Between 1838 and the early 1890s, German peasant farmers from the Kingdom of Hanover made their way to Lafayette County, Missouri, to form a new community centered on the town of Concordia. This book chronicles Concordia's life and times during those formative years. It examines the success of early agricultural efforts.

He also explores the conditions in Hanover - particularly the village of Esperke, from which many of the settlers hailed - that caused people to leave, shedding new light on theological, political, and economic circumstances in both the Old World and the New. When the Civil War came, the antislavery Hanoverians found themselves in the Missouri county with the greatest number of slaves, and the Germans supported the Union while most of their neighbors sympathized with Confederate guerrillas. Frizzell tells how the notorious "Bloody Bill" Anderson attacked the community three times, committing atrocities as gruesome as any recorded in the state - then how the community flourished after the war and even bought out the farmsteads of former slaveholders. Frizzell's account challenges many historians' assumptions about German motives for immigration and includes portraits of families and individuals that show the high price in toil and blood required to meet the challenges of making a home in a new land. Independent Immigrants reveals the untold story of these newcomers as it reveals a little-known aspect of the Civil War in Missouri.