St. Clair County, Illinois - Chapter 16, 1928

Chapter 16

fficKENDREE's alumni list begins m 1841 and up to the days of the Mexican War she had but few students. The most of these were singled out for leadership in civil lines, but there were a few McKendree men who participated in that early war. Among them were William R. Morrison, who was a captain in the Mexican, and a colonel in the Civil War; the two brothers, William H. and Frederick A. Snyder, the former a first lieutenant of the Fifth Illinois, and the other a second lieutenant in the Sixteenth U. S. A. regiment. These were both members of the class of 1843. In the list of privates there were Samuel Kinney Thomas, class of 1848; Joseph H. Tam, one of the founders of Philo; and Michael Mummert, one of the founders of Plato and the first teacher of German in McKendree. Doubtless there were others if we had a complete list. At the beginning of the Civil War there were in the college in all Its departments, including the faculty, less than two hundred men. The Union Army, outside of the regulars, was recruited by a call for volunteers. The draft came later, and then it was a selective draft and not a conscription of all sound men between certain ages. So probably not a single one of the college group went except voluntarily. Also there were some new students each year of the war, and by these means the college work was kept going in spite of the large number who entered the army. At this time it is not possible to determine exactly how many McKendreans were in the war, but we have a record of at least thirty officers, and it seems likely that altogether there were not less than a hundred and fifty who were in the army and also students in McKendree either before or after their war service. As evidence of the patriotic principles employed in the administration of the institution, and also as indication that there may have been some students who were not strictly loyal to the union, we find the following resolution in the records of the Board : "Students shall not be allowed to utter disloyal sentiments against the government of the United States or make disloyal demonstrations in any other way, by displaying signs or badges indicative of disloyalty; and should any student continue to do so after suitable admonition, he may be expelled or otherwise punished at the discretion of the faculty." The class of 1862 graduated in June of that year, twelve in number. We do not have at hand the titles of their orations, but there is a tradition that they reflected the patriotic sentiment of the day and advocated the duty of citiiens to engage in righteous warfare when their country needed their service. The war clouds were hanging low upon the horizon, and there was much discouragement in many quarters over the outlook for the success of the war. It was that summer that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, though it did not go into effect until the following January. It so happened that before college opened in the fall of 1863, at least two members of that class and two members of the faculty were officers in the Union Army. In September the 117th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers was organized with Professor Risdon M. Moore as colonel and Professor Samuel H. Deneen as adjutant. This was called the McKendree Regiment because the majority of the McKendree soldiers were in that regiment. Henry C. Fike, of the class of 1852, gives a list of the officers of this regiment who were graduates or sometime students in McKendree. Colonel Risdon M. Moore, Quartermaster Henry C. Fike, Adjutant Samuel H. Deneen, Lieutenant Daniel Kerr, Sergeant Joseph T. Parker, Major William P. Olden, Lieutenant Benjamin F. Olden, Lieutenant William Wallis, Lieutenant James M. Truitt, Sergeant William P. Eaton, Captain Robert A. Halbert. Lieut.-Colonel Jonathan Merriam, Captain W. R. Whittaker, Sergeant Monroe J. Miller, Lieutenant David H. Wilderman, and of course a much larger number in the rank of private. In other branches of the army were General Jesse H. Moore, General James H. Wilson, General Wesley Merritt, General Lucian Greathouse, Colonel William R. Morrison, Captain William Herbert Copp, Captain Henry A. Castle, Major Bluford Wilson, and of course it is not claimed that this list is complete.

After a few weeks of training, the 1 17th left Camp Butler November 11, 1862 and did service at various points in the war zone as far south as Vicksburg. In its three years service the regiment was engaged in six battles and thirteen skirmishes. It marched 2J07 miles, traveled 6191 miles by water, and 778 miles by rail. A number of soldier boys came to McKendree after the war was over, in the fall of 1865, realizing that with the handicap of maimed bodies, it was more necessary to have trained minds in order to succeed in the world's great struggle for the means of livelihood or for success in a business or profession. At one time there were three ex-soldiers reciting in McKendree classes, who had only one arm each; having lost the other in southern battlefields. This one-armed trio consisted of James B. Pinckard of Brighton,

James Haynes of ZanesviUe, and William F. Wilton of Huey. As an illustration of the kind of service the McKendree soldiers rendered m this great war, we quote briefly from an address delivered hy Professor Deneen at an educational convention held at Lebanon in 1884. "But if our land were to derive from its colleges no greater service than the zealous devotion with which they espoused the loyal cause in the late war, the nation would be amply repaid tor all the selfsacrifice and expenditure made in their behalf. All did well, but none better in proportion to age and numbers, than our own McKendree. From the tiring upon Fort Sumpter to the capture of Mobile, her sons gathered around the starry banner to defend its honor or die beneath its folds. They perished from fever in hospitals; they pined away from starvation in prison pens; they found a sudden grave beneath the waters of the Tennessee ; they fell m the fiery front above the clouds at Mission Ridge. From Fort Donaldson to Appomattox there was scarcely an important engagement in which the sons of McKendree did not do battle for equal liberty and an undivided nation. They were found in all ranks from the private soldier to the Major General; but however different in rank the spirit which animated them all was the same. It was at Fort Donaldson that Colonel Morrison, the present congressman, then in charge of the Forty-ninth Illinois Volunteers, received a disabling wound. It was at Holly Springs, when that post was surprised by Van Dorn, that a cavalry officer, Isaiah Stickle, a graduate of McKendree, while others were surrendering, drew his sabre, and exhorting his comrades to follow his example, and to prefer death to a rebel prison, cut his way through the superior numbers of the encircling foe, and brought his followers in safety to the Union lines. It was near Atlanta that another son of McKendree, Colonel Lucien Greathouse, leading his regiment in a charge against the serried ranks of the enemy, fell with a fatal wound while the air was ringing with the shouts for the victory which his fiery courage had helped to win.

The Three Onh-Armed Ex-Soldiers

and scattered havoc and desolation through Alabama and Georgia, defeated Forrest and destroyed his army, took Montgomery, which was for a time the capital of the Confederacy, and feasted his troopers where the chieftains of secession had first met m council, and closed his eventful campaign by the capture of Jefferson Davis himself, was a student in McKendree. This was General James H. Wilson. Not less deserving of mention is another son of McKendree, M nor General Wesley Merritt, a cavalry officer, noted alike for impetuous valor and eminent services, prominent in campaigns in Virginia, who not very long ago was appointed Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

"But not to dwell longer upon the achievements of officers, it was a student of McKendree, a private soldier, a mere boy, who at the battle of Nashville, rushed into the thickest of the fight, tore their colors from the hands of the enemy, bore them m triumph to Washington City, and received m person the thanks of the nations representatives.

"There was another McKendrean, Richard Thatcher, the son of a Methodist preacher of Southern Illinois, who joined the army when only fifteen years old. His company was captured and he was taken to Salisbury prison, infamous on account of the inhuman Wirz whose fiendish life was fitly closed by a felon's death. There the poisonous air and the polluted water, the want of proper clothing and sufficient food, the daily suffering and the distant hope, had caused his young heart to despond and almost to despair of aid, either human or divine. One day while he was seeking to call away his thoughts from his own wretched condition by reading the Bible, which among other losses he had contrived to retain, he was accosted by a fellow prisoner, low in stature but with a piercing eye: 'What book have you there, my friend^' The Bible,' was the reply. 'Let me see it. The rebels got mine when they made me a prisoner.' Taking the book he read some of the promises which have brought comfort and hope to so many of the unfortunate and suffering of earth. He then returned the volume to the young soldier saying, 'Cheer up, my brother, cheer up ! We shall yet find some means of deliverance. God has revealed to me that I am never to die in this rebel prison!' The speaker was Boston Corbett, who afterwards fired the shot which put an end to the life of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. The two captives resolved to hold a daily prayer meeting in the prison. Others came. The interest increased. A revival followed which resulted in many conversions Subsequently our young soldier made his escape from prison, and guided by the light of the stars and assisted by the counsels of slaves, journeying through forests and swamps, subsisting on such food and sleeping in such places as the veriest tramp would now disdain, he made his way in safety at last to the Union forces."

It seems appropriate here to give an extract from Colonel Risdon M. Moore's account of the campaigns of the "Mc- Kendree Regiment," the 117th, which was written for the "McKendree Pigskin" which was puHished in 1905. After enumerating the list of officers of the regiment who were McKendreans, which we have already given above, he says.

"A large per cent of the privates and non-commissioned officers had been college students and some were students after the war. The response to 'Father Abraham's' call for 'three hundred thousand more' was so generous that the government found it difficult to arm and equip the vast number of regiments that were in camp within one month after the call. The number of infantry regiments rose from the sixties to over one hundred and thirty in Illinois. There were no tents and few guns and mustering officers were scarce. However we left for the front November 11, 1862, almost two months after final muster, and went into camp six days later at Memphis, Tennessee.

"I shall always remember a dapper little staff officer, who escorted us from our steam boat to camp and began to let us know who he was by expressing regrets that his grandfather was dead. I, supposing he referred to some one recently killed, was slow to reply to his words of sorrow. As he kept repeating his regrets, I finally asked who his grandfather was, and was surprised to learn that he meant President Harrison who died April 4, 1841, and .so had been dead more than twenty-one years. I thought, though I didn't say it, 'How blood will tell''

"On leaving Camp Butler, we had received our guns, a Belgian rifle calibre sixty-nine. However we soon discovered that they were worthless, as after bursting a cap eight or ten times they would no longer explode one. We had these rifles inspected several times by inexperienced officers like our nice little fellow whose grandfather was dead, but no one could tell what was the matter with our guns, and they were all alike. They would fire all right a few times and then they would cease to do duty. Finally General Sherman came out and discovered the trouble in a few minutes. The defect was irreparable, the guns were useless, and we were left out of the moving column, then ready to start for Vicksburg, overland, by way of Holly Springs, under General Grant in December, 1862.

"Being thus without arms we were placed in Fort Pickering in the lower part of Memphis. And there we were kept to man that fort with its hundred and twenty heavy guns, for nearly two years. At times, however, we were sent out on scout duty into Tennessee and Arkansas to drive out small rebel forces under Forrest and other rebel raiders. On July j, of 186 J, the regiment was sent down to Helena, Arkansas, to support General B. M. Prentiss, whose command was then severely threatened by the rebel commands of General Price and Marmaduke. Their assaults failed and the 117th took an honored part in sending them into the Arkansas woods to rest.

"In December thereafter, Forrest threatened Memphis, and then we went for him, as he was ravaging and pillaging West Tennessee and Northern Mississippi, until he and his command hastily went for other places of safety, to annoy Memphis no more for eight or nine months.

"In January, 1864, we became a part of General A. J. Smith's command, in which we remained to the close of the war, participating in all his campaigns and battles, not resting between campaigns, at any time more than four or five days, and without tents at one time for more than six months.

"We left Vicksburg for Meridian, Mississippi, as a part of the third brigade, fought with portions of S. D. Lee's and Polk's commands, driving them rapidly back on Jackson; crossed Pearl River on the 6th, and then kept them moving, fighting almost daily until we entered Meridian, February 14, under the boom of cannon and the rattle of rifles, the 117th in the lead. There we worked eight days destroying railroads, with corn for rations for man and beast, one hundred and fifty miles from the Mississippi River, our base of supplies.

"We returned thence to Vicksburg by way of Canton, where the fighting was resumed as a business almost daily, until within a short distance from Vicksburg where we arrived March 4, having been gone twenty-nine days. In the meantime I had fallen heir to the brigade.

"On the eighth we took steamers for Red River, having had four days for washing and for outward and inward ;. On the eleventh, we tied up for the night at

Simmesport, Louisiana, on Atchafalaya Bayou; reconnoitered the twelfth; moved out from Simmesport a few miles on the thirteenth, driving off rebel cavalry: began a forced march at four A. M. for Fort De Russey, thirty-four miles up Red River on the fourteenth, and captured it at five P. M., tho it was one of the strongest of fortifications. Abbott, in writing up the brilliant battles of the war, cites De Russey as one of them, but gives the credit to General Banks who was not within a hundred miles of it at the time, and had nothing to do with our movements until two weeks later. After the fall of De Russey, we took our boats and ran up to Alexandria, Louisiana, where we waited the arrival of Banks' command, thus wasting ten precious days and thus giving the rebels time to concentrate or get together. We had divided or scattered them. This delay was the chief cause of Banks' defeat later at Mansfield, April 8, and the loss of the fruits of our victories up to that date, in which we had captured several thousand prisoners and over twenty pieces of artillery at De Russey, Alexandria, and Henderson Hill. We reached Pleasant Hill battlefield April 8, while Banks' command, parts of the thirteenth Army Corps under Ransom and the nineteenth under Franklin, were fighting at Mansfield or Sabine Crossroads. Banks, to display his army and his lack of generalship, had placed our command a day's march behind his rear, and besides this had cumbered us with his baggage and a part of his supply train. Hence we were fully twenty miles from the battlefield on the eighth, but hearing the boom of the cannon on the afternoon of the eighth, we abandoned all trains and hastened to the front at a quick step and met our routed forces at Pleasant Hill at dusk. Their condition gave an idea of our stampede at Bull Run. We fought the battle almost alone on the ninth and won a great victory, driving the rebels from seven to twenty-one miles.

"Here again Banks' inefficiency was shown in falling back to Grand Ecore, thirty-six miles, where after four days the Confederates, discovering that we were retreating, came timidly up to us. There the second brigade, and my brigade, the third, went to the relief of our fleet and transports at a small place called Campti, fourteen miles up the river, where the Confederates under Dick Taylor had besieged Commodore Porter's fleet and our boats with our sick and wounded - about forty vessels of all kind, iron clads, tin clads, and wooden boats.

"We released them under orders 'not to leave the camp.' We left again on the twentieth and fought our way to the Mississippi in battles at Cloutierville, Marksville, Alexandria, and vicinity, and at Yellow Bayou. The date of the last was May twentieth. This ended that disastrous campaign of about seventy-five days, wherein Banks showed up so badly and General A. J. Smith so brilliantly. We arrived at Vicksburg and found the river blockaded. We landed at Chico, Louisiana, and drove Marmaduke and company off, and opened the Mississippi. We landed at Memphis June tenth, to learn that Forrest had fallen upon the commands of Generals Sturgis and Grierson and cut them to pieces. A few years ago I opened a folio history of Professor Hamilton Mabie, a writer of some note, wherein he said in substance, that General Sturgis of the Federal army met General Forrest June lo, 1864, and almost annihilated him. This was a strange perversion of a sad history. Our command was hurriedly pushed out to the relief of Sturgis and Grierson. Sturgis should have been court-martialed and summarily dismissed for that disgraceful affair. After our return from relieving them, we were paid up and equipped for the work that Sturgis failed to do - whip Forrest. This we did handsomely in six pitched battles, fought July thirteenth, on the march from Pontatoc to Tupelo, Mississippi; two at Tupelo, one in the morning and one at night of the fourteenth. In this night battle the 117th did all the fighting; two on the fifteenth, one at Tupelo and one at Crooked Creek, and then one on the sixteenth. In all of these engagements we chastised Forrest severely and gave him the only wound he received during the war. I learned this fact from Forrest himself some years after the war, in Montgomery, Alabama.

"After a fruitless campaign down to Oxford, Mississippi, where we burned old Jake Thompson's residence, while he was m Canada scheming to burn Chicago, we returned to Memphis to wash up and secure supplies. Then we started up the river for St. Louis to drive off Pap Price and his Confederates. At St. Louis, the 117th was first rushed down to De Soto, and then back to St. Louis and out to Franklin, thirty-six miles west, to meet Joe Shelby and others in line of battle. A few shots and shells sent them away in haste. We followed them up and out to the Kansas line without another chance to try our Springfields on them. From the Kansas border we returned to St. Louis and then were hurried off to Nashville to aid General Thomas against the dashing Confederate, Hood. The 117th went into line there November 3,0, while Schofield and Hood were in a desperate struggle for the mastery at Franklin thirty miles away. Franklin was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Hood was so severely punished there that he was in no haste to pitch in at Nashville. Thomas assumed the offensive on the fifteenth of December and annihilated him. It was of these battles that Lincoln told his dog story. Some critics complained that Thomas did not capture every man, horse and gun, in Hood's army. The story was that a farmer out west gave a troublesome dog a piece of fat meat with some powder and a piece of punk which had been lighted. The dog gulped the dose down, but in a few minutes there was an explosion and the late dog was scattered around in many pieces, and though all the pieces were there, they were no longer a dog.

"We followed the retreating forces of Hood down to the Tennessee River, capturing many thousand prisoners and about ninety pieces of artillery. So that army, like the dog, was dead.

"We went into camp at Eastport, Mississippi, and had the finest rest we had had for a year. Here again we had corn for rations for eight days. The soldiers took it good naturedly, saying, 'the next ration, boys, is hay.'

"We left that camp for New Orleans and Mobile, February the seventh. We camped a few days at New Orleans and then took a steamer for Mobile, The George B. McClennan' steaming down the Mississippi and out through the south east pass and thence to Dauphine Island at the mouth of Mobile Bay. On March twenty-sixth we took small steamboats and ran up to Danly's landing on Fish River. On the twenty-seventh, by rapid march, we invested Spanish Fort, driving a small Confederate force before us. On the second of April, I invested Fort Blakely, six miles further north. On April eighth a part of our corps assaulted Spanish Fort and carried it, and on the ninth we assaulted Blakely and carried it. We found an unfolded letter written by a Colonel of an Alabama regiment to his mother in Mobile, saying: 'Dear Mother- You have or will hear of the capture of Spanish Fort by the Yankees, but I write to assure you that there are not enough Yankees in Alabama to capture us in a month.' We captured him and his fort in less than twenty minutes. This battle ended the war for us as Lee had surrendered nine hours before we fought our last battle.

"From Mobile we marched to Montgomery, arriving there April a^th, and from there we were sent home to be mustered out, by way of Selma, Meridian, and Vicksburg. From there we went to St. Louis by boat and thence on to Springfield, Illinois, by rail, where we were mustered out at Camp Butler on August 5, 1865, having participated in about thirty-five engagements, and having travelled by rail nearly a thousand miles, by water over six thous.md, and on foot nearly two thousand five hundred."

One of the trio of one-armed McKendreans whose pictures appear above, James B. Pinckard, lost his right arm at Fort Blakely. Yet as stated by Colonel Moore, General Lee had surrendered more than nine hours before that battle was fought. If the more perfect means of communication which we have now had existed then, that soldier need not have gone through life with only one arm. These narratives of Colonel Moore, Adjutant Deneen, Lieutenant Fike, and others, make it clear that the McKendree boys played no inconsiderable part in the great Civil War.

With the Spanish- American War in 1898, McKendree does not seem to have been so closely identified. It is true that Harry Van Treese, a former McKendree student, was one of Col. Roosevelt's "Rough Riders." And a number of other McKendreans got as far as the training camp in Florida, among them, Rev. Orley E. Laird, class of '93, and the three Wallis brothers, Marshall, Robert, and Edward, sons of Rev. William Wallis, of the class of '62, while Cameron Harmon, Clair Moorman, and OUie Wallace, commonly known as "Irish," actually saw service in Cuba. Harmon held the position of wagonmaster, served till the end of the war, and came home with the victorious army by way of New York City. All these experiences were a wonderful inspiration to the young soldier boy, but as soon as practicable, he came back to McKendree and finished his college course.

McKendree's connection with the World War is more difficult to determine with accuracy. The plan of the draft for soldiers included all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who did not have some legitimate reason for exemption. This no doubt included hundreds of men out in the busy world who had at one time been students in McKendree. In the fall of niS, according to the plan devised by Congress, a chapter of the "S. A. T. C," or Student's Army Training Corps, was estabhshed in Mc- Kendree. These boys from eighteen to twenty-one were drafted for training, to be used for soldiers in case the war should last until they were needed at the front.

This group was composed of a hundred young men, most of them just out of high school. When they were given a choice of going to the army training camp or training in college, they usually chose the latter, and the government bore the actual expense of their board and training. The Corps was in charge of Major Andrews whom some of the faculty still remember and whom some of the boys in the training corps will never forget. The Boys' Dormitory was transformed into a barracks, and military rules of living were enforced. A strict physical examination had to be pass' ed and a few were rejected for physical reasons. The hoys received military instruction under the major and took certain specified college courses which were supposed to be especially helpful to the future soldier. The boys wore their uniforms in the class room and we seemed more than GENERAL WESLEY MERRITT ever a part of the great war. But after the armistice was signed on that well remember' ed eleventh day of November, there were soon rumors afloat that the policy of the government would be changed. There were grave objections to spending the people's money in training soldiers if there was to be no im' mediate need for them. In fact, before Christmas, came the order to disband the "S. A. T. C." in the various colleges which had them throughout the country. It was done and soldier uniforms were no longer the prevailuig costume on McKendree's campus. But besides this training group many McKendree boys were actually in the war activities both at home and abroad, on this side of the ocean and "over seas." The Philo and Plato Societies both had their service flags. The stars on them represented men who were at the time or recently connected with the college societies. Of course there were also many Methodist young men m the war besides those who were at McKendree. Almost every church in the conference had its service flag. The idea came to a couple of young women who had been working for a few years in our conference as evangelists, that it would be a fine thing to combine all these flags into one. These excellent ladies were Miss May Paul and Miss Mary Olive, also known as "Little Mary." They were quite successful as evangelists and they undertook this new enterprise in the same indomitable spirit that brought success in their evangelistic work. They procured a huge banner and proceeded with their own hands to set upon it the five thousand stars that represented the Methodist soldier boys of one conference. The task took weeks and even months. But the two women persevered and at conference time they brought the magnificent flag with them to Greenville where the conference met that year (1918), and on the opening day it was unfurled and raised in the Greenville Church, with appropriate ceremonies and abundance of patriotic speeches. Yet this enthusiasm was tempered and subdued at times by the fact that many ot the sons of members of the conference were at that time over seas in the army and several had already made the supreme sacrifice for their country in "Flanders Field" at the battle front of the most stupendous civil war that the world has ever known. After conference, the great flag was carefully furled and brought to McKendree College for safe keeping, where with its five thousand stars it may still be viewed by the visitor as it reposes in a wooden case with a glass cover.

Among the boys who had been recently connected with the college and never returned from over seas or from the training camp, were Herschel Tritt, Paul Dee, Harold Adams, and Glen McCormack. As a memorial to the last named his fellow members of the Philosophian Society have started a movement to found a permanent scholarship to aid one needy student after another during all the years of the future m accomplishing the trying task of securing an education.

We may safely conclude that McKendree's connection with the four great wars in which our country has been involved during the first century of her existence, has always been an honorable one. Yet it is also a safe prediction that her influence will he e.xerted in the most vigorous manner possible to prevent the occurrence of any war at all during her second century, upon which she is about to enter.