Thursday, May 7, 2009

The Battle of Chicago's Beer Gardens

Whew! It's been awhile! Well let's get right to it.

This tale comes from Robert Strong, and involves his return trip to Illinois after the war. His regiment was sent back to Chicago. They wired the mayor asking for quarters and provisions and got none! They were then ordered to to different quarters, still with nothing to eat. You can imagine the mood the men were in by this time.

"We reached our camp at nine o'clock Friday morning and found some rations had been sent to us. On opening the boxes of crackers, we found them alive with worms. The meat was so maggotty that we could not eat it. Then we were mad! Our officers bought us some dinner and the quartermaster was sent for. He attempted to apologize for the condition of the rations. He was told that if he did not very soon have full, clean rations on the grounds, we would hang him. The rations came, but we stayed mad.

Adjoining the camp was a Dutch beer garden. On sunday morining it began to fill up with men and women coming to spend the day drinking and dancing.

The other regiments in camp besides the 105th (Strong's unit) did not go home saturday night, but went almost in a body into these beer gardens. Early on sunday, a soldier in one of those regiments bought a whopping big glass of beer and drunk the health of "Old Billy Sherman." When this soldier toasted Old Billy, a big Dutchman said, "Damn Sherman." The soldier knocked him down with his beer glass. Others came to the Dutchman's rescue, and for a time I thought they would clean us out.

Just then, some soldier called out, "Attention, Sherman's Bummers to the rescue!" and then, Oh my countrymen, began a fierce fight. In ten minutes, the saloon keeper had not a bottle or keg or box of cigars unsmashed, and he himself lay senseless on the ground. Police came rushing in with their clubs, and they got a drubbing. The battle kept roaring for two hours. We did not go for our guns, but used our fists and chairs and the clubs which we had taken away from the policemen.

The mayor ordered out all the police and himself came to quell the riot. He swore he would arrest every one of us. As it happened, General Joe Hooker, who had formerly had command of us, appeared about then. He told the mayor: 'These boys are mad at the way you have used them, but will quiet down if you let them alone. But if you bring any more policemen or new troops here, they will think it fun to whip the whole crowd. They have faced cannon and musketry for three years, and do not know what fear is. Let them alone or they will burn down your city.'

So the mayor left us alone."


Awesome. Go Hooker!

1 comment:

  1. Awesome!! Great article!! I would love to find out where the camp was, if it was Douglas or Dearborn or even Camp Sheridan. Would be interesting to find the exact location and what's there now as I do know the locations of some of the historic places in Chi-town. Gotta love our western boys!! And Hooker too for realizing it.

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