German Immigrants and African-Americans in Charleston South Carolina During Reconstruction Jeffery G
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 Ethnicity and Race in the Urban South: German Immigrants and African-Americans in Charleston South Carolina during Reconstruction Jeffery G. Strickland Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ETHNICITY AND RACE IN THE URBAN SOUTH: GERMAN IMMIGRANTS AND AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN CHARLESTON SOUTH CAROLINA DURING RECONSTRUCTION By JEFFERY G. STRICKLAND A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2003 Copyright 2003 Jeffery Strickland All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Jeffery Strickland defended on April 8, 2003. ______________________________ Neil Betten Professor Directing ______________________________ John Lunstrum Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Elna Green Committee Member ______________________________ Joe Richardson Committee Member ______________________________ Rodney Anderson Committee Member Approved: ________________________________________________ Neil Jumonville, Chair, Department of History _________________________________________________ Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii To Maria iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT I have many people to thank for supporting me throughout this entire process. Maria has offered emotional support and a voice of optimism. Professor Neil Betten has provided first-rate advisement since my arrival at Florida State University in fall 1998. Without him, I could not have accomplished this complicated study. Professor Elna Green taught me about the New South and the history profession. Professors Joe Richardson, Rodney Anderson, Valerie Jean Conner, Maxine Jones, Neil Jumonville, and Edward Wynot shared their valuable historical knowledge. Professors Robinson Herrera and Matt Childs provided scholarly and professional advice. The history department staff assisted with the bureaucracy. Florida State University students provided valuable feedback on their historical interests and helped motivate me to undertake this study. Finally, I thank my parents Don and Mary Anne; Don, Mike, Cindy, Stephen; extended family; and many friends for their patience and support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………………. vi Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………….. vii INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………. 1 1. GERMAN IMMIGRATION AND THE LABOR QUESTION……………………. 11 2. RACIAL AND ETHIC RELATIONS………………………………………………. 41 3. BUSINESS, RACE, AND ETHNICITY……………………………………………. 59 4. THE GERMAN SCHUTZENFEST: RACE AND ETHNICITY AT THE “PEOPLE’ S FESTIVAL”…………………………………………………... 73 5. THE GERMAN SCHUTZENFEST PARADE AND THE CULTURE OF WHITE SUPREMACY…………………………………………………….… 109 6. PUBLIC RITUALS IN THE URBAN SOUTH: AFRICAN-AMERICAN PARADES………………………………………………………………….... 127 7. GERMAN IMMIGRANT AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLITICS…………….. 149 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………….……………... 177 REFERENCES ……………………………………………………………………………... 183 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ………………………………………………………..……... 193 v LIST OF TABLES 1. Native-born White and German and Irish Immigrant Populations, 1860 to 1880…... 13 2. White and Afro-American Populations in Charleston, 1860 to 1880……………….. 13 3. German and Irish Immigrant Populations in Charleston, 1860 to 1880…………….. 14 4. Percentage of Merchant Population in Charleston by Nativity……………………… 61 5. Merchant Populations in Charleston by Sex………………………………………… 66 vi ABSTRACT Germans and African-Americans exhibited a significant degree of economic, social, and political interaction in Reconstruction Charleston. Race and ethnic relations between Germans and African-Americans tended to be more positive than those between blacks and white southerners and challenged southern social norms. During Reconstruction, a small but economically and politically significant community of German immigrants thrived in Charleston, South Carolina. The overwhelming majority of Germans in Charleston had immigrated between 1850 and the Civil War. They worked primarily as merchants, shopkeepers, and skilled artisans, but a minority of them worked as laborers, domestic servants, and other service-related occupations. Germans often lived in the same neighborhoods, buildings, and even households as African-Americans. Interracial relations between Germans and African-Americans challenged social conventions of the time and drew criticism from southerners. In several instances Germans and African-Americans entered into sexual relations and even married. Following the Civil War, some southerners and German elites in Charleston considered attracting German immigrants to stimulate the economy or replace black laborers. However, German immigrants lacked to desire to settle there, and southerners had hostile views toward German immigrants and never committed to a program that would successfully attract Germans to the South. Many Germans owned and operated successful businesses and sometimes they faced the scrutiny of southerners. Germans shopkeepers catered to African-American consumer demand vii and sometimes sold items to blacks on credit. German middle-class businessmen organized social clubs based on their cultural heritage. The German Rifle Club leadership organized its annual Schutzenfest, and the members invited southerners and African-Americans to attend. In the annual Schutzenfest parade, German elites expressed their willingness to become southern whites and contribute to white political ascendancy. African-Americans demonstrated their own political and martial power at Fourth of July and Emancipation Day parades in which the entire community participated in the procession. German and African-American political cooperation and conflict posed a tremendous problem for southerners. Southern whites called for German Democratic political support, but African-Americans appealed to Germans as well, evidence that Germans held moderate views. Throughout Reconstruction, Germans divided themselves between both political parties, but politically active Germans gradually moved toward the Democratic Party. viii INTRODUCTION Charleston was a cosmopolitan city during Reconstruction with thousands of German immigrants, African-Americans, white southerners, and others living and working side by side; all actively attempting to escape the postwar economic doldrums. In 1872, upon his arrival in Charleston, the well-traveled Stephen Powers, walked down to the Battery and noted, “The birth- place of the great rebellion still slumbered in the deep sluggard languor of Southern cities on a winter morning.” Powers remarked pejoratively, Charleston was a city, first, of idle ragged negroes, who, with no visible means of support nevertheless sent an astonishing multitude of children to school; second, of small dealers, laborers, and German artisans, starving on the rebel custom; third, of widows and children of planters, keeping respectable boarding-houses, or pining hopeless and unspeakable penury; fourth, of young men loafing in the saloons, and living on the profits of their mother’s boarding-houses; fifth of Jews and Massachusetts merchants, doing well on the semi-loyal and negro custom; sixth, of utterly worthless and accursed political adventurers from the North, Bureau leeches, and promiscuous knaves, all fattening on the humiliation of the South and the credulity of the freedmen.1 The city had not yet recovered from the impact of the war when the Panic of 1873 and subsequent depression devastated the feeble economy. During Reconstruction, a small but economically and politically significant community of German immigrants thrived in Charleston, South Carolina. These primarily middle-class immigrants lived throughout the city’s eight wards, but they tended to live nearby other Germans. The overwhelming majority of Germans in Charleston had immigrated between 1850 and the Civil War. They worked primarily as merchants, shopkeepers, and skilled artisans, but a minority of them worked as laborers, domestic servants, and other service-related occupations. Similar to those in other United States cities, Germans in Charleston exhibited more positive relations with African-Americans than southern whites because German immigrants had not been racialized in accordance with southern social norms. Germans and African-Americans lived in the same households, and in rare instances entered into sexual relations and even married. German shopkeepers catered to African-American consumers, sometimes extending goods on credit but more often conducting a cash business with them. In the aftermath of the war, African-Americans actively participated in the debate over the social, political, and economic course that had not yet been determined. Former slaveholders attempted to maintain control over their labor force and resisted the efforts of freedmen to act as independent wage laborers. Carl Schurz, a prominent liberal German immigrant and abolitionist, reported on the conditions in the South and emphasized that most southerners did not believe African-Americans would work as freedmen, and that southerners had already begun to legislate restrictive controls over African-Americans. Among the German Republicans in Charleston some participated in this debate and argued on behalf of African-Americans. Many northerners became increasingly disenchanted with