August Willich's Gallant Dutchmen

August Willich's Gallant Dutchmen
Author: Joseph R. Reinhart
Publisher: Kent State University
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Civil War letters from soldiers serving in a German regiment Organized by Colonel August Willich, a former Prussian army officer who led troops during the German Revolution of 1848, Indiana's German 32nd Indiana regiment fought in the Western Theater of the Civil War. The 32nd Indiana forged an enviable combat record on the battlefields at Rowlett's Station in Kentucky; at Shiloh, Stones River, and Missionary Ridge in Tennessee; and at Chickamauga and Pickett's Mill in Georgia. The letters collected here originally appeared in German in wartime issues of German American newspapers. These rare documents connect the contemporary reader to the world of the patriotic immigrant soldier and his hard-fighting regiment, revealing personal motivations, wartime experiences, opinions, ethnic pride, and bravery, as this regiment engaged in some of the most bitter fighting in the West. These gripping letters also provide insight into the social, political, and cultural dimensions of the war and reveal the competing ethnic identities, nativism, and immigrant acculturation of late-nineteenth-century America. The Germans of the 32nd Indiana proved themselves to be "Gallant Dutchmen" in the fight to save the Union. Gallant Dutchmen is a valuable addition to Civil War studies and will also be welcomed by those interested in ethnic and immigration studies.

A German Hurrah!

A German Hurrah!
Author: Friedrich Bertsch
Publisher:
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN:

Offers fascinating perspectives on the war from two German immigrants. This title is suitable for those interested in ethnicity and immigration.

We Are the Revolutionists

We Are the Revolutionists
Author: Mischa Honeck
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2011-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820339601

A Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Widely remembered as a time of heated debate over the westward expansion of slavery, the 1850s in the United States was also a period of mass immigration. As the sectional conflict escalated, discontented Europeans came in record numbers, further dividing the young republic over issues of race, nationality, and citizenship. The arrival of German-speaking “Forty-Eighters,” refugees of the failed European revolutions of 1848–49, fueled apprehensions about the nation’s future. Reaching America did not end the foreign revolutionaries’ pursuit of freedom; it merely transplanted it. In We Are the Revolutionists, Mischa Honeck offers a fresh appraisal of these exiled democrats by probing their relationship to another group of beleaguered agitators: America’s abolitionists. Honeck details how individuals from both camps joined forces in the long, dangerous battle to overthrow slavery. In Texas and in cities like Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Boston this cooperation helped them find new sources of belonging in an Atlantic world unsettled by massive migration and revolutionary unrest. Employing previously untapped sources to write the experience of radical German émigrés into the abolitionist struggle, Honeck elucidates how these interethnic encounters affected conversations over slavery and emancipation in the United States and abroad. Forty-Eighters and abolitionists, Honeck argues, made creative use not only of their partnerships but also of their disagreements to redefine notions of freedom, equality, and humanity in a transatlantic age of racial construction and nation making.

Radical Warrior

Radical Warrior
Author: David Dixon
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-09-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781621906025

Clear the Track

Clear the Track
Author: Phillip J. Reyburn
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2012-08-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1477254145

With the air filled with the missiles of death, the bluecoats sought the shelter of mother earth and lay flat hugging the wet ground. The men were caught in an exposed position, and here occurred an incident, that would haunt William R. Hartpence of the Fifty-first Indiana as long as he lived. He observed First Lieutenant Peter G. Tait of the Eighty-ninth Illinois standing a little in advance of his regiment, which had intermingled with the Fifty-first during the assault. With his eyes fixed on the young officer, Hartpence watched as Tait was stuck by a cannon ball near the center of his body, tearing a great hole in the left side. As he fell, he threw his right arm around to his side, when his heart and left lung dropped out into it. The heart continued to throb for twenty minutes, its pulsations being distinctly seen by his agonized comrades, who stood there and saw the noble life fade out in heroic self-sacrifice. Battle of Nashville, December 16, 1864. In answer to Lincolns call for more men to put down the rebellion, the several trunk railroads centered in Chicago oversaw the organization of a regiment composed principally of railroad employees. Numbered the Eighty-ninth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, it was better known by the sobriquet, the Railroad Regiment. Considered one of the 300 hundred fighting regiments of the Union army, the Railroaders had 133 men killed in action or later died from wounds. Another 66 succumbed in rebel prisons. At the final muster, Colonel Charles T. Hotchkiss said it best: Our history is written on the head-boards of rudely-made graves. . . . Such a record we feel proud of. And indeed, it was. PHILIP J. REYBURN is a retired field representative for the Social Security Administration. With Terry L. Wilson, he edited Jottings from Dixie: The Civil War Dispatches of Sergeant Major Stephen F. Fleharty, U.S.A.

The Germans of Charleston, Richmond and New Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850-1870

The Germans of Charleston, Richmond and New Orleans during the Civil War Period, 1850-1870
Author: Andrea Mehrländer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2011-05-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110236893

This work is the first monograph which closely examines the role of the German minority in the American South during the Civil War. In a comparative analysis of German civic leaders, businessmen, militia officers and blockade runners in Charleston, New Orleans and Richmond, it reveals a German immigrant population which not only largely supported slavery, but was also heavily involved in fighting the war. A detailed appendix includes an extensive survey of primary and secondary sources, including tables listing the members of the all-German units in Virginia, South Carolina and Louisiana, with names, place of origin, rank, occupation, income, and number of slaves owned. This book is a highly useful reference work for historians, military scholars and genealogists conducting research on Germans in the American Civil War and the American South.

Liberty and Slavery

Liberty and Slavery
Author: Niels Eichhorn
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-10-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807171824

In Liberty and Slavery, Niels Eichhorn examines the language of slavery, which he considers central to revolutionary struggles, especially those waged in Europe in the nineteenth century. Eichhorn begins in 1830 with separatist movements in Greece, Belgium, and Poland, which laid the foundation for rebellions undertaken later in the century, and then shifts focus to the 1848 uprisings in Ireland, Hungary, and Schleswig-Holstein. He argues that revolutionaries embraced or rejected the language of slavery as they saw fit, using it to justify their rebellions and larger goals. The failure of these insurgencies propelled a wave of revolutionary migrants across the Atlantic world. Those who journeyed to the United States felt the need to adjust to the political and sectional divisions in their new home. Eichhorn shows that separatism was widespread during this period; the secessionist aims of the American Confederacy were by no means unique. Additionally, Eichhorn explores these migrants’ motivations for shunning the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Having been steeped in the language of slavery and separatism, they naturally sided with the Union when the sectional crisis culminated in civil war in 1861.

At War with King Alcohol

At War with King Alcohol
Author: Megan L. Bever
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2022-08-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469669552

Liquor was essential to military culture as well as healthcare regimens in both the Union and Confederate armies. But its widespread use and misuse caused severe disruptions as unruly drunken soldiers and officers stumbled down roads and through towns, colliding with civilians. The problems surrounding liquor prompted debates among military officials, soldiers, and civilians as to what constituted acceptable drinking. While Americans never could agree on precisely when it was appropriate to make or drink alcohol, one consensus emerged: the wasteful manufacture and reckless consumption of spirits during a time of civil war was so unpatriotic that it sometimes bordered on disloyalty. Using an array of sources—temperance periodicals, soldiers' accounts, legislative proceedings, and military records—Megan L. Bever explores the relationship between war, the practical realities of drinking alcohol, and temperance sentiment within the United States. Her insightful conclusions promise to shed new light on our understanding of soldiers' and veterans' lives, civil-military relations, and the complicated relationship between drinking, morality, and masculinity.

God's Almost Chosen Peoples

God's Almost Chosen Peoples
Author: George C. Rable
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 599
Release: 2010-11-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807899313

Throughout the Civil War, soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict saw the hand of God in the terrible events of the day, but the standard narratives of the period pay scant attention to religion. Now, in God's Almost Chosen Peoples, Lincoln Prize-winning historian George C. Rable offers a groundbreaking account of how Americans of all political and religious persuasions used faith to interpret the course of the war. Examining a wide range of published and unpublished documents--including sermons, official statements from various churches, denominational papers and periodicals, and letters, diaries, and newspaper articles--Rable illuminates the broad role of religion during the Civil War, giving attention to often-neglected groups such as Mormons, Catholics, blacks, and people from the Trans-Mississippi region. The book underscores religion's presence in the everyday lives of Americans north and south struggling to understand the meaning of the conflict, from the tragedy of individual death to victory and defeat in battle and even the ultimate outcome of the war. Rable shows that themes of providence, sin, and judgment pervaded both public and private writings about the conflict. Perhaps most important, this volume--the only comprehensive religious history of the war--highlights the resilience of religious faith in the face of political and military storms the likes of which Americans had never before endured.

Campaigning with Uncle Billy

Campaigning with Uncle Billy
Author: Lyman Summerfield Widney
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1425178871

Campaigning with Uncle Billy is the memoir of the service of Sgt. Lyman S. Widney of Illinois who served throughout the Civil War with the 34th Illinois Infantry. Widney's account of his wartime service is based on the diary he kept during the conflict. As a regimental clerk, he was in a position to meet many prominent people and to know the plans and thinking of the command staff. Widney's narrative is personal, highly detailed, vividly descriptive and accurate. He writes with emotion and humor. He details the life of the volunteer soldiers as they enlist, adapt to military life and learn the trade of soldiering. His descriptions of the horrors of the battlefield, its grisly aftermath and the toll that sickness exacted on the rank and file is highly personal. Through Widney's eyes we explore the countryside, tour Mammoth Cave, learn firsthand about combat and sickness and endure life in the trenches in the relentless fighting of the Atlanta Campaign and the grueling March to the Sea and through the Carolinas. Widney's memoir is a worthy addition to the literature of the Civil War from the point of view of the common soldier.