uppity (German) Polish porter
I don’t want to minimize the Civil War, but this story reminds me of modern sports fans trying to come to grips with losses by their favorite sports teams. How could it be? Here a southern newspaper deals with the undoubted federal victory at Mill Springs by placing the blame on foreigners and a southern traitor.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch January 30, 1862:
Renegade Southerners.
The Federal press announce that one of the successful Federal Generals at Somerset, Thomas, is a Virginian, and the other, SchÅpff [Schoepf], a foreigner, who came to this country as a porter, and has had the good luck to rise to his present position.
Thomas (or Schoepf) on his high horse?
So far as Thomas is concerned, if he be a Virginia, he is not the only renegade from this Commonwealth who has stained his hands in the blood of her children, but we marvel that the Yankees should take pride in having such allies. It ought to be far more gratifying to their national ambition to gain successes — if they can — by Yankee leadership. Their expectations, however, in that line, have not as yet been eminently fortunate. There are plenty of Southern traitors, according to their own accounts, in their camps, who however false to their native land, will fight at any rate, and all the harder perhaps because they are fighting against their own kindred, and naturally hates a land which gave birth to such monsters as themselves. The man in the North who sympathizes with the South may still be faithful to his own section, and is probably its most intelligent friend. It is not his home that is invaded, nor any of his interests that are assailed. But we have no words to express our detestation and scorn of the Southern citizen who can side with the North against his own section in a war upon the land which gave him birth, upon its firesides and altars, upon its women and children. Must not the blood that is shed, the blood of his brethren and countrymen, stain his guilty soul and haunt his evil imagination like the blood of murder! Out upon the wretches! We have never heard even of Yankees, in the whole career of their baseness, joining an invading army, for the desolation and defilement of their own homes, with the single exception of Benedict Arnold, who was a prodigy of virtue in comparison with these Southern traitors.
Mill Springd aftermath
As for the foreign General, with the unpronounceable name, who was associated with Thomas at Somerset, and who is said to have risen from the position of porter to that of General, we consider it very doubtful whether any such exchange of avocations can be properly designated as promotion. An honest German porter at a hotel is a much more respectable character than a Yankee General of an invading army, especially an army of Ohioan, who, according to Judge Tucker, have nothing beneath them on the face of the earth but their own swine. It is of such materials, however, that the great bulk of the invading army is composed. At least two hundred thousand foreigners are arrayed under the banner of Lincoln, and endeavoring to subjugate a country which gave them refuge from despotism, and to enslave a people who were their best friends.
According to Wikipedia Albin Francisco Schoepf was already a military officer by the time he emigrated to the United States.
(un)true in blue?
benign Benedict (compared to Thomas)
