Elzey enjoyed a long and impressive antebellum career, serving in both the Seminole War and the Mexican War. As a captain of artillery during the latter conflict, he fought in many of the major battles. His gallantry on the field at Contreras and Churubusco won him double brevets.

In 1829 Garrison secured for young Whittier the editorship of the political weekly American Manufacturer in Boston, where he quickly became an earnest and outspoken critic of Democrat Andrew Jackson and a supporter of Whig leader Henry Clay. This position introduced him to the realities of politics and political discourse, where he acquitted himself credibly enough to attract the notice of George D. Prentice, editor of the New England Weekly Review, and Nathaniel Parker Willis.

Sanborn was interested in abolitionist politics from an early age, and once settled in Concord he became actively involved in the organized abolitionist movement, developing acquaintances with leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel Gridley Howe, Parker, and Wendell Phillips and serving on committees for the colonization and defense of Kansas. These associations led to Sanborn’s meeting John Brown (1800-1859) in late 1856 and to his involvement in Brown’s plot to capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

J. Herman Bosler was born in Silver Spring, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on December 14, 1830. He was one of eight children of Abraham and Eliza Herman Bosler, an already distinguished county family active in farming, milling, and distilling. He attended the Cumberland Academy in New Kingston at seventeen and then went on to Dickinson College, entering in 1850 into the class of 1854 with his younger brother James Williamson Bosler. Neither brother completed their course, however, with John Herman withdrawing in 1851 to join his father’s business.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Watie joined the southern cause. Commissioned a colonel in 1861, he raised a regiment of Cherokees for service in the Confederate army. …Watie’s men were renamed as the Second Cherokee Regiment of Mounted Rifles. After Ross fled Indian Territory, Watie was elected principal chief of the Confederate Cherokees in August 1862.