German Americans on the Middle Border
Regular price
€28.50
A01=Zachary Stuart Garrison
abolition
antislavery
Author_Zachary Stuart Garrison
Category=JBFH
Category=NHB
Category=NHWR
Category=NHWR3
Civil War
Civil War Era
emancipation
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Free Labor movement
Free Soil movement
German American
German American History
German American politics
German Americans
German ideology
German immigrants
German liberal ideology
German Liberals
German Republicans
guerilla warfare
guerilla warfare in the Civil War
middle border
Midwestern border
Missouri
Radical Republican
Reconstruction
slavery
St. Louis
Turner Society
Turners
United States
Western border
Product details
- ISBN 9780809337552
- Weight: 318g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 30 Dec 2019
- Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Before the Civil War, Northern, Southern, and Western political cultures crashed together on the middle border, where the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers meet. German Americans who settled in the region took an antislavery stance, asserting a liberal nationalist philosophy rooted in their revolutionary experience in Europe that emphasized individual rights and freedoms. By contextualizing German Americans in their European past and exploring their ideological formation in failed nationalist revolutions, Zachary Stuart Garrison adds nuance and complexity to their story.
Liberal German immigrants, having escaped the European aristocracy who undermined their revolution and the formation of a free nation, viewed slaveholders as a specter of European feudalism. During the antebellum years, many liberal German Americans feared slavery would inhibit westward progress, and so they embraced the Free Soil and Free Labor movements and the new Republican Party. Most joined the Union ranks during the Civil War.
After the war, in a region largely opposed to black citizenship and Radical Republican rule, German Americans were seen as dangerous outsiders. Facing a conservative resurgence, liberal German Republicans employed the same line of reasoning they had once used to justify emancipation: A united nation required the end of both federal occupation in the South and special protections for African Americans. Having played a role in securing the Union, Germans largely abandoned the freedmen and freedwomen. They adopted reconciliation in order to secure their place in the reunified nation. Garrison’s unique transnational perspective to the sectional crisis, the Civil War, and the postwar era complicates our understanding of German Americans on the middle border.
Liberal German immigrants, having escaped the European aristocracy who undermined their revolution and the formation of a free nation, viewed slaveholders as a specter of European feudalism. During the antebellum years, many liberal German Americans feared slavery would inhibit westward progress, and so they embraced the Free Soil and Free Labor movements and the new Republican Party. Most joined the Union ranks during the Civil War.
After the war, in a region largely opposed to black citizenship and Radical Republican rule, German Americans were seen as dangerous outsiders. Facing a conservative resurgence, liberal German Republicans employed the same line of reasoning they had once used to justify emancipation: A united nation required the end of both federal occupation in the South and special protections for African Americans. Having played a role in securing the Union, Germans largely abandoned the freedmen and freedwomen. They adopted reconciliation in order to secure their place in the reunified nation. Garrison’s unique transnational perspective to the sectional crisis, the Civil War, and the postwar era complicates our understanding of German Americans on the middle border.
Zachary Stuart Garrison teaches history at Chaminade College Preparatory School in St. Louis, Missouri. He previously taught at the University of Cincinnati and Lindenwood University and worked at Ohio Valley History.
