Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America (Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World)

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 particularly at the ways in which German attitudes towards 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 get land, they opposed it.After slavery ended, most German immi