Those who followed also served.

Not long after the war was over, Springfield was picked as the site of a U.S. National Cemetery with the bodies of the Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Wilson's Creek reburied when it opened at Glenstone Avenue and Seminole Street in 1967. The Confederate cemetery was opened in 1870. But it was the turn of the century before the stone wall was broken and the two sections merged into one. Veterans of other conflicts lie buried there today as well.

Succeeding wars weren't as physically close to home but did have a very definite impact upon the lives of families as members were called upon to serve, many not to return. A company of volunteers was raised from the area to fight in the Spanish American War in 1898 but got only as far as a training camp in Tennessee before the war ended.

Springfieldians served well again in World War I in Europe, as part of the famed 35th Missouri Division. That unit also contained another famous Missourian, Harry S. Truman. Springfieldians were so anxious to celebrate the end of the war, that, because of faulty communications, they officially did so November 7,1918, four days before the armistice was actually signed.