When Abraham Lincoln called for troops to defend the Union, men and boys of DeWitt County answered, including people from families who had known him during his years practicing law and politics there and foreign-born residents such as the German-born shoemaker Martin Mohrle. Some who died on Civil War battlefields were returned to DeWitt County for burial on this hill, which became a soldiers’ burial ground, and veterans who took their final furlough after the war were laid to rest there as well. Mohrle, color bearer for Company E, 20th Illinois Volunteer Infantry, mustered in on June 13, 1861, returned home on furlough in April 1864 after reenlisting, married his sweetheart Mary Robinson, and before leaving gave her a piece of the tattered flag he had carried. He was killed in action near Atlanta, Georgia, on July 21, 1864, and although comrades reported his death and there is record of a hasty burial on the field, his final resting place is unknown, making him one of thousands of Union dead who never returned home and whose graves are marked Unknown. Lincoln had also first met George B. McClellan in a DeWitt County courtroom when Lincoln, then a prairie lawyer representing the Illinois Central Railroad, awaited testimony from McClellan, a railroad executive. Their paths later crossed again as Lincoln became President of the United States and McClellan rose to Union General-in-Chief, but Lincoln, dissatisfied with McClellan’s procrastination and sluggish military tactics, removed him from command before McClellan ran against him as the Democratic Party presidential nominee in 1864.