Adjutant’s Call - November 2021
Circular Memorandum #530 - November 2021
“Radical Warrior: August Willich” Presented by David Dixon
David Dixon earned his M.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts in 2003. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and magazines. Most focus on Union sympathizers in the Civil War South.
David spoke at the 2016 Sacred Trust Talks in Gettysburg and has delivered nearly 100 talks to audiences across the country. He appeared on Civil War Talk Radio and other podcasts. He hosts B-List History, a website that features obscure characters and their compelling stories. You may download free pdf versions of his published articles on that website at www.davidtdixon.com.
David’s latest book is the biography of German revolutionary and Union General August Willich and was published by the University of Tennessee Press in September 2020. It highlights the contributions of more than 200,000 German-American immigrants to the Union effort in the Civil War. Transatlantic radicals like Willich viewed the war as part of a much larger, global revolution for social justice and republican government.
His current project is a biography that highlights the role of emotions in Southern allegiance in the Civil War.
Radical Warrior: August Willich
Radical Warrior: August Willich’s Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General (University of Tennessee Press 2020) is the biography of a Prussian army officer who renounced his nobility and joined in the failed European revolutions of 1848. He emigrated to America, edited a daily labor newspaper in Cincinnati, and became one of the most accomplished generals in the Union Army. This story sheds new light on the contributions of 200,000 German-Americans who fought for the Union in the Civil War.
In an age of global social, economic, and political upheaval, transatlantic radicals helped affect America’s second great revolution. For many recent immigrants, the nature and implications of that revolution turned not on Lincoln’s conservative goal of maintaining the national Union, but on issues of social justice, including slavery, free labor, and popular self-government. The Civil War was not simply a war to end sectional divides, but to restore the soul of the nation, revive the hopes of democrats worldwide, and defend human rights.