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made at Louisiana to raise a rebel flag, occurred in May of 1861. Spence Norvelle, a Virginian by birth, kept a saloon on the corner of Water and Georgia streets. He was a noisy secessionist and concluded he would hoist a rebel flag in front of his saloon. He ran it up on a pole, and a large crowd of infuriated Union men gathered around it determined to pull it down. Norvelle, who spoke the Virginia vernacular well, said, "You may tar my shirt, you may tar my har, but you can't tar that flag!" At this juncture Bill Kingston hit him a blow under the burr of the ear that felled him to the ground. Further proceedings interested Spence no more. The flag was pulled down and destroyed, and no more attempts were ever made to raise a rebel flag in Pike County.

An amusing incident occurred at Spencersburg, Pike County, in 1861. General Porter, a secessionist, had organized quite a force in Lewis County for the confederacy and a company was organized in the southern part of Pike County to join Porter's troops. About the same time two or three companies of Home Guards came in Camp at Louisiana. As neither the rebels nor Union forces had uniforms, there was nothing to designate the "side" to which they belonged.

Information came to the Home Guards that the rebel company commanded by Col. Dorsey would pass through Spencersburg early the next morning, so two companies made a night march from Louisiana to Spencersburg to intercept Dorsey and his force. At sunrise the Union men came to the residence of Judge Woodson (formerly a County Judge) on the

outskirts of the town, who came to the door, looked carefully at the troops and mistaking them for Dorsey's rebel company, in a great voice said, "Hurrah for Jeff Davis!" Lieutenant Sam Scotten said to him, "Come out here, we are hunting for your kind." Woodson saw his mistake and said, appealingly, "Bless my soul, gentlemen, I thought it was t'other side."

Dorsey did not appear and so there was no conflict at Spencersburg.

William H. Biggs, now deceased, was at one time while I was a resident of Pike County, Missouri, a member of the law firm of Fagg, Dyer & Biggs. He was subsequently chosen Judge of the St. Louis Court of Appeals and for twelve years served with distinction in that capacity.

On one occasion I asked him for what reason he had gone into the confederate army. He said, "At the beginning of the war I was a boy residing with my father, George Biggs, on a farm about ten miles from the Mississippi river in Clark County, Missouri. Steamboats on the river carried mail, including the St. Louis papers. In May 1861, a neighbor of ours went to the river on business and stopped as he came back at our house. He was greatly excited and said to my father, 'George, what do you think old Lincoln has now done?' My father said he could not guess. 'Why,' said he, 'the d-d old rascal has suspended the writ of habeas corpus.' This greatly alarmed me and I went to the stables, bridled and saddled a mule and broke as hard as I could go for the southern army. I did not know what 'habeas

corpus' was and I was looking for it to overtake me before I could get to a place of safety." Biggs said that he was made a Sergeant of the company and a neighbor of his by the name of Guthrie, a Corporal. He said that he took orders from Guthrie for three months before he found out that a Corporal was inferior in rank to a Sergeant.

Another incident that occurred in Louisiana at the breaking out of the war was, to those who knew the parties, very amusing. E. G. McQuie was an old and successful merchant and extended credit to almost every one who asked it. He was a bitter and uncompromising secessionist, however, and had a great hatred for the Union men who had joined the Home Guards.

During the preceeding winter he had given credit to an Irishman by the name of Pat Burns for a half dozen "hickory shirts." Burns at the time was cutting cord wood on Salt River bottom and shipping it to Louisiana on a flat boat. He was a very short man and did not at his best present a very fine appearance. He joined a company of Home Guards called the "Salt River Tigers" which was armed with "Belgium muskets." The gun that Burns had was longer than himself and with a fixed bayonet on the end of it, at least two feet long, made Burns a formidablelooking soldier. With the gun on his shoulder he walked by McQuie's store. McQuie saw him coming and determined to humiliate him if he could. Said he, "Pat, hadn't you better pay for the hickory shirts I sold you?" Pat pointed the gun with the bayonet on the end toward McQuie and said, "You

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d-d old rebel, if you ever mention hickory shirts to me again I will run this bayonet through you," This ended the controversy and Pat was not further disturbed.

Calhoun County, Illinois, is carved out of that portion of the State that lies in the fork of two rivers, Illinois and Mississippi. The topography of the county is very broken, consisting of great hills and deep ravines. It fronts west on the Mississippi River and opposite the lower part of Pike and the upper part of Lincoln counties, Missouri.

In 1861 the population of this section in a large measure consisted of an ignorant, uneducated class. The school-houses were scarce and the teachers employed were fair representatives of the parents of the children they taught. The vehicles used were carts and sleds and the motive power was oxen. These were also used in drawing the plows, the mould boards of which were made of wood. The inhabitants boasted of the fact that not a mile of railroad or a yard of telegraph wire was in use in the county, and they also boasted of the fact that no negro was permitted to live there. This was the character of the population in 1861 when the Civil War broke out. They were bitterly opposed to "old Abe Lincoln' and were in sympathy with the secessionists of Missouri. The topography of the county and the sympathy of its people made a safe refuge for the rebels of Missouri. This bit of history is necessary to fully appreciate the story I am going to tell about the "Hare-lip man."

A year or two prior to 1861 a man by the name of

Williams settled in Calhoun County. He came there from the State of Michigan with a family, wife and three or four children. He was a Republican in politics while his neighbors were Democrats. He was greatly disfigured by a hare-lip but was a man of intelligence and keen discernment greatly appreciating the ludicrous. He enjoyed a joke and perpetrated many himself. The telling of stories by him, in a voice that was controlled by the hare-lip, was greatly enjoyed by all who listened.

He was asked what induced him to come to Calhoun County to live. He said that he had entered land in Michigan and had made a comfortable home there; that while on this farm he was approached and asked to subscribe money for the building of a railroad through that part of the State. He signed a contract to pay $250.00 when the road was built. The road was built but no demand had been made upon him for the money. Finally a man came to the place and demanded possession, showng the contract, a judgment, and deed from a Master in Chancery. He said that he was so outraged that he determined to leave Michigan and go to a county where a railroad could not be built, and so he came to Calhoun County. He said that among the things he brought to the county, was a four-wheeled buggy, the first that was ever seen in the county. In speaking of the inhabitants at the time, he said, "They followed me for miles and miles, trying to see the hind wheels catch up with the fore wheels.'

At the beginning of the Civil War there lived at Bowling Green, Pike County, Missouri, a noisy secessionist by the name of John W. Buchanan. Buchanan

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