[Heinrich Hilgard's] father wanted him to become a lawyer, but Villard was an indifferent student. When his father threatened to enlist him in the military, Villard immigrated to the United States in August 1853. He changed his name to Villard, after a schoolmate he admired, to make it difficult for his family to trace him and engaged in a number of jobs during his first years in the United States. Villard eventually found work as a journalist for German-language papers and later for English-language papers, covering the Abraham Lincoln-Stephen A.

Nothing in Polk's early life predicted his rise to prominence in a movement of angry farmers. The son of a planter, a moderately successful politician within the bounds of traditional southern politics, and a failed businessman, Polk nevertheless possessed remarkable organizational skills, and he had a knack for getting people to accept his leadership. He did not enrich himself at the expense of the movement he led; in fact, he died in debt, unable even to collect the salary owed him as president of the alliance.

The controversy over slavery led Miller, a Whig emancipationist, to move to Iowa in 1850. He became a successful lawyer, specializing in land title, commercial, and transportation cases. In 1854 he joined in organizing the Republican party in Iowa. Although he did not hold an elected office, he became a prominent Republican and a strong supporter of Abraham Lincoln. Politically well connected, Miller sought appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1862 President Lincoln appointed him to the high bench.

[Pope] saw his first Civil War action in Missouri in late 1861 when his Illinois unit was assigned to John C. Frémont's Department of the West. In March 1862 Pope took command of the Army of the Mississippi and that same month captured New Madrid, Missouri, in a lightning campaign, moving on in April to take Island Number 10 in a joint army-navy operation that opened the Mississippi south to Memphis. In May he led his army against Corinth, Mississippi, as the left wing of Henry W. Halleck's Grand Army.