This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
In the early weeks of 1863, President Lincoln was asked for his advice on the conduct of the Civil War. The war had dragged on far longer than expected, and 1862 had been a disastrous year for Union troops. The Union had suffered great casualties at Shiloh and Fredericksburg. A discouraged Lincoln could only reply, “Keep pegging away.”
“Keep pegging away” was hardly a stirring call to arms—except in Iowa, where a little stirring has always gone a long way. From the beginning, Iowans had been among the strongest supporters of the war. Many of them had come from Germany and other European countries, fleeing repression, with freedom in their blood. They were proud of Iowa’s status as the first slave-free state west of the Mississippi River. Iowans had oversubscribed to Lincoln’s first call for troops in 1861.
In 1862 they had responded to the tide of Southern victories and to the news that one-fourth of the 10,000 casualties at Shiloh had been Iowans by sending in an additional 22 infantry regiments. By the end of 1862, half of the total male population of Iowa had volunteered for the war.
And now, their President had asked them to keep pegging away. Iowans went wild. Rallies supporting the Emancipation Proclamation were held across the state, in Burlington, Muscatine, Des Moines. Men left their crops and came in from the field to serve alongside their brothers and fathers. Mass meetings were held to unite all political parties and to denounce the copperheads who wanted to give in to the South. At nearly every public gathering, at concerts and lectures, collections were taken for supplies for Iowa regiments at the front. Soldiers wrote home requesting fresh fruit. The women of Iowa responded by boxes of applies, plums, cranberries, carrots and ginger snaps.
By July 4th of 1863, the tide of battle had turned. Vicksburg had fallen and Lee had been repulsed at Gettysburg. Iowans kept pegging away. That fall, responding to Lincoln’s call for 300,000 more, Iowa sent 1,200 volunteers over its quota.
As many modern politicians have found out, Iowans are suspicious of fancy rhetoric. But just ask them to peg away, and they’ll do it.
Rock Island Lines is underwritten by the Illinois Humanities Council and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, with additional funding from Humanities Iowa, the Iowa Arts Council, and Augustana College, Rock Island.
