“Damned Dutch”: St. Louis Germans in the Civil War Era

“Damned Dutch”: St. Louis Germans in the Civil War Era Kay Witkiewicz College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Florida When the German radical leader Friedrich Hecker Ultimately, these ubiquitous social influences contributed immigrated to St. Louis, Missouri in November 1848, to St. Louis Germans‘ widespread activism on behalf of the following a failed attempt at establishing a democratic Union during the Civil War. Also, since many Germans republic in his home state of Baden during the revolutions immigrated to the United States for economic reasons, in the German states that year,1 he described St. Louis as joining the Union war effort offered direct and indirect an up-and-coming city with a ―colorful mix of people, economic benefits, such as bounties, government contracts, where the Indian, the Negro, the Greek, the lively and protection of the free white labor market. Nonetheless, Southerner, and the calculating Yankee all flock together.‖2 the German element in St. Louis was not monolithic. As While social and political upheaval spurred Germans like varied as Germans‘ reasons for immigrating to St. Louis Hecker to immigrate to the United States, many also sought were, so were their political and economic motivations refuge in America to escape poverty in their native states. once they arrived in the city. While some acted fervently In fact, from 1840 to 1860, about 90% of all German political, others appeared apolitical; while some firmly emigrants settled in the United States, nearly 1.4 million in established themselves as urban residents, others only all.3 The growth of the city of St. Louis coincided with this sought to earn enough money in the city to purchase land wave of German immigration. Between 1840 and 1850, the and raise a farm in the countryside. The purpose of this total population of St. Louis grew almost five-fold to paper is to show how the various political and economic 77,860 inhabitants, making it the sixth most populous city interests of German immigrants to St. Louis led them to in the United States at midcentury.4 Over half of these support the preservation of the Union during the Civil War. inhabitants were foreign-born, most with German roots.5 Furthermore, far-reaching interpersonal relationships, Influenced by their oppressed social, political, and German social organizations that fostered ethnic economic experiences in the German states and by the cohesiveness, and the Republican ideology expressed by American democratic tradition, St. Louis Germans state politicians were key in eliciting St. Louis Germans‘ emerged as a politically active community by the 1850s. devotion to the Union cause. Since German-Americans made up almost one-third of First, it is crucial to examine conditions in the German the city‘s population in 1850, their party affiliation and states in order to understand why so many Germans came support for state and federal politicians had major to America, and especially to St. Louis. Although Germans implications for Missouri politics. Although certainly not left from a multitude of states, the emigration waves united on the political front, many St. Louis Germans between 1840 and 1860 hit particular regions especially backed Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton and his state hard. The southwest German states of Württemberg, faction of the Democratic Party, which opposed the spread Baden, and the Palatinate, the Prussian provinces of of slavery. However, with the decline of Benton as a viable Westphalia and the Rhineland, and the Hesse-Cassel region state and national politician in the mid 1850s, Germans‘ furnished a significant number of emigrants to the United political sympathies gradually shifted toward the free-soil States during that time.6 Affected by rural overpopulation, movement, and ultimately the Republican Party, led locally fluctuating grain prices, high land prices, and increasing by Benton‘s protégé Frank P. Blair, Jr. By 1860, St. Louis industrialization without much protection for laborers, the was the banner city of Republicanism in a pro-slavery lower middle class—namely farmers, agricultural workers, border state because the tenets of the Republican Party industrial laborers, artisans, and journeymen—and the were more ideologically and practically compatible with peasantry made up the majority of German refugees to the German-American vision of the United States as a America.7 The available land in many German states could democratic country that safeguarded the socio-economic no longer support families who needed to engage in both advancement of free whites. agriculture and protoindustry in order to survive. For Aiding this transition in political affiliation, the Anzeiger example, international competition, primarily from Britain, des Westens, the leading German-language newspaper in and the rise of mechanized linen production caused rural St. Louis, and its prominent editor Heinrich Börnstein linen-weaving—Westphalia‘s primary protoindustry—to mobilized his St. Louis ―landsmen‖ by appealing to their decline beginning in the late 1830s, leading many to German roots and the American promise of freedom. emigrate in the mid-1840s.8 Furthermore, bad harvests, Furthermore, German immigrants settled in significant such as the blights of potatoes and Prussian grains, numbers across St. Louis, and did not concentrate in a beginning in 1845, caused food prices to soar.9 Compared distinct neighborhood in the city. Hence, in addition to the to July 1845, the price of potatoes increased 425%, the Anzeiger, various social organizations fostered ethnic prices of rye and wheat increased about 250%, and the cohesiveness and encouraged political discourse. price of barley increased 300% in the Prussian Rhineland University of Florida | Journal of Undergraduate Research | Volume 10, Issue 3 | Summer 2010 1 KAY WITKIEWICZ in July 1847. Concomitantly, wages remained sticky, while and social aims, the failure to coordinate the national unemployment and underemployment increased primarily government with the states‘ governments, and indecision due to growing industrialization.10 Furthermore, numerous about German territorial sovereignty, exacerbated by bread riots and the Berlin Potato Revolution in April, regional differences, proved the demise of the Frankfurt during which a hungry mob pillaged a Berlin market place Parliament. Even violent attempts at a second revolution— and stoned the royal palace of the king‘s brother, most notably in Baden where Hecker and other characterized the spring and summer of 1847.11 Depraved revolutionaries sought to establish a democratic republic— economic conditions played a prominent role in the could not overcome legislative impotence as Prussian revolutionary upheaval in 1848 and 1849, which further forces, buoyed by the parliamentary deadlock, quickly contributed to German emigration. subdued the agitators.17 The upheaval of 1848 and 1849 As market failures made personal and institutional was effectively over, and for many Germans unhappy with bankruptcies unavoidable, Germans expected their the outcome, emigration—to the United States or respective state governments to respond with protective elsewhere—became an attractive option. measures to curtail the widespread economic hardship. The failure of the revolution is often credited with However, instead of fulfilling Germans‘ expectations of inciting the tremendous waves of German immigration to vigorous intervention on their subjects‘ behalf, states the United States in the 1850s. Certainly, a significant reacted complacently and with violent repression, such as number of German liberals and intellectuals, disgruntled when Prussian police forces beat back rioters during the with the outcome at Frankfurt, left for the United States— Potato Revolution.12 Spurred by the economic crisis, Hecker among them—but most German migrants during liberal-minded Germans also opposed unresponsive state that time likely were not politically motivated. Instead, governments and called for sweeping political reforms. By most Germans ventured across the Atlantic for economic March 1848, revolution, albeit unevenly, had spread reasons. Already poor and destitute—in part due to throughout the German states, most prevalent in urban increasing industrialization, rural overpopulation, and the areas and regions in transition from protoindustrialization economic crises of the mid-1840s—and with government to full-scale industrialization.13 relief unlikely, many lower- and middle-class Germans Unlike a year earlier, state governments did not repress from both rural and urban areas scrounged together the large-scale demonstrations and popular petitions. Instead, money necessary to move to America, where economic in what has been described by one historian as a ―collective opportunity abounded. loss of nerve,‖ rulers conceded to the popular will and German migrants to the United States, and St. Louis in promised reform.14 Elections for the German national particular, generally traveled along one of two routes via parliament in May 1848, in which every independent adult steamship. Leaving northern Germany, the journey began male could vote, became the proving ground for reformers. in Bremerhaven with stops in Virginia and Maryland, Assembled in Frankfurt‘s Paulskirche, several positions down the Ohio River to Cincinnati, and then on to St. were evident. Among the liberal-minded Germans, liberals Louis. Leaving southern Germany, the journey began in Le distinguished themselves from democrats. Generally,

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