“War strengthened a national sense of belonging.” 

By Niels Eichhorn

“IT IS NOT the joy over the defeated enemy, but the joy of overcoming weakness and discord which the past centuries bear sad witness to and whose painful feeling gradually faded away like a bad dream in the thunder of the battle . . . But let us also take comfort in their heroic strength and believe that the people who were capable of such victories are still moving towards a great future.”

These were the words of Prof. Dr. Diez at a banquet honoring Sedantag or Day of Sedan, a commemoration of the Battle of Sedan that took place during the Franco-German War of 1870/71, on September 2, 1895.

Like the original forms of Memorial Day in the United States (known initially as Decoration Day), Sedantag was never a recognized national holiday, but from its establishment in the 1870s to its falling out of fashion during the Weimar era, the day served as a reminder to the German people of the sacrifices of German soldiers to bring about the founding of the modern German nation state.

The Battle of Sedan did not end the Franco-German War; the conflict would continue a few more months until the French accepted defeat. However, the battle signaled the decline of the Second French Empire, birth of the Third Republic, as well as the emergence of a fully unified German nation state. In both Germany and France, the war strengthened a national sense of belonging. Both sides erected monuments to commemorate the soldiers who fought and died in the war. In that, there was nothing new or unique among the mid-19th century conflicts.

In our new book The Civil War in the Age of Nationalism, we illustrate that people everywhere, including in the United States, struggled with the same problems and came up with similar solutions. This essay will showcase this by looking at what we call the “three modernizing wars” of the mid-19th century, the Crimean War, American Civil War, and the Wars of German Unification (especially the Franco-German War).

Sandwiched between two deadly conflicts, the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Wars of German Unification from 1864 to 1871, the American Civil War was at a crossroads of military development. Modern industrial technology had dramatically advanced the manufacture of weapons, increased the range and speed of loading, increased the size of artillery projectiles, and changed the face of naval warfare; however, while the conflicts of the mid-19th century were modern in a sense of technology, they were backward looking in the tactical use of these weapons and the disposition of troops on the battlefield. In this sense, they marked a transition from the strategies and tactics of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars to the devastating conflicts of the 20th century.

Mass conscription and the advent of new technology meant the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars changed the face of warfare. But the conflicts also spread new ideas of nationalism, political freedom, and constitutionalism across the western world. This, however, was only the beginning of a process and many states remained in a proto-nationalist state with the contours of the nation still ill-defined.

The United States was no exception. The Declaration of Independence and war with Britain created a country; the constitution defined its political boundaries, but a national identity was lacking. Over the following decades, Northerners, Westerners, Southerners, minorities, and others contested the meaning of the United States. Southerners imagined a state-centered nationalism that eventually shattered the United States with the secession of South Carolina in 1860. The Civil War, emancipation, the Gettysburg Address, and the many legal changes during Reconstruction crafted a new nation with a new national, political identity. The very name “United States” went from the plural (“the United States are…”) to the singular form (“the United States is…”). 

What President Abraham Lincoln and his armies accomplished with blood and iron Otto von Bismarck brought about with the Prussian state in a series of three conflicts in the 1860s. Bismarck’s realpolitik had no qualms ignoring constitutional limitations when he outmaneuvered the Prussian Landtag in 1862 over constitutional and budget disagreements. Furthermore, to achieve his goal of aggrandizing Prussia, he had no problems dragging Austria as an ally into a war with Denmark and then turning around two years later to fight Austria for hegemony among the German states.

Similarly, Lincoln was willing to do anything to protect the country, including extending it westward, where his forces were no longer armies of emancipation and union, but armies of empire and, from a Native American perspective, genocide. Lincoln seemingly never considered the disconnect between his policies toward enslaved people in the south and Native people in the western parts of the country. Imperial expansion, however, was a common theme of nation-building during this period, as many western but also western hemispheric countries used this expansion to revitalize the nation and foster a national community of a certain set of people that excluded others. 

The process of defining a nation or the imagining of a national community was never an easy one. Wars certainly helped in the crafting of these imagined communities and the soldiers who died in the conflicts offered in their sacrifices — heroic figures as well as martyrs to the cause of the nation. Lincoln well understood this aspect of national imagining as demonstrated by his eloquent words at the opening of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, invoking the sacrifices of those who had died on the field to defend the United States. Talking about soldiers, Lincoln noted: “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it;” therefore, this was a conflict that would ordain the country with a new birth. This was a very religious language, but one that people in this era were extremely familiar with and invoked frequently, even if they may not have personally believed themselves.

But Lincoln’s famous words at Gettysburg were likely not entirely his own. Like many Americans, he had paid close attention to the events in Hungary in 1848 and 1849. The radical Hungarian independence leader Lajos (anglicized as Louis) Kossuth had delivered a powerful address on a battlefield, honoring the fallen heroes of Hungary, not unlike Lincoln at Gettysburg. More so, Lincoln’s famous word of the Gettysburg Address that this conflict would represent a rebirth of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” may well have been lifted or paraphrased a Kossuth speech to the Ohio legislature in 1852. Nevertheless, Lincoln and Kossuth were the leaders of their respective causes to create a new framework for their national community during an existential struggle—one was successful in life and the other not.

At the same time, Kossuth remained unreconciled to the defeat of Hungarian independence and continued to work on another revolution. He was not unlike many of the unreconciled rebels in the United States who kept the Confederate national identity alive in the decades following their defeat. Nevertheless, when Kossuth died in 1894, by which point Hungary had gained autonomy or self-rule and adopted extremely restrictive national and ethnic policies, akin to Jim Crow laws in the southern states of the United States, he was honored by a state funeral in Budapest.

Politician Julius Justh eulogized Kossuth, saying “In Louis Kossuth, we mourn one of the greatest, most honorable, and most selfless figures of history. He is not only our dead, but the dead of humanity . . . for the services of Kossuth were larger, worldwide in significance, immortal.”

In similarly grandiose terms did Massachusetts Senator, Charles Sumner eulogize recently slain President Lincoln noting: 

“Then will the Unity of the Republic be fixed on a foundation that cannot fail, and other nations will enjoy its security. The corner-stone of National Independence is already in its place, and on it is also inscribed the name of George Washington. There is another stone which must have its place at the corner This is the Declaration of Independence, with all its promises fulfilled. On this stone we will gratefully inscribe the name of Abraham Lincoln.”

Lincoln had helped imagine a new United States.

Of course, leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Lajos Kossuth, and others received statues and monuments to honor their work imagining and crafting new nation states. Their shrines would serve as symbols and foundations of the new nations they helped design. At the same time, as Lincoln so rightfully pointed out in the Gettysburg Address, it was not the generals and politicians any more who received all the cheers; but the common soldiers as well. Warfare had proletarized in the course of the 19th century.

The Crimean War altered British attitudes toward war veterans and gave birth to the quintessential “Private Smith” or “Tommy” of British folklore. The British had set the stage with this new remembrance when they created the Victoria Cross in the Crimean War to honor the bravery of soldiers in the face of the enemy and is awarded irrespective of rank. Over one hundred members of the British armed forces received this recognition. Mimicking the Victoria Cross, the United States created the Medal of Honor in 1862, which was also for bravery and awarded to the common soldier. These medal recipients were the martyrs and living monuments of the reimagined nation.

By the end of the 19th century, the United States government preserved a couple large battlefields for future generations. Some promoters of the creation of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park sold the project as an effort in reconciliation, but veterans had other ideas. The Scioto Gazette in Ohio succinctly summarized the situation: “It makes a true soldier’s blood boil to think of having those battle fields covered with Rebel Monuments.” Throughout the world in the hyper-nationalistic, imperial-militaristic age of the late 19th century, erecting monuments to past and recent heroes was a reminder to the present generations of the struggles their nation had faced and how to safeguard those accomplishments. Wars had and continue to help imagine and reimagine the nation states the world over, just like the American Civil War in the United States.

Niels Eichhorn is the co-author of The Civil War in the Age of Nationalism (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War). He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Arkansas and is interested in international aspects of the Civil War, including diplomacy. He has published articles on Civil War diplomacy in Civil War History and American Nineteenth Century History. His previous book is Liberty and Slavery: European Separatists, Southern Secession, and the American Civil War. He lives in Wels, Austria.