Forty-Eighters in Baltimore: German Revolutionaries and their Political Ideologies, 1858-1865

Abstract

Forty-Eighters were a significantly influential subsect of the German immigrants community in Baltimore in the 1805s, particularly because of their radical belief in the abolition of slavery. This was especially the case in Baltimore, where Carl Heinrich Schnauffer published a radical Republican newspaper called The Baltimore Wecker. The Wecker was representative of the values and ideologies held by Forty-Eighters in Baltimore, and often symbolized the development of their community. Throughout the 1850s, Forty-Eighters grew as a formidable political sect in Baltimore, culminating in the Pratt Street Riots, when their meetings space and The Wecker office were attacked by Confederate mobs. In this thesis, I argue that because Forty-Eighters were able to develop as a community in Baltimore due to their formidable newspaper publications and commitment to community organizing, they shaped the German American political landscape.