avenge injuries which could no longer be borne. [Footnote: It is a
noteworthy coincidence that President Lincoln's proclamation at the
opening of the war calls for troops "to redress wrongs already long
enough endured."] Had I borne them longer my people would have said:
'Black Hawk is a squaw; he is too old to be a chief; he is no Sac.'
This caused me to raise the war-whoop. I say no more of it; all is
known to you." He returned to Iowa, and died on the 3d of October,
1838, at his camp on the river Des Moines. He was buried in gala
dress, with cocked hat and sword, and the medals presented him by two
governments. He was not allowed to rest even in his grave. His bones
were exhumed by some greedy wretch and sold from hand to hand till
they came at last to the Burlington Museum, where they were destroyed
by fire.

[Illustration: BLACK HAWK]

It was on the 16th of June, a month before the slaughter of the Bad
Axe, that the battalion to which Lincoln belonged was at last mustered
out, at Whitewater, Wisconsin. His final release from the service was
signed by a young lieutenant of artillery, Robert Anderson, who,
twenty-nine years later, in one of the most awful crises in our
annals, was to sustain to Lincoln relations of prodigious importance,
on a scene illuminated by the flash of the opening guns of the civil
war. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
The men started home the next day in high spirits, school-boys for
their holidays. Lincoln had need, like Horatio, of his good spirits,
for they were his only outfit for the long journey to New Salem, he
and his mess-mate Harrison [Footnote: George M. Harrison, who gives an
account of his personal experiences in Lamon, p. 116.] having had
their horses stolen the day before by some patriot over-anxious to