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and as usual with cranks, he uses splinters of truth to build a forest of lies.
Here are his splinters of truth: large numbers of Germans had in fact emigrated to America before the Civil War, mainly to the North, and a great many native-born Germans fought in the Union Army (the Army of the Potomac's XI Corps, for instance, which was wrecked by Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville, was heavily comprised of German immigrants). But by this reasoning the author would have had a stronger case if he had blamed Irish Catholics for the Civil War. In fact this very logic would have enabled him to blame the real culprits, native-born protestant Americans, who did in fact hold the clear preponderance of military, political, and financial power throughout the United States, both North and South.
It is also true that influential German-Americans such as Franz Sigel and Karl Schurz were rewarded with political and military positions in exchange for their support, but again, this was just business as usual in the 1860s. To this day high political positions in the United States are often filled more on the basis of payment for services rendered than of merit; and in the huge volunteer armies of the Civil War era, high rank was freely dispensed to men who had wielded economic or political power in peacetime in exchange for their continued support of the administration in time of war, regardless of whether the man in question had any capability for commanding troops or not. But again, native-born American protestants got the lion's share of these prize plums.
It is also true that Marx supported the North -- as did the textile workers of Great Britain and the Tsar of Russia, and their support weighed far more importantly in Lincoln's mind than that of Marx, whom Lincoln had probably never even heard of. The statement that "Marx egged on the Union" to do anything whatsoever is complete nonsense. I defy anyone to present even one proof of how Karl Marx influenced policy in the Lincoln administration. You can't, because it's a crock. Karl Marx could have screamed his head off. He was a non-entity here, and Civil War America wasn't listening. The "communist communities" the author mentions were based on the ideas of Charles Fourier, not Karl Marx, and they certainly had none of the sinister tones associated with 20th-century Bolshevism/Stalinism/Maoism, etc.
And, yes, some of the Germans probably did intend to use the experience they were gaining on American battlefields to strike a future blow for their homeland. Some of the Irish certainly did.
But to state that the influence of Franz Sigel, Karl Schurz, and a million German immigrants would hold more sway than the majority of the native population of the United States over the mind of such a canny and expert politician as Abraham Lincoln, is complete and total crap. The author appears not to know that native-born Americans in the North volunteered in such huge numbers after the firing on Fort Sumter that they had to be turned away in droves because the government just didn't think it would ever have a need for that many men. Nor does he explain how the German Communists manipulated the South into secession and firing on Federal property. Nor does he explain how the German Revolution of 1848 or Karl Marx had anything whatsoever to do with the American secession crisis which dated back to 1833, nor with the slavery crisis that had been an issue of contention since at least the end of the American Revolution.
Your statement that "the civil war did not eliminate slavery, nor racism" is technically true, but it fails to recognize that major strides, for the time, did in fact occur in the years before and during the war. The existence and influence of men like John Brown and Thaddeus Stevens is proof of that.
Finally, while it is understandably difficult for white Southerners who are genuinely proud of their heritage (a pride which I can understand and respect, though I myself despise and abhor the Confederacy and everything it stood for), and for some Northerners who like to bitch about how the US government has been a nefarious evil empire since the day the first Englishman stepped off the boat, to come to grips with the fact that the Civil War was in fact fought primarily over slavery, that remains the primary reason why it was fought. Not the only reason; but slavery, like abortion or gun control in our own day, was the "hot button" emotional-moral issue that got everyone stirred up. Slavery, not business protectionism or tariffs, was what made folks crazy mad enough to pick up a gun and go shoot the other guy. Slavery and nothing else was the issue that tore Kansas apart in the 1850s. White Southerners lived in perpetual terror of a slave revolt, and the reason John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry freaked them out so bad was that it wasn't just a question now of a few pig-headed blacks going haywire, but of white men with brains and intellect leading the operation, backed by Northern money and political power. White Southerners at the time, even the majority who didn't own slaves, openly admitted that the whole issue, for them (As James B. McPherson shows in his book For Cause and Comrades), boiled down to making sure that even the trashiest white could consider himself better than a black man and, more crucially, to ensuring that black men wouldn't be sleeping with white women.
Those of you who doubt the visceral rage which the thought of black male/white female sex can provoke in some minds to this day, have obviously never been a white woman or a black man married to a person of the opposite race.
Francoise
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