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

German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era. By Alison Clark Efford. (New York and other cities: Published by Cambridge University Press for the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., 2013. Pp. x, 267. Paper, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-107-47608-0; cloth, $95.00, ISBN 978-1-107-03193-7.)

At the unveiling of the statue of General Franz Sigel in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, speakers "linked his battle to preserve the United States in the 1860s to his efforts to unify Germany in 1848" (p. 1). No one, however, acknowledged that the German republic that Sigel had envisioned was not the authoritarian empire created in 1871. Unmentioned were his antislavery beliefs and his support for African American voting rights. Alison Clark Efford offers what she terms a new interpretation of whites' uneven promise to African Americans for citizenship that ascended to a zenith in 1870 and plunged dramatically thereafter. She argues that "the activities of German Americans...