The core sources for this work are two German-language daily newspapers in St. Louis in which Anderson finds convincing evidence that German immigrants who arrived after the failed revolution of 1848 gave their political support to the free-soil wing of the Democratic Party. They first supported Senator Thomas Hart Benton until his death in 1858 and then became the rank and file of the city’s Republican Party. Deeply antagonistic toward Know Nothing nativism and eager to demonstrate their trustworthiness as voting citizens, St. Louis Germans aligned themselves with the platform of conservative Republican Frank Blair, who opposed the extension of slavery and linked future emancipation with the colonization abroad of African Americans. Anderson finds that German hostility toward slavery was pragmatic, without the moral imperative of abolitionism. Germans embraced Blair’s slogan of free soil for free white men and advanced their own interests by embracing whiteness not racial equality.
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