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Paying tribute to those who fought to save the Union.For most of my 77 years, I have attended the Memorial Day ceremonies at our cemetery and listened proudly as the names of the more than 200 veterans buried here were spoken by a representative of our American Legion post.As a kid I was amazed that our cemetery in our little town, which in 1960 had 373 residents, was the final resting place of 66 Civil War veterans.I marveled at the love of country and the belief in the equality of all people that inspired so many young pioneers to lay down tools and take up arms in defense of their worthy ideals.Their sacrifices preserved the union, ended slavery and made me proud to be both a resident of their town, a descendant of some of them and an American.Their stories Now, after all those years, thanks to the Quasqueton Area Historical Society, which will soon publish a book documenting, memorializing and honoring the more than 130 Civil War veterans with connections to our town and the surrounding area, I have my chance to tell their stories.Of the 130 soldiers with a connection to Quasqueton, only four were even born In Iowa, which had been a state for just 15 years before the war.Just one of them, Charles Kessler, was actually born in Quasqueton.The 1860 census listed Iowa's population at 674,913 — a more than threefold increase from 192,641 in 1850.It listed Buchanan County’s population at 7,906 — an exponential increase from the 517 residents recorded in the 1850 census.The 1860 census listed a population of 796 in Liberty Township, with 394 (about half) residing in Quasqueton.Iowa’s rapid growth after statehood was fueled primarily by migration from Eastern and Midwestern states as well as by European immigrants.The youthful state’s residents were equally young, with a median age in 1860 around 20 years, which compares with a median age of 38.2 in the 2020 census.The newcomers were also chance-takers and fortune-seekers, forsaking the security and familiarity of their home states for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on the frontier, busting sod, felling trees, draining swamps and building homes, barns, schools and churches to provide a better life for the families that many of them had yet to even start.Freedom over comfort Unlike too many of us today, the young pioneers flooding into Iowa in 1860 valued freedom over comfort and security.While their lives lacked comfort, those pioneers would not stand idly by while slaveholders sundered the then 84-year-old country that enshrined self-governance and whose constitution guaranteed their freedom.During the Civil War, about 2.4 million men served in the Union military.Of them, more than 360,000 died — about 110,000 killed in action or mortally wounded, and more than 225,000 died of diseases and 25,000 who died in prison or from other causes.Among Iowa soldiers, about one in six (a total of 13,001) died of wounds or disease, with disease claiming about twice as many lives as battle wounds.Another 8,500 Iowa soldiers survived combat wounds.A postwar panel appointed to review the Civil War service of Buchanan County residents found that 723 men went off to war and 123 were killed in action or died of disease.Of those 123, 12 were Quasquetonians: Albert Alford, Amos Andrews, Joseph Blank, Henry French, Jacob Glass, James Holland, William Holland, Theodore Hyde, Castleton Leatherman, John McBane, Joseph McWilliams and Joseph Moore.No other state, north or south, had a higher percentage of its male population between the ages of 18 and 42 engaged in the war.Nine Iowa farm boys The historical society book, which we expect to be published later this year, will include many examples of the dangers and hardships faced by our ancestors.None perhaps is more poignant than the Civil War history of the nine farm boys from the Spring Grove community in southeast Buchanan County and northeast Linn County who enlisted together in Company C of the 9th Iowa Infantry in August 1861.The close-knit nine included Vinson Holman, whose diary provides a vivid account of their participation in the bloody Union victory at Pea Ridge, Ark.; his brother Isaac Holman; their cousins, Stephen Holman and William Whisennand; and Isaac Arwine, who was Vinson and Isaac’s brother in law.The other four were John Cartwright, Eli Holland, John Leatherman and Pierce Walton.Just six months after the nine friends had left Dubuque, three were dead — Arwine, Cartwright and Whisennand — and three had been declared disabled and discharged — Isaac Holman, Pierce Walton and John Leatherman.A few months later, Vinson Holman, the diarist, died of jaundice in Memphis, Tenn.Stephen Holman was discharged at the end of his three-year enlistment.Of the nine friends, only Eli Holland was still with Company C of the 9th Iowa at war’s end.I could go on all day about the valor and fortitude of Union Civil War veterans, but I won’t.It will be in the book.‘This mighty scourge of war’ In the modern era of comfort over freedom, few would doubt that a much lower percentage of Iowans and Americans would volunteer to charge enemy fortifications over open ground, braving enfilade fire of exploding canister shells and rifle slugs, only to fight desperate foes to the death in close quarters with bayonets and clubbed muskets.On April 9, 1865, when Confederate Gen.Robert E.Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen.Ulysses S.Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Grant later recalled he felt sad “at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly” for a cause that was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought.” President Abraham Lincoln, the lodestar of the North’s moral firmament, framed the Civil War as God’s judgment on slavery in his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”