At the end of their term of service his company was mustered out, and
most of the volunteers, seeing no prospect of glory or profit, started
towards home; but Captain Lincoln re-enlisted the same day as a private,
and often spoke of the satisfaction he felt when relieved of the
responsibility of command. He served through the campaign. He was the
strongest man in the army and the best wrestler, with the exception of a
man named Thompson, who once threw him on the turf.
Black Hawk was captured through the treachery of his allies. Lincoln's
battalion was mustered out at Whitewater, Wisconsin, by Lieutenant
Robert Anderson, who, twenty-nine years later, was to stand with him
as the most interesting figure upon the national stage. A story that
Lincoln was mustered into the service by Jefferson Davis has been widely
published. It was a natural mistake, however, because Davis, then a
lieutenant in the army, was stationed at a fort near Rock Island, but
during the summer of the Black Hawk War he was on leave of absence
and did not join his regiment until long after the Sangamon County
volunteers had returned to their homes. However, Lincoln was to see and
meet several interesting characters, including Colonel Zachary Taylor,
whom he afterwards supported for President, General Winfield Scott,
another Whig candidate for the Presidency and the commander of the
army at the beginning of his administration, Lieutenant Albert Sidney
Johnston, afterwards a Confederate general, and others of fame.
Lincoln never permitted any one to call him "captain," and when in
Congress in 1848 he made a political speech in which he ridiculed
the efforts of the friends of General Cass to obtain some political
advantage from that eminent gentleman's services in a similar capacity.
He said,--
"If General Cass went in advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess
I surpassed him in charges on the wild onions. If he saw any live,
fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody
struggles with the mosquitoes; and although I never fainted from loss
of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry. If ever I should
conclude to doff whatever our Democratic friends may suppose there is
of black-cockade Federalism about me, and thereupon they shall take me
up as their candidate for the Presidency, I protest that they shall not
make fun of me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to write me
into a military hero."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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