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From the Rhine to the Mississippi: Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War

From the Rhine to the Mississippi: Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War an drew zimmerman From the Rhine to the Mississippi Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War From within the common national, gradualist, and liberal narrative of emancipation, Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont’s August 30, 1861, proclama- tion freeing all the slaves of disloyal Missourians appears as a recklessly premature step threatening to derail the progress of freedom in the United States. Frémont’s proclamation, however, was not simply a misstep in the national process of legislating emancipation. Rather, it refl ected, and perhaps attempted to justify, extralegal processes of emancipation already taking place in the trans-Mississippi West. These were the self-emancipa- tory eff orts of slaves, the ongoing antislavery guerrilla warfare of Kansas Jayhawkers, and the military strategies of European, especially German, revolutionary socialists. This essay focuses only on the last group, the European socialists, to highlight how the Civil War, arguably the central turning point in U.S. history, was also an important episode in a larger revolutionary drama pitting plebian proponents of democracy against concentrations of wealth, whether of slaveholders or of capitalists, and also against concentrations of elite power in the limited, liberal state. Revolutionary émigrés gave Frémont’s command much of its political character. Anyone taking http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of the Civil War Era University of North Carolina Press

From the Rhine to the Mississippi: Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War

Zimmerman, Andrew
The Journal of the Civil War Era , Volume 5 (1) – Feb 5, 2015
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright @ The University of North Carolina Press
ISSN
2159-9807

Abstract

an drew zimmerman From the Rhine to the Mississippi Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War From within the common national, gradualist, and liberal narrative of emancipation, Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont’s August 30, 1861, proclama- tion freeing all the slaves of disloyal Missourians appears as a recklessly premature step threatening to derail the progress of freedom in the United States. Frémont’s proclamation, however, was not simply a misstep in the national process of legislating emancipation. Rather, it refl ected, and perhaps attempted to justify, extralegal processes of emancipation already taking place in the trans-Mississippi West. These were the self-emancipa- tory eff orts of slaves, the ongoing antislavery guerrilla warfare of Kansas Jayhawkers, and the military strategies of European, especially German, revolutionary socialists. This essay focuses only on the last group, the European socialists, to highlight how the Civil War, arguably the central turning point in U.S. history, was also an important episode in a larger revolutionary drama pitting plebian proponents of democracy against concentrations of wealth, whether of slaveholders or of capitalists, and also against concentrations of elite power in the limited, liberal state. Revolutionary émigrés gave Frémont’s command much of its political character. Anyone taking

Journal

The Journal of the Civil War Era – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Feb 5, 2015

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