Naval Institute). With the capture of strategic Confederate positions along a bend in the Mississippi River at New Madrid, Missouri and the small nearby island, the Union gained control of the river all the way to Fort Pillow in Tennessee. Swaim had proved his leadership in battle and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel June 15, 1862.[14]

As the 34th continued South, they saw action at Grand Prairie near Aberdeen, Arkansas before serving on garrison duty in Helena, Arkansas. Swaim described the changing scenery as they marched by abandoned fields of corn and blooming cotton. He and his son James experienced bouts of dysentery, but were able to recover fairly quickly. He complained about inaccurate reports of troop movements in the newspapers. He often wrote about the new draft and hoped that the numbers would fill the places of those in his regiment who had been killed, injured, or fallen ill.

And he seemed puzzled and indifferent to a sick Black man attempting to travel with the regiment. He wrote in dehumanizing language about this ill man, potentially a self-emancipated formerly enslaved person looking for protection.[15] But while he likely held prejudices against Black southerners, or Black people more generally, Swaim was also vehemently opposed to slavery. He believed not simply that it should not be extended into new territories, like many anti-slavery advocates at the time, but that it should be abolished. And he was ready to give life for this ideological belief.

Timothy O’Sullivan, Fugitive African Americans forging the Rappahannock, collodion negatives, 1862, Civil War Photographs, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/cwpb.00218/.

In August 1862, he wrote to Hannah about a letter he received from Han Platt, a relative of the Swaims. Platt had written of news from home but also that she was encouraging her family not to enlist. She called it “a Negro war” and said “the Abalitionest and Negros ought to fight it out.” Swaim was livid. He told his wife:

I answered her by saying that I had been an Abalitionist for nearly thirty years and Gloryed in it . . . I told her that I had one Son with me in the Armey with me and if he either died by Sickness or by bullets from the Enemey it would be a great consolation to me to know that I had one relation who had curage enough to face Danger with me in Defence of our Countrey.[16]

In a September 1862 letter home, he praised the “splendid” cooking of two Black women, a mother and daughter, who had self-emancipated from enslavement as “house servants” and were travelling with the camp as cooks. He wrote of their desire to return North with the regiment and that the colonel was going to employ them in his home after the war. Before closing, Swaim expressed his “contempt for such men as bye [buy] and sell and abuse” Black women. It is possible that as he got to know more Black people, his empathy and understanding increased. When he wrote to Hannah again in December (after she had come in person for a visit) and reported on everyone’s health, he made sure to include: “We are all well in our Mess including the 3 Negro[s].”[17] [Learn more about Black freedom seekers in Union camps through the National Archives.]

Matthew Brady, Group of 7th New York Infantry, photograph, NAID: 167250882, National Archives, accessed https://catalog.archives.gov/id/167250882.

When the 34th left Helena in January 1863, Swaim told Hannah that a “Black boy Gorge” (likely George) continued to travel with them. But a Black man named “Corneleous” (likely Cornelius) had to stay behind because he had a wife and General Sherman was not allowing and women or citizens south of Helena as he prepared for a major offensive at Vicksburg. Swaim paid Cornelius thirty dollars in some sort of business transaction and “told him to take his money and with it find a place of Freedom . . . he said that was his intentions.”[18]

In another letter, Swaim expressed concern over leaving so many freedom seekers behind, worried about what would happen to them, and hoping that the war would end their plight. He wrote in a February letter:

We think at this time we have a fair prospect of victory ahead . . . over that monster Slavery, which has cost us So meny lives and so much truble[.] Every Senciable man and well wisher of his countrey now admits that it must be distroyed to insure us a lasting piece.[19]

In April 1863, the 34th joined the Vicksburg Campaign as part of Brig. Gen Alvin Hovey’s Division. (A native of Mount Vernon, Indiana, Hovey would go on to serve as the 21st Governor of Indiana). Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign would cut supply lines and destroy manufacturing centers before marching on the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg. As the 34th headed towards Vicksburg, the greatest danger they had yet faced, Swaim told Hannah:

I feel that we are in the most Righteous war that ever any body was in and if we fall we fall in a good cause — if we get into fight I expect to do my Duty as an officer and leave no stain upon my Character or disgrace upon you or my children[.] I wish you to act the part of a Soldiers wife take things as they come and be redy for the Worst.[20]

Indeed the worst was yet to come.

On April 30, 1863, the 34th Regiment crossed the Mississippi at Bruinsburg and then “marched all night and engaged the enemy at daylight” during the Battle of Port Gibson. The regiment made “a charge during the battle . . . capturing two field pieces and forty-nine prisoners.” They suffered heavy losses.[21]

Major General Grant moved his forces towards Vicksburg, which Jefferson Davis described as the “nailhead” holding the Confederacy together. Taking Vicksburg would give the Union control of the Mississippi and split the Confederacy in half, isolating both sides from reinforcements and supplies. On May 16, 1863, Swaim and the 34th were among Maj. Gen. Grant’s Union forces who engaged Gen. John Pemberton’s Confederate forces in the Battle of Champion Hill, the bloodiest and most significant conflict of the Vicksburg Campaign.[22]

“Champion Hill, May 16, 1863,” American Battlefield Trust, accessed https://www.battlefields.org/learn/maps/champion-hill-may-16-1863

According to the American Battlefield Trust, Maj. Gen. Grant ordered and attack on Pemberton’s defensive line at around 10:00 a.m. This attack was led by divisions under Maj. Gen John A. Logan and Brig. Gen. Hovey, which included the 34th. By 11:30, these two Union brigades reached the main Confederate defensive line and by 1:00 had pushed the Confederates back from the hill and captured the main roads.[23]

Detail Showing the 34th Regiment Indiana Volunteers: “Champion Hill, May 16, 1863,” American Battlefield Trust, accessed https://www.battlefields.org/learn/maps/champion-hill-may-16-1863.

In a furious counterattack, the Confederates pushed Union forces back and nearly retook control of Champion Hill, but were outnumbered. Pemberton’s troops were forced to retreat towards Vicksburg. After a 47-day siege, Union troops would also take Vicksburg, turning the tide of the war in their favor.[24]

“The Battle of Champion Hill,” [illustration], Harper’s Weekly, June 30, 1863, 393, Internet Archive.
At some point during the Battle of Champion Hill, likely during the fierce Confederate counter attack, Lt. Col. William Swaim was severely wounded while leading his men. The Daily Evansville Journal reported:

Lieut. Col. Swain [sic], 34th Indiana, was severely wounded whilst cherring his men and encouraging them in the performance of their duty.[25]

As the rest of the 34th marched on to Vicksburg, Swaim was moved to a nearby hospital, accompanied by his son Jim who helped care for him. While many newspapers reported that Swaim had died on the battlefield, he actually seemed to improve for several weeks. Jim wrote to Hannah:

I received a letter from you today when on the 31 of May you said that you had seen in the papers that pop had been killed at Champion Hills[.] It is all a mistake[.] [26]

Jim reported that while William was severely wounded, he had left the morning of June 12 with a doctor first to Memphis to secure a medical leave of absence and then move to Ossian. Jim concluded, “I expect that he will get home before this letter does.”[27]

But Swaim never made it home. On June 16 or 17, 1863, on his long journey home, Lt. Col. William Swaim died from the wound he sustained at Champion Hill.[28] It is hard to fathom what it must have been like for Hannah having to lose him twice—first, in the conflicting newspaper reports, and then, the tragic arrival of the fallen citizen soldier. But she would have to be strong for her other children. Jim survived the war, continuing on with the 34th Indiana Regiment, which fought in the very last conflict of the Civil War at the Battle of Palmito Ranch, Texas.[29]

Photo from brochure created by the Heckber family commemorating the restoration of the Ossian Cemetery in February 2022, accessed Old Ossian Cemetery Restoration Project Facebook.

Swaim was buried in the Ossian Cemetery (and later moved to nearby Oak Lawn cemetery). The 34th Regiment wrote to Hannah in July signing a unanimous resolution stating:

That in his death the regiment has siffered [sic] the irreparable loss of a brave, efficient, and faithful officer; the country a high minded unwavering patriot [to] the cause of liberty – a mighty, uncompromising champion, and to society – a jewel of sterling worth whose unswerving integrity – and dauntless courage stood out boldly as an example of imutation [sic].”[30]

Lt. Col. William Swaim was willing to risk his life for his country, for the honor of his family and his hometown, and for the preservation of the Union. But those who claim that Indiana soldiers did not understand and/or care about the underlying cause of the war—ending slavery—do a disservice to the sacrifices of men like Swaim. In his own words to his beloved wife, he expressed his dedication to abolishing “that monster Slavery” and was prepared to die for that cause. In the end, Swaim did just that. He gave his life in “the most Righteous war” to make the United States a more perfect union, one without the abomination of slavery.

Acknowledgement 

Thank you to Larry Heckber for introducing me to Swaim’s story through his ongoing commitment to the history of Wells County and the preservation of the Ossian Cemetery. And thank you to UIndy student and IHB intern Sam Elder for his help in researching this project.

Notes:

[1] James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Thomas E. Rodgers, “Hoosier Soldiers in the Civil War,” Civil War 150th, Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed in.gov/history.

[2] William Swaim and Hannah Taeg (Toy), Mariage Record, December 28, 1844, Burlington New Jersey, accessed AncestryLibrary.com; 1850 U.S. Federal Census, Troy, Miami County, Ohio, accessed AncestryLibrary.com; 1860 U.S. Federal Census, Jefferson Township, Wells County, Indiana, accessed AncestryLibrary.com; Tyndall and Lesh, Standard History of Adams and Wells Counties Indiana, vol. 1 (Lewis Pub Co., 1918): 366-67, accessed Archive.org.

[3] Oliver P. Morton to Abraham Lincoln, August 9, 1861, Oliver Morton Papers, Indiana Historical Society; Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 2 (Indianapolis: W. R. Holloway, State Printers, 1865), p. 333-343, accessed Internet Archive.

[4] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, September 15, 1861 in The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Colonel William Swaim, transcribed by Kent D. Koons (March 1993), Indiana Collections, Indiana State Library; Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 2, p. 333-343.

[5] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, October 16, 1861.

[6] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, October 22, 1861.

[7] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, November 4, 1861; “The Hoosier Thirty-Fourth,” Indiana Herald (Huntington), November 27, 1861, 1, accessed Newspapers.com.

[8] “The Hoosier Thirty-Fourth,” Indiana Herald (Huntington), November 27, 1861, 1; “The Morton Rifles Rallying Song,” Indiana Herald, January 28, 1863, 4; “John Thompson Letter,” Steuben Republican, April 11, 1863, 2; “The Morton Rifles,” New-Orleans Times, June 5, 1864, 4; Document 148: Memorial of the Thirty-Fourth Indiana Volunteers – “Morton Rifles,” in William H. H. Terrell, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 1 (Indianapolis: W. R. Holloway, State Printer, 1869), p. 354-355; Swaim to Toy Swaim, February 6, 1863.

[9] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, January 9-12, 1862.

[10] Ibid.

[11] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, January 19, 1862; William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, January 27, 1862.

[12] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, passim.

[13] William A. Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, March 8, 1862.

[14] Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 2, p. 333-343; Lieutenant Commander J. J. Murawski, “Checkmate at New Madrid Bend,” Naval History, April 2018, accessed U.S. Naval Institute.

[15] William Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, August 7, 1862 and August 13, 1862.

[16] William Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, August 13, 1862.

[17] William Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, September 14, 1862.

[18] William Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, January 11, 1863.

[19] William Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, February 6, 1863.

[20] William Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, April 15, 1863.

[21] Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 2, p. 342-343.

[22] “Vicksburg,” American Battlefield Trust, accessed  https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/vicksburg.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Evansville Daily Journal, June 18, 1863, 4, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

[26] James “Jim” Swaim to Hannah Toy Swaim, June 12, 1863 in The Civil War Letters of Private James Swaim, transcribed by Kent D. Koons (March 1993), Indiana Collection, Indiana State Library.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana,  vol. 2, p. 333. Sources conflict on the exact date of Swaim’s death. Military records claim June 17 while his headstone reads June 16.

[29] Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana, vol. 2, p. 342-343.

[30] Resolution of the 34th Regiment Indiana, June 30, 1863 enclosed in Col. R. A. Cameron to Hannah Toy Swaim, July 2, 1863.

“The Gentlest Memory of Our World”: Robert Ingersoll and the Memorialization of Abraham Lincoln

Indianapolis Journal, May 4 1893, Hoosier State Chronicles.

Abraham Lincoln is one of the most written-about subjects in all of human history; thousands of books, articles, and speeches have been published about his life and legacy. As such, there is an interesting interplay between history and memory that manifests whenever the sixteenth President is discussed. Historian David Herbert Donald, one of the foremost Lincoln scholars of the 20th century, wrote in his essay, “The Folklore Lincoln,” that “the Lincoln cult is almost an American religion. It has its high priests in the Lincoln ‘authorities’ and its worshippers in the thousands of ‘fans’ who think, talk, and read Lincoln every day.” What we know about him is interpolated through decades of stories, recollections, and reflections that separate Lincoln “the man” from the Lincoln “the myth.” None of this is necessarily wrong, as all historical figures are subject to mythologizing and memorialization. The task of the historian is to identify the difference between myth and reality, but in a countervailing twist, recognize the historical importance of the development of myths.

President Abraham Lincoln, from Great Speeches of Ingersoll, Internet Archive.

One such figure who mythologized Lincoln while humanizing him was the orator Robert Green Ingersoll. Among the most sought-after public speakers and intellectuals of the late nineteenth century, Ingersoll is best remembered today for his excoriating lectures on religion. Known as the “Great Agnostic,” Ingersoll became the outstanding leader of the “Golden Age of Freethought,” the era between the Civil War and World War I which saw a groundswell of religious criticism and secular activism. But his lectures, which were attended by thousands over the decades, were not limited merely to religion. In fact, he spoke on a variety of subjects, from William Shakespeare to the history of the United States. As a veteran of the Civil War, Ingersoll’s life deeply intertwined with arguably the most important event in the history of nineteenth century America.

Robert Ingersoll, from Great Speeches of Ingersoll, Internet Archive.

His memorialization of Lincoln and the Civil War era started in earnest within a matter of years after the war ended. In September of 1876, Ingersoll delivered one of his most influential speeches in Indianapolis, referred to as the “Vision of War” speech. Introduced as “that dashing cavalry officer, that thunderbolt of war, that silver tongued orator” by Brevet Brigadier General Edward F. Noyes, Ingersoll commemorated the sacrifices of Union veterans, as well as stumped for Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes in his remarks. Throughout his speech, Ingersoll used the memory of Lincoln to hit home his partisan political message. One such example: “Every man that cursed Abraham Lincoln because he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation—the grandest paper since the Declaration of Independence—every one of them was a Democrat.” Clearly the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was a contentious document in its time, of which many politicos disagreed with. Nevertheless, Ingersoll’s rhetorical flourish used Lincoln’s political prescience to elevate the Republican party, which Ingersoll saw as the party of freedom and progress.

In the middle of his speech, Ingersoll’s tone shifted from partisan (and somewhat rancorous) to poetic and solemn as he reflected on the horrors of war, its fallen soldiers, and the society those who fought had left behind. “These heroes are dead,” he began:

They died for liberty — they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest. The Earth may run red with other wars — they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death! I have one sentiment for all soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.

As a man who fought at the Battle of Shiloh, who experienced horrors as a prisoner of war, Ingersoll’s words were not mere flights of rhetoric. He intimately understood the sacrifices his generation made in the service of saving the Union, and he wanted every person hearing his words that day to recognize those sacrifices.

The title page of the illustrated version of Ingersoll’s “Vision of War Speech,” published in 1899, Google Books.

His remarks received an immediate public reaction. The Indianapolis News praised his speech, albeit with slight criticism, writing “the orator justified all expectations by delivering a speech, bitter in perhaps of arraingment [sic], but comprehensive, eloquent, and inimitable.” The ‘vision of war’ section was later reprinted as a pamphlet with illustrations that reiterated many of its core themes. It was one of the orations that made Ingersoll a nationally-renowned public speaker.

By 1880, then a more accomplished orator, Ingersoll began to tackle Lincoln as a subject more directly, publishing a laudatory sketch of the president that was published in pamphlet form. This version focused less on biographical details and more on character impressions of the president. Right from the outset, Ingersoll was keenly aware of how Lincoln’s memory is shaped by the public, often to the negation of the real person. As he wrote, “Hundreds of people are now engaged in smoothing out the lines of Lincoln’s face—forcing all features to the common mold—so that he may be known, not as he really was, but, according to their poor standard, as he should have been.” The metaphor of “smoothing out” is certainly apt; upon his assassination in 1865, Lincoln’s visage appeared in countless artistic depictions which removed him from the realm of mortals and into the hands of providence. He became more of a symbol than a man.

A pamphlet of Ingersoll’s Lincoln Speech, 1880, Internet Archive.

Ingersoll sought to counter this with his 1880 pamphlet, reminding Americans that “Lincoln was a many-sided man, acquainted with smiles and tears, complex in brain, single in heart, direct as light; and his word, candid as mirrors, gave the perfect image of his thought. He was never afraid to ask—never too dignified to admit that he did not know.” Ingersoll’s portrait, while still quite laudatory, nevertheless centered Lincoln’s humility and complexity, reaffirming his humanity rather than attempting to deify him. Additionally, Ingersoll emphasized Lincoln’s dedication to education, despite the latter’s known history of scant instruction. “Lincoln never finished his education,” he noted, “To the night of his death he was a pupil, a learner, an enquirer, a seeker after knowledge.” This was in stark contrast to those who Ingersoll called “spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.” This revealed an influential parallel between Ingersoll and Lincoln. Both were Illinoisans who received little formal education and became lawyers through independent study, rather than going to a university. Ingersoll saw much of himself in Lincoln, which one suspects impacted the orator’s portrait of the president as a self-educated, self-made man unsullied by the indulgences of the established ways of acculturation. In all, Ingersoll’s 1880 pamphlet depicted Lincoln as a moral, and even righteous, figure, but still relatable— a man dedicated to education, honesty, and self-improvement.

Indianapolis News, April 29 1893, Hoosier State Chronicles.

By the 1890s, Ingersoll’s renown for oratory made him constantly in demand, and for the 1893 Lincoln Dinner of the Republican Club of New York on February 11, he delivered a revised version of his speech as a keynote speaker. While much of the text is similar to the 1880 version, Ingersoll added a section of Lincoln’s own oratory as a means of memorialization. The passage, which Ingersoll described lovingly as “sculptured speech,” was taken from Lincoln’s remarks in Edwardsville, Illinois on September 11, 1858, during his run for the Senate against Stephen A. Douglas:

And when, by all these means, you have succeeded in dehumanizing the negro; when you have put him down and made it impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul in this world and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you? What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, our army and our navy.

These are not our reliance against tyranny. All of those may be turned against us without making us weaker for the struggle.

Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defence [sic] is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere.

Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.

Lincoln’s words placed liberty, not mere power, at the heart of the American experiment of self-government, a heart which would be torn asunder by the barbarism of slavery. In reflecting on Lincoln’s use of language, Ingersoll declared, “The orator loves the real, the simple, the natural, and he places thought and feeling above all. He knows that the greatest ideas should be expressed in the shortest words. He knows that a great idea is like a great statue, and he knows that the greater the statue the less drapery it needs.” Among other attributes, Lincoln’s use of simple, but poetic language during a time of deep of crisis, in Ingersoll’s estimation, cemented his place in American history.

Robert Ingersoll delivered his speech on Lincoln during a nationwide tour in 1893, with one of the stops being Indianapolis. He had spoken many times in Indianapolis since his “vision of war” speech in 1876, but the venue in 1893 was the illustrious English Opera House, which was located on Monument Circle and was a mainstay of the entertainment industry during the era. The Indianapolis News and Journal ran flashy advertisements in advance of his appearance, with the latter stating “Colonel Ingersoll’s treatment of the subject is said to be one of those rarely intellectual things that is to be heard but a few times in a lifetime.” Ingersoll arrived in Indianapolis at noon on May 4, 1893, mere hours from his scheduled performance, according to the News. The Journal ran a final advertisement in its early edition, noting that it would be Ingersoll’s “only appearance this season.”

Ingersoll’s Lincoln Speech in Indianapolis,1893, Indiana Memory.

The Standard Publishing Company of Indianapolis reproduced his speech, with commentary, in pamphlet form (a digital version is available via Indiana Memory). Ingersoll opens his speech with a fascinating coincidence of history: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809. “Eighty-four years ago two babes were born,” he began:

one in the woods of Kentucky amid the hardships and poverty of pioneers; one in England surrounded by wealth and culture. One was educated in the university of nature, the other at Oxford. One associated his name with the enfranchisement of labor, with the emancipation of millions, with the salvation of the Republic. He is known to us as Abraham Lincoln. The other broke the chains of superstition and filled the world with intellectual light, and he is known as Charles Darwin. Because of those two men the nineteenth century is illustrious.

Ingersoll viewed Darwin and Lincoln as emancipatory figures, with Lincoln the emancipator of people and Darwin the emancipator of minds. As one of the first to popularize the theory of evolution in America, Ingersoll comprehended the profound implications of Darwin’s ideas in a deeply religious country. Perhaps Ingersoll linked Darwin with Lincoln in an attempt to soften the intellectual blow of his concepts; conversely, linking Lincoln with Darwin emphasized the importance of the former’s contributions to humanity, ones with transformative consequences for his nation.

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, Galapagos Travel Center/Wikipedia.

Later in his lecture, Ingersoll painted a portrait of Lincoln as a man of contradictions who nevertheless transcended them. “The sympathies of Lincoln, his ties, his kindred, were with the South,” he noted, “His convictions, his sense of justice and his ideals were with the North.” Born of upland southern ancestry and marrying into a southern aristocratic family, Lincoln could have easily given into the currents of his experiences. Yet, “he knew the horrors of slavery, and he felt the unspeakable ecstasies and glories of freedom,” Ingersoll continued, and “he had the manhood and independence of true greatness, and he could not have been a slave.” Lincoln’s abhorrence of slavery, and the political road that conviction took him on, made him, in Ingersoll’s eyes, a statesman rather than mere politician. “A politician schemes and works in every way to make the people do something for him,” the orator declared, while “A statesman wishes to do something for the people. With him place and power are the means to an end, and the end is the good of his country.” For Ingersoll, Lincoln’s sense of higher purpose allowed him to transcend his age and become a leader for the ages.

Near the end of his speech, Ingersoll directly addressed the question of memory in regards to the “Great Emancipator.” “The memory of Lincoln,” he said, “is the strongest, tenderest tie that binds all hearts together now, and holds all States beneath a nation’s flag.” With this passage, Ingersoll positioned Lincoln as the force which connected the Union and transformed the United States from a loose conglomeration of states into a single, unified nation. The nationalism of late-nineteenth century America was on full-display, with Lincoln as the catalyzing agent melding heart and hearthstone across the land. (This is an image of Lincoln that persists to this day; in times of crisis, politicians and the media often look to Lincoln for insights on how to unify and connect the people of America.) To reaffirm the importance of memory, Ingersoll ended his speech with the moving words, “Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He was the gentlest memory of our world.”

Indiana State Sentinel, May 10 1893, Hoosier State Chronicles.

Ingersoll’s appearance was a resounding success, with the Indiana State Sentinel writing, “English’s opera house was packed from gallery to pit Thursday to hear America’s greatest orator in his famous lecture, ‘Abraham Lincoln’.” Of his performance, the Sentinel also said, “Col. Ingersoll has lost none of his great ‘personal magnetism’ that enables him to move his audience to the feeling of his every emotion.” Its publication in pamphlet form ensured more people would consume his lecture, thus furthering Ingersoll’s memorializing of the sixteenth President.

Despite his success with audiences and readers, Ingersoll caught the ire of critics concerning his treatment of Abraham Lincoln’s religious views. Ingersoll, a religious skeptic who gave public speeches denouncing Christianity, was accused of asserting that Lincoln was a nonbeliever. As a March 26, 1893 editorial in the Indianapolis Journal remarked, “The assertion of Colonel Ingersoll in his address on the character of Abraham Lincoln, to the effect that he was a freethinker after the manner of Voltaire and Paine, challenged emphatic contradiction which was no more conclusive than the Ingersoll declaration.” The article then provides numerous quotations which give credence to the claim that Lincoln was a believer in God, such as the speech he gave in 1861 in Springfield before he left for Washington, wherein he said:

A duty devolves upon me which is, perhaps, greater than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same Divine aid which sustained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support, and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that Divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain.

At the same time, Lincoln may have not accepted the mainstream consensus on Christianity, which the editorial granted. “Abraham Lincoln may not have troubled himself about dogmas,” the Journal acknowledged, “but no man was ever more devout in his reliance upon the great power which controls human acts and events, or whose conduct was more thoroughly in harmony with the truths of the Sermon on the Mount.”

The Religion of Abraham Lincoln, a dialogue between Ingersoll and Gen. Charles H.T. Collis, Internet Archive.

Ingersoll addressed these concerns head on in a series of letters between himself and Colonel Charles H. T. Collis, an Irish immigrant to the United States who also served in the Civil War. A book compiling their correspondence was published in 1900, shortly after Ingersoll’s death. Collis attended Ingersoll’s performance of the Lincoln speech in New York on February 11, 1893 and immediately wrote to him challenging his conclusions on Lincoln’s faith. With passion and conviction, Collis wrote, “no man invoked ‘the gracious favor of Almighty God’ in every effort of his life with more apparent fervor than did he, and this God was not the Deists’ God, but the God whom he worshiped under the forms of the Christian Church, of which he was a member.” Ingersoll retorted in a follow up letter, writing, “Lincoln was never a member of any church,” and that “he denied the inspiration of the Scriptures, and that he always insisted that Christ was not the Son of God, and that the dogma of the Atonement was, and is, an absurdity.”

As with much of history, Lincoln’s religious beliefs fall somewhere between Ingersoll’s and Collis’s. It is true that he never formally joined a church or was baptized, but he often asked for counsel from religious leaders and infused his speeches, especially the Second Inaugural, with meditations that bordered on theology. As historian and Lincoln biographer David R. Contosta has written, “he was no Christian in any conventional sense of the term, since there is no evidence that he ever accepted the divinity of Christ or ever joined a church,” but “what he had come to embrace in the end was the inscrutable omnipotence of a God who worked his will in history though persons and events of his own time and choosing.”

Lincoln’s Meditation on the Divine Will, September, 1862, Brown University.

One striking piece of evidence to support Contosta’s conclusion is Lincoln’s “Meditation on the Divine Will,” written in September of 1862. “The will of God prevails,” Lincoln reflected:

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true – that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.

Lincoln’s theology centered the agency of God in human affairs, using people as agents of his divine plan. These musings emphasize Lincoln’s belief in fate, a holdover from his Primitive Baptist upbringing, which, Contosta noted, stressed “predestination and human sinfulness.” Lincoln was not an Agnostic like Ingersoll, but he also wasn’t the kind of Christian the Collis portrayed him as. As with many aspects of his life, Lincoln was a complex, often contradictory figure whose idiosyncratic religious views highlighted these tensions.

Lincoln’s Tomb, in Great Speeches of Ingersoll, Internet Archive.

The Civil War, with Lincoln as its central protagonist, was the defining event of Ingersoll’s life. It shaped his view of politics, oratory, and even religion. He placed a high priority on telling this story with eloquence, mastery, and tactfulness. As a result, it is not surprising that his lectures on Lincoln became so popular, as well as lauded. In commenting on his speech in Indianapolis, a pamphlet noted, “No man in the world could do justice to the memory of Abraham Lincoln with the same force and eloquence as Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll.” While many books and recollections were published during Ingersoll’s time, he kept the public memory of Lincoln alive as only an orator could do. In some respects, it was a logical outgrowth of Lincoln himself, who was one of the most influential public speakers in American history. Robert Ingersoll’s orations on Lincoln, while somewhat forgotten now, nevertheless provided a unique contribution to the memorialization and mythologization of the sixteenth President—a vast tapestry of remembrance which exists to this day.

Race, Power, and the Ballot: Early Black Settlement in Sugar Creek Township

Every election elicits charges of voter fraud. During the 2016 general election, Republicans charged Democrats with importing out-of-state voters to swing New Hampshire. During the 2018 midterms, Democrats charged Republicans with disenfranchising African American senior citizens who needed rides to the polls. The courts can decide the individual cases, but the accusations show us that people have always been concerned about who is a legitimate voter, and therefore, citizen.

In 1880, the democratic newspaper of Lebanon, Boone County, published a ranting article accusing Republicans of voter fraud. The Lebanon Weekly Pioneer claimed that Republicans at the state level imported Black men from North Carolina to Boone County to win a legislative seat for the region. The charge was ludicrous. Black families had established a thriving farming community around Thorntown in the Sugar Creek Township of Boone County as early as the 1840s. But the article showed more than the prejudice of the local editor, who saw this community as “imported,” as “other,” and as not “real” or “true” Boone County voters. The article reflected the fear of the white, democratic newspaper’s audience. These white citizens were afraid of losing their sovereignty. Because whether or not the Pioneer considered Black Hoosiers to be “real” voters, the Black men of Boone County held real political power. [1]

“Rice and Gilliam Families ca 1926,” accessed Roberts Settlement Photos, http://www.robertssettlement.org/historical-photos.html

By the 1840s, patriarch Moody Gilliam moved his large family, described as “mulatto” by white census takers, from North Carolina to Boone County, Indiana. Other members of the Gilliam family had been prominent in the establishment of nearby Roberts Settlement in Hamilton County. This proximity to family and another black community certainly played an important part in the decision to settle and farm in Boone. The Gilliams owned at least $1000.00 worth of property by 1850 which they farmed and improved successfully. By 1860, Moody Gilliam’s property was estimated at $4000.00. This would be approximately $120,000 today, a solid foundation for a family facing unimaginable prejudice and legal discrimination. [2]

Registration certificate issued in Gibson County, Indiana to Gilly Ann Perry, Indiana State Library, Nelson Perry Collection, accessed Indiana Historical Bureau.

Though he was a well-to-do land owner by 1860, Moody Gilliam would not have been allowed to vote. Additionally, he may have been forced to register with county authorities and to post a $500 bond with the assumption that the county would someday be supporting him. In fact, Indiana residents made it clear that they did not even want him there at all. In 1851, Hoosiers voted for Article XIII of the Indiana Constitution that stated, “No negro or mulatto shall come into, or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution.” Despite racist legislation and prejudice, Black settlers established a successful farming community in Boone County concentrated in Sugar Creek Township near Thorntown.

By 1860, seventy-two Black Hoosiers lived in Sugar Creek Township with eleven based in Thorntown proper. The census from that year, shows us that they arrived mainly from North Carolina and Kentucky, that they were predominately farmers, and that most could not read and write. Many Black Southerners had been prohibited from obtaining an education as it was seen by white slave owners as a threat to the slavery system. The mainly illiterate founders of the Sugar Creek settlement, however, broke this systematic oppression by making sure their children could read and write.

By the late 1860s, Sugar Creek residents of color purchased land from local Quakers for the purpose of building a school, likely at the corner of Vine and Franklin Streets in Thorntown. Around the same time, they also purchased a lot to build an A.M.E. church at the west end of Bow Street. The church established a Sabbath school around 1869. Thus, the children Sugar Creek’s founders received a primary education as well as a spiritual one. By 1869, residents purchased more Quaker land to establish a “burying ground for the Colored people of Thorntown and vicinity.” It was clear that they planned on staying. [3]

Harper’s Weekly, March 18, 1865. Wood Engraving. Colonel Charles Fox Leading the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment into Charleston, S.C. when the City Surrenders to Union Forces on February 21, 1865 ,” accessed Black Past.

During the Civil War, at least one Sugar Creek son fought for the Union cause in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment of the United States Colored Troops. It’s not clear when Elijah Derricks came to Sugar Creek, before or after the war, but he is buried in the “colored cemetery.” Derricks volunteered for service in 1863 when he was 38-years-old. His regiment saw a great deal of action in Florida and South Carolina.

“Elijah Derricks,” 55th Massachusetts Infantry, Misc. Cards, 1864, compiled Military Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers, accessed Fold3, Ancestry Library.

All Civil War units struggled with causalities from disease and Derricks suffered several bouts of illness, but returned to his regiment each time. In November 1864, he was injured at the Battle of Honey Hill, a Union initiative designed to help Sherman’s March to the Sea. It’s not clear if Derricks’ injury took him out of action or if he remained with the regiment until it mustered out. If he did remain, he would have been present in 1865 when the 55th marched into a conquered Charleston, arriving “to the shouts and cheers of newly freed women, men, and children.”[4] Either way, Derricks carried his injury for life, as he collected a pension for his injured arm back at Sugar Creek. [5]

Plan of the Battle of Honey Hill, South Carolina, November 30th, 1864. Virginia Historical Society, Library of Congress, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.ndlpcoop/gvhs01.vhs00181.

By the late 1860s, the Sugar Creek community also boasted a Masonic lodge. By 1874, they had seventy-four members and the Boone County Directory listed the group as: Washington Lodge F&AM (Colored). While not much is known about “the colored Masons of Thorntown,” their establishment of such a society shows us that they sought power through organization. However, the men of Sugar Creek also took more direct political action. [6] 

While the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave Black men in the North the right to vote in 1870, one newspaper article implied that some residents of color in Sugar Creek participated in local elections prior to this legislation. The Thorntown Argus reported in 1897 that after the well-liked and respected barber John Mitchell settled in Thorntown around 1864, “he was a delegate to the first Republican county convention held after his arrival and there were 47 colored voters in this township then”[7] The newspaper’s language is ambiguous, but seems to imply that they were voting in the 1860s before the amendment passed. [8]

James Sidney Hinton, 1880, Division of Manuscripts and Rare Books, Indiana State Library.

After officially gaining suffrage rights, however, the men of color in the community immediately joined the political efforts and causes of the time. On Saturday, August 10, 1870, they held a large “XVth Amendment celebration” at Thorntown. [9] One of the speakers that day was the James Sidney Hinton, a powerful orator and civil rights advocate who would become the first African American to serve in the Indiana General Assembly. There is no record of what the Republican leader said to the people of Thorntown the day they celebrated their enfranchisement. However, gleaning from a speech he made some years later on Independence Day, we can imagine he made similar remarks. Hinton stated on that occasion: “The forces of truth and the principles of liberty, born in the days of the revolution, and proclaimed in the Declaration of 1776 have placed the negro for the first time in his history on this continent in a position to realize that he is a man and an American citizen.” [10]

Thomas Kelly, “The Fifteenth Amendment,” 1870, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.34808/

In 1872, several prominent men of the Sugar Creek community founded a political organization. The Lebanon Patriot reported that “the colored men of Thorntown were organized into a Grant club at Thorntown” which hosted political speakers. [11] The Crawfordsville newspaper referred to it as the “Gran Wilson Club,” making clear that they were advocating for the Republican presidential ticket during the election season. [12] Despite the more blatantly racist policies of the Democratic Party at the time, not all Black residents of Sugar Creek were Republicans. In 1896, “Rev. Charley Derrickson of Thorntown, colored, 90 years of age, took part in several Bryan parades during the campaign.” [13] While this three time presidential candidate was never an advocate for Black citizens, perhaps the reverend found something he liked in William Jennings Bryan’s Protestant values.

By the late 1870s, local newspapers provided evidence of the power of the Black vote in the area. The Lebanon Pioneer described (and poked fun at) the candidates for local offices of Sherriff, County Recorder, and County Auditor. The newspaper implied that the candidates were Quakers and noted that only one of the candidates by the last name of Thistlethwait could “hold a solid negro vote.” The support of the Black vote, the newspaper concluded, was needed for Thistlethwait to win the election and was only possible for him if local resident of color, Harvey White, “sticks to him.” [14] The Pioneer was staunchly Democrat and often blatantly racist, so it is quite possible that these statements were meant to discredit the candidate. However, it does show the weight of Black leadership and suffrage in the district.

Map of Sugar Creek Township, 1878, Boone County Land Ownership Atlas, Boone County Genealogy, http://sites.rootsweb.com/~inboone/land/atlas_1878.htm

This increased influence of the Black vote was due in part to an increase in population. By 1870, 172 Black Hoosiers lived in Sugar Creek Township, seventy-seven of whom lived in Thorntown. The A.M.E. church had twenty-five adult congregants by 1874 and forty-five children in Sunday school. In 1879, the local newspaper reported that “Elias Schadd, colored, was impaneled as a petit juryman from Sugar Creek Township last Monday, to serve on the present term of court. He is the first colored man ever placed on the petit jury in Boone County.” [15] Thorntown was growing and changing, and for some white residents, this felt threatening.

Lebanon Pioneer, November 27, 1879, 3, NewspaperArchive.com

In nearby Whitestown, Boone County, white residents carried out “an unprovoked attack on a colored family.” According to the Lebanon Patriot, the family arrived on Thursday January 29, 1880, and “took refuge in an old dwelling house.” A mob surrounded the house the following evening and “showered the building with stones and brick-bats.” When the family was forced out of the structure, one of the children was “seriously injured” by a brick. The mob successfully “forced the family to leave town.” The Patriot reported that the attack was instigated by reports that Republicans were importing voters to Boone County. The paper dismissed the charges against republicans, stating that the patriarch of the unnamed family “had gone there of his own notion” and “the attack was wholly unwarranted.” [16]

The Democratic paper, the Lebanon Pioneer, attacked the Lebanon Patriot’s report of the incident with racist vitriol and slurs. The Pioneer reported that the Black man’s name was “Thusa” and that a white resident named “Mr. Scovill” lent him a stove and asked him several questions. The Pioneer reported on their supposed exchange. Thusa “said he had come from North Carolina, and that he had come to vote with the ‘publican party.’” Scovill asked him if he had any money or clothes to which he reportedly replied “no, sah.” The paper concluded, “He was a pauper, and imported as such, and the only reason he could give, was to vote the ‘publican’ ticket.” The newspaper claimed Whitestown was fed up with supporting such paupers and played down the physical attack, claiming the mob threw stones only at the house, and never mentioned the man’s wife or children.  The Pioneer claimed the attack continued “until the colored occupant became so frightened as he agreed to leave the town . . . no one was hit or hurt.” [17]

Lebanon Weekly Pioneer, February 5, 1880, 2, accessed NewspaperArchive.com

In the same issue, the Lebanon Pioneer, printed a more extensive article charging Indiana Republicans with importing Black voters from North Carolina. Their entire argument hinged on the claim that if these Black settlers were coming of their own volition, they would never come to Boone County, Indiana. The paper asked:

If it is not for political purposes why do they come so far? Why don’t they stop in Pennsylvania or Ohio? And if the colored people are so anxious to come to Indiana, why don’t they come from Kentucky or Missouri. At least a few.

The Pioneer‘s argument was baseless. Of course, many people came from North Carolina, because they were joining family who came from North Carolina – a migration pattern that has existed for as long as migration has been recorded. And they did come from other states, especially Kentucky. In fact, about half of the residents of Sugar Creek were originally from the neighboring Blue Grass State. And some did come from Virginia and even New York.

Nonetheless the Pioneer stated:

It is a fact: they have brought them to Boone county. Republican leaders are doing it for the purpose of making sure of the county ticket and send a Republican to the legislature.

The paper concluded that these “stupid paupers” would “override the majority of real and true Indianians.” First of all, any true “Indianian” would have used the word “Hoosiers.” [18] Second, and all joking aside, there were few paupers or criminals among the Sugar Creek community. There were instead farmers, washer women, school teachers, reverends, barbers, ditch diggers, students, and veterans. [19] And despite all of the institutionalized prejudice, and against the odds, for many generations they created a healthy community in Sugar Creek, Boone County.

Lebanon Reporter, September 23, 2017, accessed http://eagleproject.homestead.com/

By the late 1890s, many of the Sugar Creek community had moved to Lebanon or surrounding towns for more employment opportunities. However, the Thorntown church stayed active for several more decades. In 1894, the Thorntown Argus reported that “the colored church” would serve as the polling place for the second precinct of Sugar Creek Township. [20] In 1898, the congregation raised money and built a brick parsonage building to house their reverend in comfort. In 1902, they held a successful New Year’s concert and fundraiser. That year, the Indianapolis Recorder reported on the “good work” of the Literary Society and Sunday school and noted that the women of the AME congregation organized a Missionary Society. [21] Unfortunately, there are few records of the lives of the women of Sugar Creek. Census records show that many had large families and thus were mainly engaged in child care, as well as helping with the farm. Thus, the work of the missionary society is perhaps our best insight into the lives of the women of Sugar Creek. These women organized programs and social gatherings at the church and engaged in community service. They raised money for a new carpet for the church. The ladies held “a successful social” after the organized theological debate held at the church and their programs were known for being “excellent” even forty miles away in Indianapolis. They led the memorial services for one congregate in which they were “assisted” by the revered, as opposed to the other way around. [22]

Indianapolis Recorder, May 17, 1902, 3, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.

Today, the only known physical remnant of the Sugar Creek Community is the small cemetery where the Civil War veteran Elijah Derricks is buried under a worn headstone. This is all the more reason to continue looking into this story. There is more here – to add, correct, and uncover. Thorntown librarians, genealogists and Eagle Scouts have been working to learn more, and the descendants of Roberts Settlement have shown that genealogical research can open up a whole new world of stories. [See related local projects] But even with what little we do know about Thorntown and Sugar Creek, the community stands as a powerful reminder to check prejudice against newcomers. Before they could vote, or testify in court, or expect a fair shot, Black settlers built a thriving community in Sugar Creek. They worked, raised families, built a school, celebrated their accomplishments, worshiped together, and perhaps most importantly, they cast their ballots.

*Note on Terminology: The term “Black” is used here as opposed to “African American” because it provides the necessary ambiguity to describe the Sugar Creek settlers. Some family names at Sugar Creek are the same as residents of Roberts Settlement and thus likely relatives. Many Roberts residents either had no African heritage or very distant and thus did not identity as “African American.” Describing the Sugar Creek settlers as “Black” is more inclusive of the possibility that Sugar Creek residents had the same heritage as Roberts residents.

Notes

[1] Lebanon Weekly Pioneer, February 5, 1880.
[2] 1850 and 1860 United States Census accessed AncestryLibrary.
[3] Deed Record Book 15, Records of Boone County Recorder’s Office.
[4] Ephrem Yared, “55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment,” Black Past, March 15, 2016, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/55th-massachusetts-infantry-regiment-1863-1865/
[5] Lebanon Weekly Pioneer, October 11, 1883.
[6] Crawfordsville Weekly Journal, July 9, 1868.
[7] Thorntown Argus, March 6, 1897
[8] More on the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and Hoosier response: Indiana Historical Bureau
[9] Lebanon Patriot, September 15, 1870.
[10] “James Sidney Hinton,” accessed Indiana Historical Bureau.
[11] Lebanon Patriot, August 8, 1872.
[12] Crawfordsville Weekly Journal, August 15, 1872, Hoosier State Chronicles.
[13] Indianapolis Sun, November 3, 1896.
[14] Lebanon Pioneer, July 19, 1877.
[15] Lebanon Pioneer, November 27, 1879.
[16] Lebanon Weekly Pioneer, February 5, 1880.
[17] Lebanon Weekly Pioneer, February 5, 1880.
[18] Lindsey Beckley, “The Word ‘Hoosier:’ An Origin Story,” Transcript for Talking Hoosier History, Indiana Historical Bureau.
[19] 1850 and 1860 United States Census accessed AncestryLibrary.
[20] Thorntown Argus, November 3, 1894.
[21] Indianapolis Recorder, April 19, 1902, 3, Hoosier State Chronicles.
[22] Indianapolis Recorder, April 19, 22, May 3, 17, 1902, Hoosier State Chronicles.

Further Reading

Anna-Lisa Cox, The Bone and Sinew of the Land (New York: PublicAffairs, 2018).

Warren Eugene Mitleer Jr., The Complications of Liberty: Free People of Color in North Carolina from the Colonial Period through Reconstruction, Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Digital Repository, accessed cdr.lib.unc.edu.

Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana before 1900 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1985).

Stephen A. Vincent, Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

The “Symbolic Rape,” Arrest, and Defense of Sojourner Truth in Indiana

Sojourner Truth Indiana
Sojourner Truth, courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/Photographs and Prints Division/The New York Public Library, accessed Mapping the African American Past.

In May of 1861, as men throughout the state answered Governor Oliver P. Morton’s call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion, well-known abolitionist and evangelical speaker Sojourner Truth visited Indiana to speak in support of the war. This would ultimately lead to her arrest. The reformer was born a slave in Ulster County, New York, sometime in the late 1790s, and named Isabella. She became free in 1827 under New York’s gradual emancipation law, and took the name Isabella Van Wagenen, after her last master.  That year, she had a religious conversion experience and became a Methodist. In June, Isabella Van Wagenen was inspired to change her name to Sojourner Truth and became an itinerant preacher. She settled among the Northampton Association and for the remainder of her life spoke widely on behalf of spiritual, anti-slavery, feminist, and temperance causes.

Sojourner Truth first visited northeastern Indiana in 1858, probably because it was not far from her new home in the Harmonia community near Battle Creek, Michigan. By setting foot in Indiana she broke the law, as Article 13 of Indiana’s 1851 Constitution provided that “No negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution.”  This was of no concern for a woman of her ideals and determination. It was at the small town of Silver Lake in Kosciusko County that a hostile crowd insisted that she was really a man in disguise.  Challenged to reveal her breasts to women of the audience, she uncovered her breasts for the entire audience, saying that she “had suckled many a white babe.” Accounts of this “symbolic rape,” as modern scholars describe it, were published both locally and in the nation’s leading abolitionist newspaper, William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator.

Her 1861 appearance at the Steuben County courthouse in Angola was, according to abolitionist accounts, disrupted by a drunken mob, which pushed and cursed her, threatening tar and feathers or even worse. Reports noted that she made a dramatic figure:  unusually tall (some said nearly six feet), thin, very dark complexioned, and dressed for this occasion in red, white, and blue.  According to the Steuben Republican, “Sojourn Truth” did speak, although her words were not recorded.  Local residents were divided on her right to speak, but the Republican said nothing about a mob or threats of violence.  Its seven headlines tell a story of confusion in five distinct typefaces:

A BLOODLESS VICTORY.

Free Speech Tolerated in Angola.

GRAND MILITARY DISPLAY!

NEGROES NOT TOLERATED IN INDIANA.

Arrest for Harboring Negroes.

Arrest and Trial of Sojourn Truth.

ANGOLA BECOMING HERSELF AGAIN.

Apparently many local Republicans were reluctant to allow Sojourner Truth to speak, although they were equally opposed to allowing anti-abolitionist Democrats to prevent her from speaking.  The Republican seemed to be more concerned with the community’s reputation for law and order than for printing a clear account of what actually happened:

Although the freedom of speech had not been questioned here, yet the free speech of colored persons was not thought advisable at this time and under the excited state of the country, which met with opposition by some and encouragement by others, which resulted in favor of free speech, although but of short duration.

Sojourner Truth was arrested “by her would be friends on a charge of being in the State contrary to the laws of the State,” tried before a friendly justice of the peace, and set free.  Other local residents, dissatisfied by this “mock trial,” had her arrested again and taken before a less-friendly justice, whereupon her friends won a change of venue to a court ten miles to the north in Jamestown, very near the state line.  As she told the story afterward, she and her white companion Josephine Griffing were called before the courts on six occasions, but she was never convicted.  A local abolitionist named Horatio Roby was arrested and bound over to the circuit court “for harboring a negro.”  He was released on bail set at $500, but there is no record that he was ever brought to trial.

Sojourner Truth lecturing, January 2, 1860, Illustration from the Film, ‘The Emerging Woman’, Produced by the Women’s Film Project, 1974, accessed gettyimages.com.

Sojourner Truth remained for about a month during her 1861 visit, and she certainly spoke at a number of places in northeastern Indiana, not only in favor of the war itself, which was not a matter of great controversy in that part of the state, but also on the evils of slavery and the necessity for its destruction.  Abolition did not become government policy until President Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862.

Sojourner Truth’s visit emphasizes how divided was public opinion in Indiana in the late spring of 1861.  Most Hoosiers were enthusiastically in favor of preserving the Union, far fewer favored the abolition of slavery, and few of those would have welcomed freed slaves to live in Indiana.  Although it was unenforceable during and after the Civil War, Article 13 was not formally repealed until 1881.  Nevertheless, despite accusations of intimidation by a drunken mob published by the abolitionist press, Sojourner Truth did speak publicly in Steuben County.  She was threatened but not injured, she was protected by armed members of the Scott Township Home Guard, and she was never convicted for the crime of entering the state although obviously guilty of the charge.  The Steuben Republican believed that “Negro excitement has run very high in Angola for the last ten days, very much to the discredit of the town.”   Those who invited, sheltered and defended Sojourner Truth on her visits to Indiana held a much different opinion.

The author wishes to acknowledge the generous assistance of Peg Dilbone of Angola, independent researcher and Steuben County Historian.

 

Bibliography

Painter, Nell Irvin, editor, Narrative of Sojourner Truth.  New York:  Penguin Books, 1998.

Painter, Nell Irvin, Sojourner Truth:  A Life, a Symbol.  New York:  W.W. Norton, 1996.

Steuben Republican [Angola, Indiana].

Thornbrough, Emma Lou.  Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850-1880.  Indianapolis:  Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana Historical Society, 1965.

Thornbrough, Emma Lou, The Negro in Indiana:  A Study of a Minority.  Indianapolis:  Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957.

Washington, Margaret, Sojourner Truth’s America.  Urbana:  University of Illinois Press, 2009.

The Indiana General Assembly (1850-1865): A New Constitution and the Civil War

 

Accessed The Indiana Historian.

* See Part Two: Surveying, the First Statehouse, and Financial Collapse (1826-1846)

The New State Constitution of 1851

After years of political and budgetary turmoil, the Indiana General Assembly and the general public agreed that it was time for an improved state constitution. The failures of the Mammoth Internal Improvements Act in the 1830s and 1840s precipitated a need for more safeguards against “special legislation,” or local legislation that served special interests.[1] The election of state delegates, many from within the General Assembly, ensured that state debt would be contained and allowed for only special defense purposes. For example, delegate Schulyer Colfax (future vice-president under Ulysses S. Grant) wanted the language on debt to be so clear that, “no more State debt shall hereafter be created upon any pretext whatever. . .”[2] The limitations enacted against the General Assembly created a rigid political system that neglected the promise of debt remuneration for at least three decades, especially during the disastrous effects of the Civil War.

The delegates, however, did create more effective organizational tools for the legislature. The General Assembly was provided with biennial sessions with sixty-one days of legislative time, and a two-year term for representatives and a four-year term for senators were also established. Furthermore, the House and Senate were limited to only 100 and fifty members, respectively. These same provisions continue today, with the notable exception that the General Assembly now meets every year. The delegates also made some social progress, instituting a stronger push for public schools and easier access to citizenship for immigrants.[3] Yet, there was one particular provision of the new state constitution that created widespread animosity up through the Civil War.

Indiana and Race: The Antebellum Years

When the state constitution was ratified by the public in February 1851, it institutionalized its own version of racism. Article 13 stated that, “No negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution.”[4] Even though Indiana was a Free State, a strong antagonism towards African-Americans lingered. As historian David G. Vanderstel noted, Article 13 “demonstrated the strength of the exclusion and colonization movements, which sought to remove blacks to Africa.”[5] Voting rights for the already 11,000 African-American citizens was also prohibited by the 1851 constitution, and African-American marriages were also left unrecognized.[6] Many of these egregious policies were slowly reversed after the Civil War, but discrimination and legal obfuscations continued well into the mid-twentieth century.

Indiana and the Civil War

The Civil War permanently altered the course of the United States, and Indiana’s unique role in the conflict underscored these drastic changes. Indiana ranked second among the Union in the amount of troops, just over 197,000, and suffered over 25,000 casualties.[7] While personal sacrifices occurred on the battlefield, an internal civil war erupted between the governor and the Indiana General Assembly. The eye of this political hurricane was Governor Oliver P. Morton, often cited as Indiana’s most influential Governor. Elected as Lieutenant Governor under Henry Smith Lane, Morton assumed the governorship after Lane went the U.S. Senate.[8] From 1861 to 1867, Morton made his presence felt throughout the state, often in controversial ways.

Indiana’s war-time Governor. His policies led to a fierce internal civil war with the General Assembly, courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society.

Morton’s leadership exacerbated the political divisions within the Indiana General Assembly. Some Democratic legislators scrambled to remain relevant, supporting the aims of the Union but not the executive power grabs of Morton or President Lincoln. Others were fierce “Peace Democrats,” which the Morton administration targeted as “Copperheads” and “traitors.”[9] The same divide pervaded the Republicans as well, but their leadership often bowed to Morton’s forceful demands. But by 1862, the barrage of military failures and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had angered the Indiana public enough to ensure a Democratic sweep in the mid-term elections.

James F. D. Lanier. Sketch of the Life of J. F. D. Lanier (self published, 1877).

Once the Democrats had control of the state’s legislature and finances, the legislative progress of Indiana stagnated for over two years. When the General Assembly tried to pass a law that truncated the Governor’s war-time powers, the Republicans, “bolted, fleeing Indianapolis in order not to be forced to provide a legislative quorum.”[10] The finances of the state become so dire that Governor Morton, along with a consortium of bankers united by fellow Hoosier James Lanier, financed the state government by fiat, without legislative approval. At one point, Morton doled out funds from a safe in his office, virtually circumventing the General Assembly.[11] By 1864, Morton was essentially a dictator, but the cause of the Union, at least in his perspective, was larger than the need of constant legislative approval. The Indiana public largely agreed. The 1864 elections swept a wave of Republicans into the legislature, reelected Morton, and helped calm some of the storm that was Indiana’s government.

Once the war was over, Morton finished out his term and became a United States Senator. The Indiana General Assembly, by 1869, was flooded with Radical Republicans, ensuring that at least some of Reconstruction’s policies were carried out. Nonetheless, the Civil War divided the Hoosier state in ways not felt since, and Morton’s tempestuous relationship with the General Assembly certainly motivated those divisions.

Notable Legislators

  • Horace Heffren
    • The Civil War era was full of cantankerous characters, and State Representative Horace Heffren was no exception. In 1861, Heffren, a Democratic representative from Washington County, was accused of treason by Republican lawmaker Gideon C. Moody. Tensions grew so quickly that on February 11, 1861, Moody challenged Heffren to a duel in Campbell County, Kentucky. A Sheriff stopped them just before fatal shots could be fired and the Indiana General Assembly took no recourse against them.[12] After the attempted duel, Heffren was again tried for treason in 1864, but to no avail. Heffren was lambasted by Republicans as, “one of the most loudmouthed, rampant, bitter, boisterous, violent, venomous, poisonous copperheads that could be found on the face of the footstool.”[13] Whether or not Heffren was actually a traitor is lost to history, but the level of animus against him shows the bitter divisions within the Indiana General Assembly during the Civil War.
  • Alexander J. Douglas
    • The arrest and trial of Indiana State Senator Alexander J. Douglas provides us with a glimpse into the intense and polarizing era of the Civil War. Douglas, born in Ohio in 1827, practiced law and served as Whitley County prosecutor from 1859 until his election to the Indiana General Assembly in 1862.[14] With a voting public disgruntled from the heavy-handed policies of Morton, Douglas benefited from wave of votes for Democrats in the mid-term elections. As a fierce opponent of the policies of Lincoln and Governor Oliver P. Morton, Douglas used his new-found influence in the Senate to denounce Unionist policies and their “centralization” of state of power.[15] These tensions accelerated after the arrest of noted anti-war Democrat Clement Vallandigham, whose speech in Columbus, OH chastised the dissent-snuffing policies of General Ambrose Burnside. Douglas came to Vallandigham’s defense in a series of speeches denouncing the use of military arrest on civilians. Douglas was then arrested by General William Tecumseh Sherman and put on trial through a military tribunal.[16] Even though he was found not guilty of treason, Douglas’s trial illustrated the deep ideological and political divisions at the heart of Indiana during the Civil War.

See Part Four

[1] Justin E. Walsh, The Centennial History of the Indiana General Assembly, 1816-1978 (Indianapolis, Indiana Historical Bureau, 1987), 179.

[2] Donald F. Carmony, “Historical Background of the Restrictions Against State Debt in the Indiana Constitution of 1851,” Indiana Magazine of History 47, no. 2 (June 1951): 129, 140.

[3] James H. Madison, The Indiana Way: A State History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 138-140.

[4] Charles Kettlebrough, Constitution Making In Indiana, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Commission, 1916, 1930 [reprint edition], Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1971), 1: 360.

[5] David G. Vanderstel, “The 1851 Indiana Constitution,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed November 12, 2014, http://www.in.gov/history/2689.htm.

[6] Madison, The Indiana Way, 169-170.

[7] Ibid, 197.

[8] Ibid, 198.

[9] John D. Barnhart, “The Impact of the Civil War in Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History 57, no. 3 (September 1961): 187.

[10] Madison, The Indiana Way, 203.

[11] Ibid, 203.

[12] Walsh, Centennial History, 189.

[13] Ibid, 190-191.

[14] Stephen Towne, “Worse than Vallandigham: Governor Oliver P. Morton, Lambdin P. Milligan, and the Military Arrest and Trial of Indiana State Senator Alexander J. Douglas during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History 106 (March 2010): 6-8.

[15] Ibid, 10.

[16] Ibid, 32.

Thomas A. Hendricks: “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was”

Governor Thomas Andrew Hendricks, Governors’ Portrait Collection, accessed Indiana Historical Bureau.

Thomas A. Hendricks (1819-1885), an attorney from Shelbyville and, later, Indianapolis, became the most prominent Democrat in Indiana during the Civil War era. As such, he articulated the conservative Democratic position most forcefully and memorably. This stance can be summed up in the words, “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was.” Hendricks was also known for his outspoken white supremacist, but antislavery, views.  His frequently quoted remark, uttered on the floor of the U.S. Senate, reveals this attitude: “This is the white man’s Government, made by the white man, for the white man.”

In a storied career that included single terms as senator, governor, and election in 1884 to the vice presidency of the United States, Hendricks spent nearly four decades in public life.  First elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in the late 1840s and then to Congress in 1851, he was appointed by President Franklin Pierce (and later reappointed by President James Buchanan) to lead the extremely busy General Land Office during a period of numerous and generous land grants.  Increasingly out of step with Buchanan’s proslavery and anti-homestead bill policies, Hendricks resigned his Washington position in 1859.

Governor Oliver P. Morton, Governors’ Portraits Collection, accessed Indiana Historical Bureau.

He returned to Indiana, and almost immediately found himself at the head of the Democratic Party ticket as it attempted to retain control of the state’s reins of power. However, although 1860 was a Republican year, Hendricks fared better against his gubernatorial opponent, Henry S. Lane, than did the rest of the Democratic ticket.  Then, according to a pre-arranged agreement, Governor Lane was chosen by the Republican-controlled General Assembly to become Indiana’s new United States senator.  The energetic and ambitious lieutenant governor, Oliver P. Morton, then became governor and served throughout the Civil War.

It was a different story in the off-year elections of 1862, when the unpopularity of the war and many of President Abraham Lincoln’s policies—especially his emancipation plan—resulted in a Democratic sweep of state offices, including control of the Indiana General Assembly.  When this body elected another new senator, the popular Hendricks was chosen.  In office from 1863 to 1869, Senator Hendricks was involved with the final years of the Civil War and the first years of Reconstruction. Initially, he stoutly supported the Union’s war effort, but not the plans for the emancipation of African American slaves. After the war, he spoke out against (and voted against) the three so-called Civil War Amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th) to the federal Constitution.  In his view, the impassioned feelings of the immediate postwar era and the absence of representatives in Congress from eleven states, made the times “unpropitious” for making basic constitutional changes.

Governor Conrad Baker, Governors’ Portraits Collection, accessed Indiana Historical Bureau.

Obviously, Hendricks’s views resonated with his fellow Hoosier Democrats, and while still a senator he was nominated to run again for governor in 1868.  Hendricks was narrowly defeated by the incumbent governor, Conrad Baker, who had succeeded Morton when he went to the U. S. Senate in 1867. Hendricks retained his personal popularity and ran a third time, successfully, for the governor’s seat in 1872, serving from 1873 to 1877.  Still not done with electoral politics, the charismatic governor was Samuel J. Tilden’s running mate in the famous “disputed election of 1876,” in which the Democratic team received more votes than did their opponents, but a partisan Electoral Commission awarded the victory to Republicans Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler.

Campaign poster for Grover Cleveland and Thomas A. Hendricks, 1884, courtesy of PBS Learning Media.

Hendricks’ final campaign came in 1884 when he reluctantly, for health reasons, agreed to join Grover Cleveland at the head of the Democratic Party ticket. Successful this time, Hendricks’ service as vice president was destined to be short.  Inaugurated in March 1885, the Hoosier politician died at his home in Indianapolis in November 1885.

Regarding Hendricks’ Civil War years in Indiana, there is no evidence that he was a member of any “dark lantern” society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, the Sons of Liberty, or the Order of American Knights; nor was he a Copperhead, if one defines that term as a Northerner who supported the South during the war.  If, however, one defines the term more broadly to include those who opposed the Lincoln administration and, following Lincoln’s death, the Radical Republican agenda, then, of course, Hendricks certainly belongs in that category.

Greenback bill, issued March 1863, courtesy of Museum of American Finance.

He was an outspoken critic of what he considered the excesses of Lincoln’s wartime policies, including emancipation, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, high tariffs, the issuance of “greenbacks” and other banking policies that he believed aided the New England states at the expense of western states, and many more extra-military actions by both the state and national administrations. In particular, Hendricks lambasted the Lincoln administration in a major speech in Indianapolis on January 8, 1862, during the state Democratic Party convention, which in its platform condemned the Republicans for rejecting compromises that might have averted war, and for its violations of freedom of the press and the domestic institutions of sovereign states. But Hendricks consistently supported the war to save the Union, urged compliance with the draft, and deplored armed resistance to its enforcement.

Thomas A. Hendricks monument at the Indiana State House, accessed Wikipedia.org.

In May 1863, at the time of another party gathering in Indianapolis, Hendricks was threatened by an unauthorized band of roaming soldiers when he attempted to speak.  The melee that followed led up to the events known as the “Battle of Pogue’s Run.”  Hendricks was also at the center of a volatile situation when he joined Governor Morton on the steps of the state house in eulogizing the assassinated president; Morton’s stern demeanor quieted the protesters, following cries of “Hang him” aimed at Hendricks, and the Democrat was able to continue his remarks. Ironically, this episode occurred near the site on the current State House grounds where a tall monument with a larger than life-size statue of Hendricks was erected in 1890 and still stands.

Bibliography

Gray, Ralph D. “Thomas A. Hendricks:  Spokesman for the Democracy,” in Gray, ed., Gentlemen from Indiana: National Party Candidates, 1836-1940. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1977.

Holcombe, John W., and Hubert M. Skinner. Life and Public Services of Thomas A. Hendricks with Selected Speeches and Writings. Indianapolis: Carlon and Hollenbeck, 1886.

Neely, Jr., Mark E., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Stampp, Kenneth M.  Indiana Politics during the Civil War. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1949.

Tredway, G. R. Democratic Opposition to the Lincoln Administration in Indiana. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1973.

William Hayden English: A Man Apart

William Hayden English. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
William Hayden English. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.

When I started researching him, William Hayden English seemed like a pretty typical figure for the 19th century: Congressman, businessman, Vice-Presidential candidate. However, I soon realized how complicated his life and his politics really were.

English played a key role in the unrest in Kansas during the antebellum period, yet supported the Union during the Civil War (but was still antagonistic towards Lincoln’s presidency). A deal broker, English often chose the middle of the road. He was a conciliator, a compromiser, and a tactical politician who was a Pro-Union Democrat who held misgivings about both slave-sympathizers in the South and radical Republicans in the North. In more ways than one, he was truly a man apart.

William Hayden English was born on August 27, 1822. Early in his life, English received some formal education. According to a letter by E. D. McMaster from 1839, English received education in the “Preparatory and Scientific departments” of Hanover College. Additionally, he received accreditation to teach multiple subjects at common schools by examiners Samuel Rankin and John Addison. He would eventually leave school and pursue law, where he passed the bar in 1840.

The English family home in Englishton Park, Lexington, Scott County, Indiana, circa 1900. English lived here for many years with his family until his time in the Indiana House brought him to Indianapolis. An IHB marker for English is at this location. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
The English family home in Englishton Park, Lexington, Scott County, Indiana, circa 1900. English lived here for many years with his family until his time in the Indiana House brought him to Indianapolis. An IHB marker for English is at this location. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.

His major break in politics came with his selection as the principal Secretary of the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1850. During his time as Secretary, he earned the reputation as being a thoughtful and balanced tactician, someone who was willing to work with others and make things happen.

The first page of the manuscript version of the 1851 Indiana State Constitution. English honed his political skills during his time as principal secretary for the Constitutional Convention. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
The first page of the manuscript version of the 1851 Indiana State Constitution. English honed his political skills during his time as principal secretary for the Constitutional Convention. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.

Using this newly-earned reputation, English was first elected to the Indiana House of Representatives from Scott County in August of 1851. On March 8, 1852, after the resignation of Speaker John Wesley Davis, English was elected Speaker of the House with an overwhelming majority of the vote. He was only 29 years old, making him the one of the youngest Speakers in Indiana History.

In his election speech, he stated his praise for the new Constitution and called for a full new legal code to be established. He additionally called for a “spirit of concession and compromise” and for his colleagues to “zealously apply himself to the completion of the great work intrusted [sic] to us by a generous constituency.” In effect, the Indiana House of Representatives under Speaker English had consolidated state government and extended its purview to neglected regions of the state.

William English's officialt Congressional Portrait, 1859. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
William English’s official Congressional Portrait, 1859. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

After his time in state government, English was called for national service. He won his first election to the United States House of Representatives in 1852, and was reelected in 1854, 1856, and 1858. During his tenure in Congress, English would be remembered for his “wise and patriotic course in Congress,” notably his important role in crafting a controversial bill that gave Kansas the choice of whether to come into the Union as a free or slave state.

English’s time in Congress, much like the rest of his political career, can be seen as pragmatic. While he morally abhorred slavery, he condemned abolitionists and believed in the notion of “popular sovereignty,” which argued that the people of a state or territory should choose for themselves whether to have slavery. He stated his view in a speech in 1854:

Sir, I am a native of a free State [sic], and have no love for the institution of slavery. Aside from the moral question involved, I regard it as an injury to the State where it exists….But sir, I never can forget that we are a confederacy of States, possessing equal rights, under our glorious Constitution. That if the people of Kentucky believe the institution of slavery would be conducive to their happiness, they have the same right to establish and maintain that we of Indiana have to reject it; and this doctrine is just as applicable to States hereafter to be admitted as to those already in the Union.

During this session, Congress was debating a bill named the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would repeal the Missouri Compromise (also known as the Compromise of 1820) and allow for states and their citizens to decide whether they wanted to be admitted as a slave state or free state. English voted for the bill and it was later signed into law by President Franklin Pierce on May 30, 1854. Almost immediately, violence erupted between pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates in the state, who could not agree on the direction of the state constitution.

Alexander Stephens, circa 1860s. A congressman from Georgia, Stephens helped English craft the "English Bill" that would later ensure that Kansas as a free state. Today, he is best remembered for being the Vice-President of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Alexander Stephens, circa 1860s. A congressman from Georgia, Stephens helped English craft the “English Bill” that hoped to quell unrest in the territory of Kansas. Ironically, he is best remembered for being Vice-President of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

After his reelection in 1856, English, along with congressional colleague Alexander Stephens, went to work on a compromise bill that would potentially quell the violence and political unrest. This compromise, known as the English Bill, allowed the citizens of Kansas to either accept or reject the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. However, if the citizens of Kansas chose to be a slave state by referendum, they had to additionally let go of federal land grants within the territory.

The bill passed and the voters of Kansas did not reject the land grants, thus rejecting the Lecompton Constitution. Upon the Bill’s passage, English declared that, “The measure just passed ought to secure peace, and restore harmony among the different sections of the confederacy.” The Kansas issue would be not resolved until its admission to the Union as a free state in 1861.  As he did in the Indiana House, English struck a compromise that hoped to quell the violence, using federal land grants as a way to take heat off the slavery issue.

While the English Bill attempted to stave off conflict within Kansas, the harmony among the nation was short lived. The growing tensions among pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions of the country were mounting, and English lamented this development in one of his final speeches to Congress. He chastised both the abolitionists and radical Republicans, who he believed had appealed to the “passions and prejudices of the northern people, for the sake of getting into office and accomplishing mere party ends.” To English, the cause of all this strife was the agitation of the slavery question and the solution would be to elect a Democrat President and ensure that the national discussion be reverted back to other issues of state. This did not happen; in the fall of 1860, voters chose Republican Abraham Lincoln and the first seven southern states seceded from the union.

By 1861, right as English was leaving Congress, the United States became engulfed in Civil War. While many within the national Democratic Party either defected to the Confederacy or took a tenuous position of support in the north, English was unequivocally for the Union. In an August 16, 1864 article in the Indiana Daily State Sentinel, the Committee of the Second Congressional District, under the chairmanship of English, wrote a platform that supported the Union and decried the act of secession. However, it did reserve criticism for President Lincoln, particularly with regards to supposed violations of freedom of speech. English’s pragmatic, even-handed political gesture fell in line with many of his past political actions.

Campaign poster for candidacy of Winfield Scott Hancock and William Hayden English, 1880. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Campaign poster for candidacy of Winfield Scott Hancock and William Hayden English, 1880. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

After his time in Congress,  he was the President of the First National Bank of Indianapolis for 14 years. He established the bank in 1863, taking advantage of the reestablished national banking system during the Civil War. According to historian Emma Lou Thornbrough, the First National Bank of Indianapolis became “the largest bank of Indianapolis, and one of the largest in the Middle West.” He is also listed as a “banker” in the 1870 Census and as a “capitalist” in the 1880 Census. By the time of his death in 1896, English had become one of the wealthiest men in Indiana.

Even though his time in national politics was years removed, he was nonetheless nominated by the Democratic Party in 1880 for Vice President, with Winfield Scott Hancock as President. Articles in the Indianapolis News and the Atlantic noted that his chances for the Vice-Presidential nomination were quite good, especially if the candidate was presumed front-runner Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Within days of the News piece, when asked if he was interested in the VP nomination, English said, “None whatever, for that or any other office.

A campaign poster for Hanock and English, with a patriotic flair, 1880. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
A campaign poster for Hanock and English, with a patriotic flair, 1880. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Despite his protestations, English was nominated for the Vice-Presidency by the Democratic Party on June 24, 1880, after Tilden redrew his consideration for the Presidential nomination and General Winfield Scott Hancock was elected in his stead. In his acceptance letter, English wrote that he was “profoundly grateful for the honor conferred” and that his election with Hancock would be a triumph over the dominance of the Republican Party in the presidency. Their chances to win the White House were dashed when they lost to Republicans James Garfield and Chester Arthur in the General Election.

English's Hotel and Opera House, circa 1948. Completed in 1880, it became a mainstay on Monument Circle before its demolition in 1948. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
English’s Hotel and Opera House, circa 1948. Completed in 1880, it became a mainstay on Monument Circle before its demolition in 1948. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
William Eastin English, circa 1880s. The son of William H. English, William E. managed the English Hotel and Opera House. Like his father, he became a successful businessman and U.S. Congressman. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
William Eastin English, circa 1880s. The son of William H. English, William E. managed the English Hotel and Opera House. Like his father, he became a successful businessman and U.S. Congressman. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
Actor Lawrence Barrett, circa 1880. When English's Hotel and Opera House opened on September 27, 1880, Barrett played the lead role in its production of Hamlet. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
Actor Lawrence Barrett, circa 1880. When English’s Hotel and Opera House opened on September 27, 1880, Barrett played the lead role in its production of Hamlet. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.

While he was running for Vice-President, English’s business empire was also expanding, with his financing and construction of the English Hotel and Opera House. Historians James Fisher and Clifton Phillips noted that English purchased land on the city circle in the 1840s, as a residence for himself and his family. In early 1880, during renovations on the circle, English announced that he would invest in the construction of a new Hotel and Opera House. His son, William E. English, became the proprietor and manager. It officially opened on September 27, 1880, and the first performance was Lawrence Barrett as Hamlet. It would be in continual use until its closure and demolition in 1948.

English served as the President of the Indiana Historical Society, from 1886 until in his death ten years later. During his tenure, English wrote a two-volume history of the Northwest Territory and the life of George Rogers Clark. It was published in 1896, shortly after his death. An 1889 article in the Indianapolis Journal noted his compiling of sources and his emerging methodology; a two-volume general history that would be divided at the 1851 revised State Constitution. By 1895, the project materialized into the history mentioned above, with English using documents from leaders involved, such as Thomas Jefferson and Clark himself. He also conducted interviews with other key figures of the revised Indiana Constitution. English’s historical research became the standard account of the Northwest Territory for those within the Historical Society and the general public for many years.

The English family home on Circle Street, Indianapolis, 1870s. English lived in Indianapolis for most of his adult life, occasionally visiting his home in Scott County. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.
The English family home on Circle Street, Indianapolis, 1870s. English lived in Indianapolis for most of his adult life, occasionally visiting his home in Scott County. Courtesy of Indiana Historical Society.

William English died on February 7, 1896, as reported by the Indianapolis Journal. On February 9, thousands came to see his body displayed in the Indiana State Capitol before he was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.

His legacy in Indiana is lesser known, but he does have some monuments. A sculpture in the Indiana Statehouse commemorates his place in history. The town of English, Indiana is also named after the late politician. According to historian H. H. Pleasant and the Crawford County Democrat, the unincorporated town was originally named Hartford. It was changed to English in 1886 after the town was officially incorporated, in honor of election to Congress from the area. He also has an IHB marker at his former home in Lexington, Scott County, Indiana.

The William English Bust in the Indiana State House. Located on the fourth floor, the bust only lists his time as Indiana House Speaker as an accomplishment. Courtesy in.gov.
The William English Bust in the Indiana State House. Located on the fourth floor, the bust only lists his time as Indiana House Speaker as an accomplishment. Courtesy in.gov.

To many who enter the Statehouse and see his statue on the fourth floor, he might be just another leader of Indiana’s past. However, English’s political career attempted to stave off Civil War (at least temporarily) and reinforced Indiana’s political tradition of measured, temperate leaders who sought a middle ground on most issues. In that regard, English might be one of Indiana’s most emblematic statesmen.