Remembering the Civil War
The news of Lee's surrender was welcomed in Greencastle and Putnam County with great enthusiasm. The Putnam Republican Banner reports "from the time of the reception of the news at 10 o'clock A.M. till late in the night the rejoicing was continual." Upon learning of the President's death, celebrations in Putnam County subsided. The Putnam Republican Banner offered a stirring tribute to the fallen President, as "The patriot's friend, the mild but firm ruler of rebellious sons, the man of lofty intellect, of truly Christian comportment; one whom the nation could rely upon with safety in her darkest most direful struggle."
Following Lincoln's death, Methodist preacher Aaron Wood and Indiana Asbury President Thomas Bowman addressed a meeting of all Greencastle churches on the college lawn because the crowd would not fit into the campus chapel. Matilda Cavins, the wife of Col. Aden Cavins, recalled the memorial held for Lincoln on the campus grounds in this letter (page 2) (3).
Citizens from Putnam County traveled to Indianapolis on Sunday April 30th where they met President Lincoln's funeral train and paid tribute to Lincoln at the State House. More than one hundred thousand visitors passed the coffin in one day and the Terre Haute and Richmond Railroad offered reduced fares for riders to go to Indianapolis for the occasion. The funeral train's visit to the state capital is pictured below.
Rev. Matthew Simpson, the first President of Indiana Asbury University, was a prominent Protestant leader by 1860. A Union supporter, he became an advisor to Secretary of War Stanton and a confidant of President Abraham Lincoln. Simpson delivered the funeral address at Lincoln's memorial service in Springfield, Illinois on May 4th, 1865. Simpson is pictured below.
Putnam County also boasts connections to three prominent Lincoln biographers. An 1875 graduate of Indiana Asbury, Jesse W. Weik received an appointment as a pension agent from the Department of the Interior in 1882, and was assigned to Springfield, Illinois. While there, he met with Lincoln's former Illinois law partner, William H. Herndon, who sh owed Weik his papers from their law office. Weik collected information about Lincoln from family, friends and acquaintances. After Weik returned to Greencastle he kept up correspondence with Herndon and initiated collaboration on a biography of the president. Herndon came to Greencastle in 1887 to write. Weik composed and edited Herndon's work and published the landmark book in 1889. In 1941, the Library of Congress purchased Weik's Lincoln records for its collection. Weik (left) and Herndon (right) are pictured below.
U.S. Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana was an 1885 graduate of Indiana Asbury and the author of numerous publications. His unfinished biography of Abraham Lincoln was researched from previously unexamined sources and from the Herndon collection of Lincoln materials on loan from Jesse Weik. It was published in 1928 after Beveridge's death in 1927. Beveridge is pictured below.
Shortly after the end of the war, the Putnam County Soldiers' Monument Association was formed under the leadership of Col. John R. Mahan. Nearly $10,000 dollars was raised by the committee to fund the monument's construction. Cincinnati sculptor Thomas D. Jones designed and constructed the monument, which depicts a volunteer Civil War soldier and lists the names of 321 county soldiers who died in the war. The monument was dedicated on July 2nd, 1870, to much fanfare, and drew a crowd of five to ten thousand people. For years after the war, veterans maintained connections with fellow soldiers through reunions and veterans groups, such as the Grand Army of the Republic, with some soldiers became politically active.
After the Civil War began, military training began to be offered on the Indiana Asbury University campus. The Asbury Cadets were formed in 1879 and their name changed with the university's in 1884. The Cadet Corps represented a legacy of the Civil War on the Greencastle campus. They are pictured below, drilling on the East College Lawn.
By 1870, the African American population of Putnam County was just over one hundred. Religion was one way African Americans formed community in Putnam County. The Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greencastle had about forty members, let by Rev. John H. Clay. Between 1879 and 1880, former slaves moved to Indiana as part of the Exoduster movement to pursue jobs and escape racism in the south. Rev. Clay and George L. Langsdale, editor of the Greencastle Republican Banner, distributed circulars throughout North Carolina and Kentucky to attract labor to Putnam County. By 1880, nearly six hundred African Americans lived in Putnam County, although that population would diminish over the next twenty years. Years after the war, a former slave who migrated to Putnam County, Spear Pitman, described his experience.
Years after the war, A.W. Crandall taught history at DePauw University from 1921 to 1963. He was well known for his annual lecture on the Battle of Gettysburg which drew a large audience each year. DePauw also hosted Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg to the university in 1958 to deliver a talk.