Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory

Often called Lees greatest triumph, the battle of Chancellorsville decimated the Union Eleventh Corps, composed of large numbers of German-speaking volunteers. Poorly deployed, the unit was routed by Stonewall Jackson and became the scapegoat for the Northern defeat, blamed by many on the flight of German immigrant troops. The impact on Americas large German community was devastating. But there is much more to the story than that.
Drawing for the first time on German-language newspapers, soldiers letters, memoirs, and regimental records, Christian Keller reconstructs the battle and its aftermath from the German-American perspective, military and civilian. He offers a fascinating window into a misunderstood past, one where the German soldiers valor has been either minimized or dismissed as cowardly. He critically analyzes the performance of the German regiments and documents the impact of nativism on Anglo-American and German-American reactionsand on German self-perceptions as patriots and Americans. For German-Americans, the ghost of Chancellorsville lingered long, and Keller traces its effects not only on ethnic identity, but also on the dynamics of inclusion and
assimilation in American life.