12th ILLINOIS VOLUNTEER INFANTRY
COMPANY C
by Keith Hays ©
Residence: Danville, Illinois
Enlisted: 4/24/1861 as a Private
Mustered Into: Company C -12th Illinois Infantry - 5/2/1861
He died on 7/20/1861 at Cairo, Illinois
The thunder of the guns at Fort Sumter had barely faded when Illinois rallied to the National Colors. 20 year-old John Lafferty was one ofthe first to sign up at Danville with the Company Sam Frazier was raising. They were volunteering for ninety days service. Three months should be enough to take care of those Carolina radicals. An Ohio native, John had come to Vermilion with his family. His father worked in the mines. The lad was not going to follow his father underground. He got a job as a farmhand for prosperous Carroll Township farmer Samuel Dougherty. It was a good job and came with a room in the servant quarters of the Dougherty's big farm house. There were other attractions as well, not the least of which were the Dougherty's 20 year old daughter, Mary Ellen and the hired girl, 17 year-old Malissa High, whose room was next to his.
The company took the train to Springfield where the Illinois regiments were being organized. The Vermilion County boys were mustered in as Company C of the 12th Illinois Volunteer Infantry on May 2, 1861. Two days later the new President sent out his call for 50,000 volunteers to serve for three months. As soon as the regiment was organized the raw 12th Illinois was sent to Cairo to be in position to either defend the State against invasion or cross the river to Kentucky.
It was a precarious position. West, across the Mississippi was Arkansas and Missouri. Arkansas was firmly out of the Union and Southeastern Missouri was thoroughly rebel in sentiment. South, across the Ohio, was Kentucky with its Governor and the majority of its legislature trying to find a way to stay in the Union while maintaining its neutrality toward the secessionist slaveholding states with which Kentucky shared a slaveholding economy.
Illinois' southern tip was like a dagger pointed at the Confederacy. While slavery was nominally illegal in Illinois it was common in the cotton fields of deep southern Illinois. Kentucky and Missouri cotton growers sent slave gangs to work their Illinois lands or rented their labor to Illinois landowners. Secessionist sentiment was high around Cairo. The arriving regiments went into camp at Camp Defiance and began the monotonous process of becoming soldiers. It was drill and guard duty and guard duty and drill day in and day out.
The camp was not ready to receive the thousands arriving to defend their State. As a tent city grew the conditions of camp life grew worse. Sanitation was primitive. The water supply was less than safe. Thousands of young men brought together for a shared adventure brought with them diseases to share as well.
The doctors in camp did what they could with the tools and knowledge that they had. There was no sulfa to control infection, no aspirin to dull the pain, no antibiotics to control infection and no knowledge of the mechanisms by which disease was spread. Camp life sheltered in tents against the summer heat and rains took its toll. By the time its three months service expired on August 1 the regiment had lost 4 men to disease "Camp fever" they called it. It might have been malaria, the mosquitos were thick in the Southern Illinois swamps. It didn't make much difference. The men were dead and their bodies would shipped home for their families to bury in familiar ground.
John Lafferty never saw a battle. He would not march
to reduce Forts Henry and Donaldson. He wouldn't share the horror at Shiloh
or the triumph at Corinth. John's war was over before it began. He was one
of the four lost to disease. He died July 20th 1861. He had just turned 21.
Return to Home Page
© Copyright Keith Hays
All Rights Reserved