Men of Principle: Gender and the German American War for the Union

According to historian's estimates, almost a quarter of all soldiers in the northern army of the American Civil War (1861-1865) had German roots. This article sets the collective emotional rush with which German Americans marshaled for war support  in a wider cultural context. While German immigrant men, of whom many were democrats, liberals  and early socialists, who were forced to leave Germany after the failed  democratic Revolution of 1848/49,  claimed to have fought for democratic ideals in the American Civil War, the growing number of German Americans settling in midwestern and western states inevitably contributed to the decimation of the Native Americans.