http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2008/04/30/review-chancellorsville... Christian B. Keller. Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism,
Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory. New York: Fordham University Press;
First Edition (May 15, 2007). 244 pp., 4 maps, notes, index. ISBN:
978-0823226504 $65.00 (Hardcover w/DJ).
How serious a blow was the Battle of Chancellorsville to the
collective German-American psyche? Christian B. Keller attempts to
answer precisely this question in Chancellorsville and the Germans:
Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory. Pulling from German-
language newspapers and looking at his subject from a German-American
viewpoint, Keller argues somewhat persuasively that not only did the
rout of the German XI Corps at Chancellorsville severely damage German-
American support for the Northern war effort, it also significantly
delayed assimilation of this ethnic group into mainstream American
culture. In addition, the attacks on German-American units,
specifically the XI Corps, served as a unifying force for a hitherto
disparate German-American presence in the United States.
German-Americans flocked to support their adopted homeland in 1861,
eventually composing close to one fourth of all soldiers who fought in
the Union army. Many of these men formed companies and regiments
composed almost entirely of German-Americans. Some of these units
played a large role in keeping Missouri in the Union in 1861 and
fought well at First Bull Run and in many western battles. Many
German-Americans, including Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz, assumed roles
as Union generals. Blenker's all-German Division was treated rather
badly in March 1862 when it was forced to trek through the mountains
of western Virginia on the way to Charles Fremont's aptly-named
Mountain Department. Poor weather and lack of food led to some
foraging, and this behavior was reported rather negatively in the
Anglo-American press as stereotypical German behavior. German-
Americans were understandably outraged by this characterization of
their fighting men, and believed nativism was at work when Blenker and
his men were not supplied with adequate rations. Unfortunately, this
negative stereotype of Germa
n-American troops would soon grow worse.
The Army of the Potomac's XI (Eleventh) Corps, including Blenker's
former division, had only been officially created about eight months
before Chancellorsville. These troops had originally been members of
Fremont's Mountain Department, but had been dubbed I Corps, Army of
Virginia when John Pope arrived in the Eastern Theater in mid-1862.
The new I Corps was led by German-American hero Franz Sigel. The
troops were involved in the campaign that culminated at Second Bull
Run, encountering much hard fighting trying to crack Stonewall
Jackson's line along the Unfinished Railroad there. After Pope's
defeat, the unit was finally redesignated as XI Corps, Army of the
Potomac on September 12, 1862. The unit did not again see large scale
action until Chancellorsville. By May 1862, just before that battle,
the XI Corps had gained a distinct German flavor. It was even widely
know as the German Corps despite containing only thirteen German
regiments out of a total of twenty-seven. German-Americans had come
to see the unit as their own and took great pride in its performance
and its leader Sigel. Attacks against the XI Corps were perceived as
attacks against German-Americans as a whole.
Unfortunately, Sigel resigned over several trivial matters in early
1863 and the thoroughly religious and decidedly non-German Oliver O.
Howard was his replacement. The German troops were not impressed and
had not formed a good relationship with their commander by the start
of the Chancellorsville Campaign in late April. On May 2, 1863 the XI
Corps was hit with a staggering surprise flank attack in the horrible
terrain of the Wilderness by Stonewall Jackson and 28,000 men of his
II Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. This attack and follow-up
assaults on May 3 and 4 led to the eventual withdrawal of Joseph
Hooker's entire Army of the Potomac north of the Rappahannock River.
Keller spends a good deal of time discussing the tactical military
history of May 2, 1863. Using analysis of German and other units, he
successfully demonstrates the mostly German regiments fought as hard
as Anglo-American units and were not at fault for the defeat. Keller
argues that the placement of the XI Corps units prior to the attack
were the responsibility of General Oliver O. Howard, the XI Corps
commander, and Charles Devens, the 1st Division commander whose right
flank was open to attack. Keller also argues against charges that
most if not all of the XI Corps ran without doing any fighting. He
found at least two documented instances of resistance approaching half
an hour, once near Wilderness Church and once further east on the line
of Buschbeck's Brigade. Rather than fleeing rapidly, Keller argues,
the men of the XI Corps bought just enough time and deflected just
enough of Jackson's energy to allow other Federal units, most notably
the III Corps and XII Corps, to set up a final defensive line near the
Chancellorsville crossroads. Keller's conclusion is that the men of
the XI Corps fought as well and as long as they could from a deeply
flawed tactical position.
In the wake of the defeat, a search for scapegoats ensued. Nativist
predilections of the old Know Nothing party of the 1850s came roaring
to the forefront as the Dutchman of the XI Corps were blamed. In a
thorough look at both English and German language newspapers of the
day, Keeler found several major New York English-language newspapers
incorrectly blamed the Germans, and many other papers ran with this
erroneous account. Only the Chicago Tribune tried to dispute the
account in any way initially. After some time, these accounts were
mostly retracted, but Keller argues the damage had already been done.
German language newspapers fought back, defending the combat record of
the mostly-German regiments, (correctly) blaming Anglo-American
generals such as Howard and Hooker for the defeat, claiming Franz
Sigel would have done much better at the head of XI Corps, and
denouncing the massive resurgence of nativism in mainstream American
newspapers. Interestingly, Keller discusses how the scapegoating of
XI Corps rebuilt the morale of the non-ethnic Americans in the Army of
the Potomac as well as on the home front. Unfortunately, according to
Keller, this simultaneously took a massive toll on German-Americans in
the XI Corps and in the general population, destroying their faith in
and support of the Union war effort and causing many Germans to
strengthen their ethnic identity and shrink from assimilation.
From this point forward, says the author, German-Americans were highly
sensitive to even the slightest criticism of their troops in the
field. He believes Gettysburg did not have the same effect as
Chancellorsville because it was a Union victory and no one had to be
blamed. Germans tended to interpret events through a more ethnically
tinted lens than they ever had in the past. Although nativism in the
Anglo press was greatly muted following Gettysburg, it still continued
at greater levels than earlier in the war. In the fallout the XI
Corps was broken up after Gettysburg, with one division sent to South
Carolina and the other two to Tennessee. Carl Schurz, a division
leader in the XI Corps, eventually lost his command in part because of
his later issues with Joseph Hooker, the union army commander at
Chancellorsville. Germans also tended to unify more politically than
they ever had in the past, even going so far as to back Fremont's
candidacy for President in 1864, but this would have caused the
destruction of the Union and in effect would have meant many thousands
of German-Americans had died in vain.
In earlier looks at ethnic regiments, Ella Lonn (Foreigners in the
Union Army and Navy) and William Burton (Melting Pot Soldiers: The
Union's Ethnic Regiments, see my review of this work here) contend the
ethnic regiments tended to lose their ethic flavor by the end of the
war. This is a theory which Keller disputes. In his look at five
predominantly German regiments organized in Pennsylvania, particularly
the 74th and 75th regiments, he found they tended to preserve their
Germanness through the end of the war by monopolizing all of the
officer positions in these regiments. I am not sure maintaining
ethnic homogeneity among the officers constitutes the preservation of
ethnic flavor as meant by Lonn and Burton. In addition, I would have
liked to have seen a more all encompassing study of this nature for
the German regiments, especially those which did their fighting
predominantly in the west. I'm sure the author's earlier book on
German-Americans in Pennsylvania regiments at Gettysburg was the
reason he chose those five regiments as a sample here. In any case,
more work remains if we are to overturn Burton's claims in my
estimation.
Standard works have often contended German-Americans assimilated after
the war. Recent work, including Keller's book and a study of letters
written by German-Americans edited by Helbich and Kamphoefner, argue
against wartime assimilation. Keller goes even fuller by stating he
believes Germans had only finally gotten over the sting of
Chancellorsville by 1910. He discusses cultural pluralism and the
necessary entanglement of two main post-war themes for German-
Americans: memory of the war and Americanization. Keller cites their
continued efforts to remain German, including the retainment of the
German language, German customs, and the efforts of cultural
pluralists to resist assimilation as evidence of the continued
influence of Chancellorsville on the German-American psyche. I
thought this might have overemphasized the specific Battle of
Chancellorsville to some extent and the expense of other factors which
...
read more »
