On April 7, 1832, fife and drum announced the spring muster of militiamen around the region of New Salem. All white males from eighteen to forty-five, according to state law, had to assemble four times a year, but the regulation was often ignored in favor of a yearly muster. William G. Greene, twenty years old, stood in a casual formation with his cousins, Bennet Abell and Mentor Graham, along with Lincoln and the other men who were part of the Thirty-first Regiment of Illinois. A militiaman was supposed to “provide himself with a good musket or rifle with proper accoutrements.” (2) But these citizen soldiers did not look like a military unit with “some sitting, some lying, some standing on one foot, some on both -- every variety of weapon, the cornstalk, the umbrella and riding whip predominating.” (3)
Nine days later, Governor John Reynolds of Illinois called for mounted volunteers to reinforce federal troops opposing Black Hawk, chief of the Sauks and Foxes, who had led his braves across the Mississippi River, one hundred miles northwest of New Salem. Black Hawk, sixty-seven at the time, had violated an agreement to stay out of Illinois, but his initial purpose was planting corn until some local militiamen fired the first shots in what became known as the Black Hawk War. Most of the fighting would take place near the northern border of Illinois. If there had been a true emergency in the state, Reynolds could have called up the entire militia of one hundred and fifty thousand, but the Indians only numbered between four and five hundred braves. (4)
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