The month began with talk of the House minority Unionists withdrawing from the Indiana General Assembly to deny a quorum in order to defeat “the military bill” that would have taken the control of the state’s militia out of Gov. Morton’s hands by enabling the militia to be “…called out to execute the laws, on the warrant of the judge, mayor of a city, or justice of the peace whose authority has been defied….” “The Morgan County War” trial concluded with the defendants, Andrew J. Perry, William Dillman, John Caldwell, and Jacob Groseclose, being found guilty of conspiracy and firing on the soldiers who were attempting to arrest deserters. Each was fined $500. Many thought the sentence too lenient, especially in time of war. Later in the month, a small party of soldiers seeking deserters in Rush County were surrounded by a band of 200 mounted Knights of the Golden Circle near Raleigh. Gen. Carrington dispatched 100 infantry by train to the scene; the Knights offered no resistance and “skedaddled in true rebel style.” The deserters were arrested without further trouble.
Announcements of candidates hoping for endorsement at the upcoming Union Conventions began to appear in the Journal. The election of township officials will be held next month and the election of city officers will be held in May. A showing of Goodwin & Wilder’s gigantic “Polyorama of the War” opened at the Masonic Hall. The “life-like tableaux” contains “vividly illustrated” scenes of “startling reality” and has been favorably reviewed by immense crowds in Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. A large audience also attended the Metropolitan Hall to see Andrew J. A. Neafie, “a tragedian of more than ordinary ability,” make his Indianapolis debut in Metamora, the Corsican Brothers, and Damon & Pythias. State librarian Rev. David Stevenson’s announcement of his intention to publish a book, Indiana’s Roll of Honor and Patriotic Dead, With Biographical Sketches, is seen as “much needed.” Indiana U. S. Representative Schuyler Colfax donated his mileage allowance of $629.34 (2012 $11,570.42) from the last session of Congress to “aid the sick and wounded” soldiers of the state.
Vandals, under the pretense that some official had authorized them to do so, cut down twenty large forest trees in Military Park. Union Meetings continued to be held in the townships with the loyal people of Franklin gathering “notwithstanding the bad roads” at Gallaudette and a meeting in Lawrence to convene at Lanesville.
A long train of paroled soldiers, mostly from Illinois regiments, came through the city on its way from Annapolis to St. Louis. When the train stopped at Richmond, Indiana, about 30 soldiers left the train and destroyed the offices of the Richmond Jeffersonian because of its rebel sympathies. Later, soldiers arriving on the train from Cincinnati destroyed news agent Charles M. Steele’s bundle of the Cincinnati Enquirer because of that paper’s southern leanings.
“The Trade Palace” of Hume, Lord & Co, 28 W. Washington St, offered an “enormous and unprecedented stock of spring goods” — dress goods and laces; curtains, wall paper and carpets; hosiery and “a hundred other kinds of articles.” Around midnight on Tuesday the 17th, a destructive fire at the hub, spokes and wood work manufacturing factory of Osgood, Smith & Co. destroyed everything in the large brick factory on Illinois St. south of the Union Depot. The fire watch’s ten minute delay in sounding the alarm, and the subsequent late arrival of the three steam fire engines to the scene, may have been due to confusion with the sheets of fire frequently sent into the night sky from the near-by rolling mill.
On Saturday, March 21, the Unconditional Union City Convention met at the Court House and nominated candidates for the May election. John Caven was the choice for mayor. Also, a number of patriotic Marion County farmers came to the State House Square with their wagons loaded with wood for soldiers’ families. A company of the 63rd Infantry with “the spirit-stirring drum and ear piercing fife” of its drum corps escorted the procession through crowds of spectators to the Indianapolis Benevolent Society on south Alabama St. The 112 wagons deposited nearly 80 cords to be distributed as needed.
In “the most impressive and dreadful scene ever witnessed in Indianapolis,” Robert Gay, Company D, 71st Indiana Volunteers was shot, by order of a general court martial, in an open field lying between Camp Morton and Burnside Barracks on Friday afternoon, March 27. He had deserted to the enemy at the Battle of Richmond. This was the first execution of a soldier, for any cause, in the West. On the solemnity of this occasion, the Journal columns reminded deserters from the army that the period of the President’s leniency ended on Tuesday the 31st and after this “…last day of grace….Those who by their perverseness or from bad counsels, persist in absenting themselves, will be shot.”
