HARRISON COUNTY,
Old Corydon
By Charles Moores,
Indianapolis, Member of the State Historical Commission
The sentimentalist is wont to personify a commonwealth as a
broad-shouldered, underclad young woman lifting a torch or flourishing
a sword or emptying a cornucopia. She commands deference because in her
Amasonian presence—like that of our latter-day Golduh—no mere man would
dare cross her purposes. Her monster physique offers no suggestion of a
possible maternity, the normal function of a state, nor any hint of a
useful occupation—although a state really ought to have something to do.
In the effort to set before you the picture of Indiana's birthplace I
would personify our State, not as torchbearer, sword swinger or
cornucopia-emptier, but as the mother of us all, who, at the close of
her first century, is still young and strong and wise and fit to bear
and rear and train her children for a place among America's idealists.
This year Indiana is struggling after a memory of her infancy. Like one
who is world-weary she finds it hard to command a clear vision of the
place where she was born. Many a loyal Hoosier shamefacedly confesses
his ignorance of the capital of a hundred years ago and wonders where
Corydon is and what it is like. Even the cultivated nonclassicist
pronounces it Corydon and the railway conductor calls it Croydon.
Where William Henry Harrison and John Tipton and Isaac Blackford and
many a comrade and friend of Washington used to gather and James Monroe
and Andrew Jackson received a royal hospitality, and while men were
still talking of Napoleon, Indiana's tiny capital rested in village
simplicity among sheltering elms and nestling hills.
To be great it is not necessary to be big. Richard Harding Davis was
bigger than Robert Louig Stevenson, and Shafter outweighed Napoleon. In
the days when American civilization was in the making, more leaders
gravitated toward Springfield and Richmond than ever enjoyed the
hospitality of Kansas City or Chicago. In Corydon the capital there
were only a score who had reached the age of forty five.
In the decade of its primacy—from 1813 to 1824—the group who came there
year after year to lay the foundations for a commonwealth were pioneers
of a distinctive type. They were not unlettered men to whom learning
had been denied, nor brawlers escaping the restraints of civilization,
nor as in the Kentucky of 1800 or the Arizona of 1900, were they rebels
against stable government who believed in a liquid and dilute
constitution. On the contrary, many of them were missionaries of
education and of political idealism who had come to Indiana to create a
commonwealth with all the stability which the years of revolution and
of constitutional reaction had made them covet so earnestly. At the
same time they hoped to realize more completely than in the elder east
the democracy of which Jefferson was the forerunner and Jackson the
apostle. To them equality under a stable government was a passion and
the exclusion of human slavery a religion.
The Corydon of a hundred years ago was a protest against commercialism.
It had no metropolitan ambitions like Madison. It was not cosmopolitan
like Vincennes. It had no river trade, no Indian trade, no land
speculators. It was an easy-going, old-fashioned Virginia village, with
an ambition to be decent and to cultivate the social spirit. Its older
houses were log cabins, but it had some generous brick colonial
residences, which still stand. Democracy had become a social ideal
everywhere. The man in the big colonial house and the man in the log
cabin neither patronized nor toadied. Labor was not self-assertive as
it is today, for everybody labored. Wealth signified little, for the
only commodity it could buy was land, and the more land a man had the
more labor he had to provide. Where slavery was forbidden and labor
scarce, men coveted large land-holdings about as much as a tired
housewife longs for a big house with many rooms and no servants.
One way to judge the character of a town is by its representative men.
Old Corydon as a social study calls for a broader view, for the student
must consider the things done there and the men who did them; those
whose labor drew them there from time to time as well as those to whom
Corydon was home. Of the men who lived in Corydon while it was
Indiana's capital, Dennis Pennington, John Tipton, Spier Spencer, and
Isaac Blackford were probably the leaders, and of those whose duties
brought them there often and kept them there, mention may be made of
Governors William Henry Harrison, Jonathan Jennings, and William
Hendricks, Treasurer Samuel Merrill, Secretary of State Robert A. New,
and Judges Benjamin Parke, James Scott, and John Johnson.
Some of these were men of state-wide fame, but the one who is always
identified in history and tradition with the fate and fortune of
Harrison county is Dennis Pennington; from the time he came with the
family of Daniel Boone and other adventure hunters at the dawn of the
nineteenth century to open the wilderness and wrest it from the
treacherous Indian, until long after his heroic fight to prevent the
removal of the capital to Indianapolis he was Harrison county's trusted
and devoted champion. His portrait done in oil hangs in the
Representatives' Hall in the old capitol to show how far character can
surpass human beauty.
Dennis Pennington's spelling was even more unconventional than
Washington's. He gained his culture by the slow process of social
attrition. He was too busy with the affairs of men to read books. He
held closely and consciously to his heart the ideals of the community
and from the earliest days threw the weight of no inconsiderable
influence into the anti-slavery fight, warning a friend in 1815: "Let
us be on our guard when our convention men are chosen that they be men
opposed to slavery."
Dennis Pennington is remembered because he built the cutest little
State house that was not hatched from an easter egg or set up to play
dolls in; so ugly that men love to look at it. For nearly a generation
he was a legislative leader, representing Corydon and serving as
speaker in the Territorial legislature of 1810, and serving again in
the Constitutional Convention of 1816, in thirteen sessions of the State
Senate and in five sessions of the House. Such scant records as are
preserved of the early legislatures show that "Uncle Dennis" as he was
called gave to the lawmaking in which he bore so conspicuous a part an
unusual degree of horse sense and old-fashioned honesty. As
representative of a river county he can not be blamed for trying to put
off the inevitable eclipse of Corydon, and the removal of the capital,
. for it took longer then to travel from the river civilization to the
semi-barbarism of Indianapolis than it requires now to go from
Indianapolis to Constantinople, and the journey was fraught with graver
dangers than those of floating mines or treacherous submarines. A brave
fight he waged each winter, when the General Assembly took up its
regular program of trying to lower the cost of boarding the legislators
by threatening to adjourn to some cheaper town. No Hansard has
preserved for us Uncle Dennis' blunt eloquence when he made his brave
defense of the Corydon cuisine as against the cheap labor of
Charleston's cooks. The danger was so real that even the Corydon
Indiana Gazette of December 14, 1820, whose motto was "Willing to
praise but not afraid to blame," and which discussed only questions of
great import, came out December 14, 1820, boldly with this editorial
utterance:
The old famous resolution to remove the legislature to Charleston or
some other place where It Is Imagined members can get boarding lower
than Corydon is going the formal rounds of legislation, when it Is
understood that no more is Intended by It than to beat down the prices
of boarding.
This nefarious measure was opposed by Simon Yandes of Marion and
supported by the jurist Joseph Holman, the bloodthirsty fighter John
Tipton, and the financier Samuel Merrill of Switzerland county. The
price of board was fixed by law of the county commissioners at 37 1/2
cents for breakfast or dinner, 25 cents for supper, and lodging 12 1/2
cents, with whiskey at 37 1/2 cents a quart. Whether legislative
agitation brought it down, we shall never know, but the vote of 11 ayes
to 16 noes shows that Corydon's cohorts won the skirmish under Dennis
Pennington's leadership.
Samuel Merrill's account of the village in the Indiana Gazateer for
1849 mentions the stone courthouse built by the Speaker of the House of
Representatives—and a better man the State never had—who it was said
was often called from the hammer and trowel to the chair:
The other buildings there, not exceeding one hundred In number, were
either cabins or of hewn logs. As the town was but little visited
except during the sessions of the legislature, there was then often a
large crowd, while the means of accommodation were not In proportion.
The supplies came from Louisville, twenty-five miles distant; but the
state of the roads and streams was such that no regularity could be
relied on. Whenever anything was wanting the arrival of the wagon from
Louisville was to supply the deficiency. As this explanation was often
given, much merriment was excited one morning by a modest boarder's
being asked, when he had no plate, knife or fork, whether he too was
waiting for the wagon.
Captain Spier Spencer, more than Tipton or Harrison, was Corydon's
military hero. His company of Indian fighters adopted a uniform that
justified their warlike name—Spencer's Yellow Jackets—and made life at
the frontier capital safe, while it brought a certain military glory to
the little town. When real warfare broke out in 1811 and Tecumseh and
the Prophet had to be suppressed, Corydon was proud of its fighting
company as they marched out in their yellow finery to join the regulars
and Kentucky militia under William Henry Harrison's command.
Spencer was territorial sheriff of the county from 1809 to 1811, and at
the same time kept the village tavern, which his wife continued for
many years after his heroic death at Tippecanoe.
On that fatal November morning in 1811 Spencer's Yellow Jackets held
the place of greatest danger through the darkness in which the
Prophet's braves had hoped to surprise them. A survivor of the fight
reported that firing was so constant that the bark was flying from the
trees. He could see the Indians in the half darkness running from point
to point with tomahawk and scalping knife and bow and arrow, trying to
finish their work of destruction before the whites could organize to
resist, while Spencer kept calling incessantly, "Hold the line, men;
hold the line." They did hold the line till daybreak. "As the fight
continued," this pioneer's story goes on, "we got the welcome order to
fix bayonets and charge. We moved on while as the men fell I could hear
Captain Spencer's voice—'Close up, men! Steady! Steady!'" The captain
of the line was wounded in the head, but fought on. He was shot through
both thighs and fell. The men raised him up so he could see to give his
commands and a ball through the body brought his brave life to an end.
Spencer's boy, twelve years old, was brought back from this tragic
scene to civilization by General Harrison and educated by Harrison for
West Point.
General John Tipton was more than a local figure in Indiana's pioneer
life. So long as history was being made at Corydon he belonged there,
and there his descendants still live. He was first sheriff of the
county, having already laid the foundation of his greatness by serving
as justice of the peace.
In 1818 the county board made him custodian of the courthouse and
"accountable for any damage that may be sustained by reason of any
societies of people either religious or otherwise occupying said
courthouse."
Governor Jennings in 1820 appointed him one of the commissioners to
locate the "scite" for the permanent seat of government, and the
Corydon paper records on May 18 that Gen. John Tipton left that place
yesterday for White river, accompanied by his excellency the governor,
to fix the location for the new capital, and notes his return in the
issue of June 25th. Next year he was serving again in the legislature
and was chosen as a commissioner to lay off the town of Indianapolis on
the site he had helped to choose.
In 1820 he announced his candidacy for the legislature in a thoroughly
frank way:
As my term of sheriff is expiring and I will not be eligible for
reelection, I am a candidate for the legislature. As actions speak
louder than words, having resided twelve years among you, nine of which
I have been in office, it is unnecessary to say more than that I have
become a candidate unsolicited.
No Machiavellian pretense about that! In 1823 he was vice-president
with Governor William Hendricks presiding, at the grandest Fourth of
July celebration the world ever witnessed. In 1831 he became United
States Senator by appointment, and in 1832 by election. Besides
locating and directing the survey of Indianapolis he surveyed the
disputed Illinois boundary, and tried his best to locate Chicago in the
Hoosier State. He donated part of the site of Columbus and became a
prominent citizen of Fort Wayne, and Logansport, where he died in 1839.
His fame was won at the Battle of Tippecanoe, and because his comrades
were buried there he bought the Battleground and gave it to the State.
For all his civic activities it was as an Indian fighter that he was
longest remembered.
Tipton's father had been killed by the Indians, and the boy as he grew
up needed no encouragement to become an Indian fighter. He understood
the ways of the savage and met their stealth and treachery and
merciless cruelty with equal stealth and cruelty, but with high
courage. As frontier sheriff he had no trouble in dealing with lawless
characters. He was a scrapper and a rough rider, and he carried a big
stick and used it, though he did not talk about it before and after as
other fighting characters in American history have been known to do. At
the battle of Tipton's Island, a little Indian skirmish near Seymour,
one of his command, a stalwart Hoosier, persisted in talking, despite
Tipton's order of silence. When a reminder of the order proved
ineffective, Tipton took the ranger's gun from him, tied him to a tree
in the tall weeds and left him there an ignominious captive until the
battle was over.
Two years earlier Tipton was with Indiana Territory's first governor at
Tippecanoe. It was one of the last important Indian engagements east of
the Mississippi river, and although there were less than two thousand
engaged, the consequences were vastly significant.
General John Charles Black, whom many of this club have heard and
admired, said:
Had Harrison failed here . . . there would have been no mourning along
the St. Lawrence and no bitter withdrawal to the Rio Grande, but
instead, pushing forward to the very feet of the Alleghenles the
uprising power of Great Britain would have had to choke and destroy the
Infant republic that she hated.
William Henry Harrison was victorious, and by his gallant conduct
captured the imagination of the American people and won and held
through all too short a life the passionate affection of the people of
the West. Eleven heroes of Tippecanoe who won immortality on that
bloody field gave their names to Indiana counties. Of these, Harrison,
Parke, Floyd, Spencer, and Tipton were well known at the little capital
that was to be.
John Tipton was twenty-five years old when the slaughter began, Captain
Spier Spencer of the Yellow Jackets fell, and immediately after, his
first lieutenant, and Ensign Tipton took charge of the company. General
Harrison rode up to the young ensign and asked, "Where is your
captain?" "Dead, sir," was the reply. "Where is your lieutenant?" "He
is dead, too, sir." "Who is in command of this company?" "I am, sir,"
was young Tipton's answer. "Hold your own, my brave boy," Harrison
replied, "and I will send you reinforcements." The young ensign was
elected captain, so his comrade, Isaac Naylor, tells us, "as a reward
for his cool and deliberate heroism displayed during the action."
It was largely Tipton's influence that led to the naming of so many of
Indiana's counties after the heroes of Tippecanoe.
In the federal Senate Tipton was a conservative opponent of the
extension of slavery. As long ago as 1836 he was an earnest advocate of
preparedness and a greatly strengthened army, and when he differed with
the president he declared :
I do not stand here to register the executive will, but look for my
instruction to the boys of the West, those with hard hands, warm
hearts, and strong arms, who fell the forest, hold the plough and repel
foreign invasion.
Oliver H. Smith, who served with Tipton in the Senate of the United
States, describes him as having a round head, a low, wrinkled forehead,
sunken gray eyes, stern countenance and stiff, reddish hair, grown
pompadour; a man of great energy, frank and confiding. "He saw the
question clearly," his colleagues tells us, "and marched directly at it
without any rhetorical flourishes. . . . When his term ended we parted
warm friends; with the last grasp of my hands as he bade me farewell,
his voice choked and the tears ran down his cheeks."
An advertisement in the Corydon newspaper of October 28, 1819, shows
much of the advertiser's personality:
RETURN MY HOOKS AND I WILL LEND AGAIN
The persons who have borrowed of me, Scott's Military Discipline, with
the plates: The Naval History of the U. S.; Duane's Handbooks for
Infantry and Rifle, History of the Late War, Webb's Monitor, Steuben's
Military Guide, and The Trial of Oen. Hull, will confer a favor by
returning them immediately. John Tipton.
It proves that the pioneer sheriff was not lacking in literary and
military taste.
Corydon's best known citizen, at least until her much loved Walter Q.
Gresham became judge and cabinet minister, was Isaac Blackford. In
1786, the same year that John Tipton was born in the backwoods of
Sevier county, Tennessee, Isaac Blackford was born at Bound Brook, New
Jersey. He entered Princeton, where he made a brilliant record in Latin
and Greek, excelled in mathematics, and graduated in 1806. He studied
law and began the practice in Morristown, New Jersey, but responded to
the call of the wild and in 1811 floated down the Allegheny and the
Ohio on a flatboat to Lawrenceburg. In 1812 he was at Brookville,
(qualifying there for greatness as all early Hoosiers did). In 1813 he
was clerk and recorder at Salem, and in 1816 he was at Vincennes, where
next year he was elected to the legislature and sent to Corydon, to
receive almost immediately from Governor Jennings his appointment as
judge of the supreme court. His judicial duties identified him with the
life of Corydon until 1825, when the removal to Indianapolis took
place. He held his place on the supreme bench by repeated appointments
from 1817 until 1851, when the new constitution, to Indiana's shame,
made the supreme bench elective and made it possible to turn the
control of that court over to the politicians.
Blackford was defeated for governor in 1825, and the same year he
failed by a single vote of an election to the United States Senate. It
was as a judge and a reporter of supreme court decisions that he became
famous, and as an interpreter of the Common Law Blackford's Reports of
what were largely Isaac Blackford's decisions introduced him to the
courts of America and England and won for him a position of the highest
authority. In his Corydon days his recognized scholarship, his courtesy
and his high character, won for him the respect of a community that had
free and friendly ways and yet for a frontier settlement had more than
its share of dignity and self-respect. The loneliness of Judge
Blackford's widowed life found its compensation in the companionship of
books and the contact his scholarship brought him with the scholarly
men of an exceptionally intelligent frontier community.
The early settlement of Indiana owed much to Daniel Boone, the woodsman
and trapper and Indian fighter who in his frequent journeys over the
Wilderness Trail had led the caravans of emigrants out of Virginia and
Pennsylvania and over the Cumberland mountains into the heart of
Kentucky. But his explorations and long hunting journeys were not
confined to Kentucky, for the wild life north of the Ohio river soon
called him into Indiana, and before 1800 he was pitching his hunting
camp among the hills of Harrison county. The earliest of those who came
to live in that picturesque county were Dennis Pennington and Squire
Boone, brother of Daniel Boone. Squire Boone was a famous hunter, the
tales of whose strange adventures with bears and with Indians are still
told about the old county seat at Corydon.
This region is historic ground, on the edge of the battleground which
divided the half-civilized Indians of the south from the savages of the
north. It was subject to incursions from these irreconcilable enemies.
It was a land of game; bear, deer, and turkeys were abundant.
Notwithstanding the danger of the situation, this hunting ground soon
attracted the attention of the Boones and other Kentucky pioneers.
Every excursion was a scouting expedition, every trail a war path. On
one of their hunting expeditions Squire Boone, in passing along the
eastern bluff of Buck creek, noticed a small opening in the rocks,
partially hidden by bushes. It appeared to be a good hiding place for
large game. A few miles further on he was attacked by Indians. His only
chance was to hide. He remembered the cave he had just discovered, and
reached it when his pursuers were at his very heels. Throwing himself
into the cave he heard the Indians pass over his head. The little
cavern had saved his life. To him it was a sanctuary. He chose it as
his place of burial, a natural sepulcher.
A rough stone in the hillside closes the entrance to Boone's grave.
About seven feet within is a little room where a recent search
disclosed the broken coffin and the exposed bones of Squire Boone, a
man of stalwart frame and of great strength.
Squire Boone spent his latter days near this cave. A great spring
poured its torrent from the cave down the hillside, having a fall of
eighteen feet. Here he built a mill of stone almost wholly with his own
hands. On many of the blocks he carved quaint figures and emblems. A
trailing vine in full leaf and laden with fruit was cut upon the
lintels, and figures of deer, fishes, a horse, a cow, a lion, a human
face, and stars, and many texts from the Bible, were sketched upon the
stone in different parts of the building. Over the doorway was this
inscription, "The traveler's rest. Consecrated by Squire Boone, 1809."
Over another door is the following: "I sit and sing my soul's
salvation, and pledge the God of my creation."
The settlement of Harrison county proceeded rapidly. Among the first to
enter land in the county was Governor Harrison himself, who in 1804
bought from the government the land where Corydon stands and held it
for a short time. Three years later he took up other land in the same
region and built a water mill and set out a large orchard, some of
whose trees were still standing a century later.
There were 640 acres of this Harrison farm, and the place was so much
esteemed that in 1818 when the Governor had to sell it and go back to
Ohio it brought him $10,000. Every part of Harrison's Valley recalls
its first owner, one plot being known as the Governor's Field, another
the General's Meadow. The valley is almost an amphitheater, walled by
limestone hills. In the middle is the Harrison spring, in a basin
rimmed with a natural stone wall two feet high, filled with pure, clear
water hundreds of feet deep and flowing in a strong stream that widens
in time of flood to a torrent at the spring and flows out in a stream
one hundred feet wide and ten feet deep. From the spring to Blue river,
a few hundred yards distant, there is a fall of eight feet, and the
power is used to run a mill. And so the Governor erected a mill here
and employed himself between campaigns as a farmer and miller. General
Harrison is said to have received the grain with his own hands and
carried it to the hopper. Only a few shrubs and a part of the orchard
he planted so carefully survive to mark the Harrison home.
William Henry Harrison was twenty-seven years old when he began his
administration at Vincennes. His duties and his personal interest
brought him often to Harrison county. On one of these journeys as he
passed through the new settlement that was to be the seat of government
he was asked to give a name to the village. It was at Edward Smith's
cabin, where the county fair grounds now are. The young governor, whose
taste for music and verse was of the somber sentimental sort which
Abraham Lincoln so greatly admired, had asked, as usual, that Jennie
Smith, his host's pretty daughter, might sing his favorite song, "The
Pastoral Elegy."
Modern experts have tried in vain to wring music out of the song. The
singer must have been singularly attractive or the young governor would
not have stood for it. It seems that one Corydon had recently deceased
and his fiancée, Caroline, with the gracious co-operation of a
nightingale, was inflicting her grief on a melancholy world:
"O, Corydon! hear the sad cries
Of Caroline plaintive and slow;
O Spirit look down from the skies
And pity the mourner below."
Caroline was plaintive, all right, and she may have been slow, but
Corydon's name is linked forever with that of our first State capital.
And the attractive name the village received may be credited to
Governor Henry Harrison's bad taste in music.
The chief function of the village newspaper a hundred years ago was to
print the news from abroad, necessarily from a month to three months
after the fact, and to keep the readers of Indiana informed as to the
doings at Washington. In a village of 300 inhabitants, more than
two-thirds of whom were under 26 years old, local news such as we
search the daily press for would have been absurd. Everybody of course
knew everybody else's doings. So one finds few such items in the
Corydon files of that early day. And yet the columns of the Corydon
Indiana Gazette reveal the social life of the village in a way its
editor and its readers a century ago did not dream of. Even the
advertisements give us glimpses of the way society lived.
John Martin will give liberal prices for bear skins, grey fox, red for,
mink, muskrat, otter, raccoon, rabbit. Also beeswax.
Here was an innocent fur trader, perhaps, the sort we read about in
histories and dime novels. And yet there were strange doings at Mr.
Martin's place if Senex is to be believed, especially during the
legislative sessions, for we find this savage communication in the
issue for New Year's Day 1823:
Messrs. Editobs-:
Suffer me through your paper to recommend Mr. Martin to break up the
rendezvouse at his house, otherwise he will be complained of at the
uext Circuit Court for the County of Harrison. Also members of the
Oeneral Assembly who are in the practice of resorting thither are
admonished to desist or their names and their conduct will be exposed
to their constituents. The makers of laws should not be lawbreakers.
Senex.
There is a modern touch about this:
Notice
Oct. 9, 1819.
The subscriber wishes the person who borrowed his Great Coat (without
leave) to return it Immediately as he Is known and It will prevent
further expense. D- B- Foans.
Here is an advertisement inserted in the leading newspaper west of
Ohio, between whose lines may be read a story of separation and
possible unhappiness growing out of the impending failure of the
Rappite experiment at Harmonic:
INFORMATION
WANTED
Stephen Bach, who lately came from Germany, wishes to know where his
brother-iii-luw, John Jonas, now resides. They (Bach and Jonas) came to
America about the same time, since which Bach has received one letter
from snid Jonas, directed to Harmonie, Indiana. Any person who may be
able to give any information respecting Mr. Jonas at this time will
confer a particular favor by communicating it to the Rev. George
Pfrlmmer. near Corydon, Indiana.
The German paper at Lancaster, Ohio, will please Insert the above once
or twice and the favor will be reciprocated when occasion requires.
And this is an advertisement to show that domestic science and
vocational training were a part of our educational system almost a
hundred years before our progressive educators of the twentieth century
discovered "the new education."
Education
J. Tarlton, Milliner, (from Baltimore) Intends opening a school In
Corydon on the 1st day of April next for the
Education Of Young Ladies '
and pledges a careful attendance to the Instruction and moral conduct
of Mh-ii as may be committed to her charge.
Price :
For Reading, Writing and plain sewing, $2 per quarter; Embroidery, $4
per quarter: Boarding, $1.25 per week, exclusive of washing; Country
produce will be taken in payment for boarding at the market prices.
And here is another:
Ladies
School
Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Baker will teach young ladles committed to their
care the following branches of education, viz: Reading, Writing.
Arithmetic, Grammer, Logic, Rhetoric, Geography. Composition. Also
Plain sewing, sampler and cotton work.
The social instinct in Corydon while not exhausted in entertaining the
legislative multitudes every winter found its outlet in the main in
simple things. Thus the Gazette announces:
Singing is appointed in the Senate Room on next Friday the llth of June
(1819) nt 0 o'clock p. ni. and aingera are invited and requested to
attend.
The following November the spirit of music was revived by this notice:
(Nov. 27, 1819.) The young ladies and gentlemen of Oorydon are
requested to meet in the Senate Chamber on Thursday evening next at
early candle light for the purpose of singing and forming a singing
school.
Next to the singing school as a means of uplift was the debating
society, whose transactions are reported all too seldom in the public
press. Two of these accounts were all I was able to discover. These
meetings were in June, 1820, and were published as paid advertisements:
Corydon
Debating Society
(June 15, 1820)
The following question will be discussed by this society on tomorrow
evening commencing at half past 6 In the Representatives' Hall:
Which is most admired, Virtue or Beauty
The ladles and gentlemen of the place are respectfully Invited to
attend. R. McCuinouoll, Sec'v.
Cobydon Debating Society
(June 22, 1820)
The following question will be discussed by this society on tomorrow
evening commencing at half past 6 In the Representatives' Hall: In
which does Virtue shine most brilliant, the Male or Female?
U. McCULLOUGH, Rec'y.
How the "Females" came out is impossible to tell, for they could not
afford to pay to advertise the result and the press was mercenary. But
the sex was enormously self-conscious in those days. They did not try
to force their propaganda upon any historical pageants as they are
doing nowadays, but they were bent on treating women as a distinct
order of creation. Witness this advertisement of the proposed
Connersville publication:
(9-10-23) Prospectus of a New Periodical Work to be published at
Oonnersvllle, Indiana, entitled Western Ladies' Casket, and Edited by a
Female. "Improve, excel, surmount, subdue your fate."
The entire tendency of this publication will be to desseminnte useful
knowledge and to excite a taste for mental improvement, particularly
among the female part of the community. ... As this perhaps, is the
first publication attempted to be published by a female In the western
country a hojw is entertained that It will not be deficient in merit or
short In duration for want of a liberal support. $1.00 a year.
A later issue contained a poem on "Female Literature."
Brains were not the only feminine equipment that came in for
improvement, for a dispatch from Liverpool is published in the issue of
August 21, 1819, announcing the invention of a velocipede for females.
Those of us who have provided funds for foreign missions are but paying
back for the gifts our seaboard patrons made to convert the heathen in
Indiana a hundred years ago. Religious services in old Corydon were in
the main a community affair, unimpaired in their efficiency by any
sectarian influences. The Corydon paper during the ten years when the
seat of government was located there mentions no local sectarian
services.
In January, 1819, this announcement appears as the leader on the
editorial page:
The Reverend Mr. Rogers, missionary to the State of Indiana, will
preach tonight at candle-light and tomorrow at 12 m. at the courthouse.
And this (March 10, 1824) :
Adam Payne, a traveling preacher from Kentucky, will preach In the
courthouse tonight at candle light
The news columns contained the story of religious revivals in New York
and New England and in time Corydon came in for its share of the
spiritual interest. I quote:
It will be peculiarly grateful to the lovers of Christianity to hear of
the revival of religion which has taken place in this town. A few weeks
ago our streets exhibited little else than Intemperance and profanity;
but now so far has the scene changed that morality seems to predominate
iu every quarter through the day and at night the sound of prayer,
prnlse and the shouts of new-born souls cheer the evening shades.
Henry P. Coburn was clerk of the supreme court. His name is a familiar
one in Indianapolis. He was the superintendent of the community Sunday
school which kept up the atmosphere of righteousness in the Senate
Chamber when the General Assembly was not in session.
Sunday
School
(June 21, 1821)
The advantages of this Institution are clearly manifest by the progress
the scholars make in learning. Two boys of Mr. James Klrkpatrick
distinguished themselves on last Sunday by the number of verses they
rehearsed by memory, which they committed the week previous. James, who
is eight years old, rehearsed 118 verses; and Moses, who is seven years
old, rehearsed 101 verses.
Here is the only published fiscal statement of the Corydon Sunday
School Society:
$6.50 in paper, $2.50 in specie, $2.12} In branch of Indiana Bank, 10
of McDonald's Spelling Books, 5 Webster's Spelling Books, 7
Philadelphia Primer, 5 of New England Primer.
J. Jennings and Benj. Adams, Committee.
J. Jennings was governor of Indiana and Benjamin Adams was a local
statesman whose descendants are among the best people of Corydon to
this day.
Intemperance was not as disreputable then as it has come to be. At
election time—and they held general elections every summer while the
legislature elected State officers every winter—there was some drinking
as we note from this editorial of August 16, 1821:
We congratulate the citizens of Harrison county that the late election
has been conducted more decently than the election of last year.
Nevertheless there is much room yet to mend. We were mortified to hear
some severe censure on the Immoderate use of whiskey coming from the
mouths of some respectable strangers who were visitants to our town and
attentive observers of the passing scenes of the day. Surely candidates
for office would not wish to have it understood that their popularity
rests upon the strength of whiskey, nor would the voters succumb to the
pitiful idea that they would barter their liberty for a dram. Then
there can be no good reason that the day of election should exhibit
scenes of intoxication grating to the feelings of every good man. The
laws of the state as well as those of morality are against the practice
and if nothing else will effwt a reformation the civil authority ought
to take cognizance thereof.
The Fourth of July was observed as a community affair; sometimes
fittingly and sometimes not, but always by the entire populace. J.
Tarlton, who kept one of the taverns and was an unsuccessful candidate
for office, advertised
(June 29, 1821):
I will prepare a Dinner and furnish plenty of Domestic Liquors at my
bouse In Corydou on the 4th of July, where gentlemen are invited to
attend. Price $1 per head. J. Tablton.
A representative Independence Day program is preserved in full:
Fourth of July. At daylight in the morning the day was announced by a
discharge of the 6 pounder. Governor Hendrlcks was selected President
and John Tipton Vice-President of the day. A_t 11 o'clock notice of the
meeting was uuiiounced by a second gun at the Court House, when the
Declaration of Independence was read by H. H. Moore, which was followed
by an address appropriate to the occasion by Benjamin Hurst lu presence
of a large concourse of citizens. Frorrt thence the procession, formed
agreeably to the previous arrangements, proceeded to Llttell's Spring,
where the company partook of a dinner prepared by Thomas Highfill under
a bower erected for the purpose. After the cloth was removed a number
of patriotic toasts were drank, accompanied with platoons of musketry
and loud huzzas. From the spring the company returned in the same order
of procession to town, where they were dismissed In good order and
harmony about 5 o'clock p. m.
Toasts
1st The day—May it never be forgotten as long as liberty warms the
American bosom.
2nd. The United States. The home of happiness, the refuge of the
oppressed—may their fraternal affection be entwined by the cord of
patriotism.
3rd. Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, etc.
4th. Army.
6th. Navy.
6th. Porter's Squadron, The Scourge of Pirates.
7th. South American Republics.
8th. Seminaries of Learning—may the genius of liberty revolve nround
them.
9th. Domestic Manufactories—the hum of the wheel, the rattling of the
Loom, and the gingllng Cash are far more musical than the rustling of
Silks with an empty purse.
10th. Internal Improvements.
llth. Commerce and Agriculture of the West.
12th. State of Indiana—may It discern with wisdom and with energy
pursue the public good.
13th. The American fair—While their smiles are destined to grace and
ornament virtue the sons of America will not be the votaries of vice.
They were eloquent in those days as the following brief paragraph from
an oration by John N. Dunbar delivered in the old capitol will prove:
The sad and helpless orphan left unfriended and alone in the wild and
merciless ocean of life, without one friend to guide, one smile to
cheer him. struggling against the threatening wave that rises to
engulph him, looks with an aching eye and desolate heart upon the
benighted course his hard untoward destiny points out. There Is no
glimmering of Joy for him. Futurity holds out to him no loved, no
cherished expectation; and retrospection but serves to show him the
withered fragments of the bliss his youthful nature painted. He has no
wish but death.
The biggest day in all the village history was the one that brought to
little Corydon James Monroe, President of the United States, and Major
General Andrew Jackson, America's popular idol. They were met by the
citizens, escorted into town, where they were welcomed by the most
cordial feelings. At four o'clock the President, General Jackson and
suit, dined with the governor. The invitation to a public dinner to be
given by the citizens was declined.
Enjoyable as the Fourth of July and presidential parties must have
been, another function took place at Corydon that would have interested
me more. Here is the announcement:
Natural Curiosities will be exhibited at Corydon on the 3rd and 4th
»f December; the
African Lion, Full Grown,
The African Leopard,
The Cougar From Brazil,
The Shetland Pont, With Its Rider,
The) Ichnetjmen And Several Other Animals.
Admission 25 cts. Children under 12 years of age half price. Good music
on the ancient Jewish Cymbal and other instruments. Hours of Exhibition
10 a. m. until 5 p. m. (November 28, 1823.)
Sensational events sometimes occurred. I read from the issue of March
27, 1819:
Lamentable
Accident
On Saturday last in the vicinity of this place a woman of colour was
killed by a yearling calf. The animal became impatient for its
accustomed food and thrust his horn into her body. She expired in ten
minutes. Let this be u caution to the unwary. She has left a husband
and numerous family of children, to whose evident distress aud
unfeigned sorrow should cause to blush the proud intelligence who
boasts of his exclusive possession of those refined feelings which
distinguish and add dignity to man.
A strong sense of duty to a bound boy is proved by the following
display advertisement. I should say its publisher must have been a
Puritan if it were not for his sense of humor:
One
Cent Reward
Ran away from the subscriber September 1819, John Napper, who was bound
to me to learn the tanning business. He is about 16 years of age, 5' 8
or 9* high, black hair, blue eyes. The above reward will be given If
delivered to me In Spencer county, Indiana, but no thanks.
by
John Greathouse.
There was actual slavery in Corydon despite the intense anti-slavery
feeling of Governor Jennings and Dennis Pennington and the other social
and political leaders of the community. Thus in 1812 the county records
show that Amy, a woman of color, of full age, indentured herself to the
services of Isaiah Boone and his family and heirs for seventyfive years
in return for his agreement to furnish her with clothing and "suitable
diet." Isaac Blackford and his associates on the supreme court early
declared slavery in Indiana to be unconstitutional. (See volume 1 of
Blackford's Reports.) But long after negro apprenticeships ceased to
be, there were negro-hunts in Harrison county, and the greed of slave
owners was stimulating and strengthening the abolition spirit north of
the Ohio.
We can imagine the subtle effect of this little paragraph published
January 23, 1819:
We are informed that Susan, a woman of color, who was kidnapped some
months ago, has returned into the neighborhood of this place. She made
her escape from the boat descending the Ohio somewhere about the mouth
of the Tennessee river. It is expected she will have her trial for her
freedom at the next term of the court If she is not again kidnapped
before that time.
I have told nothing of Corydon's political history—of her
constitutional convention that met beneath her splendid elm a hundred
years ago next month, or of her part in the Civil War, when John
Morgan's raiders fought a bloody skirmish in her streets, for that
would be history, and this paper is meant only as a brief social study.
Despite the temptation to gossip and expand, I have had to omit most of
the fascinating detail of her social life, retaining only enough to
help us project our imagination into the capital of Indiana as it was a
hundred years ago and realize for ourselves how men lived then.
It was but a village. Its biggest men would be counted young to cope
with such responsibilities in our modern day. They were young, but they
possessed scholarship and character. Harrison, Jennings, Blackford,
New, Merrill, and Benjamin Parke were classical students—several of
them teachers by profession and by choice, readers and gatherers of the
best books. And Pennington and Spencer and Tipton were men of valor and
character. These pioneer patriots gave of their own character to the
State whose foundation they laid. They were young for such genuine
achievement. In 1816 Jennings was 32, Hendricks 33, Tipton 30,
Blackford 30, Ratliff Boon 35, Samuel Merrill 24.
It will be recalled of the largest and wickedest city of all time that
ten righteous men were deemed enough for its salvation. The character
of a community for righteousness and for lesser things, scholarship and
self-respect and ability to achieve is determined by a few men whose
leadership it recognizes. Corydon was righteous, for its men were of
the saving sort. And so of Indiana. To the purity and strength of its
pioneers as well as that of the pioneers of its later capital,
Indianapolis, is due the fact that Indiana has been able to prove that
righteousness exalteth a people.
Reminiscences
of the Civil War; Escape From Fort Tyler Prison*
By Horace B. Little, Danville, Ind.
If I remember correctly, it was on the second day of April, 1864. We
(43rd Ind.) with the 77th Ohio and 36th Iowa were detailed to escort a
wagon train back to Little Rock after supplies. This train consisted of
350 to 400 wagons, which reached out over two miles. Each wagon was
pulled by from four to six mules. Our regiment was greatly scattered
out in acting as a guard for the train. The first thing we knew the
rebels were upon us. General Bank's army had been defeated by them and
then their main force came back on us. We were not a very large army
and it was scattered out over two miles. But we held them from early
morning until about noon, when we were surrounded by very superior
forces and a great many of us were made prisoners. A large part of our
regiment were wounded or killed.
Our captors marched us from Camden, near Mark's Hill, to Camp Ft.
Tyler, Texas—Smith county.
We were young, and had no maps. We did not know just where we were. You
heard me say Smith county, Texas, but that does not give you any idea
of what portion of the state it is in. That was the condition we were
in.
The prison was a stockade with high walls, built of long timbers, with
stations where guards with guns could look over and keep an eye on us.
We found some five or six thousand prisoners already confined there
when we arrived. There was no shelter and only two trees within the
enclosure.
Mr. Little enlisted from Rockvllle in Co. K, of the 43 Ind. Vol. for
the three-year service. His regiment was part of the command of General
Steele, who was seeking to make a junction with Gen. Banks, who had set
out on an expedition from New Orleans. Shreveport was the objective of
both wings. Mr. Little was with the so-called Arkansas wing, which was
moving south from Little Rock to Join with Banks. The army had reached
Camden, when the events began that are the basis of Mr. Little's story.
This story appeared substantially as here given In the Danville
Gazette, Dec. 7. 1916.
We were permitted to roam around in the enclosure during the day, but
at night each man had a certain spot—just enough to lie on—where he was
expected to stay and sleep at night. During the day, after roll call,
we mingled with the other prisoners and got acquainted and talked over
the situation. There were boys there from all over the United States.
For food we had corn meal, issued to us dry. Once or twice a week we
were given a little meat. When we got tired of eating our corn meal dry
we would mix it with a little water, place the cake on a board and prop
it up before a fire to bake. There were but few camp kettles and we had
to take turns in using them. These were the only things we had to eat
while we were there. We had nothing to do except look for a way to
escape, if inclined that way. There seemed no way to get out; yet some
did, and I never gave up hope of getting away. The ground was so level
that digging under the stockade did not offer a good chance, as the
distance necessary to dig would have been too great. Besides the
soldiers were camped all about the stockade. The stockade had two
gates—one on the south and one on the west. These were used by the
guards and by the prisoners who went after fire-wood under guard. They
went in bodies of from 50 to 100 after fire-wood, and once in a while
some of the boys succeeded in concealing themselves and making their
escape that way.
A few days after I arrived at the stockade I began to plan some way of
escape. I devised a number of plans, but could never form one which
would seem to lead to success. When run down to the extreme, in my
mind, nearly every one would fail. One had to consider the guards
watching us and the pickets and the camp surrounding us.
Frequently wagons would be brought within the stockade to haul out the
trash. One of my thoughts was to get a man to cover me over with trash
and haul me out that way. If I could bribe him to keep still long
enough I felt I might get safely away. But others were also watching
that means of escape and I never had the opportunity. Some actually got
out of the stockade that way, but every one of them but one was
captured and returned during the three months I was confined there.
Finally I asked some of the recaptured men how it was that they did not
succeed after getting outside the stockade. They all said it was on
account of having to go to farm houses to get something to eat. They
became victims of their appetites. There were no surplus provisions
within the stockade and a man could not provide himself with food. When
hunger drove him to a farm house he was reported and the bloodhounds
were put on his trail.
I resolved that if ever I succeeded in getting outside I would not be
caught that way. It was three or four hundred miles to our lines, but I
believed I could manage without going to a house for food. The lesson
learned by questioning the returned prisoners saved me when I did
escape.
On the west side of the stockade was a clapboard shed which was used
for a hospital. It was not much of a hospital as they were known in the
north, but it served that purpose. Prisoners who became so ill that
there was no danger of them trying to escape were removed from the
stockade to this hospital. Union soldiers, also prisoners, were
detailed to nurse them. They were made trusties and were allowed to
come and go in the stockade to examine the sick. These were reported to
the surgeon in charge and by his permission and that of the post
commander they were placed on a stretcher and removed to the hospital.
A friend of mine by the name of Jake Thomas, who enlisted from Parke
county, was one of the nurses. He had a pass and could come into the
enclosure to look after the sick. He had two assistants who always came
in with him. These two men carried the stretchers. Mr. Thomas
frequently came around and talked to me. One day I asked him how he got
in and out. He told me he had a pass. I had thought it likely that he
did have one. I asked him if he would let me see it and he finally
consented. After I had read it I asked if he would let me use it for a
little while. He thought it was too risky, but I urged so strongly, and
promised to return it safely, that he finally gave in. I had previously
learned that a man from a New York regiment had pen and ink and I
intended to have him make me an exact copy of the pass. He was a good
penman and when I made my request he agreed to try. I told him to dot
the "i's" and cross the "t's" just like he found them on the copy. He
was a good scribe and he succeeded in making an almost exact copy. I
then returned the pass to Mr. Thomas and jokingly told him I was coming
out to take dinner with him soon. He warned me never to attempt it.
Now the question was how to use my pass. The deadline prevented me from
going closer than ten feet to the gate. The guard had orders to shoot
every one who came within ten feet of the stockade walls. The guards
had plank walks up near the top of the stockade where they could walk
around and watch us inside. It was impossible for me to use the pass
without crossing this dead-line. Mr. Thomas repeatedly warned me never
to attempt that, but I told him that winter was coming on and that I
would about as soon run the risk of getting shot in that way as to
remain in the stockade without food or shelter.
Then I set about developing my plans. Mr. Thomas had two assistants,
and it was up to me to get two men to go with me on the venture. I went
to a comrade and told him what I had in mind, and showed him my forged
pass. He would not join me and warned me against attempting it. Then I
went to the meanest oneriest man in our company—James Steele. He
immediately said he would tackle it. I knew he would because he was no
coward. He was not a genial companion, however, and if there was
anything around to drink there was no putting up with him. But I knew
he could not get anything to drink around there. I next went to a young
fellow by the name of Neavins, who lived southeast of Rockville. (I
have since learned that he was a relative of Harvey Neavins of
Danville.) He was also a member of my company. He was not
educated—could not read nor write—not swim. He also consented to go, as
I had anticipated, because he was daring.
Up to that time I had no definite plan in view, and had fixed no date
for the attempt. There was one thing I did want, though, in carrying
out my plans. There was one guard whom I wanted at the gate when I
presented my pass. I don't know why I wanted him to be there, because I
had never said a word to him and could only see him from a long
distance off.
Mr. Thomas came in one Saturday afternoon and we talked about other
things. Just before he went away I told him I was coming out to take
dinner with him the next day— told him this in a joking way. He again
warned me not to attempt it, but my mind was made up.
The next day came and I told some of the comrades what was in the wind
and what I wanted them to do to hide the escape until I could be out
long enough to escape the bloodhounds. We had to answer roll call every
morning. If 1 did not respond to my name the bloodhounds would soon be
on my trail. It was customary every morning to line the prisoners up in
companies and call the roll. It happened there were many sick and if
one failed to respond to his name it furnished an excuse. I arranged
that I was the one to be missing at roll call the next morning and was
to be reported sick. The second day some one was to respond to my name
and one of the other boys would be missing. It was so arranged that
neither of the three was to be reported missing two days handrunning.
This deception was kept up for eight days, and we by that time had got
beyond danger from the bloodhounds—but that is getting ahead of the
story. In explanation, however, once every month all the prisoners were
lined up for general muster and roll call. Every man had to be in
place, or if sick, accounted for. This came on the eighth day after we
made our departure. The guards asked the boys where the missing men
were. They said:
"When we got up this morning they were gone."
They got out the bloodhounds and tried to trail us, but the hounds came
back.
About one or two o'clock—we had no time-piece—Sunday afternoon I
decided to start for the gate. Some of the boys knew we were going.
They watched us, but kept back in the crowd so they would not be
noticed. The guards were always watching for anything of that kind
which might indicate movements to escape.
We started in single file for the gate, I holding the pass in my hand.
The guard I wanted to be on the job was there. Without question he took
the pass and read it.
The pass, which was on a piece of paper about the size of my four
fingers, read: "Please permit Mr. Thomas and two assistants in and out
as nurses." The writing covered about all of the paper and the surgeon
barely had room to sign at the bottom and the post commander had
countersigned it on the back.
When the guard had read the pass he said: "You will have to have that
countersigned by the post commander before you can get in and out of
here."
Then I knew he had never seen Mr. Thomas' pass. My heart was right up
in my throat and I could hear it pound. How to speak was more than I
could tell. I did not want him to suspicion anything was wrong and was
afraid my voice would betray me, but I had to answer. I blurted out:
"It is countersigned on the back, if you will just turn it over and
read."
That threw him off his guard and he folded it up, returned it and
allowed us to pass out.
We found ourselves in a worse shape than ever. Soldiers were all around
us; those who were on guard and those who were not. In addition there
were many citizens. Why they did not catch on has always been a mystery
to me. We were ragged and dirty and were not carrying a stretcher. But
the guard let us out and we resolved to put on a bold front.
We had to pass right by the post commanders' headquarters. He was
sitting by a log cabin surrounded by soldiers. It was the only way we
could get out. We had to be bold to avoid suspicion. We made a polite
bow to the commander, which he answered, and we went on. We always
supposed that everyone took it for granted we would not have been there
unless permission had been granted.
We went up to the hospital where Mr. Thomas was and he was very much
surprised to see us. He did not know what to do with us at first, as he
was not willing to expose himself to the danger that would come to him
and us if detected. In the meantime I had put the pass in my mouth and
chewed it up. I did not want to have it about me if recaptured.
As soon as he had recovered from his surprise, Mr. Thomas called
attention to some old haversacks hanging near the shed hospital, and to
disarm suspicion he told us to get those haversacks and go with him to
gather some grapes. It was then the 14th day of August and grapes were
just beginning to get ripe.
He led us down into the woods until we came to a hollow. Stopping by a
brushpile he told us to stay there until dark and he would return with
food if he could. He would not promise for sure. He said he would give
a certain whistle. We crawled under the brushpile and after dark we
heard his whistle. We crawled out and he gave us some cornbread. We
relished it very much.
He then bade us farewell. It was dangerous for him to go with us for he
would have been shot if recaptured. He was very much afraid for us. He
never thought we could get through the pickets, which were all about
the woods. After bidding him farewell we started north, crawling on our
hands and knees. We had some trouble deciding which way to go when we
got out. Mr. Steele wanted to go south, but for some reason I wanted to
go northeast. I did not know why, but something seemed to tell me that
safety lay halfway between east and the north star. We decided to leave
it to Mr. Thomas and he said to go towards the north star.
I do not know how many miles we crawled on our hands and knees. It was
very tiresome. Finally we decided we were beyond the picket lines and
had not been discovered. Then we arose to our feet and made fast tracks
to get as far away from the stockade as possible and find a hiding
place before daylight. We went through brush and wood. When it began to
get daylight we began to hunt a hiding place. Fortunately we happened
to find a tree overgrown with green vines which hung down and spread
out over the ground. The vine had thorns on it. The tree resembled our
umbrella tree, only it was larger. The vine was very thick. We parted
these vines and crawled in around the trunk of the tree to rest after
our first night's march towards home. We could see out but no one could
see inside and we felt pretty safe if the dogs did not come. The
bloodhounds were thick down there, everybody having some, but we
resolved to keep out of their way if possible. We lay there during the
day with nothing to eat.
While we were marching the first night out we came to a road which was
going our direction. It was a great temptation to take it, as we could
make double the speed on it that we could across the country. We
finally concluded we would follow the road so long as it went our
direction. We had not gone far until we heard some one in front of us.
We could not tell whether or not we had been discovered, but knew it
was useless to run from the road because the motion would be heard and
then the dogs would come. We held a hurried consultation and decided to
drop down at the side of the road and take our chances. The approaching
men were a party of soldiers returning to camp. They walked past us
without discovering our presence. We then got up and went on but
resolved to avoid roads after that. The next night we stayed entirely
in the woods.
Before we had left the stockade we had vowed to each other that we
would starve before we went to a house to get anything to eat. This
forced us to live on corn. Corn was then just a little past the
roasting ear stage. We could break off the grains and eat as we walked
along. That was fifty years ago, however, and corn fields were not as
plentiful as they are now, and there were days at a time when we could
find no corn. The next thing we did was to dig up the moist roots of
certain trees and get the juicy bark. That was our food for days.
Later in our travels we saw a squirrel run up a tree while we were
hiding out one day. The squirrel ran into a hole but left his tail
hanging out. One of the boys was a good climber and after trying to
club the squirrel out he clambered up and killed it. The next thing was
to decide what to do with it. We had no fire and no way to cook. I
happened to have an old knife—I have it yet at home in a trunk— which
was spared to me in this manner: When first captured we had good
oil-cloth haversacks, while the rebels had only cheap cloth ones. They
forced us to trade with them. The man who made me change with him had
an old piece of dirty fat meat in his haversack. It was so dirty no one
would touch it to take it out. I had taken this piece of meat and made
a hole in it, in which I had placed my knife, a little money and some
trinkets. I then put dirt over the hole and put the meat back in my
haversack. Whenever I was searched the chunk of fat meat was left alone
because it was so dirty, but it was the same as a bank to me.
I whittled some sticks with this knife and we took turns about rubbing
them together to make a fire. We worked for a considerable time but
never succeeded in getting a blaze. The sticks would smoke but not
blaze. We had to g4ve this up. We thought maybe we could run across a
bed of coals where some one had camped and we carried the squirrel
along with us. We did not find a place where we could cook it, so we
decided to eat it raw. It was very good and we wished we had another
one.
We found a few grapes, but after we got into Arkansas they were not
ripe enough to eat and we had to live on corn and roots.
To add to our troubles our clothes began to come to pieces. We tore
them more every night. Now we had to fix that, so we peeled bark from
trees and darned the torn places. At the end of 21 days of our journey
our clothes were mostly bark.
We had a great many streams to cross, including Wichita and Red River.
When we came to Red River it was up very high and in places was out of
its banks. Mr. Neavins could not swim and we had to make a raft. The
water was so high we were afraid to attempt crossing at night. In
making our raft we used cypress rails. That wood is very light and the
rails were made very large. We struck the bank of the river near an old
cotton ware-house and we cut the rope off cotton bales to use in
lashing the rails together. We tied each rail separately and then
fastened another layer cross-wise. We first tried the raft with three
rail depth, but it would not hold up our weight. We added a fourth
layer. We got three boards and used two for oars and the third for a
rudder. The water was very high and we were carried quite a distance
down stream, and when we got to the opposite side we could not find a
place to land, having struck a canebrake and slough filled with
underbrush. We spent the night on the water and as it began to grow
light we heard a chicken crowing. We decided that if there was a place
for a chicken around there, there was also a place for a man.
Drawing the raft up into the mouth of a small stream we abandoned it
and set out across the marshy country. Hiding by day and traveling by
night the journey was continued. While trying to get across some
backwater we saw some men wading toward us. Hastily drawing to one side
we stooped in the water until it all but covered our heads. The men
passed without discovering us. They brought us good news. If they could
come in that way we could get out that way. It was a cypress knee swamp
and the traveling was hard. Frequently we came to deep places and we
would have to put Mr. Neavins on a log and push him across. We came to
many lagoons which forced us to go out of our way to get around them.
Some of them looked like small lakes.
When we got out of this backwater we found ourselves in a big corn
field. We sat down and had a feast. I remember I ate three ears of corn
without stopping. Before this we had eaten a few grains at a time as we
walked along.
About this time Mr. Neavins began to fare badly. To begin with, he had
no shoes, having thrown his away before he had been put in the
stockade. When I first proposed to attempt to escape he hesitated
because he had no shoes. I had an extra pair of shoes, having purchased
an extra pair in anticipation of winter, with a little money and some
buttons. The Confederates wanted buttons more than anything else. I
offered Neavins this pair of shoes. He wore No. 6 shoes and I wore No.
7. The shoes had lain out in the rain and sun and had become very hard.
He took the shoes but after we had marched several days they began to
rub his feet and made them sore. He decided he would go barefooted. It
was the worst thing he could have done, as his feet became poisoned and
began to swell up. He said he did not believe he could continue with us.
We had made an agreement before we left the stockade that if any one
found himself unable to travel the others were to go on, and the
abandoned one was not to go near a farm house until the remainder of
the party had been gone long enough that the hounds could not pick up
the trail.
"You go on," he said. "I will try to travel by day and get my feet
well." It was very sad to leave him sitting there with his feet sore,
and sick; and he had nothing to eat, but we pushed on. I have never
heard of him again from that day to this. His grandparents over in
Parke county were dependent upon him. They afterwards made application
for a pension on his supposed death, and the government has sent
examiners to me and Mr. Steele to tell them the story of how it
happened. This is the only story to substantiate his death. The
government in after years granted the old people a pension—$8.00 per
month, I think.
But we pressed on. Many times in crossing a stream we found we had
landed in a canebrake which had been there for years and years. The
cane was thick and very hard and brittle. It broke easily and made a
splinter which was dangerous to travel over. The cane fell over and new
cane would grow up through it. One could not walk on the fallen cane.
The only way to go through a cane brake was to get down and crawl under
it. We tried that several times, but invariably we came out to the
stream near where we had started in. We could not see the north star
for guidance and crawled in a circle. It was impossible to keep a
straight road. We were always lost. We had to go a long ways out of our
path on account of these obstacles.
One day as we were walking along through some wood, something looked
strangely familiar to me and I said to Mr. Steele: "I've seen this
before." I could not give a description of any one thing, but knew
there was something familiar about it. Steele did not believe me, and
we went on.
Soon we struck a river, but we could both swim. This was on the 5th of
September, as we afterwards learned, and the 20th day of our march. As
we swam across the river darkness had just fallen. On the opposite bank
we encountered a high fence and soon discovered that we were in a
stable lot. We were tired, wet and hungry, and decided if we could find
anything in that lot to ride we would spend the night riding and would
turn our mounts loose the next day to return home.
We went into the stable, but could not find a bridle or even a strap.
We then decided we would make a bridle out of bark, but in the darkness
we could not find the bark, so we gave up the project.
We supposed there was a house near and we were watching out for it. In
glancing to one side we discovered what appeared to be an open door
through which came a flickering light. We could hardly see the outline
of a house, but only a flicker of light. We were wet, and hungry, and
the temptation to investigate was strong. We crept closer. Listening
closely, we heard voices. A rail fence ran close to the door through
which the voices came and we decided to creep up to it. From the voices
we determined the occupants were old people and only two in number.
We decided to cry "hello," and keeping in the dark, see what would
happen. The old man answered. He asked us in and the temptation to
accept was strong. The old man was lying on the floor with his feet
poked through the doorway. The old woman was sitting before a fireplace
knitting by the light of a pine knot. That was all the light they had.
As the couple were very old we decided to take a chance and walked up
to the door. Looking across the room I saw an old-fashioned gun and a
powder-horn above another door I walked across the room and took the
gun. I explained that I was doing it for our protection and that he was
in no danger so long as he told us the truth. We then had quite a
conversation, and finally he asked us if we were hungry. We were glad
he asked the question.
Up to this time the old woman had said nothing, but had continued her
knitting before the fire-place. The old man told her to get something
to eat. She replied she was willing to divide with us, only she did not
like to be fooled. The bushwhackers and others had preyed on them.
The old lady got up and went to the kitchen and I told Steele to go
with her, so she would not have the opportunity to betray us. I stayed
to entertain the old man. I asked how far we were from the closest
Confederate camp, and the old man said he did not know of any. "But,"
he said, "at Pine Bluff—21 miles away—the Union troops are there."
My heart bounded at the words, but I had to be cautious. But we were in
safe hands. We became very well acquainted and I found there was no
truer Union man in the north than he was. Soon supper was ready. We had
corn coffee, some very fat meat swimming in a bowl of grease and some
corn cakes made from unsifted meal. But never before had I sat down to
such a feast!
They insisted that we stay until morning and have the same kind of
breakfast. It had been twenty days since we had tasted food, so we
stayed.
They conducted us to the kitchen again, where there was an
old-fashioned high bed with straw tick and feather bed. It was a great
treat to climb up on that bed with a full stomach and rest!
Next morning the old man told us where we were. He said he knew every
section of land between his home and Pine Bluff, and it was just six
miles across the country where we had been captured. Then I knew why it
was that the place had seemed familiar to me. The old man said it would
be safe for us to make the rest of the trip during the day time if we
kept to the woods.
I had four dollars in greenbacks still stowed away in the chunk of fat
meat. I took them out and gave the old couple two dollars.
"This is of no value to you now, but when the war is over you can use
them," I said.
The old couple seemed greatly pleased with the greasy old greenbacks
and said they would retain them as keep-sakes.
We then struck into the woods and traveled all that day. About sundown
we came to a stream, but the banks were so steep we could not get down
to the water and it was necessary to go up or down stream to find a
place to cross. We found a road which went the way we wanted to go and
we followed it. Presently it led to a bridge over the river, but we
were afraid to risk crossing until after dark. We started to turn off
to one side to wait for night, when we saw some soldiers come out in
the road ahead of us. They were a long ways off but we knew we had been
discovered. We could not tell whether they were Union or Confederate
soldiers, but all we could do was to wait for them to come up. Before
they got to us, however, we could see they wore the blue. They proved
to be our own men on picket duty. We were 40 miles below Little Rock.
When they escorted us back to the picket line they would not consent
for us to go on until we had told our story. We did not want to stay
out there with the outposts. We had been through too many dangerous
experiences to risk cap ture when that near to our camp. We insisted
that we be sent in. They sent two men to conduct us to the inside
picket lines. We did not feel safe out there.
It was very near sundown on Sunday evening. We escaped on Sunday and
had arrived at our lines on Sunday. They had had a dress parade and the
companies were drilling before the citizens. Our two guards marched us
along. The citizens wanted to know why they had brought us there. They
thought we were rebels and yelled for the men to string us up to the
first tree. The troops had had a skirmish that morning with some roving
bands and a Union soldier had been killed. The citizens and some of the
soldiers followed us with cries of "string them up."
But the guards knew their business and marched us to headquarters. They
called the commander. He asked us the necessary questions to determine
who we were and to what command we belonged. He knew our officers and
knew of the incidents we related of our fight and capture. He turned to
the growing mob and made a short speech, relating the true situation
briefly.
I never before saw such a change in a body of people. Before they were
wanting to hang us and now they wanted us—dirty and ragged as we
were—to stay with them, and they wanted to give us things to eat and
wear. But we preferred to stay with the soldiers. There was no
government supply of clothing there, but the boys fitted us out: one
gave a shirt and another a pair of pants, etc.
Mr. Little concluded his story at this point. To those who are curious
about how he got back to his command it might be said that at the time
of his capture his three-year enlistment had expired and he had signed
up for another enlistment. The members of the regiment who had escaped
wounds or capture, and who had signed up for another enlistment, had
been transferred to Indianapolis, where'the regiment was being
recruited up to its normal strength. Mr. Little was accordingly given
the customary 30-day furlough and went to Indianapolis and rejoined the
regiment.
Indiana magazine of history, Volume 13
By Indiana University. Dept. of History, Indiana University,
Bloomington. Dept. of History, Indiana State Library, Indiana
Historical Society