🇺🇸 📖 **Civil War Settlers: Scandinavians, Citizenship, and American Empire, 1848–1870**
"_Associating American citizenship with liberty and equality, Scandinavian immigrants openly opposed slavery and were among the most enthusiastic foreign-born supporters of the early Republican Party. However, the malleable concept of citizenship was used by immigrants to resist draft service, and support a white man's republic through territorial expansion on American Indian land and into the Caribbean. Consequently, Scandinavian immigrants after emancipation proved to be reactionary Republicans, not abolitionists._"
🔗 https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/civil-war-settlers/FA57A6A7FAFBB55A40482369AEA61330.
#OpenAccess #OA #Academia #Nonfiction #Books #History #USA #UnitedStates #Scandinavia #Immigration #Migration
@bibliolater
I'm amazed that this interesting book is available for free download from Cambridge Core.
I know from other sources that the very idea of citizenship didn't really take hold in the US before the Civil War. Much internal strife in the Confederacy swirled around the draft and whether recent immigrants were subject to it. People resented recent arrivals who profiteered while many residents suffered.
The situation was probably similar in the North. I'm glad to have this book!