German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era

ISBN-13: 9781107031937 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 278 str.

Alison Clark Efford

Opis

This study of Civil War era politics explores how German immigrants influenced the rise and fall of white commitment to African-American rights. Intertwining developments in Europe and North America, Alison Clark Efford describes how the presence of naturalized citizens affected the status of former slaves and identifies 1870 as a crucial turning point. That year, the Franco-Prussian War prompted German immigrants to reevaluate the liberal nationalism underpinning African-American suffrage. Throughout the period, the newcomers approach to race, ethnicity, gender, and political economy shaped American citizenship law."

Recenzje

'Efford does an excellent job of thinking about ethnicity in connection with race and gender and shows how Old World ideology was used as a prism for New World politics. Moreover, Efford convincingly demonstrates that the Forty-Eighters and influential newspaper editors helped shape German immigrant communities' political sensibilities and, by extension, exerted some influence on the Republican Party. Where many scholars of Civil War era ethnicity historically have taken a hagiographic and monolithic view of specific ethnic groups, Efford's analysis is refreshingly nuanced and thus highly recommended.' Anders Bo Rasmussen, The Journal of the Civil War Era

Spis treści

Introduction: naturalized citizens, transnational perspectives, and the arc of reconstruction; 1. The German language of American citizenship; 2. The 'freedom-loving German', 1854–60; 3. Black suffrage as a German cause in Missouri, 1865; 4. Principal rising, 1865–9; 5. Wendepunkt: the Franco-Prussian War, 1870–1; 6. The Liberal Republican transition, 1870–2; 7. Class, culture, and the decline of reconstruction, 1870–6; Epilogue: the Great Strike of 1877; Appendix: voting tables; Bibliography.