No national occurrence had a deeper impact on McDonough County than the Civil War, and there are two main reasons for that.
One is the cultural division that existed in this central Illinois county, between residents from southern states who were severely prejudiced toward Blacks, did not oppose slavery, and certainly didn’t want military violence to occur in their former home area, and other residents from northern states who had opposite views, realizing that slavery had no place in a nation which was supposedly committed to freedom, equality, and respect for everyone—so military action in the South was required.
The long state of Illinois was itself divided between a southern-dominated section in the lower half and a northern-dominated section in the upper half.
And McDonough County was right in the middle of that cultural division—as were some other nearby counties. No wonder that before the war the Underground Railroad operated in western Illinois—with notable help from the northern-based Allison and Blazer families near Macomb. And our county also had a violent group of men from pro-South areas that sought to stop those anti-slavery crusaders from secretly transporting Blacks to freedom.
To illustrate the deep division over slavery and the war in McDonough County, I reflected the attitudes of our two county seat newspapers, the Macomb Eagle and the Macomb Journal, in my book, Macomb: A Pictorial History. The Eagle, for example, viewed Abraham Lincoln as a destroyer of the nation and a threat to the lives of white people. In an 1864 article titled “The Victims of Lincoln’s Despotism,” the Union Army soldiers were “slaughtered on behalf of the negro.” And in another article from that year, the newspaper portrayed Republicans (Lincoln supporters, committed to the war) as people who often do violent acts against opponents of the military conflict. In contrast, the Macomb Journal, during 1862, discussed “a foulmouthed, blatant secessionist, named Dave Crisman,” who hated supporters of the war, and who committed an act of gun violence against someone who disagreed with him. In an 1864 article, which I also reprinted, that newspaper blasted the local “Copperheads” (northern-based supporters of Confederates during the war) as “reptiles and renegades” for opposing the Union Army draft and fighting against “all of the rights that are sacred to man.” And of course, it also celebrated Lincoln as a great American. So, the two Macomb newspapers couldn’t have been more opposed throughout the war, as they represented the two sides of the conflict time and again during the 1861-1865 period. That local clash illustrates the severe division in our county during those turbulent years. So does the most notable murder in McDonough County during the nineteenth century—the killing of William H. Randolph, who had been a Macomb store owner, banker, realtor, sheriff, circuit clerk, and state legislator (who had also built the Randolph House Hotel) in the 1830s-1850s.
During the war, he was appointed Deputy Provost Marshal, and while enforcing the controversial draft (that Lincoln had established), he was murdered by the anti-war Bond brothers at Blandinsville, on November 1, 1864. They then fled from Illinois. Although caught and tried in 1868— they were not convicted, by a jury sympathetic to the Southern viewpoint.
The other reason for the deep impact of the Civil War in McDonough County was the large number of local soldiers who signed up for service in the Union Army.
Many of them lost their lives in the conflict, making our county known for its many tragic military deaths. And other local Union soldiers, who survived, were deeply impacted by their military service and later made our county a place that was noted for remembrance of the Civil War.
As I mention in my history of Macomb, the war began on April 12 and 13, 1861, when Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumter. President Lincoln then called for 75,000 volunteers, and there was a patriotic response throughout the North. Men from McDonough County flocked to Macomb, where companies were organized, officers were elected, and men were taught to march.
Our county’s first company was the Union Guards, and men from Macomb and Bushnell dominated it. The captain was Virgil Ralston of Macomb, and the first lieutenant was Benjamin Pinkley of Bushnell. Within several days, a second company, the McDonough Guards, was also organized.
Those units left together in early May, and the Macomb Journal reported the event, saying, “It was known that the men were to leave that afternoon (May 2), and the people poured into town by the thousands, many of them having husbands, sons, brothers, and sweethearts among those 300 men...” After a ceremony at the courthouse square, the two military units marched behind two bands to the railroad station on West Jackson Street, where they “boarded the cars, and with a thousand ‘God bless you’s’ rising above a thousand sobs, the first quota from McDonough was off to the tented field—many of them gone forever.”
By late August of that summer, McDonough County’s remarkable contribution to the Union Army already consisted of ten companies of men, and two others were being organized. The Macomb Journal then asked, “Can any town or county in the country beat this?” And the military volunteering continued. As W. H. Hainline, himself a Union Army soldier, and after the war the editor of that newspaper and a devoted Civil War historian, later said in a 1903 historical article, McDonough County produced “a total of 2,734 soldiers, or over twenty-seven companies of one hundred men each.”
So, “two out of every three [male residents] who were able to bear arms went to the front,” and about “400 never returned.” As that reveals, the sheer number of local Civil War soldiers who were killed—and whose families in our rural county were deeply impacted by those military deaths—is a notable feature of our local heritage.
And of course, McDonough County has various notable military figures who were associated with that war. For example, there were two colonels who had remarkable reputations.
One was Louis H. Waters, and the other was Carter Van Vleck. They were law partners in Macomb during the late 1850s, and both were immensely patriotic. When the war broke out, they were immediately involved in promoting enlistment and organizing military units.
Waters helped to raise a company for the 28th Infantry Regiment, but he later resigned that commission to organize the 84th Regiment at Quincy, in August, 1862.
Of the 950 men in that unit, 205 were from McDonough County. They saw much action, in many noted battles, including Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Stone’s River. At the last of those, the Union forces, under General Rosecrans, were almost defeated by the Confederates, but they were able to hold on and prevent the Rebels from pushing on to Nashville. However, the cost was high: 13,000 casualties, of which 228 came from the 84th Regiment. As General Rosecrans said of the regiment founded and led by Col. Waters, “The 10th Brigade saved the (Union) army, and the 84th saved the 10th Brigade.” Moreover, the total number of casualties for that heroic unit, during the entire war, was 558 men—well over half of the soldiers who had fought under Col. Waters. The great colonel from Macomb was a revered hero after the war.
His law partner, Carter Van Vleck, who had been Macomb’s city attorney in the 1850s, was the lieutenant colonel, and then the colonel, of the 78th Regiment, which was also organized in 1862. It included 214 McDonough County men.
That regiment also fought in many battles, including Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Kenesaw Mountain. Van Vleck’s most important officer was his close friend from Macomb, Major William L.
Broaddus, who had been a police officer before enlistment, and he was killed at Chickamauga in 1863. Like so many others, he was buried on the battlefield, in an unmarked, mass grave, but as I point out in Here to Stay (2012), Van Vleck later returned to that battlefield, with sixty of his men, dug up that mass grave, and found his old friend’s body. Then he shipped it to Macomb, and Broaddus was then buried at Macomb’s Oakwood Cemetery—which was becoming a renowned site of Civil War graves.
And eventually, so was Col. Van Vleck. He was wounded in the arm at Chickamauga and could have resigned, to come home, but instead, he got out of his hospital bed, put his arm in a sling, and returned to lead the 78th Regiment. After another eleven months, while encamped with his unit near Atlanta, he received a bullet wound in the head that led to his death twelve days later. He was also buried at Oakwood Cemetery, and many local people contributed to the purchase of a tall obelisk that marks his grave.
By then, local people had become very appreciative of their Civil War heroes, and after the war (starting in 1869), many annual Decoration Day events were held at Oakwood, which drew thousands of people.
Another hero is Rev.
Milton Haney, who was the minister of the Bushnell Methodist-Episcopal Church in 1861, when the war broke out, and he helped to form Company F of the 55th Illinois Infantry Regiment. He was first a captain, but he soon became the regiment’s chaplain. As Rollene Storms and Peggy Hood point out in their history of Bushnell, at the Battle of Atlanta in 1864, when his unit was in danger, the normally noncombatant chaplain “picked up a rifle, rallied a small contingent of men, and with gallant effort counterattacked [the Confederates] and held the position until reinforcements arrived.” Then he ministered to both Union and Confederate casualties.
In 1896 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Another notable war veteran is locally more well-known today: C. V.
Chandler. Born and raised in Macomb, he was a lieutenant in the 78th Infantry, who was wounded at Chickamauga. And after the war he became Macomb’s wealthiest, businessman as well as a renowned community activist. He not only led various civic groups but erected the Civil War soldiers’ memorial in Chandler Park during 1899 and was a noted leader in Macomb’s huge Decoration Day event, set at Oakwood Cemetery, where so many Civil War soldiers were buried.
Another Civil War veteran with a huge impact was W. H. Hainline. Raised in rural McDonough County, he served in the 16th Regiment, was captured near Atlanta, and spent a few months at notorious Andersonville Prison Camp. Released through a prisoner exchange, he later fought in Sherman’s famous march through Georgia. During that effort his beloved older brother, George, who was a captain in the same regiment, was killed at Bentonville— and buried in a mass grave on the battlefield.
That had a deep impact on Hainline, who later became the owner and editor of the Macomb Journal. In that role he had an influence on the town, county, and region. Among other things, he wrote more articles about the Civil War than any other figure in the region’s history—including some vivid memoirs. Also, he was a noted leader of Macomb’s huge annual Memorial Day event, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
What all of this, and so much else, reveals is that the Civil War (and its causes) had an enormous impact in McDonough County. And because of our past experience in that turbulent era, and the many ways in which the conflict influenced our county, the Civil War heritage here should be emphasized far more than it has been in recent generations.
