Archived news - The Role played by the Welsh in the American Civil War

A fascinating book about the role of Welsh people caughtup in the American Civil war; Llwch Cenhedloedd: Y Cymry a Rhyfel Cartref America [Dust of Nations: The Welsh and the American Civil War] was published recently. This is the first book to treat this subject, a field which is exciting as well as painful, given the nature of the war experiences it involves. The author is Jerry Hunter is a Senior Lecturer at the University's Welsh Department, the publishers are Gwasg Carreg Gwalch.

The American Civil War was a massive historical earthquake, the most import single milestone in the history of the United States. For four years, between 1861 and 1865, the country was torn in two, with the South fighting against the North, and by the end of the war more than 620,000 Americans had died. Slavery was a central part of the economy and culture of the Southern states before the war, but that came to end with the end of the war. The Civil War was thus a crucial part of the process of making the United States into a modern nation.

Thousands of Welsh people - or Welsh-speaking Americans - played a part in the war, and thousands of pages written in Welsh which come directly from the American Civil War have survived. Indeed, as soldier's letters and diaries were not censored (as they were in later wars), it's very possible that this is the largest - and most honest - body of war writing in the Welsh language.

This new book is the product of more than 15 years of research, and it is based on a huge amount of original sources, some of them unpublished manuscripts which are now coming to light for the first time in over a century. This massive amount of written material shows that Welsh Americans were able to use their mother tongue in treating the unique and often horrible experiences relating to the greatest turning point in the history of the United States.

The book concentrates to a great extent on the way in which Welsh Americans worked against slavery. By the start of the war, Welsh-speaking Americans as a group were radicalised and organized against that immoral institution, and they thus tended to see the war as 'a crusade against slavery'.

The book also contains a great number of period photographs, and it proceeds a related documentary series which will be broadcast by S4C in January.