Iowa TV Schooltime: Landmarks in Iowa History- South English

it's TV school time WY TV in association with Iowa State Teachers College presents another program in the Iowa TV school time series landmarks in Iowa history today's topic South English your teacher is her fake of Iowa State Teachers College boy if I got a cold hello boys and girls sorry you caught me with my nose in my hand I'm paying for that trip I made the Grundy Center last week remember we were on that farm which was the boyhood home of Herbert quick and it was below zero I'm sure you remember that well the cold weather is gone but my cold isn't and so I hope I get through the program all right today I have all the things that I need I think I have a full box of Kleenex and some nose drops and some throat lozenges and in case my throat gets dry I have some coffee here so don't be surprised if I have to stop to treat myself I've got enough things here for a drugstore you know by a strange coincidence this is a drugstore or was a drugstore this old house here in South English was a drugstore at one time about a hundred years ago it isn't a drugstore now it's a private dwelling but right here where these streets cross this is Main Street right here at this point where the streets cross here at the old drugstore was the scene of the tali war sometimes called the copperhead war sometimes called the skunk river war now if you should hear any one of those labels you'll know that it refers to this war and it took place right here on this corner and today I'd like to talk to you a little about that tally war or Copperhead war or skunk river war now that word Copperhead I think requires a little explanation remember I told you last week that the term Copperhead did not refer to the snake the Copperhead it has a special meaning and there are many people who are confused about that word because they sometimes think that the copperheads were the same as the Knights of the Golden Circle sometimes the Knights of the Golden Circle were identified by a little circle of course they couldn't afford to make them of gold and so they were made of copper or brass but people carrying those were not copperheads let me show you where those terms came from I'll have to make a drawing for this before I put that chalkboard up I'd better put the easel up the person has a cold like I have forget about some of these things I could have had that easel up there before we started well now the Knights of the Golden Circle were organized way back in 1854 that was before the time of the Civil War you see and these people organized the society and their plan was to invade Mexico and take a lot of land away from Mexico to make a great slave plantation let me draw a map here that shows just where that was to be located draw a map of the United States first there's the Pacific coast here is the Rio Grande River there's the Mississippi going up there here is Florida and there's the Atlantic seaboard well Mexico comes down like this and then there is the peninsula of Yucatan like that here's the Pacific side of Mexico now the idea of these Knights of the Golden Circle was to invade Mexico and take away from Mexico a whole strip of land around on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico this is the Gulf Mexico now you see this this forms a kind of a circle here if all of this were made into a slave plantation all the way around the coast of the Gulf of Mexico it would be a kind of a rough circle a golden circle where these people expected to make a lot of money well they got nowhere with this there weren't enough people in the organization to start an invasion and the United States government was against it from the very beginning and so nothing came of this plan perhaps we ought to finish out this map of the United States a little bit here's the Grand Canyon in here there's the Mississippi there's the Red River flowing in over here Appalachian Mountains and so we get a picture of Uncle Sam here frowning upon this whole idea of taking land away from Mexico and forming this Golden Circle well you see Uncle Sam didn't think much of that idea but the Knights of the Golden Circle didn't disband the Civil War came along and these people in the Knights of the Golden Circle decided that it would be a good secret organization in favor of peace that is the Knights of the Golden Circle were against war they believed in secession all right they thought that the southern states had a perfect right to withdraw from the Union but they thought they shouldn't be allowed to do that without any kind of warfare they should just be allowed to peacefully withdraw from the Union and form their own country but the Knights of the Golden Circle continued to be a secret organization nobody knew exactly who the members were now the Copperheads were something else again and perhaps we ought to have another drawing for that so that we can be perfectly sure we understand the difference between the Knights of the Golden Circle and the copperheads because the copperheads are the ones with whom we are concerned today now the copperheads worked in the open and they were identified by an actual Copperhead and where did they get this Copperhead well they just took the head from a penny and a penny of course was made out of copper and the pennies of those days had the head of Miss Liberty on them and of course it is not considered to be polite or legal to cut up pennies pennies are part of our money what they did it anyhow but as they cut the head from a Liberty Head Penny and that was a kind of a badge that was a kind of a button which meant that anyone wearing that was a copper head the head from a copper penny the head of Miss Liberty meant that members of the group were copper heads now the copper heads were the piece Democrats Republicans didn't belong to this organization because the Republicans all supported President Lincoln most of them did at least but the Democrats in some numbers at least were opposed to war they didn't believe in going to war because the south had left the Union and the people who belong to the copperheads used this head of Liberty because they believe that the south should have freedom or Liberty to withdraw from the Union if it wanted to keep its slaves and live its own life and not be bothered by the people in the north who didn't believe in slavery and the copperheads worked in the open they didn't care if anybody knew that they were copperheads or not the Knights of the Golden Circle were secret so remember that difference now perhaps before we get into the story of the Talia war or the Copperhead war or the skunk river war we should understand a little bit about the civil war itself you see the copperheads would never have been organized if it hadn't been for the civil war the civil war as you know began in 1861 and the South left the Union and that was what started the events leading to the Civil War I want to show you a few pictures in this book which is the best book that I have found so far about the Civil War in the matter of pictures the pictures in this book are all made from from negatives that were actually made during the Civil War itself pictures taken by Mathew Brady and other famous Civil War photographers not only photographers who took pictures of the northern army but also photographers or took pictures of the Confederate Army when Abraham Lincoln was elected president and I want to show you a picture in this book called Abraham Lincoln a picture taken during the Civil War when he became president when abraham lincoln became president and before that is when he was elected president and before he had even taken office South Carolina decided to leave the Union here is a picture of Lincoln at the time he was elected president the people in South Carolina said with this Republican president it means that slavery is going to be abolished now Lincoln never said that when he was running for president that he was going to abolish slavery he didn't like the idea of slavery he said that a nation cannot endure half-slave and half-free and he hoped that there would be some peaceful means of settling the differences between the north and the south but it wasn't until the war had been advanced by several years that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which made all Negroes free when he was elected president his main concern was to save the Union to keep all the states together but before Lincoln had ever even become president South Carolina decided to leave the Union and it wasn't long before there were other states in the south who also decided to leave the Union and before Lincoln was even inaugurated on March the 4th 1861 Jefferson Davis this man whom you see in the picture here had been elected the president of the Confederate States of America the war that is the shooting war didn't begin until April of night 1861 when Fort Sumter was captured Fort Sumter was in the harbor of Charleston South Carolina and when these states in the South left the Union they said now all of the things that are here which belong to the government or which belong to the former United States government now belong to us and they said that poured out there in Charleston Harbor now belongs to the south and they demanded its surrender and the commander there refused to surrender and so the first shot was fired against Fort Sumter and it was captured and that began the war but as the shooting didn't actually begin until the capture of Fort Sumter now the thing that we must remember about the Civil War is that it was different from any other war that we had ever had before the Revolutionary War and the war of 1812 had been fought and also the war against Mexico all those wars had been fought against people outside of our United States and the same thing was true also about World Wars 1 and 2 and the Korean War we fought those wars against people who were far away and all of the people of the United States were against England in the Revolutionary War and in the war of 1812 all the people in the United States were against Mexico in the Mexican War and in World Wars 1 and 2 we were against Germany and Japan but in the Civil War we were fighting among ourselves now that gave rise to many many awkward situations because in these United States people who had been born in the South moved to the north and they were caught there when the war began even though they still had relatives and and people of their own family living in the south and many times a person who had moved from the south was fighting with the army of the north against members of his own family in the south and that caused many many hard feelings and there was always this belief that the war should never have started in the first place and the South should have been allowed to start its own country and then instead of the United States as we know it today there should have been two countries there's two nations a Confederate States of America and then the United States which would just be the part that we think of as the north when we talk about the War Between the States now you can understand that there would be people living in the north who sympathized so strongly with the people in the south that they were willing to help them and they would try to get people to go down there and fight the south and they would supply ammunition and guns and things of that sort to the people in the south and the people in the north didn't like this and so the people who sympathized with the South were called copperheads and as the war advanced and more and more people were killed this sentiment got stronger and stronger Abraham Lincoln had a great deal of trouble with his generals you may remember here is a picture showing Abraham Lincoln as a clown and he was considered to be a buffoon and entertainer because he liked to tell stories and here you see he's taken all these dolls out of the cabinet each one representing a different general the first general he had was McDowell and McDowell couldn't win any battles against the south so he appointed McClellan and McClelland after trying in vain to get started and to do something against Lee was finally replaced by Burnside and Burnside was defeated and President Lincoln appointed the hooker as general and it wasn't until he appointed General Meade who was the winner in the Battle of Gettysburg that the north began to turn the corner and to begin to win the Battle of Gettysburg was fought on July 1st 2nd and 3rd and on July the first US Grant General Grant captured Vicksburg on the Mississippi so there were two important victories against the south in 1863 well when the tide against the south began to turn the people in the North who sympathized with the south became even more desperate and decided that they would have to help the south even more and one of the men who believed in helping the south was the man who was killed in the tali war and who gave that war here in south english his name his name was ciphered Talley his family had come from Tennessee in 1848 and come up to Iowa because of the good land in Iowa but you see the family had grown up in Tennessee and by birth and education they believed in slavery they believed that the South should be allowed to have its own way about this that it should be allowed to withdraw from the United States if it wanted to and there should be no war about it the whole thing should be settled peacefully so this man Sanford Talley preached this doctrine and he was able to do this preaching because he was a minister he was a Baptist preacher now I think we should know a little about where South English is before we get into this story of Seyfert Ali here is our map of Iowa this white spot is the point where we are today this is South English and here just a little north of it is North English they have this name because both South English and North English are located on the English River this isn't a very big river but it's big enough to have a name this is the South Fork and this is the North Fork of the English River which flows into the Iowa River and then goes through the Mississippi a little southwest of South English is sig Renee which is the county seat of Keokuk County I don't get that kotti mixed up with the city of Keokuk city of Keokuk is way down here in Lee County this is Keokuk County not Keokuk itself but sig Renee is the capital or the county seat of Keokuk County and here on the other side of the skunk river this is the skunk river here is Rock Creek The Rock Creek Cemetery about which I'll tell you in a minute remember last week when we were up here in Grundy Center that I told you that Herbert quicks father had been accused of being a copperhead just because he had not voted for Abraham Lincoln just because he happened to be a Democrat well Herbert quicks father proved that he was not a copperhead you see it is it is sometimes a common thing for people to accuse others who do not agree with them of being communists or copperheads in civil war times people who did not agree with the majority we're called copperheads now we sometimes call people Communists even though they have no connection with the Soviet government even though they never belonged to the Communist Party we call them communists just because they disagree with us which is obviously unfair well that's what happened to mr. quick he was called a copperhead just because he was a Democrat but this was too far north for copperheads to operate most of the copperheads in Iowa were here in the southern part of the state because Missouri down here was a a border state and since the people living here were closer to Missouri than the people living up here there was more Copperhead activity shipping arms shipping ammunition to the south from these positions than from up here now let me show you some pictures hmm excuse me just a minute boys and girls my throat is getting dry and I must do something about it boy that's hot coffee and it makes my throat feel better anyhow I shouldn't have stood outside so long last week in that sub-zero weather but I wanted to be sure that you got the program I don't like to miss these weekly visits with you now let's look at some of the landmarks connected with this Talley war here in Rock Creek Cemetery south of the skunk river and south of sigourney is the church which was served by ciphered Talley Baptist minister Baptist preacher now nobody interfered with mr. Tully as long as he didn't speak too loudly and to brazenly about his sympathies for the south but he was known to be a sympathizer with the south he was known to be a copperhead and he made no effort to conceal it then apparently early in the war a Union soldier was sent back to Keokuk County to be buried and somebody asked Seyfert Talley to preach the funeral sermon and so the group gathered in the church here this is the inside of the church you see and just before Reverend Talley could begin the sermon someone up and the congregation said we're not going to have a Copperhead preaching a funeral sermon for this brave soldier who died defending the Union and so the service was conducted outside mr. Tali recognizing the fact that the people in the congregation didn't think that he was capable or that he was patriotic enough to preach this funeral sermon in their church went outside and preached the sermon outdoors and then he realized that he could no longer expect to hold his congregation and he gave up the ministry but because he was a very very speaker an orator people persuaded him to make speeches about his opposition to the war and he was invited to many many places where there were many of these peace Democrats and even though the people in the community said we don't want tally to preach to us or to speak to us he went anyhow he was a brave man but not very discreet here is a scene along the skunk River where Talley and his friends among the copperheads live you see this is a pretty wild country and there isn't much room here for people to seek them out it would be very difficult to find these people if they wanted to hide well on August the 1st 1863 which was just a months after the victory at Vicksburg just a month after the Battle of Gettysburg in both of which battles the Union had won resounding victories on August the 1st 1863 the peace Democrats decided to have a rally on the English River which is just a little north of South English and they knew that the people in South English were Republicans and were strong northern sympathizers and so in order to protect themselves they made the trip in wagons from their place near Rock Creek and in the straw at the bottom of the wagons they hit guns and pistols just to protect themselves in case they needed to while they were having their meeting in a grove north of town the Republicans were having a rally in South English right here at this corner and they were pretty excited too because they knew the copperheads were having this meeting just a few miles away and then when the copperheads came back through South English some people on the outside of town said to mr. tally you better not go through South English there are a lot of people there that have guns and I don't think they'll let you get through and mr. tally said I I'm not going to fight I just want to drive through town on my way back home and so he started and this mob here in South English began to yell at him and say you copperheads are afraid to use your guns and that of course was too much and some of the people in this party coming from the rally on the English River began to dig in the straw and get their guns and someone in the crowd here in South English fired a pistol by mistake and everybody thought the shooting was starting and mr. tally himself began to be alarmed and he pulled a pistol and sit up in the wagon and as he stood up someone in the mob shot him through the hem and of course he died well the followers of tally decided to be revenge and they gathered on the skunk river in their home territory and decided to organize an army and march on south English and really do some shooting meanwhile the people in South English sent word the governor Kirkwood of Iowa and the governor sent the militia to sigourney and as soon as the people on the skunk river heard that there the militia was in town they decided they wouldn't fight after all and so there was no war the skunk river war or the tally war or the Copperhead war was fought at this corner in all maybe a hundred shots were exchanged only one man was killed and that was cypher tally and he was buried in this cemetery at Rock Creek near the church in this old cemetery here and he lies buried under this stone which you'll find in the Rock Creek Cemetery and at the bottom of the stone it says a martyr to his religious beliefs murdered by highwayman in South English on August the 1st 1863 well you may say that wasn't much of a war why go to all that trouble and telling us a story in which only one man was killed it is true that there were no major battles of the Civil War fought in Iowa even though Iowa's apply in many many men for the Union Army but this was a fight between the two forces and it was in many senses and in many respects a war what happened in the case of cypher tally was that he misunderstood his functions as a minister here is the pulpit the kind of pulpit that you find in the Rock Creek Church now he was not content to merely preach the gospel of love which is the responsibility of every Minister he became a rabble rouser instead of preaching the gospel of love he became a man who preached the gospel of hate and so he was killed next week we're going to aim for Iowa State College is celebrating its centennial until then goodbye today your teacher has been her fake of Iowa State Teachers College landmarks in Iowa history is produced for Iowa TV school time by WY TV an association with Iowa State Teachers College TV school time is presented daily Monday through Friday at 1:30 p.m. by the Iowa joint committee for educational television