The Union’s Communist General
Are you a history fan who is tired of biographies of the same four Civl War guys? This is your Highland’s Bunker.
Author and historian David T. Dixon joins Rob in the virtual bunker to talk about the life and times of August Willich, the German revolutionary and communist who later became a Union general in the American Civil War.
Show Notes:
As Willich was preparing to resign his military commission and disavow his Prussian noble status he wrote a friend and comrade in the Rhineland – where he was going to work as a common carpenter. This brief bit really got me.
“My strength is to feel more and more penetrated by this spirit, to be content with it, to be able to give up everything without pain. I am filled with joy as I look at myself, as I have become a vagrant to others, but a free man to myself.”