Germans for a Free Missouri: Translations from the St. Louis Radical Press, 1857-1862, and: A German in the Yankee Fatherland: The Civil War Letters of Henry A. Kircher (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Germans for a Free Missouri: Translations from the Sf. Louis Radical Press, 1857-1862. Selected and translated by Steven Rowan, with introduction and commentary by James Neal Primm. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983. Pp. x, 323. $26.00.) A German in the Yankee Fatherland: The Civil War Letters of Henry A. Kircher. Edited by Earl J. Hess. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983. Pp. xi, 169. $19.50.) Germans were the largest foreign element in the Union army and certainly in the early Republican party, yet their record has been obscured by barriers of language and excesses of filiopietism. These edited translations of primary sources help to fill a gap in standard works on the Yankee common soldier and the Northern press written during secession without the benefit of foreign language sources. Germans for a Free Missouri follows the escalating crisis of the Union and the first year of hostilities from the viewpoint of the two leading St. Louis German newspapers. Introductory essays by Rowan on the ideological background of German radicals and by Primm on local political developments help place the articles in context. The Kircherletters reflect nearly three years of life in an ethnic regiment, the Twelfth Missouri, as experienced by a young officer from Belleville, Illinois. They trace the course of Sherman's command through the Yazoo Pass expedition, the siege of Vicksburg, and the Chattanooga campaign, until Kircher came away from the field at Ringgold minus an arm and a leg. A bright, perceptive young man, Kircher recognized long before his commanding officers the futility of frontal assaults on entrenched positions. Eighteen months before Sherman began his march through Georgia, Kircher was "convinced that wecan do much more damageto the South . . . ifourarmy at the present would concentrate mainly on destroying the Southern plantations and means of production" (p. 89) . Both works go beyond the military side of the war and provide insights into politics, civilian life, inter- and intraethnic rivalries. These documents suggest that the ethnocultural school may have gone too far in discounting the salience of the slavery issue for the German voters. "Radical" is the appropriate designation forthe St. Louis press; as early as December of 1861 the Anzeiger des Westens came out for uncompensatedemancipation and thearmingofformerslaves (pp. 292-93). In general, German journalists took an optimistic view of black potential , attributing present disabilities of the race to environmental factors rather than innate traits. This was tempered, however, by the recogni- BOOK REVIEWS273 tion that white racism would be a fact of life for the foreseeable future. The Hess volume makes one wonder how successfully these liberal ideals were transmitted to the average reader, or to members of the second generation such as Henry Kircher. His statement that "I am willing to wade through thick and thin in blood up to my knees if thereby the last Negro and the last traitor finds his death" (p. 57), is sufficiently out of character that one suspects it was incorrectly transmitted. But in early 1863 Kircher still admitted "I am not far enough advanced in civilization that I don't know the difference between white and black anymore" (p. 92). His parents seem to have gently reprimanded him for such attitudes , and for opinions on civilian dissent "garnished with fire, sword, and hemp" (p. 91). Overall, both volumes reflect the German tendency to tar everyone less radical than they with the brush of Confederate sympathy. Fortunately, the annotations correct misstatements arising from ethnic chauvinism as well as identifying obscure persons and places. Both books are handsomely produced, including photos of the protagonists . The Hess volume provides excellent maps of theaters and battlefields , including several reproduced from the letters themselves. The copy editing is meticulous except for one lapse, a repeated paragraph on page 274 of Rowan and Primm. Their index would have been much more helpful had it included topical entries as Hess's did. Both works are team efforts of an American historian with alanguage expert not specializing in the Civil War. The collaboration was more successful with Rowan and Primm, even though the nonspecialist played the dominant role. The translation of the Kircher letters occasionally suffers from excessive literalism or...