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2 57 2 2 2 “W ith Mor e Fr eedom a nd Independence Th a n the Ya nk ees” The Germans of Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans during the American Civil War Andrea Mehrländer Due to an extremely difficult source situation, a monographic discussion of the position of Germans or German Americans in the Confederacy is still the largest and most serious research gap in the field of American studies of the Civil War era.1 By 1850, no fewer than 44.3% of all foreigners who had emigrated to the antebellum South lived in the eight largest Southern cities and represented together more than 39% of the free white population of these cities. The Germans dominated especially in New Orleans (12.9%) and Charleston (9.1%), followed by Memphis (5.5%) and Richmond (5.0%).2 Highly urbanized, single , and male, there were 71,962 native Germans living in the eleven states of the subsequent Confederacy in 1860, constituting only 1.3% of the entire free population in that area. In the social order of the antebellum South, the city was the synapse where the interests of the planter aristocracy came together with the interests of those in trade and finance; the diverse branches of trade and finance were the two professional options that attracted German immigrants most. By 1860, the Germans constituted between 6.2% in Richmond, 8.3% in Charleston, and almost 14% of the free white population in New Orleans. Summarizing antebellum German life in Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans, it becomes clear that by the end of 1860 the ethnic German minorities of all three cities had very similar characteristics: each city had one or two daily German-language newspapers, had a number of German societies, including the athletic and shooting associations, and supported at least one German theater. In addition, there was at least one Protestant, Catholic, and 58 2 Andrea Mehrländer Jewish congregation in each city and a colonization project furthered more or less actively by the Germans. Among the German immigrants in either one of these three Southern cities, religious distinctions—surprisingly enough—had no cultural or social implications for their sense of community: longing for religious freedom so long suppressed in the homeland, the Germans of Charleston, Richmond, and New Orleans established Lutheran and Catholic churches that were independent units, many of which did not affiliate with a synod or a diocese for years. A body of representatives from the membership, which reported to the congregation , administered their affairs. They were empowered to hire and fire pastors, buy property, and direct the financial structure of the church. This independence explains why so many German immigrant congregations formed and disbanded over the years prior to 1865, resulting in a lack of religious ethnic leadership.3 Especially for German Jews, economic survival was the paramount concern. Those who needed to work on Saturday just to keep a job could not afford to follow the commandment to keep the Sabbath—thus, only about 10% of all newly arrived German Jews within New Orleans officially belonged to a synagogue prior to the Civil War.4 The German antebellum communities of Richmond and Charleston were too small to sustain more than one or two congregations of either denomination; to them, it was more important to worship in their native tongue than to argue about matters of liturgy or theological creeds, and sometimes German Lutherans, German Catholics, and even German Jews could be found sitting next to each other harmoniously in the same pew—something unheard of in the German fatherland.5 How visible, then, was such a small ethnic minority that not only worshiped together in antebellum times but fought in the same military companies during the war? When the War between the States broke out, the Confederacy required and used German expertise and craftsmanship almost from day one. It was the twenty-nine-year-old Carl H. Schwecke from Hannover, a member of the German Artillery of Charleston, who fired the so-called secession gun as a salute in front of the Charleston Mercury building in honor of South Carolina’s secession from the Union on December 20, 1860.6 Bavarian-born William Flegenheimer’s penmanship can still be admired in Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession.7 As far as Virginia maps were concerned, General Robert E. Lee used the topographical works of Louis von Buchholtz throughout the entire war. Von Buchholtz, a retired officer and engineer, was a native [3...

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