At a conference devoted to a comparison of the German Wars of Unification and the American Civil War, the ideology of nationalism which inspired both ought to be closely examined. That German, and for that matter, Italian, unification and the preservation of the Union in the American Civil War were all the result of this seemingly irresistible ideology has long been recognized. But there were important differences between the nationalism animating European unification movements and the American struggle for the preservation of the Union, and these distinctions must be stressed as well.

European, and particularly German, nationalism has always had a tribal basis. It concerned itself with one people, not with the interests of the world. As the famous “Turnvater” Friedrich Ludwig Jahn defined German Volkstum in 1810, “Volkstum is the common characteristic of a people, its inner being, its rules and life, its power of development, its power of progress. All peoples have their peculiar own thoughts and feelings, loves and hates, joys and sorrows, hopes and yearnings, ancestors and beliefs. German means national....We must return to the lost past and recreate Nation, Germanness, Fatherland.” Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in his Address to the German Nation, agreed. “Liberty to them [the Germans],” he wrote, “meant this: persisting to remain German and continuing the task of settling their own problems, independently and in consonance with the original spirit of their race.”