“We believe that ‘secession’ will play itself out in less than six months,” Jim Kilpatrick wrote on Feb. 6, 1861, in his Vermilion County Press. The young editor and owner of the paper also observed, “there may be some bloodshed, but it will not be much.”
He was referring to the states that had left the Union. Those comments and that view would prove to be terribly wrong. The vast majority of people in the north also thought if there was to be a war with the wayward states, it would be brief.
Seven states had already left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. They did this following the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. Four more states would join the Confederate states in their treasonous defiance of the Union.
The next four years would be a time of great sacrifice for the citizens of Vermilion County, but they had no way of knowing that on February 11, 1861, as a large crowd gathered around the Great Western Depot in Danville. They were waiting for Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural train to pass. It wasn’t scheduled to stop in Danville but there was a chance Abe might stop.
The little train was coming, all decked out in flags. People gathered at country rail crossings and in villages to wave at Abe as the train steamed by. It was making its way across the Illinois prairie on that chilly day with a light drizzle falling.
When the train neared Danville, it slowed down. Abe was not going to disappoint the citizens of Vermilion County. He became acquainted with many of them during his long years of attending court in Danville..
The train came to a stop at the Great Western station and there were cheers for the tall man who wore a new set of whiskers. His old friend Doctor Fithian was among about a thousand people who had come to wish him well. Elizabeth Harmon was also there and would record the event in her memoir. When the cheering ended, Abe hailed a few people he knew and then made a short speech.
The New York Herald noted he referred to the people as “his good old friends.” That was true of many of them. He ended his remarks by promising the people if he found he had blessings at his disposal after he took office, Old Vermilion would come in for a bountiful share. His address finished, he then thanked those gathered for their expression of friendship. Then the train bell rang, the whistle blew, and the train began to move. Abraham Lincoln left Illinois forever, bound for Washington.
Vermilion County had a population of a around 20,000 then. The census found that 47.4 percent of the Illinois population was female at that time. That would mean there were only 10,415 males in Vermilion County. It was a time when families were large, so there would have been a large number of very young boys counted in the census. This reduced the number of men available to fight in the coming war to well under 10,000. Over the next four years an estimated 2,000 of them would go to war. This was a significant number of the men living in the county.
Even though the estimated 2,000 would not all absent themselves from the county at the same time, there would be a large number gone during the four-year conflict. It would leave women and young children behind to provide the intensive labor required on Vermilion County farms. It was an agricultural economy at that time
The men would leave the county to answer President Lincoln’s call to arms when the Civil War began. It was well known to Lincoln’s Danville friends, Doctor Fihian and Reverend Enoch Kingsbury, that he would do all he could to abolish the institution of slavery. He had stated he hated the institution of bondage and considered it a great injustice to humanity. Those true views of the newly elected president on slavery were also known in the South, that’s why slave states left the Union and would begin a war of rebellion.
On March 4, 1861, Senator Edward D. Baker introduced President Lincoln when he gave his inaugural address. In his speech, President Lincoln threw the South a bone by stating, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Near the end of his speech he countered that with three things he would do, he swore he would “preserve, protect and defend” the United States of America. That meant he would not permit states to leave the Union. Destroying the Confederacy would preserve the Union and end slavery.
Josephine Fithian’s son John Charles Black knew war was coming. He wrote his mother, who was Doctor Fithian’s wife, a letter from Wabash College expressing his joy Lincoln had been elected and stated, “We’ll hold the Southerners.” Black would have his chance to do that during the next four years as Vermilion County made it through four years of great sacrifice by its citizens.
Sen. Baker, who introduced President Lincoln at his inaugural, and Lincoln had been Doctor Fithian’s lawyers in Danville in 1841.