David Dixon on "The American Civil War: A Radical, International Revolution"

For more info: WWW.ChicagoCWRT.org

On October 8th historian David Dixon will talk about an aspect of the Civil War not often discussed--”the role of foreign, German transplants”--based on the life of one of those immigrants, August Willich. Dixon's latest book, Radical Warrior: August Willich's Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General (on which this talk is based) is the biography of a Prussian army officer who renounced his nobility and joined in the failed European revolutions of 1848. He emigrated to America, edited a daily labor newspaper in Cincinnati, and became one of the most accomplished generals in the Union Army. This story sheds new light on the contributions of 200,000 German-Americans who fought for the Union in the Civil War. In an age of global social, economic, and political upheaval, transatlantic radicals helped affect America's second great revolution. For many recent immigrants, the nature and implications of that revolution turned not on Lincoln's relatively conservative goal of maintaining the national Union, but on issues of social justice, including slavery, free labor, and popular self-government. The Civil War was not simply a war to end sectional divides, but to restore the soul of the nation, revive the hopes of democrats worldwide, and defend human rights. David Dixon earned his M.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts in 2003. His first book, The Lost Gettysburg Address, told the unusual life story of Texas  slaveholder Charles Anderson, whose speech followed Lincoln's at Gettysburg, but was never published. It turned up 140 years later in a cardboard box in Wyoming. David has presented to more than sixty Civil War Round Tables from coast to coast. He hosts B-List History, a website that features obscure characters and their compelling stories at www.davidtdixon.com. David's latest book, published by the University of Tennessee Press, is the biography of German revolutionary and Union General August Willich. His current project is a biography that highlights the role of emotions in Southern allegiance in the Civil War.