German Catholic Communalism and the American Civil War: Exploring the Dilemmas of Transatlantic Political Integration

TL;DRAbstract

Consider the dilemma of returning U.S. Civil War veteran George Hansen - German, Catholic, and American. Hansen had had what a later generation would term a “good war.” He had enlisted in Company G of Minnesota's Fourth Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the late autumn of 1861. He was a 23-year-old carpenter at the time, an active member of the younger crowd that, with its drinking, dancing, politicking, and institution-building, set the tone for German life in St. Cloud, the county seat of Minnesota's German and Catholic-settled Stearns County. He had been born in Obersgegen, Kreis Bitburg, under the shadow of the great, dismantled Luxemburg fortress at Vianden, as the youngest of six sons of a Napoleonic veteran, and was named Gregor after his godfather. His family may have regarded themselves as among the peasant elite in Germany and certainly quickly acquired security and status in America. His older siblings emigrated in 1852 to the stone quarry area near Joliet, Illinois, and three

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