DOCSLIB.ORG

Friedrich Franz Karl Hecker, 1811–1881 Part II Kevin Kurdylo

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Friedrich Franz Karl Hecker, 1811–1881 Part II Kevin Kurdylo Volume 19 No 2 • Summer 2010 Friedrich Franz Karl Hecker, 1811–1881 Part II Kevin Kurdylo As the 150th anniversary of the begin- was convinced that the contract of ning of the Civil War approaches, we the Union could not be broken by a will examine the role German-born minority of states,2 and he believed immigrants played during that histori- firmly that each man should take cal era. The first section of this article on Friedrich Hecker (Spring 2010) his place according to his abilities. examines his career in Europe before Because he felt Sigel was the more he came to this country. This section experienced and competent soldier, focuses on his activities in America. he was prepared to do his part as an infantryman if need be. There were ealizing that Lincoln’s elec- others, including some of his promi- tion as president meant an nent German-American friends, end to compromise on the who felt Hecker should lead his own Rissue of slavery, southern states began troops. to secede from the Union in the first In May of 1861, without Hecker’s months of 1861. Propelled by the knowledge (though capitalizing on same strong beliefs he held during his reputation), recruitment had be- the Revolution of 1848, the fifty-year- gun in Chicago for what was called Colonel Friedrich Hecker old Hecker answered Lincoln’s call the 1st Hecker Jäger [Hunter] Regi- to arms, and he crossed the Missis- ment, later known as the 24th Illinois and not enough privates, and a severe sippi River by rowboat to join Francis Volunteers, and Hecker was offered discipline problem, the latter exac- (Franz) Sigel’s 3rd Missouri Volunteer command of this regiment with the erbated by friction between Hecker Regiment—as a private.1 Hecker rank of colonel. At first he declined, and his subordinate officers. His de- still wishing that someone with bet- termination to have European-style ter leadership skills would be chosen, discipline and order were frustrated INSIDE but attestations of loyalty from Ger- when others would not fulfill the du- man-American soldiers and his own • Digitizing Immigrant Letters ties he gave them. Still wounded by idealism made him change his mind. • Europe’s Revolutions and the the defeat of 1848, Hecker was prone Whatever visions he may have had U.S. Civil War, Book Review to paranoia and explosive outbursts. of leading well-trained men commit- • 1917 Phrase Book He felt that nativist forces in the ad- ted to principles of the greatest good • Friends Annual Meeting ministration were responsible for his were soon shattered by grim realities. • Jewish Girls in Nuremberg lack of supplies, and that immorality The 24th Illinois, comprised pri- during the Nazi Years and laziness were rampant among the marily of German and Hungarian • Ads from Our Archives troops. After seven months, Hecker immigrants, suffered from lack of • Friends Profile: resigned command of the 24th Il- support and supplies, continuous Pamela Tesch linois and returned to his farm, once orders to march, too many officers • Farewell to Dr. Henry Peters Continued on page 4 DIRECTOR’S CORNER Greetings, Friends Tangermünde, with old city walls and lovely church towers. and Readers! Meanwhile, back in Madison, we ummer has finally come, and have completed some projects and for many of us this means are getting ready for the challenges a change of scenery. I will that lie ahead. The MKI’s twenty- Sspend a couple of months in Europe, fifth anniversary festivities were over including five weeks directing the more than a year ago, but I have just academic program of the Som- finished editing the volume of con- merschule Wust in Saxony-Anhalt, ference presentations from last April in the former eastern part of Ger- (2009), which will appear later this many. Check us out on the Internet year with Peter Lang under the title at <sommerschule-wust.de>. The Paths Crossing: Essays in German- school offers English classes taught American Studies. I am glad to see by a group of twenty native speak- the end of this, even though—all in ers of English who come from Great all—our quarter-century celebrations Britain as well as the United States; were a richly rewarding experience. our students range in age from 10 You will remember that the inten- to 75 or 80. But the entire program tion behind our conference was to includes much more: enough theater, illustrate the breadth of German- all kinds of research in the humani- music, art, sports, and other activities American studies and its interdis- ties and social sciences: history, eth- to overfill an entire summer. While ciplinary appeal. For this reason, nicity, language islands and bilingual- I am there I find plenty of interested we invited participants with a wide ism, immigration studies, historical audiences who want to know about range of interests: historians of vari- geography, music, folklore, etc. the activities of the MKI, and I, in ous kinds, geographers, Germanists, The contributions and traditions of turn, pick up lots of information that and more. We wound up with what German-speaking immigrants are an is useful for my projects at home. some might consider a really wild integral part of our country’s fabric, This is a great deal of fun but also mixture…but were pleasantly sur- lying so deep in America’s cultural very hard work—and I will certainly prised at how everything fit together undercurrents that they are often return to Madison at the beginning and how much everyone felt at home. overlooked: in our language, our of the semester quite ready to get Perhaps we should not be sur- cuisine, our attitudes, and our way back to the “normal” old grind. prised. After all, German-American of life. And studying the story of the studies today is actively involved in But I do get a wonderful change of Continued on page 15 scenery while in Wust. Here is a pho- tograph of the Romanesque village church in Wust (a village with 450 The Newsletter of the Friends of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies is published quarterly at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Submissions are invited and inhabitants), which stands directly should be sent to: across from our school building, an old manor house now used as an el- Kevin Kurdylo ementary school. The church, which Friends of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies 901 University Bay Drive, Madison, WI 53705 dates from ca. 1200, was damaged Phone: (608) 262-7546 in the Thirty Years War and rebuilt Fax: (608) 265-4640 thereafter in the Baroque style. And [email protected] about eleven kilometers away is the mki.wisc.edu larger and also picturesque town of maxkade.blogspot.com 2 REPORT Minnesota Center Digitizing Immigrant Letters Kevin Kurdylo n mid-May I was invited to take riences associated with migration. range of ethnic groups, revealing what part in a symposium hosted A preliminary model now avail- the groups have in common or what by the Immigration History able online features approximately is unique to each. As the IHRC elo- IResearch Center (IHRC) at the Uni- 35 letters (dated between 1880 and quently describes it, the project will versity of Minnesota. I was happy to 1960) written to and by immigrants be of interest to those “in an array of visit this important center in our field in North America. The letters are fields related to migration, history, of studies, and to learn about their drawn from six collections held in literature, language and linguistics, significant and ambitious new project the IHRC’s archives and represent geography, communication studies, to digitize and make accessible let- writings in Italian, Finnish, Latvian, anthropology, sociology, and other ters written in languages other than Ukrainian, and Croatian. They were fields . as well as a general audience English that were exchanged in the chosen because they succeed in con- that will appreciate the very personal years between 1850 and 1970 by im- veying strong emotional content in and often vivid stories the letters tell.” migrants in America and their loved their descriptions of the life-altering This is a challenging and undeniably ones who remained behind. The proj- emigration experience. Five to seven richly rewarding project. Ethical is- ect’s goal is to transcribe and trans- letters have been selected from each sues of “reading another person’s mail” late samples of such foreign-language collection, and each has been digi- remain important, and, while tran- letters, which are held in archives in tized, transcribed, and translated. scription and translation will occupy North America, Europe, and Asia. The Web pages include historical a great deal of time and effort, simply An interactive and contextual Web background and contextual infor- locating the letters may be a daunting site will be developed to encourage mation on the letter-writers, their task. Libraries, archives, and institutes the preservation and use of these and migrations, homelands, and lives, as are easy to identify and contact, but other letters by diverse audiences, well as the locations in which the let- how do we gain access to all those let- including teachers, students, family ters were originally written. Letters ters held in family collections, bound historians, and genealogists. by those writing in the German lan- with ribbon and stored in boxes in The letters reveal the very hu- guage—as well as many others—will attics and closets? man side of globalization during a be included in years to come. As the The IHRC’s pilot project may be period when pen, ink, postal ser- digital resources grow, researchers viewed at vices, and steamships provided the will be able to compare and contrast <http://ihrc.umn.edu/research/dil/ primary means of communication migration experiences across a broad index.html>.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Annals of Iowa for Their Critiques
    The Annals of Volume 66, Numbers 3 & 4 Iowa Summer/Fall 2007 A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY In This Issue J. L. ANDERSON analyzes the letters written between Civil War soldiers and their farm wives on the home front. In those letters, absent husbands provided advice, but the wives became managers and diplomats who negotiated relationships with kin and neighbors to provision and shelter their families and to preserve their farms. J. L. Anderson is assistant professor of history and assistant director of the Center for Public History at the University of West Georgia. DAVID BRODNAX SR. provides the first detailed description of the role of Iowa’s African American regiment, the 60th United States Colored Infantry, in the American Civil War and in the struggle for black suffrage after the war. David Brodnax Sr. is associate professor of history at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois. TIMOTHY B. SMITH describes David B. Henderson’s role in securing legislation to preserve Civil War battlefields during the golden age of battlefield preservation in the 1890s. Timothy B. Smith, a veteran of the National Park Service, now teaches at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Front Cover Milton Howard (seated, left) was born in Muscatine County in 1845, kidnapped along with his family in 1852, and sold into slavery in the South. After escaping from his Alabama master during the Civil War, he made his way north and later fought for three years in the 60th U.S. Colored Infantry. For more on Iowa’s African American regiment in the Civil War, see David Brodnax Sr.’s article in this issue.
    [Show full text]
  • State and Local Immigration Regulation in the United States Before 1882
    BENJAMIN J. KLEBANER STATE AND LOCAL IMMIGRATION REGULATION IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1882 The absence of significant federal regulation in the area of immigration legislation until 1882 1 no more denotes a laissez-faire approach in this area than in many other aspects of American economic life. For many generations Congress had left the task of regulating the immigrant stream to the states and localities.2 The first general federal law (1882) is best understood in the context of antecedent activity on the local level. Eventually most of the seaboard states, including many without an important passenger traffic, enacted statutes dealing with immi- gration. Table I presents a brief outline of their essential features. After a consideration of certain aspects of the provisions of these laws, their administration in the major seaports will be surveyed. It will then be shown how the increasing opposition by business inter- ests to state legislation, culminating in decisions by the Supreme Court declaring such regulation unconstitutional, eventually paved the way for the 1882 Act of Congress. I. THE STATUTORY BACKGROUND Nine of the thirteen colonies reflected in their enactments the desire to protect the community from the burden of foreigners likely to 1 Federal space and sanitation requirements, however, date back to 1819. Federal legis- lation is conveniently compiled in U.S. Immigration Commission, Reports, vol. XXXIX (Washington, 1911). Cf. John Higham, Strangers in the Land (New Brunswick, N. J.; Rutgers University Press, 1955), p. 44. This article does not discuss legislation enacted in a number of states which barred foreign convicts. - The author acknowledges with gratitude the many helpful suggestions made by Professor Carter Goodrich, who super- vised his doctoral thesis "Public Poor Relief in America, 1790-1860" (Columbia University, 1952) from which much of the material for this article is taken.
    [Show full text]
  • GERMAN IMMIGRANTS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, and the RECONSTRUCTION of CITIZENSHIP, 1865-1877 DISSERTATION Presented In
    NEW CITIZENS: GERMAN IMMIGRANTS, AFRICAN AMERICANS, AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF CITIZENSHIP, 1865-1877 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Alison Clark Efford, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2008 Doctoral Examination Committee: Professor John L. Brooke, Adviser Approved by Professor Mitchell Snay ____________________________ Adviser Professor Michael L. Benedict Department of History Graduate Program Professor Kevin Boyle ABSTRACT This work explores how German immigrants influenced the reshaping of American citizenship following the Civil War and emancipation. It takes a new approach to old questions: How did African American men achieve citizenship rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments? Why were those rights only inconsistently protected for over a century? German Americans had a distinctive effect on the outcome of Reconstruction because they contributed a significant number of votes to the ruling Republican Party, they remained sensitive to European events, and most of all, they were acutely conscious of their own status as new American citizens. Drawing on the rich yet largely untapped supply of German-language periodicals and correspondence in Missouri, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., I recover the debate over citizenship within the German-American public sphere and evaluate its national ramifications. Partisan, religious, and class differences colored how immigrants approached African American rights. Yet for all the divisions among German Americans, their collective response to the Revolutions of 1848 and the Franco-Prussian War and German unification in 1870 and 1871 left its mark on the opportunities and disappointments of Reconstruction.
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliography
    BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL ISSUES RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHY FIORANI, ELEONORA. Friedrich Engels e il materialismo dialettico. Feltrinelli Editore, Milano 1971. 272 pp. L. 3000. Engels's Anti-Diihring, Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy and Dialectics of Nature are the writings most elaborated upon by the author, who, refuting efforts to draw a line between Marx and Engels as regards their later followers, stresses Engels's contribution to Marxism. She argues that his contribution to dialectical materialism is still important for a clarification of topical issues, and makes some comments on the vicissitudes of diamat in the USSR. A chronology of Engels's life and an annotated bibliography are appended. HARTMANN, KLAUS. Die Marxsche Theorie. Eine philosophische Unter- suchung zu den Hauptschriften. Walter de Gruyter & Co, Berlin 1970. xii, 593 pp. DM 78.00. The author of this learned study undertakes a re-appraisal of Marx's theory from a purely philosophical angle. He criticizes Popper's theses (and lack of understanding of Hegelianism), but his own refutation of Marxian views brings him closer to Popper's. It is denied that a dialectical process going on in reality could justifiably be made to fit in the chain of historical necessity. Besides Marx's more philosophical writings all his major works, especially Capital, come up for discussion. Interesting are the comments on Marxist and non-Marxist evaluations of our time (Sartre, Habermas etc.). WILDERMUTH, ARMIN. Marx und die Verwirklichung der Philosophic. Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1970. xii, 852 pp. (in 2 vols.) Hfl. 90.00. "The synthetic unity [of inter-subjective and object-related communications] constitutes the indissoluble process of the 'social movement', the total process of human self-reproduction.
    [Show full text]
  • University of New South Wales 2005 UNIVERSITY of NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Project Report Sheet
    BÜRGERTUM OHNE RAUM: German Liberalism and Imperialism, 1848-1884, 1918-1943. Matthew P Fitzpatrick A thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of New South Wales 2005 UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Project Report Sheet Surname or Family name: Fitzpatrick First name: Matthew Other name/s: Peter Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD. School: History Faculty: Arts Title: Bürgertum Ohne Raum: German Liberalism and Imperialism 1848-1884, 1918-1943. Abstract This thesis situates the emergence of German imperialist theory and praxis during the nineteenth century within the context of the ascendancy of German liberalism. It also contends that imperialism was an integral part of a liberal sense of German national identity. It is divided into an introduction, four parts and a set of conclusions. The introduction is a methodological and theoretical orientation. It offers an historiographical overview and places the thesis within the broader historiographical context. It also discusses the utility of post-colonial theory and various theories of nationalism and nation-building. Part One examines the emergence of expansionism within liberal circles prior to and during the period of 1848/ 49. It examines the consolidation of expansionist theory and political practice, particularly as exemplified in the Frankfurt National Assembly and the works of Friedrich List. Part Two examines the persistence of imperialist theorising and praxis in the post-revolutionary era. It scrutinises the role of liberal associations, civil society, the press and the private sector in maintaining expansionist energies up until the 1884 decision to establish state-protected colonies. Part Three focuses on the cultural transmission of imperialist values through the sciences, media and fiction.
    [Show full text]
  • Friedrich Hecker (I) - Jugend Und Politisches Wirken
    Friedrich Hecker (I) - Jugend und politisches Wirken Im Vorfeld des großen Heckerjubiläums am 28.09.2011 werden vier Folgen über das Leben und Wirken des Revolutionärs abgedruckt. Wir danken dem „Hecker- Autor“ Wolfgang Haaß für die Ausarbeitung der Kurz-Biografie. 2011 jährt sich zum 200sten Mal Heckers Geburtstag (28. September). Grund genug, sich einige Gedanken über den berühmten Eichtersheimer zu machen, der "eine Zeitlang tatsächlich der populärste Mann in Deutschland gewesen ist" (W. Blos). "Hecker war der erste demokratische Volksführer größten Stils in Südwestdeutschland" (E.R. Huber, Geschichtswissenschaftler) Hecker - ein großer Volksführer und Politiker? "Seht, da steht der große Hecker, eine Feder auf dem Hut, seht da steht der Volkserwecker, lechzend nach Tyrannenblut" (aus dem "Guckkastenlied vom großen Hecker"). Hecker - der Bürgerschreck? Wer war Hecker, worin lag seine Bedeutung? Aus seinem Leben ist meist nur die kurze Episode des gescheiterten Putschversuches im März 1848 bekannt, der mit dem Gefecht bei Kandern ebenso schnell wie unrühmlich endete. Und meist wird dieser Misserfolg zum) Anlass genommen, Heckers ganze Sache als gescheitert zu erklären. Tatsächlich jedoch hat Hecker in den Jahren als Abgeordneter der II. Badischen Kammer sehr viel zur Entwicklung freiheitlicher und demokratischer Ideen im Staat und im Volk beigetragen, die nach dem Scheitern der Revolution allerdings für .- einige Jahrzehnte "auf Eis gelegt" wurden, um erst in der Weimarer Republik und dann in der Bundesrepublik eine Fortsetzung zu finden. dass lange Zeit in der Geschichtsschreibung das Bild Heckers als das des politischen Romantikers und naiven Revoluzzers überwog, liegt nicht zuletzt daran, "dass Geschichte immer von den Siegern geschrieben wird" (Gustav Heinemann). Heckers Bedeutung als einer der Wegbereiter und Vorkämpfer unseres heutigen Verständnisses von Staat und Gesellschaft wird heute immer mehr erkannt.
    [Show full text]
  • Author Interview--David T. Dixon (Radical Warrior) Part 2
    H-CivWar Author Interview--David T. Dixon (Radical Warrior) Part 2 Discussion published by Niels Eichhorn on Thursday, September 24, 2020 Hello H-CivWar Readers: Today we feature the second part of our interview with David T. Dixon to talk about his new book Radical Warrior: August Willich’s Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General, which came out with the University of Tennessee Press. Part 1 Obviously, I completely agree with your attitude about giving more attention to European experiences of European immigrants. At the same time, Willich seems torn in Europe. In part he is something of an ideologue but he does have his military background and much of his 1848 work is military. Do you think of him more as a soldier or as a political reformer in Europe, especially in 1848? DTD: Willich certainly had a difficult time breaking away for his military career, but by 1847 he was so utterly consumed with the plight of working class people and the disregard of their welfare by the monarchs of Europe, that he dedicated himself to radical political and social change for the rest of his life. I see him as a far-left activist who believed that violent revolution in Europe by an armed citizenry was the only feasible path to a more just and equitable society. So, in that sense, his military training and skills, combined with strong leadership talents, made him well-suited for the rebellion that took place in 1848 and 1849. So, he sounds very similar to Karl Marx. How did the two get along with each other? DTD: Not well.
    [Show full text]
  • An Unpublished Letter of M.A. Bakunin to R.Solger
    Robert M. Cutler AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF M.A. BAKUNIN TO R. SOLGER* After Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin escaped from Siberian exile in 1861, he circumnavigated the globe en route to London, where he joined his friends A.I. Herzen and N.P. Ogarev. En route Bakunin travelled by boat from Yokohama to San Francisco, traversed the isthmus of Panama, and sojourned in New York and Boston before reembarking for England. Four decades ago Hecht wrote that there "is little record of Bakunin's stay in America",1 but Avrich has since established the general contours and many details of that record.2 An unpublished letter of Bakunin to Reinhold Solger, which lies among Solger's papers in the Library of Congress, sheds further light on Bakunin's activities in the United States in late 1861.3 Bakunin met Solger in Zurich in * I wish to thank Professor Margaret Dorsch for assisting in the decipherment of the manuscript and for suggesting alternative renderings in the translation. 1 David Hecht, Russian Radicals Look to America, 1825-1894 (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), p. 56. 2 Paul Avrich, "Bakunin and the United States", International Review of Social History, XXIV (1979), pp. 320-40, adds new material to Max Nettlau's account of Bakunin's passage through the United States, in The Life of Michael Bakounine. Michael Bakunin: Eine Biogra- p/u'e,3volsin2(London, 1896-99), l,pp. 139-40. Avrich also expands upon Hecht's treatment (which is from the standpoint of intellectual history) of the sojourn's influence upon the subsequent development of Bakunin's political thought, and he provides a detailed discussion of the influence of Bakunin's writings upon the development of collectivist socialist move­ ments in the United States towards the end of the nineteenth century.
    [Show full text]
  • Episode 210: Prelude to Cedar Creek Week of October 12-October 18
    Episode 210: Prelude to Cedar Creek Week of October 12-October 18, 1864 When Ulysses Grant took over command of all United States armies, he devised a plan to totally annihilate the Confederacy from multiple directions. While Grant and George Meade attacked Robert E. Lee and pushed him back toward Richmond, William Tecumseh Sherman would invade Georgia, Nathaniel Banks would attack Mobile, Alabama and Franz Sigel would invade the Shenandoah Valley, the Confederacy’s “breadbasket”. The Valley Campaign did not start well for the Union as Sigel’s troops were defeated at New Market in May by a Confederate army that included VMI cadets. Sigel was replaced by David Hunter. Hunter resumed the offensive in early June and pushed the Confederates all the way up the valley to Lexington, where Hunter burned most of the VMI campus. Hunter then turned his sites on Lynchburg, but he was headed off there by reinforced Confederate troops under Jubal Early. On June 18, Hunter withdrew into West Virginia. Robert E. Lee, concerned about the lack of supplies and food that would result from Union control of the valley, ordered Early to go on the offensive. He also wanted Early to provide a diversion to relieve the pressure Lee was feeling from Grant’s offensive. Early moved down the valley with little Union opposition and in early July moved into Maryland, defeating a Union force at Frederick. From there he actually reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, fighting a battle that concerned Abraham Lincoln so much that he watched it in person. Not being able to make more progress, Early withdrew back into Virginia, where he defeated the Union again near Winchester at the Second Battle of Kernstown.
    [Show full text]
  • German Immigrants in the Civil War”
    “Social Studies / History Activity” “Impact of German Immigrants in the Civil War” Background "I goes to fight mit Sigel" was the rallying cry of Unionist German immigrants during the Civil War. It was in Missouri that ethnic prejudice and political rivalry between immigrants and native-born citizens of the state led to military action. In the 1840s and '50s, many German citizens left their homes in Europe seeking freedom and democracy in America. Thousands began their new lives in St. Louis, where they established a strong cultural identity, founding German language newspapers and social organizations. Yet Germans realized that in order to be accepted by their fellow Americans they would have to assimilate to American (or English) traditions and practices. German Americans also developed strong anti-slavery and pro-Union views, believing that free labor and democracy were in direct conflict with the traditions of the South and the southern desire to expand slavery into the territories. When the Republican Party chose Abraham Lincoln as its candidate in 1860, the politically active St. Louis Germans comprised nearly all of Lincoln's support in Democratic Missouri. Many of their fellow citizens, immigrants from Tennessee and Kentucky, viewed the German immigrants with suspicion. As the Civil War approached, a rift existed between the state's slaveholders who supported the Democratic Party, and the commercially minded German Republicans of metropolitan St. Louis. Labeled as "Dutchmen" (the English corruption of Deutsche) by the non-Germans of Missouri, they were subject to prejudice that would ultimately have significant effects on the course of the Civil War.
    [Show full text]
  • Cartas a Un Buscador De Sí Mismo
    Todos hemos sentido alguna vez la llegada de un tiempo en el que todo tiembla y en el que necesitamos poner en cuestión cada aspecto de nuestra vida. Las convicciones políticas supuestamente asentadas se destruyen para crear otras nuevas, las normas sociales asumidas se revisan y se lucha por otras distintas, las metas existenciales se transforman de modo radical. Precisamente durante este proceso vital Harrison G. O. Blake escribe por primera vez a H. D. Thoreau para solicitar su consejo y su orientación hacia una vida más verdadera. Se inicia así una correspondencia intensa y reveladora, tan íntima como filosófica, que para muchos constituye el más claro equivalente moderno de las Cartas a Lucilio de Séneca. De carta en carta y durante trece años Thoreau le habla a Blake de cómo ganarse la vida, del coraje, del sexo, del trabajo, del amor, de la naturaleza, de la libertad, de la sociedad, de la política, de la moral, de la alimentación, de la disidencia, de la religión, de la soledad y de un tiempo pleno, donde la construcción de la subjetividad se labra a golpes de una desorientación gozosa, libre y salvaje. Décadas después de la muerte de Thoreau, un Blake anciano confesaba seguir leyendo y releyendo estas cartas, como si buscara aún en ellas una verdad esencial y recóndita: «Y, sin embargo, sé que estas cartas siguen viajando en el correo, que en cierto sentido aún no me han llegado, y probablemente no lo harán mientras viva. De hecho, puede decirse que estas cartas están desde siempre dirigidas a quien mejor pueda leerlas».
    [Show full text]
  • February 2021 Meeting Highlights
    BRUNSWICK CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE MEETING – March 3 , 2021 “SIGEL & BRECKINRIDGE: LESSONS IN LEADERSHIP FROM THE BATTLE OF NEW MARKET” SPEAKER: Sarah Kay Bierle “If your actions inspire others to dream of more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams Some historians and writers make hasty claims about the meaning of battles, the competency of generals, and leadership. They make their statements as if handing down the unvarnished word from on high. Sarah Kay Bierle presented a refreshing change of pace with her conclusions about leadership of Generals Franz Sigel and Breckenridge. In her honesty she admitted that their leadership qualities were those that appealed to her. Her modesty and earnestness earned our trust and her effective use of the Zoom platform our admiration. Much fought over during the Civil War, the Shenandoah Valley drew Sigel and Breckenridge together so that Sigel could deny the Valley’s victuals and soldiers to Lee in Richmond, and Breckenridge could retain the supplies and reinforce Lee. Both men came with a history. Sigel, a German immigrant respected by the German community, came with a German military academy background, a firm belief in education, experience as a writer and recruiter who attracted many soldiers from the German-American community, and experience in numerous battles where he lost, but successfully lead orderly retreats, no small feat in the heat of battle. He could both organize units and lead them in training. Decisive decisions, not so much. He repeatedly lost encounters such as the German rebellion he fought for in Europe, the second Battle of Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and the Valley versus Stonewall Jackson.
    [Show full text]