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GROTESQUE, YET FRIGHTFUL.
The nearest Lincoln ever came to a fight was when he was in the vicinity
of the skirmish at Kellogg's Grove, in the Black Hawk War. The rangers
arrived at the spot after the engagement and helped bury the five men
who were killed.
Lincoln told Noah Brooks, one of his biographers, that he "remembered
just how those men looked as we rode up the little hill where their camp
was. The red light of the morning sun was streaming upon them as they
lay, heads toward us, on the ground. And every man had a round, red spot
on the top of his head about as big as a dollar, where the redskins had
taken his scalp. It was frightful, but it was grotesque; and the red
sunlight seemed to paint everything all over."
Lincoln paused, as if recalling the vivid picture, and added, somewhat
irrelevantly, "I remember that one man had on buckskin breeches."
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Stories and Anecdotes About the Life of Abraham Lincoln
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