The Flag on the Hilltop

Cover

Early in the Civil War, two young brothers boldly flew the Union flag from a tree atop a hill between Makanda and Cobden, Illinois. This was a towering act of courage in an area teeming with Confederate sympathizers known as Copperheads. Theodore and Al Thompson, eighteen and twenty years old at the time, raised the flag in defiance of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secessionist group that operated throughout the Midwest. Controlling its membership through terror, this secret society condemned betrayers to death by torture. The Knights, whose goals included capturing a Union prison and liberating the rebels, instigated antidraft movements , aided Northern deserters, and triggered the Civil War riot in Charleston, Illinois. Theodore Thompson, who later owned much of Makanda, Giant City, and the land that became Southern Illinois University describes the tree as a “tall tulip poplar between 3 and 4 feet in diameter at the trunk and some 60 feet to the first limbs. This noted tree could be seen in some directions 15 or 20 miles away.” Born in Cobden less than twenty years after the Civil War, Mary Tracy Earle was one of the first women novelists from southern Illinois to succeed in the New York world of publishing. Herbert K. Russell, formerly the director of college relations at John A. Logan College in Carterville, has published widely on the life and works of Edgar Lee Masters. southern illinois university press www.siupress.com The Flag on the Hilltop Southern Illinois University Press EARLE Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-8093-3051-2 ISBN 978-0-8093-3051-5 Regional MARY TRACY EARLE The Flag on the Hilltop With an Introduction by HERBERT K. RUSSELL Earle cvr mech.indd 1 12/19/12 10:23 AM The Flag on the Hilltop "WHAT MADE YOU DESERT FROM THE ARMY?" {page33) ...