Lincoln's Man

The refugee who had fought for a free press found his politics in America quickly.

The Saga says Dr. Kiefer was among the organizers of the new Republican Party at the famous meeting "under the oaks" in Jackson, Michigan, in 1854. He became president of the German Republican Committee of Michigan, campaigned for John C. Frémont in 1856 and for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and brought Detroit's German voters with him.

He served as Detroit's City Physician in 1860. When the Civil War came, he cared for the wounded; the family tradition says he persuaded John Harper to build the wards that grew into Harper Hospital.

The war reached the family directly. A Kiefer brother-in-law, Bruno Mauch, a first lieutenant in Company F of the 1st Michigan Infantry, was wounded at Bull Run, captured, and died in Richmond's notorious Libby Prison. His revolver came down in the family.

After the war Dr. Kiefer negotiated the casting of Detroit's Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Dresden, served as a presidential elector in 1872, and at the 1876 state convention helped swing Michigan's delegates to Rutherford B. Hayes.