Roberto Santoro
You know, Italians are a people of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. They were able to divide also in the American Civil War, the partisans on the side of Lincoln, the Bourbons under the banner of General Lee. And the Hero of Two Worlds? Serious danger of being appointed chief of the Mounties
Blue Books should have the patience to read them. "Anger and pride" was declassified in anti-Islamic pamphlet when in fact contains many stories that explain what stuff was made Oriana Fallaci and how much he loved our country. The book speaks of ancient and modern, Salvemini who arrives in New York to warn Americans by Fascism, and Italian volunteers who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. On one side, convinced Garibaldi to defeat slavery, on the other Bourbon filopapisti which espoused the Confederate cause. The memoirs of Garibaldi is one of the most vital (and fun) historical and literary documents of our Risorgimento. They are fragments of everyday life, reflections on life, love and war, a witness that can sometimes get sick of rhetoric, but always retains an element of truth becomes tradition and reason for teaching the younger generation.
The history of Italians in the Civil War has a solid basis in research done by George Waring who in 1893 published the first detailed memorandum on the "Garibaldi Guard", the volunteers lined up with the Union. The historian Frederick
Phisterer resumed this issue in his essay "New York in the War of the Rebellion," published in 1912, describing the community of Italians in New York in the second half of the nineteenth century. They had arrived in America, through poverty, in search of peace and freedom. They had their schools and their newspapers ("The Echo of Italy"), a dense network of solidarity that grew thanks to a more far-sighted partisan than others - Francesco Casale - capable of promoting education and defend the rights of the child Italian-American workers. All this material was collected and elaborated by John Pellicano in 1996 in "Conquer or Die: The Thirty-Ninth New York Volunteer Infantry," an essay devoted to the red shirts who fought in America the cry of "Win or die."
Back in New York. Garibaldi was already in the fifties, before the Civil War. In America it was considered a living legend, almost a reincarnation of General Washington. He lived in the home of Antonio Meucci, the Tuscan scientist inventor of the telephone. Liked his adventurous life and republicanism convinced. The editor Horace Greeley wrote in the Tribune, New York: "Garibaldi is known worldwide as the hero of Montevideo and the defender of the Roman Republic. It is a man of character who is put at the service of freedom. "
summer of 1861, the Union believed to have victory in his pocket and Washington was still alive so carefree when it came as a blow to the news of the defeat of Bull Run. The Confederates had routed the army of General McDowell and sent marching to the capital. Among the winners of the first battle of Bull Run as the more we find former partisans Wheat, an intrepid adventurer Virginian who commanded the "Louisiana Tigers." Among the losers instead there are the Italians of the thirty-ninth, the Garibaldi Guard, who had fought alongside the first freed African Americans. Garibaldi would not hesitate to lead this troop mixed as in South America had already had his orders to soldiers of all races.
During the Civil War the thirty-nine officers and 269 soldiers lost in action, among the wounded, but mainly due to of diseases and infections. A large number of them ended up prisoners and remembers Count Luigi Palma di Cesnola, who, ended up in Southern jails, he fought for recognition of the rights of prisoners of war. A monument at Gettysburg has brought success to companies in the thirty-ninth, "this regiment - the inscription - about seven o'clock in the afternoon of July 2, 1863 was ordered to give support to the line of General Sickles charge to take up arms to the enemy. A plaque marks the place where this happened. " Unfortunately, other stories circulating less glorious. John and Joseph falacia Rionese were two young emigrants landed in New York and enrolled in Pennsylvania. After a hasty trial were accused of desertion and sentenced to death. They were innocent but served to lead by example, anticipating the tragic fate of Sacco and Vanzetti.
Italian Volunteers of the Confederate army had landed in New Orleans by three ships from Europe, the Charles & Jane, "the" Oliphant "and" Elisabeth ". Bourbon soldiers were mostly former prisoners of war of the Piedmont. Three hundred were classified in the "Italian Legion" also known as the "Militia of Louisiana." At Winchester, the Confederates still crossed bayonets with the brothers of the Thirty-knives. Defeated them again and then they would contemptuously called "home-made Yankees" Yankee homemade. The Bourbons followed General Lee defeats between sudden and dramatic victories until the surrender of Appotomax. Among them was Sergeant John Garibaldi, the twenty-seventh Virginia, that his death was buried in the cemetery of Lexington near the monumental tomb of Lee. Was a Genoese and store dozens of letters written to his girlfriend remained in Italy waiting for him. John was married but happy ending was an isolated case of the Fourteenth Louisiana, the Confederate battalion which had served the majority of Italians after the war survived only two officers and twenty soldiers.
beginning of the Civil War Lincoln was desperate. He could not find officers to motivate the troops: "If General McClellan does not intend to use the military - snapped in front of the staff," I would like to have it on loan, hoping to figure out how to get him to do something. " Maybe that's why the president was thinking of Garibaldi as a beautiful Capataz Union. The diplomatic contacts between Washington, Turin and Caprera were long and complex, lasted a couple of years, but eventually the hero of two worlds did not take part in the conflict. Garibaldi had sensed that the war declared by the Union had as its objective, unique and indispensable, the liberation of slaves. It was rather a strategy pursued by some American states, to protect (and expand) the federal system out of the Constitution of 1789.
imposed war to defeat the industrial North and a political system more 'statist', while the Confederates had taken literally the spirit of the Declaration of Independence in 1776: "These United Colonies are, and right must be free and independent states ... and how free and independent states they have full power to make war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and complete all other Acts and Things which Independent States may rightfully do. " All these historical reasons, joined the egocentrism of Garibaldi, the request, made in no uncertain terms to Lincoln, to assume its full functions as commander in chief of the Union Army. The American president would never give this power to a foreign general.
"A few days after setting up Bull Run was one of the strangest and most adventurous diplomatic missions in U.S. history," wrote the New York Times pointing out the main characters and extras of that correspondence between the White House and Caprera. Those engaged in this spy-story American Freemasons are old and Garibaldi, comrades of the General and the upper echelons of the presidential cabinet. The U.S. Secretary of State Seward Garibaldi tried to convince himself to accept the offer, reminding him that it was "a citizen with U.S. passport" and "a friend of freedom." The "North American Review" published an editorial titled enthusiastic tone, "Giuseppe Garibaldi". The general, flattered, he asked his old friend Augustus Old to write a letter of thanks to the newspaper. The Old Colonel outdid himself by announcing that the Americans most important result of the victory of Lincoln was the emancipation of blacks "from America to the Antilles."
Now he enters the console James Quiggle, a lawyer and politician from Pennsylvania in the odor of Freemasonry. In Italy with his wife, Quiggle sickly sends letters to Garibaldi comparing it to the Marquis de LaFayette (one of Europe sympathizers who fought with the colonies against England during the American War of Independence). "There are hundreds of thousands of Italians and Hungarians who will follow in his footsteps," wrote the consul invited Garibaldi to leave for the U.S.. Quiggle in the vision of the Italian Risorgimento, the movement of liberation Balkan, the cause of the Union, all belonged to the same historical and cultural climate. They were events that marked the birth of modern states created by a liberal political elite and educated thanks to the decisive of the masses. The consul general and they exchanged several letters on the subject but the question of Garibaldi was always the same: "James, tell me if this war will lead to the emancipation of the blacks or not."
admired Garibaldi and the abolitionist John Brown who had rebelled against slavery by force of arms: "Every man is like myself - said the general - I'm like any other man." Instead Brown has been described by historians as a lunatic who believed he was God's instrument on Earth to eradicate slavery. On 16 October 1859, at the head of a band of followers, seized the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, hoping to provoke a large-scale slave uprising blacks. The plan failed and Brown was captured and executed. Ascended the scaffold, made a last appeal for emancipation from slavery. According to the philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson's death made "the gallows glorious as the Cross" and Brown "a new saint awaiting martyrdom".
Lincoln, Seward and the superiors of the Republican Party were not the same idea. They feared the likes of Brown and regarded them as simple criminals. In a letter of June 4, 1861 Quiggle writes Garibaldi "emancipation is not the intent of the federal government." On 22 July, the White House issued the "Crittenden Resolution" asserting that the war's objective was the maintenance of the Union (not the subversion of anti-slavery). A year before Lincoln became president on a platform that recognized in every state of the Union the right to control its internal institutions, including slavery. Things would change gradually. At the end of '61 passed amendments against slavery which was abolished in the District of Columbia and in the West. In 1862 the "confiscation Act granted freedom to slaves who belonged to the defeated Southerners owners. On January 1, 1863 Lincoln proclaimed the emancipation itself. Garibaldi blessed the American president calling it "Pilot of the Liberty."
The Civil War broke out for material interests rather than ideals and reasons would not solve the issue of racial integration. Winning, however, was a crucial step in the economic and social modernization of the United States. Secession had undermined one of the cardinal principles of the United States, the Jacksonian ideal that identifies the Union with the nation, freedom and democracy. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln revisited this scheme mystical tones of preserving the territorial integrity of the United States would show the world that the government began to experiment in 1776 was still valid, battered but functioning.
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