Born November 10, 1818, John Todd grew up in the rural area surrounding Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The most formative experience of his life was attending college in Oberlin, Ohio. A one-of-a-kind educational institution, Oberlin College was fully integrated--allowing men and women, black and white, to attend the same classes--at a time when the entire country was in a racial upheaval. As a result, Oberlin turned out a group of men and women almost devoid of racial prejudice. It was from this pool of graduates that many of the founders of Tabor, Iowa, were drawn. They were determined to found...

In 1861, Colonel Grenville Dodge organized the 4th Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment and led them off to war. They had few uniforms or weapons and were more of a mob than a military unit, but Dodge shaped them into a fighting force that won honors on the battlefield and gained respect as one of the best regiments in the Union army. Promoted to the rank of major-general, Dodge became one of the youngest divisional, corps and departmental commanders in the Army. A superb field general, he also organized a network of more than 100 spies to gather military intelligence and built railroads to...