Civil War soldier had local tie

Sketch of James T. Ayers in the Civil War by Fairbury soldier James H. Phillips in the 129th Illinois Infantry Company E. Mr. Ayers lied about his age when he enlisted saying he was 50 when he was really 57.

James Thompson Ayers farmed near Lexington, and he owned five lots in Fairbury. He wrote poetry to help recruit formerly enslaved Black people into the Union Army during the Civil War. He also wrote poems as prayers for his daughter's health in Fairbury after she had a complicated childbirth.

James T. Ayers was born in Kentucky in 1805. At an early age, his parents moved the family to Madison County, Ohio. His parents were Richard    Ayers (1778-1844) and Nancy Ann Thompson (1781-1867).

In 1825, at the age of 20, James T. Ayers married Rebecca Bloomer. She was 19 when they married. They were married in Ohio and went on to have 11 children. In 1831, the family emigrated to Tazewell County, then to McLean County near Lexington. He was a lay Methodist minister and a strong advocate against slavery.

Unfortunately, James T. Ayers' first wife passed away in 1948 at the age of 40. He became a widower at the age of 42, and he had many young children to raise by himself. In 1858, he married Mrs. Mary J. Watson, a widow.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor, starting the Civil War. The Civil War provided an opportunity for James T. Ayers to crusade against the abuses of slavery. Mr. Ayers found himself too old to join the Army. For over a year, he watched younger men enlist and march away to crush people whom he believed to be traitors.

In August of 1862, the Illinois 129th Infantry unit was formed in Livingston County. All the members of Company E were from Fairbury. Colonel A. J. Cropsey (who Cropsey Township and the village of Cropsey were named after) was the leader of Company E.

Fifty-seven-year-old James T. Ayers traveled the short distance from Lexington to Pontiac. He lied and said he was only 50 years old and that he lived in Fairbury, not Lexington in McLean County. Mr. Ayers was accepted as a Private in Company E of the 129th Infantry. Mr. Ayers enlisted for three years.

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all persons held as slaves in the rebellious states were, and henceforward, shall be free. Within a few months, the Union Army started recruiting formerly enslaved black people to join the Union Army.

In the summer of 1863, James T. Ayers began recruiting black soldiers under a special assignment in Tennessee under the direction of Governor Johnson. He recruited more than 100 men. On Christmas Day of 1863, James T. Ayers was sent to Stevenson, Alabama, to work under the direction of Captain William F. Wheeler as a recruiter.

As soon as he began this formal recruiting assignment in December 1863, James T. Ayers started writing a diary of his activities. He maintained this diary until his death in September of 1865.

In 1947, the Illinois State Historical Society published his diary in a book. The book's title is Civil War Diary of James T. Ayers: Civil War Recruiter. One of the reasons the Illinois State Historical Society published his diary was that it was one of the rare references to how the Union recruited black men to join the Union Army.

On April 12, 1864, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his 2,000 troops launched an attack against the 600 Union soldiers at Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River about 40 miles north of Memphis. About half of the Union soldiers were black.

The Confederate troops were able to capture the fort with ease against the vastly outnumbered Union forces. This Confederate victory quickly became nationally known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. One version of events recounted that many of the black Union soldiers tried to surrender, but the Confederate forces massacred them. The Confederate forces were not happy to see their former slaves fighting against them in battle, so they massacred them.

This Fort Pillow Massacre story quickly spread to all the blacks living in the southern states. James T. Ayers realized that if he wrote a poem about the Fort Pillow Massacre, the poem could be used to recruit new black soldiers who could seek vengeance against the Confederate forces who committed the atrocity at Fort Pillow. Copies of his poems still exist today.

The recruitment effort to enlist more black soldiers was somewhat disorganized, and some Union officers resisted the idea of blacks fighting in combat. James T. Ayers was 58 years old, and he grew disillusioned with the recruiting program. He longed to return to his old Fairbury Company E unit and resigned as a recruiter in October of 1864.

Then, too, by the early autumn of 1864, the time had come for the re-election of Abraham Lincoln as President. This election interested Ayers more than anything else. He devoted his spare moments to writing campaign poetry and songs. He recorded in his diary that Lincoln's defeat would be a national calamity. He also complained about his poor health in his diary entries.

On November 10, 1864, he obtained a 20-day furlough from Chattanooga,            Tennessee, and went to Fairbury, Illinois. James T. Ayers was not feeling well and needed some rest. He decided to stay at his daughter's house in Fairbury. He also planned to visit his son Joseph, who lived in Danvers. James T. Ayers recorded his visit to Fairbury in his diary, which was published in 1947.

His daughter, Sarah E. Ayers (1846-1880), married John Warrick (1846-1871), and they lived in Fairbury. Two days after he arrived in Fairbury at his daughter's house, his new granddaughter Harriet Lynch Warrick was born. Unfortunately, it was a complicated birth, and his daughter was very ill for several weeks after the birth.

While he was in Fairbury, Abraham Lincoln got elected to his second term as President, which made James T. Ayers very happy. Mr. Ayers sold five lots that he owned in Fairbury to Judge Woodford G. McDowell for $60 each. Mr. Ayers was also able to visit his son, Joseph, in western McLean County.

James T. Ayers wrote a poem as a prayer for his very sick daughter to recover from childbirth. The health of both James T. Ayers and his daughter, Sarah, improved, and he returned to the Civil War with his old Fairbury 129th Company E unit.

Sarah Elizabeth Ayers survived the birth of Harriet, her daughter. Sarah's husband, John Warrick, died August 6, 1871. She then married Nathan Hinshaw. Sarah died May 22, 1880, in Anchor, Illinois. Granddaughter Harriet Lynch Warrick died in 1937 in Michigan.

The military career of James Ayers did not terminate with the Civil War. He had learned to like Army life. Furthermore, he was intensely interested in the future welfare of African Americans. Ayers felt that he could assist in the difficult task of adjusting these people to their new freedom.

Before he was mustered out of his old Fairbury 129th Infantry Company E unit, he enlisted on June 5, 1865, as chaplain with the 104th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops. He was assigned to Company G and ordered to report at Fort Duane at Beaufort, South Carolina, on July 1, 1865. Ayers received his commission as a first lieutenant.

James T. Ayers ranked fifth on the roster of officers in the Regiment, with only a colonel, a lieutenant colonel, a major, and a surgeon above him. Ayers's ill health prevented him from giving much service to the 104th Regiment. During the summer of 1865, he was committed to the hospital at Beaufort, South Carolina, where he died of typhus on September 10, 1865. James T. Ayers was 59 years old when he died.

The legacy of James T. Ayers endures because of the diary that he kept during the Civil War. His diary remains a valuable firsthand account of the challenges and triumphs of Union recruiting efforts among the newly freed population.

(Dale Maley's local history feature is sponsored each week by Dr. Charlene Aaron)