Conjuring Freedom: German Central Europe in a Global History of the American Civil War

The presentation will discuss the contribution of German communists to the revolution against slavery and the defeat of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. While the Lincoln administration and top Union generals developed a military strategy to restore the status quo antebellum in the Chesapeake Bay region, German émigrés in the Mississippi River Valley worked with enslaved African Americans and some native-born white people to create what Carl von Clausewitz termed “war by means of popular uprisings.” German communism shaped the course of the American Civil War, and the American Civil War, in turn, shaped German communism.

Andrew Zimmerman is Professor of History at The George Washington University.

Convened by UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and NC State, Departments of History, Center for the Study of the American South