About Captain Abraham Lincoln

"ABOUT CAPTAIN LINCOLN"

Lincoln had hardly launched in his first political venture when, in April, 1832, a messenger arrived in New Salem with the announcement from Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, that the] Sacs and other hostile tribes, led by Black Hawk, had invaded the northern part of the State, spreading terror among the white settlers in that region. The governor called upon those who were willing to help in driving back the Indians to report at Beardstown, on the Illinois River, within a week.

Lincoln and other Sangamon County men went at once to Richmond where a company was formed. The principal candidate for captain was a man named Kirkpatrick, who had treated Lincoln shabbily when Abe, in one of the odd jobs he had done in that region, worked in Kirkpatrick's sawmill. The employer had agreed to buy his hired man a cant-hook for handling the heavy logs. As there was a delay in doing this, Lincoln told him he would handle the logs without the cant-hook if Kirkpatrick would pay him the two dollars that implement would cost. The employer promised to do this, but never gave him the money.

So when Lincoln saw that Kirkpatrick was a candidate for the captaincy, he said to Greene, who had worked with him in Offutt's store:

"Bill, I believe I can make Kirkpatrick pay me that two dollars he owes me on the cant-hook[ now. I guess I'll run against him for captain."

Therefore Abe Lincoln announced himself as a candidate. The vote was taken in an odd way. It was announced that when the men heard the command to march, each should go and stand by the man he wished to have for captain. The command was given. At the word, "March," three-fourths of the company rallied round Abe Lincoln. More than twenty-five years afterward, when Lincoln was a candidate for the presidency of the United States, he referred to himself in the third person in describing this incident, saying that he was elected "to his own surprise," and "he says he has not since had any success in life which gave him so much satisfaction."

IGNORANCE OF MILITARY TACTICS

But Lincoln was a "raw hand" at military tactics. He used to enjoy telling of his ignorance and the expedients adopted in giving his commands to the company. Once when he was marching, twenty men abreast, across a field it became necessary to pass through a narrow gateway into the next field. He said:

"I could not, for the life of me, remember the word for getting the company endwise so that it
 could go through the gate; so, as we came near the gate, I shouted, 'This company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on the other side of the fence.'"

A HISTORIC MYSTERY EXPLAINED

Captain Lincoln had his sword taken from him for shooting within limits. Many have wondered that a man of Lincoln's intelligence should have been guilty of this stupid infraction of ordinary army regulations. Biographers of Lincoln puzzled over this until the secret was explained by William Turley Baker, of Bolivia, Ill., at the Lincoln Centenary in Springfield. All unconscious of solving a historic mystery, "Uncle Billy" Baker related the following story which explains that the shooting was purely accidental:

"My father was roadmaster general in the Black Hawk War. Lincoln used to come often to our house and talk it all over with father, when I was a boy, and I've heard them laugh over their experiences in that war. The best joke of all was this: Father received orders one day to throw log bridges over a certain stream the army had to cross. He felled some tall, slim[ black walnuts—the only ones he could find there—and the logs were so smooth and round that they were hard to walk on any time. This day it rained and made them very slippery. Half of the soldiers fell into the stream and got a good ducking. Captain Lincoln was one of those that tumbled in. He just laughed and scrambled out as quick as he could. He always made the best of everything like that.

"Well, that evening when the company came to camp, some of them had dog tents—just a big canvas sheet—and the boys laughed to see Lincoln crawl under one of them little tents. He was so long that his head and hands and feet stuck out on all sides. The boys said he looked just like a big terrapin. After he had got himself stowed away for the night, he remembered that he hadn't cleaned his pistol, after he fell into the creek.

"So he backed out from under his canvas shell and started to clean it out. It was what was called a bulldog pistol, because it had a blunt, short muzzle. Abe's forefinger was long enough to use as a ramrod for it. But before he began operations he snapped the trigger and, to his astonishment, the thing went off!

"Pretty soon an orderly came along in great haste, yellin', 'Who did that?—Who fired that shot?' Some of the men tried to send the orderly along about his business, making believe the report was heard further on, but Lincoln he wouldn't stand for no such deception, spoken or unspoken. 'I did it,' says he, beginning to explain how it happened.

"You see, his legs was so blamed long, and he must have landed on his feet, in the creek, and got out of the water without his pistol getting wet, 'way up there in his weskit!

"But he had to pay the penalty just the same, for they took his sword away from him for several days. You see, he was a captain and ought to 'a' set a good example in military discipline."

HOW CAPTAIN LINCOLN SAVED AN INDIAN'S LIFE

One day an old "friendly Indian" came into camp with a "talking paper" or pass from the "big white war chief." The men, with the pioneer idea that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," were for stringing him up. The poor old red man protested and held the general's letter before their eyes.

"Me good Injun," he kept saying, "white war
 chief say me good Injun. Look—talking paper—see!"

"Get out! It's a forgery! Shoot him! String him up!" shouted the soldiers angrily.

This noise brought Captain Lincoln out of his tent. At a glance he saw what they were about to do. He jumped in among them, shouting indignantly:

"Stand back, all of you! For shame! I'll fight you all, one after the other, just as you come. Take it out on me if you can, but you shan't hurt this poor old Indian. When a man comes to me for help, he's going to get it, if I have to lick all Sangamon County to give it to him."

The three months for which the men were enlisted soon expired, and Lincoln's captaincy also ended. But he re-enlisted as a private, and remained in the ranks until the end of the war, which found him in Wisconsin, hundreds of miles from New Salem. He and a few companions walked home, as there were not many horses to be had. Lincoln enlivened the long tramp with his fund of stories and jokes.

It is sometimes asserted that Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis met at this early day,] as offiers in the Black Hawk War, but this statement is not founded on fact, for young Lieutenant Davis was absent on a furlough and could not have encountered the tall captain from the Sangamon then, as many would like to believe.

Lincoln always referred to the Black Hawk War as a humorous adventure. He made a funny speech in Congress describing some of his experiences in this campaign in which he did not take part in a battle, nor did he even catch sight of a hostile Indian.