The American Civil War: A Radical, International Revolution
What were the international dimensions of the American Civil War? Why did political refugees, from the failed European republican revolutions of 1848, end up in America, where they were among earliest and most zealous volunteers to the Union banner? Were their motives, like those of mainstream Republicans, including Lincoln: or, were not merely to preserve the Constitutional Union, but to eradicate the Southern slave aristocracy, and validate the principles of democratic republican government? How big was the impact of these refugees on Union victory, considering that German-born soldiers alone numbered about 200,000 men, not to mention Irish, and other European natives? David Dixon’s talk will help us expand our view of America’s most momentous conflict, beyond the standard, parochial narrative of North versus South, and help us understand the war as a global event of huge import. You should not miss this meeting.

Mr. David Dixon
David Dixon earned his M.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts in 2003. His first book, The Lost Gettysburg Address, published in 2015, told the unusual life story of Texas slaveholder Charles Anderson, whose speech followed Lincoln’s at Gettysburg, but was never published. David has spoken at Gettysburg National Military Park’s Sacred Trust Talks, appeared on Civil War Talk Radio, and has presented to more than sixty Civil War Round Tables from coast to coast. He hosts B-List History, a website that features obscure characters and their compelling stories at www.davidtdixon.com. David’s next book, Radical Warrior, to be published by the University of Tennessee Press in September 2020, is the biography of German revolutionary and Union General, August Willich. His current project is a biography that highlights the role of emotions in Southern allegiance in the Civil War.