On a cold New Year's Eve in December of 1862, twenty-one-year-old Joshua Hobbs Brown listened wistfully to combined Union and Confederate bands playing "Home Sweet Home" as he and 80,000 other men prepared for the bloody carnage that would follow at daybreak along Stones River-just as the Emancipation Proclamation took effect to free millions of enslaved men, women, and children. Joshua would be seriously wounded by Confederate fire but survive to fight on with his valiant 84th Illinois Infantry Regiment from Chickamauga and Atlanta to Chattanooga, Franklin, and Nashville. Joshua's adventures were not limited to his battlefield exploits. He also made history by helping settle not one, but two states as a pioneer: first in the earliest days of the settlement of the prairies of Illinois and then in the first years of settling the high plains of western Nebraska. Persevering against every possible hardship from prolonged drought and blizzards to pandemics and economic depression, he helped forge two civilizations and turn the American frontier into the breadbasket of the world. On another cold December day in 1928, Joshua was laid to rest not far from his beloved homestead carved out of the wild Nebraska prairie. Thanks to his sacrifice, the republic he loved and served was still one nation, under God, indivisible. Joshua Hobbs Brown was once a solider and twice a pioneer. He is forever an American hero.
About the Author: Steve Grasz is a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He and his wife, Verlyne, live in Elkhorn, Nebraska. Steve grew up on his family's farm and ranch in the Lodgepole Valley of the Nebraska panhandle near Chappell. He is the son of Jane and the late Jess Grasz, and the great-great grandson of the book's subject, Joshua Hobbs Brown. Prior to being nominated by the President, at the recommendation of both of Nebraska's U.S. Senators, and confirmed by the United States Senate to the federal bench, Steve practiced law in Omaha. He also served for nearly 12 years in Nebraska's State Capitol as Chief Deputy Attorney General. He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (B.S. in Agriculture Honors) and the Nebraska College of Law where he was inducted into the Order of the Coif, served as Executive Editor of the Nebraska Law Review, and received the Roscoe Pound Award for Oral Advocacy. Steve has maintained his ties to the land by planting thousands of conservation trees over the past two decades on historic family property along the Lodgepole Creek in the shadow of the Oregon Trail and the path of the Pony Express.