Yankee Dutchmen under Fire: Civil War Letters from the 82nd Illinois Infantry

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translated and edited by Joseph R. Reinhart YankeeDutchmen underFire Civil War Letters from the 82nd Illinois Infantry Thousands of volumes of Civil War letters are available, but little more than a dozen contain collections written by native Germans fighting in this great American conflict. Yankee Dutchmen under Fire presents a fascinating collection of sixty-one letters written by immigrants who served in the 82nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The 82nd Illinois was one of the thirty or so predominantly “German Regiments” in the Union army, and one of only two Federal regiments containing a Jewish company. Fighting alongside the Germans was a company of Scandinavians, plus a scattering of immigrants from many other countries. The letters span nearly three years of war and include firsthand accounts of major battles: Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in the East and Missionary Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, and Kolb’s Farm in the West. The soldiers of the 82nd Illinois also describe campaigning in East Tennessee, Sherman’s Atlanta campaign and his March to the Sea, and the Carolinas campaign (including the Battle of Bentonville). The majority of the letters originally appeared in wartime issues of German American newspapers and kept the German community informed of the regiment’s marches, camps, battles, and casualties. Lt. (later Capt.) Rudolph Müller, an idealistic and highly critical commentator , wrote twenty-one of the twenty-nine private letters to his close friend and confidant Col. Friedrich Hecker. Müller cautioned the colonel not to make his letters public because they often contained highly critical comments about commanders, fellow officers, public figures , Anglo-Americans, and American society. Besides providing details of military life and combat, the documents reveal how the Germanborn writers viewed the war, American officers and enlisted men, other immigrant Continued on back flap Continued from front flap soldiers, and the enemy. They shed light on the ethnic dimensions of the war, including ethnic identity, ethnic pride and prejudice, and ethnic solidarity, and they reflect the overarching political climate in which the war was fought. Yankee Dutchmen under Fire is a valuable addition to Civil War studies and will also be welcomed by those interested in ethnicity and immigration. Joseph R. Reinhart is an independent scholar who has researched and written about Germans in the American Civil War for almost twenty years. He is the author of a regimental history and the editor and translator of four books containing collections of letters of German-born soldiers who fought for the Union. Other Books by Joseph R. Reinhart August Willich’s Gallant Dutchmen Civil War Letters from the 32nd Indiana Infantry isbn 978-0-87338-862-7 A German Hurrah! Civil War Letters of Friedrich Bertsch and Wilhelm Stängel, 9th Ohio Infantry isbn 978-1-60635-038-6 Lifeanddeath,prideandprejudice,andcombat inanethnicCivilWarregiment “In Yankee Dutchmen under Fire, Joseph Reinhart has come close to writing a full-scale history of the 82nd Illinois. This was a vibrantly German unit, filled with articulate and sometimes very feisty guys, with a rich operational history in the Eastern and Western theaters. The regiment is a good case study of the age-old issue of German-American assimilation into mainstream American culture in the mid-nineteenth century. Reinhart brings his considerable experience with these topics into full effect to produce an interesting and significant book that should be read by everyone interested in German Americans and their role in the Civil War.” Earl J. Hess, author of Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman, Johnston, and the Atlanta Campaign “Reinhart’s best yet. . . .This is a significant collection of German American soldiers’ letters that deserves serious attention from anyone interested in the ethnic experience in the Civil War and the middle years of the war in the East.” Christian B. Keller, author of Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory civil war in the north TheKentStateUniversityPress Kent, Ohio 44242 www.KentStateUniversityPress.com isbn 978-1-60635-176-5 9 781606 351765 Reinhart Yankee Dutchmen under Fire TheKentStateUniversityPress Kent, Ohio 44242 www.KentStateUniversityPress.com Cover image courtesy of Chicago History Museum (ICHi-08203) ...