Rough and Ready in Illinois. Zachary Taylor's daring exploits in the Prairie State.

President Zachary Taylor

Before becoming Commander-in-Chief, Zachary Taylor spent most of his life securing or expanding our nation's frontier. From the Mississippi and Rock rivers to the Rio Grande and Lake Okeechobee, Taylor commanded troops in battles against Indians, the British, and Mexicans. He was the first President not previously elected to any other public office and when inaugurated on March 5, 1849, had yet to cast a ballot in any election. He was the last Whig elected President and the last Chief Executive to own slaves.

Born in Virginia in 1784, Taylor was raised on a plantation in Kentucky. Although rarely there, he called Baton Rouge, Louisiana, his home, but grew cotton in Mississippi. While President, he fought the expansion of slavery and warned Southern secessionists in 1850 that he would personally hang any rebels against the Union, yet his only son later served as a general in the Confederate Army. Muscular, stocky, and sometimes crude in manner, he gained the nom de guerre "Old Rough and Ready" while fighting the Seminoles in Florida. A year before Taylor was elected President, an Illinois soldier described him during the Mexican War as "short and very heavy, with pronounced face lines and gray hair, wearing an old oilcloth cap, a dusty green coat, a frightful pair of trousers and on horseback looks like a toad."

Taylor was not so seasoned when he served in Illinois. But he was always ready for a good skirmish. He was indicted in 1814 in Edwardsville, Illinois for assault and battery.

IN GOOD COMPANY
In the summer of 1886, the Philipson Decorative Company of Chicago won the contract to finish decorating Illinois' new capitol with eight historic scenes. When one of the State House Commissioners suggested that the Black Hawk War be memorialized, Philipson Secretary Theodore Stuart wrote to former Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis for "any information of your personal connection with that event and any reminiscences that would be useful in making a spirited & truthful group." Stuart felt compelled to remind the aged Davis that he was one of "three Presidents" who "fought" in that war, Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor being the others.

In 1832, Captain Abraham Lincoln served in the Illinois Militia for eighty days under the command of U.S. Army Col. Zachary Taylor. Lincoln was proud of his service but was always self-effacing in his reminiscences. In a speech, during his one term in Congress, he confessed that he never fought any Indians, but he did have "a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes." Sixteen years after his Black Hawk War service, Lincoln protested America's war with Mexico and demanded to see the "spot" where blood was shed on American soil. However, in December 1847 (while the war was still in progress) he started a "Taylor for President Club" and campaigned heartily for this Whig war hero the following year.

When the Black Hawk war began, forty-eight-year-old Taylor had been fighting Indians in Indiana, Missouri, and Minnesota for most of his twenty-four-year army career. (His first combat with Black Hawk in Illinois took place in 1814.) Leaving his wife and family in Galena, Taylor took command of the U.S. 1st Infantry on April 4th and tried to coordinate the use of federal army regulars with the 1,700 Illinois volunteers under Brigadier General Samuel Whiteside in the pursuit of Black Hawk and his followers. Taylor felt that the militia was generally undisciplined and performed poorly under fire. The rout of Isaiah Stillman's force along the Rock River in May of that year confirmed Taylor's suspicions; he would later write that the retreat was one of the most shameful acts the troops had committed.

Taylor's forces followed the Sauks into Wisconsin and were present at their defeat in August at the Battle of Bad Axe. When Black Hawk was captured three weeks later, Colonel Taylor ordered his adjutant, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, to assist Lieutenant Robert Anderson (later the defender of Fort Sumter) in taking the prisoner to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. With the cessation of hostilities, Taylor returned to his command of the frontier along the northern Mississippi River. West Point graduate Davis transferred to the First Dragoons and spent the next two years serving in the greater Midwest. In June 1835, Davis resigned from the Army, married his former commander's daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor, and moved to Mississippi to commence careers in agriculture and politics.

General Zachary Taylor led Illinois troops into battle in Mexico. At various times in 1846 and 1847, future Illinois governors William Bissell and Richard J. Oglesby were under his command. Long before the Black Hawk and Mexican wars, however, Taylor's first experience with Illinois soldiers took place in 1814 on the Mississippi River.

CALL TO ARMS
On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain because England had harassed our merchant marine and interfered with our frontier settlements. The Potawatomi, Sauk (Sac), Mesquakie (Fox), and other tribes in and around the Illinois Territory allied themselves with the British in hopes of protecting their hunting lands from the Indians. In response to the killings of Americans at and near Fort Dearborn and other attacks on isolated white settlers, Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards recruited hundreds of volunteer militiamen and rangers. Meanwhile, the U.S. sent federal troops to Missouri to prevent Britain's Indian allies from attacking St. Louis and settlements in today's west-central Illinois.

During the early stages of this conflict, Captain Taylor served admirably in Indiana at Fort Harrison and late in 1812 was breveted a major by General William Henry Harrison. Brevet Major Taylor was sent to St. Louis in April 1814 and took up his duties as second in command. In August, he was ordered to lead a force up the Mississippi to Rock Island to destroy Indian crops and build a fort to control the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers. Two previous expeditions that year had failed.

Departing on August 22nd, the expedition consisted of 8 large fortified keelboats with 40 army regulars and more than 300 Illinois militia serving under captains Samuel Whiteside and Nelson Rector. For the next two weeks this small armada sailed and rowed against the current without encountering the enemy, their only casualty being a private who fell victim to measles and later died. The expedition reached the mouth of the Rock River on a windy Sunday, September 4th, and settled in for the night on one of the many islands between Illinois and Iowa. The largest of these was Credit Island, so named because Indians received manufactured goods there each fall on "credit" and each spring paid back the debt to French and British traders with bundles of plush furs.

While Taylor's force landed and prepared for battle, the British under the command of Lieutenant Duncan Graham transplanted a battery of 30 men on a knoll in Iowa across from Taylor's keelboats. Graham had arrived a few days before with orders to "stir up" and support the Indians, but also to keep their "barbarity" in check and to prevent the scalping or the mutilation of prisoners. He reported to his superiors that his arrival gave the Sauks great satisfaction and convinced them "that their English Father is determined to support them against the ambition and unjust conduct of their enemies."

Before first light, Indians (including Black Hawk) opened fire on Taylor's troops and a pitched battle began on the islands and in the river. Major Taylor instructed Captain Rector to drop down river, ground his boat on Credit Island's western shore, and pour broadside after broadside from his swivel guns into any foe in range. The British battery then opened fire on the Americans, the first shot blasting through the bow of Taylor's boat as a "thousand" Indians appeared from nowhere, howling, shrieking, and firing.

Whiteside, under Taylor's orders, went to rescue Rector whose boat was adrift. After Rector's men had driven back a large number of Indians, Illinois Ranger Paul Harpole leaped into waist deep water to secure a cable to Whiteside's craft. He rapidly fired fourteen rounds from muskets handed to him by his sheltered comrades until he was shot in the forehead and sank below the waters. Taylor, for the only time in his career, gave the order to retreat.

The flotilla raced down river firing on the enemy for two miles. After enemy sightings had stopped, Tavlor landed to treat the 14 wounded (3 would later die) and repair his riddled boats.

Consulting with the other officers, Taylor decided that "334 effective men" could never defeat the British guns and the 3-1 advantage held by the enemy. He ordered his command to fall back to the DesMoines confluence and construct a fort on the high bluff of the eastern bank of the Mississippi, the present site of Warsaw, Illinois. Taylor named it Fort Johnson in honor of his friend Richard Johnson (later Vice-President under Martin Van Buren). Fort Johnson was built in 19 days. Captain Callaway wrote his wife on September 25th saying he had provisions for only ten more days. The construction, occupation, and abandonment, due to running out of provisions, totaled only 42 days. In 1816 a new fort was built 1/2 mile to the north, named Fort Edwards, which also served as a fur and trading post, in honor of Territorial Governor Ninian Edwards.

Sometime after September 7, 1814, Major Taylor left Captain James Callaway in charge of Fort Johnson, and returned to St. Louis with the main body of troops. When he arrived in Missouri he found that General Howard had died and now Taylor was suddenly interim commander. By early October Callaway and his troops had to burn down what they had just built and returned to Jefferson Barracks.

On September 29, 1814, somewhere in Madison County (at that time the county stretched from Collinsville to Vincennes in the south clear to the Wisconsin territory) one Simon Bartrane was assaulted "with force and arms." He was so beaten, wounded, and ill-treated "that his life was greatly dispaired." Indicted for this crime by the October session of the Madison County Grand Jury were Francois (Francis) Valle of St. Louis (formerly of St. Genevieve), Byrd Lockhart of Goshen Township in Edwards County and Major "Zachariah" Taylor of St. Louis.[1]

History does not reveal how Taylor reacted to his indictment or even if he knew he was charged. All of his personal family correspondence was destroyed when Union soldiers burned his family's plantation during the Civil War.

Military records show that he seemed to carry out his normal duties in St. Louis. In November 1814, Taylor accompanied his new commander 250 miles up the Missouri River in response to a perceived Indian threat to a remote settlement. At the end of the month Taylor was sent to take command of the troops at Vincennes, Indiana. With the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, the War of 1812 was effectively over and Illinois had been held as American territory.

The onset of peace brought about an immediate reduction in the standing army. Seeing that he could not hold his rank, nor support his family without promotion, Taylor applied for a discharge and was farming in Kentucky in June 1815 when it was approved." There is no record of his returning to Illinois until the Black Hawk War seventeen years later.

But as Taylor prepared his papers for early retirement from the army, the wheels of justice turned slowly in the Illinois Territory. On January 24, 1815, Madison County Sheriff Isom Gilham was ordered by the "Supreme Court" in Edwardsville to "take Major Zachariah Taylor, if he may be found within your Bailiwick and him safely keep so that you have his body before the Judges (on March 27th)... to answer an indictment... for an assault & Battery on the body of Simon Bartrane... and against the peace and dignity of the United States."

Felix McGlaughland (McGlaulin), a sometimes Illinois Ranger, was called as a prosecution witness to this incident and testified in the cases of Taylor and Valle. Francis Valle came from one of the oldest French families in Missouri and was an officer in the 24th U.S. Army Infantry with Taylor at the battle of Credit Island. Although we don't know what McGlaughland said under oath, the prosecuting attorney dismissed the case against Zacheriah Taylor on June 1, 1815. Byrd Lockhart, who also had served as an Illinois Ranger and Madison County Coroner, was later found guilty. He left Illinois in 1818 and eventually became the namesake of Lockhart, Texas.

It now appears that while a Major in the United States army, future U.S. President Zachary Taylor witnessed or abetted the beating of French descendant Simon Bartrane on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. British war correspondence reveals that in late August 1814, "some French gentlemen from St. Louis" warned the Sauks that Taylor's forces had left to attack Rock Island. Could knowledge of this leak have triggered an assault on Bartrane? Even with the newly found Madison County court documents, we may never know if Bartrane was suspected of espionage or simply the victim of a petty quarrel.

History does show us, however, that although the Illinois militia won no major military victories in the War of 1812, it helped prevent the British from making any territorial claims east of the Mississippi. Whenever called upon, Zachary Taylor and the Rangers proved rough and ready to fight in Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

---

[1] Documents recently processed at the Illinois State Archives now reveal an event concerning future President Taylor that has never previously been known.

How two Illinois men helped keep Adolph Hitler from developing the atomic bomb.

One reason Adolph Hitler was so anxious to invade Norway during World War II was that it offered him access to heavy water, or D2O, a key ingredient in his plans to build an atomic bomb. In the mountainous region of southern Norway, near the village of Vemork, the Fuhrer in 1941 commandeered a hydroelectric plant to separate heavy water (deuterium oxide) from its common cousin, H2O. Allies and Norwegian resistance fighters were aware of the plant. It was sheltered under a rocky ledge, though, and could not be bombed from the air. Thus the Nazis were able to separate the heavy water and ship it to Germany. Had it not been for the efforts of a small-town pastor and an editor from Gardner, Illinois, they might have been able to build their bomb and drastically alter the outcome of the war.

Reverend Christian Christiansen
outside his home in Gardner, Illinois.

Christian Christiansen was born in Sandnes, Norway, not far from Vemork, in 1859. As a child, he became intimately familiar with the Fjords, rivers, and mountains of his native land. As a young man, he joined Norway's massive merchant marine fleet and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean several times. 

In 1881 he crossed the Atlantic one last time and settled in Chicago. There he worked all day for up to $1.50. At night, he attended a Lutheran seminary.

Ordained in 1888, Christiansen became a circuit rider between York, Illinois, and Gardner, about 60 miles south of Chicago. Near the turn of the century, he accepted a call to pastor churches in Gardner, Gardner Prairie, and Grand Prairie. After a decade there, a dispute with parishioners drove him to northern Wisconsin for 23 years.

When his Gardner congregation asked him three times to come back, he finally agreed to spend the twilight of his career there. Among his neighbors when he returned were the Parkinsons, publishers of the Gardner Chronicle since 1865. He became particularly good friends with young Burt Parkinson, who would soon become the third generation to head the paper. 

Although Burt was in his 80s, he still has a vivid memory that separates editorial wheat from the chaff.

Burt Parkinson and his Heidelberg Press, 1985.

"My grandfather once published a daily paper in Braidwood," he said. "It was a much bigger city then because of coal mining. Anton Cermak was his paperboy. I remember we used to visit him after he moved to Chicago. My grandfather would set me on that big desk while the two of them went to work on memories. Later Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was shot and killed in an assassination attempt while shaking hands with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt during an event in Miami, Florida in 1933.

"Walt Disney used to be a good buddy of mine, too," Burt continued. "We used to go drinking once in a while. He was with the Chicago Herald and Examiner, a Hearst newspaper. They were the first ones to publish his Mickey Mouse strip. The Chronicle then was eight pages long. We bought prepared inserts from Chicago. They were four pages of world news about a month late. The other four pages we did ourselves."

"The old reverend was a friend of mine," Burt said. "I loved him. Every morning he would come in the office and we'd sit there and chat. One morning he came in with a Chicago Tribune article about the plant "Look here, Burt," he said. The English had been bombing it, but that shelf of mountains protected it. The reverend said, "I can show them how to get up underneath and bring a warship in." Nobody knew the depth of the fjord or anything that might be in the way. I said, "Let"s call the Navy." I knew one of the guys up there. The reverend said, "Fine."

"The next Sunday morning after the sermon, the reverend invited me over. A line of cars was parked out front. Out on his kitchen floor two admirals, one from England and one from the U.S., had laid out a map as big as a dining room table. We all got down on our hands and knees. The reverend took a red pencil and drew his own map on the bigger map. Then they left."

The Vemork Hydroelectric Plant (1935) - Heavy water was produced in the Hydrogen Production Plant (the front building).

Burt believes that English warships destroyed the heavy water plant within a week of the Gardner meeting that he arranged. This cannot be easily documented. What is known is that Allies and Norwegian commandos attacked and seriously damaged the plant on at least three separate occasions. These operations—codenamed Grouse, Freshman, and Gunnerside—finally managed to knock the plant out of production in February of 1943.

In Operation Grouse, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed four Norwegian nationals as an advance team in the region of the Hardanger Plateau above the plant in October 1942. The unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted the following month by British paratroopers; they were to rendezvous with the Norwegians of Operation Grouse and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the military gliders crashed short of their destination, as did one of the tugs, a Handley Page Halifax bomber. The other Halifax returned to base, but all the other participants were killed in the crashes or captured, interrogated, and executed by the Gestapo.

In February 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in destroying the production facility with a second attempt, Operation Gunnerside, later evaluated by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II. These actions were followed by Allied bombing raids. The Germans elected to cease operation and remove the remaining heavy water to Germany, but Norwegian resistance forces sank the ferry carrying the water, SF Hydro, on Lake Tinn in late 1944.

The U.S., meanwhile, was able to develop its A-bomb without using D2O.

In September of 1946, in a letter from the Norwegian Embassy in Washington D.C. advised Christiansen's family of his valuable service to the war effort. It read, in part:

"It gives me great pleasure to inform you his Majesty the King of Norway has instructed me to present to you a Diploma in recognition of your valuable services for Norway during the last war... May I extend to you my heartiest congratulation upon this well merited award."

The letter was signed by the Ambassador of Norway.

The specific impact of Reverend Christiansen's contribution to the war effort has never been officially detailed. This is due in large part to its classified nature. However, Burt has a copy of the diploma from the King of Norway thanking the reverend for his "valuable services" to his native country during World War II. And he also has the surety that he and his old friend did the right thing at the right time.

Christiansen died in 1947 and is buried in the Norwegian cemetery near Gardner, Illinois.

The movie, The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris is roughly based on this event was released in 1965. It was filmed on location in Norway with former members of the underground serving as technical advisors.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.