Carl Schurz and the Waning of Minority Rights in 1870s America
Dr. Julius Wilm (SFB 1199)
Abstract
The Rhinelander and 1848 revolutionary Carl Schurz (1829-1906), who became known as an anti-slavery activist and republican politician in the USA during the Civil War era, is still widely regarded today as an integral figure of German-American friendship. Numerous accolades emphasize that Schurz, throughout his life, stood up for the principles of democracy and the equality of all people.
The Leipzig historian and expert on 19th-century U.S. history, Dr. Julius Wilm, presents a more nuanced view of Schurz’s later positions, drawing on his new book »Ein deutscher Revolutionär im Amt: Carl Schurz und der Niedergang der Minderheitenrechte in den USA der 1870er-Jahre«.
As U.S. senator, Schurz fought against the protections of African-American civil rights in the southern states, which he had previously favored. As U.S. secretary of the interior, he also introduced a policy of forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples and even ordered the starving of rebellious Indigenous people. The talk frames the presentation of Schurz’s 1870s turn against equal minority rights with contemporary critiques.
This live-streamed lecture is a cooperation between American Studies Leipzig, the German-American Institute Saxony and the Carl-Schurz-Haus in Freiburg.
Bibliographical Note
Dr. Julius Wilm (Leipzig University)
Julius Wilm is a postdoctoral researcher at the SFB 1199 “Spatialisation Processes under Conditions of Globalisation” at the University of Leipzig. After his doctorate in Anglo-American history at the University of Cologne with a thesis on land donation programmes in the USA before the Civil War, he taught at the Universities of Copenhagen and Lucerne, among others. In 2019/2020, he was a Gerda Henkel Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital History at the German Historical Institute Washington and at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. As a fellow in Washington, he developed a digital project on the Homestead Act, with a special focus on the impact of the Act on Native Americans in the western United States between 1863 and 1912.