Abolitionizing Missouri : German immigrants and racial ideology in nineteenth-century America / Kristen Layne Anderson.
Anderson, Kristen Layne, 1979- author.
2016
F475.G3 A53 2016 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title Abolitionizing Missouri : German immigrants and racial ideology in nineteenth-century America / Kristen Layne Anderson.
Author Anderson, Kristen Layne, 1979- author.
ISBN 9780807161968 (cloth ; alk. paper)
0807161969 (cloth ; alk. paper)
9780807161982 (pdf)
9780807161975 (epub)
9780807161999 (mobi)
Published Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2016]
Language English
Description viii, 278 pages ; 24 cm.
Other Standard Identifiers 40025968884
Call Number F475.G3 A53 2016
Dewey Decimal Classification 305.8009778
Summary Historians have long known that German immigrants provided much of the support for emancipation in southern Border States. Kristen Layne Anderson's Abolitionizing Missouri, however, is the first analysis of the reasons behind that opposition as well as the first exploration of the impact that the Civil War and emancipation had on German immigrants' ideas about race. Anderson focuses on the relationships between German immigrants and African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri, looking specifically at the ways in which German attitudes toward African Americans and the institution of slavery changed over time. Anderson suggests that although some German Americans deserved their reputation for racial egalitarianism, many others opposed slavery only when it served their own interests to do so. When slavery did not seem to affect their lives, they ignored it; once it began to threaten the stability of the country or their ability to secure land, they opposed it. After slavery ended, most German immigrants accepted the American racial hierarchy enough to enjoy its benefits and had little interest in helping tear it down, particularly when doing so angered their native-born white neighbors. Anderson's work counters prevailing interpretations in immigration and ethnic history, where, until recently, scholars largely accepted that German immigrants were solidly antislavery. Instead, she uncovers a spectrum of Germans' "antislavery" positions and explores the array of individual motives driving such diverse responses. In the end, Anderson demonstrates that Missouri Germans were more willing to undermine the racial hierarchy by questioning slavery than were most white Missourians, although after emancipation, many of them showed little interest in continuing to demolish the hierarchy that benefited them by fighting for black rights.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-261) and index.
Series Antislavery, abolition, and the Atlantic world.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
Slavery must persist among us for many years yet: slavery and German immigrants, 1848-1854
Abolitionizing Kansas and Missouri: German attitudes toward slavery, 1854-1860
At the point of Dutchmen's bayonets: the early years of the Civil War
Für einheit und freiheit: the politics of emancipation
The perfect equalization of Blacks and Whites: the transition to freedom
Equal justice to all, without regard to color: the debate over Black suffrage.

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