Originally Posted February 25, 2011 by Patrick Young, Esq
I wrote this fourteen years ago explaining my new series The Immigrants’ Civil War. I thought I would write twelve articles, but, by the time I finished, there were 250 of them. We will be republishing the articles over the next several months. Here is the intro:
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. The war ended slavery, gave citizenship to non-whites, and established the legal unity of the United States, albeit at bayonet point.
When asked who won the Civil War, one historian once reportedly quipped, “The American Booksellers Association.” New books on the ancient conflict are churned out monthly by respected publishing houses, university presses, and specialty publishers. And we should never forget that more books have been published on Abraham Lincoln than on any other American.
Yet, while whole forests have been cleared to fill the public’s need for new books on the conflict, comparatively little has been written about the role of immigrants in the Civil War.
Sure, there are many books of the ethnic pride sort that boast of the special accomplishments of this or that immigrant group, but the shelf of scholarly books on the immigrant experience between 1861 and 1865 is short indeed.
Hofstra University’s Library, for example, has more books on a single battle, Gettysburg, than it does on the hundreds of thousands of foreign-born soldiers who fought in the war. And there is almost no mention in the history books of the families the immigrants left at home to go fight for their new country.
That is why I am starting an in-depth series on the role of immigrants in the American Civil War.
In conjunction with the anniversary of the war, I intend to post at least one piece per month for the next four years on the Immigrants’ Civil War. The content will range from overviews of the different immigrant communities on the eve of war and the recruitment of foreign-born soldiers, to immigrant riots against the draft and relations between immigrants and newly freed African Americans.
You’ll learn about how the US Army dealt with non-English speaking soldiers, how Germans in Texas suffered for their opposition to slavery, and the peculiar position of Jewish immigrants in the South.
I’ll also tell you about the Latino immigrants who changed countries without ever moving out of their homes in New Mexico and how they helped keep slavery out of the West.
You will find out how men and women who were treated like second-class citizens before the fall of Fort Sumter assumed the ranks of defenders of their country, as they struggled to understand their place in a violently changing America.
I hope you’ll join me in learning about The Immigrants’ Civil War.
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