The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life
sixty-five miles above its mouth, a frontier post called Dixon’s
Ferry. It was an unpretentious affair, consisting of a solitary
tenement laid east and west, in three sections, and built of logs–a
cozy but rambling affair ninety feet in length.
At this point the great “Kellogg’s trail,” run by O.W. Kellogg in
the year 1827, crossed the river, and John Dixon, from whom the
ferry derived its name and its existence, had lived here with his
family since early in the year 1830, entertaining travelers,
operating the ferry and trading with the “suckers” who journeyed to
and from the mining district and Indians. This famous old trail was
then the route pursued by the argonauts of all the southern country
in search of sudden wealth in the mines. It was the great
thoroughfare from Peoria, then more commonly referred to as Fort
Clark, to Galena, sought by those from the St. Louis country on the
southwest and the old Vincennes country to the southeast, and
followed on northwesterly past Dixon’s Ferry to Galena, where the
crowds dispersed and scattered for the “diggings” over northwestern
Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin, then a part of Michigan
Territory. Later the Government mail route changed the old trail to
a straighter course between Galena and Dixon’s Ferry, thence leaving
it for an easterly direction through DeKalb, Kane, DuPage and Cook
counties the route continued to Chicago.
Famous old days were those in the West and famous men traveled that
trail in those old days! From the miner and prospector to the
merchant; from the mail carrier to the soldier; from the circuit
preacher to the circuit law rider following a peripatetic court.
From Peter Cartwright, the energetic Methodist preacher, who swam
swollen streams and rivers to keep his word, and who, if rumor be
true, brought in more than one obstreperous recruit with a flogging,
to Col. James M. Strode, the then noted but erratic criminal lawyer
of Galena; from Lieut.-Col. Zachary Taylor, who afterward became
President of the United States, and Gen. Winfield Scott, who wanted
to be, to Lieut. Jefferson Davis, who was President of the Southern
Confederacy, and Capt. Abraham Lincoln, who dissolved it, we find
them all associated with the old trail and eating and lodging with
mine host Dixon, singly and together; those who were later to become
Cabinet Ministers, United States Senators, Representatives,
Governors, and soldiers and statesmen without number.
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White men and Indians alike made their pilgrimages along that trail,
stopping over with Mr. Dixon to strengthen the inner man and
replenish their stock of supplies. With the Indians he was
particularly popular, insomuch that he became their counselor and
arbitrator, and likewise their banker. In turn, as a recognition of
his many and kindly offices, the Winnebagoes adopted him into their
tribe, naming him Na-chu-sa (long hair white). This affection for
the old patriarch was equally manifested by the whites, and when the
time came to bespeak it there was left no uncertainty respecting the
judgment. His silent influence became so potent that in the year
1840, with Galena the political and commercial power of the
Northwest, he took from her to his own town the United States Land
Office.
When the subject of removal was first broached it appeared so
ridiculously impossible that nothing in Galena but laughter
protested, but John Dixon’s tavern was stronger than the politics
and commercial prestige of the giant philistine, and her haughty
pride was humbled. Singly he journeyed on to Washington, and for the
simple asking, the office, the most potential factor in the politics
of that day, was ordered removed to Dixon–the miracle of the century
in Illinois politics.
The man’s venerable personality, his charming sweetness of
disposition, his rugged honesty, and possibly his little account
book, were altogether too powerful for the antagonists of those
rugged days, and before passing that same little account book it may
be well to run hastily over its pages.
Colonel Strode was exceedingly familiar with them; one might say
that he took liberties with them. First we find Colonel Strode
Dr.–To Cash–$10.00, and again Strode was Dr.–To Cash–$5.00;
invariably cash, running clear through from cover to cover.
Col. William S. Hamilton, son of General Alexander Hamilton, whose
business ventures were as varied as they were numerous, was favored
with merchandise to the extent of many pages and many hundreds of
dollars, and so, by the by, was Col. Zachary Taylor, only to more
modest amounts. One entry characteristic of the times is laughable
enough. Here it is: “Col. Z. Taylor–To Md’se. (including a shirt
pattern), $6:50,” and then follows its liquidation in a still more
laughable manner: “Settled by note.”
There is humor for you! The hero of more than one war and President
of the United States settling an account of $6.50 by note of hand!
But the note was paid in due time, we are assured by Miss F. Louise
Dixon, the owner of the little book with such historic credits and
debits.
Even the dignity of Gen. Winfield Scott was not above the acceptance
of the hospitality of those friendly pages, for we find entries
which tell of the manner they had obliged him, but the punctilio
observed by him in the discharge of those little accounts was
manifested by the same precision one would expect from the dignified
old soldier, who was nothing if not precise.
Men came and traded, traveled afar off and returned to settle,
sometimes a year from date and sometimes at a still longer date, but
they returned, and the score at Mr. Dixon’s was never forgotten.
Today the debtor was a miner; tomorrow he might be a contractor, and
later he might be a lawyer, but in meeting his obligations he was
always a man.
On one occasion we find this same Colonel Hamilton, who had
contracted two hundred steers to be delivered to the Government
agency at Green Bay, Wisconsin, driving them from Springfield,
Illinois, through Chicago, and thence northward to his destination.
In the same month he was operating “Hamilton’s diggings,” and
subsequently he was defending a noted Mormon at Nauvoo, Illinois,
charged with the commission of a crime, and yet again he was
commanding a band of Menominee Indians in the Black Hawk War; always
strenuous and always unqualifiedly successful.
Backward and forward the people came, forgetting never to stop over
with genial Mr. Dixon. Travel was constant, and in a general sense
men were prosperous, particularly in the mines.
Though freely encroaching on the land of the Winnebagoes, no
troubles had ensued since the “Winnebago scare” of 1827, when Red
Bird was captured for an unwarranted attack upon the whites.
A little riffle was caused in 1831 by Black Hawk, but nothing
serious arose to disturb the tranquillity of the settlements until
the year 1832. Possibly if the affair of 1831 had been more serious
the one of 1832 would have been less disastrous.
In the spring of the year 1832, Black Hawk and his “British band,”
as it was denominated, of the Sac tribe of Indians, disregarding all
former treaties, one of them so late as the preceding summer,
crossed the Mississippi in search of trouble. He had traveled up
Rock River, stopping one day with Mr. Dixon, and then continued to a
point some thirty miles above, where Stillman and his militia in
attempting later to dislodge them, were signally defeated, and in
consequence consternation spread over the entire West.
Then it was the log cabin of John Dixon took on a national
reputation, which its memory has ever since maintained, and which
must stand by it so long as our country endures, and then, indeed,
the account books took on an importance seldom acquired in the
affairs of bookdom. Then the tide turned, too, from lawyers and
“suckers” to soldiers, and the flower and chivalry of the State and
Nation went forth to concentrate at Dixon’s Ferry to contest the
advance of Black Hawk and his mercenaries, who had fought the
Americans at every opportunity from the beginning of the century.
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In addition to those named there were Gen. Hugh Brady, Gen. Henry
Atkinson, Col. Nathan Boone, son of Daniel Boone, Capt. W.S. Harney,
Robert Anderson, Jefferson Davis, N.J. Eaton, Albert Sidney
Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, Bennet Riley, W.M. Graham, George
Wilson, Kearney, Abercrombie, Gardenier, William Whistler, M.L.
Clark, of the regular army, and of the militia, Capt. Abraham
Lincoln, Gen. Henry Dodge, Gen. George W. Jones, Gov. John Reynolds,
Gen. E.D. Baker, O.H. Browning, John A. McClernand, John Dement,
Harrison Wilson, James D. Henry, Sidney Breese, Jacob Fry, Samuel
Whiteside, Adam W. Snyder and others without number, who became
famous in the history of the country at subsequent periods.
The regulars stationed at Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis) started
under Atkinson up the Mississippi for Fort Armstrong (Rock Island),
from which point the General, with a small detachment, proceeded
further up to Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien), to secure the
assistance of the troops stationed there under Lieut.-Col. Zachary
Taylor, and those at Fort Winnebago (Portage, Wisconsin) under
Lieut.-Col. Enos Cutler. Those under Taylor returned with Atkinson
to Fort Armstrong to meet the militia of the State of Illinois, then
gathering at Beardstown, preparatory to moving up to the mouth of
Rock River, where a junction was to be formed with the regulars.
Other troops under General Scott were subsequently ordered from
Fortress Monroe. Others under Brady were ordered to Dixon’s Ferry
from Detroit, taking in the Fort Winnebago men, the whole finally
making an army formidable enough to annihilate all the Indians in
the West if Indians could have been drawn into a general engagement.
On the 12th of May, 1832, the militia under Governor Reynolds and
Gen. Samuel Whiteside arrived, almost simultaneously with a company
of troops from the mining district under the intrepid Gen. Henry
Dodge. On the 17th the regulars under General Atkinson arrived, and
on this day Jefferson Davis assisted in mustering into the United
States service the newly-formed Fifth Regiment, of which James
Johnson of Macon County had been made Colonel just before.
In this first campaign of 1832 Lincoln was captain of a company of
militia composed of sixty-nine as intractable and headstrong men as
could be found at that very independent period, extravagantly
opposed to discipline, acknowledging no superior, yet managed with
skill and credit to all by the captain, who, under ordinary
circumstances, chafed under restraint much less severe than that
which military authority imposed and which few western men
respected.
The age was one of independence, and that, more than anything else,
was the cause of Stillman’s defeat. Private differences were settled
without the assistance of courts, which were few and far between.
One man was as good as his neighbor, and if anyone disputed the
proposition it generally cost him a sore head. Those men who had
fought in the war of 1812, without the assistance of the general
Government, looked with profound contempt on the gold trappings of
the regular officer and his tedious routine, and Governor Reynolds,
diplomat that he was in handling western character, was put to the
limit of his ability and endurance in smoothing over the