- Joined
- Aug 25, 2012
We have not seen much on the immigrants forum in a while. The 82nd Illinois was considered a German Regiment, but in fact contained Germans, Jewish Germans, Scandinavian and Swiss immigrants. Its commander when forming was Lt. Colonel Edward Selig Salomon who was a Jewish German immigrant. The regiment was mostly German, most of the Germans being from western and southwestern Germany. Captain Rudolph Mu eller wrote letters home in old German of his experiences in the 82 Illinois. Thus were printed in English in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society vol. 94, No. 2 (Summer 2001) I have recently saw the Journal on sale at a price I could not resist and so have just finished reading it. Although Mueller himself was too young to have been politically involved in the 1848 uprising in Europe, he like many other educated foreign-born saw serving in the Civil War as an abstract struggle for liberty.