The Flag on the Hilltop

Introduction

INTRODUCTION Herbert K. Russell Mary 'fracy Earle occupies an unusual place among southern Illinois fiction writers: the descendent of a family that helped shape the region, she left her hometown of Cobden and made her way to New York City where she published two novels and saw her short stories printed in the best magazines of the day-including The Saturday EveningPost, Harper's, and The Atlantic Monthly. She succeeded so well at her craft that she is still identified in some literary histories as "a New York writer"- a phenomenon that may help to explain why she is not particularly well known in her native area. This neglect is unfortunate. Mary 'fracy Earle was one ofthe first southern Illinois writers to gain popular acceptance in the East, and she did so viii INTRODUCTION while frequently employing southern Illinois themes. Born in Cobden on October 21, 1864, Mary 'fracy Earle enjoyed the benefits of a wealthy and respected family. (Her father, Parker Earle, was a successful horticulturist and fruit farmer and the inventor [18791 of a refrigerated container used by the Illinois Central Railroad to ship perishable fruit.) In 1881, she left home and began her college education at the University of Illinois where she enrolled in a natural sciences curriculum and participated in oratory contests before graduating with a B.S. in 1885. She subsequently spent considerable time in the South before moving toNew York in 1898. She published her first significant short story in the June 1896 issue of Scribner's Magazine, and would publish more than forty others between then and 1904 when her literary production tapered off. Her output was never great. In some years she averaged only one published short story per year. Always, however, her emphasis was on characterization and quality rather than length. She paused to collect her stories on two occasions: The Man Who INTRODUCTION ix Worked Fbr Collister (1898); and Through Old Rose Glasses and Other Stories (1900). (The latter has two short stories with southern Illinois settings, each of them set in "North Pass," or Makanda; the former has three, in Cairo, Johnson County, and "North Pass:') She also published two novels, The WOnderful Wheel (1896) and The Flag on the Hilltop (1902). The former is a Deep South tale of small town life which has not stood up well to time; the latter is a southern Illinois regional classicthe best of its kind on the subject. The Flag on the Hilltop is based on an actual series of incidents that occurred during the Civil War when Joshua Thompson's two sons (aged18 and 20) scaled an immense tulip poplar tree on their father's hilltop farm between Makanda and Cobden and raised an American flag on what came to be known as Banner Hill. (The hill is three and onehalfmiles southeast ofMakanda, or five miles from that town via the most direct road.) Initially raised as a sign of support for the Northern cause, the flag was hoisted after Union victories on the battlefield, and it also stood as a x INTRODUCTION reproach to agroup ofSouthern supporters banded together as the Knights of the Golden Circle. The Golden Circle was a secessionist civilian group that was well organized throughout the Midwest, especially Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. At times it caused a great deal of mischief and not a few deaths. It was, for example, partially responsible for the famous Civil War riot in Charleston, Illinois, and for anti-draft movements elsewhere, and when not feuding openly with Union soldiers it created a great deal of tension through threats the most popular of which was a never-to-berealized plan to seize a Northern prisoner of war camp and free Southern soldiers. The Circle was organized as a secret society and was said to maintain discipline through severe means, including death by torture for those who betrayed it. In extreme southern Illinois-in the Makanda-Cobden area-the Golden Circle's chief accomplishment was to offer aid and comfort to Northern Army deserters, which were numerous. Desertion rates from certain units originating in southern Illinois were extremely high (due to the INTRODUCTION xi region's political ambivalencies), and a good many native sons made their way back North and spent the war years hidingout in the hills near Makanda. In fact, the 109th Illinois Infantry, comprised principally of troops from Union County; was so depleted by desertion that...