From Address of Captain Paul F. Rohrbacker Dedication of Monument,
74th (German) Pennsylvania Infantry, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 2,1888.

The monument to Major Gustav Schleiter, in Section 5, Lot 277 of The Homewood Cemetery, can also be seen as a monument to German (and other ethnic) participation in the Civil War. The image of America as a haven for the oppressed was already marred for many immigrants by the existence of slavery; the idea of the spread in a broken Union became intolerable.

Incited by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have allowed slavery into new territories, Pittsburg's working men were agitating against slavery in the 1856 election. By 1860, German-American Workers were active in the cause to elect Lincoln. Although Lincoln was not an Abolitionist, he was seen as the "people's candidate" to preserve the Union, prevent the spread of slavery and keep labor free.

President Lincoln made his first call for volunteers immediately after Fort Sumpter was fired upon April 12,1861.Immigrant response was immediate and generous. Recruitment was focused on The Regiment; these were organized by a wide array of groups. Butchers and farmers, teachers, singing societies, and theological students all applied to form Units. Iowa even supplied a Temperance Regiment, while the well-known Fire Zouaves Regiments were formed in New York. Companies and Regiments were also formed from geographical areas - neighborhoods, counties and regions

The most prevalent units were those based on ethnicity, a direct and natural development of state and local politics. Though complicated motives brought immigrants to the Union cause, predominant were loyalty, patriotism and a willingness to work with the political system and institutions of their newly adopted country. War involvement swept over every ethnic group, profession and occupation. Volunteer recruiters advertised in foreign-language papers and used agents to solicit from immigrants in their communities and workplaces.

Germans streamed into the Union Army in enormous numbers. Pennsylvania alone contributed five German Regiments and, along with New York, Ohio and Missouri, provided over 58,600 German troops by September 1861. In a patriotic response to an editorial in the Evening Chronicle for the formation of a Regiment of German citizens in the Pittsburg area, funds were secured with extraordinary speed. In two days Company B German Turners left Pittsburg for Harrisburg. Influential German leaders in the city recruited eight Companies which formed the Thirty-fifth Pennsylvania Infantry, mustered into service on September 14, 1861. The Thirty-fifth was joined in Philadelphia by other German Companies and became the Seventy-fourth Pennsylvania Infantry. It was a model of discipline and drill under the command of the brilliant Prussian staff officer, Alexander Von Schimmelfennig of Philadelphia. Schimmelfennig was a "Fourty-eighter", one of the exiles from the political upheavals in Germany in 1848, many of whom maintained active roles in politics, journalism and industry in America. It was the "Fourty-eighters" who were the most influential leaders for thousands of German Volunteers who fought in The Civil War.