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In St. Louis the two election districts with the highest percentage of German-born immigrants were the First and Second Wards, each about 55% German. In the 1860 election, only 10% of Missouri voters went for Lincoln, but the First and Second Wards went 65% for the Republican. The formerly Democratic German had moved towards Lincoln because they opposed the expansion of slavery.1
When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many Missouri Germans were angry with the president, not because they opposed emancipation, but because the proclamation did not end slavery in Missouri. Lincoln believed that he only had the power to end slavery as a war measure in those states in revolt against the United States. Germans believed that Lincoln ignored the fact that Missouri’s governor had run off with a sizable portion of the old state militia to join the Confederates and that the state was regularly invaded by highly mobile Confederate forces. The state was also riven by pro-Confederate guerrilla activity. The German community argued that slaveholders were behind the Missouri rebels and that ending slavery was necessary to break their power.2
St Louis was the most important city west of the Mississippi in 1865.
As German-born soldiers filled up the ranks of Missouri’s Union regiments, they fought beside black soldiers. Some of the blacks were from Kansas, where they had gone in the 1850s after escaping slavery. Others were black refugees freed by the advance of Union armies into the Confederacy. German antipathy towards slavery was heightened by a sense of comradery with black troops fighting for the same cause. The German immigrants became advocates for their black fellow soldiers, but their voices were not always heard.3
When a delegation of Missouri Germans travelled to Washington to speak with Lincoln about the expansion of the Emancipation Proclamation to cover their own state, he refused to see them. Lincoln’s Postmaster General Montgomery Blair had written the president to beware of the Missouri Germans, calling them “revolutionists, not reformers.”4
In 1864 some of the Missouri Germans backed an attempt to challenge Lincoln from the Left by nominating a Radical anti-slavery man for president. When Lincoln outflanked them by endorsing the 13th Amendment ending slavery, the Germans returned to the Republican fold and put their energies into revising the Missouri constitution to abolish slavery in their state.5
Eight of the sixty-six delegates to the Missouri Constitutional Convention were born in Germany. One of the immigrants, Arnold Krekel, was elected Convention President. While nearly all native-born Republicans believed that Missouri’s blacks should be freed, the status of blacks in freedom was contentious. Many thought that blacks, if they were free, should not be given the right to vote. Even among whites, women and young people under the age of 21 were not allowed to vote. One could be both a citizen and be deprived of the privilege of voting in 19th Century America.6
In early January 1865 Missouri adopted a German-backed ordinance abolishing slavery. On January 15, the German community held a mass meeting to celebrate its victory in ending slavery and to call for citizenship rights for blacks. The editor of the leading German-language newspaper in the state, Emil Preetorius, told the immigrants that they could not stop at emancipating the slaves. “The principle of freedom and equality,” he said, required that black men being given the right to vote. He said that the “principles of the Declaration of Independence” required that “distinctions based on color” be eliminated. 7
The Ordinance Abolishing Slavery was so important that it was printed as a commemorative print.
The meeting was held in Turner Hall, the center of German American liberalism in the state. Speaker after speaker tied the struggle for the vote for African Americans back to the failed struggle for democracy in Germany in 1848. They rejected the idea of many native-born white Americans that blacks could live in the United States as both free and barred from the vote. The attorney Georg Hillgartner asked the audience, “Is he a free man who is muzzled on account of his skin color? Or is that a free state…whose people’s hands are bound in regard to their custodians and lawmakers?” If blacks could not vote, they would be at the mercy of their white neighbors, including those who had fought for the Confederacy.8
Arnold Krekel, the Constitutional Convention’s president, told the assembled Germans to disregard the racially charged rhetoric of the opponents of black citizenship. He said that the possibility that citizenship might one day lead to the election of a “Negro president or governor” should not frighten them. The German assembly agreed to petition the Constitutional Convention for the vote for African Americans.9
As the Constitutional Convention did its work of drafting a charter for post-war Missouri, the German delegates consistently tried to move the document towards equality. They were not always successful, but they forced the Convention delegates to confront their own prejudices. For example, when the new Constitution defined the qualifications for governor to include that he be “white,” the Germans took their fellow Missourians to task. They backed a minority report calling for the elimination of the racial requirement. 10
The German members of the drafting committee dealing with the Executive office wrote that “we believe that the all-merciful God is the Father of all, and that, before Him, all men are equal.” The German delegates said that their consciences and their constituents demanded that they protest against “any distinction” to be made in the Missouri Constitution “between white, black, red, or brown.” They rejected the suggestion by moderate Republicans that racist exclusions be incorporated into the Constitution to secure its passage in a state with a segregationist native-born electorate. They wrote that “we were not sent here to pander to a prejudice…but to deal equal justice to all, without regard to color.”11
Echoing Krekle’s speech at the Turner Hall, the Germans refused to be bullied by the fear that blacks might rise to the highest offices in the state. They wrote boldly that they were “not afraid that a colored man will ever be an aspirant to the office of Governor, or any other state office.” Instead, they argued, “should he-though sprung from a race systematically kept in ignorance by the tyranny of the white man—still be the superior of his white competitor…we do not wish that he be barred out because…his skin was not as white.”12
The Austrian Jewish delegate, Isidor Bush, argued in a speech from the Convention floor that voting was not a privilege that whites could choose to extend or deny to free blacks. Instead, he said, it was “the right of everyone who lived in the civil society of a free government.” He told his fellow delegates that extending the vote to blacks was the “necessary, unavoidable, logical consequence of freedom.” 13
The Germans, who had less than a decade before been the targets of the Know Nothings because of their immigrant identity, drew parallels between the discrimination they had faced and the even greater persecution of blacks. Newspaperman Preetorius wrote that “differences of race and color should be as unimportant as those of belief or descent,” fully understanding that just a few years earlier immigrants had been attacked because of their religion and “descent.”14
When the Missouri Constitution did not go adopt the full platform of racial civil equality advocated by many Germans, the immigrants denounced the more conservative delegates as embodying the prejudices of the Know Nothings. They warned that “racial intolerance” might soon be coupled with efforts to clamp down on immigrant communities.15
While the Germans failed to achieve civil equality for blacks in Missouri, their accomplishments were marked. They had helped keep the state in the Union when Missouri’s governor had plotted to take it out in 1861. They had pressured Lincoln into supporting the 13th Amendment. They had helped end slavery in a state that had been slave from its founding. Most importantly, they had spoken, fought, and died for the most racially egalitarian program proposed by any large group of whites in the state. 16
Resource:
German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) is an excellent new study of German immigrants during the Civil War Era. This article relies heavily upon Professor Efford’s research.
Sources:
1. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 6784 ; Civil War St. Louis by Louis S. Gerteis published by University of Kansas Press (2001) page 308; The Civil War in Missouri: A Military History by Louis S. Gerteis published by University of Missouri Press (2011); The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War by Adam Arenson published by Harvard University Press (2011); Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment by Christian G. Samito published by Southern Illinois University Press (2015); Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle For The 1864 Presidency by John Waugh published by DeCapo Press (2001); Abraham Lincoln: Volume 2 by Michael Burlingame published by Johns Hopkins Press; Lincoln by David Herbert Donald published by Simon and Schuster; The Radical Republicans by Hans Trefousse (1969); Lincoln and the Radicals by Harry T. Williams (1941); Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man by David Donald (1970); 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History by Charles Bracelon Flood published by Simon and Schuster (2009); The Story of a Border City During the Civil War by Galusha Anderson (1908); Germans for a Free Missouri: Translations from the German Radical Press, 1857-1862 by Steven Rowan, University of Missouri Press (1983).
2. Missouri’s German Uniionists.
3. The Election of 1864
4. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2505
5. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location
6. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2615—2737
7. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2460
8. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2749
9. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2745
10. Missouri Constitutional Convention Journal 47-48.
11. Missouri Constitutional Convention Journal 47-48.
12. Missouri Constitutional Convention Journal 47-48. Minority Report Com. on the Executive prepared by George Husmann and G. Thilenius.
13. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2757
14. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2806
15. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location 2820
16. German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era by Alison Clark Efford published by Cambridge University Press (2014) Kindle Location
The Immigrants’ Civil War is a series that examines the role of immigrants in our bloodiest war. Articles will appear twice monthly between 2011 and 2017. Here are the articles we have published so far:
1. Immigrant America on the Eve of the Civil War – Take a swing around the United States and see where immigrants were coming from and where they were living in 1861.
2. 1848: The Year that Created Immigrant America – Revolutions in Europe, famine and oppression in Ireland, and the end of the Mexican War made 1848 a key year in American immigration history.
3. Carl Schurz: From German Radical to American Abolitionist– A teenaged revolutionary of 1848, Carl Schurz brought his passion for equality with him to America.
4. Immigrant Leader Carl Schurz Tells Lincoln to Stand Firm Against Slavery.
5. …And the War Came to Immigrant America -The impact of the firing on Fort Sumter on America’s immigrants
6. The Rabbi Who Seceded From the South
7. The Fighting 69th-Irish New York Declares War
8. The Germans Save St. Louis for the Union
9. New York’s Irish Rush to Save Washington
10. Immigrant Day Laborers Help Build the First Fort to Protect Washington-The Fighting 69th use their construction skills.
11. Carl Schurz Meets With Lincoln To Arm the Germans
12. Immigrants Rush to Join the Union Army-Why?– The reasons immigrants gave for enlisting early in the war.
13. Why the Germans Fought for the Union?
14. Why Did the Irish Fight When They Were So Despised?
15. The “Sons of Garibaldi” Join the Union Army
16. The Irish Tigers From Louisiana
17. Immigrant Regiments on Opposite Banks of Bull Run -The Fighting 69th and the Louisiana Tigers
18. The St. Louis Germans Set Out To Free Missouri
19. Wilson’s Creek Drowns Immigrant Dream of Free Missouri
20. English-Only in 1861: No Germans Need Apply
21. After Bull Run: Mutineers, Scapegoats, and the Dead
22. St. Louis Germans Revived by Missouri Emancipation Proclamation
23. Jews Fight the Ban on Rabbis as Chaplains
24. Lincoln Dashes German Immigrants Hopes for Emancipation
25. When Hatred of Immigrants Stopped the Washington Monument from Being Built
26. Inside the Mind of a Know Nothing
27. The Evolution of the Know Nothings
28. The Know Nothings Launch a Civil War Against Immigrant America
29. The Know Nothings: From Triumph to Collapse
30. The Lasting Impact of the Know Nothings on Immigrant America.
31. Lincoln, the Know Nothings, and Immigrant America.
32. Irish Green and Black America: Race on the Edge of Civil War.
33. The Democratic Party and the Racial Consciousness of Irish Immigrants Before the Civil War
34. The Confederates Move Against Latino New Mexico
35. Nuevomexicanos Rally As Confederates Move Towards Santa Fe—But For Which Side?
36. The Confederate Army in New Mexico Strikes at Valverde
37. The Swedish Immigrant Who Saved the U.S. Navy
38. The Confederates Capture Santa Fe and Plot Extermination
39. A German Regiment Fights for “Freedom and Justice” at Shiloh-The 32nd Indiana under Col. August Willich.
40. The Know Nothing Colonel and the Irish Soldier Confronting slavery and bigotry.
41. Did Immigrants Hand New Orleans Over to the Union Army?
42. Did New Orleans’ Immigrants See Union Soldiers As Occupiers or Liberators?
43. Union Leader Ben Butler Seeks Support in New Orleans-When General Ben Butler took command in New Orleans in 1862, it was a Union outpost surrounded by Confederates. Butler drew on his experience as a pro-immigrant politician to win over the city’s Irish and Germans.
44. Union General Ben Butler Leverages Immigrant Politics in New Orleans
45. Thomas Meager: The Man Who Created the Irish Brigade
46. Thomas Meagher: The Irish Rebel Joins the Union Army
47. Recruiting the Irish Brigade-Creating the Irish American
48. Cross Keys: A German Regiment’s Annihilation in the Shenandoah Valley
49. The Irish Brigade Moves Towards Richmond-The Irish brigade in the Peninsula Campaign from March 17 to June 2, 1862.
50. Peninsula Emancipation: Irish Soldiers Take Steps on the Road to Freedom-The Irish Brigade and Irish soldiers from Boston free slaves along the march to Richmond.
51. Slaves Immigrate from the Confederacy to the United States During the Peninsula Campaign
52. The Irish 9th Massachusetts Cut Off During the Seven Days Battles
53. Union Defeat and an Irish Medal of Honor at the End of the Seven Days
54. Making Immigrant Soldiers into Citizens-Congress changed the immigration laws to meet the needs of a nation at war.
55. Carl Schurz: To Win the Civil War End Slavery
56. Carl Schurz: From Civilian to General in One Day
57. Did Anti-German Bigotry Help Cause Second Bull Run Defeat?
58. Immigrant Soldiers Chasing Lee Into Maryland
59. Scottish Highlanders Battle at South Mountain
60. Emancipation 150: “All men are created equal, black and white”– A German immigrant reacts to the Emancipation Proclamation
61. The Irish Brigade at Antietam
62. Private Peter Welsh Joins the Irish Brigade
63. Preliminaries to Emancipation: Race, the Irish, and Lincoln
64. The Politics of Emancipation: Lincoln Suffers Defeat
65. Carl Schurz Blames Lincoln for Defeat
66. The Irish Brigade and Virginia’s Civilians Black and White
67. The Irish Brigade and the Firing of General McClellan
68. General Grant Expells the Jews
69. The Irish Brigade Moves Towards Its Destruction At Fredericksburg.
70. Fredericksburg: The Worst Day in the Young Life of Private McCarter of the Irish Brigade
71. Forever Free: Emancipation New Year Day 1863
72. Private William McCarter of the Irish Brigade Hospitalized After Fredericksburg
73. The Immigrant Women That Nursed Private McCarter After Fredericksburg
74. Nursing Nuns of the Civil War
75. The Biases Behind Grant’s Order Expelling the Jews
76. The Jewish Community Reacts to Grant’s Expulsion Order
77. Lincoln Overturns Grant’s Order Against the Jews
78. Irish Families Learn of the Slaughter at Fredericksburg
79. Requiem for the Irish Brigade
80. St. Patrick’s Day in the Irish Brigade
81. Student Asks: Why Don’t We Learn More About Immigrants in the Civil War?
82. Missouri’s German Unionists: From Defeat to Uncertain Victory
83. Missouri Germans Contest Leadership of Unionist Cause
84. German Leader Franz Sigel’s Victory Earns a Powerful Enemy
85. Immigrant Unionists Marching Towards Pea Ridge
86. German Immigrants at the Battle of Pea Ridge: Opening Moves
87. Pea Ridge: The German Unionists Outflanked
88. German Immigrants at the Battle of Pea Ridge
89. The Organization of the “German” XI Corps
90. The Irish Brigade on the Road to Chancellorsville
91. The “German” XI Corps on the Eve of Chancellorsville
92. The “Germans Run Away” at Chancellorsville
93. The New York Times, the Germans, and the Anatomy of a Scapegoat at Chancellorsville
94. An Irish Soldier Between Chancellorsville and Gettysburg
95. Lee’s Army Moves Towards Gettysburg: Black Refugees Flee
96. Iron Brigade Immigrants Arrive at Gettysburg
97. Iron Brigade Immigrants Go Into Battle the First Day at Gettysburg
98. The “German” XI Corps at Gettysburg July 1, 1863
99. An Irish Colonel and the Defense of Little Round Top on the Second Day at Gettysburg
100. A Prayer Before Death for the Irish Brigade at Gettysburg: July 2, 1863
101. The Irish Regiment that Ended “Pickett’s Charge”: July 3, 1863
102. Five Points on the Edge of the Draft Riots
103. Before the Draft Riots: The Cultivation of Division
104. The New York Draft Riots Begin
105. Convulsion of Violence: The First Day of the New York Draft Riots
106. The Draft Riots End in a Sea of Blood-July 14-15, 1863.
107. Pat Cleburne: The Irish Confederate and the Know Nothings
108. Killing Pat Cleburne: Know Nothing Violence
109. Pat Cleburne: Arresting a General, Becoming a General
110. The Immigrant Story Behind “Twelve Years a Slave”
111. A German Immigrant Woman’s Gettysburg Address
112. Pat Cleburne: The Irish Confederate’s Emancipation Proclamation
113. Pat Cleburne: The South Can’t Use Black Soldiers Without Ending Slavery
114. The Suppression of Pat Cleburne’s Emancipation Proposal
115. An Irish Immigrant Colonel’s Warnings Ignored at Chickamauga
116. An Immigrant Colonel’s Fighting Retreat at Chickamauga
117. August Willich: German Socialist at Chickamauga
118. Hans Heg:at Chickamauga: Norwegian Commander on the Eve of Battle
119. Ivan and Nadine Turchin: Russian Revolutionary Aristocrats at Chickamauga
120. German Immigrants Pinned Down at Chickamauga
121. Hans Heg: To Die for His Adopted Country at Chickamauga
122. Patrick Guiney: An Irish Colonel on the Edge of the Wilderness
123. Immigrants March Out of The Wilderness and Into a Wicked Hail of Gunfire
124. Peter Welsh in the Irish Brigade’s Purgatory at Spotsylvania
125. Peter Welsh: What Sacrifice Must the Immigrant Make for His Adopted Land?
126. A Second Irish Brigade’s Catastrophe at a Forgotten Fight Near Fredericksburg
127. An Irish Man and a French Woman Between Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor
128. Two Irish Brigades Swept Away by a Hurricane from Hell at Cold Harbor
129. Petersburg: The Start of a Ten Month Siege that Devoured Men and Disabled the Irish Brigade
130. A Volcano in Virginia: The Battle of the Crater
131. 1864 Election: The Immigrant Voter & Abraham Lincoln
132. August Belmont: The German Jewish Immigrant Who Led the Opposition to Lincoln’s 1864 Reelection
133. Lincoln and the Superiority of the “Negro” over the Irish
134. Lincoln’s Germans and the Election of 1864
135. Lincoln’s German Lawyer Comes Out Swinging in the Election of 1864
136. Lincoln Wins the Election of 1864 With Immigrant Votes
137. American Refugee Camp in Civil War Kentucky Destroyed by Union Soldiers
138. Kentucky Civil War Refugee Camp Reborn and Reconstructed After Expulsions
139. Immigrant German “Hamburgers” Tormented and Captured at Petersburg
140. German General Weitzel and His African Canadians at Petersburg
141. Irish Regiment at the Beginning of the End of the Confederacy at Five Forks
142. Richmond Burning: The German Immigrant and Black Troops Who Saved the City
143. Appomattox: The Capture of a Confederate Army & the Fall from Grace of an Immigrant General
144. Lincoln Assassinated: John Wilkes Booth’s Immigrant Conspirators
145. Immigrants Hunt Lincoln’s Killers and Help Capture the Confederate President
146. Lincoln’s Murder and the New York Irish American
147. Lincoln’s Funeral in Immigrant New York
148. German General Carl Schurz Begins His Investigation of the Post-War South
149. Carl Schurz Warned That a “System of Terrorism” Was Taking Hold in the Post-War South in 1865
150. Immigrants in the Union Navy: Minorities in the Majority
151. How Immigrants Were Recruited into the United States Navy
152. African Canadian Sailors in the Union Navy
153. High School Student Proves Professor Wrong When He Denied “No Irish Need Apply” Signs Existed
154. The Fallout from No Irish Need Apply Article Spreads Worldwide
155. No Irish Need Apply Professor Gets into a Fight With Our Blogger Pat Young Over Louisa May Alcott
157. A Scottish Socialist and a German General Work to Help Slaves Become Freedpeople-Robert Dale Owen, Carl Schurz and the founding of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
158. Our Man in Sweden: Recruiting Immigrants to Strengthen the Union War Effort
159. German Immigrants and the End of Slavery in Missouri
160. 13th Amendment: Immigrants and the end of slavery in America
Cultural
Painting of the Return of the 69th from Bull Run Unearthed
Blog Posts
The Real Story Behind The Immigrants’ Civil War Photo
Why I’m Writing The Immigrants’ Civil War
The Five Meanings of “The Immigrants’ Civil War”
The Fallout from No Irish Need Apply Article Spreads Worldwide
No Irish Need Apply Professor Gets into a Fight With Our Blogger Pat Young Over Louisa May Alcott
Books for Learning More About The Immigrants’ Civil War
Free Yale Course with David Blight on the Civil War
Cinco de Mayo Holiday Dates Back to the American Civil War
New Immigrants Try to Come to Terms with America’s Civil War
Important Citizenship Site to be Preserved-Fortress Monroe
Should Lincoln Have Lost His Citizenship?
The First Casualties of the War Were Irish-Was that a Coincidence?
Civil War Anniversaries-History, Marketing, and Human Rights
Memorial Day’s Origins at the End of the Civil War
Germans Re-enact the Civil War-But Why Are They Dressed in Gray?
Leading Historians Discuss 1863 New York City Draft Riots
The Upstate New York Town that Joined the Confederacy
Civil War Blogs I Read Every Week
First Annual The Immigrants’ Civil War Award Goes to Joe Reinhart
Damian Shiels Wins Second Annual The Immigrants’ Civil War Award
Mother Jones: Civil War Era Immigrant and Labor Leader
Immigration Vacation -Civil War Sites
Fort Schuyler-Picnic where the Irish Brigade trained
The Fallout from No Irish Need Apply Article Spreads Worldwide
No Irish Need Apply Professor Gets into a Fight With Our Blogger Pat Young Over Louisa May Alcott
Books for Learning More About The Immigrants’ Civil War
Free Yale Course with David Blight on the Civil War
Cinco de Mayo Holiday Dates Back to the American Civil War
