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Way back in 1808 at the village of Fairview, down in old Kentucky where horseshoes are lucky, the former Jane Cook presented her husband with a healthy new son on Friday, June 3rd. Samuel Emory Davis may have raised two fingers to form a V while uttering "I love ya, baby! Peace." Sam and Jane Davis, already having a child named Sammy Davis, jr., decided this little fellow should be called Jefferson Finis. By 1861, Jefferson F. Davis, Kentucky native of what is presently Todd county, had served as a senator, congressman, and US Secretary of War. Davis was once married to Sarah Knox Taylor, daughter of the late Zachary Taylor, former US President. In February, the 52-year-old Davis was selected as Provisional President of the new Confederate States of America. Later, in November, he was elected CSA President by popular vote of the secessionists. On Wednesday, February 20, a Louisiana native named Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard resigned from the US Army as a brigadier general. The departure followed a very brief stint as Superintendent of West Point Academy in New York. Beauregard had graduated from the Point in 1838, and was twice wounded about a decade later in the Mexican War. P. G. T. Beauregard soon became a commander in the Confederate army. President Abraham Lincoln, who had grown up not far from Hawesville, KY, assumed office on Monday, March 4, 1861, one day before JOHN TAYLOR's 35th birthday. Several southern states had already seceded. When the outbound President James Buchanan met with Lincoln just before the inauguration, he expressed a great happiness to relinquish the position; and consequently the ramifications of the job would literally kill the new President. The Rail Splitter's entire executive career as President would be spanned essentially by the full length of the Civil War. The impending war ultimately broke loose only 39 days after he took office and officially ended just five days before the President's demise. When JOHN and MARY's infant son, little Rob Taylor, was almost four months old, the Rebel General Beauregard followed the instructions of his Confederate superior, and ordered artillery firing on Fort Sumter. At 4:30 on the morning of Friday, April 12, the bombardment had begun. Trying to dodge the shelling at the besieged US Army post was Captain Abner Doubleday, credited by some folks with having invented baseball, which had already been played around the country for years and would become known as "The National Game" before the end of the century. US Major Robert Anderson, a native Kentuckian, was forced to surrender Fort Sumter to the Rebels before the Federal evacuation. Three days after the attack in South Carolina, President Lincoln immediately called up 75,000 militia troops and asked for volunteers across the nation to fight the Rebels. Down the wires from the cockpit basket under his lighter-than-air contraption floating 500 feet above Washington, DC, 29-year-old Thaddeus Lowe sent an informative message to President Lincoln on Tuesday, June 18, 1861. Beholding a view stretching 50 miles in every direction, Dr. Lowe impressed the chief executive with the aircraft's military reconnaissance value via the first telegram ever transmitted from an airborne station. Lincoln's reply was telegraphed back up the cable, and later at the White House he inspected the returned hot-air balloon. The President himself was reported by newsmen to have consequently gone for an elevated ride in the flying apparatus, prompting him to appoint Lowe as chief of the Federal Balloon Corps later in the year. Either this year or the previous one, George was born to Decatur and Nancy (Kerns) Wyman in Pennsylvania. The majority of Kentucky citizens were loyal to the Union; on Thursday, July 4, 1861, and later in August, they elected mostly strong Union men as their local state representatives. The Kentucky birthplaces of Abraham Lincoln and the Confederate States President, Jefferson Davis, were each within 75 miles of Hawesville. Davis was born at Fairview, KY, on June 3, 1808. A former son-in-law of the late President Zachary Taylor, Davis was a veteran of the Mexican War and had been Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. As a US senator, he was chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Lincoln was born at Hodgenville, KY, on February 12, 1809, eight months after the birth of Davis. Through his marriage, President Lincoln had four Todd brothers-in-law serving in the secessionist army, and three of Mrs. Mary (Todd) Lincoln's sisters were married to Confederate officers bearing surnames other than Todd. Although Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin personally favored the Southern cause, the administrative ruler strategically attempted to maintain a temporary neutrality for the commonwealth, ordering that both Southern and Federal troops stay out of the state. But on Thursday, September 5, assurance came to the legislature in Frankfort that Rebels led by General Leonidas Polk, an Episcopal minister, had invaded the southwest corner of Kentucky two days earlier and were holding Hickman, Chalk Bluffs, and Columbus. On the 4th, US gunboats, the Tyler and the Lexington, had engaged Rebel forces away downriver from Hawesville. The Civil War had come to the land of bluegrass and bourbon, dividing concerned residents into their personal political stances of choice. Kentucky lawmakers passed a resolution demanding unconditional withdrawal of the Confederates. Other resolutions were passed over Governor Magoffin's veto. By Saturday the 7th, General Ulysses S. Grant had brought his Union troops, three regiments made up of Battery K of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery and the 9th and 13th Illinois Infantry, on a two-day march from Cairo to take Paducah a few miles to the east on the Ohio River. Extensive preparations were made to halt the northward advance of the Rebel army. On the September 18th, Confederates held Bowling Green. 138 battles were fought in Kentucky during the Civil War. 14 battles occurred in the state during 1861, 59 in 1862, 30 in 1863, 31 in 1864 and four battles in 1865. In July of 1861, Confederate forces numbered about 114,000 and the total Union military strength was nearly double at 219,400 members. In November, about one-third of the Union forces, 70 thousand Federal soldiers, were in Kentucky and over 20 thousand of these were Kentuckians. William Wishart was making his home down in Union county, KY, evidently with his wife, and he was working at the Mulford mines. In late 1861, the young miner journeyed up into St. Clair county, IL, to stay at Caseyville and work on the Belleville tract near St. Louis. William probably left warring Kentucky to avoid on-the-spot conscription the Union army units employed inside the border state whenever they came across a likely candidate who could tote a muzzle-loader and go fight "Johnny Reb." JOHN wrote a letter to Mary Taylor in Orkney on November 22, an autumn Friday which would have been their parent's 40th wedding anniversary. He told his sister that a great number of soldiers were presently in the state, making a "very disagreeable" situation, but JOHN assured her that all her Kentucky relatives were well. In Kentucky before the end of 1861, Union troops had engaged the Confederates at Barboursville, Mayfield Creek, Muddy River, Laurel Creek, Hopkinsville, Albany, Travisville, Hillsborough, Upton's Hill, near Clintonville on the Pomme De Terre, Rockcastle Hills, Hodgensville, West Liberty, Camp Joe Underground, Saratoga, Eddyville, Woodbury, Morgantown, Columbus, Ivy Mountain, Piketown, Brownsville, Mill Springs, Somerset, Fort Holt, Whippoorwill Creek, Goggin's Camp, Bacon Creek Bridge, Russellville, on the fishing creek near Somerset, Gradysville, Bagdad, Rowlett's Station, Grider's Ferry, and Sacramento. But much bigger battles were yet to come. Even Hawesville would be assaulted by cannon balls fired from gunboats upon the Ohio River. Toward the end of 1861, JOHN's homemaker wife, MARY TAYLOR, minded the domestic duties and kept house while serving her husband and raising four children. 10-year-old Willie was attending school, while his younger sisters, Mary Helen and Agnes Frances, were turning out to be "two nice girls." Little baby Rob had still not yet mastered the precise art of striding. When no one toted him around, the exploring year-old infant would adventurously "creep through the room." The overall climate of Hawesville was not favorable when the new year of 1862 began. For the past few months JOHN was talking openly about looking for a new location to work and live, just as William Wishart had done by going up to Caseyville, IL. But the employer of JOHN's brother-in-law was not paying well in St. Clair county, so William planned to stay only until the upcoming month of March. William was himself needing to find a better job somewhere else where he could apply some of his talents, skills, abilities, proficiencies, aptitudes, and competences in order to provide himself gainful employment through the next summer. And the war between the states continued. |
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