Fighting Nearly Erupts at Potosi
After Civil War; Gov. Intervenes
Only the Governor of the State of Illinois managed to stop a shooting war in the tiny community of Potosi nine miles south of Fairbury during the year of 1866 [sic]. Potosi Corner definitely rings a bell in the minds of many of Fairbury and Cropsey’s old residents, but the younger generation, it is doubtful if they know the whereabouts of the vicinity.
It’s a ghost town today, but farmers that work the fields in the area see artifacts turned up by the plow that recall pioneer life in the middle 1880’s.
A.F. Cox, who presently owns part of Potosi Corner, said that hanging almost occurred there as result of "the butternut war." More about this follows.
Potosi could hardly be called a village, though it was long the center for citizens to collect, get their tri-weekly mail, and trade. When the post office was established, that’s how the village received their name—through the U. S. government post office—the affairs of mail were kept by citizens at their houses.
In 1866, Dr. A. W. Green, recently-diplomaed physician, went to Potosi in search for a place to practice. He soon started a drug store which grew into a large general trade in merchandise. The post office was removed to his store.
J.E. Whitney carried on blacksmith trade there in his she and A.D. Taylor had a shoe shop. A dozen or more houses lined the east-west road toward Potosi school one half mile east of the corner.
One of the most exciting occasions in the history of Potosi was the speck of war over the “butternut pole” which was raise by the Democrats on the occasion of a political rally during the campaign of 1868 [sic]. Owing to the color of the Confederate army uniform, which was brown or of butternut shade, the butternut had come to be accepted by the soldiers of the Union army as a symbol of “secesh” doctrines.
Some person, either out of pure “cussedness,” or for some unknown reason, put a few butternuts on the pole. This was thought, by some returning soldiers, to be a taunt and was taken in dead earnest as tending to spread treasonable sentiments, and they declared it should come down. The excitement spread, and there was talk on both sides of “enlisting for the war” to bring down or to sustain that pole. Arms we collected and stored in convenient places.
Men became as thoroughly in earnest as they ever were on the fields of Dixie. The one side declared that no butternuts should ever be permitted to wave or shake over the four corners at Potosi, and the other just as energetically affirmed that that pole should never come down while they lived to defend it.
At this juncture, some of the Republicans thought of the company of “Tanners,” organized and officered to help carry on the Grant campaign, and went to get their assistance. As Capt. McDowell and his company of Tanners had never been sworn into the State service, he did not feel like volunteering to put down rebellion or butternuts at Potosi without an invitation from the Governor. He consulted Maj. Osman, who was in command of a Democratic Company, and the two agreed to lay the matter before the Governor and be guided by his order.
They therefore sent a message to Gov. Oglesby, alying the matter before him and asking advise or orders. Capt. McDowell, for the Republicans, and Maj. Osman, for the Democrats, agreed that his orders should be complied with. The Governor was absent from Springfield and it was not until a day after that he sent his reply, which was to the effect that the Republicans should go home and some thus save the majesty of the law, and the Democrats should take down, and thus save, their butternuts.
The order was obeyed and the butternuts were taken down and turned over to Capt. McDowell and Maj. Osman. They expressed them to the Governor who kept them safely in the archives of the State.
Thus ended what bid fair to be at one time a serious riot.
Potosi, at the crossroads on the McLean-Livingston County line two and one half miles west of Cropsey, might have ruptured into
a town of considerable size if the and railroad would have wound through
this community instead of Cropsey.
The road through Potosi was very important in the settlement of the eastern part of McLean County since it furnished an outlet for farm products and was used to bring supplies to the settlements.
NOTE: This article was copied from the Fairbury Blade, Fairbury, Illinois, the issue of Thursday, May 18, 1961, page five.