Culture

Yankee Warhorse: Mary B. Townsend on her biography of Maj. Gen. Peter Joseph Osterhaus

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Peter Joseph Osterhaus was one of the most accomplished of the wave of "'48ers"-Germans who participated in the 1848-49 Rebellion, then fled their native land-to re-settle in the United States.

Now he is subject of a biography, Mary Bobbitt Townsend's Yankee Warhorse: A Biography of Major General Peter J. Osterhaus, published by the University of Missouri Press.

Townsend, who is Osterhaus' great-great-granddaughter, uses fresh scholarship and never-before-published source material to describe Osterhaus' important battlefield roles in Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, as well as his time as a Major General for the Union Army in the Civil War, military governor of Mississippi during the early days of Reconstruction, and later U.S. consul general in Lyon.

Approximately 3.09 minutes. Shot by Dan Hayes and interviewed by Reason's Matt Welch, who is the Townsend's son. Edited by Josh Swain.

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