Chapter Twenty Six

THE WAR PERIOD-TALLY RAID, SKUNK RIVER ARMY-PEORIA RIOT.

As in many northern communities during the Rebellion, there was a misguided element in Mahaska county who was not in sympathy with the war measures of President Lincoln and his admirers. Organizations known as "Knights of the Golden Circle," who held secret meetings and were in communication with similar societies throughout the state, are known to have existed in this county especially along, its northern border. In fact, these associations of men were in sympathy with the Southern Confederacy, and were never more light-hearted than when victory came to the Southern army. In a letter to Secretary of War E. M. Stanton, dated March 18, 1863, Governor Kirkwood expresses the belief that these organizations were effected by paid agents of the Southern Confederacy .

On North Skunk river, near Indianapolis, three men were arrested on the charge of treason by the United States marshal. They were Silas Parr, B. A. Smith and Wesley Thomas, all public men. They were brought to Oskaloosa and placed in jail and a company of guards were ordered from Eddyville to prevent the possibility of their friends releasing them.

Some days after their arrest a company of several hundred men gathered and started for Oskaloosa for the purpose of liberating the prisoners. They held a parley on the north side of Skunk river and sent a committee to Oskaloosa to confer with the authorities. Little attention was paid to their presence, and after some threatening remarks of what they intended to do, they returned to their companions and the company dispersed to their homes.

After a short confinement Parr and Thomas were released on the payment of a small fine. Smith, being a man of limited means, was sent to Des Moines to serve out a six or nine months imprisonment. His friends sent him a purse, but he sent the ransom money to his family, determining to submit to the sentence imposed after which he was permitted to go free.

TALLY RAID.

Confederate sympathizers were known in the north as "Copperheads." They wore a badge of half a butternut or a copper cent as a breast pin. Perhaps the most rabid, disloyal stronghold in Iowa was over in the forks of the Skunk rivers in Keokuk county, with allies in Mahaska, Poweshiek and Wapello counties. On Saturday, August 1, 1863, when our country was under its darkest cloud a meeting of "Peace Democrats," as they chose to call themselves, was held in a grove near English river, a half mile from the town of South English, which was of strongly Union sentiment. There were several hundred persons at this meeting. Their leading spirit was George Tally, a young Baptist minister, whose father was a Tennesseean. He was an open advocate of slavery as a divine institution and a defender of the Rebellion. They had gone to this meeting with arms secreted under the hay and, straw in the bottom of, their wagon beds. Some republicans were at the meeting and hot words had passed and butter-nut badges had been stripped from a couple of ladies who had displayed them.

Tally was an uneducated man, but endowed with much natural ability as a speaker. On this occasion he was the chief speaker. Some of the party had made absurd threats that as they returned they would clean out the town of South English. These facts were made known in town and in the afternoon when the Tally forces were returning home they passed through South English just at the close of a republican meeting and found the entire town armed, making no effort to disguise their weapons. Excitement ran high and the streets were crowded. Tally was in the rear part of the front wagon with a revolver and bowie knife in his hands. The Union element bitterly hated the Copperheads, and taunted them as traitors and cowards. At this all of the company took up their weapons from the bottom of their vehicles and one man discharged, by accident he claimed, one barrel of his piece into the ground. This gave license for the firing to become general. Tally fell dead after firing two chambers of his weapon. One of the horses drawing the front wagon was shot, which caused the team to run, and the fusillade ceased. Tally was shot three times. Once in the head and twice through the body. A democrat by the name of Wyant was severely wounded, but afterward recovered. Tally was carried to his home in Iuka. The revolver and knife which he held in his hands when he received the fatal shots were so tightly clinched that they could only be removed with difficulty after the body reached home. That afternoon and night messengers were sent to adjoining counties to notify sympathizers. By daylight Sunday morning an army of variously estimated at from 500 to several thousand were on their way to a rendezvous agreed upon on Skunk river south of Sigourney. Here they formed a camp and spent the day molding bullets, gathering ammunition and arms. Bill Tally, a cousin of the unfortunate victim at South English, was selected as their leader. This hastily assembled body of men are known in history as the" Skunk River Army." Governor Kirkwood had been promptly notified of the occurrence, and with his usual foresight and activity was ready for the emergency. He at once ordered eleven military companies and a squad of artillery to proceed forthwith to Sigourney where he himself with three aides met them on Wednesday. The governor made an address at the courthouse to the large assembly who were in waiting. He urged obedience to law, and promised the power of the state to bring guilty parties to justice. The army had called Charles Negus, a prominent Fairfield attorney, to act as their counsel. After a conference with the state authorities he wisely advised the leader of the army of the utter folly of trying to resist the legally organized state authorities. Col. N. P. Chipman was commander of the state guards. When Tally reported to his crude soldiery that they were called upon to disperse or face the state troops without delay, their courage gave way to more mature judgment and they concluded to disband. The temporary encampment was abandoned in as short a space of time as they had gathered. It is estimated that about 150 men from Mahaska county were members of that inglorious mushroom army.

PEORIA RIOT.

On August 22, 1863, a similar occurrence took place in this county, one-half mile west of Peoria, at a democratic rally. Capt. Simon G. Gary and Sergt. A. T. Alloway, both of Company H, Third Iowa Infantry, were in Peoria at that time at home on wounded furlough. Gary had been at this mass meeting in the fore noon and had had some trouble with some parties wearing buttetnut badges. In the afternoon after indulging in some liquor he returned to the meeting and took with him his comrade, Alloway, from whom he had borrowed a pistol. Capt. James A. Seevers, of Oskaloosa, was the speaker for the afternoon, and A. L. Shangle presided at the meeting. The two wounded soldiers got into an altercation with the disloyal element and were persuaded to retire by some of their friends. As they were leaving the grounds a partisan named Mart Myers stepped in front and dared either of them to remove his butternut badge. The hated symbol was at once removed and Alloway and Myers clinched. In the struggle which followed Myers shot Alway, who was unarmed, through the body. Whereupon the soldier, now suffering from a second wound, snatched the weapon from his antagonist and threw him on the ground, and after striking Myers several times with his pistol, he fell to the ground completely exhausted. Immediately after the first shot was fired, it was followed by the discharge of a number of other weapons. Gary was wounded in the wrist and a Dr. Spain received a wound in the leg. Excitement and consternation followed and the meeting broke up. The few republicans present placed Sergeant Alloway in a wagon, but he expired before reaching Peoria. The dead soldier was to have been married in a short time to a cousin of the man who took his life. 

Sheriff Frank Alumbaugh and two marshals shortly afterwards arrested Myers and he was placed in the county jail in Oskaloosa. After two lengthy and expensive trials, one in Ottumwa and the other in Albia, in which a hard effort was made by the defense to prove that it was the shot fired by Gary that killed his comrade, the county already having been at a large expense, with no hope of conviction, the case was dismissed, and Myers remained unpunished for his crime. There is not much wonder that such men went unpunished when we remember that it was estimated by Gov. Stone in that year that there were 30,000 members in the disloyal organizations of the state.

RAID ON THE TIMES OFFICE.

The Times was a democratic paper published in Oskaloosa. A. A.  Wheelock was its editor. He was of the radical democratic type of that period and in commenting on the death of Alloway he is said to have referred to the murdered soldier as being "only a Lincoln hireling, employed in killing his betters." Several copies of the Times reached his comrades of Company H, Third Iowa Regiment, where they were on duty at Natchez, Mississippi. They were very justly indignant at that kind of journalist reference to their services in behalf of their country.

A meeting was called and they decided that Mr. Wheelock should do one of two things, viz.: retract his ultra statement, or accept confederate money for his paper at its face value. Failing to do either of these, his paper should be suppressed just as soon as Company H should reach home. These alternatives were sent to the indiscreet editor by mail. He refused the first two and the soldiers determined to stop the publication of the paper. In March, 1864, a number of troops came home on veteran furlough, and among the number a part of Company H of the Third. At a meeting held at Eddyville, which was at that time the nearest railroad point, quite a number of veterans opposed violent measures; others were bent on carrying out the decision of the company while in camp. A delegation of veterans alighted from the stage at the Madison house and called at the Times office and told Mr. Wheelock they were comrades of Alloway, whose calling he had derided and belittled through his paper. They would be at home for thirty days and requested that his paper should be suspended for that length of time. When asked by what authority, their reply was: "By military authority." Mr. Wheelock stated in. the next issue that he had been threatened by soldiers, that he wished no quarrel with them, but if his business was interfered with they would be called upon to settle with the democracy of Mahaska county. The Saturday following this publication was selected by the soldiers to make their work effective. The veterans had all been notified and were present, likewise a goodly number of the Times supporters were in town and were known to be armed. The Times office was near the northeast corner of the square, where the jail now stands. A squad of Company H, Third Iowa, visited the office about two o'clock in the afternoon, and going into the press room they quietly carried to the window everything that was in sight- forms, font and type, and threw it into the street. It was only the work of a few moments, and without touching anything else they met their comrades on the outside. The work was completed without a shot being fired and the suppression of the paper was effectual. Mr. Wheelock left the city and abandoned the field of journalism.