In this Book
- Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory
- Book
- 2007
- Published by: Fordham University Press
- Series: The North's Civil War
summary
Often called Lee's greatest triumph, the battle of Chancellorsville decimated the Union Eleventh Corps, composed of large numbers of German-speaking volunteers. Poorly deployed, the unit was routed by StonewallJackson and became the scapegoat for the Northern defeat, blamed by many on the flightof German immigrant troops. The impact on America's large German community was devastating. But there is much more to the story than that. Drawing for the first time on German-language newspapers, soldiers' letters, memoirs, and regimental records, Christian Keller reconstructs the battle and its aftermath from the German-American perspective, military and civilian. He offers a fascinating window into a misunderstood past, one where the German soldiers' valor has been either minimized or dismissed as cowardly. He critically analyzes the performance of the German regiments and documents the impact of nativism on Anglo-American and German-American reactions-and on German self-perceptions as patriots and Americans. For German-Americans, the ghost of Chancellorsville lingered long, and Keller traces its effects not only on ethnic identity, but also on the dynamics of inclusion andassimilation in American life.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- List of Maps
- p. ix
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xi-xii
- Introduction
- pp. 1-9
- Bibliography
- pp. 197-214
Additional Information
ISBN
9780823247547
Related ISBN(s)
9780823226504
MARC Record
OCLC
647876370
Pages
244
Launched on MUSE
2012-02-08
Language
English
Open Access
No