THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY MIT PULVER UND BLEI: RADICAL GERMAN-AMERICANS AND THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR BRANDON T. BENNER SPRING 2017 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in History and Political Science with honors in History Reviewed and approved* by the following: William Blair Walter L. and Helen P. Ferree Professor of Middle American History Thesis Supervisor Michael Milligan Senior Lecturer of History Honors Adviser * Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College. i ABSTRACT This thesis discusses the political contributions of the German-American radical leftist community in the northern United States during the American Civil War period, and argues that such contributions should be interpreted as having a significant influence on the nation’s development. Seeking political asylum in the United States after the failed European democratic revolutions of 1848, German radicals settled mainly in cities and in the modern-day Midwest. They established tightly-knit ethnic communities which, through their social infrastructure, facilitated intellectual and political growth for their inhabitants and became bases of mobilization for German immigrant involvement in American politics. Not all German-American radicals held the same goals for their adopted nation, but many saw the Civil War as a catalyst for the advancement of programs like labor rights, public education, and unconditional emancipation of slavery. However, a schism formed between radicals who pursued these goals through violent revolution on the front lines and those who practiced a form of “tempered radicalism” to fit more moderate native political views. This schism met its height during the presidential election of 1864, in which many hardline German radicals backed an opponent to Abraham Lincoln, Major General John C. Frémont. Ultimately, however, the tempered radicals prevailed, led by the pragmatic political maneuvering of community leaders like Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel. Though some historians interpret the defeat of the revolutionary radicals in 1864 as the end of German- American radical influence in American politics, this thesis proposes that such influence did not end, but instead shifted leadership and evolved into a more politically pragmatic form. Indeed, the radicalism of these German-Americans helped form the policy of the Federal government in the latter years of the Civil War the beginning of the Reconstruction Era. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... iii Introduction .................................................................................................................. v Chapter 1 Radicals in Exile.......................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Opportunity for Revolution ........................................................................ 26 Chapter 3 Harnessing Revolution ............................................................................... 55 Epilogue ....................................................................................................................... 80 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................ 86 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Reflecting on this work that I have completed, I view it as a milestone of my life thus far. Hardly any life is built by one person alone, however. Thus, I have many people I wish to thank for their kindness and care that they have given me over the long process of writing this thesis. First, I must thank the brilliant Dr. Bill Blair, who served as my thesis advisor through this process. Since my early days as a freshman in his HIST 130, he recognized the potential in me and encouraged me to pursue it and cultivate it. His patience, understanding, and encouragement through this year of work have enabled me to work harder and create things I never thought I had it in me to make. I must also extend my gratitude to my honors advisor, Mike Milligan. Even on a day where I appeared at his office a disheveled mess and determined that I would never make it at this whole thesis-writing business, he built me up and showed me that with confidence, an individual can reach the heights they hope for. Further in Penn State’s faculty, I am grateful for the patience of all my instructors over the past year who have understood the weight of my obligations and have worked with me to ensure my success in my classes. Indeed, I have all of Penn State to thank. This amazing university and lively community have given me so many opportunities to learn and expand my life. May no act of mine bring shame to one heart that loves thy name, and may my life but swell thy fame, Dear Old State. I would be nothing without my friends and family. My parents have shown me that I have the power to create whoever I wish to be. From my mother’s brilliance and my father’s ethics, I was given the tools to build my life. They have urged me forward through the entirety of this thesis. So too have my grandparents on both sides, my Aunt Tam, my Uncle Pat, and all the rest of the folks back home in Juniata County – they all helped foster a love of history in my iv childhood self. To my friends, I owe a debt I could never repay. Their loyalty and kindness kept me fighting even when things seemed bleak. Even the little things from them would help: getting dinner together, singing along to our favorite songs from Hamilton, or the off-hand encouragement posted on my Facebook wall. Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to my fiancée, Megan. She knows me and my mind like no one else in this world. Even when I stared at the blank screen and told myself I couldn’t do it, she told me she believed in me no matter what. She urged me to go on – to “write like I need it to survive.” Without her, none of this would have been possible. I can never claim full credit for the things I do in life – and I do not wish to. All the products of my life will be the sum of all the encouragement, hopes, and care of all the people who have believed in me, and for that, I willingly share the credit for my work with them. Thank you all for standing by me. I wish to dedicate this thesis not to one particular person, but to many people – the immigrants to this nation. From as far back as 1748 when Johannes Benner – my seventh great- grandfather – stepped off the ship in the port of Philadelphia, I am descended from immigrants. Almost everyone here is descended from immigrants who poured their life into this nation and its future. Let us never forget that. Let us welcome the next generation of immigrants – wherever they may be from – and let us grant them the American liberty of thought and political expression. v Introduction “Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschißen mit Pulver und Blei – Die Gedanken sind frei!” “No one know them, no hunter can kill them with powder and lead – thoughts are free!” “Die Gedanken sind frei,” 1848 liberal revolutionary song1 In the United States of the early twenty-first century, intense debate has arisen over the role of the immigrant in America’s cast of characters. While some would welcome the refugee of a far distant land, others would build a wall – a physical one and a rhetorical one – to keep them out. While some call for the celebration of America’s multiculturalism, others insist upon assimilation. This debate is not a new one; indeed, it is one that has been held amidst nearly every American generation since the nation’s birth. The immigration question has always been in the United States because immigrants have always been in the United States. In periods where this debate becomes heated and vitriolic, it is easy for some to forget the stories of how immigrant communities have helped shape the America of today. This is one of those stories. When German-speaking immigrants arrived in the United States in the early 1850s, they had left war, reprisal, and autocracy behind them across the ocean. They came to a land they had only read about, but nonetheless dreamed of. Carl Schurz, then a young political refugee taking asylum in England in 1851, reminisced years later about his calling to America. “The Fatherland 1 Mark Corwin, Words in World Literature, (Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 2012), 116-117. vi was closed to me. England was to me a foreign country, and would always remain so. Where, then? ‘To America,’ I said to myself.” He and his enclave of fellow refugees had no home to return to. The cause they had risked life and limb for – to build a united democratic nation for all Germans – had failed, and many of their comrades had fallen with it. But the United States was a beacon of new hope. “The ideals of which I have dreamed and for which I have fought I shall find there, not fully realized, but hopefully struggling for full realization. In that struggle I shall perhaps be able to take some part. It is a new world, a free world, a world of great ideas and aims. In it there is perhaps for me a new home.”2 For Schurz and thousands like him, the United States was a place to start anew. The Germans who fled the 1848 Revolution – the “Forty-Eighters,” as they were called – arrived in the United States at one of the most turbulent times in the nation’s history. Issues that were uncomfortably tolerated since the nation’s founding were now reaching the breaking point: sectional division, economic inequality, and the moral dilemma of a nation that proclaimed “that all men are created equal” yet held their fellow man as chattel. Though they were newcomers, these Germans were not content to sit quietly by and keep to themselves. They had already been considered political radicals back in Europe, and they brought that same vigorous radicalism with them to their new home.