Ozaukee County's
War History
by Daniel E. McGinley

as extracted from THE PORT WASHINGTON STAR
June 13, 1896



Politics & Pathos

Some readers may make the accusation that these articles give the war record of Ozaukee county as seen from a partisan standpoint. I acknowledge that I try to be a partisan. Every good citizen of this republic is a partisan in the popular sense of the term, and although I may make a failure in that line I endeavor to be a good citizen. In writing these short newspaper articles, in which there is space for but a very brief outline of Ozaukee's war history, I try to be as impartial as possible. In noting the doings of those of its citizens who favored the secession of the slave states and the formation of a southern confederacy; who continually opposed the Federal government and the war for the suppression of the rebellion; and who gave the enemy all the assistance and encouragement they dared to, by discouraging the raising and equipping of the Union armies, by opposing the levying of war taxes, by reviling, persecuting and intimidating Union men and their friends, I have been very lenient, in some cases too much so perhaps. There are many facts regarding the deplorable record of such persons which, for the truth of history, ought perhaps to be recorded, but which for the sake of their children are withheld.

When we look at the vote polled in Ozaukee county in the presidential election of 1860 we are led to marvel much at the political inconsistency of a large number of its citizens at the commencement of war. At that election, the records tell us, this county cast 1823 votes for Stephen A. Douglas, candidate of the northern branch of the Democratic party, 627 for Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the Republican party, and only eight for John C. Breckinridge, candidate of the southern or slaveholdersí branch of the Democratic party, a faction which favored the unrestricted extension of slavery. But no sooner had the crisis come, Fort Sumter had been bombarded, and Stephen A. Douglas, the popular leader of such a large majority of our voters, had denounced treason, declared secession to be "criminal," and had taken a firm stand for the preservation of the Union by openly endorsing the "coercing" or war measures of our government, than a great change came over at least three-fourths of his followers in Ozaukee. They immediately deserted his standard, went over bodily to the Breckinridge faction, and thereafter loudly and persistently advocated the doctrine of "state rights" as laid down by the slaveholders. They must have been simply the tools of demagogues. Had they, like hundreds of their neighbors, remained true to their great leader, and had followed his good example by endorsing and supporting the war for the preservation of the Union, how much better it would have been for themselves, their children and all concerned. Probably one-fourth of those who had voted for Douglas in this county became strong Unionists or "War Democrats" when Sumter was fired upon, and a number of them were among the very first to volunteer in defense of the old flag. Scores of Ozaukee's War Democrats died for Union and Freedom during that war, leaving memories that will be revered by lovers of liberty for ages to come; and it was no fault of theirs or of ours that their neighbors went astray.

No historical sketch of Ozaukee's part in the civil war, be it ever so brief, is complete which does not make mention of the grand record made by its loyal women. But when I endeavor to write of the noble part taken by them - of their trials and sufferings in that great strife for the life of our Nation, my pen fails me - is utterly unequal to the task of writing anything that will do them justice. The history of the work done by them, of their heartaches, their sufferings and sorrows has never been written nor never will be, but nevertheless there were hundreds of heroines among the mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts of the boys in blue from Ozaukee, whose records would be grand additions to our war literature. They bore a very important part in the work of those trying days, but their tasks were performed so modestly and quietly, and their sorrows and sufferings were borne with such patient gratitude, that the world will never know nor imagine a hundredth part of it. The services of Ozaukee county's soldiers and sailors are recorded in the records of the state and of the Nation, and in the annals of fame, but the services of its loyal daughters, performed in the privacy and seclusion of their humble homes, although none the less efficient and worthy, are recorded only in the memory of the few survivors and in the records of the Most High.

Obliged to give up their loved ones to their country, to experience all the hardships, anxieties, torturing suspense and agonizing desolation to which their sisters in the more loyal sections of the land were subjected, the loyal women of Ozaukee were forced also to listen to the unjust and heartless criticisms of disloyal neighbors, and often to the defamation of their heroic dead. What wonder then that many of them found early graves, and that the survivors have such vivid recollections of those war days? Truly the lot of the women who "waited, watched and prayed" during the war in Ozaukee county was a most trying one.

Soon after the beginning of hostilities sad faces and emblems of mourning began to appear among them, and as the war continued became more plentiful until there were very few that did not exhibit some sign of bereavement. But they were not idle. They prepared and sent to the boys at the front and in hospitals many necessary helps in the shape of clothing, medicines, vegetables, fruit, etc., and often took the absent soldier's place in office and shop, and on the farm, all the while suffering untold anxieties and sorrows.

Picture to yourself if you can, dear reader, the feelings of a young wife when she parts from her husband, her only earthly protector, and sends him forth to his country's aid. Picture if you can the agony of that wife when, a few weeks later, she is informed that a battle is in progress in which her husband is exposed to the bullets and bayonets and sabres of the foe, and after pacing the floor all the long night learns on the morrow that he is among the "missing" and thus has the torture prolonged indefinitely, for weeks, months and years perhaps, only to learn at last that he starved to death in a southern prison-pen and was consigned to a nameless grave! Picture if you can, the mother who greets her only son, who, but a few short months ago had marched away from her and home perfect in form and health and fully of patriotic enthusiasm, but is now borne back to her on a stretcher, maimed and shattered in limb and health, a certain cripple or invalid, or both, for life! Picture if you can, the poor devoted mother as the lifeless form of her boy, her pride, her joy, is borne into his boyhood's home wrapped in the starry flag he loved so well and died to save! And, oh! picture if you can the utter desolation of a mother as she reads the message which informs her that the last of her sons, her bright-eyed, happy faced, darling youngest born has fallen with his face to the foe, and has died as his brothers died before him, heroically fighting for liberty, and she realizes that she is alone in the world! But you cannot picture, you cannot conceive the agonizing struggle that had torn that fond mother's heart but a short time before, when that boy, the last of her sons, had asked her consent to go to the front and help to fill the broken ranks from which his brothers had fallen, and she had hesitated between love and duty and had at last decided that as much as she needed her boy, her country needed him more.

Yes, try to form such pictures in your imagination, and if successful you may gain a slight conception of the heroic sufferings, the taintless patriotism, the pure, self-sacrificing love of country of the noble, devoted women who "waited, watched and prayed" while their sons, brothers, husbands and sweethearts "rolled the stone from the sepulchre of progress, kept our country on the map of the world and our flag in the heavens."

In the next chapter a brief history of the "Ozaukee Rifles," Company "K" of the Sixteen Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, will be commenced, and will run through several issues of THE STAR. As this company was made up almost entirely of Ozaukee county boys, saw a great deal of service, being mustered in in the fall of ë61 and mustered out July 12, 1865, and made a proud record, its history ought to interest all of the old and many of the new residents of the county.