Brand Me Not A Deserter

Brand Me Not A Deserter A Union Soldier’s Struggle with Epilepsy and Malice

Myles Nienstadt

Brand Me Not A Deserter A Union Soldier’s Struggle with Epilepsy and Malice

Myles Nienstadt

Copyright © 2011 by Myles Nienstadt.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Myles Nienstadt.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data Nienstadt, Myles, 1959Brand me not a deserter: a union soldier’s struggle with epilepsy and malice

/ Myles Nienstadt

Washington, DC: Myles Nienstadt Publishing, c2011

p. 89. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Genealogy & local history. 2. Civil War America

ISBN-13 9780615485713

Book design by Myles Nienstadt Typeface: Book Antiqua

Contents

i Intro

1 Preface

5

Ambition of an Iowa Boy

15

Epilepsy and Malice

21 Clemency

29

Hometown Dispatches

57

Weaving a Legend

61 Epilogue

66 Outro

75 Appendix

79

81 Acknowledgments

83

87 Index

Kinsloe-Langdon Family Tree Illustration Credits

He was more like his educated mother. [Thaddeus] was kind of a gentle soul.

[His father] the captain was a very big masculine sort of a person. But {Thaddeus] Mama’s father was a kind of a gentle sweet little person. When you asked him stories about the war, he always managed to change the subject pretty fast.

But if I asked [his father] great-grandpa who was a captain, the red-headed captain, about the war - oh, he’d tell fantastic stories about the war. I could never figure why I couldn’t get good stories out of Grandpa Kinsloe and then as I got older, I found out that they enlisted, they figured they were going to free the slaves, they were very idealistic - wonderful idealism, not realizing that they were being tools of New England manufacturers.

He knew when his first baby was due and he was determined to get back there. And didn’t get released from the army and just left the army and got back as quick as he could. His wife was my mother’s older sister Edith Kinsloe. She began to feel the labor pains. She wasn’t going to bed. She sat and said, “Thaddeus is coming and I won’t have the baby until Thaddeus comes.”

And he got there!

She died a few hours later.

arrived at 9:40 am at the Research entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue. It took about one hour for security staff to complete inspections of myself, laptop, and scanner and then for me to read the Power Point introduction to rules and regulations, to get registered and issued Research Card # 091483, to stash non-allowed stuff such as a carrying bag into coin operated locker, and to walk up to room 203.

I came today on behalf of five generations of descendents of Thaddeus Augustus Kinsloe to lay my eyes on original documents of his 1864 court martial. Online the day before, I had been shocked to receive a result other than “no records found” when I submitted “Kinsloe” into the National Archives’ ARC search engine at www.archives.gov. The result informed me that at location LL-1867, the National Archives in Washington DC had a file in Record Group 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), 1792-1981 for Kinsloe, Thadisis A. – Private, Missouri – 7th Cavalry, Company D, 02/1864.

I set up my laptop and scanner on an unoccupied space at the right bottom quadrant of one of the large wood and stone topped desks.

The four quadrants are separated by a low 4.5 inch dividing pane of glass with a brass reading light stand for each quadrant. Each quadrant has a Herman Miller Aeron black mesh chair – very comfortable.

The abrupt end of my mother’s medical career in August 2006 and her move to McLean to live with us caused me to set up a room in our basement full of boxes of family memorabilia and photos. Shortly afterward, I encountered and scanned an encased glass photo plate of a young man. I remembered seeing the framed small photo before. When I removed

Thursday, May 29, 2008 U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, General Research Room 203 Washington, DC

I

Preface

• 1

the photo from the frame, it revealed the caption: “Taken April 1861 Before Departure to Cario [sic] in the U.S.A.” A quick Google search of Cairo and the underlined initials for the United States Army made me realize that the young man was Thaddeus Kinsloe. I had periodically heard about him when I was younger from my mother and Grandma Sullivan as the ancestor who had deserted during the Civil War to return to his dying wife after the birth of a daughter. Both my mother and Grandmother said that the family did not keep any records of the consequences of the desertion - only that President Lincoln had intervened with a pardon.

I was impressed by the emotional power of the story particularly when my grandmother recounted it again during a family vacation in Belgium in 1982. She and my mother had arranged for all of us to meet in Amsterdam for a week long pony wagon trip in the rural area along the Dutch-Belgium border. I had brought along a Sony Walkman recorder. At one point while the pony and our wagon slowly passed along farm fields, I pulled out the recorder and prompted my grandmother to talk about family history. Over the steady clip clop of the pony’s hooves, she talked about various ancestors. When she got to Thaddeus and the point when his first wife was dying, she said that Thaddeus’ wife insisted that he would come back in time to see her. At that moment in the story, she said, “He did!,” and then her voice broke. It was the only time in my life that I ever heard Grandma Sullivan’s ever confident voice falter.

The tape that I recorded was put away and over the years got mixed in with boxes of other music cassettes. When I encountered the tape again in early 2007, I had the interest and tech2 • Myles Nienstadt

nology to transfer my grandmother’s family history conversation to a digital file.

Hearing my grandmother’s emotional retelling of Thaddeus’ desertion to see his dying wife, and my rediscovery of his youthful 1861 photo that was taken after signing up with the Illinois volunteers prompted me to begin poking around on the Internet for further information about him. On community genealogical websites, I found brief mentions from transcribed old Oquawka or Monmouth Illinois newspapers of his two marriages I found confirmation from an Illinois state web site that he had served three months in 1861 with a volunteer unit.

In September 2007, one day after trying different search terms for various civil war units that I thought Thaddeus might have served with, I came across a preview of an e-book of selected portions of a Civil War-era journal written by Homer Jewett, a nineteen year old Iowa boy, that had been published in 2004 by his descendent, Tom Jewett. I quickly realized that Jewett’s journal at numerous points mentioned individuals named Kinsloes. To investigate further, I paid for access to the e-book of Jewett’s journal. On July 10 1862, I found that Homer wrote an entry that said Thaddeus had deserted two days earlier after receiving a letter that his wife was very ill.

For the first time, I had evidence to collaborate my grandmother’s account. The only trouble was that Thaddeus’ first

daughter was born in late April 1863 and his wife passed away a week later on May 3, 1863 – an eight-month discrepancy in my grandmother’s story.

I thought about contacting Tom Jewett who had published Homer’s journal but I felt that maybe I should explore if there were court martial records that might shed light on the time discrepancy. I had read a promising article on the National Archives web site that said that, despite the potential discomfort that some descendents have about finding a relative who was court martialed, the resulting records of the court proceedings are a great way to learning more about family history. At that time, I needed to focus my time on my career shift so I set aside further research about Thaddeus for a few months.

In April of this year, I again had time to poke around further on Thaddeus. I went to the local Mormon church to order four microfilm rolls of Civil War registers of court martials in an attempt to locate when and where Thaddeus Kinsloe’s court martial occurred.

Two arrived but I could not find his name. By then, however, I had learned about Google Books and the great strides that it had made in the past year to digitalize library holdings across the country of publications in the public domain.

One day, using Google Books, I got a search return on a 1900 collection of Abraham Lincoln’s correspondence that referenced the term, “Kinsloe.” On page 222 in the Appendix was an entry for April 30, 1864 where Lincoln directed the commanding officer in Little Rock, Arkansas to send the court martial record of Thaddeus Kinsloe for review. After sleeping on it over night, I decided to see where the original of this correspondence might be

located. The following day, I found an online database in Michigan that had been assembled with data from a 1953 publication that was then considered the definitive collection for all of his writings. The search results found the April 1864 message as well as an annotation that on June 15, 1864, the unexecuted portion of Thaddeus’ sentence to hard labor was remitted. I could not figure out, however, where or who had this correspondence.

With the new evidence in hand, I decided to return to web site of the National Archives to determine if they had the original of this correspondence. This time, unlike the previous year, I noticed on their web site that they had a link to a search engine for their collections.

I entered “Kinsloe” and immediately had a search result that showed that they had the original text records for his court martial.

So, at this hour, 11:45 am, on May 29, 2008, I am awaiting the delivery from the 11:00 am “Pull” of the original materials in the grey archive boxes on a cart to be wheeled into the research room.

Preface

• 3

4 • Myles Nienstadt

Chapter One

Ambition of an Iowa Boy

Henderson County, 1876

T

he Peoria & Oquawka Railroad tracks that a nineteen-year-old Iowa boy was walking alongside after leaving Galesburg, Illinois took him toward Oquawka, a steam boat port and ferry crossing on the Mississippi River1.

1 All references to Homer, his activities, and entries in his journal come from Jewett, Homer Harris, and Tom Jewett. 2004 (2008 Revised). Failed Ambition: the Civil War Journals and Letters of Cavalryman Homer Harris Jewett.

CreateSpace.com.

Ambition of an Iowa Boy

• 5

Despite the railway name, the train traffic veered five miles south of Oquawka to stop at Oquawka Junction before ending at river’s edge across from Burlington, Iowa. Since leaving Chicago, Homer had been ordering and selling envelopes along the way to finance his return to Iowa. To return to Burlington and Iowa – where he had departed for Chicago in an effort to enroll in a business school earlier in the summer, Homer Jewett only needed to retake the ferry boat across the Mississippi. He had arranged for his next batch of envelopes to be delivered for pick up at his next stop in Burlington. Homer’s pause on the morning of Sunday, September 15, 1861 in Oquawka Junction would prove fateful.

Walking along the tracks and passing through the towns and villages of Kewanee, Galva, Galesburg, Monmouth, and Biggsville, Homer undoubtedly took in the sights and sounds of local citizens rallying after the Union defeat of Bull Run to assemble new units for “three year service” to quell the Rebellion.

Arriving in Oquawka Junction, maybe to attend “Sabbath sermons” at the local church, Homer met Ezekiel Lynn, a farmer and his family including a son, Charles (age 21), and two daughters, Harriet (18) and Olive (14).

By the end of the day, Homer recorded in his journal that Charles had successfully recruited him for a cavalry company being formed locally in Henderson County on the Illinois side of the Mississippi - just before he would have stepped foot again in his home state of Iowa.

Throughout Illinois in the late summer and into September, new volunteers were avidly sought. Community leaders, whole towns, and returnees (soldiers who had completed their “three months” service in response to President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers after the shelling of Fort Sumter in mid-April 1861) 6 • Myles Nienstadt

Recruiting Advertisement Oquawka Spectator July 27, 1861

[Published October 3, 1861]

MUSTER ROLL Of Cavalry Co. From Henderson County

The following list of names comprise, in part, the Cavalry Company raised here for Col Bishop’s Battalion. The Company left on Monday evening on the Kate Cassell, and will go into Camp at Warsaw, at Camp Sullivan: T W Kinsloe, J M Vance, James Springstein, Charles Dawley, Samuel G. Martin, B F Carll, John Welch, T C Mitchell, Wm II Bell, Abraham Eagley, Andrew Wickiser, E Schlumph, Geo W Mead, James E Garrison, Homer H Jewett, Geo W Williams, Seymour D Martin, Richard Aylet, James W Moore, C W Moore, Charles Johnson, James F. Pointer, Charles Brown, Silas C Catlin, Lubon Moyer, William Walker, W H Highfield, H H Billings, Elisha Billings, W P Lyons, Henry Burkholder, John Klippell, Anthony Hany, James L Nelson, John C Fall, C E Crandall, J A Pence, J E Chapin, John Noble, T A Kinsloe, Wm Morris, Charles Hall, Roh’t J Pence, Thomas Snodgrass, J H Grady, F M Hurst, H P Hart, Wm H Willhite, Cyrus Chapin, Martin M Tuttle, Michael Brandy, George Porter, James Porter, William Rey, Charles Lynn, Noah Speck, Henry C Sewell.

often competed with each other to fill units.

Their offerings included financial rewards, recruitment into more glamorous cavalry units, or assignment with a particularly dashing general. Homer already possessed the ambition and patriotism to join the military. On that day, however, Charles Lynn’s persuasive way with words apparently convinced Homer to sign up with the cavalry unit being forming locally. He also had a practical consideration in that his funds had steady dwindled to about $2.50 despite his envelope sales and his clothing had become thread bare.

After being sworn into the cavalry company at Lynn’s house the next day, Homer went up to Oquawka to board until the end of the month. From here, the new unit would travel by the steamer Kate Cassel down the river to Warsaw. The unit was being formed by Thomas Kinsloe, an Oquawka hat and boot

From our personal knowledge of many of the men composing this fine Company, we have no hesitation in saying that they will be a credit to their Regiment; and if opportunity offers in the field, will do their whole duty as soldiers.

Thomas W. Kinsloe, 1850s Ambition of an Iowa Boy

• 7

KATE CASSEL2 Type: Sternwheel, wooden hull packet.

Size: hull, 141’ X 29’ X 5.’. 167 tons.

Power: 14’s-4 ft., 2 boilers.

Launched; 1845, California, Pa. 1861- , Ft. Madison-Rock Island 1863-64, U.S. troop transport Destroyed: 1864, dismantled Owners: 1861-63, B.H. Campbell, of Galena 1863-64, Capt. Hillhouse 2 Worden, Frederick J. 1986. Racing For The Broom And Other Upper Mississippi Exploits Of A Record-setting Steamboat Captain. Largo, Fla: F.J. Worden.

merchant, with help from James Vance, John A. Pence and William Morris on behalf of a Col. Bishop from Missouri. Illinois had contributed so many men and units in the early months of the war that, temporarily, the Federal government was not accepting new units from the state. As result, Col. Bishop formed some of his Missouri companies with men from Illinois and Iowa. By the end of September 1861, one third of the estimated 1,875 men of Henderson County between the ages of eighteen to fortyfive had joined various units in Illinois and elsewhere3.

During his half month in Oquawka and Henderson County, Homer became more acquainted with the bustling commercial river port of Oquawka and the Henderson county “boys” who enlisted in Kinsloe’s company. Similar to Homer’s home county of Marion, Iowa, Henderson County was initially settled by families migrating from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine or those who decided to move on from Kentucky, Ohio, and Kentucky.

Much like a Harper’s Weekly depiction of Indiana volunteers arriving at St. Louis, Capt. Kinsloe’s Black Hawk Cavalry took the Kate Cassel, a sternwheel steamboat, from Oquawka and arrived at Warsaw, Illinois in October 1861.

The Mississippi also brought large numbers of foreign immigrants coming north from New Orleans. In the late 1840s, Homer’s father

3 Oquawka Spectator, October 3, 1861.

8 • Myles Nienstadt

had sold his first farm in Iowa to a group of Dutch immigrants who founded nearby Pella where Homer went to college and retains to this day a visible Dutch influence in its architecture and customs. As a way station for inland future communities like Pella, Oquawka in the 1850s was a very cosmopolitan river town.

During their stopovers, many Germans, Irish, Dutch, and Scandinavians aboard the steam boats that stopped daily at the river port of Oquawka - some of the locals still called it by its old Black Hawk Indian name of Yellow Banks - contributed to the fortunes of the local merchants. “… The interesting part of the cargo now unloading at the Yellow Banks [are] the immigrants and the cabin passengers. The steamer is crowded with both classes. The old country people, in wooden shoes and queer headgear, swarming over the steerage and barges with their hard- wood, iron-bound trunks built during the reigns of the Great Frederick or Gustavus Adolphus, and which can now be found in use all through Wisconsin and Minnesota as shed kitchens and silos. There was an interchange of curiosity and comment between the loungers on the wharf and the cabin passengers, noticeably between the young bloods of the town and the fair travelers clustered along the railing of the ladies’ cabin. As the delay promised to be considerable, many of these came ashore and studied the architecture of our temple of Justice, with its Corinthian columns, which aspired to rank with the fallen glory of Baalbec. Some of them were tempted to see Moir Brothers manufacturing high wines, and found their way with difficulty among the saw-mills, and the lumber piled high around, and celebrated their return to the steamer by regal-

Ambition of an Iowa Boy

• 9

ing themselves with confections from Chickering’s “Yankee Notions.4” Because many immigrant families decided to stay longer and settled in and around Oquawka, the rosters of the Civil War units raised in Henderson County would include many young immigrant men.

During Homer’s brief stay in Oquawka, much like the local boys and girls, he also was likely attracted to the high drama of the daily arrival of the large heavily-laden steamboats or packets as they were often called. One local boy who was a year older than Homer and, like Thaddeus Kinsloe, the son of a prominent Oquawka merchant wrote of the arrivals of steamboats to Oquawka in his 1911 autobiography.

“The arrival at our landing of one of the Northern-line packets of the largest size with double barges loaded to the guards with immigrants and merchandise was a scene to rivet the attention of the small boy no less than that of his elders. From the water-line to the pilot-house she swarmed with life.

Sharp eyes caught her large size two miles down stream and when her whistle called the citizens of the landing to attention, an imposing body of merchants, idlers and small boys, under the leadership of Jo Hand, the steamboat agent, went down onto the wharf to receive the new arrival. She overwhelms us with interest as she advances, floating in majesty, and with a sense of power.

A railroad train strikes to the heart of the town, or through it like a’ dirk ; but the steamer comes before you with grace, full of color, like milady within the charmed circle of foot-lights. The bell sounds and the captain from his coign of vantage on the hurricane deck gives a quick signal over the shoul4 Jamison, Matthew H. 1911. Recollections Of Pioneer And Army Life. Kansas City: Hudson Press, pp. 48-49.

10 • Myles Nienstadt

der to the pilot in his handsome conservatory so high and lifted up, and which the small boy on the landing imagines must be a very heaven indeed. The engine bells jingle and talk back to the pilot, and the great paddle-wheels reverse, and Leviathan lays his nose gently upon the rocks to doze and sleep while the cargo is carried ashore, preceded by the clerk of the steamer.

Steamboats discharging cargo on St. Louis levee, 1853 Close at his heels, on the run; comes a caravan of deck-hands bearing boxes and bags and rolling barrels and hogsheads of brown sugar two men, sometimes four, to each of them. He has a large cargo to discharge, for in addition to the quotas for our own merchants, there are tons of groceries, hardware, wooden and willow ware, crates of crockery, dry goods, what not, for the country stores in Monmouth, Greenbush, Berwick, Ellison and Ambition of an Iowa Boy

• 11

Stringtown. He plats the space along the wharf for each of these consignments and long before he has exhausted his tally he is crowded for room.

The small boy is awed at the excellence of things around him. His senses are keenly alive to the odors of sweet and precious things that rise like incense from the heavy-laden steamer. The round globe has contributed to the happiness of the Yellow Banks.

The subtle pungent barks and seeds from the spicy isles, the oranges and limes from the languorous South, nuts from Brazil, sugars from “Belcher’s sugar-house” and “New Orleans” molasses from Louisiana and the “Tiger” State, with its slaves and sugar plantations, seemed more remote to the small boy than Spain or Italy, both of which were well represented in the cargo.5” In September 1861, as Homer strolled along the foot of Schuyler Street where the river boats unloaded, he also would have likely passed Kinsloe’s “Double Front Emporium.”

One half of the Emporium was a new clothing store that Thaddeus had opened the year before next door to his father’s older hat and boot store.

Homer’s journals indicate that he readily became friends with many of the Henderson County “boys,” who comprised most of Kinsloe’s company that became Company D of the 7th Missouri Cavalry Volunteers. Their names appear frequently in Homer’s journal from September 1861 to the fall of 1862. When they were encamped in Missouri, Homer was able 5 Jamison, Matthew H. 1911. Recollections of pioneer and army life. Kansas City: Hudson Press, pp. 46-48.

12 • Myles Nienstadt

Schuyler Street

to keep up with events by reading magazines and newspapers sent from Oquawka. Oquawka’s home town politics and quarrels among the men also would influence Homer’s military service and the early history of Company D. More than a century later, the references in Homer’s journal to the influence of Oquawka home town disputes among the Company men would guide me in my search for what really happened to Thaddeus Kinsloe. Homer’s journal entries in 1862 suggest personal friction between Captain Thomas Kinsloe and Lieut.

Vance.

“recd letter from home stating that his wife was not expected to live. He tried to get a furlough and having failed concluded to go home at all horizon.”

Thad Kinsloe

In March of 1862, Homer mentioned that Capt. Kinsloe resigned to return to Oquawka without specifying the cause of his resignation. The following week, Homer reported that Capt. Kinsloe’s son, Sergeant [Thad] Kinsloe, had been discharged along with three other men. Homer also said that his own promotion in the ranks had been blocked by the First Lieutenant James Vance’s feeling that Homer was a favorite of Captain Thomas Kinsloe. On May 9th, Homer records that Thad Kinsloe was with the unit but still under guard. All of this points to deep divisions among the ranks of the founding officers of the unit which are never explained.

Within two months after Capt. Kinsloe’s resignation, Homer wrote in his journal that his opinion of Lieut. Vance had significantly improved. In the month of June, Homer and Thad Kinsloe participated in several scouting patrols and bushwhacking expeditions with Vance. In the early morning hours on July 8, 1862, however, Thad Kinsloe deserted – according to Homer’s journal, he “recd letter from home stating that his wife was not expected to live. He tried to get a furlough and having failed concluded to go home at all horizon.”

Ambition of an Iowa Boy

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14 • Myles Nienstadt

Chapter Two

Epilepsy and Malice

O

ne hundred forty years later, I found myself at the National Archives. What truly befell Thaddeus Kinsloe after his desertion, I hoped would be illuminated by the contents of the grey archive box sitting on a cart that had just been rolled beside my table in Research Room 203.

With a sense of wonder, I opened the grey archive box and quickly found one folder labeled LL 1876. I slid out the first bundle of lined legal sheets clasped by a red ribbon - not the metal clips of modern legal dockets – and found myself fully absorbed in reading a court transcript written out in simple and clear handwriting, and then assorted attached affidavits with the signatures of family names that I recognized but also that of new names as well as letters from unknown personages a few addressed to his Excellency, President Lincoln.

The more I read, a new reality emerged.

Thad’s wife, Edith Henderson Langdon, survived whatever afflicted her in early July 1862 and had caused him to desert or be ab-

Top page of Kinsloe’s court martial transcript (above) First page of Kinsloe’s mother’s affidavit (right) Epilepsy and Malice

• 15

sent without leave. In my subsequent readings of historical studies, I would learn that Thaddeus’ temporary departure from his unit was not that unusual during the Civil War when home for soldiers in units formed from nearby communities was only a long horse ride away.

President Lincoln’s proclamation issued in the early 1863 offering amnesty for those absent without leave who returned to their units was an indication of the numbers of soldiers who had gone absent.

Margaretta Kinsloe’s affidavit February 25, 1863

Instead, the passages in Thaddeus’ court martial folder revealed his dramatic personal battle with a mysterious affliction that struck him down without warning over and over.

Whether the affliction predated the Civil War in his youth or continued through out his life remains unknown. The unmanaged and severe symptoms of his affliction, however, became manifest when Thaddeus attempted to service with volunteer calvary units formed in western Illinois and, particularly after the tragic loss of his first wife.

A week after Company D was defeated at the Battle of Independence, Missouri on August 11, while Thad was still at home with his wife, he apparently suffered one of several severe epileptic fits which left him weak and insensible for hours at a time. Affidavits by family and letters by Oquawka notables included in the court martial folder state that Thad was epileptic from childhood and that his fits bedeviled his ability to be a functional soldier despite his passion to serve.

In the spring of 1861 when he was selected to be in the first volunteer unit formed in Henderson County in response to the President’s

16 • Myles Nienstadt

call for “three month” volunteers, he had to be placed on sick furlough for the last month of his service. Again, while with Company D in January 1862, he had a seizure while on picket duty – losing his horse and equipment.

William Morris’s affidavit April 21, 1864

In late August 1862, when Thad’s fits subsided and he felt better, he traveled to St. Louis where he encountered some of the men from his Company who told him that after the unit’s defeat at Independence, Missouri the unit didn’t exist anymore and that the Company papers had been destroyed by the Confederates. He and they returned home to Oquawka.

Some of the men who returned were mustered out after escaping capture; others who had been captured were later paroled by the Confederates.

In January 1863, however, Lieut. James Vance, commanding officer for Company D, sent a sergeant to Oquawka to arrest Thad for desertion. Thad escaped the attempt to arrest him. The gravity of the situation prompted his mother to prepare an affidavit attesting to his poor health. The court martial record is silent about whether this affidavit was sent at that time to officers of the 7th Missouri Cavalry in an attempt to seek a formal discharge before Vance tried to make another attempt to arrest Thaddeus.

On March 10, 1863, President Lincoln issued an order of amnesty for men absent withEpilepsy and Malice

• 17

out leave from the Union Army if they reported back to their units by April 1st. Otherwise, they would face arrest for desertion. Thaddeus and his father allegedly sent letters to his unit expressing his intention to return but he was too ill to travel in time to meet the deadline.

Then suddenly, four days after the birth of his first daughter on April 26, his wife passed away. On May 4th, the day after accompanying his wife’s body back to her nearby hometown of Monmouth, Thaddeus suffered three epileptic attacks in one day. The effects of these and subsequent fits caused him to remain bed ridden and confined to a room in the home of his in-laws, the Langdons. In late May, his family enlisted a respected doctor with statements of support by the local Congressman and most of Henderson County’s elected leadership to write a letter to a close confidant of President Lincoln to seek an honorable discharge for Thaddeus.

In early June 1863, Lieut.

Vance took action again – this time requesting the sheriff of Warren County to arrest Thaddeus. When the sheriff entered the Langdon home to make good on the lawful order, he had to revive Thaddeus and was fearful of his “sinking condition.” Due to his weak condition, Thaddeus was sent to the military hospital in Keokuk, Iowa for two months and, in November 1863 when he was better, he was escorted by a guard to St. Louis, but then went unaccompanied on his own down to Little Rock, Arkansas where his unit was stationed.

18 • Myles Nienstadt

Court martial transcript specifying charges February 18, 1864

In February 18, 1864, Thaddeus was brought before a general court martial with a panel of seven judges – with Lieut. Vance serving as one of the judges. The prosecution presented four men from Kinsloe’s unit for testimony: John F. Hackney, Michael L. Blandee, John C. Fall, and James M. Vance. The testimonies of the first three men do not provide much detail about the circumstances of Kinsloe’s absence, whether he made an attempt to obtain a furlough from Vance, or the desertion itself.

Their testimonies do not appear to further the prosecution’s case or to be made with much enthusiasm. Lieut. James Vance’s primary case for desertion was that Kinsloe was absent without permission. Thaddeus had the opportunity to ask Vance whether he had saved the letters that Thaddeus allegedly had sent him within fifteen days of leaving without absence.

Vance said he did not. The Court asked Vance if he had received any letters since Thaddeus

left. Vance answered, only after Thaddeus was arrested the second time.

One defense witness, John Langdon [Kinsloe’s brother-in-law] was presented and two questions were asked of him by Thaddeus regarding affirmation of his attempt to let Lieut.

Vance know about his intention to rejoin his unit. No cross examination was undertaken.

The court martial proceedings then adjourned

“In Gods name, gentlemen, I ask for nothing but Justice, Justice in the name of humanity. Brand me not I pray as a Deserter, for I am the last to flee from the National Standard.”

T.A. Kinsloe

T.A. Kinsloe’s defense statement February 1864

Epilepsy and Malice

• 19

and reassembled the following day to review Kinsloe’s two submitted documents: his own statement and an affidavit of the arresting sheriff attesting to his poor health.

In his statement, Kinsloe sought understanding of the circumstances of his prolonged stay away from his unit: “That I lost my wife during my stay at home. The bereavement was sad, “the loss irreparable and that the loss, inflamed my health very much, and left me an Infant child to support. “In Gods name, gentlemen, I ask for nothing but Justice, Justice in the name of humanity. “Brand me not I pray as a Deserter, for I am the last to flee from the National Standard. “I claim to be an American soldier, and if I have breached, or smeared, I have done it ignorantly. “I pray of you, to take into consideration my wifes illness, as much as my own, and I think my steps, at least a part of them, can be justified.

“I never had been mustered into the U.S. Service, not even taken the Oath of Allegiance late about two months since. And have been under arrest since the 15 day of last June. And reported here to my Company (not under guard) on the Eve. of the 10th day of Nov. last. “In conclusion, Gentlemen I would ask, that my apparent neglect of duty be not severely punished, Yours With Esteem, T.A. Kinsloe.

On February 20th, after a few hours of discussion, the general court martial found Thaddeus Kinsloe not guilty of desertion but guilty of being absent without leave and sentenced him to loss of pay and hard labor for the remainder of his service.

20 • Myles Nienstadt

Chapter Three

Clemency A

fter the issuance of General Orders 15 on March 23, 1864 which affirmed Thaddeus’ sentence and his transfer to the Alton, Illinois military prison, the Kinsloe and Langdon families made a concerted effort to obtain clemency for him. During the week of April 18th, they prepared affidavits from both families, the arresting sheriff, another doctor in Monmouth, and William Morris - a veteran of Company D who helped the Kinsloes to form the unit, served with Thaddeus, and had earned widespread local respect after surviving a grave head wound at the Battle of Independence.

The Langdons affirmed that “he was so weak that he could not walk any great distance during all the time he was at our house [May 3, 1863-June 15, 1863] - in fact he was for the greater portion of the time confined to his room… From the day he first came to our house until the day of his arrest he appeared to be very anxious to recover sufficiently

March 23, 1864 General Orders No 15 sentencing Kinsloe to hard labor (top) William Morris’s affidavit of April 21, 1864 (bottom)

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to return to his Regiment. He often expressed his determination to return at all hazards.

“On his arrest he became very nervous and ill, was carried to a bed in a sinking condition, and it was not until after the application of Cold Water and Camphor that he revived – I considered his condition a dangerous one.”

William Morris said Thaddeus was, “subject to violent spells of sickness on which without any warning he would fall down insensible and remain in such a condition for some time.” … “Thaddeus was a good and prompt soldier and was ready to perform every duty required of him within his power, and was always relied upon and trusted by his officers.”

The notarized affidavit by Warren County Sheriff David Riggs carried special weight.

During the Civil War, Sheriff Riggs acquired the reputation of having arrested the most deserters in the state of Illinois. In his affidavit, Sheriff Riggs said that “when I arrested him, I found him in very poor health – He appeared to be suffering under a disease that I thought was palpitation of the heart – he seemed much prostrated and very week – On his arrest he became very nervous and ill, was carried to a bed in a sinking condition, and it was not until after the application of Cold Water and Camphor that he revived – I considered his condition a dangerous one. He informed me that he intended to have returned to his Regiment if he had not been arrested, just as soon as he was able to travel.”

At the time, almost no one outside the War Department would have been aware of the process for reviewing court martial convictions, but an almost-mythic aura surrounded President Lincoln and his office. As a result of this aura and especially for the Kinsloes and Langdons due to Lincoln’s roots to Illinois, they instinctively sought out local notables who had personal connections to the President to seek his review of Thaddeus’ conviction.

They persuaded three key founders of Oquawka and Henderson County who were close to and on familiar terms with Abraham

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Lincoln from his days as state legislator before being elected President to write letters directly to President Lincoln. Besides raising the issue of Thaddeus’ physical fitness to serve in the military and the death of his wife, each of the three leading citizens cited the malice with which Lieut. Vance pursued Thaddeus stemming from the quarrel he had with his father in the early days of Company D. The first of the three, Sumner Phelps was the primary founder of Oquawka and had donated the land on which the Henderson County courthouse was built in 1842. He also was a banker and the town’s most successful merchant. He had first met Abraham Lincoln when Lincoln was a captain of a company of troops that came to fight in the Black Hawk War of 1832 and over the years became close friends – Lincoln coming to the funeral of Sumner’s brother and Lincoln staying overnight at the Phelps home when he gave a speech during the Lincoln-Stephen Douglas race for Senate in 1858.

In his letter to the President, Sumner said, “young Mr. Kinsloe was raised in our Town almost – and I have known him since Twelve years of Age. At no time has his health been sufficient to stand the fatigue of the service in my opinion and at the time of his enlistment to my personal knowledge he was promised a Clerkship as I was informed at the time or he would not have enlisted. I also know from personal knowledge that there was a personal quarrel between his family and the present Captain of his Company and I believe Malice has had more to do with his conviction as a deserter than anything else and I believe his Pardon will observe the needs of justice and humanity. I can also state that we do not get up any more Loyal Folks than his family.”

Another letter writer, Abner Harding was a former Republican mayor of Monmouth and

“Although it is by rumor, I yet believe that a effect of Malice, has been the suggestive reason that he has been treated as a deserter by an officer, who is not been on friendly terms with his parents.”

Abner Harding

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First page of William D. Henderson’s letter dated April 22, 1864 to President Lincoln with A. Lincoln’s notation to Judge Advocate General pasted on back of Henderson’s letter 24 • Myles Nienstadt

had become a Brigadier General in 1863. In the spring of 1864, he was preparing to run successfully for the local seat in the United States House of Representations. He wrote to President Lincoln, “I beg leave to say that I have long known young Kinsloe and his parents. They are zealously loyal, and I have not believed any intention existed to desert the Army! Although it is by rumor, I yet believe that a effect of Malice, has been the suggestive reason that he has been treated as a deserter by an officer, who is not been on friendly terms with his parents. Judge Langdon one of our trusted friends so informs me. The young man was never fit for the Army for want of Physical power to do service. And I hope that the Rigors of Laws may be withdrawn from execution upon him.”

The third individual to write to President Lincoln was William D. Henderson, the namesake for Henderson County. Mr. Henderson’s letter stated that “Persons intimately acquainted with all the facts in the case censure Capt. Vance Severely. They believe that he is dealing unjustly with the young man on account of the difficulty he had with his father. Mr. Kinsloe is a young man, and left the service at the time he did in Company with many others older than himself. I have no doubt [to] honestly believe that they were illegally transferred into this Missouri Regiment and that they were not bound to serve in it and I do feel equally confident from a correspondence I had with his father that it was the intention of the young man to return to his regiment had he not been prevented by sickness. In view of all these circumstances, I think his a fitting case for Executive Clemency.

On April 30, 1864 when President Lincoln received Mr. Henderson’s letter, Lincoln wrote out a direction to the War Department’s Judge Advocate General to “exam[ine] and report [on T.A. Kinsloe’s court martial].” In the court martial folder, Lincoln’s notation has been pasted to the back of Henderson’s letter.

“Persons intimately acquainted with all the facts in the case censure Capt. Vance Severely.

They believe that he is dealing unjustly with the young man on account of the difficulty he had with his father. ...

I think his a fitting case for Executive Clemency” William D. Henderson

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Second page of Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt’s summary of Kinsloe’s court martial case with War Department’s Special Order No. 212 of June 18, 1864 remitting Kinsloe’s sentence

26 • Myles Nienstadt

Each step of my journey to uncover what befell Thaddeus after his desertion had yielded more detail than I had dared imagine. Now, I gazed in amazement to find Abraham Lincoln’s handwriting among the court martial papers, confirming the success of the Kinsloe family to obtain his personal intervention.

On June 8, 1864, Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt wrote a two-page summary of the case without taking an explicit position, simply highlighting the disabling sickness of Kinsloe recounted by the court martial documents and affirmed by the arresting sheriff, and the “earnest communication for executive clemency by Mr. Henderson.”

A week after Holt sent his summary to the White House, the War Department issued an order to remit the unexecuted portion of Kinsloe’s sentence. The court martial folder does not indicate if President Lincoln personally made the final decision or if the War Department made its own judgment with the apparent concurrence of Lincoln. If the Kinsloe family did receive a letter signed by President Lincoln informing them of his remitting of the court martial sentence, it is missing and likely destroyed according to the family legend.

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28 • Myles Nienstadt

Chapter Four

Hometown Dispatches H

omer Jewett’s journals provided my first glimpse of Thaddeus Kinsloe’s life as a soldier and pinpointed the date of his desertion. Through Kinsloe’s court martial record, I absorbed a new reality of Thaddeus beset by a chronic but mysterious affliction and the victim of an act of malice toward him and his family from his commander. Yet, while I reveled in the sense of accomplishment in finally knowing what happened to Thaddeus, new questions came to the fore in my mind as I absorbed this newly found material. The desire to resolve these questions while the case of Thaddeus was still fresh in my mind left me wanting to tap another potential repository of information.

As a result of my earlier Google searches, I had come across a genealogical web site that published a transcription of selected old newspaper reports from the Monmouth Atlas for 1864, one of which mentioned news from the Oquawka Spectator that Thaddeus Kinsloe’s court martial verdict had been set aside.

A further search for microfilm copies of the Oquawka Spectator in Google Book Search and the World Cat (www.worldcat.org) database indicated that it was available at the University of Virginia.

The week after leaving the National Archive Research Reading room, I went to the Tysons-Pimmit branch of the Fairfax Public Library to request two rolls of microfilm of the Hometown

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Lincoln campaign poster, 1860

Advertisement for Thaddeus A. Kinsloe’s new clothing store.

Oquawka Spectator April 25, 1861

Oquawka Spectator for the period of 1860-1867 via interlibrary loan. When a voice message from the library was left on my answering machine on June 12th saying that the microfilm had arrived, I eagerly walked through the door of the library shortly after the 10:00 am opening and went straight to the librarian’s desk.

Starting with the January 2, 1860 issue, I became acquainted with the mid-19th century style that the publishers of the Oquawka Spectator organized the layout of the paper. The publisher regularly devoted the front page to a featured literary article and sometimes a poem.

The second page was usually a mix of national, state, and local news articles without the familiar modern hierarchy of headline weight and font size. The third page mostly was hometown news items of interest to the publisher or related to businessmen whose advertisements appeared in the paper. Both the second and third pages usually ran larger advertisements.

The fourth page mostly contained small advertisements and public record announcements.

Beginning in March 1860, I encountered Thomas Kinsloe’s advertisements for his boot and shoe store. Later came Thaddeus Kinsole’s ads for his new store for clothing.

As I read the Oquawka Spectator coverage of President Lincoln’s election in the fall and the voices of anger from the south in reaction, I began feeling the quickening of history with the immediacy that I had never quite felt before from the text books of my school years.

The Thursday, April 18, 1861 issue of the weekly paper had its customary literary article on the first page, but the second page columns exploded with the headline, War! War! War!, announcing the commencement on the previous Friday of hostilities at Fort Sumter and reporting on the urgent rallies held in Oquawka and elsewhere locally.

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All public life changed with one fell stroke.

Sumter fell on Sunday, April 14th. By Monday morning, April 15th, the Oquawka Spectator reported that a huge American flag was suspended from a wire strung between two buildings over Schuyler Street, the main business street, and that all the stores and public buildings had flags of various sized flying to the breeze. In many communities in this part of Illinois, the abrupt change in public life meant that public schools remained closed, not to re-open until the fall of 1862.6 On Tuesday, Illinois Governor Yates issued general order No. 2, providing for the immediate organization of six regiments.7 That afternoon in Oquawka, handbills were posted up around town calling a public meeting to be held at the Henderson County Court House for the afternoon of the following day to take measures in response to Yates’ call.

At the meeting in the court house, “There was a perfect rush; no question then as to who would go, but who could get a chance to go.”8 Ninety men rushed up to enroll in the Oquawka Company being raised by Francis A. Dallam, a thirty-six year old founder and editor of the Oquawka Plaindealer, a local paper firmly in the Republican camp. When Dallam found out that he could not bring all ninety men, the volunteers met on Monday, April 22nd and selected thirty five from their midst – Thad being one of the selected.

Reflecting the commercial character of Oquawka, almost one–third of the company 6 Monmouth, Illinois newspaper

Henderson County Court House in 1981 (top) and in the early 1900s (bottom)

7 History of Mercer and Henderson Counties, 1882, p. 1013.

8 History of Mercer and Henderson Counties, 1882, pp. 1013-1014, Hometown

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were young store clerks between the ages of 18 to 24 like Thad who was 21. Eight volunteers where foreign born – four from Germany, including the tallest at 6 foot 2 inches, Frederick Odendahl, from Cologne.

On the afternoon of April 23rd, Dallam and his thirty-five volunteers were escorted by townspeople and families to the train depot at Oquawka Junction - then known as Sagetown where they took the train to Quincy.

One of the young merchant clerks, Matthew Jamison would later write, “On the day we left home for the South there was a throng of people on the streets and around the court-house to see us off.

There was a current of strong patriotic feeling in the hearts of those who had assembled to bid us Godspeed, … Joseph Chickering, whose patriotic fervor found expression in song … mounted a wagon in the crowded street and led some of the young vocalists in singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

As the hour of departure drew near a great throng from the village and surrounding country gathered in vehicles to escort the volunteers to the depot in Sagetown, five miles south [for the train to Quincy].9” The volunteers were enlisted in Quincy and, in elections for officers, the young clerks were elected for almost all of the lieutenant, corporal, and sergeant positions under the leadership of Dallam who was elected captain.

Thaddeus was elected to be the third sergeant.

In addition to the clerks, another one third of the volunteers were farmers and the remaining third were laborers from enterprises in town,

9 Jamison, Matthew H. 1911. Recollections Of Pioneer And Army Life. Kansas City: Hudson Press, p. 150. Digitalized book from Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (http://hdl.handle.net/10111/UIU COCA:recollectionsofp00jami).

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“The trip from Oquawka was a continual ovation.

At every station to enthusiastic crowds greeted and cheered them, and along the route men in the fields, and women and children at the doors and windows, waved hats, flags, and handkerchiefs, showing to what mighty depth the popular heart was moved for the Union. ” Matthew Jamison

tradesmen such as carpenters, painters, saddlers, or young teachers.

From Quincy, Illinois, Dallam’s company took the train via Springfield to Cairo where on April 29th they were mustered in by Capt. (later General) Pope.

A local history book written in 1882 described their train trip. “The trip from Oquawka was a continual ovation. At every station to enthusiastic crowds greeted and cheered them, and along the route men in the fields, and women and children at the doors and windows, waved hats, flags, and handkerchiefs, showing to what mighty depth the popular heart was moved for the Union. But this fiery, glorious spirit waned to a chilling degree on approaching within forty or fifty miles of their destination [of Cairo], and soon it seemed that they were in the enemy’s country. Sympathy with secession was greater there, in “lower Egypt,” than love for the old flag.10” In his 1911 autobiography, Matthew Jamison wrote that “after an exchange of telegrams between Capt: Dallam and Col. Ben Prentiss [while at Quincy], we took the train for Cairo, where we were incorporated into the 10th Illinois Infantry as Company D. Cairo was the rendezvous for troops, the base of supplies, and the chief strategical point in the Southwest in the days of hurried organization under the first call for 75,000 men.”

“The population of the town comprised many traitors in disguise; rebel spies crowded elbows on the streets with the Union troops and a good deal of confusion and uncertainty marked the administration of the post. The regiments of the State began with the number 7, where our regiments in the Mexican War left off, and they were composed of the best blood of the commonwealth. The 9th and 10th 10 History of Mercer and Henderson Counties, 1882, p. 1014.

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Regiments occupied barracks along the levee on the west side of the town. Here we had a local drilland parade ground, and our time was occupied by squad, company and battalion drills, including the zouave skirmish drill, and in private apartments the sword and Turner athletic exercises, the latter excelled in by the Germans from St. Louis.”

Illinois volunteers drilling at Camp Defiance, Cairo, Illinois with Mississippi River in background, May 1861.

“Our German-American friends occupied a separate barrack and were supplied with free beer by the car-load from their home breweries, and as a result these staunch friends of the Union were most of the time in a condition of incertitude – the captain of the company particularly, a big, fierce- visaged six-footer, uniformly appearing at the head of his men on dress parade his face blazing like a headlight. They stood firm by their war-cry throughout the service. “Zwei Lager und eine Union!11” In early May, the local newspaper, Oquawka Spectator, urged the hometown boys to write with updates, “we expect to hear from them regularly through one of the officers, who promised 11 Jamison, Matthew, pp. 151-152.

34 • Myles Nienstadt

to keep us advised of their whereabouts and doings.”

For the remainder of the war, the paper frequently published correspondence from various military units written by the hometown boys. The first dispatch published on May 16th

[published May 16, 1861] from camp defiance.

Camp Defiance, Cairo, May 5.

Dear Colonel: I have endeavored to get an opportunity to post you as to our whereabouts &e., ever since our arrival here, but have been so busy and unsettled as not to have much time or opportunity for writing. We are now comfortably settled in our quarters, and will try and let the “Folks at Home” hear from us frequently. The Boys are all well and doing well. It is raining very hard to-day, and we have nothing to do; but to lay quiet in our quarters: As this is Sabbath we are to have preaching in the encampment this afternoon, and indeed every Sabbath day. Dr. Clarkson of Chicago preached last Sabbath, the whole encampment joining in singing “Old Hundred” and the “Star Spangled Banner.”

There are now three full regiments at this command, and several companies besides, making in all over 4,000 troops.

Colonel Prentiss is Commander of the Seventh Regiment and also of the encampment.

Col. Oglesby’s Regiment came here with us.

Col. Paine arrived here on the 3d with his

provides an eyewitness account by the unit’s first lieutenant, Samuel J. Wilson, of the military training and drilling that he and Thaddeus began undergoing upon arrival in Cairo.

Regiment. Our boys have the honor of being the third company in the Seventh Regiment.

Capt. Dallam has done all in his power to secure the position we occupy, and the boys feel under great obligations to him, and will stand by him to the last. The Commissionary Department is very well furnished, so that we have plenty of the necessaries of life, and the luxuries we do not desire. Our daily rations consist in bread, beef, pork, coffee, molasses, tea, rice, beans, vinegar, &e. Cooking utensils are pretty plentifully provided, and clothing in the shape of shirts, shoes, and socks. The following are the regulations of our camp: Reveille at 5 in the morning; Breakfast Call at 7; Guard Mounting at 9 ½; Dinner Call at 12; Company Drills from 1 to 3; Dress Parade 6; Tattoo at 9: Taps at 10, when all lights must be put out.

The Hospital is provided with excellent physicians and surgeons. Enclosed I send you a copy of the Camp Register. As it is time this should be in the office I will not add anything more, at present. Yours, &e., S.J.W. [Samuel J. Wilson]

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Within two months of service, Thaddeus’ health condition began to bedevil him. The Oquawka Spectator reported that, in the last week of June, Thaddeus was sent back from Cairo. In its July 4th edition, the paper reported that the volunteers “have had to forego all the comforts of home, and been subject to many privations and hardships… [upon his return] Thaddeus has been confined to his bed, most the time very sick…He is now better, and by good nursing it is hoped that he will soon be up again.”

From the court martial record, I learned that Thaddeus Kinsloe’s mother said that his childhood health was poor. In the spring of 1861, however, we can only speculate about the level of awareness that Oquawka’s leading citizens and other townspeople about Thad’s affliction when ninety of them met to include him among the few to join the first military unit that was raised locally. Even if some of them were aware that he had some sort of health affliction, Oquawka’s townspeople might have individually entertained a number of rationales. Perhaps, the serious symptoms of his affliction did not manifest themselves in his pre-war civilian life. Maybe his family’s social standing was a factor. Given the widespread belief the war was going to be quick and splendidly resolved in favor of preserving the union, many may have not been concerned about physical fitness. At the same time, given our modern medical understanding as of 2008 that epilepsy can appear at any point in a person’s life and that the cause is unknown in more than half the cases12, Thaddeus and his family may have had no inkling of what would come.

On the eve of the Civil War, epilepsy was little understood. In his 1911 autobiography, Matthew Jamison, one of Thad’s fellow vol12 www.epilepsy.com

36 • Myles Nienstadt

unteers from Oquawka, described a desperate family in the 1850s who had sought out Jamison’s father to drain blood from a young epileptic son in an effort to provide relief for the boy’s fits. In the court martial affidavits, one of the doctors gave an extensive explanation that Thaddeus’ fits were caused by abnormal rushes of blood out of his heart and compounded by emotional strains. Although the heart condition now seems farfetched, modern medicine recognizes that stress is among the environmental causes of epilepsy. Perhaps, Thad’s epilepsy and the frequency of his disabling fits deepened with the mounting stress of his military service beginning with the rigor of drilling in the summer of 1861, the leadership strife in the following year within Company D of his father’s Black Hawk Cavalry unit, and in May 1863 the death of his wife.

After Thad left for Cairo in late April 1861, more volunteer units were being assembled in Oquawka. In the May 9th edition, the Oquawka Spectator reported that the Union Grays, an independent company was organized with Charles S. Cowan elected Captain; John M. Wilson, 1st Lieutenant; Thad’s father, Thomas W. Kinsloe, as 2nd Lieut.; and William H. Phelps, 1st Sergeant. The Union Grays afforded a chance to drill and parade in front of the local townspeople but in mid-summer when new units were called for and assembled, the leadership of the Union Grays went into service in separate ways. Except for Phelps, each would later seek to command a unit of their own.

At approximately the same age as Thomas Kinsloe, Charles S. Cowan was a very successful Oquawka merchant and highly Republican in his politics. He had a son, Charles W. Cowan, who was just about the same age as Thaddeus and also employed as a clerk in the Hometown

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family business. Later that year, Charles S. Cowan and son would become the Captain and a Private of Company E, the “Three Year Service” unit of the 10th Illinois Infantry formed

by Francis A. Dallam in August 1861. Captain Charles S. Cowan went on to have a long and distinguished military record, including participation in General Sherman’s march on Atlanta.

At the age of twenty-eight, John M. Wilson was a married merchant with no children. On May 5, 1864, John M. Wilson would become Captain of Company D formed locally and attached to the 138th Illinois Infantry. William H. Phelps was a twenty-seven year old clerk and the son of the founder of Oquawka, Sumner S. Phelps – the successful merchant and banker who would later write to his friend Abraham Lincoln to urge clemency for Thaddeus. William H. Phelps appears to be the only one of the initial leaders of the Union Grays not to later join the military or lead a unit, most likely on account of him having a one-year old first born daughter at home.

Thomas Kinsloe also had a strong desire to lead a military unit, probably motivated by a strong sense of patriotism as well as an expression of his competitive pride in his social standing in the community. In August 1861, Thomas Kinsloe was given an opportunity to form a cavalry unit when a representative of Col. Bishop from northern Missouri sought out local leaders for assistance. In the spring of 1861, the War Department had issued orders to accept no further cavalry units13. Within six weeks after the Union loss at Bull Run in late July of 186, however, where the Confederacy 13 Davis, William C., and Russ A. Pritchard. 1998.

Fighting Men Of The Civil War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 70, 72.

38 • Myles Nienstadt

had demonstrated the utility of cavalry, the Union put thirty-one mounted volunteer regiments into service, and eighty-two more – including Kinsloe’s – by December 31, for a total of more than 90,000 cavalrymen. If the veracity of the notarized clemency statements of Thomas and Margaretta Kinsloe is believed, they and others sought to dissuade their son Thaddeus not to seek further military service. Thaddeus, however, apparently insisted on serving at his father’s side rather than stay at home. Perhaps, he also felt the same competitive social pressures to re-enlist as he watched many of his friends – the young merchant clerks with whom he had grown up with and were part of the initial Oquawka “three-months service” volunteer unit that went to Cairo – join Captain Cowan’s infantry unit which was being formed in August 1861.

Thaddeus undoubtedly shared a patriotic ambition to preserve the Union that was prevalent among the young men who were just beginning to work as clerks in their father’s stores on Oquawka’s river front. The rapidly growing river town was thriving through its profitable commerce and trade links up and down the Mississippi.

As young men, Thad and other merchant clerks also likely imagined the prospect of military adventures in glorious terms. Even if some of them had fathers who might have participated in the Mexican or Indian wars, none of them could have anticipated the pain and suffering that was to come about as a result of the impact of new weapons technologies and means of communications on the scale of military warfare that they were about to experience. To Thaddeus and Homer Jewett, the Iowa boy passing through Oquawka Junction, Captain Kinsloe’s Black Hawk Cavalry likely seemed an opportunity too good to pass up.

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[published October 31, 1861]

Ironically, the arc of Thaddeus Kinsloe’s ambition and adventure would mirror the trajectory of the Union Army during the course of the war: starting from the wildly romantic expectations of abilities in 1861 to the depth of defeat and despair in the spring of 1864, renewed confidence by the fall of 1864, and finally relief with a heavy price in 1865.

In October 1861, Thaddeus’s life seemed glorious. He was a member of the Black Hawk Cavalry named after the fierce Black Hawk fighters that the early settlers – including a young Captain Abraham Lincoln – had encountered in 1832. He was elected by his father’s company to be a sergeant. Further, on 30th of the month, he married the daughter of a well-to-do merchant from Monmouth, Illinois, sixteen miles east of Oquawka along the Peoria & Oquawka tracks.

Capt. Kinsloe and son, came up on Saturday last, on a short visit from their camp near Warsaw. The Capt. looks well and reports the general health of his Company, good. We understand he takes with him several recruits to join his Company.

Married. In Monmouth, at the residence of the bride’s father, Oct. 30th, by the Rev. R.C. Matthews14 assisted by the Rev. W.T. Smithall, of Galesburg. THADDEUS A. KINSLOE [Black Hawk Cavalry, U.S.A.] of Oquawka, and EDITH H. daughter of John Langdon, Esq., of Monmouth.

The printers were duly remembered on this occasion by the young Soldier and his Bride.

To them we tender our best wishes that their journey through life may ever be attended with prosperity, happiness and contentment.

14 Reverend R. C. Matthews, Doctor of Divinity came to Monmouth in December, 1851, and took charge of the First Presbyterian church, and continued as its pastor till the day of his death in 1881 [Contributed by Sara Hemp; Rushville Times, Rushville, Schuyler County, Illinois, November 24, 1881]

40 • Myles Nienstadt

[published November 28, 1861]

Two weeks after his wedding, Thaddeus left Oquawka “riding his father’s splendid black charger” to rejoin his unit in Warsaw, Ill, while “the captain left on Saturday last by steam.” Warsaw is about sixty miles downstream on the Illinois side of the river just across from the top of the state of Missouri which meant that it would have been about eight hours for Thaddeus to travel on horseback.

Moreover, as I began reading the pages of the Oquawka Spectator that were published into the fall of 1861 and early 1862, I unexpectedly encountered Thaddeus in his own voice providing first hand accounts of his military experience. John B. Patterson and Edwin H. N. Patterson, the father and son owners and printers of the Oquawka Spectator, who were duly remembered by Thaddeus and Edith when they were married began publishing his letters under the heading “Occupation Army of Missouri.”

On the third Thursday of November—two years before President Lincoln proclaimed it a national Thanksgiving Day, the Oquawka Spectator published its first letter from Company D, written by Thaddeus.

black hawk cavalry

Mrs. T. A. Kinsloe has permitted us to take the following extracts from a letter just received from her husband: “Camp Stanley, Mo., Nov. 20.

“Our Regiment has been mustered into the service of the United States, under the name of Black Hawk Cavalry – and ours is Company E. “Two Companies move to-day, and we have marching orders for to-morrow – destination, Hudson City, Mo. This place is situation on the H. and St. Jo. R.R. [Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad]15, distant about 160 miles from our present camp.”

15 Three months earlier, the railroad experienced its worst disaster of the war on September 3, 1861, when bushwhackers burned a bridge over the Platte River, causing a derailment that killed between 17 and 20 and injured 100 in the Platte Bridge Railroad Tragedy. Wikipedia contributors, “Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia. org/w/index.php?title=Hannibal_and_St._Joseph_ Railroad&oldid=208892734 (accessed July 18, 2008).

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In the last month of 1861 and the first month of 1862, the Oquawka Spectator published three dispatches from the Black Hawk Cavalry, all written by Thaddeus.

[published Dec. 12, 1861] army correspondence

Hudson City, Mo., Dec. 6, ‘61.

Dear Spec.: Since last I felt the grasp of your friendly hand, we are nicely housed in the “tented field.”

We left Alexandria on Sunday, Nov. 24 at 7 A.M., en route for Hudson City, and arrived at Hannibal on Sunday night, expecting to take Rail thence to Hudson, but were delayed on account of damage done to the Road by Secesh16.

Found the Illinois 26th encamped and nicely cared for at Hannibal, we visited their cap. and found them to be soldiers to every sense of the term. Col. Loomis is the commanding officer.

Monday morning – bugle call at 4 o’clock, company to breakfast at 4 ½ - baggage and men all on board by 5 – and with three hearty cheers we are all bound for “Dixie Land.”

There are at this town including infantry and cavalry, about 2,400 soldiers in camp and then one Ohio regim’t when I do, but justice when I say they ware well disciplined and splendid looking men – No. 1 specimens of the native state; their equipments are of the most im16 Northern term for secessionists or Confederate soldiers and sympathizers.

42 • Myles Nienstadt

proved style, and to challenge their bravery I dare not. I learn that we are to remain here until we get fully equipped and mounted; then we will take the field – preferring fighting to eating, but would a little rather EAT first.

The 22nd Mo., Col. Tuster have several prisoners here in custody, some have been prominent leaders in the Rebel army. What their doom may be remains to be seen; I presume they’ll get their just deserts – hanging.

I learn that Union troops have surrounded the Secesh above alluded to and recovered all the lost property.

T. Kinsloe

[published January 2, 1862]

Hudson City, Mo., Dec. 22, ’61.

Dear Spec.: Old winter has come upon us with its cold and snowy mantle – not at all favorable for soldiering.

On Thursday morning last news was received at head-quarters that the Rebels were congregating on the N. M. R.R.[Northern Missouri Railroad], for the purpose of tearing up the track and burning bridges. Part of our Regiment, under command of Major McKee, started on Friday morning to pay them a visit and ascertain the facts in the case. The command returned this morning, and as near as I can learn report as follows: They followed the Railroad line as far as Warrington, tracing the enemy by the damage done the road, in several places. Upon nearing the above palace they met a couple of suspicious characters with shot guns; the Major commanded them to “Halt,” saying if they did not impart all they knew concerning the enemy, they would blow their brains out on the spot. After a little hesitation they let down, declaring that they were the enemy’s pickets, and that they were between three and four hundred strong, and were all in camp at Warrington. Our men after learning these facts, dismounted on the spot, leaving every 5th man in charge of the horses, when they formed in line and advance on the enemy, finding them all nicely concealed in a crab apple thicket in the suburbs of the place.

The majority of them had dismounted and had tied their horses, and was preparing

for breakfast. Our men approached within about 100 years of them before they were discovered, when they let loose of musketry, killing 7 on the spot and wounding several. This confused them so that they could do nothing – they all took leg bail but about 150 who showed fight. The battle continued about 30 minutes, and sums up as follows: Enemy’s loss – killed 20 Wounded 45 Prisoners 82 Horses and Mules taken 70 And 100 stand of Arms, besides a quantity of Blankets and other things that they could not carry, destroying several stand of arms by breaking them on trees, having no baggage wagon it was impossible to carry them.

Our loss was only 8 wounded, mostly flesh wounds; they are all in a fair way to recover. I have just been over paying the prisoners a visit, and find that we have had three of them in custody before, who were released upon taking the oath.

The Col. says that the command that took them, can dispose of them as they see fit. They have, I believe, decided upon playing Turkey with them on New Years’ day. I flatter myself a pretty good shot and think that I’ll take a share.

Last night we had a fall of snow 8 or 9 inches in depth. The weather has been very clear, but since the snow has moderated a little.

Yours, T.A.K.

Hometown

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[published January 16, 1862]

Letters from Missouri Mr. T.S. Carll has kindly permitted us to take the following extracts from letters received by him from members of the Black Hawk Regiment, dated Macon City, Jan. 10.

The Captain has just come in from Headquarters with orders “for all men that are in condition for picket guard to mount their horses and start immediately.”

About four hundred of our men are going. Judging from appearances and actions, they must expect an attack. I have not been very well for several days, therefore I am compelled to remain in Quarters.

The boys in our Company are all well; Frank, in particular. I have never seen him look better – and all are in high spirits.

We have a reserve here of about seven hundred men, and “can whip our weight in wild cats.” Our boys are only “too anxious” to have a brush with the rebels. They are just in their element when they thing there is “any show for a fight.”

Frank, John Welsh, Columbus and I mess with the Captain.

T.A.K.

44 • Myles Nienstadt

Two days after writing his Jan.. 10th letter, Thaddeus experienced his first documented fit when he fell off his horse and lost his equipment. One of his friends, William Morris, later cited Thad’s fall in his affidavit in support of clemency for Thad. The newspaper reported that Thaddeus came home for a visit for a few days in the middle of February – no mention is made of his illness.

However, it is clear that trouble is brewing in the Company. In a letter written on March 3rd just before hand, Thaddeus boasts of the Rebel fear of the Black Hawk Cavalry name but then discloses that the Black Hawk Cavalry is no more and has been absorbed into the 7th Missouri Regiment. Furthermore, the men of the former Black Hawk Cavalry faced a general examination in a week’s time and those that fail the standard would be discharged. More ominously, he tells “enemys to my back” that he is safe in camp and willing to assist in fighting the battles of our Country.”

[published march 13, 1862] army correspondence

Hudson City, Mo., March 3, 1862.

Dear Spec.: Last Saturday, a reconnoitering party of Home Guards, or State Militia, made a visit to Bloomfield, it being reported that a number of Rebels had concentrated at that place. Upon their entrance into that village, they were warmly received by the Secesh, that were concealed in barns and houses. They received the fire nobly – but “skedaddled” in much better order. This flight did not, I presume, arise from fear – Oh, no! simply caused by struggles to subdue their passions. Fudge on all such imitations of soldiers, they are nothing but Renegades from Prince’s Army, sponging a living from Uncle Sam. The Home Guards never offered to return the fire, but took it like little men, just as it came. Seven of them were wounded, and three killed. They then fell back to Hudson, and are now, I presume, crunched in some corner, meditating on the past, and wishing that it was not I.

ing to assist in fighting the battles of our Country, and, if needs be, try them a round or two.

The Regiment formerly known as the Black Hawk Cavalry has undergone an entire change. It is now known as the Missouri 7th Reg. Cavalry. Col. Heuston, of the Regular Army, has taken command of the same.

We, I hear, are to pass a general examination this week, and any failing to come up to the standard, as Cavalrymen are to be discharged.

While I write, it is snowing smartly. Weather very cold. The health of the Company is good, with few exceptions. F.C. Bush and R. J. Pence are down with the measles, not dangerous.

Respectfully yours, T.A. Kinsloe.

A detachment of our men have gone in pursuit of the Rebels, and I can assure you that, in case they find them, they will fare rough, or every man die at his post. They dread the name of Black Hawk Cavalry, and well they may, for death’s their portion.

I would here mention, for the benefit of my would-be friends – friends to my face and enemys to my back – that I am safe in camp, and, as actions speak louder than words, I am willHometown

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The following week, on Monday March 10 , Homer Jewett writes in his journal that all of the sergeants including Homer, Thaddeus, and John Langdon had been reduced in the ranks. On Friday the 14th, Homer reports that a number of companies have been consolidated with William McKee as the new captain to replace Captain Kinsloe who resigned that day.

That evening, the former Black Hawk Cavalry men caucused as recommended by Captain Kinsloe and elected Thaddeus Kinsloe as chairman. Over the weekend, they heard reports that the new officers would be appointed by McKee, not elected from among the ranks. th

Homer recorded in his journal on Monday that “Our Comp’y are very mad because they did not appoint Mead and Homer” to the sergeant positions. He also wrote that four boys including Thaddeus Kinsloe and John Langdon had been discharged. After the consolidation, according to Homer, only Lieut. Vance was able to retain his position under McKee. The Oquawka Spectator makes no public mention of the leadership squabbles that occurred that month. On April 10, 1862, the paper noted the return of Captain Kinsloe with warm words of praise, “Capt. T.W. Kinsloe, late of the Black Hawk Cavalry, in Missouri, has returned home, having resigned his position in the Army. ‘King’ looks well and hearty as if he could stand a half-dozen rough campaigns.”

For the next two months, Thaddeus discontinued his correspondence with his hometown newspaper. Instead, Charles Lynn, his former neighbor from Sagetown would send a series of letters, none of which mention Thaddeus. Thaddeus, however, had not been let go, instead “Thad Kinsloe remains with us but is still under guard” according to Homer’s May 9th entry.

46 • Myles Nienstadt

As with Homer, by early June, Thaddeus appears to have weathered the cloud of turbulence that accompanied the resignation of his father. He resumes his correspondence with the editor of the Oquawka Spectator with a letter dated June 9th fulsome in his joy at being in Missouri, praise of others in his unit, and grandly expectant of victory, “The sun is now setting in kingly glory – may his golden beams soon shine upon a preserved Union, and set forever upon the treasonable designs of southern ambition.”

[published June 26, 1862] army correspondence

Independence, Mo., June 9, 1862 Dear Spec.: - Independence, I think, is the garden city of the State. No improvements are going on in the city worthy of note, the enterprise and liberality of its denizens, being deadened by the war.

I presume that we shall remain here for some time, working principally in Jackson County, and about the Kansas lines.

Missouri is recovering fast from the effects of Secession that have been hanging over her like a malaria, blighting its prospects, and injuring its future prosperity for a time.

Col. Quantrel is about the only Secesh Lion in these parts, and his men are gradually disappearing.

We are kept busy scouting both day and night. We are in hot pursuit of Col. Q., and if he don’t look sharp he will go up when he least suspects. He is a bold, daring fellow.

At times, I am told, he as ventured inside our lines, in disguise. We have several traps baited for him, and if don’t step cautious, one of ‘em will spring. You need not be surprised to hear of our contending with him before long, judging from his midnight visits of late.

No doubt he is anxious for a fight, but thinks it best to know our strength beforehand.

He is right there, for we are all for fight, and wont scare no more than Jones’ barn.

Our midnight scout has just came in. succeeded in getting 3 stands of one fife and a bowie knife. The had skedaddled, as usual, for the

They arms, birds bush.

Our camping grounds are beautiful – having an excellent spring of pure water inside the line. Health of the men good.

The Hospital a total stranger to all, except a few militia soldiers that were wounded sometime since, near Kansas City, when guarding the U.S. mail to that place.

Lieut. Col. Buel has command of our battalion, (the First.) He is of the regular army, a gentleman of fine abilities, and enjoys the universal love and admiration of his command.

The 2nd battalion is stationed at Marshall, under the respective commands of Major McKee and Snyder. The 3d is at Lexington, Col. Hueston and Major Bredette in command, that being the Head Quarters of that Regiment.

Our Company paid this memorable place – Lexington- a visit last week. It has suffered much from last summer’s battle. Not only public, but private, property has been destroyed by the wholesale. Among the most principal buildings destroyed were the Masonic College, Seminary and Boarding House. They had been beautiful edifices, and of the most modern style. In the College walls I counted 105 cannon ball holes, besides grape canister and musket.

A great number of Col. Mulligan’s men were stationed in and about the College, and that, I presume, is why Price directed his shots at that Hometown

• 47

point. The dwellings also, bear the marks of deadly messengers, here a grape and there a musket ball half way concealed in the timber.

Capt. Hawks’ Co. of the 3d has just returned from a scout. They had a skirmish with the Rebels east of Lexington, killing 4, and taking 9 horses. Our loss, orderly Sergeant killed, pierced with 12 balls, four through the head, killing him instantly; also, the Captain wounded in the arm.

Jackson County suffered much last winter from the noted Jennison’s Band. I noticed in one day’s march, the ruins of 13 dwellings that he had fired, destroying both houses and contents, barely allowing the inmates to escape with their lives.

The weather for weeks past has been very dry and warm, in consequence of which the farmers must suffer much.

By late papers, we have received flattering accounts from Gen. Halleck’s Army.

May success attend them on every hand, and “onward to victory” be their motto.

The sun is now setting in kingly glory – may his golden beams soon shine upon a preserved Union, and set forever upon the treasonable designs of southern ambition.

Thad.

Cavalry Charge.

48 • Myles Nienstadt

On June 23, Homer’s journal provides an interesting vignette about their shared military experiences during what would likely to prove to be the best and most memorable month for Thaddeus as a cavalry man.

“Lieut. Vance last night chose 11 men from our own Company whom he wanted to go with him on a bushwhacking expedition. The 11 were Snoefo.*; Sergt. Ross, Sergt. Abernathy, Corp Springstein, Ferrier Morris, Wm Willhite, James Nelson, John C Fall, Thad Kinsloe, Joe* Highfield, David Page , and myself. Each one was to take a revolver and dress in citizens clothes if possible. A stage was to take us from here and deposit us in the brush. Accordingly we started at daylight in the stages—the windows of which were closed. We take 6 days provisions. About 20 miles from here on the Lexington road in the vicinity of the Mo. River we decamped from the stages taking our provisions with us into the brush. We halted about 100 yds from the road and had a long consultation. Having concluded to conceal our rations in the brush and travel towards the river taking enough food for supper & breakfast. We came to the river near a Mr. Matthews, a union man, and here we lay in the brush until night. After dark they kooked us some supper and we partook largely. About 10 we laid ourselves down in his yard and had one on watch all the lime. I stood one hour. You had better believe times seemed pretty critical as I sat in the dark shade of a tree peering out into the thick gloom ready to catch the first light sound that would be made by an approaching enemy.”

Cavalry Column on the March.

Two weeks later, Thaddeus received the family letter with the distressing news that his wife was ill and not expected to live. Unlike Lieutenants Vance or Pence who as officers had obtained furloughs for home visits in April, as Hometown

• 49

a private, Thaddeus was not eligible for a furlough. Homer wrote that Thaddeus tried to get a furlough and when denied, decided to desert.

Despite the ambiguous testimony that indicated that it was widely rumored that Thaddeus had left without permission from Thaddeus’ fellow Company men who were presented by the prosecution during the subsequent court martial, Homer’s private journal contains two entries that refer to Thaddeus having deserted.

Homer does not appear to be using the word, desertion, out of judgment other than a feeling that Thaddeus had no other option if he wanted to see his wife still alive.

Ironically, Thaddeus probably would have had a better chance of obtaining a discharge instead of a furlough. One of his friends, C. [Collens] E. Crandall, obtained a discharge in early May due to poor health. For Thaddeus, a discharge based on his illness, however, would have meant giving up on his larger ambitions.

At the same time, in Oquawka, Captain Thomas Kinsloe was reported to be seeking once again to form a new unit.

[published August 7, 1862]

Recruiting is going on briskly. Those who want bounty must enlist in a hurry. Capt.

Kinsloe is now getting up a company, and we are satisfied that the boys cannot volunteer under any officer who will prove more active, energetic, brave and efficient than T.W. Roll in your names quickly, or you may be drafted, when you will receive no bounty and get but $11 a month!

50 • Myles Nienstadt

It appears that Capt. Kinsloe was not successful in raising a new company. On August 24, 1894, when a Soldiers’ Reunion was held in Oquawka, Capt. Kinsloe registered himself as having served with the 7th Mo. Cavalry. The August 1862 Oquawka Spectator news item, however, raises some interesting questions with unknown answers. If Capt. Kinsloe had been successful, would have Thaddeus attempted to be transferred to his father’s new unit. Was the prospect of Capt. Kinsloe’s new unit what accounted for John Langdon’s move in the latter half of July 1862 to have himself discharged from the 7th Missouri Cavalry?

Company D’s defeat at Independence, Missouri on August 11, 1862 along with the death of a few of the Oquawka men, the wounding of Lieutenant Vance among others, and the capture of others would have repercussions for Thaddeus. As revealed in his court martial record, after his wife apparently recovered from her life-threatening illness, in mid-August, he apparently attempted to return to his unit only to encounter several returnees from Company D in St. Louis. There he learned of the end of his company and returned home with them.

According to Thaddeus’s court martial statement, it appears that he was incapacitated as a result of his fits starting in August 18th. Sometime in September, apparently in the belief that his obligation to Company D was over, Thaddeus opened a saloon in Oquawka. Mean while, other leaders of the company made their way back. Lt. Pence and Charles Lynn returned in late September. Two wounded members of Company D, Lt. Vance and William Morris, returned in the first week of October.

In Lt. Vance’s testimony at the subsequent court martial proceedings, he mentioned seeing Thaddeus at that time without talking to Hometown

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him. In his testimony, Vance was not asked why he did not talk to Thad. The Oquawka Spectator issue for October 9, 1862 offers insight about Vance’s silence. That day, the paper carried two news items – one about Vance, one about Thaddeus – which taken together suggest to me a reasonable explanation for Lt. Vance’s subsequent vigor to have Thaddeus prosecuted for desertion.

[published October 09, 1862]

Lieut. Vance and “Capt.” Wm. Morris arrived here on Friday evening last. The Lieutenant has so far recovered from his wounds as to walk about. Capt. Morris went on home to his farm immediately upon his arrival here. We hope soon to see him in town entirely recovered from his dangerous wound.

------T.A. Kinsloe, at his fine Saloon, serves up oysters in fine style. We don’t take other people’s words for this, for we “tried the thing on” and are posted. If you want a delicious dish, call on Thad.

52 • Myles Nienstadt

[published March 19, 1863]

Whatever transpired between the Kinsloes and Lieut. Vance in March 1862 was aggravated in October by Vance’s sighting of Thaddeus Kinsloe operating his saloon - apparently rekindling his quarrel with the Kinsloe family.

In mid-November, Lt. Vance left Oquawka to rejoin the 7th Missouri Cavalry. The other Oquawka men who had been mustered or paroled out after the Battle of Independence, Missouri stayed home. Most of them thought their service obligations were over. Widespread confusion about the status of citizen volunteer units which made up much of the Union Army was common in early 1863.

Additionally, President Lincoln’s proclamation that year of emancipation for slaves and a string of Union defeats contributed to hometown dissent in parts of Illinois. This dissent in Henderson County appeared in the Oquawka Spectator accounts describing the activities of William Morris, one of the wounded veterans of Company D.

On the 14th ulimo, a “Peace Meeting” was held in that neighborhood, and certain resolutions adopted, which, upon request, we inserted in our columns. These resolutions generated an unusual amount of bad blood – men allowed themselves to lose their tempers to such an extent that they made some very foolish speeches and did some very foolish things. One of our subscribers, (a leading Republican,) however, recognizing the great principle of free speech, takes the only proper course with reference to these resolutions, and, in another column, expresses his views in the shape of a counter blast. The article is couched in appropriate language, quite free from slang and unnecessary epithets. Articles in this temper are always acceptable, and will meet due courtesy at our hands.

------Capt. Wm. Morris – We regret to see, in a letter to the Plaindealer from Nashville, a very, severe attack upon this old and highly respected citizen – a man whose every impulse is that of a patriot; who marched to the music of the Union, and fought valiantly through a campaign in a foreign country, defending his country’s flag in Mexico, and who, when Rebellion reared its hydra head, stepped forth to do battle again as a private soldier, won the admiration of all his comrades by his courage and loyalty, and fell upon the battle field, barely saved as by a miracle from death by a frightful wound.

Hometown

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In an effort to bring the large numbers of volunteers who had deserted or taken extended leaves of absences back into service, President Lincoln issued his proclamation on March 10, 1863 granting a pardon for those who returned to their units by April 1st. The Oquawka Spectator encouraged the local boys who were in doubt about their status including paroles – those who had been captured by the Confederacy and released upon taking an oath not to fight again, to report to their units17.

[published March 19, 1863] go back, boys!

17 The first government-sanctioned exchanges took place in February 1862, but it was not until July 22 that a formal cartel detailing the exchange system was agreed to by the two governments. Under this agreement, all prisoners were to be released- either exchanged or paroled- within 10 days of capture. An equivalency table was devised in which a certain number of enlisted men could be exchanged for an officer. Excess prisoners who could not be exchanged were to be released on parole, which meant they could not perform any military service until they were officially notified that they had been exchanged. http://civilwar.bluegrass.net/PrisonsParolesAndPOWs/prisonerexchangesystem.html

54 • Myles Nienstadt

We call the attention of all concerned to the Proclamation of the President, relating to absentees from the Army. All knowing themselves to be liable under this call should make arrangements to report themselves at once.

We observe that paroled men are also called in. The President does not mention them, but, we believe, the construction is put upon the word “absentees,” in such a manner as to include them. The boys should consult their safety in the matter, and it will be better in a case of this kind to be on the safe side.

Later in the summer, after Thad’s arrest in June 1863, there continued to be doubt about the service status of some of the Oquawka men of Company D after the Battle of Independence, Missouri. In July, the Oquawka Spectator reported upon rumors that they were recalled to service which prompted Lt. Pence and other former members of “Kinsloe’s company” – as the paper continued to refer to Company D – to travel in July 1863 to St. Louis to determine their status. They returned after hearing that “only such few of the members as were never mustered out are required to re-enter the service,” meaning Thaddeus among others. At some point, John Langdon likely rejoined Company D as Captain Kinsloe attempted to have him along with Thaddeus transferred to Company F in May 1863 and Langdon was in Little Rock in 1864 when Thaddeus was court martialed.

After Thaddeus Kinsloe’s court martial and subsequent clemency, the publishers of the Oquawka Spectator continued to hold the Kinsloe family in high regard. In August 1864, the newspaper reported the promotion of Thad Kinsloe to the “responsible post of regimental commissary sergeant” and editorialized that “we are glad to see this mark of the confidence of his officers manifested toward Thad.”

The Oquawka Spectator makes no further mention of the Kinsloe’s company for the remainder of the war. Thaddeus Kinsloe’s military service did not turn out as glorious as he probably imagined in 1861. Considering the many months stretched over several years of suffering epileptic fits, the death of his wife, and being branded a deserter, he likely was relieved to be quietly mustered out in the fall of 1864 and return to his home town to resume his life as a merchant and start a new family.

Hometown

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56 • Myles Nienstadt

Chapter Five

Weaving A Legend A died,

In this town, on the 1st instant, Mrs. Edith H, wife of Mr. Thaddeus A. Kinsloe in the 23rd year of her age. a tribute

To the memory of Mrs. Edith H. Langdon Kinsloe. by

J. P. Irvine, Esq.

Her eye is fixed, her heart is stilled; Her lips are cold, they cannot speak; The frosts of death, have early chilled The rose of youth upon her cheek.

Her life is o’er, her sunny morns Have fled in quick dissolving years; While we amid life’s gath’ring storms, Are drifting down a flood of tears.

We’ll meet her on that distant shore, Where all is sweet, and green, we’ll stand, Where death and partings come no more; Th’ Eternal home the Spirit Land.

Death Announcement Oquawka Spectator May 14, 1863

lert readers who have accompanied me this far in my assembling of a fuller portrait of Thaddeus’s life from Homer’s journals, records at the National Archives, the pages of the Oquawka Spectator would rightly wonder about the apparent absence of information about the female loved ones in his life here to fore. Making the transition from relying on the archival details of Thad Kinsloe’s military life to his family life requires making some educated speculation tied to limited information from the Oquawka Spectator and the United States census.

The mystery of Edith Langdon Kinsloe’s life threatening illness that caused Thad’s desertion in 1862 has yet to be uncovered. Approximately four weeks after his July 8th desertion during the first week of August and before he evidently planned to return to his unit, Thad and Edith’s first born was conceived—if the assumption is made that she carried the baby to full term when the daughter was born on April 26, 1863.

The nature of the child bearing complication that caused her death on Friday, May 1, 1863, however, was revealed by the Oquawka Spectator in its report of her death from puerperal fever, a disease specific to childbirth.

Although the disease is now rare due to improved hygiene during childbirth and the use of antibiotics after it appears, the bacterial infection of the upper genital tract that causes Legend

• 57

the fever can still be a factor in maternal death in the United States.

In most patients in the nineteenth century, puerperal fever appeared on the third day, and commenced with rigor, headache and the “cold fit” followed quickly by extreme heat, perspiration and thirst. The tongue was usually white, although it could become dark and furred in the face of impending death. Respiration became difficult due to the abdominal pain and distension, and the patient was prone to nausea and vomiting. In the nineteenth century when hygienic practices were less rigorous, puerperal fever tended to appear in “epidemic” form, in which the case fatality rate was high—70 to 80 percent, as compared with 25 to 30 per cent in the sporadic form18. Tragically, this appears to have been the case that weekend in Oquawka. When the Spectator was published the following Thursday, in the same paragraph that told of the sad bereavement about Edith Langdon Kinsloe’s death, another young mother was reported to have died from puerperal fever three days after Edith.

Two weeks after her death, the Oquawka Spectator ran a tribute to Edith written by James P. Irvine, a twenty-seven year old lawyer from Monmouth who evidently was a friend of Edith and the Langdons. Irvine had married a New York woman in Monmouth in November 1861, two weeks after Thaddeus and Edith married19.

18 The Attempt to Understand Puerperal Fever in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: The Influence of Inflammation Theory, by Christine Hallett, Medical History, 2005, 49: pp. 1–28.

19 Monmouth Atlas, http://mhrising.com/ newspapers/Monmouth/MONMOUTH%20ATLAS%20 1861.htm

58 • Myles Nienstadt

The legend that my grandmother recounted about Thaddeus Kinsloe’s desertion to see his wife alive before she died from complications of child birth probably originated with Elizabeth Wenman Langdon, the younger sister of Edith who married Thaddeus on September 5, 1865 – two and half years after the death of her older sister.

[published September 14, 1865]

“Married, on the 5th inst, at the residence of the bride’s father, by Rev. A.M. Black, Mr. T.A. Kinsloe, of Oquawka, and Miss Lizzie W. Langdon, daughter of John Langdon, Esq., of Monmouth. Accompanying the above notice came two sterling silver coins, and the two are equal to a gold dollar; also a splendid variety of choice bride’s cake. The happy couple will accept our thanks; and be assured of our best wishes for their continued happiness.”

John Langdon, the father of Edith and Elizabeth, passed away at the age of sixty nine, less than a year after Elizabeth’s marriage with Thaddeus. Edith Henderson Langdon Kinsloe, the two and half year old daughter of Thaddeus’s deceased first wife and her namesake, was raised by John Langdon’s widow, Susan Packwood, and never became part of Thaddeus and Elizabeth Kinsloe’s household.

From her marriage with Thaddeus, Elizabeth had eight children. As they matured in the town of Oquawka more than a decade after the end of the Civil War, Elizabeth likely

Edith Henderson Langdon Kinsloe, Two months old, July 2, 1863 Legend

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found herself comfortable weaving a family narrative about Papa Kinsloe that stemmed from the Langdon family bereavement over the loss of a vibrant and interesting daughter together with the inescapable knowledge that their children would hear of Thaddeus’ court martial for desertion from the larger Oquawka community. The basic narrative probably sprung from themes that she wanted to be understandable for young children and later grandchildren – first for her eldest, Maude and later for Maude’s youngest daughter – my grandmother.

The long lives and protective instincts of Thaddeus’ parents also likely added to the gradual weaving of the legend about Thaddeus. The story is told that Margaretta McConnell Kinsloe, Thaddeus’ mother, destroyed President Lincoln’s letter of pardon out of shame. She lived to see twelve great grandchildren reach their tenth birthdays before she passed away in Bishop, California in 1915, a little more than a month before her 101st birthday. She spent the last decade of life in the household of Rev. Asa and Maude Kinsloe Beall, Thaddeus’s oldest daughter by marriage with Elizabeth. Captain Thomas West Kinsloe out-lived three of Thaddeus’ children when he died in 1906 at the age of ninety one. When he passed away, he was living with Thaddeus’ son, Edward Kinsloe and family in Des Moines, Iowa.

Margaretta Kinsloe and Elizabeth Kinsloe, mother and daughter-in-law respectively, likely would have been uncomfortable addressing the issues of malice that arouse out of the clash of personalities between Margaretta’s husband, Captain Kinsloe, and Lieut. Vance or of the social and medical circumstances of a health condition that was variously described by edu60 • Myles Nienstadt

cated doctors as a heart condition or epilepsy.

It probably was easier to cloak the actual path to Thad’s court martial and his epilepsy with silence and shame.

The two Kinsloe men involved took two widely different tacks when it came to the Civil War. Despite his very short service, Captain Thomas Kinsloe would delight in telling his grandchildren stories about the Civil War. Thaddeus, however, would never talk about the war to his children.

Although Thaddeus lived to be eighty-one years old and epilepsy did not prove to be a mortal affliction in his youth as it often was in the 19th Century and still tragically continues to be for some even now, it appears that epilepsy was not confined to his early adulthood.

Just as the court martial folder revealed that he suffered from it in his childhood, a surviving family letter from Elizabeth in 1901 at the time of the birth of Maude’s youngest daughter seems to describe Thaddeus’ health at the age of sixty one in chronic terms: “Your papa … has not been well this winter, every one tells him he looks so bad, it makes me so mad for them to talk so to him, he seems better now than he has been.20”

20 1901 letter from Elizabeth Kinsloe in Galesburg, Illinois to Rev. A.P. Beall family in Alma, Nebraska, Jean Nienstadt collection.

Chapter Six

Epilogue

Thaddeus Augustus Kinsloe (back center) flanked by his granddaughters, Maude Elizabeth Kinsloe Beall and Estelline Beall (l-r), and his parents, Margaretta and Thomas West Kinsloe (front), Oquawka, 1893

T

he source of the quarrel between the Kinsloes and Lieut. Vance in early 1862 remains a mystery. Both Thomas Kinsloe and James Vance were in their late forties - the former a big muscular former Pennsylvania Canal21 boat captain of Irish descent with a 21 Juniata Division Canal which opened in 1832 along the Juniata River beginning at the Susquehanna River.

popular boot and shoe store in Oquawka, the latter a proud veteran of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1848 who had been wounded in battle.

Captain Kinsloe’s family was small – Thaddeus was his only surviving child. Thomas Kinsloe had migrated from Pennsylvania in the late 1840s following “the route into the Mississippi Valley taken by the Lincolns namely, from Epilogue

• 61

Pennsylvania and Virginia into Kentucky, thence across the Ohio River into Southern Indiana, and from thence directly to the Father of Waters.22” The family initially farmed in the area that would become Sagetown with the Lynn family as neighbors. Shortly after the September 1850 census was taken, Thomas Kinsloe decided to move the family into Oquawka where he became a merchant and quickly became a trustee of the First Presbyterian Church. His move to Oquawka came when the booming river traffic was still growing and becoming a merchant was in vogue – before the “steel tracks” of railroads shifted economic fortunes elsewhere to Burlington, Iowa and inland to cities, such as Galesburg, situated where multiple tracks formed train junctions.

Lieutenant Vance’s family was large with nine children ranging in age at the time from seven months to twenty one – the oldest three being daughters who undoubtedly assisted his wife in caring for the family while Vance was away in the army. The 1860 U.S. Census lists James Vance as a migrant farmer with limited assets who was apparently boarding in Oquawka when the census was taken.

James Vance seems not to have developed an overpowering malice toward the Langdon family despite the Langdon ties with the Kinsloes. John W. Langdon was recruited by the Kinsloes. His older sister married Thaddeus Kinsloe the same month that John was recruited. John also was elected sergeant like Thaddeus and, according to Homer Jewett, also was demoted to private by Col. Bishop and then allegedly discharged in the turbulent month of March 1862. After March 1862, both remained with Company D. In May 1862, Homer made 22 Jamison, Matthew H. 1911. Recollections Of Pioneer And Army Life. Kansas City: Hudson Press, p. 8.

62 • Myles Nienstadt

no mention of Langdon having shared the same predicament as Thaddeus who was under guard for some unexplained reason. According to Homer, a few days after Thaddeus’ desertion, presumably with Vance’s approval, Langdon is allowed to muster out and make arrangements to completely depart the unit at the end of July 1862.

Langdon’s status for the remainder of the war is also uncertain. In May 1863, the Oquawka Spectator published a news item reporting Captain Kinsloe’s success in transferring both his son and John Langdon to a new unit, Company F – a development that had no effect in deflecting Vance in the following month from issuing an order to arrest Thaddeus.

Thaddeus would live to be a respected citizen of Oquawka and later Galesburg until he passed away at the age of 81 in 1921. He once again became a merchant – instead of sell-

Kinsloe home in Galesburg, Illinois (above) and interior view with Chickering upright piano in corner (left). Piano playing was a popular activity for the Kinsloe children and grand-children during family gatherings.

Epilogue

• 63

Elizabeth and Thaddeus Kinsloe (center) in 1905 with six remaining adult children, Thaddeus B., Maude, Marie, Edward (rear l-r), Rupert, and Zullah (front l-r)

ing clothing as he did before the war, his store offered groceries and dry goods.

Four years after the end of the Civil War, Thaddeus served three years on the Oquawka township board of trustees alongside the publisher of the Oquawka Spectator. After most of their seven surviving children left home, Thaddeus and Elizabeth moved to Galesburg in the 1890s where they managed a store before they retired.

Captain Thomas Kinsloe would serve on the executive committee of the soldier association that built the Henderson County Civil War Soldiers Monument and dedicated it on July 4, 1887. Around 1902, Thomas and his wife 64 • Myles Nienstadt

moved in with Thaddeus’s second eldest surviving son, Edward Cottrell Kinsloe, and his wife in Des Moines, Iowa.

Oquawka’s protective embrace of the Kinsloe family apparently convinced Lieut. Vance to move his family away in the final months of the war. He took up an administrative position with the post-war occupation administration of Little Rock, his son becoming a deputy sheriff there during the Reconstruction era.

Rev. Charles Ezekiel Lynn

Captain William R. Morris

Five years after the end of the Civil War, Charles Lynn would apply the persuasive skills that had recruited Homer Jewett to a new found calling as a Methodist minister. Thaddeus Kinsloe’s second daughter, Maude Elizabeth Kinsloe, would marry Rev. Asa P. Beall, a Methodist minister who would preside over the funeral of Captain William Morris’ wife in 1888 in Sunbeam, Illinois.

Homer Jewett would never reside in Iowa again – after the war, he would travel deep into the Reconstruction South never to return.

He was presumed dead by his family after his letters mysteriously ended in 1866 while he was in Louisiana. The most tangible memories that his mother, brother, and their descendents have of Homer would be the three Journals that he sent home. His writings, however, would illuminate the lives and times of Thaddeus Kinsloe and the Henderson County boys with whom he met in the autumn days of 1861 for more generations of descendents than he could have imagined.

Epilogue

• 65

66 • Myles Nienstadt

Outro

I

learned far more than I could have imagined when I began my search to illuminate the story behind a found photo of a young man on the way to Cairo in 1861 and a grandmother’s heartbreak in recounting the legend of a young mother determined to live long enough for her soldier to return before she died. As a veteran traveler knows, two types of mementos get collected along the way of physical journeys: real and imagined. Photos and ephemera for keepsake albums and new perspectives of personal self for one’s autobiographical memory.

On this particular journey, I paid one particularly memorable visit to the National Archives that gave me the chance to collect an electronic folder of scanned images of Thaddeus’ court martial including affidavits written in the hand of Thad and his family and the signatures of President Abraham Lincoln, Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, and leading figures of Oquawka and Henderson County.

Unlike any prior age in human history, however, most of the mementos that I found in the course of my journey were collected from my arm chair as I traversed the new frontiers of the Internet. Much like roads, steel rails, or telegraph wires connected distant points on the new frontiers of North America, the Internet is connecting our physical planet in new ways.

Surprisingly for all the attention that has been made to seemingly futuristic social communities that did not exist in the past, the Internet Outro

• 67

has also created opportunities to connect with the past that already exists – in old paper records, microfilm spools, books, or libraries, but now through scanning and digitalization has become a new frontier for exploration, analysis, and interpretation.

Instead of connected to new geographic points, the Internet has created the opportunity to connect to our past: the basic building blocks of raw or original data from records such as the U.S. Census; written and graphic information about places, people and buildings; and the knowledge learned or wisdom gained from experience and communicated by long dead individuals through their languages of written word, music, math, and art.

At this point in time late in the first decade of the 21st Century, the opportunities to build electronic communities and analyze aggregate data pools that break down traditional concepts of privacy are well understood even if the future implications are not. Less understood by myself – until I made my journey with Thaddeus – are the opportunities for individuals to assemble widely disparate memories from an earlier generation into a new understanding of that generation’s life and times – never as personal as experienced by the human self in their moment of life, but an equally compelling perspective of a human self lived in the context of the unique deck of cards dealt them at their moment in time.

In my electronic travels to assemble a new perspective on Thaddeus Kinsloe, I also gained new perspectives of myself. At first blush – and well into adulthood, I like many people assumed that we face a deck of cards primarily unique to our own lives and our generation.

Yet, the deeper we venture, the more common across the generations do the challenges of life 68 • Myles Nienstadt

seem. The classics of the world’s major religions and civilizations - Aristotle, Sun Tze, or Shakespeare come to mind – have always been accessible in book form to members of later generations seeking knowledge or wisdom to address the common challenges of life. The classics offer knowledge and wisdom from the memories and experiences of the departed, but unfortunately each generation inescapably must accumulate his or her own emotional experience and maturity at the fairly predictable biological rate of every human being. That is why we don’t hand over the car keys to tenyear old youths and have a constitutional minimal age for presidents. It is why the younger start new businesses with brash innovative ideas and the older manage the ones that successfully mature. Yet, a life lived generally requires decisions to be made and actions taken well before the wisdom of the classics have been read, absorbed, and connected with the here and now.

In the vortex of biological life that often requires action before maturity, every generation knows not the slightest suspicion of its own ignorance. It must rush forward to acquire its own emotional experience. Probably at every step in my life, I have wished not necessarily to be smarter, just a tad more aware of what I should have known. Traversing the Internet to connect with the past and to find Thaddeus, I encountered words about the same challenge of life that I have faced but expressed in 1911

by Matthew Jamison, one of the young merchant clerks who along with Thaddeus joined the first “three-month service” unit formed in Oquawka in April 1861: We were so ignorant as to what constitutes a good soldier that we had not the slightest suspicion of our ignorance. Along with all the youngsters of my day, my imagination was stocked with the

Matthew Jamison, 1911

Outro

• 69

feats of Napoleon, with the school reader pictures of the surrender of Cornwallis, and, not the least of these, the patent medicine placard of Santa Anna, his wooden leg having dropped on the road while fleeing for his life with his mounted escort before his American pursuers ; and all we would have to do in going to war, we surmised, would be to draw the wooden scimiters of our boyhood and the enemy would disappear with the vapors of the morning.

Alas for him who boasteth before putting on the armor, rather than after putting it off! But however dense our ignorance, we were not boasters. As for myself and a moiety of our company, we had a decided advantage. We had belonged to a company of “Wide-Awakes,” drilled campaigners during the political rivalry and stimulus of the Lincoln-Douglas senatorial campaign of 1858, an organization which continued down to and through the Presidential campaign of 1860. Charles S. Cowan, county clerk, was our captain and drill-master, and a thoroughly competent leader. There was no company in our Congressional District that could compete with us in company evolutions, and without doubt many thousands of young men throughout the North were in this way unconsciously preparing themselves for efficiency in the Civil War.23 Another common challenge for most people is to acquire the skills of leadership to succeed in any facet of life. In looking for an answer on the Internet to a question about Thaddeus, I found an unlikely source of insight about the keys to successful leadership. It also gave me a new perspective about the Kinsloe-Vance quarrel. The insight came from instructions written in 1860 for the challenge of organizing and leading a company of immigrants to undertake 23 Jamison, Matthew H. 1911. Recollections Of Pioneer And Army Life. Kansas City: Hudson Press, pp.

150-151. Digitalized book from Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (http://hdl.handle. net/10111/UIUCOCA:recollectionsofp00jami)

70 • Myles Nienstadt

the trek from St. Louis to the American Far West. The more that I read the passage written before the great election of that year that split the nation and propelled Thaddeus into the military service for which he was ill-equipped to join, the more I realized its insightful lesson on the characteristics of leadership – a common challenge across generations for parents, community leaders, cavalry captains, or presidents of the United States.

“In the selection of a captain, good judgment, integrity of purpose, and practical experience are the essential requisites, and these are indispensable to the harmony and consolidation of the association.

His duty should be to direct the order of march, the time of starting and halting, to select the camps, detail and give orders to guards, and, indeed, to control and superintend all the movements of the company.”

“On such a journey as this, there is much to interest and amuse one who is fond of picturesque scenery, and of wild life in its most primitive aspect, yet no one should attempt it without anticipating many rough knocks and much hard labour ; every man must expect to do his share of duty faithfully and without a murmur. On long and arduous expeditions men are apt to become irritable and ill-natured, and oftentimes fancy they have more labour imposed upon them than their comrades, and that the person who directs the march is partial towards his favourites, &c. That man who exercises the greatest forbearance under such circumstances, who is cheerful, slow to take up quarrels, and endeavours to reconcile difficulties among his companions, is deserving of all praise, and will, without doubt, contribute largely to the success and comfort of an expedition.”

“Unless a systematic organization be adopted, it is impossible for a party of any magnitude to travel in company for any great length of time, and for all Outro

• 71

the members to agree upon the same arrangements in marching, camping, &c. ... When a captain has once been chosen, he should be sustained in all his decisions unless he commit some manifest outrage, when a majority of the company can always remove him, and put a more competent man in his place.

Sometimes men may be selected who, upon trial, do not come up to the anticipations of those who have placed them in power, and other men will exhibit, during the course of the march, more capacity.

Under these circumstances it will not be unwise to make a change, the first election having been distinctly provisional.24” We can not know James Vance’s perspective on the bad blood between him and Thomas Kinsloe and his sighting of his son operating a saloon upon Vance’s return with a wound from the Battle of Independence must have been galling. But it appears that the emotional experience and maturity of both men prevented them from striking the right balance to have the good judgment, integrity of purpose, and ability to reconcile differences during their respective turns as leaders.

Whatever particular difficulty he faced in March 1862, Captain Thomas Kinsloe decided to resign early in his command. In the first year of the Civil War, the winnowing out of the popularly elected captains who failed the art of leadership under the rigors of military life was happening throughout the Union armies.

Over time, Lt. Vance would go on to gain the respect of the Henderson County men while commanding Company D under the rigors and difficulties of occupying Missouri and later Arkansas. He would lose the respect of 24 Marcy, Randolph Barnes. 1860. The Prairie And Overland Traveller: A Companion For Emigrants, Traders, Travellers, Hunters, And Soldiers Traversing Great Plains And Prairies. London: S. Low. pp. 9-11.

72 • Myles Nienstadt

his home town community, however, with the malice with which he decided to pursue Captain Kinsloe’s son. He successfully branded Thaddeus as a deserter, but it provoked the Oquawka community to close ranks around the Kinsloe family and make earnest calls upon President Lincoln to grant clemency for the evident loyalty of a patriotic son brought low by a little understood frailty.

Eighty-two years after Thad’s desertion, on a different continent and in a very different war, a nineteen-year old German boy made a decision to desert. The cause for desertion would be vastly different, but through marriage to a great granddaughter of Thaddeus, another generation of descendents would wrestle with the fateful consequences of that decision and the common challenges in life that resonate down through family history.

Those consequences of profound personal decisions made while young are often little understood or unappreciated but they reverberate with gathering emotional intensity as one ages.

Some have consequences that reach beyond the generation that made them: Witness the catch in the voice of the granddaughter of Thaddeus, herself a grandmother in 1982, when she recounted her mother’s legendary story about his desertion.

Witness the efforts of the great great grandson of Thaddeus, himself a middle aged father in 2006 who takes in his elderly mother under his roof, to document an ancestral photo of a young man who departed for Cairo and the United States Army in April 1861 to the cheers and singing of his townspeople.

Outro

• 73

74 • Myles Nienstadt

Appendix First Oquawka Volunteers for “Three-month Service,” Company D, 10th Illinois Infantry Rank Age Height

Hair

Eyes

Complexion

Ayres, Gideon H

PVT

20

5’ 7

Light

Blue

Dark

Single

Brakeman Cincinnati, Hamilton Co, OH

Booth, Owen K

PVT

21

5’ 7

Light

Blue

Light

Single

Laborer

Mercer Co, IL

Burgh, John D

MUS

18

5’ 5 1/2 Brown

Blue

Light

Single

Student

Hyde, Cheshire, England

Caldwell, Putnam F

CPL

24

5’ 10

Black

Dark

Dark

Single

Carpenter Palmyra, Portage Co, OH

Chapin, John E

PVT

21

5’ 8

Brown

Blue

Light

Single

Saddler

Crandall, Edward H

PVT

22

5’ 8

Black

Gray

Dark

Married Laborer

Quincy, Adams Co, IL

Cristen, James

PVT

30

5’ 7

Dark

Blue

Dark

Married Farmer

Edmundston Co, KY

Dallam, Francis A

CPT

36

5’ 11

Black

Black

Light

Married Editor

Butler Co, KY

Daran, Alfred

PVT

21

5’ 6

Red

Blue

Light

Single

Farmer

Dublin, Ireland

Edson, Benjamin

1LT

24

5’ 11

Black

Black

Dark

Single

Clerk

Bridgewater, Plymouth Co, MA

Endicott, William C

PVT

21

5’ 5 1/2

Light

Blue

Dark

Single

Farmer

Jefferson, Clinton Co, IN

Foster, Edward

PVT

24

5’ 8

Dark

Blue

Dark

Single

Painter

New York, NY

Froehlich, William

PVT

26

5’ 8

Brown Light

Dark

Single

Saddler

Prussia

Fuller, William H

PVT

21

5’ 6

Brown

Gray

Light

Single

Teacher

Manchester, Dearborn Co, IN

Hall, Minard

PVT

21

5’ 10

Red

Blue

Light

Single

Farmer

PA

James, William

1SGT

21

5’ 7

Black

Blue

Light

Single

Clerk

Dover, England

Jamison, Matthew H

CPL

20

5’ 10

Brown

Blue

Dark

Single

Clerk

Henderson Co, IL

Johnson, Garrett

PVT

31

5’ 9

Brown

Blue

Light

Single

Farmer

Goldersville, Hudson Co, NJ

Kinsloe, Thaddeus A

SGT

21

5’ 7

Black

Dark

Dark

Single

Clerk

Huntington, Huntington Co, PA

McKinney, Collins

CPL

21

5’ 10

Brown Light

Light

Single

Clerk

Henderson Co, IL

Morgan, James A

PVT

23

5’ 7

Dark

Single

Farmer

England

Name

Dark

Dark

Martial Status

Occupation

Nativity

Oquawka, Henderson Co, IL

Appendix

• 75

First Oquawka Volunteers for “Three-month Service,” Company D, 10th Illinois Infantry - continued.

Rank Age Height

Hair

Eyes

Complexion

Odendahl, Frederick

PVT

38

6’ 2

Dark

Blue

Light

Parsons, Austin

PVT

26

5’ 11

Light

Blue

Light

Single

Farmer

N/A

Paul, Alvah W

PVT

21

5’ 8

Brown Black

Dark

Single

Teacher

Jefferson Co, NY

Post, William M

MUS

18

5’ 6

Brown Light

Light

Single

Clerk

Henderson Co, IL

Ray, Frederick A

CPL

19

5’ 8

Brown

Blue

Dark

Single

Lumber Dealer

Newport, ME

Rice, Warren

PVT

18

5’ 6

Black

Black

Light

Single

Clerk

Akron, Summit Co, OH

Ross, Stephen

PVT

27

5’ 8

Brown Black

Dark

Single

Teacher

Montgomery Co, IN

Salyer, William H

PVT

21

5’ 8

Light

Light

Light

Simpson, Charles B

SGT

22

5’ 8

Light

Dark

Dark

Single

Clerk

Hampden, Penobscot Co, ME

Smith, Joseph

PVT

23

5’ 7

Light

Dark

Dark

Single

Laborer

Prussia

Smith, Nicholas

PVT

21

5’ 10

Black

Black

Dark

Single

Laborer

Prussia

Watson, James H

PVT

24

5’ 6

Light

Blue

Light

Single

Farmer

Warren Co, IL

Watson, Jason L

PVT

22

5’ 7

Light

Blue

Light

Single

Farmer

Henderson Co, IL

Wilson, George

PVT

22

6’ 1

Brown

Dark

Dark

Single

Farmer

Trumbull Co, OH

Wilson, Samuel J

2LT

22

5’ 10

Brown

Blue

Light

Single

Clerk

Rushville, Schuyler Co, IL

Name

Martial Status

Occupation

Married Grocer

Married Farmer

Nativity Cologne, Rhien, Prussia

IN

Sources: Oquawka Spectator, April 25, 1861 Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database (http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/datcivil.html)

76 • Myles Nienstadt

Volunteers for Captain Kinsloe’s Black Hawk Cavalry Company, October 1861.

Last Name

Alternate Last Name

Published First Name

Expanded First Name

Illinois home town

Aylet

Richard

Bell

Wm II

William H.

Oquawka

Billings

HH

Henry H

Keithsburg

Billings

Elisha

Keithsburg

Michael

Oquawka

Brown

Charles

Keithsburg

Burkholder

Henry

Carll

BF

Catlin

Silas C

Oquawka

Chapin

Cyrus

Oquawka

Chapin

JE

John E.

Oquawka

CE

Collins E.

Oquawka

Brandee

Crandle

Brandy

Crandall

Oquawka Benjamin F.

Oquawka

Dawley

Charles

Eagley

Abraham

Fall

John C

Garrison

James E

Grady

JH

James H.

Hall

Charles

Charles F.

Oquawka

Hany

Anthony

Hart

HP

Hezekiah P.

Oquawka

WH

Wilford H.

Keithsburg

Hurst

FM

Francis M.

Keithsburg

Jewett

Homer H

Johnson

Charles

Kinsloe

TW

Thomas W.

Oquawka

Kinsloe

TA

Thaddeus A.

Oquawka

Klippell

John

Lynn

Charles

Charles E.

Sagetown

Lyons

WP

William P.

Martin

Samuel G.

Little York

Martin

Seymour D

Little York

Mead

Geo W

Highfield

Hughfield

Keithsburg

George W. Appendix

• 77

Volunteers for Captain Kinsloe’s Black Hawk Cavalry Company, October 1861 - continued.

Last Name

Alternate Last Name

Published First Name

Mitchell

TC

Moore

CW

Moore

More

Expanded First Name Thomas C.

James W.

Illinois home town Oquawka Oquawka

Morris

Wm

William

Little York

Moyer

Lubon

Oquawka

Nelson

James L .

Oquawka

Noble

John

Pence

JA

John A.

Oquawka

Pence

Roh’t J

Robert J.

Oquawka

Pointer

James F.

Porter

George

Porter

James

Rey

William

Schlumph

E

Sewell

Henry C.

Snodgrass

Thomas

Speck

Noah

Springstein Springsteen

James

Oquawka

Tuttle

Martin M.

Terre Haute

Vance

JM

Walker

William

Oquawka

Oquawka

Edward Little York Noah A.

James M.

Oquawka

Welsh

Welch

John

Oquawka

Wickiser

Wilkison

Andrew

Keithsburg

Willhite

Wm H

William

Oquawka

Williams

Geo W

George W.

Keithsburg

Sources: Oquawka Spectator, October 3, 1861 Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls Database (http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/datcivil.html) Missouri State Archives, Soldiers’ Records: War of 1812 - World War I (http:// www.sos.mo.gov/archives/soldiers/#soldsearch using term, “7th Regiment Cavalry Volunteers” who were in Company D) 78 • Myles Nienstadt

Kinsloe-Langdon Family Tree Thomas West KINSLOE Born: 5 Dec 1814 in Mexico, Pennsylvania Marr: 13 Apr 1837 Died: 7 Jul 1906 in Des Moines, IA Margaretta Judith MCCONNELL Born: 4 Oct 1814 in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania Died: 20 Aug 1915 in Bishop, CA

Thaddeus Augustus KINSLOE Born: 17 Jun 1839 in Pennsylvania Died: 9 Jan 1921 in Galesburg, Knox, IL

Edith Henderson LANGDON Born: 20 May 1839 in Ellisville, IL Marr: 30 Oct 1861 Died: 1 May 1863 in Monmouth, Warren IL

Edith Henderson Langdon KINSLOE Born: 26 Apr 1863 in Oquowka, IL Died: 9 Jul 1901 in Omaha, Douglas, NE

Maude Elizabeth KINSLOE Born: 12 Aug 1866 in Monmouth, Illinois Died: 9 Jun 1943 in Whittier, California

John J LANGDON Born: 1797 in Pennsylvania (1850 IL Census) or Ireland Marr: 30 Mar 1834 in New York Died: 16 May 1866 in Monmouth, IL

Charles Wesley KINSLOE Born: 19 Sep 1867 Died: 18 Oct 1875 Thaddeus B KINSLOE Born: 28 Apr 1869 Died: 21 Jan 1937 in Downers Grove, Du Page, Illinois

Susan Maria PACKWOOD Born: 1810 in New York Died: 1 Feb 1893

Elizabeth Wenman Mary LANGDON Born: bet 6 Apr 1841 and 7 Apr 1841 in Ellisville, Fulton, IL Marr: 5 Sep 1865 in Monmouth, Warren, IL Died: 5 Mar 1922 in Galesburg, Knox, IL

Edward Cottrell KINSLOE Born: 26 May 1871 in Oquawka, Henderson, IL Died: 11 Dec 1922 in Burlington, Des Moines, IA Thomas West KINSLOE Born: 6 Mar 1873 Died: 29 Aug 1904 in Clarksburg, West Virginia Rupert Frankfort KINSLOE Born: 19 Feb 1875 Died: 29 Nov 1906 in Galesburg, Knox, IL Margaretta Marie KINSLOE Born: 16 Aug 1876 in Illinois Died: 20 Jan 1957 in Los Angeles, California Zullah Beatrice KINSLOE Born: 5 Dec 1877 Died: 25 Dec 1970 in Los Angeles, CA

Kinsloe-Langdon Family Tree

• 79

80 • Myles Nienstadt

Acknowledgements

Jean S. Nienstadt, great granddaughter of Thaddeus A. Kinsloe Tom Jewett, great great grandnephew of Homer H. Jewett Keith Morris, great great grandson of William R Morris Robert Eichel, great great grandson of Thaddeus A. Kinsloe Google Book Search (books.google.com) Ancestry.com - the Generations Network, Inc. (www.ancestry.com) Fairfax County Public Library - Tysons-Pimmit Branch World Cat —the OCLC Online Union Catalog (www.worldcat.org)

Acknowledgements

• 81

82 • Myles Nienstadt

Illustrations

Front cover and Intro Grand Army of the Republic pin, Thaddeus A. Kinsloe, Jean Nienstadt Collection.

Duotone Sepia Image of Oquawka Spectator, December 25, 1861, p. 2, col. 1 was scanned from microfilm obtained through interlibrary loan from University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia.

DIG-cwpb-02524, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC) by die engraver Frederick P. Goll. Material: brown thermoplastic. Notes: case warped with top cracked along left edge.

Dimensions: 4.88-inches by 4-inches. Pad: purple velvet with embossed leaf motif. Jean Nienstadt Collection.

Content/Description

Quarter Plate Union Case with Portrait of Thaddeus Kinsloe Motif: Front plate features the Washington Monument in Richmond, Virginia (image above taken in April-June 1865, LC-

Bust portrait of man in formal suit and pink highlighted facial features.. [Thaddeus Augustus Kinsloe] . [April 1861]. 1 photograph: ambrotype; quarter plate, visible image 8.7 x 6.5 cm.

Illustrations

• 83

Marks, Inscriptions and Accompanying Material Case well contains brown slip of paper (handwritten in pencil): “Taken April 1861 Before Departure to Cario [sic] in the U.S.A.” Printed in case well (letterpress): GENUINE UNION CASE, / IMPROVED. / - / Fine Gilt and Burnished / Hinge. / S. PECK & CO, / Manufacturers.

Image Package Note Original component parts: plate, mat, cover glass, preserver. Plate: clear glass with asphaltum backing. Mat: oval. Preserver: decorative brass.

Brief History of the Union Case About 1853 an entirely new style of daguerreotype case was introduced, made of plastic. It was called the “Union case.” Highly ornate Union cases became popular at the end of the daguerreotype era. The daguerreotype was covered by a brass cut-out mat. On top of this was placed a think piece of plate glass of identical size. The sandwich was bound together with gummed paper or goldbeater’s skin, and often enclosed with a delicate frame of gilded brass called a “preserver.” The assembly fitted snugly into the boxlike case.

These molded cases were produced in a great variety of designs. Samuel Peck, who invented the cases described “the composition of which the main body of the case...is composed of gum shellac and woody fibers or other suitable fibrous material dye to the color that may be required and ground with shellac between hot rollers so as to be converted into a mass which when heated becomes plastic so that it can be pressed into a mold or between dies and make to take the form that may be imparted to it by such dies.” Samuel Peck was a typical Yankee Jack-of-all-trades - carpenter, storekeeper, grocer, theater owner, undertaker, daguerreotypist.

He formed the firm of Samuel Peck & Co. in 1855 and dissolved his company in 1860. Fred-

84 • Myles Nienstadt

erick Goll, a die-sinker listed in the New York City directory for 1853-53, cut a die for molded case with a design showing the Washington Monument in Richmond, Virginia, along with a medallion of George Washington, a horse race, and a copy of the painting by Asher B. Durand, The Capture of Major Andre.”1

Preface Stylized preface floral design in sepia from a 1880 book (books.google.com).

Book cover for Jewett, Homer Harris, and Tom Jewett. 2004 (2008 Revised). Failed Ambition: the Civil War Journals and Letters of Cavalryman Homer Harris Jewett. CreateSpace.com.

National Archives and Records Administration Research Card, May 2008, Myles Nienstadt.

Ambition of an Iowa Boy Map of Henderson County, (with) Inset of Oquawka. (Union Atlas Co., Warner & Beers, Proprietors. Lakeside Building Cor: of Clark & Adams Sts. Chicago. 1876. Entered ... 1876

by Warner & Beers ... Washington D.C.), Rumsey Collection, Creative Commons License, Cartography Associates (http://www. davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/ RUMSEY~8~1~4284~460043?id=1-1-4284460043&name=Map+).

Recruiting Advertisement and subsequent images of the Oquawka Spectator masthead and published articles and advertising were scanned from microfilm obtained through interlibrary loan from University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia.

Portrait of Thomas W. Kinsloe, 1805s, daguerreotype on metal, Jean Nienstadt Collection.

Indiana volunteers arriving at St. Louis, illustration in Harper’s weekly, v. 5, no. 246 (1861 Sept.

14), p. 582. LC-USZ62-126965, Library of Con1 Newhall, Beaumont. 1976. The daguerreotype in America. New York: Dover Publications, pp. 36, 129-132.

gress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC. St. Louis Levee. Daguerreotype by Easterly, Thomas M., 1853. N17007, Missouri History Museum Photographs and Prints Collections.

Easterly Daguerreotype Collection. Copyright, Missouri History Museum.

Epilepsy and Malice Court martial documents are scanned images of the contents of Thaddeus Kinsloe’s court martial file, LL-1867, Record Group 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), 1792-1981, Court Martial Case Files, 12/1800 - 10/1894, File Unit: Kinsloe, Thadisis A. – Private, Missouri – 7th Cavalry, Company D, 02/1864. Archives Reference Section, Textual Archives Services Division, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.

Clemency Portrait of Abner Clark Harding circa 1860.

Original Artwork: Engraved by George E Perrine. Copyright iStockphoto.com/Hulton Archive Drawing of Abraham Lincoln with A. Lincoln signature below, Sheppard, Robert Dickinson.

1903. Abraham Lincoln, a character sketch.

Chicago: F.J. Drake. p. 2. Drawing is based on a photo taken by Matthew B. Brady on February 9, 1864.

Hometown Dispatches Early campaign portrait of Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. The bust portrait is based on Samuel M. Fassett’s October 1859 photograph of the Illinois Republican. LCUSZ62-92281, Abraham Lincoln / Fabronius ; lith. & published by Edw. Mendel, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC. Photos of Henderson Courthouse. 1981 July,

By Calvin Beale. Accessed from http://www.

ers.usda.gov/briefing/population/photos/ ShowCH.asp?FIPS=17071, 05/02/2011. Early 1900s, Historic American Buildings Survey Old photograph copied by Joseph Hill. View from Southeast. HABS ILL,36-OQUA,1-, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC. Photo of Illinois volunteers drilling at Camp Defiance, Cairo, Illinois, 1861. LCUSZ62-132593, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC. Note: Illus. from: The Photographic history of the Civil War : thousands of scenes photographed 1861-65, with text by many special authorities / Francis Trevelyan Miller, editorin-chief ; Robert S. Lanier, managing editor. New York : Review of Reviews Co., 1911, v. 1. The opening battles, p. 176-77 (bottom).

Cavalry Charge. Davis, Washington. 1888.

Camp-fire chats of the Civil War. Chicago: Miller. p. 314.

Cavalry Column on the March. Brackett, Albert G. 1865. History of the United States cavalry.

New York: Harper & Bros., Front piece.

Weaving a Legend Portrait of Edith Henderson Langdon, July 2, 1863, daguerreotype on metal, Jean Nienstadt Collection.

Epilogue Portrait of Thomas West Kinsloe and family, 1893, black and white photo on card stock, Jean Nienstadt Collection.

Photos of Thaddeus Kinsloe home in Galesburg, IL from front and of interior, black and white photos on card stock, Jean Nienstadt Collection.

Portrait of Thaddeus Kinsloe and family, black and white photo on card stock, Jean Nienstadt Collection.

Illustrations

• 85

Portrait of Rev. Charles Ezekiel Lynn, accessed from www.mossbrat.com/1178.htm, May 2, 2011.

Portrait of Captain William R. Morris, accessed from http://www.mkmorrisjr.com/myfamilypics/williamrmorris/, May 2, 2011.

Outro Portrait of Matthew H. Jamison, 1911 Jamison, Matthew H. 1911. Recollections Of Pioneer And Army Life. Kansas City: Hudson Press, front page. Digitalized book from Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (http://hdl.handle.net/10111/UIUCOCA:recol lectionsofp00jami).

86 • Myles Nienstadt

Index

Arkansas, Little Rock 3, 18, 55, 65 Arrest 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 55, 63

B

Beall Estelline 61 Mildred Louise 2, 59, 60, 67, 73 Rev. Asa 60, 65 Bishop, William Col. 7, 8, 38, 62 Black Hawk Cavalry Company 8, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 77, 78. See also Military Units, 7th Missouri Cavalry Volunteers, Company D Black Hawk War of 1832 23, 40 Blandee, Michael L. 19 Brazil 12 Brown, Charles 7 Bull Run, Battle of 6, 38 Bushwhacking 13, 49

C

California, Bishop 60 Camp Defiance 34, 35 Camp Sullivan 7 Clemency 21, 25, 27, 38, 39, 44, 55, 73 Cowan Charles S. 37, 38, 39, 70 Charles W. 37 Crandall, Collens E. 7, 50

D

Dallam, Francis A. 31, 32, 33, 35, 38, 75 Dawley, Charles 7 Desertion 2, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 27, 29, 50, 52, 54, 57, 59, 60, 63, 73 Dutch 2, 9

E

Epilepsy 16, 18, 36, 37, 55, 60

F

Fairfax Public Library 29 Fall, John C. 7, 19, 49 Fort Sumter 6, 30, 31

G

German 9, 32, 34 Google 2, 29 Google Book Search (books.google.com) 29, 81

H

Hall, Charles 7 Harding, Abner 23 Henderson, William D. 24, 25, 27 Henderson County Civil War Soldiers Monument 64 Holt, Joseph, Judge Advocate General 1, 24, 25, 26, 27, 67, 85

I

Illinois Alton (Military Prison) 21 Biggsville 6 Cairo 2, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 67, 73 Chicago 6, 35 Galesburg 5, 6, 40, 60, 62, 63, 64 Galva 6 Henderson County 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 16, 18, 22, 23, 25, 31, 53, 64, 65, 67, 72 Monmouth 2, 6, 11, 18, 21, 23, 29, 31, 40, 58, 59 Oquawka 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 22, 23, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 50, 51, 53, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 73 Schuyler Street (main commercial street) 12, 31 Oquawka Junction 6, 32, 39 Quincy 32, 33 Sagetown 32, 46, 62. See also Illinois: Oquawka Junction Springfield 33 St. Louis 8, 11, 17, 18, 34, 51, 55, 70 Warren County 18, 22 Warsaw 7, 8, 40, 41 Yellow Banks 9, 12. See also Illinois: Oquawka Independence, Missouri, Battle of 16, 17, 21, 47, 51, 53, 55, 72 Indiana 8, 62 Internet 68 Iowa Burlington 6, 62 Index

• 87

Des Moines 60, 65 Keokuk 18 Madison County 8 Pella 9 Irvine, James P. 57, 58 Italy 12

J

Jamison, Matthew H. 10, 12, 32, 33, 34, 36, 62, 69, 70, 86 Jewett Homer 2, 5, 6, 7, 29, 39, 46, 62, 65, 77, 84 Tom 2, 5, 81, 84 Johnson, Charles 7

K

Kentucky 8, 62 Kinsloe Edith Henderson Langdon (1st daughter of Thaddeus Kinsloe) 59 Edward Cottrell 60, 64, 65 Margaretta Judith McConnell (wife of Thomas Kinsloe) 16, 39, 60, 61, 64 Maude Elizabeth 60, 61, 64, 65 Thomas (father of Thaddeus Kinsloe) 7, 12, 13, 30, 37, 38, 39, 50, 60, 61, 62, 64, 72 Kinsloe’s Double Front Emporium 12 Kinsloe-Langdon Family Tree 79

L

Langdon Edith Henderson (1st wife of Thaddeus Kinsloe) 1, 2, 3, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23, 37, 41, 49, 50, 51, 55, 57, 58, 59 Elizabeth Wenman (2nd wife of Thaddeus Kinsloe) 59, 60, 64 John Judge (father-in-law of Thaddeus Kinsloe) 25, 40, 59 John W. (brother-in-law of Thaddeus Kinsloe) 19, 46, 51, 55, 62, 63 Susan Packwood (wife of John Langdon) 59 Lincoln, Abraham President 2, 3, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 38, 40, 41, 53, 54, 60, 67, 70, 73 Louisiana 12, 65 New Orleans 8, 12 Lynn Charles, Rev. 6, 7, 46, 51, 65, 85 Ezekiel 6 Harriet 6 Olive 6

M

Maine 8 Malice 1, 3, 5, 15, 23, 25, 60, 62, 73

88 • Myles Nienstadt

Matthews, Rev. R.C. 40 McKee, William Major 43, 46, 47 Merchants 8, 10, 23, 32, 37, 38, 40, 55, 62, 63, 69 Methodist 65 Military Units 10th Illinois Infantry, Company D (Three Months Service) 2, 6, 31, 39, 69 10th Illinois Infantry, Company E (Three Year Service) 38 7th Missouri Cavalry Volunteers, Company D 1, 7, 12, 13, 16, 17, 21, 23, 33, 37, 38, 41, 51, 53, 55, 62, 72, 85 Union Grays 37, 38 Minnesota 9 Mississippi River 5, 6, 8, 34, 61 Missouri 1, 8, 12, 16, 17, 25, 38, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 53, 55, 72, 78 Hannibal 41, 42 Hudson City 41, 42, 43, 45 Lexington 47, 48, 49 Monmouth Atlas 29, 58 Morris, William 7, 8, 17, 21, 22, 44, 49, 51, 52, 53, 65, 86

N

National Archives 67 Nebraska, Alma 60 New York 8, 58, 84

O

Ohio 8, 42 Ohio River 62 Oquawka Plaindealer 31 Oquawka Spectator 6, 8, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 63, 64, 76, 78, 84

P

Patterson, Edwin H. N. 41 Patterson, John B. 41 Pence John A., Lt. 7, 8, 49, 51, 55 Robert J. 45 Pennsylvania 8, 61, 62 Pennsylvania Canal 61 Phelps Sumner 23, 38 William H. 37, 38 Puerperal Fever 57, 58

Q

Quantrill, William Clarke 47. See also Bushwhacking

R

Railroad 10, 62

Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad 41 Northern Missouri Railroad 43 Peoria & Oquawka Railroad 5, 40 Riggs, David Sheriff 18, 20, 21, 22, 27, 65

S

Scandinavians 9 Spain 12 Steamboat 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 41 Kate Cassell (Cassel) Steamboat 7, 8

U

United States-Mexican War of 1848 33, 61, 70 United States National Archives 1, 3, 15, 29, 57, 67 United States War Department 22, 25, 26, 27, 38

V

Vance James M., Lt. 7, 8, 13, 17, 18, 19, 23, 25, 46, 49, 51, 52, 53, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 70, 72 Virginia 62, 84 Virginia, University of 29

W

Washington Monument in Richmond, Virginia 83 White House (Executive Mansion) 27 Wide-Awakes 70 Wilson, John M. 37, 38 Wilson, Samuel J. 35 Wisconsin 9 World Cat (www.worldcat.org) 29, 81

Y

Yates, Governor (Illinois) 31

Index

• 89

90 • Myles Nienstadt