Mischa Honeck. We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists After 1848. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. 236 S. $24.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8203-3823-1.

Reviewed by John Jentz

Published on H-TGS (July, 2012)

Commissioned by Corinna R. Unger (Jacobs University Bremen)

Mischa Honeck’s distinctive contribution is to ous free-labor society on the edge of the slave sys‐ place the American abolitionist movement in a tem. Olmsted was particularly impressed with transatlantic context that includes continental Eu‐ Adolf Douai, a Forty-Eighter who published a Ger‐ rope, not just Great Britain. He does this by using man-language newspaper appealing to this immi‐ detailed case studies to examine the web of rela‐ grant constituency. Douai organized a convention tionships between German Forty-Eighters and in San Antonio during the spring of 1854 that vo‐ American abolitionists in Texas, Cincinnati, Mil‐ cally endorsed the recent Louisville Platform, waukee, and Boston. His impressive research which articulated a comprehensive political pro‐ fnds interracial and multiethnic solidarities sel‐ gram for liberal Germans in America. These opin‐ dom explored by others, and his scholarship is en‐ ions immediately created tensions for Douai with hanced by drawing on German-language sources the more conservative Germans who had arrived rarely if ever used. earlier and built a substantial place for them‐ Honeck’s case studies--constituting four of his selves within slave-holding Texas, even if they did six chapters--are interesting and informative. not own slaves themselves. Douai pressed on with Frederick Law Olmsted, an abolitionist and future his politics, in part sustained by aid from Olmst‐ father of American landscape architecture, toured ed’s abolitionist friends in the North. When Douai the South in the 1850s as a young man, publishing published an article asserting the ultimate goal of travel accounts that reinforced Northern public the Forty-Eighter abolitionists--founding a free-la‐ opinion in its view that the slave system debased bor state out of West Texas--native-born political not only slaves but also poor whites. Nonetheless, leaders pounced. Violent political crowds attacked he was pleasantly surprised when he encountered his paper, and local Germans abandoned him. In the Germans who had settled in the hinterland of May 1856, he left Texas for good, in his mind re‐ San Antonio; to him they had created a prosper‐ treating once again in the face of an implacable H-Net Reviews aristocratic enemy, similar to the sort that had In his most engaging case study Honeck ana‐ driven him out of Europe. With the help of Olmst‐ lyzes the personal and political saga of Mathilde ed and his circle, Douai fought on, joining the abo‐ Anneke, one of the most prominent Forty-Eighters litionist movement in the North and achieving an in the United States, and Mary Booth, a religiously economic security he never had in the South. devout white abolitionist. Mathilde and her hus‐ The main actor in Honeck’s study of antebel‐ band Fritz moved to Milwaukee from Newark in lum Cincinnati is its multi-ethnic plebian culture late 1858, living initially with Sherman and Mary rooted in the city’s craftsmen and small propri‐ Booth. A leading abolitionist and Republican, etors. In examining this culture he follows the Sherman grew increasingly estranged from Mary lead of Bruce Levine.[1] Honeck highlights groups because of an afair and the demands of his politi‐ like the Turners and freethinkers, labor newspa‐ cal career. Meanwhile, Mathilde’s relationship pers such as August Willich’s Cincinnati Repub‐ with Fritz was strained by the deaths of two of likaner, and public celebrations of cultural and their children and his inability to fnancially sup‐ political heroes, particularly Tom Paine and port his family. The two women developed a Friedrich Schiller. Participants in this vital culture strong emotional bond, and perhaps a lesbian re‐ built alliances with the city’s African American lationship. community over opposition to the Kansas-Nebras‐ In the summer of 1860 the two women went ka Act of 1854. Native-born white abolitionists, to live in Zurich, Switzerland, where they immedi‐ such as Moncure Conway, a Unitarian minister, ately joined the local community of Forty-Eighter were attracted to the popular rationalism of the exiles. To support themselves they wrote for plebian Left. German Forty-Eighters like Willich newspapers and did translations. The small world defended Conway when his views on scripture of Forty-Eighter exiles in Zurich was intimate and split his congregation, and in turn Conway and factious, with Mary frequently defending the other abolitionists joined in the large celebration United States against the Europeans, who derided of the centennial of Friedrich Schiller’s birth in Americans for supporting slavery while claiming 1859. It was a moment when abolitionists and that their country was a beacon of liberty. Mary, Forty-Eighters could proclaim their common faith and sometimes Mathilde, viewed America as the in liberating all workers, irrespective of race. leader in the worldwide resistance to aristocracy, In the same year John Brown’s raid created a claim aided considerably by the Emancipation divisions among Cincinnati’s abolitionists by rais‐ Proclamation. ing the issue of using violence to achieve emanci‐ Mary and Mathilde were part of a transat‐ pation. Conway could not accept it, while Willich lantic debate about the meaning of both the Civil and the leader of the African American communi‐ War and the heritage of the 1848 revolutions. ty, Peter H. Clark, thought it was an unavoidable Their most fascinating contribution to that discus‐ part of revolutionary change. For Willich, fghting sion was a jointly written set of short stories and a for interracial democracy was a cultural obliga‐ novel about slavery and emancipation. They artic‐ tion growing out of his idealism and his national ulated a synthesis of European Enlightenment hu‐ pride, if not ethnic chauvinism. While the allies of manism and American abolitionist piety, while Cincinnati’s antislavery movement moved along drawing on the melodrama of popular evangelical separate paths during the Civil War, Honeck fction in the United States. The authors presented claims that they had developed a “multiethnic vi‐ their fctional protagonists as heroes whose demo‐ sion of democracy” needed to build a new society cratic values and self-sacrifce made them true (p. 103). Americans, despite their foreign origins. The sto‐

2 H-Net Reviews ries did not escape a common racial paternalism, whose promises remain relevant to this day” (p. presenting African Americans as passive recipi‐ 171). ents of higher culture. The work of these two In his concluding chapter Honeck argues that women provide Honeck’s most vivid example of three events contributed to the decline of the mul‐ the transatlantic character of the mid nineteenth- ti-ethnic and interracial abolitionist movement. century abolitionist movement. Feminists broke with mainstream abolitionists The story of Karl Heinzen and the Boston abo‐ when they refused to back the vote for women litionists starts in the 1850s and takes the reader along with African American men. Meanwhile, into the Reconstruction era. Although Boston was the Liberal Republicans attracted Forty-Eighters, not a center of German immigration, it did have a such as Carl Schurz, with their concerns for gov‐ vital German ethnic community complete with ernment corruption and their promotion of lais‐ the usual organizations of the Vereinswesen, in‐ sez-faire economics. Most important, Bismarck’s cluding the Turners. Boston was also the center of founding of the Second Empire awakened a con‐ the Yankee abolitionist movement, led most servative ethnic nationalism that overshadowed prominently by William Lloyd Garrison and Wen‐ the liberal nationalism of the Forty-Eighters. More dell Phillips. The uncompromising Forty-Eighter generally, Honeck concludes that liberal Germans Karl Heinzen, editor of the Pionier, was the leader were caught up in the drive to assimilate into an of the German abolitionists. The two wings of the American culture that was fawed by racism and abolitionist movement found common ground wealth accumulation. In his last paragraph Ho‐ when Garrison opposed an amendment to the neck notes that, “Most Forty-Eighters had become Massachusetts constitution that would have limit‐ abolitionists as Germans and democrats, but most ed the voting rights of naturalized citizens. In ended up as white German Americans” (p. 188). turn, Heinzen helped organize the Turners to pro‐ And so the bright moments of “cosmopolitan tect abolitionist speakers, especially Wendell democratic ideology” waned. Phillips, from mobs. This protection service None of these conclusions are surprising or prompted the Yankee abolitionists to rethink their fundamentally alter accepted interpretations of pacifsm. the Forty-Eighters in the United States. Strongly Heinzen’s uncompromising idealism fowered antislavery, they were leaders of the Republican during the Civil War as he criticized more moder‐ Party in the 1850s and 1860s and of its Liberal ate to conservative Germans, including the popu‐ wing during Reconstruction; they founded and lar general Franz Sigel, as well as Lincoln himself. maintained vital institutions of German American Heinzen was a key player in the efort within the culture, such as newspapers and Turner societies; Republican Party to replace Lincoln with John C. they rejected the evangelical piety of their Yankee Frémont in the 1864 election, and he stuck by the collaborators, making collaboration more dif‐ radical program of this largely German efort af‐ cult; and they were frequently obnoxious to their ter Frémont withdrew his candidacy. After Lin‐ countrymen who had arrived earlier than they coln’s assassination, Heinzen and Phillips contin‐ had. ued their collaboration, opposing Johnson’s Re‐ Honeck could have been bolder with his gen‐ construction policies while extending their sup‐ eralizations. They would have benefted, for ex‐ port to other reforms, including women’s rights. ample, from building on the transatlantic themes Honeck sees them infuencing each other as they that are at the center of his work. He does not forged a “cosmopolitan democratic ideology take full advantage of the considerable secondary literature on the transatlantic Anglo-American re‐

3 H-Net Reviews form movements of the nineteenth century, in‐ gence of African American Politics in the British cluding abolition.[2] What similarities and difer‐ Atlantic World, 1772-1861,” American Historical ences were there between the Anglo-American Review 113 (2008): 1003-1028. phenomenon and the continental one he studies? Similarly, what does the transnational experience of the German Forty-Eighters reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of their politics? Is there anything about their history in the United States that illuminates their experience in Ger‐ many? Certainly they were brilliant at agitation, and their ideals led them to articulate noble vi‐ sions of egalitarian democracy. Yet they mis‐ judged Lincoln. Were they prone to similar mis‐ judgments in Europe? Finally, he could have ex‐ plored more thoroughly the implications of his re‐ search for the role of liberal nationalism in transatlantic reform. How did liberal nationalism compare with evangelical piety as a basis for transnational movements in the nineteenth centu‐ ry? How did the history of liberal nationalism shape postwar reform movements, beginning with the interpersonal networks he examines? Al‐ though he raises such issues himself, he could have pushed further with them. These criticisms attest to the fruitfulness of Honeck’s research. He has signifcantly advanced our knowledge of the Forty-Eighters by placing them in a transatlantic context, and his book will be required reading for future students of the subject. Notes [1]. Bruce Levine, The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Confict, and the Coming of the Civil War (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illi‐ nois Press, 1992). [2]. The best place to start is with David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revo‐ lution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975). More recent works include Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); and Van Gosse, “‘As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends’: The Emer‐

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Citation: John Jentz. Review of Honeck, Mischa. We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists After 1848. H-TGS, H-Net Reviews. July, 2012.

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