The South … has never proscribed any man on account of his creed or race
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch June 11, 1863:
The Yankee Know Nothings.
A suggestive item of Yankee news has been published in this paper, which states that the Germans of New York have held a meeting and passed resolutions declaring “the continued abuse of the 11th Army corps, composed of Germans, which stampeded at Chancellorsville, to be chiefly attributed to the feeling of Know Nothingism, which prevails to a great extent in both Northern and Southern States.”
The Germans of the North, like the Irish, are beginning to find out that, at the bottom of their hearts, their Yankee taskmasters have no love for them, but only desire to use them for their own base purposes, and would have no hesitation in making them and other foreigners the victims of their intolerance and bigotry if the South were only out of their way. The ridicule heaped upon the retreating Germans at Chancellorsville is a significant indication of the real estimation which they are held in the North. Why is nothing said of the retreating Yankees? Were the Germans the only soldiers whom the resistless charge of our gallant troops drove from the field? So far from this is the fact, that in that battle, as well as every other Yankee defeat, from Manassas down, the Yankees have run not only faster than the Germans, but than any other people under the sun. The German and Irish troops have been the very best in their service, and if these were once out of the way, the Yankees would never be able to make another fair and square stand-up fight with the Southern Confederacy.
The Germans of New York are quite right in attributing the attack upon their soldiery to the feeling of Know Nothingism in the North; but they do not know what they are talking about when they say that it prevails to a great extent in the South as well as the North. It was the South which gave Know Nothingism its quietus, and, which saved the Germans and Irish from political and religious subjugation. That they should permit themselves to be made the instruments of subjugating their deliverers was both a crime and a blunder, and we trust their eyes will, ere long, be awakened to the fact. The South, which they are invading, has never proscribed any man on account of his creed or race; it has never rode priests on rails, or sacked churches or convents; nor does it intend to permit itself to be visited with impunity with outrages and wrongs from which it has protected others.
In April 1862 General O.O. Howardtook command of the 11th Corps. He had his right arm amputated after being wounded during the June 1862 Battle of Fair Oaks (he would eventually be awarded the Medal of Honor).You can read his account of the disaster at Chancellorsville (written 23 years after the battle) at Civil war Home. In summing up, General Howard could look back and be glad for the Union’s sake that at least Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded during the battle:
Stonewall Jackson was victorious. Even his enemies praise him; but, providentially for us, it was the last battle that he waged against the American Union. For, in bold planning, in energy of execution, which he had the power to diffuse, in indefatigable activity and moral ascendency, Jackson stood head and shoulders above his confreres, and after his death General Lee could not replace him.
