Wisconsin Magazine of History

(ISSN 0043-6534) WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY The State Historical Society of Wisconsin • Vol. 76, No. 4 • Summer, 1993 *:>^ w. ^^*y^ ^» fW^7. '.•' \ \ •^ V . ' 'IT"".- «'?^ >''":'f^ |-«> n% f ^ I ^j'^V f ^'! ffl THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN H. NICHOLAS MULLER III, Director Officers FANNIE E. HICKLIN, President GERALD D, VISTE, Treasurer GLENN R. COATES, First Vice-President H. NICHOIJVS MULLER III, Secretary JANE BERNHARDT, Second Vice-President THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN is both a state agency and a private membership organization. Founded in 1846—two years before statehood—and chartered in 1853, it is the oldest American historical society to receive continuous public funding. By statute, it is charged with collecting, advancing, and dissemi nating knowledge of Wisconsin and of the trans-Allegheny West. The Society serves as the archive of the State of Wisconsin; it collects all manner of books, periodicals, maps, manuscripts, relics, newspapers, and aural and graphic materials as they re late to North America; it maintains a museum, library, and research facility in Mad ison as well as a statewide system of historic sites, school services, area research centers, and affiliated local societies; it administers a broad program of historic preservation; and publishes a wide variety of historical materials, both scholarly and popular. MEMBERSHIP in the Society is open to the public. Individual memhershvp (one per son) is $25. Senior Citizen Individual membership is $20. Family membership is $30. Senior Citizen Family membership is $25. Supporting vnemher^Yivp is $100. Sustaining membership is $250. A Patron contributes $500 or more. Life membership (one person) is $1,000. MEMBERSHIP in the Friends of the SHSW is open to the public. Individual mem bership (one person) is $15. Family membership is $25. THE SOCIETY is governed by a Board of Curators which includes twenty-four elected members, the Governor or designee, three appointees of the Governor, a legislator from the majority and minority from each house, and ex officio, the President of the University of Wisconsin System, the President of the Friends of the State Historical Society, the President of the Wisconsin History Foundation, Inc., and the President of the Administrative Committee of the Wisconsin Council for Local History. A complete listing of the Curators appears inside the back cover. The Society is headquartered at 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488, at the juncture of Langdon and Park streets on the University of Wisconsin campus. The State Historical Museum is located at 30 North Carroll Street. A partial listing of phone numbers (Area Code 608) follows: General Administration 264-6400 Library circulation desk 264-6534 Affiliated local societies 264-6583 Maps 264-6458 Archives reading room 264-6460 Membership 264-6587 Contribution of manuscript materials 264-6477 Microforms reading room 264-6536 Editorial offices 264-6461 Museum tours 264-6555 Film collections 264-6466 Newspaper reference 264-6531 Genealogical and general reference inquiries , 264-653.5 Picture and sound collections 264-6470 Government publications and reference 264-6525 Public information office 264-6586 Historic preservation 264-6500 Salesdesk 264-6565 Historic sites 264-6586 School services 264-6567 Hours of operation 264-6588 Speakers bureau 264-6586 Institutional Advancement 264-6585 ON THE COVER: The Civil War statue on the courthouse square in Monroe. The story of how it differs from other monuments begins on page 235. Photo courtesy the author. Volume 76, Number 4 / Summer, 1993 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY Published quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, A Statue for Billy 235 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488, John Evangelist Walsh Distributed to members as part of their dues. Individual membership, $25; senior citizen individual, $20; family, $30; senior Changes and Choices: citizen family, $25; supporting, Two and a Half Generations of La Follette Women 248 3; sustaining, $250; patron, I or more; life (one person), Bernard A. Weisberger $1,000, Single numbers from Volume 57 forward are $5 plus postage. Microfilmed copies available through University Book Reviews 271 Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106; Book Review Index 289 reprints of Volumes 1 through 20 and most issues of Volumes 21 through 56 are available from Accessions 290 Kraus Reprint Company, Route 100, Millwood, New York 10546, Wisconsin History Checklist 292 Communications should be addressed to the editor. The Society does not assume Contributors 294 responsibility for statements made by contributors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin, POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Wisconsin Magazine of History, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1488, Copyright © 1993 by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Magazine of History is indexed annually by the editors; cumulative indexes are assembled decennially. In addition, articles are abstracted and indexed in America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts, Index to Literature on the American Indian, and the Combined Retrospective Index to Journals in Editor Histcrry, 1838-1974. PAUL H. HASS Associate Editors Photographs identified with WHi negative numbers arc from the WILLIAM C. MARTEN Historical Societv's collections. JOHN O. HOLZHUETER The Givil War statue on the courthouse square in Monroe was a gift to the community in 1913 by Gaptain Benjamin M. Frees. The face for the statue was modeled on a picture of William R. Hawkins, who died at the Battle of Petersburg while under the command of Captain Frees. Photo courtesy the author. 234 A Statue for Billy By John Evangelist Walsh T is peaceful and tidy and spa one rare, indeed unique distinction. The r cious, the old town square. bronze figure of the brave soldier is not just Along each of its four sides stand neat rows the usual bland depiction of a stalwart-look of mostly small brick buildings, their dain ing military type. Instead, the face of the tily decorated facades exuding a feeling of figure is an actual portrait, a faithful repro the 1890's and before. At its center sits one duction of the features of one particular of those classic red-brick courthouses in young man from the town who gave his life the Romanesque st)'le, trimmed in white in battle: eighteen-year-old Corporal Wil stone and with a stately bell tower rising at liam Reese Hawkins. one corner, that were the special triumph Curiously, however, that intriguing fact of nineteenth-century architects. The town is nowhere recorded on the monument it itself—Monroe, Wisconsin, population ten self, and only a very few older residents of thousand—has been thriving for a hun the town are aware of it. Also unexplained dred and fifty years and more, beginning is how or why Corporal Hawkins was cho in pioneer days. sen as model for the figure, a truly unfor Adding to the impression that here time tunate oversight. As it turns out, the story halted a century ago, or at least slowed its of this otherwise unknown young soldier (a galloping pace, is a monument honoring story now recoverable only in fragments), the men who served, not in World Wars 1 is an inspiring one. If ever an ordinary en or II, but in the Civil War. Its eighteen-foot listed man deserved a monument, Billy base of pink Wisconsin granite, topped by Hawkins did. a ten-foot figure of a Union infantryman, occupies free-standing space of its own at another corner of the courthouse. In the 'Y curiosity about the statue attitude of the proud figure is seen an air M'wa s first aroused by a line in of bold defiance: protectively the left arm the inscription cut into its base: "Gift of B. curls around an American flag, while the M. Frees, Capt., Co. H, 38th Wise. Vol. Inf." right hand reaches across the body to grasp The circumstance that so obviously expen a sword hilt. sive a gift should have come from one of Though it appears little different from the soldiers themselves, a lowly company many other Civil W'ar monuments across commander at that, was decidedly unusual. the country, the Monroe statue does have WTien, in addition, I noted that the mon- Copyright © 1993 t}y The State Mistcmcat Society of Wisconsin 235 Ail rigfits of reproduction in any form reserved. WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SUMMER, 1993 ument had not been erected until nearly fifty years after the close of the war—it might well have been the country's final Civil W'ar monument—I was sure I wanted to know more. What I was seeking I found in an account given by the local paper, the Monroe Evening Times, of the dedication festixlties held on Memorial Day in 1913. At the ceremonies a letter was read from Captain Benjamin M. Frees himself, who was unable to attend.' Once a resident of Monroe, Frees was then living in California, a man of considerable wealth (after the war he had prospered in the lumber business). It had long been his desire, he wrote, "to see erected in the courthouse square an appropriate monu ment in honor of my comrades." The statue being dedicated that day, he added, was "crowned by as brave a boy as ever car ried a musket," and who was meant to stand as a symbol of the many other men from the area who "laid down their lives on their countr)''s altar." Frees did not mention the name of the Benjamin M. Frees, about 1912. Photo couUesy the author. brave boy in his letter, nor was it given by the day's speaker in his lengthy and emo tional address to the crowd that filled the had been published the year of the mon town hall. Only on page two of the Evening ument's dedication, more information sur Times, in a column of miscellaneous notes, faced.

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