Wednesday, July 19, 2017

CIVIL WARTIME IN PEORIA


                               NORMAN  V.  KELLY

 

By the time the war started and America tore itself in half, Peoria was ready to do its part. There were Southern Sympathizers in Peoria County, few in the city, but they existed. Out in some of the townships there were people that simply were not for the war. They were called ‘Copperheads,’ and some of them suffered for their beliefs. It was not so much they were against the Union or for the South, they just did not want war.

 

Some men in this town rose up against those people here in the county and attacked their homes at night. They would bring up a wagon or two, extract the folks from their homes, and take them out of the county. I did not see any record of these people being killed but it must have scared the hell out of them.

 

Peoria was always a patriotic town and it all began during the Civil War. Young men from here immediately volunteered  and several hundreds went off to War. Wealthy men like Robert Ingersoll, a Peoria attorney, formed their own ‘army’.  The potential officer contacted the Secretary of War and got permission to raise an army, which was called the Illinois 11th.  At that time men were given as much as $300.00 to sign up and it was a time when

a man could pay another man to take his place. I feel certain that when I mentioned Robert Ingersoll, you thought, “Agnostic.” Sad, that’s just how we got our reputation, people using a word or two to describe Peoria, Illinois. Ingersoll was the most famous product Peoria, Illinois ever produced. (Even as big as Richard Prior.) Ingersoll was a great orator and famous all over the world where he debated men of learning and spoke before crowned heads.

 

Here in Peoria he gathered together men from this area and gave himself the title of Colonel. Now the man had no military training, and as far as I can tell, he never fired a gun. Yet, he was a colonel and he raised the Illinois 11th.  They encamped out at Birkette’s Hollow, what we now call Glen Oak Park. The men would gather there, muster    at CAMP LYONS  and wait until the group was ordered to a real army camp for training. They wound up at Camp Roberts in Davenport, Iowa.

 

Most of the men had nothing but the clothes on their backs and some brought their own rifles. When the men left the camp they often walked up to what we call the Peoria Heights. They always had their army blanket wrapped about their necks. A reporter asked them why. One man said, “It shows we are loyal Union men and that we are in the army.”  One man, closer to the Peorian that I know, said, “ Well, if we left them back at camp, why they are apt to get stole.”  The truth is somewhere in both of these statements.  Colonel Bob, as he was called led his troops into battle some months later and was promptly taken prisoner. Thirty of his men were captured with him as well. Well, about a month later old Bob comes marching home…alone. He told the press that the colonel at the camp paroled him.

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