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Chancellorsville and the Germans
Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory
Christian B. Keller
$70.00
ISBN: 9780823226504
Book (Hardcover)
Fordham University Press
244 pages
June 2007
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"Chancellorsville and the Germans is an important corrective to the prejudiced charges against the 11th Corps and the Germans in the Battle of Chancellorsville. Showing by exhaustive research in primary sources that these accusations were unwarranted, he has finally laid to rest misinformation about the battle and the German-Americans."—Hans Trefousse, Brooklyn College and City University of New York
"A fine contribution to the military and ethnic history of the Civil War."
—Stephen Engle, Florida Atlantic University
"Discusses the events and aftermath of the May 1863 battle, in which the Union Army's Eleventh Corps, a force largely composed of German-speaking volunteers, was routed by Confederate troops; documents the role of nativism in criticism of the corps and explores responses in the German-American community."
—The Chronicle of Higher Education
". . . Superbly-written and detailed . . . Keller outlines with a clarity which few have done before him . . ."—Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy Often called Lee’s greatest triumph, the battle of Chancellorsville decimated the Union Eleventh Corps, composed of large numbers of German-speaking volunteers. Poorly deployed, the unit was routed by “Stonewall” Jackson and became the scapegoat for the Northern defeat, blamed by many on the “flight” of German immigrant troops. The impact on America’s large German community was devastating. But there is much more to the story than that.
Drawing for the first time on German-language newspapers, soldiers’ letters, memoirs, and regimental records, Christian Keller reconstructs the battle and its aftermath from the German-American perspective, military and civilian. He offers a fascinating window into a misunderstood past, one where the German soldiers’ valor has been either minimized or dismissed as cowardly. He critically analyzes the performance of the German regiments and documents the impact of nativism on Anglo-American and German-American reactions—and on German self-perceptions as patriots and Americans. For German-Americans, the ghost of Chancellorsville lingered long, and Keller traces its effects not only on ethnic identity, but also on the dynamics of inclusion and
assimilation in American life.
| CHRISTIAN B. KELLER is Associate Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Belvoir, VA. He is co-author of Damn Dutch: Pennsylvania Germans at Gettysburg. |
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