Historically, Italians have been in strong contraposition every time the nation faced problems or decisions. This is an ancient fault. Guelfi and Ghibellini disputed the power in the Italian cities of the XII and XII century in the name of the Pope or the Emperor and Italians have continued on this way through the centuries.
The nation had been divided also about the American Civil War. They were important years also for Italy. In November 1860 Abraham Lincoln won his bid in the race for the US presidential election. In the same year, on the 5th of May 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi moved with one thousand volunteers towards Sicily with the intention of conquering the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the largest of the Italian states before unification.
Lincoln’s Troubles and the Italian Revolutionary Hero
The Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in April of 1861, and the Kingdom of Italy had been proclaimed just a month before. Italians should have been tired of war after years of insurrection attempts against the Austrian Empire and two wars for independence but they found enough strength to run towards the US.
New York already had a strong Italian community complete with its own newspaper and schools. Garibaldi had been in the City as guest of the Italian inventor Antonio Meucci. Americans already knew Giuseppe Garibaldi and for some he was a hero. The New York Tribune edited by Horace Greeley mentioned him and some years later a postmaster from as far as Oregon named a little town on the Pacific Coast in honor of Giuseppe Garibaldi.
After the first months of war, Lincoln had great difficulty with his generals. They were incapable of moving against the Confederate Army. It is possible that the Italian General could have been helpful with this, in particular for his great capacity to motivate men.
There were several different diplomatic correspondences between the White House and Caprera, the little isle of Sardegna where Garibaldi lived, involving the American consul in Italy, James W. Quiggle, the minister to Belgium, Henry Shelton Sanford and George Perkins Marsh, first American minister to the new kingdom of Italy.
The Decision to Recruit Giuseppe Garibaldi
The decision to recruit one of the most popular revolutionary warriors of those times was made some days after the Union Army’s defeat at Bull Run on the 21st of July 1861.
Garibaldi, the liberator of Southern Italy and general of the red shirt, should have been offered the rank of Major General, a rank that only the President could have given to Garibaldi. The negotiation produced no results. Garibaldi asked for a clear declaration from the US Government that the war’s objective was the abolition of slavery. Lincoln did finally declare it some years later with the Gettysburg Address, on the 19th of November 1863.
Nevertheless, from Italy two divided factions decided to take part in the civil war.
The “Garibaldini” in New York formed the Garibaldi Guard, the 39th New York Infantry Regiment that fought on the Union side with the same Italian flag used in the battle of 1848-49 in Italy. On the opposite side soldiers and volunteers from Italy joined General Lee’s Army. Most of them came from the Kingdom of Two Sicilies Army. They were prisoners of war from the Kingdom of Sardegna and were forced to move to New Orleans after the Garibaldi expedition in south Italy. There was also a brigade in the Confederate Army named Garibaldi but they changed their name in 1862.
Italians fought each other several times. They are a part of the history of the Civil War and remembered as good soldiers in Gettysburg and Lexington. Ironically, John Garibaldi, no relation to the most famous Giuseppe, who served on the 27th Virginia Infantry Regiment, the Stonewall Brigade, is buried in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery.
Sources:
-Alfonso Scirocco, Garibaldi: Citizen of the World, Princeton University Press, 2007
-Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero, Yale University Press, 2007
-Denis Mack Smith, Garibaldi, a great life in brief, Greenwood Press, 1982
-Cassani Emanuele, Italiani nella guerra civile americana (1861-1865), Prospettiva Editrice, 2006
-Della Peruta Franco, Garibaldi tra mito e politica, in “Studi storici”, a. XXIII (1982), n. 1
-Campanella A. P., Garibaldi e gli Stati Uniti d’America, in Garibaldi generale della libertà. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Roma 29-31 maggio 1982, a cura di: Ministero della Difesa, Roma, Ufficio Storico SME, 1984
Alessandro Mastrorocco - Alessandro earned his masters degree in Political Science from Milano State University where he now serves as a research assistant, ...
