http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-Americans_in_the_Civil_War

Kim -- Nice URL and nice topic! This is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. Let's talk about it. It is fair to say that the German-American component of the United States of America stands out precisely for the fact that it doesn't stand out. There is exactly one exception, but it is a big exception. The US Civil War. The event that made us who we are. If I were to use the expression, "the German-American vote" in a sentence, everyone on HESSE would probably just laugh. But, historians are quite aware that the German Americans were the "pivot point" around which the US Civil War turned. The forty-eighter's, those Germans who came to the US in the decade or so after the failed revolutions of 1848, were politicaly different than the Hessians who stayed after the Revolutionary War or the religious minorities like the Mnenonites or Amish who had arrived on these shores before. Slavery was anathema to the forty-eighter's. It was an abomination. As a group, the forty-eighter's could not stomach it. They had escaped something that was uncomfortably too close slavery in Germany. They voted for Lincoln in droves. And Lincoln knew where his support lay. He secretly purchased a German language newspaper. The German-American vote put Lincoln over the top and represented his margin of victory. We all know that once Lincoln was elected, the slave states seceded one after the other. Germans were grossly over-represented in the Union Army as compared to their proportion in the general population. This thread could go on and on. We could talk about the XI Corps at Chancellorsville and how they were betrayed by their officers and flummoxed by Stonewall Jackson. We could continue with their redemption at Lookout Mountain. I have a Hessian great great grandfather who fought in the 27th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry Regiment, while two of his brothers were in the 81st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Another of my great great grandfathers, albeit a Wurtemburger, was in the Union Navy, and a third (from Schlesien) was in the 12th New York Cavalry. I bet we could generate 100 emails on the topic of Hessian ancestors in the Civil War... Who says that history is boring? History lives! __________________________________________________________________ Charles Hofacker: My <http://myweb.fsu.edu/chofacker> FSU<http://myweb.fsu.edu/chofacker> Page <http://myweb.fsu.edu/chofacker> | Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/chofack> | Delicious <http://www.delicious.com/chofack> | Twitter<http://twitter.com/chofack> <http://twitter.com/chofack> On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 19:10, Kim Allison Ross <slimkim@gci.net> wrote: > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-Americans_in_the_Civil_War > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > HESSE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message >