Gustav Koerner

Gustav Philipp Koerner, also spelled Gustave or Gustavus Koerner, was a German-American revolutionary, journalist, lawyer, politician, judge and statesman in Illinois and Germany, and a Colonel of the U.S. Army who was a confessed enemy of slavery. He married on 17 June 1836 in Belleville Sophia Dorothea Engelmann ; they had 9 children. He belonged to the co-founders and was one of the first members of the Grand Old Party, and was a close confidant of Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd, and had an essential role in his nomination and election for president in 1860.