Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home (review)

In 1940, Ella Lonn published her seminal work Foreigners in the Confederacy and in 1951, the companion volume Foreigners in the Union Army and Navy appeared. For nearly five decades these have essentially been the only comprehensive works (in English) on the German experience in the Civil War. In 1999, Don Heinrich Tolzmann and Steve Rowan edited and translated into English the 1911 classic work Die Deutshen in amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg by Wilhelm Kaufmann which added another work devoted to the German experience in the Civil War. Beyond these works, few scholars of the Civil War have devoted much attention to the German experience. Thankfully, in the past two decades, a small but dedicated group of scholars have sought to remedy this neglect, by producing an array of outstanding works that help us better understand the German/ethnic dimensions of the conflict and in doing so bring the war into its proper cultural perspective.

Although the editors of this work, Walter Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Helbich, make the claim that they have no intention of "celebrating" the German contribution to the Civil War or telling tales of "immigrant heroism" with the publication of Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home, the scholarly community should celebrate the fact that someone bothered to bring this kind of work to fruition. This finely edited work more than advances our understanding of the Civil War because, in their words, it brings to light the "intercultural refraction created as immigrants experienced and interpreted the war." They have included excerpts from 343 letters written by 78 German immigrants in 57 different family groups and chose the letters that best represented German perspectives on a range of issues including politics, slavery, combat, military hardships and everyday camp life, ethnic relations, and relations with Americans, as well as the socioeconomic situation in America and in Germany. The editors intentionally wanted to bring to light the various ways in which the 1.3 million Germans living in the United States in 1860 (and in particular the approximately 200,000 who fought in the Union army), viewed and experienced the world around them, so they chose soldiers and civilians, including women, to enlist their perspectives of the Civil War.

Although the editors disclaim that it is impossible to judge just how representative this sample of letters might be with regard to the typical German experience in the war, these letters do cover a wide range of soldiers and civilians from all classes and backgrounds. They reveal the day-to-day hardships and monotony of life, social contacts, friendships, the strong sense of identity, ethnic prejudice, ethnic pride, reasons for enlisting, as well as German-American tension present in their lives. Throughout the volume, the editors make insightful observations about the correlation between religious denomination and political association, ideological stances and views on slavery, and different social classes and their racial attitudes.

Kamphoefner and Helbich (and Susan Vogel) should be commended for providing a model edited and translated work in Germans in the Civil War. They have done a remarkable job of providing exhaustive background portraits of their authors and for delving extensively into the census records, pension records, muster rolls, regimental books in the National Archives, as well as a host of other primary and secondary documents to bring to life these otherwise lost stories. Interestingly enough, in a footnote the editors claim that a 796-item bibliography on women in the Civil War does not include a subject entry for Germans or immigrants. Sounds like a point of departure for future Civil War studies could be a study of the intersection of gender and ethnicity during the war. In any case, these letters provide a wonderfully rich cross-section of life by ordinary Germans so neglected over this past century and in doing so...