CHAPTER XXII

A GREAT TASK FINISHED

Many and pleasant are the fond recollections still cherished of the score of years which I spent in the practice of medicine in DuQuoin. It was there that I acquired a practical knowledge of medicine and surgery which constituted my life work, and in the practice of which I was actively engaged for more than half a century.

It was there on December 27, 1864, that I was married to Miss Helen Priscilla Ward, a daughter of Alva Ward, a branch of the New England family of that name which had found its way west by easy stages, settling first in Cayuga County, New York, moving from thence to Clermont County, Ohio, and eventually to DuQuoin at about the time the Illinois Central was built; in fact, Guy, George and John Ward, brothers of my wife, helped build the first house erected in Duquoin, which was built approximately on the site of the present residence of Lucius Smith, the banker. My wife's mother was a cousin of General Don Carlos Buell, whose timely appearance with his army at Shiloh saved Grant's army from almost certain annihilation; a brother, Guy Carl

ton Ward, was a captain in the 12th Illinois Infantry; another brother, George, served in the 81st Illinois, the regiment organized and commanded by my friend, Colonel James Dallins; another brother, John B., became a prominent educator of southern Illinois. There is none left now of that generation, but there are many of the succeeding generation and of the generation following that are living now in Chicago. My wife Helen lived but a few years, leaving at her death an infant son, my only child, Guy Marshall McLean, who is now an officer in the medical corps of the U. S. Army.

The battle of Shiloh, in which I was wounded, was a crucial contest, not only as affecting the career of General Grant but also in the campaign for possession of the Mississippi valley and control of the Mississippi river with its then extensive navigation and commerce. From Shiloh, the Confederates retreated to their entrenchments at Corinth, where they were defeated some weeks later. The year was further made memorable by the exploits of Admiral Farragut, who ran by the forts at the mouth of the Mississippi, captured New Orleans and thereby got control of the Mississippi up to Vicksburg. By the fall of 1862, the Confederates held only two places in the Mississippi valley-Vicksburg and Chattanooga.

The prosecution of the war against secession had developed so favorably that Lincoln decided

to make a bold stroke to force the rebel states into submission to Federal authority. On September 22, 1862, he issued his immortal Emancipation Proclamation in which it was announced, "That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtythree, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward and forever free." On the following New Year's Day, in accordance with his proclamation, the South still being in rebellion, he issued the promised edict which struck the chains of slavery from four million human beings. The closing paragraph of his New Year's proclamation was as follows:

"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

Thus at one stroke the Great Emancipator removed the blot of Slavery from the escutcheon of Liberty and thereby became immortalized in the "considerate judgment of mankind” which he confidently invoked upon his act.

At the time the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, General Grant's army was settling down to the siege of Vicksburg, which was orought to a successful close on July 4, 1863,

when it was surrendered to Grant, thus freeing the Mississippi; and on the same day in the eastern theater of war, Lee's attempted invasion of the North was repulsed at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with frightful losses, and he was driven back into Virginia. Late in 1863, the remaining Confederates were driven out of Tennessee. From that time on there was no question as to the ultimate outcome of the titanic struggle, the only question being the question of time.

In March, 1864, with his task successfully finished in the West, the conspicuous services of my old leader, General Grant, were recognized in his appointment as Lieutenant General of the United States Army, a rank theretofore held only by the great generals, George Washington and Winfield Scott. Grant now moved his general headquarters to the Army of the Potomac, then in the field in Virginia operating against the Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee, without a peer in the Rebel army since the death of that Christian gentleman and great general, Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, who was killed at the battle of Chancellorsville, where the Union forces under Hooker received the worst defeat of the Civil War.

Up to the time Grant took supreme command of the Union Army no general had been developed among our forces who was regarded as a match in military genius for General Lee, commanding

the Confederate Army in Virginia. Now the world was to see a battle of giants. Grant, without delay, sent the veterans of the Army of the Potomac against Lee's seasoned troops in three pitched battles. The havoc inflicted upon our army in those engagements at the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor checked the advance of Grant and compelled him to change his tactics from frontal attacks to flanking movements. Lee, with about half as many men as Grant, was putting up a masterful defense, and when the winter set in Lee was intrenched at Petersburg, which he held until the following spring.

In 1864, an opportunity was given the people to approve or disapprove of Lincoln's administration, for the Republicans in their national convention of that year nominated Lincoln for reelection on a platform endorsing his administration and all his official acts and promising "to prosecute the war with the utmost possible vigor, to the complete suppression of the rebellion." The Democrats nominated as their candidate General George B. McClellan, a Union general who had failed, as the leader of the Army of the Potomac, to disperse the rebel forces threatening Washington. The signal success of Grant had further embittered him so that he was easily persuaded to accept the Democratic nomination on a platform which declared the war a failure and