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Illinois and the Civil War
William Burton, Department of History Everyone agrees. The Civil War (1861-1865) was the most dramatic single event in American history. It was also the most vivid chapter in the history of Illinois. More books and magazine articles have been published on this subject than any other theme in our nation's past. A century and a third after the war began, scholars and history buffs still debate vigorously the roles of generals and politicians, of winners and losers on a thousand battlefields, and of both the causes and consequences of the bloodiest and most destructive of all American wars. While no major battles occurred on Illinois soil, this state was geographically, politically, socially, and economically at the center of action. Numbers alone are impressive. Out of a total population of 1,711,961, Illinois contributed 259,092 men to the Union military forces, and a handful to the Confederacy. The overwhelming majority of soldiers, sailors, and marines serving from Illinois were volunteers; only 3,538 men were conscripts. Most of these men joined one of the 150 regiments of infantry, 17 regiments of cavalry, or 2 regiments of light artillery Illinois contributed to the Union cause. Late in the war the North recruited regiments of African Americans, and one of those regiments, the 29th U.S. Colored Infantry, came largely from this state. Some 2,224 men enlisted in the Navy or Marines. Of more than a quarter of a million men (and a few women!) in uniform, 34,834 gave their lives—killed in battle and in accidents, or died of disease. But behind every number there was an individual, a human being. Most volunteers left families behind when they went off to training camp. All over the state mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters worried and fretted about those volunteers; sometimes they visited them in training camps and even in the "theater of war," as the border states and states of the Confederacy were called. It was often possible virtually to commute to a battlefield from back home in Illinois. In early April 1862, when Illinois soldiers fought in one of the worst battles of the war near Shiloh, Tennessee, Illinois Governor Richard Yates took a train to the area and spoke to surviving soldiers. Governor Yates was not the only state resident to take a train to that battlefield, as we soon shall see. It was not uncommon for relatives to take food or clothing or medical supplies to an injured or sick soldier, or for a grieving father to make a sad journey south to bring back to Illinois the body of a son. To put a human face on the war, we must go behind the numbers and focus attention on individuals. It is hard to grasp the meaning of a quarter million men in uniform; we can better understand the impact of war in terms of the lives of Illinois residents by following the story of one man or woman. One very ordinary but also extraordinary individual was Mary Ann Bickerdyke, a widow living in Galesburg. In 1861 the members of the Congregational Church in Galesburg, alarmed by stories of the poor treatment military authorities were giving to Union soldiers, dispatched the widow Bickerdyke to Cairo with medical supplies. Mary Bickerdyke went to work helping sick and wounded soldiers, and she worked for the rest of the war. Like Governor Yates, she took a train to the Shiloh battlefield, and in four years to many another battlefield and hospital, where she cooked for the hungry and nursed the sick and wounded. Mary S. Logan was the wife of John A. Logan, an Illinois congressman when the war began. Mary lived in Marion, and one of her brothers, like at least a few others from southern Illinois, joined the Confederate army. When Congressman Logan became Colonel Logan in command of the 31st Illinois Infantry, Mary helped organize the regiment, established a regimental hospital in Cairo, nursed wounded soldiers after the regiment's first battle at Belmont, Missouri, and, like many officers' wives, followed her husband from camp to camp and state to state, providing invaluable assistance both to her husband (who became a general) and the soldiers under his command. Not every hero served at the front. African Americans in Illinois when the war began suffered serious legal and social discrimination. H. Ford Douglass, a well-known abolitionist leader from Chicago, fought political battles to improve the lot of black citizens, both here and in other states. Douglass enlisted in the 95th Illinois Infantry and became one of the first Illinois African Americans in uniform. John Jones, a wealthy Chicago businessman, worked for the repeal of Illinois "black laws," which restricted the rights of black people. Jennie Hodgers was a young immigrant from Ireland when the war broke out. Determined to serve her adopted country, she disguised herself as a man and managed to enlist in that same 95th regiment. Medical examinations for volunteers were extremely perfunctory in Civil War days, and Jennie's disguise was successful. She served for several years, and her ruse was not discovered until her death in an old soldiers' home many years later. Records on the subject are poor, but in Illinois and other states several women served in uniform, some for only a short time until their gender was discovered, others for long enlistments. Nineteen years old when the war started, young Henry Kircher lived in a German-American household in Belleville. Henry spoke and wrote German as his native tongue and learned the machinist's trade. With the outbreak of war, Henry, like many other German Americans, determined to show his "American" fellow citizens that he was at least as patriotic and loyal as they were. He volunteered and served through the war in an Illinois and then a Missouri regiment. He lost both an arm and leg from wounds, and after the war he held public office. When Richard Yates became the governor of Illinois in January 1861 he was too drunk to read his own inaugural address. Three months later the state he led plunged into the Civil War. Yates often criticized President Abraham Lincoln, but he energetically organized the state for war. He assisted in raising regiments for the Union armies, took a personal interest in the welfare of Illinois soldiers, and promoted Union sentiment throughout the state. But he also dismissed the state legislature when he decided that it was obstructing his efforts to run the state. His record as wartime governor remains controversial today. James A. Mulligan was born in New York and never set foot in Ireland, but when he moved to Illinois and began practicing law in Chicago, he soon had a reputation as an ardent Irish nationalist. Like many other Illinois residents of Irish extraction, Mulligan wanted to serve his country in a special Irish-American regiment when the war started. He organized the 23rd Illinois Infantry, known as the "Irish Brigade," and from early in the war until his death after the Battle of Kernstown in 1864, his military service had a distinctly Irish flavor. Behind every number, then, is a name and an individual. It means little to us today to note that Illinois had 324,643 foreign-born residents in 1860; the statistic takes on life when we examine the lives of individuals serving in Irish-American, German-American, or Scandinavian-American regiments, or, as most did, in an "American" regiment. The war stimulated the state's economy. Illinois farmers fed and clothed thousands of Union soldiers and managed to feed many people in Europe as well when that continent suffered poor harvests. That record acquires greater meaning when we think of the thousands of young farmers who went off to war, leaving parents or wives or other family members to operate the farms. It is said that every war is local. Illinois industry and transportation certainly played a pivotal role in the Civil War, but we better understand that great conflict emotionally by trying to see it through the lives of individuals. War affected every village, town, county, and city in Illinois, and every person as well. Too often our eyes are turned to the excitement and gore of the battlefield when we think of the Civil War. Too often we think of presidents and generals and not often enough of the countless individuals whose lives in those towns and villages and on those farms were changed forever by war. It is sometimes hard work to track down those very human stories, but the effort is worth it.
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