German-Speaking Officers in the U.S. Colored Troops, 1863-1867 (review)

Martin Oefele's superbly researched analysis of German-speaking officers in the U.S. Colored Troops [U.S.C.T.] is an important book. It lies at the nexus of ethnic and African American historiography, skillfully combining two subfields of Civil War historical writing, and offers us a rare opportunity to examine the interactions between representatives of two sizeable minority groups, both of which suffered prejudice and ostracization during the Civil War era. Acknowledging the landmark works already published on black Union soldiers, Oefele wisely concentrates on the service of 265 German-speaking officers throughout his chapters, thereby also providing an especially meaningful contribution to our understanding of ethnic Americans during the Civil War.

Oefele begins his book with a series of chapters carefully explaining who these particular officers were, where they came from in Europe, what kind of political and social baggage they brought with them, and why they immigrated to the United States. He is astute to describe them as "German-speaking" rather than lumping them under the generalized rubric of "German," since a sizeable portion of his 265 officers hailed from Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, and other areas containing populations which spoke German, but were not ethnically German. Like most German immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century, the later German-speaking officers of the U.S.C.T. were strongly affected by the failed democratic revolutions in Europe, either as bona fide forty-eighters or persons economically disadvantaged by the aftershocks of the upheavals. Most were not noblemen, and the majority ended up settling in the Midwest, particularly in Missouri, where, Oefele contends, the proximity to Kansas and its agitation over the slavery question in the 1850s heightened their awareness of, if not their compassion for, African Americans.

The second section of the book deals with why these foreign-born soldiers decided to join the U.S.C.T. as officers, how well they got along with their men, and how they actually performed in battle. Oefele's answers to these overarching questions are complex, and in several places he admits that the experiences of German-speaking officers mirrored those of most of their Anglo-American comrades: that, for instance, many applied for commissions due to combinations of personal, patriotic, and economic reasons. They also appear to have performed as well, if not better, as military leaders compared to Anglo-American officers, and most treated their soldiers with a greater sense of respect. Importantly, however, Oefele highlights the uniquely ethnic considerations behind some German-speakers' decisions to opt for service with black troops. Veterans of ethnically German regiments (approximately 20 percent of the 267) often wanted to escape the seemingly omnipresent political squabbling which afflicted their earlier commands, and those hailing from "mixed" regiments frequently followed German-speaking relatives or friends, with whom they shared a sense of ethnic community within a mass of English-speaking strangers.

Oefele's final section explores the postwar careers of some of the officers and how, in order to ease assimilation, German-American memory of the Civil War more or less conformed to the greater Anglo-American interpretation in its neglect of the U.S.C.T. Although this final argument is not as well-researched and convincing as the rest of his book, it does not detract much from an otherwise outstanding and groundbreaking piece of scholarship.