Germans in the Civil War

Germans in the Civil War PDF Author: Walter D. Kamphoefner
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558

Get Book Here

Book Description
German Americans were one of the largest immigrant groups in the Civil War era, and they comprised nearly 10 percent of all Union troops. Yet little attention has been paid to their daily lives--both on the battlefield and on the home front--during the war. This collection of letters, written by German immigrants to friends and family back home, provides a new angle to our understanding of the Civil War experience and challenges some long-held assumptions about the immigrant experience at this time. Originally published in Germany in 2002, this collection contains more than three hundred letters written by seventy-eight German immigrants--men and women, soldiers and civilians, from the North and South. Their missives tell of battles and boredom, privation and profiteering, motives for enlistment and desertion and for avoiding involvement altogether. Although written by people with a variety of backgrounds, these letters describe the conflict from a distinctly German standpoint, the editors argue, casting doubt on the claim that the Civil War was the great melting pot that eradicated ethnic antagonisms.

Germans in the Civil War

Germans in the Civil War PDF Author: Walter D. Kamphoefner
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876593
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 558

Get Book Here

Book Description
German Americans were one of the largest immigrant groups in the Civil War era, and they comprised nearly 10 percent of all Union troops. Yet little attention has been paid to their daily lives--both on the battlefield and on the home front--during the war. This collection of letters, written by German immigrants to friends and family back home, provides a new angle to our understanding of the Civil War experience and challenges some long-held assumptions about the immigrant experience at this time. Originally published in Germany in 2002, this collection contains more than three hundred letters written by seventy-eight German immigrants--men and women, soldiers and civilians, from the North and South. Their missives tell of battles and boredom, privation and profiteering, motives for enlistment and desertion and for avoiding involvement altogether. Although written by people with a variety of backgrounds, these letters describe the conflict from a distinctly German standpoint, the editors argue, casting doubt on the claim that the Civil War was the great melting pot that eradicated ethnic antagonisms.

The History of the German Settlements in Texas 1831-1861

The History of the German Settlements in Texas 1831-1861 PDF Author: Rudloph Leopold Biesele
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781571688576
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Forty-Eighters on Possum Creek

The Forty-Eighters on Possum Creek PDF Author: W. A. Trenckmann
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1933337869
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Forty-Eighters of Possum Creek: A Texas Civil War Story is a departure for State House Press. This remarkable work of vintage historical fiction focuses on the life of one young man, Kuno Sartorius, who grows up and comes of age in a community of educated German immigrants during the waning months of the Civil War. Author William Trenckmann serialized the novel in his newspaper, Das Bellville Wochenblatt [The Bellville Weekly]. His novel, Die Lateiner am Possum Creek is one of the few works of fiction to treat the plight of the minority Texas Germans during the war. However, it is more than a German story, and provides vignettes of all aspects of life, and of all classes in Texas, on both the home front and the Trans-Mississippi theater. Throughout are the young men from all walks of life brought together by Confederate conscription and facing the same hardships of war. Expertly translated and annotated by James C. Kearney, this novel becomes a shadow memoir of the American Civil War. The educated German settlers of Millheim had fled their native land because of strife and revolution, choosing the bucolic life on the Texas frontier over the sophisticated university towns of Germany. Their children, though, faced uncertainties of their own as Texas seceded and joined the Confederacy and depended on all military aged men to do their part in a cause few Germans in the neighborhood cared for, and to perpetuate slavery which most abhorred. Kearney’s notes help the reader navigate the story, and reveal the “story behind the story.”

German Pioneers on the American Frontier

German Pioneers on the American Frontier PDF Author: Andreas Reichstein
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
ISBN: 9781574411348
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
Wilhelm Wagner (1803-1877), son of Peter Wagner, was born in Dürkheim, Germany. He married Friedericke Odenwald (1812-1893). They had nine children. They emigrated and settled in Illinois. His brother, Julius Wagner (1816-1903) married Emilie M. Schneider (1820-1896). They had seven children. They emigrated and settled in Texas.

Why Texans Fought in the Civil War

Why Texans Fought in the Civil War PDF Author: Charles David Grear
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603448098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Why Texans Fought in the Civil War, Charles David Grear provides insights into what motivated Texans to fight for the Confederacy. Mining important primary sources—including thousands of letters and unpublished journals—he affords readers the opportunity to hear, often in the combatants’ own words, why it was so important to them to engage in tumultuous struggles occurring so far from home. As Grear notes, in the decade prior to the Civil War the population of Texas had tripled. The state was increasingly populated by immigrants from all parts of the South and foreign countries. When the war began, it was not just Texas that many of these soldiers enlisted to protect, but also their native states, where they had family ties.

Turning Germans Into Texans

Turning Germans Into Texans PDF Author: Matthew D. Tippens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984357208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
Here is the first full-scale discussion of the impact of World War I on ethnic Germans in Texas. Germans were among the first settlers to Texas, and contributed greatly to the growth of the state in the fields of business, religion, music, agriculture, ranching, and cultural activities. Despite such accomplishments, German Texans became the targets of an anti-German hysteria during World War I. In the lead up to America's entry into the war, German Texans were subjected to intense scrutiny. After the United States declared war against Germany in April 1917, the response to German-Texan activities lost all sense of proportion to the danger. Simply being German or using the German language aroused suspicion. In the state, people tarred and feathered, beat, and whipped German Texans. Based on extensive archival research, author Matthew D. Tippens details how the attackers intended to turn Germans into Texans using whatever means necessary. Following the war, the strive for "100% Americanism" by groups such as Ku Klux Klan continued the assault. Despite the years of attacks, by 1930, German-Texan culture, though not unscathed, proved that it had survived the war and would continue for several more decades.

Big Wonderful Thing

Big Wonderful Thing PDF Author: Stephen Harrigan
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292759517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 944

Get Book Here

Book Description
The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.

A New Land Beckoned

A New Land Beckoned PDF Author: Chester William Geue
Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Com
ISBN: 0806309814
Category : Genealogy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this volume, using the best research techniques of the historian--that of going to the source documents--Chester W. and Ethel H. Geue set out to better understand the German movement to Texas.

The Material Culture of German Texans

The Material Culture of German Texans PDF Author: Kenneth Hafertepe
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 162349382X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner, 2019 San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation Book Award, sponsored by the San Antonio Conservation Society Foundation German immigrants of the nineteenth century left a distinctive mark on the lifestyles and vernacular architecture of Texas. In this first comprehensive survey of the art and artifacts of German Texans, Kenneth Hafertepe explores how their material culture was influenced by their European roots, how it was adapted to everyday life in Texas, and how it changed over time—at different rates in different communities. The Material Culture of German Texans is about the struggle to become American while maintaining a distinctive cultural identity drawn from German heritage. Including materials from rural, small town, and urban settings, this masterful study covers pioneer generations in East Texas and the Hill Country, but also follows the story into the Victorian era and the early twentieth century. Houses and their furnishings, churches and cemeteries, breweries and businesses, and paintings and engravings fill the pages of this thorough, informative, and richly illustrated volume. Recent decades have seen a sharp increase of the study of vernacular architecture (which can range from traditional building to ethnic expressions to landscape ensembles) and an intensified study of American furniture and other decorative arts. Incorporating these vernacular and decorative arts methods and building on the works of cultural geographers, curators, and historians, The Material Culture of German Texans offers a definitive contribution that will inform visitors to the region as well as those who study its history and culture.

The American Civil War in Texas

The American Civil War in Texas PDF Author: Johanna Burke
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 9781615324729
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book discusses Texas history during the Civil War (1861-1865) when Texas voted to join the Confederacy.