WOLFGANG HELBICH
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
ETHNIC LEGENDS IN THE GRAY ZONES OF HISTORY:
THE CASE OF GERMANS IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Legends, as we all know, are not handed down from some mountain, they do
not appear somewhere out of nowhere, and usually they are not invented whole
cloth by one person. Legends, be they religious or secular, nationalistic or ethnic,
positive – saints and heroes, great inventions or chosen people – or negative
– heretics or traitors, murderers of Christian children or McCarthy’s Communists
-- usually originate out of some event that is communicated and often elaborated
in the process. At some moment, one or more people realize that here they have
something whose spreading might serve their purpose, whatever that purpose
may be. Before the initial idea becomes a full-fledged legend, some adorning,
nurturing or honing may be necessary.
We don’t have to go into how many legends it takes to create a classical
nationalism or a monotheistic religion. More modestly, I would like to turn to
legends of one ethnicity in one specific period. But before getting there, we will
have to look back a little further in North American history. Roughly at the same
time, the British encountered the first difficulties with their newly acquired French
habitants and Benjamin Franklin worried about the character and the perceived
threat of the Pennsylvania Germans. These were tensions between conquerer
and conquered, and a spokesman of the majority and a stubborn minority, and
both would seem to conform to a ubiquitous pattern. But in the United States,
and a generation later in Canada, such tensions built up between immigrant
ethnicities. Excepting Know-Nothings who did not hesitate to voice their dislike
of Catholics, such tensions were usually expressed in a circumspect manner. It
is in private letters that one finds open anti-Semitism and, in the case of German
19th-century immigrants, hatred and abhorrence of the Irish. But likes and dislikes
between America’s immigrant ethnicities is not our concern here. Rather, it is the
competition between them.
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It is not a competition in which everybody who may be considered a member
of a given ethnicity takes part, but a minority of activists and organizers, college
professors and genealogists, ministers and club leaders who for various reasons
wish to uphold the good name, the importance, and also the political clout of their
ethnicity. The majority of the people with such an ethnic background are mainly
receptive, and take a varying degree of interest – all the way down to zero-- in
their roots.
By far the most important and elaborate part of this competition concerns
who contributed what to North America – how much and how valuable. A whole
genre of American historiography, usually concerning immigrants and their
offspring, has been dubbed “contribution history”, usually nurtured by and in turn
celebrating “filiopietism”. Theoretically at least, they are no longer state of the
art and no longer respectable within the profession. And clearly, they played a far
more important role 50 or 100 years ago. But there are indications that they have
survived all criticism and scorn, even if in subtler form and only in niches. Or so
one might think when confronted with a 5-volume book project sponsored by the
German Historical Institute in Washington. The innocuous title reads Emigrant
Entrepreneurship. The subtitle is more enlightening: German-American Business
Biographies 1720 to the Present. As a matter of fact, tracing the lives and business
ventures of emigrants to the USA would certainly be worthwhile. But why only
Germans? Since the flyer announcing the project and asking for cooperation does
not provide an answer, one can only guess or speculate.
On a far less serious and non-scholarly level, contribution history as part
of the inter-ethnic competition is flourishing today as it has most of the time
– actually far more so thanks to the internet. It is here, not in the work of
professional historians that legends thrive. What for? Or what are the gains for
the successful? There may be small financial or political favors, but the rewards
lie mainly in reputation seen from the outside, and in boosting the self-confidence
(or arrogance) of those members of an ethnicity who still care about their
roots.
Here I would like to deal with the historical image boosters or rather some of
the legends about the Civil War period that they propagate; more precisely, with
the kind of soil legends grow and thrive on. I will analyze five such instances in
the Civil War era.
A NUMBERS GAME
According to Don Heinrich Tolzmann, one third of the soldiers serving in the
Union army were German Americans; he gives “Kaufmann and other sources” as
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reference.1 This claim includes “German Americans” from way back and would,
if seriously considered, draw us into the endless swamp of figuring the percentage
of ethnicities developing in the entire history of North America up to the Civil
War or even the present. So it is a wholly arbitrary figure, quite useless, unless
considered a pungent introductory legend as defined in this paper: where the facts
are unknown, it’s a free-for-all to claim whatever fits their purpose.
Leaving out blatant guesswork and considering only the German-born
soldiers, one gets 216.000 (Wikipedia and Kaufmann2). 204.000 seems to be
the assumption of those who arrived at 16.6 percent of the German-born in the
1860 census, Gould’s figure is 183.000, and Wikipedia German American has
176.000.3 The difference is only 40.000, but it is probably considerably larger
when it turns out that even the lowest figure is way too high.
The 1860 Federal Census lists 1.301,136 people born in Germany and
Austria.4 If one deducts the 72,000 living in what became the Confederate States,
one is left with 1.229,136 German-born in the Union. The generally accepted
16.6 percent amounts to 204,000 German-born soldiers. If one knew that the
latter figure for the German-born population is correct, one would not have to
bother about sex ratio and age spread, but if one has doubts, a more differentiated
approach is necessary. According to IPUMS,5 (now for the 1860 census)
56 percent of the German-born in the Union were male (688,000 men), 60 percent
in the Confederacy (42,300). Of those, 40.7 % were 18-45 in the North (280,000),
46.9% in the South (20,250). With a basis of 11,000 German-born soldiers in the
Confederate and 204,000 in the Union army, the resulting recruitment rate for the
South of 54% seems quite credible in view of the prevailing pressure to enlist,
and in particular considering that the percentage for all military-age men was
about 61%.
The corresponding calculation for the Union, however, yields a result that
is totally inconsistent with reality: 73 percent, more than twice the figure of
1
http://germerica.net/node 4915, 3.06.2010; [Accessed: 17.09.2011].
W. Kaufmann (1999), The Germans in the American Civil War. With a Biographical Dictionary, Tolzmann, D. H., Mueller, W. D., Ward, R.E. (eds.), transl. S. Rowan, Carlisle, PA: John Kallmann, p. 392 (Translation of Kaufmann’s (1911), Die Deutschen im amerikanischen Bürgerkriege
[Sezessionskrieg 1861-1865], München, Berlin: Oldenbourg).
3 B. A. Gould (1979), Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American
Soldiers (1869) New York: Arno Press, p. 27, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#Civil_War [Accessed: 15.11.2011].
4 Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (U.S. Bureau of the Census),
Millenium Ed., 5 Vol. s, Cambridge UP. Vol. 1, Population, I-602.
5 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Figures from Germans in the Civil War: The Letters
They Wrote Home (2006), Kamphoefner, W. D., Helbich, W. (eds.), Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, pp. 13-14, n. 27.
2
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Wolfgang Helbich
35 percent generally assumed for the Union as a whole. If this were correct, three
out of four German immigrants ages 18-45 would have served in the army. It is
obvious that something must be wrong here. It is in clear contradiction to all we
know about the German community during the war, and also to the contents of the
most comprehensive data base of 19th-century German immigrants in existence,
compiled by Jochen Krebber for his Ph. D. dissertation, to be published in 2014.
Of the 1498 men of military age in his immigrant sample who settled in the
Northern states, he could trace 1064 in the U.S. Census, and of those, 238 served
in the Union army, i.e. 22.3%. For the 434 not traced, it is theoretically possible
that they would increase that percentage, but it is more likely that their behavior
was similar to that of the “found” ones and such increase would be minor if it
existed at all. While even this large sample can hardly be representative for all
German immigrants, it deserves being seriously considered.6
Something must be wrong. But where is the error? Basically, it can lie in
the figure of German-born immigrants or in that of the German-born soldiers, or
both, apart from the improbable possibility that the IPUMS figures are wrong.
There area number of factors that certainly cause an increase in the population
figure, only one of which is reliable: the number of German immigrants, 18601864, -- 204,119 according to Historical Statistics.7
Most studies of U.S. Census under-enumeration conclude that about
10 percent are missing in the lists, with a preponderance of the poor, the recent
immigrants and people on the margins of society. In Krebber’s sample of militaryage men, it is even 40 percent, though this would seem to be quite exceptional.
So 8% of 1.23 million (98.400) would be a very conservative estimate. Adding an
estimated 8000 German immigrants via Canada,1860-1864, to these two figures,
one arrives at 299,400, which in turn can be added to the initial German-born
population figure of 1.23 million, resulting in 1.53 million for the Civil War years.
Applying the IPUMS percentages, one arrives at (56%) 857,000 men, and of
those (40.7%) 349,000 of military age. Now the supposed 204,000 German-born
Union soldiers would no longer be 73%, but 58% of men 18-45, still extremely
high, but no longer entirely impossible.
On the number of soldiers’ side, one may first of all replace the dubious
204,000 by the dubious Wikipedia German American 176,000. The latter would
constitute 50%, another step towards credibility. But even that figure may be too
high. It is unknown how often a soldier was counted twice on reenlistment after
6
Württemberger in Amerika. Untersuchungen zur räumlichen und sozialen Dimension der
Nordamerikamigration von der Schwäbischen Alb im 19. Jahrhundert, Diss. phil. Bochum 2009.
Figures from the data base were kindly provided by Jochen Krebber in an email, [Accessed:
15.12.2011].
7 Vol. 1, I-561.
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a three-month service, especially in Missouri. And “German” or “German-born”
was constructed rather loosely. Quite frequently one encounters references in
Civil War studies that indicate the presence of American-born German Americans
in “German” units, and in one instance they have been actually counted.8 They
as well as the Poles, Hungarians, Danes, Dutch, Swiss and French serving in
German regiments and companies would tend to be lumped together with the
German-born, and together may have amounted to 5000. If one deducts that from
176,000. one arrives at 171,000 and a recruitment rate of 49%.
This is still not wholly convincing, and one might be disappointed. But in
our context there is no reason to be. The purpose of our operation was not to find
a “correct” figure, but to demonstrate the impossibility of reaching one, since
there are too many incalculable variables. So we find ourselves in a “gray area”,
where (almost) everything may be claimed and there is no definite way of refuting
it. In pure theory, though, a fairly precise figure of German-born Union soldiers
could be reached: by carefully going through all the regimental books for all two
million plus Union soldiers. – and counting the bona fide German-born. Such
an enterprise would get close to the Soundex WPA project in scope and would
probably be too big even for ancestry.com. The former as well as most services
of the latter had a clear-cut financial purpose or a huge clientele – German-born
soldiers don’t. So it’s possible but not feasible.
WHY DID THEY VOLUNTEER?
The answers one can read in ever so many German American and German
publications are, their love of freedom; their cherishing democracy; their hatred
of slavery; their desire to win recognition as loyal Americans; their wish to
defend the Constitution; their memory of a multitude of states in Germany and
consequent fear of a divided country. Generally, such statements are not backed
up by convincing evidence, and on the face of it, the last two are none too
credible. Of course, gauging motivation, and even more a mix of motives, is so
difficult that the problem can easily qualify as a gray area. Yet, it has been tried.
James McPherson, considered the leading American Civil War historian,
tackled the problem at length in two books.9 Mainly of the basis of soldiers’
8
There were some 50 US-born German Americans among the 1155 officers and soldiers in
the German 9th Ohio. http://www.breettschulte.net/CWBlog/2009/03/25/joseph-r-reinhart-responds-to-chancellorsville-and-he-germans-review/.26 March 2009 [Accessed: 21.12.2011].
9 J. M. McPherson (1994), What they Fought For, 1861-1865, Baton Rouge: LA State UP;
J. M. McPherson (1997), For Cause and Comrades: Why Men fought in the Civil War, New York:
Oxford UP.
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letters – several thousand in the first and 25,000 in the second book – he
studied the motivation of American Civil War soldiers and officers, Union and
Confederacy. His results are remarkable, but not convincing. For he committed
one of the gravest faults possible in dealing with letters as historical sources.
He counted quotes and took lines that might express patriotism at face value,
without considering the context in which the soldier wrote and the recipient
read. Efforts to meet expectations, the wish to justify his actions, tensions in the
family, using phrases heard ever so often from officers or chaplains, the desire
to be “in”, the when and where, and many other things that could influence the
communication of a soldier with his family and friends are thereby left out of
account, and of course there is no chance to verify the interpretation, since the
letters are inaccessible to the reader.
Of course it is out of the question to do the pertinent research if one decides
to work with thousands of letters. With a manageable number and an intensive
evaluation and analysis, the result would certainly have been more differenciated.
McPherson claims that 61% of the soldiers and no less than 78% of the officers
professed patriotic convictions or even ideological aims like Freedom or
Democracy. These figures are methodologically flawed but not worthless, quite
apart from their gladdening patriotic hearts. They say how many professed
patriotism, not how many felt or meant it. If only out of curiosity, these findings
can be compared – even if it goes against the letters specialist’s grain – with
the result of applying McPherson’s method to the letters of 36 German-born
Union military men printed in Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote
Home 10 . The disadvantage of this sample is its statistical insignificance and the
fact that a proper analysis for patriotism would easily fill the space of a goodsized article, whereas the verifiability of the texts is the weighty advantage
they offer.
Here are some of the considerations that are likely to have influenced the
reasoning in German-.born soldiers’ letters. The three-year military service
in Germany was dreaded by sons and parents, and escaping it figured among
young men’s reasons for emigrating. So there was a dire need to justify such
an incomprehensible act as volunteering to one’s parents. This may be the
background of professing patriotic feelings, but also of claiming one had to join
the army because it was impossible to find any other job. If the latter were true,
“freedom” might well sound hypocritical, as it does in a letter of Private Wilhelm
Hoffmann of the 54th New York Infantry who writes about women and children
10
Germans…, Kamphoefner, W. D., Helbich, W. (eds.).
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who have to starve because “their providers gave their lives for liberty, or so they
say.”11
Many other configurations could have influenced the contents of letters. Thus
six of our military letter-writers had a serious conflict with their fathers and
tended to demonstrate they had improved or “become a man”. Pronouncements
that appear straightforward can become doubtful. So a German who had
immigrated in 1857 and in less than a year reached the rank of 1st Lieutenant in
an Anglo-American regiment, wrote in the fall of 1862: “We are truly glad to be
fighting for the side that is trying to put an end to all these cruelties and destroy
the trade in slaves.” Only a month later he admitted: “But oh, with what sublime
feelings would I go into battle if I could draw my sword in the defence of my own
fatherland.”12
Frequently forgotten is the fact that very few decisions are made on the basis
of one solitary motive. Frequently, there is a mix of them, and one cannot even tell
how important one or the other is. The 20-year-old son of an affluent Cuyahoga
County farmer who had immigrated from Thuringia with his family in 1852 listed
no less than five reasons for volunteering in a letter to his parents – with at least
a slight apologetic touch:
“I have a good mind to go with the German regiment, most of the members of
the singing society have joined and many other friends, the pay is very good, and
so is the clothing, good officers, all German, of course. If I get a position slightly
better than Private, I’ll go right away, if I stay behind now I’ll be considered
a coward.13
Some of these motives undoubtedly counted for very many of the German
volunteers, at least for most of those who joinen ethnic regiments. It is interesting
to note that all the noble aims like saving of national unity, proving that German
Americans are patriotic, protecting freedom and democracy, and liberating the
slaves are missing in Bohn’s long list. The wish for an elevated rank is quite
typical, even though the scramble for position among the better-paid officers was
more intensive than among soldiers.14
11
Ibid. 22. 11.1862, p. 131.
Ibid. 6.09, 11.10.1862, p. 100.
13 Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, North America Letters Collection, series Bohn, Carl Bohn to
Heinrich Carl Bohn, Cleveland OH, 12.09.1861.
14 Bohn did join a German regiment, the 107th Ohio Infantry, though only a year later and not
as an officer, but as a hospital attendant with access to special rations and exemption from military
duties (Subsequent letters, ibid.).
12
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Wolfgang Helbich
A selection of reasons (but here only taken at face value, not contextualized
and analyzed critically) can be found in Germans in the Civil War:15 Gratitude to
the “adopted fatherland”, contagion with war enthusiasm, the only chance to find
work, to pre-empt being drafted, hope for a bounty, and the reasons offered by
Carl Bohn. By simply recording what was written one foregoes asking about the
context and the function of the statements in a two-way communication and thus,
if one is very lucky, finding out their seriousness or hypocrisy as well, perhaps
even a hierarchy of motives. Even in such a case, it is of course impossible to
determine the quantitative repartition of such motives. With such a problem, even
thousands of regimental books would not help, and in fact nothing will. For as
primary evidence, one would have to almost solely on letters, and the bulk of
them are no longer available. Of the relatively few that are, again only a small
minority is so expressive and informative, and so much can be learned about the
recipient and the general context of the communication that a credible analysis
can be attempted. David Gerber’s four case histories are a fine example how
such in-depth study can be performed, but accessible letter series of that kind
are very rare. Given this situation, another gray area, just about any motivation
can be claimed, as long as it’s not entirely implausible, and there is no way of
convincingly prove that it is not true.
FLYING DUTCHMEN
The bare and largely undisputed facts about the battle of Chancellorsville are
relatively simple. The Eleventh Corps commanded by General Howard (until
recently led by the German American idol Sigel) was one of the five Corps of the
Army of the Potomac under General Hooker. These Union forces outnumbered
Robert E. Lee’s opposing troops by more than two to one. On 1 May 1863
the armies had taken positions in the vicinity of Chancellorsville, Virginia.
The Eleventh, about 12,000 men, 13 of its 27 regiments German with German
officers, formed the right wing and extreme end of Hooker’s defensive positions,
a location considered the least likely to be the target of enemy actions. From the
west it was seemingly protected by woods that most Union officers considered
impenetrable, and its defences were facing southward.16
15
Germans…, Kamphoefner, W. D., Helbich, W. (eds.), passim.
The most detailed and perhaps most reliable account of the maneuvers and fighting by the
11th Corps on 2 May 1863 is given by Ch. B. Keller (2007), Chancellorsville and the Germans:
Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory, New York: Fordham UP. Whereas he admits freely that
he aims at exculpating the German American troops from nativist defamation, his scholarship is
largely sound and unbiased. But even he cannot untangle several essential actions and phases in the
16
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In the course of 2 May “Stonewall” Jackson, revered in the Confederacy,
led some 30,000 troops on a long-range envelopment movement on forest trails
through the “impenetrable” wilderness, largely protected from discovery by the
woods. Having reached a position to the West of the 11th Corps, but still out of
sight though not quite out of earshot, the General arranged his troops in three
attack waves, in a width of somewhat less than a mile. No elaborate battle map
is needed to convey the picture that the 11th, lined up along the Orange Turnpike
running roughly in an east-west direction like a string of pearls over a mile and
a half, if attacked on a wide front from a westerly direction would be immediately
enveloped and engaged from three sides.
Add to this the element of surprise, that the defence positions pointed
southward and were thus almost useless, and the threefold superiority of the
attacking forces, no one could expect stubborn resistance of the defenders.
Instead, though some efforts to stop the attackers were made, the inevitable
retreat quickly turned into a panic-stricken flight that seems to have greatly
impressed all witnesses, who loved to describe it in exciting, lurid detail. The
attack was slowed down by defenders in three places – it is not clear how many
minutes each – but the entire position of the Eleventh was taken by Jackson’s
troops within two hours.
Here is where the two legends begin. In the “American” one the “Dutch” 11th
Corps was attacked and ran without firing a shot and like a flock of frightened
sheep stampeded to the rear. Nothing could stop them, not even officers with
drawn sabres trying to block their way. The central subject here is not, which
units in fact resisted and how long, but the panicky, heedless, unstoppable flight.
The German American legend focussed on other aspects. The commanding
general Howard had been warned repeatedly of the impending attack out of the
woods, especially by German officers, but had refused to change the direction
of the defence lines. Thus the troops – only half of them Germans – were in an
extremely weak position, and also totally surprised. Attacked by vastly superior
forces and from three sides, they had no chance, but still put up stout resistance in
a number of places. The retreat was inevitable, but the story of the panic-stricken
Dutch was a wild exaggeration and a mean nativist calumny.
The defence or aggressive spreading of each legend was obviously based
on different aspects of the event –with one exception. Curiously, both sides
used the reputation of the German troops, which had not been the best even
long before Chancellorsville. For example, a year earlier, General Blenker had
fighting and hasty retreating, and in summarizing his findings he has to take recourse to a phrase
that is not really meaningful: “The Eleventh Corps had fought reasonably well at Chancellorsville”
(p. 72).
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Wolfgang Helbich
commended his troops in a General Order “Invidiousness of the press and of
persons could not prevent […] that all men of my division maintained their
high spirits.”17 It was the general impression that at least the German soldiers
had not gotten over their beloved General Sigel no longer commanding them.
Eight regiments of the 27 had never been in a battle, the others had, but never on
the winning side. Moreover, General Hooker held a low opinion of the fighting
qualities of the Eleventh, considered them the weakest link in the defensive
position, and precisely for that reason had put them where he thought an attack
least likely.18
For the German American legend the previous bad reputation of the Eleventh
Corps proved that their retreat fulfilled all the negative expectations of the army
command and the press and thus contributed to their exorbitantly exaggerating
what happened as confirming all prejudices. Inversely, for the American legend
it was the irrefutable proof that one had to expect the worse from these troops;
whoever might doubt their scandalous behavior could be referred to their
pre-history.
The strongest support for the American legend are the reports of witnesses
that could fill a book. The essential point is that not flagging resistance, retreat
or even flight provoked the horror and consternation of many, but the senseless
unstoppable stampede causing boundless rage against “the Germans”. Newspaper
correspondents were present during the battle, and the New York Times did
not mince words. It excoriated “the panic-stricken Dutchmen”, “the cowardly
retreating rascals”, “the retreating and cowardly poltroons” who “disgracefully
abandoned their positions.”19 Uniformed witnesses made more drastic statements.
An artillery Major who could not get his battery into firing position in the fleeing
soldiers’ rush for safety wrote: ”The Eleventh Corps had been routed and were
fleeing to the river like scared sheep […] Aghast and terror-stricken heads bare
and panting for breath, they pleaded like infants at their mother’s breast that we
would let them pass to the rear unhindered.”20 An officer from New England went
one step further: “And this is all, because the 11th Corps, Sigel’s Dutchmen, broke
and ran, all of them, at the first shot, as I knew they would, losing 16 pieces […]
17 National Archives, Washington, RG 19, Regimental Books, 35th/74th PA Inf. Vol.s, General
Order No. 13, 21 February 1862, Order Book.
18 S. W. Sears (1996), Chancellorsville, Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, p. 237; E. B.
Fulgurson (1992), Chancellorsville 1863. The Souls of the Brave, New York: A. A. Knopf, p.90.
19 5 May 1863.
20 No Middle Ground: Thomas Ward Osborn‘s Letters from the Field (1993), Crumb, H. S.,
Dhalle, K., (eds.), Hamilton, NY: Edmonston Pub., p. 154.
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It is horrible awful. Every man in Sigel’s Corps ought to be hauled off the face of
the Earth.21
German witnesses were less unmerciful, but they as well left no doubt about
the fact of a panic-driven flight. A captain in the German 45th New York Infantry
that in its westermost position was one of the first to be attacked, wrote in one
of his reports to his local newspaper that they had resisted resolutely, but when
attacked from the rear as well and exposed to a terrible cross fire, “we withdrew
in considerable disorder.”22 Dr. Carl Uterhard, regimental physician with the
119th New York, about half German, stood with his unit about in the middle of
the “string of pearls” and thus quite a ways from the place of the first Confederate
attack. On 17 May, he wrote to his mother: ”Suddenly there were noises in the
woods behind us, bullets struck around us and thousands of men poured out of
the forest in wild flight.” He was carried off by fleeing cavalry and artillery; after
a struggle he could cross to the other side of the road, “where some regiments
were standing in battle order, trying to stop the fleeing masses and willing to
receive the enemy. Generals and officers hit the soldiers with sabres in order to
bring them to a stand, but they fled inexorably.”23
The eyewitness reports by themselves were sufficient to support the American
legend. It also proved useful, since the disappointment about a battle ingloriously
lost against all expectations could now be unburdened on a plausible scapegoat. At
the same time, the legend could effectively distract from the serious mistakes of
American generals, especially Corps commander Howard, such as overestimating
the Wilderness as a protective shield, the orientation of defences toward the
south, but most of all disregarding the increasingly concrete and credible reports
of enemy movements in the wilderness.
These mistakes were also incorporated in the German American legend as part
of the excuse for a hasty retreat that could not be entirely denied. It was mainly
the consequences of these unfortunate decisions that was stressed by the German
American side, most of all the element of surprise and shock. The situation of the
unexpected, frightening outpouring of birds, hares, deer and other wildlife from
the woods, followed closely by close ranks of terrifyingly rebel-yelling soldiers
in grey rushing at the unsuspecting union troops, has a vivid dramatic quality,
especially in confrontation with the picture, lovingly drawn by many authors,
21 Fallen Leaves. The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott (1991), Scott, R. G.
(ed.) Kent, OH: Kent State UP, p. 157.
22 August Horstmann in Der Gemeinnützige, Varel 29.7.1863. Stephen Sears, one of the reliable authorities on this battle, takes a rather different view: “Two of Von Gilsa‘s German regiments,
41st and 45th New York, posted along the Turnpike aligned to face south, were surprised and turned
so quickly that they ran without firing a shot.” S. W. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 272.
23 Germans…, Kamphoefner, W. D., Helbich, W. (eds.), p. 159.
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of contented warriors, peacefully roasting their beef or eagerly playing cards,
or blithely dozing, catching up on sleep, their muskets stacked by the book, and
mingled between the soldiers several dozen train wagons and their teamsters,
the herd of cattle as a food reserve, all crammed into limited space, the pacific
disposition of it all underlined by sentimental tunes played by German bands.24
A greater contrast is hardly imaginable, nor is a ruder, more paralyzing shock
effect.
Besides the surprise element, the German American legend also leaned
heavily on the claim that there were many Americans among those who fled,
whereas inversely the defensive positions set up along the Turnpike in the course
of the movement west to east, stopping the attackers briefly and consecutively
given up when overwhelmed, especially the last, the “Buschbeck line”, were
manned by many Germans. Among the masses fleeing in terror one could not tell
who was American or foreign.
But the strongest German American argument, the one that wrapped up
everything and explained all and had the enormous advantage that there was
no way of disproving it (stringent proof, however, was also impossible) was
the claim that the so-called calumny campaign against the German troops was
owing to the rampant (some said re-born) nativism of the press, deeply rooted
nativism of society and the Republican party and not least blatant nativism in the
military. Nativism, of course, was a catch-all for any less than cordial behavior
and attitude toward immigrants and foreigners, be it hatred, contempt, distrust
or at best condescension, and while it may have abated somewhat in the years
immediately preceding the War, there is plenty of evidence that even long before
Chancellorsville there was prejudice against foreigners in the army.
Subjective complaints about discrimination in Germans in the Civil War25 are
so frequent that it would be tedious to list them. The letter of Private Gottfried
Rentschler, 6th Kentucky Infantry, preserved elsewhere, is especially concrete:
If a full company is needed for some easy service, e.g. Provost-Guard,
a German company is never taken. If an entire company is required for rough
service, e.g. several days or several weeks as Train-Guards, a German company
will be ordered whenever possible. As this happens on a company basis, so it
happens to individuals in the mixed companies.”26
With this sort of statement, the subjective factor ought not to be neglected,
and with letters written for publication embellishment or exaggeration ought to be
24
See e.g. S. W. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 270.
Germans…, Kamphoefner, W. D., Helbich, W. (eds.).
26 Ch. B. Keller, Chancellorsville, p. 127. The letter was first printed in “Täglicher Louisville
Anzeiger”, 10 March 1864.
25
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83
expected, and it is a permissible generalization that minorities or targets of alleged
discrimination react with particular sensitivity – or overreact. Thus discrimination
is not conclusively proved when Germans in an American unit are not promoted
as quickly as Americans. What if it was assumed that German officers who spoke
with an accent or even broken English did not enjoy the full confidence of the
men? The reverse case seems to have been the rule in German regiments, with
many American soldiers and officers applying for transfer to American units.27
Whereas most of the evidence for discrimination one way or the other can
be tinged with subjectivity,28 there are also largely objective indications of
– one might say – non-fraternization between American and German soldiers.
1300 soldiers’ and officers’ letters have been preserved from the (predominantly
American) 154th New York Infantry (belonging to Steinwehr’s Division in the
11th Corps) studied by Dunkelman, and some 300 in Kamphoefner/Helbich,
Deutsche. Even though almost all letter-writers had daily contacts with soldiers of
the other ethnicity, not a single case of such contacts developing into friendship,
however loose, is reported.29 And in the incredible wealth of Court Martial files,
all too little used by historians so far, there are – this is an estimate on the basis
of random sampling – several hundred minutes of trial proceedings documenting
inter-ethnic tensions. Most revealing is the fact that in an overwhelming majority
of cases witnesses of one ethnicity exonerated representatives of their own and
incriminated those of the other.30
To this day, both legends survive and are being defended. True, in the course
of time, with some abating of nationalism and a greater respect for the role
of immigrants, some jarring edges have been taken off, and concessions have
been made on both sides so that the distance between the legends has narrowed
somewhat. Yet, the dichotomy has not been eradicated, and it is amazing how,
in a battle that has been “macrohistorically” studied so closely, so many aspects
27
Ibid., pp. 29-30.
A number of instances can be found in A. R. Ruschau, ‘Fighting mit Sigel’ or ‘Running
mit Howard’: Attitudes towards German-Americans in the Civil War, MA thesis U of Miami
2007,http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/Ruschau%20Adam%20Richard.pdf?miami1180542121,
(1.03.2012), pp. 40-41.
29 M. H. Dunkelman (2001), Hardtack and Sauerkraut: Ethnic Tensions in the 154th New
York Volunteers, Eleventh Corps during the Civil War, “Yearbook of German-American Studies”,
Vol. 30, p. 28.
30 National Archives, RG 153, Judge Advocate General: Court Martials. Examples in Germans…, Kamphoefner, W. D., Helbich, W. (eds.), pp. 29-32. For a largely accurate summary of Court
Martial proceedings that were most clearly and massively determined by ethnic conflict, the trial of
Colonel Knobelsdorf, commanding the (predominantly German) 44th Illinois Infantry, see T. C.S.
Brown, etc., Behind the Guns, The History of Battery I, 2nd Regiment, Illinois Light Artillery, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP (1965) 2000, pp. 17-19.
28
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Wolfgang Helbich
essential for the legends are still unknown – and, since they have not come to
light by now, most likely never will. Who, if anyone, ran without firing a shot?
What was the ethnic composition of the men who transformed a hasty retreat into
a panicky stampede that could not be stopped, or when and where did it come to
a halt? Again, who manned those various defense lines? How long did each hold
out, -- two minutes, ten minutes, with the last, the Buschbeck line, perhaps 20 or
30 minutes? For some of these questions there are many answers, differing so
widely that it’s a free-for-all, for others there are none. So the two legends will
continue to exist and compete side by side, and, as it behooves a proper historical
legend, one can neither prove not disprove them.
THE CHANCELLORSVILLE TRAUMA
There exists a fourth ethnic legend. It has not developed directly out of
a specific event or controversy, but it is a scholarly thesis presented in a scholarly
book. The book has been mentioned before (Keller, Charlottesville), and it is not
only the latest and best study of the battle, but it also contradicts the 150-yearold claim advanced by many renowned historians that the Civil War by having
natives and ethnics fight side by side, blood and iron welding them together, did
away with ethnic prejudice. I doubted that back in 2002 on the basis of the Civil
War letters we published. 31 So does Joseph R. Reinhard.32 So do the examples of
two-way discrimination, above. And so does, finally, Christian Keller.33 But the
latter does not stop there.
He describes convincingly the German American reaction to the American
Chancellorsville legend and the trauma it inflicted. But then, more or less ignoring
the various other traumata of the German Americans connected with their generals
supposedly not getting their deserts, especially Sigel’s ins and outs, and last but
not least the frustrations connected with Fremont, he insists that Chancellorsville
more than anything else remained a depressing memory as long as to the end of
the century. Not only that, but according to Keller the Chancellorsville shock
let the German Americans take refuge in their Deutschtum, thus, being repulsed,
leaning more heavily on their own native culture and thereby deliberately slowing
down their acculturation.
31
Germans…, Kamphoefner W. D., Helbich, W. (eds.), pp. 31-34 (pp. 82–83 in the German
original, published in 2002).
32 “I also believe that Civil War service did not significantly accelerate the assimilation of the
vast majority of German Americans who served in the army”, J. R. Reinhart responds, p. 11 (cf. full
reference in note 8).
33 Ch. B. Keller, Chancellorsville, pp. 132-137.
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85
This is not the place to discuss the weaknesses of the thesis, nor what may be
said for it. I introduced it here because it is a gray area legend as defined here:
neither it nor the contrary view can be proved, and there is therefore room for
spreading legends. As usual, proof one way or the other is not possible either
methodologically or because of a lack of sources or the cost is way too high.
THE KAUFMANN STORY
Another account has some resemblance to a legend, but does not fully
qualify. It is about a book that was published in Germany in 1911. The author,
Wilhelm Kaufmann, had lived in the United States for many years and presented
a book on the role of Germans in the American Civil War to the German reading
public. He had amassed an amazing amount of facts, so that, though with great
caution, historians consulted it quite frequently. Thus it was perhaps unusual that
a 90-year-old scholarly work was translated into English and published in the
United States, but made a certain amount of sense.
The trouble was not necessarily that the book was thoroughly filiopietistic,
heavily biased in favor of Germans, imbued with pre-World- War- I chauvinism,
fully in the methodological und ideological mainstream of that period’s
historical scholarship, and a classic example of one-sided historiography. One
might consider the translation project a little odd, but basically unobjectionable.
University libraries are full of old books to which all the drawbacks just claimed
apply, in various languages, so why not another one, made accessible to more
readers by the translation? It would have been acceptable but for two Ifs.
If the editors had not blithely and untruthfully claimed that “in the field
of German-American Studies is has long since been considered the standard
work on the topic”.34 A standard work, as most readers would understand
the term, is accurate as to facts, state of the art with regard to interpretation,
fairly comprehensive in scope, free from gross bias and major methodological
drawbacks. The work in question can definitely not claim even a single one
of these qualities. The other IF is even more serious. A lot is promised in
introductions that does not really reflect the main part, so sceptics may not take
talk about a standard work at face value. But there is no such excuse about the
core of a work.
Here, the editors make the one and only correction in the whole book,
concerning a factual error about Germans in the Confederacy. Apart from that,
there is no word of caution about the book’s being outdated and about the
34
W. Kaufmann, The Germans…, p. IV.
86
Wolfgang Helbich
nationalistic hybris characterizing all aspects of the work, about the innumerable
factual errors that have long been corrected by historians. Instead, the book is
presented as an up-to-date study, the standard work of German American and
German scholarship on the Civil War. The translation without caveats may have
two kinds of readers: the critical history graduate students who will quickly
recognize the character of the book and use it prudently; and the general reader,
presumably including quite a number of German Americans, who might learn,
perhaps with some surprise, that this is what historians know about the role
of their forebears. It may fill them with pride, if not arrogance towards other
ethnicities.
In the former case, no harm is done. But the less sophisticated reader might
be tempted to consider this a re-discovered document telling the truth about the
Germans in the Civil War. And for him or her if might serve as a ready-made
legend by itself. It would not exactly be a legend in the sense and definition used
above, but close enough to be included here. The major difference is that many of
the claims made in the book can be disproved. But, as behooves a legend in our
sense, a good deal cannot, so that theoretically at least a counter-legend could be
constructed. After so many words about gray areas and legends, it may be time to
ask if such legends have any practical significance. They do, in the lofty realm of
collective memories and identities.
CONCLUSION
Even if not as intensive as a hundred years ago, or during the “ethnic revival”
of the seventies, but again growing with the internet, there is a competition
in North America between ethnicities for attention, recognition, respect, and
sympathy. There are various players, the leadership in clubs and in organizing
festivals and parades, musical events, producers of websites, the foreign-language
press, the relevant university departments, even, indirectly, foreign governments.
And, of course, there is grass-roots prejudice that is meant to be cultivated.
Historical legends are, of course, not the only means to boost ethnic ego and
prestige. There are many other ways, too numerous to list here.
Presumably a paper focussing on the presentation of things we do not and
most likely cannot ever know, is quite frustrating. But I believe we should accept
that. What got me started on this topic were the terribles simplifications and the
boldfaced and imaginative yarns especially about German Americans in the 19th
century and particularly in the Civil War era spun and offered by defenders of
Deutschthum then as well as today. Easily disproved claims are no problem. I have
been concerned with such as permit a variety of interpretations because of the
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87
lack of information and sometimes the subjectivity of witnesses, interpretations,
all of which are on the one hand insufficiently substantiated on the other cannot
be disproved. It goes without saying that this does not only apply to the Civil War
or Germans. It is obviously a ubiquitous problem in all of history.
Of course historians endeavor to clarify, find solutions and establish “wie es
gewesen”, even if they never arrive at more than approximations. But should
they not occasionally point out expressly and not just in passing to problems
for which – at least for the time being – there are and there can be no solutions,
so that different versions of how it may have been can be presented that cannot
disproved?