In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 1 Before the War Pe t e r Joseph Osterhaus, later so adept a military leader, was born into a decidedly unmilitary family in Rhine Province, a new province created and awarded to the kingdom of Prussia in 1815 after the defeat of Napoléon. His father, Josef Adolf Oisterhusz, was a self-made, prosperous contractor in the city of Koblenz. Oisterhusz and his wife, Eleanora Kraemer, a local butcher’s daughter, had three sons. Eldest was Anton Heinrich, who later joined his father in his business as an architect and contractor. Next came Peter Joseph, who was born on January 4, 1823. The youngest by six years was Lorenz Joseph Adolph. As were most people in the southern German duchies, the Oisterhuszes were Catholic. Although Josef Oisterhusz was of Dutch ancestry, he and Eleanora decided to change the spelling of their sons’ surname to the German version, Osterhaus.1 Aside from three years in Rotterdam, young Joseph, as he preferred to be called, grew up in Koblenz, an ancient city on the Rhine, with a busy father and a mother who died when he was only fifteen. He was a lanky boy, reaching six feet, two inches, with auburn hair and freckles, a broad forehead, and piercing blue eyes (later he would sport a magnificent red mustache and goatee). At some point in his youth he learned to ride and to swim, both skills that would stand him in good stead in later trials, but his main love was academics, at which he excelled. During this period he developed the lifelong interest in world history and politics that led to his dreaming of becoming a professor of history at the university. Even though this was not to be, people in later years recognized Joseph for the scholar that he remained at heart and for his quick intelligence and wide-ranging interests, particularly in politics and world affairs. Like many other young men of his time in the German kingdoms along the Rhine, Joseph became a romantic intellectual who dreamed of a united, constitution-governed German nation to replace all of the existing duchies and kingdoms that were loosely connected by a German confederation that kept power squarely in the hands of the nobles.2 7 8 Yankee Warhorse Unfortunately for Joseph, his father failed to appreciate the value of Joseph’s ambition to become a historian. Clearly seeing no need for a university education in order for a man to be successful, he steered his middle son into business, just as he did his other sons. At his father’s insistence, when Joseph was seventeen he began a three-year business apprenticeship, perhaps in connection with the family business. At the end of his apprenticeship there was still the matter of his military obligation to settle before Joseph could find a job and move on with his adult life. The Prussian army required all twenty-year-old men to serve on active duty for a period of two years followed by service in the landwehr (reserves) until the age of thirty-nine, with a short annual training obligation. (Osterhaus’s obligation for active duty was cut to one year because of a technicality.)3 Osterhaus joined a Koblenz-based jaeger outfit, Regiment no. 29 of the Third Rhine Infantry, and began the only formal military training that he ever received . His yearlong instruction prepared him somewhat for service as an officer , although the quality of instruction was considered inferior to the three-year formal officer’s training program taught at the Prussian Berlin Military Academy and elsewhere in the German kingdoms. Yet even in the short course, Prussian officer training emphasized strict personal discipline, precision in drills and maneuvers, and the values of patriotism, obedience, and honor that Osterhaus took with him throughout his life. The jaeger regiment Osterhaus joined was a light infantry unit: men both lightly armed and trained for rapid movement who operated as skirmishers in advance of the regular infantry. The army had begun to modernize by the time of Osterhaus’s service in 1844, so besides the interminable drilling he learned to use the latest basic equipment in artillery and small arms, including the new breech-loading rifle. He was an apt and interested student; many of the principles taught during this year he put to great use later in the United States.4 By the time Osterhaus enlisted in 1843, soldiers were frequently used in lieu of the inadequate civilian police to...

Share