2024 OP Summer Newsletter

HERITAGE SITES

HERITAGE SITES

HERITAGE SITES

During that meeting, 31 votes were counted. The population at this time was 504 (285 men and 219 women). However, despite the small population, no fewer than 64 men from the township enlisted in the Civil War, which was almost a quarter of the male population at the time. The 39th Illinois Infantry mustered in Chicago in October 1861 after hearing about the firing on Fort Sumter. Upon its formation, ten men from Orland enlisted in Company G, alongside individuals from Bremen, Palos, Homer, and New Lenox townships. Over the course of the war, additional men from Will and Cook County enlisted in other Illinois infantry regiments, such as the 57th, 88th, and 100th. The 100th mustered in Joliet in August 1862 and had the greatest number of Orland men in its ranks. Though Lincoln never visited Orland Park, it is likely he interacted with Orland soldiers on a few occasions. According to The History of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment Illinois Volunteer Veteran Infantry (1889) by Charles M. Clark on May 24, 1862, Lincoln passed by and inspected the Union troops stationed in Falmouth, Virginia. When he saw the 39th Regiment’s flag, he stopped and called, “What regiment is this?” The troops responded: “Thirty-ninth, Illinois!”

From Farmers to Soldiers: Orland Park and the Civil War Each newsletter, we will dive into a different piece of Orland history. This time, we will be exploring Orland’s involvement in the Civil War. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces launched an attack on Fort Sumter, a Union fort in Charleston, South Carolina. At 4:30 a.m., Confederate soldiers fired the first of many mortar rounds; after a 34 hour siege, the outgunned Union forces evacuated the fort. Northern outrage over this attack lit a fire under the Union. Newly elected President Abraham Lincoln asked all states and territories to provide volunteers for a 75,000-man militia to act against the Confederacy. American citizens in the North quickly volunteered to join this militia, with some states offering more than twice the number of men requested. The bombardment of Fort Sumter marked the beginning of the American Civil War, which lasted from April 12, 1861 to May 26, 1865. However, tensions had been brewing in America for decades prior, especially regarding the dispute over whether the institution of slavery should be permitted to expand into the nation’s western territories. While other factors contributed to the outbreak of fighting in 1861, such as popular sovereignty, states’ rights, and sectionalism, the moral quandary over slavery and the election of Illinois native Abraham Lincoln in 1860 ultimately brought years of political and social controversy to a head.

Thomas Humphrey and Caroline Talbot, 1864. Humphrey served in the 39th Regiment, Company G. He was killed in action at the Battle of Ware Bottom Church in Virginia on May 20, 1864.

Lincoln represented the Republican Party, a new political party founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, thus paving the way for popular sovereignty and allowing the territories of Kansas and Missouri to decide the legality of slavery in those areas. Settlers on both sides of the debate rushed to the two territories in hopes of determining the outcome of the upcoming election; when the conflict turned violent, it earned the nickname “Bleeding Kansas.” This tumultuous political conflict provided backdrop to Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861. In opposition to the North’s push for abolition and the perception of needing to protect their rights, eleven southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. About a month later, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter. In 1861, Orland had only existed as a township for 11 years. While English and German immigrants had settled on the land since the 1830s, it was not until April 2, 1850 that the first township election was held in Centre School.

“Well, you boys are a good ways from home, ain’t you?” Lincoln responded, pleased to see a group of men from his home state. After he had reviewed the remainder of the Union’s troops, he returned to the 39th’s quarters and conversed with some of the men there. A few months after Lincoln’s visit with the 39th, he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It declared that if the rebels did not stop fighting and rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the Confederacy “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” In response to the president’s proclamation, Joseph Ward, Jr. of the 39th Regiment wrote a letter to his parents back home in Orland in October 1862. He stated that “if the [Presidants] [Proclemation] works all over as it does here the south will soon begin to [feal] the effects of it. Already hundreds have come from North Carolina within our lines and say they heard of the [Proclemation] a way in the south where they never saw a Yankee soldier.” (More of Ward’s diary and letters can be found in An Enlisted Soldier’s View of the Civil War: The Wartime Papers of Joseph Richardson Ward, Jr, which was published in 1981.)

Matthew Wells, 1864. Wells was John Humphrey’s stepbrother. He was wounded and captured at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff in Virginia on May 16, 1864. He was a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison and was released in 1865.

| Summer 2024 | orlandpark.org

orlandpark.org | Summer 2024 |

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