ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

 

The census for the decade of 1850-60 indicated approximately 11,000 Americans listed themselves as having been born in Italy. There are many reasons for this immigration, the political situation in Italy at the time was at the apex of transition from a divided peninsula to a unified nation from among many different powers: the Church, Spain, France, Austria, kingdoms and principalities. Thus, there were many political positions available from which activist could choose.  Consequently, many decided for whatever reasons to immigrate to the United States. Most had the destination of New York City; it was here where they could find people of their own backgrounds speaking their language and other cultural aspects. They had their own schools, when they could afford them, and their own newspapers.

Francesco Secchi de Casale, a political activist who escaped from Italian authorities, found refuge in New York City and funded the publication of L’Europee Americano, the first periodical printed both in English and Italian. It failed and later, it is purported, he sold his watch and wife’s jewelry to fund a different periodical, L’Eco d’Italia, The Echo of Italy. Many considered it the first important Italian language weekly published in the United States. This was the newspaper in which Antonio Meucci, the inventor of the telephone, published news of his invention. And this was prior to his patent court case in the 1880s.

Italians in New York City had to deal with a number of social issues, one was the teaching of Italian and its culture.  Casale sought to raise funds to start an evening school for Italians in the Five Points slum area of New York City. His intentions were to have Italian children receive the opportunity to read and write Italian, develop math skills, and learn about the history of Italy and the United States. Once again another one of his projects did not pan out due to a lack of support. Undaunted, he went on to create another project which was to move Italian immigrants out of the cities and into the farmlands of America.

He attempted to get backing from both the United States and Italian governments, neither one accepted his proposals; consequently, he turned to the business world. Charles Landis, a property developer, donated Twenty acres of land near Vineland, New Jersey, to start a grape farming cooperative. Uniquely, after the Italians cleared the land and planted the grapes, Thomas Barnwell Welch, founder of Welch’s Grape Juice, bought the grapes to produce grape juice which at that time people referred to it as unfermented wine.

While Casale was involved in many social activities, the Civil War was looming in America. For many Italians, Giuseppe Garibaldi was their inspiration. Many conjecture his republican views led many Italians to back the Union cause. Nevertheless, there were Italians in the Confederate army as well, for example a list of 341 Italian male residents of New Orleans is available at http://www.ustica.org/genealogy/italian_brigade.htm.

Francesco Casale spearheaded the formation of an Italian Legion, and later the founding of the Garibaldi Guard. Many like-minded Italians joined Casale such as Luigi Tinelli, a former consul to Portugal and an industrialist, who had experience as a militia commander. Francesco Spinola recruited four regiments in New York, and President Lincoln appointed him as their general. Count Luigi Palma di Cesnola, a veteran of the Crimean War, heroically fought in the Civil War and suffering wounds, capture and imprisonment by the Confederates. (See previous article about Cesnola).

Spinola, a hero, like Cesnola, was engaging in a battle with his Spinola Empire Brigade, when they found themselves in a precarious situation, i.e., they were outnumbered six to one. Spinola ordered his men to fix bayonets and charged the enemy scattering the amazed adversaries before them into disorder.

 

  THE GARIBALDI GUARD

 

The Garibaldi Guard was the nickname of the 39^th New York Infantry, a regiment of Italian-Americans recruited mostly from New York City under the auspices of Francesco Casale and other Italian leaders in the North. Most of the members of this regiment were men who had fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi, the freedom fighter and republican agitator. They wore a distinctive styled red shirt as part of their uniform to show their connection to their countrymen, whose partisans had worn such shirts in Italy. Other Italian nationals joined the guard as well; apparently, out of a feeling that the Union’s cause, matched their own ideals of freedom and equal justice. They also viewed the northern ideology as closely-allied with the aims of Garibaldi and felt such an alliance lent credence to the great patriot’s ideas, since other nations were clearly adopting those ideals.

 

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Societys-Encyclopedia-American/.

 

In the South, especially New Orleans, the biggest seaport, it is not surprising that many Italians landed there. Consequently, with the outbreak of the civil war an Italian contingency developed. A call went out for volunteers and Captain Joseph Santini, a most prominent recruiter, gathered and led a small group of Italian Americans calling themselves the Garibaldi Legion. They too showed their ethnic pride by wearing a hat with plumes of the Italian colors and red shirts as that which Garibaldi’s men wore in the famous, Expedition of the Thousand, when in 1860 a corps of 1000 volunteers, led by Garibaldi, sailed from Genoa and landed in Marsala, Sicily to free the area of the rule of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the Bourbons.

Below is a picture of a Garibaldi Legionnaire from the Confederacy and The Garibaldi Guard Marching Troop of he New York 39th Regiment.

 

 

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 THE REGION OF TOSCANA

Tuscany

 

Toscana is a region in Italy that lies one-hundred and seventy miles north of Rome and overlooks the Tyrrhenian Sea and backs up to the Apennine Mountains; it has a population close to four million. It is the most visited region in Italy, and in the world. Upwards to ten million people visit each year. Tuscany contains six localities designated as World Heritage Sites. They are the historical centers of Siena, San Gimignano, Pienza, and Florence (the capital and the most visited locality within the region). The other two are the Leaning Tower and Cathedral of Pisa, and Val d’Orcia, known for its landscape.

The region is the true birthplace of the Italian Renaissance and a number of notable people in the arts and sciences were born there. They are: Dante Allegheri, Francesco Petrarch, Sandro Botticelli, Niccoló Macchiavelli, Luca Pacioli, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarotti Simoni, and Giacomo Puccini. The region has several museums, containing works of these great artists, scientists, and others. They are: the Uffizi, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Pitti Palace, the Chianciano Museum of Art, and the Academia di Belle Arti, where in the Tribuna stands the original statue of David by Michelangelo. The region also contains many loggias, piazzas, fountains, buildings, churches and cathedrals that are impressive works of art and architecture.

When Italy became a country in 1861, one of its first tasks was to select a language, since the peninsula of Italy consisted of many principalities, and autonomous regions, it did not have a unifying language. They may all have derived from Latin but they were dialects and not uniform. Thus, due to the impact of the arts and sciences written and spoken in the Tuscan dialect, the new government selected it as the national tongue. However, the full standardization of the Italian language occurred in the decade of 1950-1960 with the rise of mass media and television.  Nevertheless, a modern Italian can read the works of many of the great artist of the renaissance with ease.

Tuscany is also famous for its wine region of Chianti.  Many wineries exist throughout the area producing varied wines, some are Chianti, Chianti Classico, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Tenuto Tignanello, Barone Ricasoli ‘Brolio’ and Ruffino, some of these are blends of Sangiovese and Cabernet.  It can’t go without mentioning that Tuscany is famous for its cuisine too.  Some popular dishes are: crostini di fegato, liver paté on toast, ribollita, boiled again vegetable soup with hard bread, panzanella, bread soaked in balsamic vinegar topped with onions, tomatoes, basil, and olive oil. Another favorite dish is fagioli con salsiccia, cannellini beans with sausage. An interesting baking aspect is the Tuscans bake their bread senza sale, without salt.

Below are photographs of the statue of Perseus by Cellini  and the Kidnapping of the Sabine Women by Giambologna (Jean Boulogne, a Flemish) that stand in the Loggia degli Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, and of David in the Academia di Belle Arti. For a gallery of photographs see www.florencepictures.com/historical-center/paiazzo-della-signoria-vecchio.

THE SCAVI OF ST. PETER’S CATHEDRAL

 

The Excavations of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome

 

Nero Augustus Caesar had St. Peter, the apostle of Jesus Christ and whom Catholics recognize as the first Pope, crucified in his Circus (race track) that he had built where the Vatican stands today. After the crucifixion, St. Peter’s followers buried him in a nearby hillside necropolis, a city of the dead. It was a place fashioned to look like a city in miniature. Wealthy pagan families entombed their dead in houses where they could continue their new lives.

Some two hundred years later, the Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian and, in the fourth century, ordered the construction of a church over the tomb of St. Peter. He had the roofs of all of the mausoleums removed and filled them and the streets with soil; thereby, creating a flat surface on which to build.  A thousand years later, the Catholics dismantled the original church, leaving the floor, and built the present St. Peter’s Basilica. It sits above the floor of the original church. Thus they built the “new” Basilica without any systematic excavation of what lie underneath. Consequently, the graveyard remained untouched since the time of Constantine. Beneath the main floor of the present church is the catacomb of the Popes, the floor of which is of the original building. Tourist can freely visit this area.

The primary artist involved in the designing of the Basilica was Donato Bramante, who died on the eleventh of March 1514. After his death, a number of architects continued his work; however, the Vatican later commissioned Michelangelo to complete it. He designed most of the apses and the main dome before dying. Domenico Fontana completed the dome in 1589. Its dedication was in 1593.

As the centuries passed, so did the memory of the necropolis beneath the Basilica. In 1939 workers digging a tomb for the deceased Pope Pius XI, broke through a wall beneath the church and rediscovered this small city of the dead. Pope Pius XII ordered the excavation, but kept the work secret in case they didn’t find St. Peter’s tomb. Since the necropolis acts as the foundation for St. Peter’s Basilica, the entire area could not be uncovered without the possibility of having the Basilica experience damage. Work continued for a decade and on the twenty-third of December 1950, Pope Pius XII announced the discovery of St. Peter’s tomb.

On the twenty-sixth of June 1968, Pope Paul VI announced that they discovered the remains of St. Peter. His remains are encased in an altar-shrine (The Trophy of Gaius) built sometime around 200 AD. 

Amid the fragments of St. Peter’s bones, the skull, vertebrae, arms, hands, pelvis, and legs, there is nothing from the ankles down. Theory has it that if a man was crucified upside down, as tradition says Peter was, the easiest way to remove what was left of his body would have been to chop off the feet and remove the rest of the corpse from the cross. I doubt his followers did that. Most likely the assistants to the persecutions did it.

I Scavi, pronounced ee scahvee, are the Italian plural words meaning the excavations.  Public tours are available; however, in order to visit these excavations reservations are necessary and need to be made months in advance of one’s visit and can be made via the internet. When one tours I Scavi it is an exceptional visit back in time to when one can “feel” the presence of those who may have been the followers of Christ. A walk through them is a walk into some important truths concerning early Christianity. Information is also available under the subject of the Trophy of Gaius.

On my visit, I was able to get a distant view of Gaius Trophy, which contain St. Peter’s relics. I say distant since, the closest they allow you to approach is about twenty feet. Because of the other tombs, it is not a very good see. Nevertheless, there is a light over the trophy which helps in viewing. The tour is intriguing since you walk along narrow passage ways past the facades of tombs. A guide leads the way while you listen to a hand held electronic device describing in selective language what you are viewing.  For more photos go to www.holidaze.com, www.culturaltravelguide.com ..under St. Peter’s Basilica,

 THE CITY OF PAVIA

 

Some thirty-five miles south of Milan lays the city of Pavia, ancient Ticinum.   The Romans called the whole area Ticinum Papiae, which in Italian became Ticino and Pavia. Ticino is a river and Pavia the town. The river runs through a part of the town and intersects with the Po River some fifty-miles south. When under the Roman dominance it was an important military site. Historians indicate that the end of the Roman Empire in the West began here with the defeat of Flavius Orestes by Odoacer, the chieftain of a number of German tribes: the Heruli, Sciri, and Rugii. 

These tribes were mercenaries in the service of Rome who were under Orestes’ command along with Roman soldiers. There were disagreements amongst the soldiers and their commanders. The soldiers switched their allegiance to Odoacer and he led them in a revolt; thereby, killing Orestes. The soldiers then proclaimed Odoacer as Rex Italiae, the king of Italy. He then laid siege to Ravenna, the new Roman capital and deposed the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, who was the son of Orestes.

During the revolt the citizens of Pavia sided with Orestes, and in revenge Odoacer destroyed the city. It wasn’t long before he had to do battle again to maintain his position. Theodoric, a Goth, engaged Odoacer a number of times, the last time at the siege of Ravenna in 492. Theodoric was able to block the cities only source of survival—its Adriatic seaport. The city’s bishop negotiated a treaty and organized a banquet to celebrate the end of the hostilities. But Theodoric, in a toast to Odoacer, killed him. Then his men massacred his soldiers and supporters. Theodoric was now master of Italy.

Under the reign of the Goths, Pavia became their citadel toward the end of their control. It was their last stronghold in their wars with Balisarius, a general of the Byzantine Empire (505-565), who fought to reunite the West with the Eastern Roman Empire. In Northern Italy, the Lombards (the long beards), a Germanic tribe, originally from Scandinavia, migrated to Pannonia, modern day Hungary. However, in and around 569, they migrated en masse to Italy and conquered any remaining Goths. They established a kingdom which grew in size and strength to cover almost all of Italy. Today a large part of northern Italy is the region of Lombardia, named after the Lombards.

In 773 at another the battle in Pavia, Charlemagne triumphed and established it as the capital of his Regnum Italicum, a vassal kingdom of the Holy Roman Empire. In the twelfth century it became a self-governing city-state. In 1359, it yielded to the Visconti family of Milan and they ruled until 1525, when it came under Spanish rule; later Austrian rule, Napoleonic rule and then back to Austrian rule. Finally in 1859, it became a part of unified Italy.

Today, Pavia is a bustling town with many ancient buildings some are: Il Duomo, begun in 1488 and just recently finished. The Church of San Michele Maggiore, The Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel D’Oro (ceiling of gold), Il Castello Visconteo, Santa Maria Del Carmine, and many other art treasures and towers.  All of these were built during the Renaissance period1100-1699 AD. (In regard to towers also see article on Skyscrapers of Middle Age Italy)

The most famous landmark is La Certosa de Pavia, a Carthusian monastery. The beauty of this place is difficult to describe as well as all the other sites, but this one stands out from the rest since it is still a monastery and fully intact. The origins of this monastery date back to 1390 AD, when Catherine Visconti, the wife and cousin of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, made a bequest in her will that a monastery for the Carthusian monks be built in the Pavia region. At the time she made the bequest she was pregnant and asked her husband to fulfill her vow if she died during childbirth. She did not die; nevertheless, they began building it in August of that year. A visit to the monastery will clearly show why it took until 1507, to complete. The church and façade dazzle the eyes when one tries to perceive all that is there. It is full of decorative sculptures, carvings and reliefs of many inlaid marble patterns.

The monastery covers acres of land with a thirty-foot wall surrounding the whole complex. One enters by gate going through a large reception building leading into a courtyard with buildings on both sides into the church. The inside of the church is as dazzling as the outside with all of its crypts, statues, and adornments. The Carthusian practices allow for hermitage, and part of the complex has a large rectangular area consisting of a few acres of land. Surrounding this plot of land is twenty-one small two story cabins attached to each other like row houses. Each has a fireplace, small eating area, courtyard and sleeping quarters for the hermits. The doors to each have a shelf in the upper part and a small door for the hermit to open to retrieve any items placed on the shelf. The occupants take a vow of silence and isolation from human contact.  Below is a close up of the façade, a distant shot of the façade and the Grand Cloister with hermit quarters in the background.

ALLEY OOPS!

 

After twenty-five years of marriage, all of our children left the nest; it was now time for my wife and me to do some traveling. The first place on our list was Italy. Since it was the country of my grandparents, I always dreamed of visiting it. I was full of excitement of the unknown, wondering what it would be like. I believed there would be a sense of culture shock. Instead, from the moment we arrived at the airport, I felt like I came home and that I belonged there. Everybody looked like my cousins, their mannerisms were the same, they spoke like my grandparents, and the food was the same as we ate at home. It was like going to the Little Italy in the United States where my relatives lived.

When I was in my formative years my parents warned me about traveling in cities; don’t talk to strangers, stay out of alleys, and walk close to curb, lest someone pull you into an alley. And stay out of those sections where you don’t belong. And if any one calls to you to talk to you keep your distance. So that meant, I should only walk in the Italian neighborhoods or in familiar area of any city.

These warning were justified since we often went into the cities, like Newark and Patterson, N.J, and New York City to visit relatives. These were basic survival techniques that they gave my brother and me. My mother grew up in an Italian slum in New Jersey and my father in a rural Italian neighborhood in a New York community. Their living conditions were quite a contrast. Nevertheless, my father was street wise. As a young man he often was on the road traveling across America on foot, by freight train, bus and car. He told me many stories of significant ethnic problems he encountered on the road. The contents of his stories and the warnings remained in my memory.

On our trip to Italy we landed in Milan; rented a car and drove to Varese, a small city, on the outskirts. We arrived in the afternoon, acquired a hotel room and rested. That evening we went out to eat. As we were strolling we came upon two young teenage girls, and greeted them saying, “Hi! We are strangers, looking for a restaurant. Do you know of any nearby?”

 “Yes, follow us. We’ll take you to one.”

We followed them having a lively conversation. The first thing they did was to walk into an alley off the main thoroughfare. I immediately became wary. But, not my wife, who grew up in Italy, continued to walk nonchalantly along chatting. We continued and went into another alley, and another, and then into a small plaza where three or four alleys conjoined. In it were many young people. Some were standing in small groups, some sitting on motorcycles and looking tough to my perception. I became more nervous and suspicious.

We entered another alley and as we were coming to the end of it, I finally asked in Italian, “Are you sure there is a restaurant close by?” They both looked at me astonished, and at that moment responded simultaneously, “Si, Signore é lá.” They extended their arms pointing across a small plaza to a cafeteria.

Oops! I felt like a fool, I mentally wiped my brow, musing, “Phew!” For the rest of our trip I learned that many thing of interest to see in the large and small cities in Italy are in alleys.

It was a unique experience. I didn’t have to concern myself with where I went. The cities small and large are rife with alleys. Great works of art, Roman ruins, cathedrals, and the best of restaurants are in them. For example, the famous Pantheon, temple to all the gods, sits three alleys back off of a main thoroughfare, and once there six more alleys span from the piazza in front it. My fears dissipated.

Something else that help any misgivings about Italians occurred in the same town. We wanted to cross the street but there was a lot of traffic. We noticed many people entering to what I thought was a staircase leading down to a subway. But, when we approached it we realized it was a sottopassagio, an under-pass to cross the street. We entered, went down the stairs and when we were at the bottom there was a three way intersection. It was quite wide, and enough so that it contained a few shops and a small plaza. A group of about eight young people were gathered at the plaza and standing in the front of the entrance to one of the passageways. I looked at them with suspicion until I saw an elderly lady, walking with a cane, come ambling directly toward them. As she approached, the group automatically, without losing a word in their conversations, separated to let her through. Once she passed, they melded back together like she never passed through them. They continued talking. 

  Below is an 1836 painting of the Piazza della Rotonda by Jakob Alt and a picture of the back of the Pantheon from the Piazza della Minerva, note the alleys. Also is a picture of the alley way in front of the Synagogue in Casale Monferrato. The dark door is the main entrance.

RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI

RITA LEVI-MONTALCINI

 

Rita was born on the twenty-second of April, 1909, in Turin, Italy. She was one of four children, three girls and a boy, she being a twin of one of the girls. Her mother was Adele Montalcini. The family was wealthy and of Sephardic Jewish faith. The family was Victorian in their values, and her father Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer, believed women should not attend higher education as it would interfere in their role as future mothers. The family, as a whole engaged in intellectual pursuits; thus, it didn’t take much effort for the daughters to change his mind.

She studied medicine at the University of Turin and in 1936, she graduated from medical school with a summa cum laude degree in medicine and surgery.  After which she enrolled in a three year specialization program in neurology and psychiatry. She did research on the effects peripheral tissues have on nerve cell growth. But, because of her Jewish ancestry, Mussolini’s “Manifesto per la Defesa della Razza,” (Manifest for the defense of the Race), caused her to lose her job. When things became worse in Turin, the family escaped to the country side, and had to follow that with going to Florence where the family remained in hiding during the German occupation of Italy (1943-45). By 1944, the Americans cleared Florence of the Nazis and she was able to surface and became actively involved in nursing and caring for refugees suffering with infectious diseases. When the war ended in 1945, she was able to resume her research at Turin.

In 1947, she accepted an invitation to a post at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri by zoologist Viktor Hamburger. Here she was to repeat the research performed before the war in the study of the growth of nerve tissue in chick embryos.

In 1948, they discovered that a variety of mouse tumors spurred nerve growth when implanted into chick embryos. The two traced the effect to a substance in the tumor that they named nerve-growth factor NGF. Levi-Montalcini further showed that the tumor caused similar cell growth in a nerve-tissue cultures kept alive in the laboratory. Stanley Cohen, another interested scientist, joined her at Washington University, and he was able to isolate the nerve-growth factor from the tumor.

Levi-Montalcini planned to remain only twelve months, but the excellent results of their work impressed her to continue. In 1956, the University offered her the position as an associate professor and two years later that of full professorship. In 1962, she developed a research unit in Rome. She remained active both here and abroad. She also held the position of Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research in Rome.

NGF was the first of many cell-growth factors found in the bodies of animals. In 1986, Dr. Levi-Montalcini received due recognition when she, along with her colleague, Dr. Stanley Cohen, earned the Nobel Prize in medicine for the discoveries of NGF and of EGF, epidermal growth factor, which is used in the treatment of severe burns.

She published an autobiographical work, In Praise of Imperfection, in 1988. At the following internet address she provides a short interesting autobiographical sketch telling of her parents, sisters, and brother and war experiences. Levi-Montalcini held dual citizenship of Italy and of the United States. She passed away on the thirtieth of December 2012, at the age of 102.

http://www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1986/levi-montalcini-autobio.html.

 

The image below is from Wikipedia via Barnard B ecker Medical Library, Washing School of Medience circa 1975 and the following from 2009.

 

 

 THE ROMAN GOD JANUS

 

January, the first month of the year, is named after the Roman god, Janus. He has two faces, one looking back at the past and another looking forward to the future, indicating the continual process of time. Understandingly, he was also the god of doors and gates. In Roman cities they depicted him with two faces at the gates, with one side bearded and the other clean-shaven indicating age and youth. In some locales they depicted him with having four faces, signifying him as an omniscient (all knowing) god and one that no one can hide from. Besides having the first month of the year named after him, followers built many temples in his honor; they also referred to him as Janus Gemini, meaning Janus the twins, since he had two faces. The people believed in him as the protector of the city.

 Ancient legend states he originally came from Thessaly, which is located in the Eastern portion of modern Greece He settled in Latium and was welcomed by a young female resident, Camese, whom he later married. They had many children, one they named Tiberinus, who became the god of the Tiber River for whom the Romans named it. Janus was the first king of the Latins, and his reign historians describe as a Golden Age. He introduced money, laws and the cultivation of the fields. It was only after his death that the Romans deified him as protector of the city.

When Camese died, he was the sole ruler. He later married Juturna a water nymph and had another son, Fontus, who is the god of fountains or springs.  One was located in the Roman Forum and the shrine to his mother is located where it once flowed―Lacus Juturnae.