Franz Sigel

• 1. Introduction

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  Franz Sigel was born on the 18th of November 1824 in Sinsheim, in the German state of Baden, and by the time he died in New York City on the 21st of August 1902, his name had been attached to parks, streets, townships, and statues scattered across an entire continent. He was a revolutionary, a general, a teacher, a newspaper editor, and a politician. Soldiers who could barely speak English summed up their loyalty to him in a phrase that became a slogan and a song: "I'm going to fight mit Sigel." How did a Baden military cadet become one of the most politically significant Union commanders of the American Civil War? And why did the general his immigrant soldiers adored so consistently disappoint on the battlefield?

• 2. Revolutionary Beginnings

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  Sigel graduated from Karlsruhe Military Academy in 1843 and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the army of the Grand Duchy of Baden. He was one of a small number of professionally trained soldiers drawn into the orbit of revolutionaries Friedrich Hecker and Gustav von Struve. In 1847, he was wounded in a duel and retired from the army to begin law studies in Heidelberg. He never finished them.

  When the 1848 revolution broke out across Europe, Sigel found himself doing something few revolutionary leaders could: commanding troops. He organized a revolutionary free corps first in Mannheim, then in the Seekreis county, and rose to colonel of the Baden revolutionary forces. In April 1848, he led the "Sigel-Zug", assembling a militia of more than four thousand volunteers for a siege against Freiburg. His militia was defeated on the 23rd of April by numerically inferior but better-led forces of the Grand Duchy itself.

  By 1849, Sigel had become Secretary of War and commander-in-chief of the revolutionary republican government of Baden. He was wounded in a skirmish and had to resign his command, continuing as adjutant general to his Polish successor Ludwik Mieroslawski. When the Prussians crushed the revolution and Mieroslawski departed, Sigel led the surviving troops in their retreat to Switzerland. He eventually made his way to England, and in 1852 he crossed the Atlantic, joining the wave of German political refugees known as the Forty-Eighters.

• 3. Building Influence in America

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  Sigel taught in the New York City public schools after arriving in the United States. He married a daughter of Rudolf Dulon and taught at Dulon's school as well. By 1857, he had moved west to become a professor at the German-American Institute in St. Louis, Missouri, and in 1860 he was elected director of the St. Louis public schools.

  His influence in the Missouri immigrant community was already substantial when the national crisis came. In 1861, he openly declared his support for the Union side and for antislavery causes, pulling German immigrants toward both. President Abraham Lincoln was actively seeking exactly this kind of bridge figure. Sigel was commissioned colonel of the 3rd Missouri Infantry, a commission dating from the 4th of May 1861, and took part in the capture of Camp Jackson in St. Louis by Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon on the 10th of May.

  Lincoln promoted him to brigadier general on the 7th of August, to rank from the 17th of May, placing him among the politician-generals elevated early in the war for political as much as military reasons. The calculus was clear: Sigel could recruit men the regular army could not easily reach.

• 4. The Battlefield Record

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  In June 1861, Sigel led a Federal column to Springfield in southwest Missouri, then moved toward Carthage to cut off retreating pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard troops. At the Battle of Carthage on the 5th of July, his outnumbered force was driven back. Though strategically minor, the engagement encouraged pro-Confederate recruitment in the region.

  Sigel rejoined the army under Lyon and fought at the Battle of Wilson's Creek on the 10th of August, leading a flanking column that attacked the rear of the rebel force. The attack was routed. After General Lyon was killed, Sigel assumed command of the army and conducted the retreat to Rolla.

  His finest performance came at the Battle of Pea Ridge on the 8th and the 9th of March 1862, where Union forces under Samuel R. Curtis met Confederate troops commanded by Major General Earl Van Dorn in Arkansas. On the 9th of March, Sigel personally directed the Union artillery in the assault that broke the Confederate position.

  His promotion to major general came on the 21st of March 1862. From that point, the record darkened. He fought unsuccessfully against Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, where Jackson outwitted and defeated the larger Union force across a series of small engagements. At the Second Battle of Bull Run, commanding the I Corps in Major General John Pope's Army of Virginia, another Union defeat, Sigel was wounded in the hand. Over the winter of 1862-63, commanding the XI Corps in the Army of the Potomac, he asked for units he did not receive. He left the XI Corps in February 1863, replaced by Major General Oliver O. Howard, who had no immigrant affinities. The soldiers were openly disgruntled.

• 5. Politics and Removal

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  General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck detested Sigel and worked to keep him on light duty in eastern Pennsylvania. The reasons for Sigel's relief from the XI Corps were disputed even at the time: some accounts cited failing health, others a protest over the size of his corps, still others pointed plainly to his lack of military skill. On multiple occasions he had made decisions that cost soldiers their lives.

  President Lincoln, still working the political calculus, directed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to assign Sigel to command the new Department of West Virginia in March 1864. From that position, Sigel launched an invasion of the Shenandoah Valley as part of the Valley Campaigns of 1864. On the 15th of May 1864, at the Battle of New Market, he was soundly defeated by Major General John C. Breckinridge. The defeat was particularly striking because of the prominent role played by young cadets from the Virginia Military Institute. Sigel was replaced by Major General David Hunter.

  In July, Sigel faced Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early at Harpers Ferry, then was again replaced, this time by Albion P. Howe. He spent the remainder of the war without an active command. He resigned his commission on the 4th of May 1865, having held ranks few officers commanded but compiled a record that even his admirers found difficult to defend.

• 6. After the War

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  Back in civilian life, Sigel worked as editor of the Baltimore Wecker before moving to newspaper work in New York City. He moved between political parties, serving as both Democrat and Republican in various roles. In 1869, he ran for Secretary of State of New York on the Republican ticket, losing to the incumbent Democrat Homer Augustus Nelson.

  In May 1871 he became collector of internal revenue; in October of that year, register of the city. In 1887, President Grover Cleveland appointed him pension agent for the city of New York. He also lectured, worked in advertising, and published the New York Monthly, a German-American periodical, for some years.

  Sigel died in New York in 1902 and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. His granddaughter, Elsie Sigel, would later become the victim of a notorious murder. Statues of Sigel stand in Riverside Park at the corner of 106th Street in Manhattan and in Forest Park in St. Louis. Sigel Township, Minnesota, settled in 1856 and organized in April 1862, was named for him, and in about 1873, Sigel himself visited the township and the nearby town of New Ulm.