Radical Warrior: August Willich's Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General
Autor David Dixonen Limba Engleză Hardback – 27 iul 2020
An estimated 200,000 men of German birth enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War, far more than any other contemporary foreign-born population. One of these, Prussian Army officer Johann August Ernst von Willich, led a remarkable life of integrity, commitment to a cause, and interaction with leading lights of the nineteenth century. After resigning from the Prussian Army due to his republican beliefs, Willich led armed insurrections during the revolutions of 1848–49, with Friedrich Engels as his aide-de-camp. Ever committed to the goal of universal human rights, he once dueled a disciple of Karl Marx—whom he thought too conservative. Willich emigrated to the United States in 1853, eventually making his way to Cincinnati, where he served as editor of the daily labor newspaper the Cincinnati Republican. With exhaustive research in both English and German language sources, author David T. Dixon chronicles the life of this ingenious military leader—a man who could also be stubborn, impulsive, and even foolhardy—risking his life unnecessarily in the face of overwhelming odds.
As soon as shots were fired at Fort Sumter, fifty-year-old Willich helped raise a regiment to fight for the Union. Though he had been a lieutenant in Europe, he enlisted as a private. He later commanded an all-German regiment, rose to the rank of brigadier general, and was later brevetted major general. Dixon’s vivid narrative places the Civil War in a global context. For Willich and other so-called “Forty-Eighters” who emigrated after the European revolutions, the nature and implications of the conflict turned not on Lincoln’s conservative goal of maintaining the national Union, but on issues of social justice, including slavery, free labor, and popular self-government. It was a war not simply to heal sectional divides, but to restore the soul of the nation and, in Willich’s own words, “defend the rights of man.”
As soon as shots were fired at Fort Sumter, fifty-year-old Willich helped raise a regiment to fight for the Union. Though he had been a lieutenant in Europe, he enlisted as a private. He later commanded an all-German regiment, rose to the rank of brigadier general, and was later brevetted major general. Dixon’s vivid narrative places the Civil War in a global context. For Willich and other so-called “Forty-Eighters” who emigrated after the European revolutions, the nature and implications of the conflict turned not on Lincoln’s conservative goal of maintaining the national Union, but on issues of social justice, including slavery, free labor, and popular self-government. It was a war not simply to heal sectional divides, but to restore the soul of the nation and, in Willich’s own words, “defend the rights of man.”
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781621906025
ISBN-10: 1621906027
Pagini: 328
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.79 kg
Ediția:1st Edition, Maps by Hal Jespersen
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN-10: 1621906027
Pagini: 328
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 28 mm
Greutate: 0.79 kg
Ediția:1st Edition, Maps by Hal Jespersen
Editura: University of Tennessee Press
Colecția Univ Tennessee Press
Notă biografică
DAVID T. DIXON is the author of The Lost Gettysburg Address, and his articles have appeared in both popular and scholarly periodicals.
Extras
Revolution in Europe began when the citizens of Paris rose up on February 22, 1848. French radicals, bent on restoring the republic Napoleon had usurped, rioted, and forced their king into exile. Consequently, they ignited a spontaneous conflagration of democratic revolts that swept the Continent. German republicans and liberal democrats mobilized rapidly, staging no fewer than three armed rebellions against the monarchs of several German states.
Willich was a senior military leader in the rebel cause. Insurrections were put down easily in the German Confederation and throughout Europe. Willich eclipsed Karl Marx, becoming the popular leader of German political refugees in London, but enthusiasm for revolution ebbed soon after their arrival. Though European revolutionaries achieved little in the short term, their goals of democracy and republican government on the Continent eventually came to pass. Like Thomas Paine, leading German revolutionists of 1848 became folk heroes in their day only to be chastised later as heretics or dreamers. Most were all but forgotten by succeeding generations.
Willich adapted his political philosophy and tactics to his new home in America. Scorned at first by Karl Marx as a stubborn idealist and dangerous adventurist in a Europe not yet ripe for revolution, Willich matured into a pragmatic and patient radical. He grudgingly acknowledged some of Marx’s theories of labor and economy as worthy of consideration while immersing himself in the cause of the American worker. Where better to revise the relationship between labor and capital than in the largest democratic republic on earth? Willich edited one of Cincinnati’s German-language newspapers, a handy mouthpiece for advancing his social and political views. Moreover, Willich worked tirelessly to help workers organize while promoting a unique vision of a social republic with trade unions and trade associations replacing traditional legislative structures. Yet he had limited success. Willich’s grandiose schemes were discounted by more practical reformers who achieved modest gains in wage increases and reasonable working hours by the early 1860s.
Willich’s life offers an intimate glimpse into the international dimension of America’s Civil War. In an age of global social, economic, and political upheaval, transatlantic radicals helped affect America’s second great revolution. For Willich, the nature and implications of that revolution turned not on Lincoln’s conservative goal of maintaining the national Union, but on issues of social justice, including slavery, free labor, and popular self-government. It was a war not simply to heal sectional divides, but to restore the soul of the nation, revive the hopes of democrats worldwide, and, in Willich’s own words, “defend the rights of man.”
Thousands of rebels from the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848 and 1849 were among a million and a half individuals who emigrated from Germany to America in the decade prior to the Civil War. They became known collectively as “Forty-Eighters.” Leaders like Willich were largely responsible for rallying an estimated two hundred thousand men of German birth to enlist in the Union army once the Civil War erupted, a far greater number of recruits than from any other contemporary foreign-born population. Many German American Union officers had fought for freedom in Europe. Their contribution to the Union war effort was significant, even conclusive on some battlefields. Only a handful of German Americans have achieved adequate recognition for these feats in the face of pervasive bias against immigrants that has persisted in America since the mid-nineteenth century.
The destiny of many radicals in Western societies has been consignment to historical obscurity. For example, few memorials to Thomas Paine exist in the United States despite his enormous influence in kindling the revolution that secured American independence. Though Willich’s likeness in bronze or stone appears nowhere in Germany or America, monuments to a few contemporaries like Carl Schurz, Franz Sigel, and Friedrich Hecker grace public spaces in cities and towns where large numbers of German immigrants settled. Virtually all were erected before two world wars in the twentieth century dampened enthusiasm for public tributes to German-born Americans. The collective influence of Willich and his Forty-Eighter peers lives on in their contributions to progressive reform in American public education and as part of a rich cultural milieu of music, art, and literature. As Paine suggested, the Forty-Eighters remade their world in a new country, creating communities that stressed Enlightenment values of free thought and self-improvement.
Most midcentury political exiles like Willich were highly educated radicals from middling or upper ranks of European society. They sustained their commitment to democratic revolution by using similar tactics as in 1848. Many entered journalism, doubling the number of US German-language newspapers in the 1850s in just four years. They started German social clubs called Turnverein, which sprung up all over the country. Willich was involved in a handful of the overtly socialist Turner societies. For these revolutionists, survival of the republican experiment in America, however imperfect, was the last and best hope for a new world order based on freedom, equality, and justice. In America, as in the German states of the Vormärz period, the constituency of Forty-Eighter radical activists was heterogeneous—a huge challenge when crafting a persuasive message and forging political unity.
German immigrants in the 1850s were a diverse lot. Lawyers, professors, doctors, and military veterans left their homeland alongside thousands of craftsmen, skilled artisans, farmers, and common laborers making a new start in America. Newcomers ran the gamut in their religious beliefs and political ideology. Their motives for leaving Germany are difficult to discern, but economic opportunity in a free society was frequently mentioned. Although the overwhelming majority of these immigrants to America hailed from a small region in the German Confederation’s southwest, they retained strong identities as Badeners and Rhinelanders, Bavarians and Prussians, Württembergers and Hessians. This is not to mention the many thousands of second and third generation German Americans who had established affiliations with churches and political parties in the United States. Radical Forty-Eighters like Willich employed a deliberate, conscious strategy to leverage what some historians call a German penchant for joining to construct a new German American ethnic identity. They formed worker organizations, started social clubs, and conducted festivals promoting German cultural superiority, a “German spirit,” as Willich described it. That spirit carried with it a moral obligation. It was the destiny of German Americans to continue the work of revolution in their new home and perfect the American republic as an example for humankind.
Americans had thrown off the oppressive yoke of monarchy, yet they later faced the prospect of losing half the country to a plantation aristocracy that considered slavery integral to Southern society. Slaveholding was a threat to republican government and a moral abomination in the eyes of German American radicals like Willich, who were overwhelmingly antislavery and predominantly abolitionist. Unlike many American-born abolitionists, these revolutionaries’ opposition to human bondage was not grounded in religious fundamentalism. Rather, it was based on their moral and political principles; many were freethinkers. Willich and his peers understood the inherent conflicts in American political ideology. US citizens preached freedom and equality while owning slaves. German American radicals pressed newcomers, mostly Democrats, to join the newly formed Republican Party following presidential candidate John C. Fremont’s adoption of an antislavery platform. While most northerners came to embrace Lincoln’s emancipation policy gradually as a war measure, leading German Forty-Eighters viewed the Civil War as a war of slave liberation from the very beginning.
Willich linked free-labor ideology to the crusade against chattel slavery. The plight of African slaves reminded Germans of the long tradition of forced servitude in Europe. Although manorial privilege and serfdom was disappearing, mid-nineteenth-century Western European peasants faced staggering social change. Industrial capitalism threatened to turn all but the owners of the means of production into wage slaves. In America’s well-publicized rags-to-riches folklore, a worker might finally get a fair shake or even an equal stake in a more perfect republican Union. Willich and many leading German Forty-Eighters wanted to help refine and reform the New World’s capitalist juggernaut into a model society where all people could pursue happiness and true social equality. Demise of the American republic would delight the monarchs of Europe but was unconscionable to those who longed for a better world.
Willich was a senior military leader in the rebel cause. Insurrections were put down easily in the German Confederation and throughout Europe. Willich eclipsed Karl Marx, becoming the popular leader of German political refugees in London, but enthusiasm for revolution ebbed soon after their arrival. Though European revolutionaries achieved little in the short term, their goals of democracy and republican government on the Continent eventually came to pass. Like Thomas Paine, leading German revolutionists of 1848 became folk heroes in their day only to be chastised later as heretics or dreamers. Most were all but forgotten by succeeding generations.
Willich adapted his political philosophy and tactics to his new home in America. Scorned at first by Karl Marx as a stubborn idealist and dangerous adventurist in a Europe not yet ripe for revolution, Willich matured into a pragmatic and patient radical. He grudgingly acknowledged some of Marx’s theories of labor and economy as worthy of consideration while immersing himself in the cause of the American worker. Where better to revise the relationship between labor and capital than in the largest democratic republic on earth? Willich edited one of Cincinnati’s German-language newspapers, a handy mouthpiece for advancing his social and political views. Moreover, Willich worked tirelessly to help workers organize while promoting a unique vision of a social republic with trade unions and trade associations replacing traditional legislative structures. Yet he had limited success. Willich’s grandiose schemes were discounted by more practical reformers who achieved modest gains in wage increases and reasonable working hours by the early 1860s.
Willich’s life offers an intimate glimpse into the international dimension of America’s Civil War. In an age of global social, economic, and political upheaval, transatlantic radicals helped affect America’s second great revolution. For Willich, the nature and implications of that revolution turned not on Lincoln’s conservative goal of maintaining the national Union, but on issues of social justice, including slavery, free labor, and popular self-government. It was a war not simply to heal sectional divides, but to restore the soul of the nation, revive the hopes of democrats worldwide, and, in Willich’s own words, “defend the rights of man.”
Thousands of rebels from the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848 and 1849 were among a million and a half individuals who emigrated from Germany to America in the decade prior to the Civil War. They became known collectively as “Forty-Eighters.” Leaders like Willich were largely responsible for rallying an estimated two hundred thousand men of German birth to enlist in the Union army once the Civil War erupted, a far greater number of recruits than from any other contemporary foreign-born population. Many German American Union officers had fought for freedom in Europe. Their contribution to the Union war effort was significant, even conclusive on some battlefields. Only a handful of German Americans have achieved adequate recognition for these feats in the face of pervasive bias against immigrants that has persisted in America since the mid-nineteenth century.
The destiny of many radicals in Western societies has been consignment to historical obscurity. For example, few memorials to Thomas Paine exist in the United States despite his enormous influence in kindling the revolution that secured American independence. Though Willich’s likeness in bronze or stone appears nowhere in Germany or America, monuments to a few contemporaries like Carl Schurz, Franz Sigel, and Friedrich Hecker grace public spaces in cities and towns where large numbers of German immigrants settled. Virtually all were erected before two world wars in the twentieth century dampened enthusiasm for public tributes to German-born Americans. The collective influence of Willich and his Forty-Eighter peers lives on in their contributions to progressive reform in American public education and as part of a rich cultural milieu of music, art, and literature. As Paine suggested, the Forty-Eighters remade their world in a new country, creating communities that stressed Enlightenment values of free thought and self-improvement.
Most midcentury political exiles like Willich were highly educated radicals from middling or upper ranks of European society. They sustained their commitment to democratic revolution by using similar tactics as in 1848. Many entered journalism, doubling the number of US German-language newspapers in the 1850s in just four years. They started German social clubs called Turnverein, which sprung up all over the country. Willich was involved in a handful of the overtly socialist Turner societies. For these revolutionists, survival of the republican experiment in America, however imperfect, was the last and best hope for a new world order based on freedom, equality, and justice. In America, as in the German states of the Vormärz period, the constituency of Forty-Eighter radical activists was heterogeneous—a huge challenge when crafting a persuasive message and forging political unity.
German immigrants in the 1850s were a diverse lot. Lawyers, professors, doctors, and military veterans left their homeland alongside thousands of craftsmen, skilled artisans, farmers, and common laborers making a new start in America. Newcomers ran the gamut in their religious beliefs and political ideology. Their motives for leaving Germany are difficult to discern, but economic opportunity in a free society was frequently mentioned. Although the overwhelming majority of these immigrants to America hailed from a small region in the German Confederation’s southwest, they retained strong identities as Badeners and Rhinelanders, Bavarians and Prussians, Württembergers and Hessians. This is not to mention the many thousands of second and third generation German Americans who had established affiliations with churches and political parties in the United States. Radical Forty-Eighters like Willich employed a deliberate, conscious strategy to leverage what some historians call a German penchant for joining to construct a new German American ethnic identity. They formed worker organizations, started social clubs, and conducted festivals promoting German cultural superiority, a “German spirit,” as Willich described it. That spirit carried with it a moral obligation. It was the destiny of German Americans to continue the work of revolution in their new home and perfect the American republic as an example for humankind.
Americans had thrown off the oppressive yoke of monarchy, yet they later faced the prospect of losing half the country to a plantation aristocracy that considered slavery integral to Southern society. Slaveholding was a threat to republican government and a moral abomination in the eyes of German American radicals like Willich, who were overwhelmingly antislavery and predominantly abolitionist. Unlike many American-born abolitionists, these revolutionaries’ opposition to human bondage was not grounded in religious fundamentalism. Rather, it was based on their moral and political principles; many were freethinkers. Willich and his peers understood the inherent conflicts in American political ideology. US citizens preached freedom and equality while owning slaves. German American radicals pressed newcomers, mostly Democrats, to join the newly formed Republican Party following presidential candidate John C. Fremont’s adoption of an antislavery platform. While most northerners came to embrace Lincoln’s emancipation policy gradually as a war measure, leading German Forty-Eighters viewed the Civil War as a war of slave liberation from the very beginning.
Willich linked free-labor ideology to the crusade against chattel slavery. The plight of African slaves reminded Germans of the long tradition of forced servitude in Europe. Although manorial privilege and serfdom was disappearing, mid-nineteenth-century Western European peasants faced staggering social change. Industrial capitalism threatened to turn all but the owners of the means of production into wage slaves. In America’s well-publicized rags-to-riches folklore, a worker might finally get a fair shake or even an equal stake in a more perfect republican Union. Willich and many leading German Forty-Eighters wanted to help refine and reform the New World’s capitalist juggernaut into a model society where all people could pursue happiness and true social equality. Demise of the American republic would delight the monarchs of Europe but was unconscionable to those who longed for a better world.