Chapter I (5)

Such names are selected at random out of hundreds, like that of Julius Reinhold Friedlander, of Berlin, who founded the first institute for the blind in Philadelphia in 1834, subsequently taken over by the State. He is called the father of the institutions for the blind in America. Dr. Konstantin Hering was the father of homeopathy in America. Friedrich List was one of the pioneers in the advocacy of a protective tariff, writing in 1827 “Outlines of a New System of Political Economy,” which attracted wide attention. Philip Schaff soon after his arrival in 1844, attained fame in miscellaneous and religious literature, writing in English “The Principles of Protestantism,” “America, Its Political, Social and Religious Character,” “Lectures on the Civil War in America,” etc. Demetrius Augustin Gallitizin, better known as Father Schmidt, founded the Catholic mission Loretto in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, in 1798, and his life is commemorated by a statue. Johann N. Neumann wrote “The Ferns of the Alleghanies” and the “Rhododendrons of the Pennsylvania and Virginia Mountains”--and so an almost endless array of German names troop in review before our minds to show the influence of this element on our literature and our institutions. From no European source have we received a stronger accession of intellectual currents than from Germany, and whether the field be literature, art, science or music, among their foremost figures are men with German names. They never belonged to the coolie class; they were never identified with the various movements for the suppression of rights, they have had fewer of their race figure in the crime records and more in the ranks of those who stood for liberty, education and progress than any others. Their literature would fill a library, and as Professor Scott Nearing has shown, the American people are a conquering race because they are composed of the descendants of conquerors, the English and Germans.

=German-American Captains of Industry.=--Kreischer, Balthasar, of Kreischerville, Staten Island, N. Y., born March 13, 1813, at Hornbach, Bavaria. In December, 1835, occurred the great fire which destroyed more than 600 buildings in the business part of New York City. Young Kreischer, who had learned brick manufacture, was struck with the opportunity that the disaster afforded to one of his trade. He arrived in New York June 4, 1836, and helped to rebuild the burned district. Discovered in New Jersey suitable species of clay for the making of fire brick, which, up to this time had been imported from England. Kreischer began to fight against the British monopoly, and after discovering further valuable clay beds in Staten Island, drove the English fire brick from the American market. He soon established large works in New Jersey, Staten Island, Philadelphia and New York, and by a constant study of new improvements built up the industry on a lasting foundation. He was not only the discoverer of the valuable deposits of clay, but became the founder of the fire brick industry in the United States.

Seligman, Joseph, founder and head of the banking house of J. W. Seligman & Co., New York, New Orleans and San Francisco, was born in Bayersdorf, Bavaria, September 22, 1819. At the age of nineteen he came to America. In 1862 he and his brothers founded their banking house, which soon acquired a high reputation. During the darkest hours of the rebellion, Mr. Seligman never swerved in his allegiance to the National Government. In 1863, when the National credit was in its most precarious condition, and when many even of the stoutest hearts, began to fear for the ability of the Federal authorities to successfully maintain the National integrity, Mr. Seligman introduced the United States bonds to the people of Germany. His attempt was crowned with the most gratifying success, and resulted in securing for the Federal cause not merely money, but also foreign sympathy, of which, it will be remembered, the nation had till then received but little. The Government gratefully recognized the Seligmans as government bankers.

Steinway, Henry Engelhard, of New York City, who, with his sons, became founder of America’s greatest piano manufacturing industry and inventor of the “grand piano,” was born February 15, 1797, in Wolfshagen, Duchy of Brunswick, North Germany. The original spelling of the name was Steinweg. He came to this country on June 5, 1850, with his family. “Steinway & Sons” were destined to become the leading piano manufacturers in this country, whose fame became world-wide, whose house was the rendezvous of the leading musicians and whose activities are felt to this day. (Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Biography of New York, Vol. II, 1882.)

Starin, Hon. John Henry, ex-member of Congress, whose name for many decades was so prominently identified with New York’s railroad and steamboat transportation, was born in Sammonsville, N. Y. His paternal ancestor, Nicholas Starin (or Sterne, as the name was then spelled), was a native of Germany, and came to America about the year 1720, and settled in the Mohawk Valley, upon the German Flats. John Starin, his seventh son, fought in the Revolutionary War, being one of ten members of the Starin family who served in the American army under Washington.

William Havemeyer, founder of America’s great sugar refining industry, came here from Germany in 1799, and settled in New York. He brought with him a knowledge of his business from Bückenburg, Germany, and started what was one of the earliest refineries in New York, and has later developed into the Sugar Trust with which his descendants have been identified as leaders. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)

Bergh, Henry, founder of the first society in America for the prevention of cruelty to animals, was born in New York, 1823. He was of German descent, the family having come to America about 1740. Christian Bergh, father of the philanthropist, was a ship builder. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)

Gunther, Charles Godfred, mayor of New York in 1864, was born in that city in 1822. His father, Christian G. Gunther, a German by birth, was for more than half a century the leading fur merchant in the metropolis. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)

Mayer, Charles Frederick, former president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., was a son of Lewis Mayer, one of the first men to develop the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania. The father of Lewis Mayer was Christian Mayer, who emigrated from Germany and settled in Baltimore, where he became one of the leading merchants. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)

Ottendorfer, Oswald, was born at Zwittau and educated at Vienna. He came to New York in 1850, having been involved in the revolutionary outbreak in Vienna. He became eminent as the editor and proprietor of the “New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.” (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)

Ziegler, William, born of German parents, in Beaver County, Pa., in 1843, was the founder of the baking powder industry in this country, in which he accumulated a fortune. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)

Windmueller, Louis, a prominent merchant and reformer of New York, was born in Westphalia, emigrating to this country in 1853. He was one of the founders of the Reform Club and of many of the leading banking institutions in the city.

Eberhard Faber, founder of the American lead pencil industry, born near Nuremberg in 1820; Friedrich Meyerhaeuser, the American lumber king, born 1834 in Hessia; Klaus Spreckels, founder of the American beet sugar industry, in Hanover in 1828; G. Martin Brill, largest car manufacturer, born February, in Cassel.

John Valentin Steger, for whom a well-known piano is named, came to the United States from Germany at the age of 17 in the steerage and died in Chicago, June 14, 1916, aged 62, founder of the town of Steger and president of the J. V. Steger & Sons Mfg. Co., and of the Singer Piano Mfg. Co., the Reed & Sons Mfg. Co., the Thompson Piano Mfg. Co., and of the Bank of Steger; also vice-president of the Flanner Land & Lumber Co. In his will he left a large sum for a hospital and library for his employees.

From the earliest period of New York’s financial district, Germans and men of German blood have occupied a predominant part in the financial life of this country, firstly because fundamental banking principles are taught in Germany as nowhere else, and secondly for the reason that subjects, such as foreign exchange, necessitate such deep technical knowledge that it would appear only German minds can thoroughly grasp them. It is an actual fact that even today, the foreign exchange business of Wall Street, even that part of the business handled and controlled by Morgan & Company and the National City Bank, is in the hands of Germans.

Among the greatest of Wall Street operators of the end of the last century, the days of Jay Gould, Russell Sage, Addison Cammack, etc., Germans predominated and were triumphant victors in most of the great Wall Street speculative battles. Henry Villard, who came to this country from Germany, was the chief center of American railroad finance in the historic period from 1879 to 1884. He it was who captured the Northern Pacific Railroad from the Wall Street banking groups.

Another figure of this time was the great bear operator, probably the most powerful and successful bear operator that Wall Street has ever seen, Charles Frederick Woerishoffer, who died in 1886. He was born in Gelnshausen, Germany, and coming to this country, founded the firm of Woerishoffer & Company. He was connected with the famous campaigns in Wall Street conducted by James R. Keene, Jay Gould, Russell Sage, Addison Cammack, etc., for the control of the Kansas Pacific Railroad in 1879. Henry Clews, the English stockbroker, says of him in his reminiscences of Wall Street: “Woerishoffer had the German idea of fighting in the open, as against the secret operations of Commodore Vanderbilt and the others. He lost some battles but won most of those in which he engaged and made millions out of the conflicts.”

Joseph Drexel came to this country from Germany in 1787. He is the real founder of the house of Morgan & Company. Drexel founded the banking house of Drexel and Company in Philadelphia and Drexel, Morgan & Company, New York. He built up a successful banking business, in which his sons became interested, and at his death they inherited his fortune.

August Belmont, the elder, was born in Alzey, Prussia, in 1816, and died in 1890, leaving his son to manage the banking house he founded. He had been a clerk in the Rothschild banking house in Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, and when he came to this country, he was the American representative of that world historic firm, which position his son of the same name occupies today. The elder Belmont was the founder of the Manhattan Club in New York.

Henry Bischoff, founder of the banking house of Bischoff & Company, was born in Baden, Germany. Lazarus Hallgarten, of Mayence, Germany, was the founder of the banking house of Hallgarten & Company. Isaac Ickelheimer, a native of Frankfort, Germany, was the founder of the banking firm of Heidelbach, Ickelheimer & Company. Frederick Kuehne, who was born in Magdeburg, Germany, established the banking house of Knauth, Nachod & Kuehne. Jacob Schiff, one of the foremost bankers of Wall Street at the present time, was also born in Frankfort. He is the head of Kuhn, Loeb and Company. Ernst Thalmann, who died recently, was one of the founders of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Company. He was also of German birth. James Speyer, head of Speyer & Company, is a member of the old Frankfort family of that name, and obtained his financial education in Germany. In fact, the majority of banking houses in Wall Street as they exist today were founded by Germans.

Adolphus Busch, the great brewer and philanthropist, was born at Mayence-on-the-Rhine, July 10, 1839; education at gymnasium, Mayence, and academy, Darmstadt, and high school, Brussels. Came to United States, 1857. Served in the Union army under Gen. Lyon and became associated with his father-in-law, E. Anheuser, in the Anheuser Brewing Co., and later became president of the famous Anheuser-Busch Brewing Assn. of St. Louis, largest brewing concern in the world. At the time of his death was president of five large concerns, including a local bank and Diesel Engine Co., and director St. Louis Union Trust Co., Third National Bank, Kinloch Telephone Co., Equitable Surety Co., and several other strong organizations. Mr. Busch was a high type of the self-made German-American. He gave a large sum (twice) to the Harvard German Museum, the Germanistic Society of Columbia University, and to other public institutions of science and learning, and his death, Oct. 10, 1913, was universally regretted.

John D. Rockefeller and John Wanamaker are both descendants of German immigrants. The forefather of the Standard Oil King, Johann Peter Roggenfelder, came over in 1735 from Bonnefeld, Rhenish Prussia, and is buried at Larrison Corners, N. J., while Mr. Wannamaker, former Postmaster General and the father of the department store, is descended from a Pennsylvania German family named Wannenmacher.

=The German American Vote.=--The following table shows the vote of the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians (according to the census of 1910) in ten states where their vote is above 40,000, the figures being compounded of those naturalized and those having applied for their first papers:

Germans Austrians Hungarians Total
New York 163,881 41,466 16,123 221,470
Illinois 124,430 30,461 5,374 160,265
Wisconsin 92,655 11,385 1,620 105,660
Ohio 68,576 12,342 8,757 89,675
Michigan 52,510 4,113 1,011 57,634
Minnesota 46,281 9,515 1,022 56,718
New Jersey 44,899 7,403 4,448 56,750
Iowa 39,348 4,802 249 44,399
Missouri 35,267 4,115 1,835 41,217
California 34,911 5,135 1,065 41,111

These figures are but remotely representative of what is called “the German vote” or the vote of the Austro-Hungarians, as no account is here taken of the first generation born in the United States, the sons of these naturalized Americans, nor of their grandsons.

With the first generation of German Americans, the total vote in 1916 of this element in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, New Jersey, California, Nebraska, Kansas and the two Dakotas amount to 1,860,500.

New England, which was the center of anti-German sentiment as it is the center of puritanism and Anglo-American hyphenation, contains the smallest number of Germans and the largest number of aliens of any section in the United States; in other words, the lowest percentage of naturalized citizens among the foreign-born white men of the age of 21 and over--40.7 per cent. The highest proportion of naturalized foreign-born above 21 years was in the West North Central division, that is Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, where the Teutonic element is largely settled. Table 25 of the U. S. Census Bulletin on Population (1910) “Voting Age, Military Age, and Naturalization,” shows that the German aliens 21 years and over, all told, number only 127,103, and the Germans stand at the foot of the list of twenty-nine (alien immigrants) or 9.9 per cent., the highest being 83 per cent. The French aliens in the United States numbered 27.8 per cent., the Scotch 21.8, and the English 19.6. In other words, only 9.9 in every hundred of Germans could not be forced to go to war, but nearly 28 out of every hundred Frenchmen, 21.5 out of every hundred Scotchmen, and more than 19 out of every hundred Englishmen were immune from military duty in the United States, also from the payment of taxes.

There are more German-born persons in the United States of the age of 21 and over than there are persons of any other foreign nationality. Of the total number of foreign-born (6,646,817), Germany is represented by 1,278,667, of whom 69.5 per cent. had been naturalized in 1910. Russia comes next, with 737,120, of whom only 26.1 per cent. were naturalized. There were 437,152 Englishmen of voting age, 59.4 of whom were naturalized, while only 49.6 per cent. out of a total of 59,661 Frenchmen of voting age were entitled to vote.

The following table shows the States containing the largest number of Germans of voting age of all foreign-born citizens:

By Sections:--
Germans Austrians Hungarians
East North Central 461,038 166,037 90,577
West ” ” 228,262 63,686 ----
South Atlantic 32,143 10,961 6,007
East South Central 15,154 1,719 ----
Pacific 73,302 23,500 ----

By States:--
Germans Austrians Hungarians
New Jersey 60,380 26,082 22,773
Ohio 87,013 38,400 47,852
Indiana 32,123 7,356 9,383
Illinois 159,112 81,883 20,391
Wisconsin 117,661 20,700 6,014
Iowa 52,393 8,580 ----
Missouri 47,038 8,819 5,834
South Dakota 11,964 3,099 ----
Nebraska 31,008 12,184 ----
Kansas 18,910 6,178 ----
Maryland 17,370 3,397 967
Colorado 9,558 8,221 ----
Oregon 10,786 3,622 ----
California 44,712 11,125 ----

In the following States the German-born citizens of voting age constitute the second largest number of foreign-born citizens:

Germans Austrians Hungarians
Michigan 65,129 17,698 6,937
Minnesota 57,789 22,261 ----
Texas 24,039 9,767 ----

In Michigan the Germans and Austrians together outnumbered the Canadians 3,588. In Minnesota the Swedes came first, with a total of 67,003, and in Texas the Germans were outnumbered only by Mexicans.

The German-born of voting age in New York State are outnumbered by Russians and Italians, but as 68.2 per cent. of the 215,310 are citizens, only 17.5 per cent. of the Italians and only 24.4 of the Russians had acquired the franchise in 1910, the Germans outclass them numerically as voters. They are third also in Washington with a total of 17,804, next after the Canadians with 20,395 and the Swedes with 19,727. Of the Germans, however, 66.9 per cent. were naturalized while only 55.1 per cent. of the Canadians had their franchise, giving the Germans the advantage when the votes are counted.

Germans Austrians Hungarians
New York 215,310 105,889 39,577
Washington 19,727 9,675 ----

In Pennsylvania Germans of voting age are outnumbered by Austrians, Russians and Italians in the order named; but only 12.4 per cent. of the Austrians, 21.9 per cent. of the Russians and 13.7 per cent. of the Italians had the franchise, whereas 66.5 of the Germans were citizens.

In North Dakota the Norwegians, Russians and Canadians outnumbered the Germans in the order named, and here all had become citizens in fairly relative proportion, as also in Montana, where the Germans of voting age were outnumbered by the Canadians, Irish and Austrians.

Germans Austrians Hungarians
Pennsylvania 95,539 145,528 68,522
North Dakota 9,160 2,565 1,096
Montana 5,419 6,067 ----

In New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut the total number of German-born voters was only 33,011, Austrians 29,686 and Hungarians 6,377, and these were principally in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Maine had none.

The following table shows the number of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians who were citizens in 1910, including those who had taken out their first papers:

Germans 1,017,037
Austrians 208,550
Hungarians 62,366
---------
Total 1,287,953

In addition, the citizenship of a total of 240,953 Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had not been reported. The following shows the number of Irish, Swedes, Swiss and Hollanders of voting age in 1910, including those who had applied for their first citizenship papers:

Irish 439,973
Swedes 259,305
Hollanders 40,332
Swiss 49,364
--------
Total 788,974

Other States in which German-born naturalized males of 21 or over lead all other foreign-born are:

Kentucky 7,380
Tennessee 1,509
Alabama 1,255
Mississippi 647
Arkansas 2,203
Louisiana 2,739
Oklahoma 4,071
Idaho 2,133
Wyoming 1,091
New Mexico 804
Arizona 852
Nevada 922
Delaware 903
District of Columbia 1,952
Virginia 1,547
North Carolina 365
South Carolina 570
Georgia 1,174
West Virginia 2,137
Florida 925

In West Virginia the total number of Italians was 11,561 against only 3,392 Germans, but only 748 Italians had become citizens against 2,137 Germans; and in Arizona there were 2,196 English as compared with 1,324 Germans, but 825 Germans had become citizens as compared with 832 English-born.

Of the 234,285 Russians in New York only 92,269 had become naturalized and taken out their first papers. In Minnesota were 52,133 Swedish voters, in Illinois 43,618, in Iowa 10,636, in Wisconsin 11,532, in Nebraska 10,000, in Washington 13,393, and in California 11,076.

=The German Element in American Life.=--The following commentary of Carl Schurz on the influence of the Germans in America is worthy of note:

“Friedrich Kapp, in his ‘History of the Germans in the State of New York,’ says: ‘In the battle waged to subdue the new world, the Latins supplied officers without an army, the English an army with officers, and the Germans an army without officers.’ This is signally true as regards the Germans. They emigrated to America and settled here as squatters without eminent official leadership. They became parts of already existing communities, in which a majority population of other nationality played a dominant role. Unlike ‘the army with officers,’ they possessed no official writers of history to record their deeds and sayings in regular reports. They had lost their political connection with their native land, and whatever interest they inspired at home was of a personal or family nature. Besides this, they were strongly isolated from communion with the predominating nationality by the difference in language and frequently were forced into the unfavorable position of an alien element. These various circumstances combined to accord them a rather superficial, stepmotherly treatment in the history of the American people, as written by the dominant nationality.”--From the introduction to Kapp’s “Die Deutschen im Staate New York.”

While Prof. Nearing, Douglas Campbell, Dr. Griffis and others have shown that the Americans are not an English people, the latter--including Scotch and Welsh--constituting only 30 per cent. of the American people, the advantage as historians, which the English-speaking element enjoyed from the beginning of our life as a nation, prompted them to assume the name of “Americans” and to regard the people of all other races and their descendants as usurping an unwarranted right in calling themselves Americans, so that today an American with a German name, as the war has shown, is somehow in a tolerated class distinct from his Anglo-American neighbors.

“Yet the first distinctive American frontier was not created alone by the movement of population westward from the older settlements; like every successive frontier in our history it became the Mecca of emigrants from British and Continental lands. Before 1700 exiled Huguenots and refugees from the (German) Palatinate began to seek the new world, and during the eighteenth century men of non-English stock poured by thousands into the up-country of Pennsylvania and of the South. In 1700 the foreign population of the colonies was slight; in 1775 it is estimated that 225,000 Germans and 385,000 Scotch-Irish, together nearly one-fifth of the entire population, lived within the provinces that won independence.”--“The Beginning of the American People,” by Prof. Carl L. Becker, University of Kansas; Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1915; p. 177.

Elson, in his “History of the United States,” p. 198, says that in New England and the South the people were almost wholly of English stock, though New England was of more purely English stock than was the South, with a sprinkling of Scotch-Irish and other nationalities, and especially in the South, of French Huguenots and Germans. “In the middle colonies less than half the population was English; the Dutch of New York, the Germans of Pennsylvania, the Swedes of Delaware and the Irish of all these colonies, together with small numbers of other nationalities, made up more than half the population.” He gives the total population of the colonies in 1760 at approximately 1,600,000.

Pennsylvania is sometimes called “The American German’s Holy Land.” Let us see why. Today, as the tourist visits Heidelberg on the Neckar, sails down the Rhine from Spires or Mannheim to Cologne, he sees many ivy-mantled ruins, which show how terribly Louis XIV of France desolated this region during his ferocious wars. Angry at the Germans and Dutch for sheltering his hunted Huguenots, he invaded the Rhine Palatinate, which became for a whole generation the scene of French fire, pillage, rapine and slaughter. Added to these troubles of war and politics, were those of religious persecutions; for, according as the prince electors were Protestants or Catholics, so the people were expected to change as suited their rulers, who compelled their subjects to be of the same faith. Tired of their long-endured miseries, the Palatine Germans, early in the eighteenth century, fled to England. Under the protection and kindly care of the British government, they were aided to come to America. About 5,000 settled in the Hudson, Mohawk and Schoharie valleys in New York, and over 25,000 in Pennsylvania, chiefly in the Schuylkill and Swatara region between Bethlehem and Harrisburg. Later came Germans from other parts of the Fatherland, making Colonists rich in the sturdy virtues of the Teutonic race.

Though poor, these Germans were very intelligent, holding on to their Bibles and having plenty of schools and schoolmasters. In the little Mennonite meeting house at Germantown, on the 18th of February, 1688, they declared against the unlawfulness of holding their fellowmen in bondage, and raised the first ecclesiastical protest against slavery in America. In Penn’s Colony also the first book written and published in America against slavery was by one of these German Christians. The Penn Germans also published the first Bible in any European tongue ever printed in America. It was they who first called Washington “the father of his country.” In their dialect, still surviving in some places, made up of old German and modern expressions, some pretty poems and charming stories have been written. Tenacious in holding their lands, thorough in method, appreciative of most of what is truest and best in our nation’s life, but not easily led away by mere novelties and justly distrustful of what is false and unjust, even though called “American,” the Germans have furnished in our national composite an element of conservatism that bodes well for the future of the republic.... Here worked and lived the first American astronomer, Rittenhouse, and here (Pennsylvania) originated many first things which have so powerfully influenced the nation at large.... Here lived Daniel Pastorius, then the most learned man in America. (“The Romance of American Colonization,” by Dr. William Elliot Griffis.)

The disposition of the New England school of historians, with some distinguished exceptions, to glorify everything of Puritan origin and belittle everything of non-English origin in American life, is strongly manifest in their writings about the early Palatine immigration. They were merely hewers of wood and drawers of water, or coolies. But the evidence of Franklin, Washington and Jefferson is to the contrary, and their history in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North and South Carolina puts the New England historians to shame. With their disparaging comments may be contrasted the words in which Macaulay describes the same people:

Honest, laborious men, who had once been thriving burghers
of Mannheim and Heidelberg, or who had cultivated the wine
on the banks of the Neckar and the Rhine. Their ingenuity
and their diligence could not fail to enrich any land which
should afford them an asylum.

Sanford H. Cobb says: “The story of the Palatines challenges our sympathy, admiration and reverence, and is as well worth telling as that of any other colonial immigration. We may concede that their influence on the future development of the country and its institutions was not equal to the formative power exerted by some other contingents. Certainly, they have not left so many broad and deep marks upon our history as have the Puritans of New England, and yet their story is not without definite and permanent monuments of beneficence toward American life and institutions. At least one among the very greatest of the safeguards of American liberty--the Freedom of the Press--is distinctly traceable to the resolute boldness of a Palatine.” (“The Story of the Palatines,” Putnam’s Sons, 1897, p. 5, Introduction.)

And very emphatic are the words of Judge Benton in his “History of Herkimer County:”

The particulars of the immigration of the Palatines are
worthy of extended notice. The events which produced the
movement in the heart of an old and polished European
nation to seek a refuge and a home on the western
continent, are quite as legitimate a subject of American
history as the oft-repeated relation of the experience of
the Pilgrim Fathers.

Germans were among the first immigrants in the South along with the English, and many a proud Virginian has German blood in his veins. President Wilson’s second wife is a Bolling. The first attempts to colonize Virginia were discouraging failures. Of the first 105 bachelor colonists sent out from England in 1606, half called themselves “gentlemen,” young men without a trade and with no practical experience as colonists. The others were laborers, tradesmen and mechanics, and two singers and a chaplain. Among the leaders Capt. John Smith was the most noted as he was the most able. The Jamestown colony was reduced to forty men when Captain Newport on his return from England brought additional numbers of colonists, and the “Phoenix” later arrived with seventy more settlers and the languishing colony was still later reinforced by seventy immigrants, among whom were two women. The marriage of John Laydon and Ann Burras was the occasion of the first wedding in Virginia.

“Better far than a batch of the average immigrants,” writes Dr. Griffis, “was the reinforcements of some German and Polish mechanics brought over to manufacture glass. These Germans were the first of a great company that have contributed powerfully to build up the industry and commerce of Virginia--the mother of states and statesmen! There still stands on the east side of Timber Neck Bay, on the north side of the York River, a stone chimney with a mighty fireplace nearly eight feet wide, built by these Germans.”

American’s great historian, George Bancroft, in his introduction to Kapp’s “Life of Steuben,” writes: “The Americans of that day, who were of German birth or descent, formed a large part of the population of the United States; they cannot well be reckoned at less than a twelfth of the whole, and perhaps formed even a larger proportion of the insurgent people. At the commencement of the Revolution we hear little of them, not from their want of zeal in the good cause, but from their modesty. They kept themselves purposely in the background, leaving it to those of English origin to discuss the violations of English liberties and to decide whether the time for giving battle had come. But when the resolution was taken, no part of the country was more determined in its patriotism than the German counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Neither they nor their descendants have laid claim to all the praise that was their due.”

In 1734 a number of German Lutheran communities were flourishing in Northern Virginia, and in a work dealing with Virginia conditions, which appeared in London in 1724, Governor Spotswood is mentioned as having founded the town of Germania, named for the Germans whom Queen Anne had sent over, but who abandoned that region, it seems, on account of religious intolerance. The same work mentions a colony of Germans from the Palatinate who had been presented with a large section of land and who were prosperous, happy and exceedingly hospitable. Many of their descendants attained to fame and fortune, as B. William Wirt, remembered as one of the most distinguished jurists in America, and Karl Minnigerode, for many years rector of St. Paul’s Church in Richmond, among whose parishioners was Jefferson Davis.

Many Germans immigrated to the Carolinas from Germany as well as Pennsylvania, before the Revolution. A large number came from Pennsylvania in 1745, and in 1751 the Mennonites bought 900,000 acres from the English government in North Carolina and founded numerous colonies which still survive. One colony on the Yadkin, known as the Buffalo Creek Colony, at the time sent abroad $384 for the purchase of German books. After 1840 the interrupted flow of German immigration was resumed.

When the German immigration into South Carolina began is a matter of dispute, but when a colony of immigrants from Salzburg reached Charleston in 1743, they found there German settlers by whom they were heartily welcomed. As early as 1674 many Lutherans, to escape the oppression of English rule in New York, settled along the Ashley, near the future site of Charleston.

It is probable from printed evidence that the first German in South Carolina was Rev. Peter Fabian, who accompanied an expedition sent by the English Carolina Company to that colony in 1663.

In 1732, under the leadership of John Peter Purry, 170 German-Swiss founded Purrysburg on the Savannah River, and were followed in a year or two by 200 more. Orangeburg was founded about the same time by Germans from Switzerland and the Palatinate. Likewise Lexington was founded by Germans, and in 1742 Germans founded a settlement on the island of St. Simons, south of Savannah. In 1763 two shiploads of German immigrants arrived at Charleston from London.

Before the Revolution the Gospel was preached in sixteen German churches in the colony, and at the outbreak of the Revolution the German Fusiliers was the name given to an organization of German and German-Swiss volunteers which still exists. As early as 1766 a German Society was founded in Charleston and numbered upward of 100 members at the beginning of the Revolution. It gave 2,000 pounds to the patriotic cause, and after the conclusion of peace erected its own school, at which annually twenty children of the poor were taught free of charge. Dr. Griffis speaks of the ship “Phoenix,” from New York, “which brought Germans, who built Jamestown on the Stone River.”

Many of the Palatine Germans and Swiss had already settled in the Carolinas, he continues; now into Georgia came Germans from farther East, besides many of the Moravians. In the Austrian Salzburg, prelatical bigotry had become unbearable to the Lutherans. Thirty thousand of these Bible-reading Christians had fled into Holland and England. Being invited to settle in Georgia, they took the oath of allegiance to the British King and crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

In March, 1734, the ship “Purisburg,” having on board 87 Salzburgers with their ministers, arrived in the colony. Warmly welcomed, they founded the town of Ebenezer. The next year more of these sober, industrious and strongly religious people of Germany came over. The Moravians, who followed quickly began missionary work among the Indians. After them again followed German Lutherans, Moravians, English immigrants, Scotch-Irish, Quaker, Mennonites and others. “Thus in Georgia, as in the Carolinas and Virginia, there was formed a miniature New Europe, having a varied population, with many sterling qualities.”

The first whites to settle within the territory comprising the present State of Ohio were the German Moravians who founded the towns of Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhütten, Lichtenau and Salem. David Zeisberger on May 3, 1772, with a number of converted Indians, founded the first Christian community in Ohio. Mrs. Johann George Jungmann was the first white married woman. She and her husband came from Bethlehem, Pa. At Schoenbrunn and Gnadenhütten, Zeisberger wrote a spelling book and reader in the Delaware language which was printed in Philadelphia.

In Gnadenhütten was born July 4, 1773, the first white child in Ohio, John Ludwig Roth; the second child was Johanna Maria Heckewelder, April 16, 1781, at Schoenbrunn, and the third was Christian David Seusemann, at Salem, May 30, 1781. The Communities, largely composed of baptized Indians, in 1775 numbered 414 persons, and their record of industry and peaceful development is preserved in Zeisberger’s diary, now in the archives of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio at Cincinnati.

The peaceful settlements excited the jealousy of powerful interests, and the British Commissioners, McKee and Elliot, and the renegade, Simon Girty, reported to the commander at Detroit that Zeisberger and his companions were American spies. The German settlers and their Indian converts were carried to Sandusky in 1781, where they suffered great privations until permitted, after winter had come, to send back 150 of their Indian wards--all of whom spoke the German language--to gather what of their planting remained in the fields. But a number of lawless American bordermen under Col. David Williamson, acting on a false report that the peaceful Indians had been concerned in a raid, surprised the men in the fields and after disarming them by a trick, murdered men, women and children in cold blood. The details, as related by Eickhoff (“In der Neuen Heimath,” Steiger, New York, 1885, and by Col. Roosevelt in “The Winning of the West”) are among the most ghastly on record and make the blood run cold. Some of these slain had German fathers and all were peaceful, industrious and well-behaved natives who had learned to sing Christian hymns and German songs in their humble meeting houses.

Independent of these communities, the first settlement of Ohio at Marietta was the work of New Englanders, in April, 1788; but the second, that of Columbia, was under the direction of a German Revolutionary officer, Major Benjamin Steitz, the name being later changed by his descendants to Stites.

Space is lacking for fuller details regarding the great share of the Germans in settling the Middle West and West. German names predominate in the history of early border warfare in the fights with the French and the Indians; the Germans were among the most conspicuous of the pioneers, as they continued to be for generations in settling the Far West and Northwest, the great number of Indian massacres culminating in that of New Ulm in 1862, in which German settlers again formed the outposts of American civilization.

One thing is notable in the annals of our early history, the striking fact that the frontier settlements in Pennsylvania and the West and also the Northwest teemed with Germans, and that every Indian massacre and every border fight with the French, before the Revolution as well as after, brings into prominence German names. In the defense of the borders against Indians and French, forts were built by the German settlers above Harrisburg, at the forks of the Schuylkill, on the Lehigh and on the Upper Delaware. They bore the brunt of the Tulpehocken massacre in 1755, just after Braddock’s defeat; the barbarities perpetrated in Northampton county in 1756, and the attack on the settlements near Reading in 1763. Against these forays the Germans under Schneider and Hiester made stout resistance. As early as 1711 a German battalion, mainly natives of the Palatinate, was part of the force, a thousand strong, which was to take part in the expedition against Quebec.

Berks, Bucks, Lancaster, York and Northampton were then the Pennsylvania frontier counties, and from them came the men who filled the German regiments and battalions in the Revolutionary War. In the South, Law’s Mississippi scheme brought more than 17,000 Germans from the Palatinate, who made settlements throughout what was then the French colony. Theirs was a life of hardship and constant battle with the Indians.

In 1773 Frankfort and Louisville, Kentucky, were settled by Germans, the former by immigrants from North Carolina, and led to “Lord Dinsmore’s war” in which they fought the Indians and gained a foothold.

In 1777 Col. Shepherd (Schaefer), a Pennsylvania German, successfully defended Wheeling from a large Indian force. In the operations under Gen. Irvine, to avenge the massacre of the Moravian settlers in Ohio, his adjutant, Col. Rose, was a German, Baron Gustave von Rosenthal.

At the outbreak of the Old French War (1756-1763), the British government, under an act of Parliament, organized the Royal American regiment for service in the Colonies. It was to consist of four battalions of one thousand men each. Fifty of the officers were to be foreign Protestants, while the enlisted men were to be raised principally from among the German settlers in America. The immediate commander, General Bouquet, was a Swiss by birth, an English officer by adoption, and a Pennsylvanian by naturalization. This last distinction was conferred on him as a reward for his services in his campaign in the western part of Pennsylvania, where he and his Germans atoned for the injuries that resulted from Braddock’s defeat in the same border region.

The German settlers were ardent American patriots before and during the Revolution. In 1775, says Rosengarten, the vestries of the German Lutheran and Reformed churches at Philadelphia sent a pamphlet of forty pages to the Germans of New York and North Carolina, stating that the Germans in the near and remote parts of Pennsylvania have distinguished themselves by forming not only a militia, but a select corps of sharp shooters, ready to march wherever they are required, while those who cannot do military service are willing to contribute according to their ability. They urged the Germans of other colonies to give their sympathy to the common cause, to carry out the measures taken by Congress, and to rise in arms against the oppression and despotism of the English Government. The volunteers in Pennsylvania were called “Associators” and the Germans among them had their headquarters at the Lutheran schoolhouse in Philadelphia. In 1750 the German settlers in Pennsylvania were estimated at nearly 100,000 out of a total population of 270,000, and in 1790 at 144,600.

The Springfield (Mass.) “Republican,” although an outspoken pro-British paper, since the outbreak of the war paid deserved tribute to the share of the German settlers in the early history of the Republic, rebuking the spirit of envy and detraction evinced in certain quarters, by saying that those who hold these belittling views can have no knowledge of the history of the Palatines who settled the Mohawk Valley. Anyone having a cursory acquaintance with the elementary text books of American history, the paper thinks, must recall the massacre of Wyoming and the Cherry Valley. Neither in New York, nor in Pennsylvania nor in the South did the Germans evade the dangers and hardships of the wilderness. It is not generally known how large a share they had in the settling of the West. They poured into Ohio from the Mohawk Valley as well as from Pennsylvania. On the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky they vied with Daniel Boone in fighting the Indians--Steiner and the German Pole, Sandusky, preceded Boone in Kentucky. One of the most famous among the pioneers was the “tall Dutchman,” George Yeager (Jaeger), who was killed by Indians in 1775, continues the “Republican.” In the valleys of Virginia there were more German pioneers than any other nationality. Along the whole border line from Maine to Georgia they occupied the most advanced positions in the enemy’s territory, and their large families included more younger sons who went forth to look for new lands than of all others. A Kentucky observer declared at the close of the eighteenth century that of every twelve families, nine Germans, seven Scotchmen and four Irishmen succeeded when all others failed.

Michael Fink and his companions were the first to descend the Mississippi on a trading expedition to New Orleans, where the officials in 1782 had never heard of their starting point, Pittsburg. Germans again--Rosenvelt, Becker and Heinrich--were the first to descend the Ohio in a steamboat in 1811. (Rosengarten.)

“In our Colonial Period almost the entire western border of our country was occupied by Germans,” writes Prof. Burgess. “It fell to them, therefore, to defend, in first instance, the colonists from the attack of the French and the Indians. They formed what was known in those times as the Regiment of Royal Americans, a brigade rather than a regiment, numbering some 4,000 men, and the bands led by Nicholas Herkimer and Conrad Weiser.”

=Germany and England During the Civil War.=--The attitude of England during the Civil War contrasted strangely with that of the German States, and this attitude is rather clearly shown by the “Investment Weekly,” of New York, for June 21, 1917, though not intended as a reproach to England. In the course of an article, headed “Bond Market of the Civil War,” the “Investment Weekly” says:

Another difference is that the United States until recently
had been the greatest neutral nation in the world, whereas
then Great Britain was the greatest neutral nation. Still
a third difference is that whereas Great Britain was able
to borrow freely from us even before we entered the war,
our government during the Civil War was unable to obtain
any help from Great Britain. In March, 1863, an attempt
was made to negotiate a loan of $10,000,000 there, but the
negotiations utterly failed.

The significance of this paragraph will appear from reflection on the state of distress prevailing in 1863, a period when the outlook for the success of the Union was veiled in gloom, and many of the most stout-hearted trembled for the outcome. England was sending fully-equipped and English-manned warships over to aid the Confederacy; the “Alabama” and the “Florida” were sinking our ships and sweeping American commerce from the seas. Justin McCarthy, in “The Cruise of the ‘Alabama’” (“A History of Our Own Times,” II, Chap. XLIV), says:

The “Alabama” had got to sea; her cruise of nearly two
years began. She went upon her destroying course with the
cheers of English sympathizers and the rapturous tirades of
English newspapers glorifying her. Every misfortune that
befell an American merchantman was received in this country
with a roar of delight.

At that time England was on the eve of entering the war on the side of the South, and only the news of General Grant’s decisive victory at Vicksburg and Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg brought the House of Commons to a more sober reflection.

McCarthy shows that a motion for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy, which Minister Adams had said would mean a war with the Northern States, was already in process of passing in the House of Commons, for he writes:

The motion was never pressed to a division; for during its
progress there came at one moment the news that General
Grant had taken Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, and that
General Meade had defeated General Lee, at Gettysburg, and
put an end to all thought of a Southern invasion.... There
was no more said in this country about the recognition of
the Southern Confederation, and the Emperor of the French
was thenceforth free to follow out his plans as far as he
could, and alone.

It was during these dismal hours of trembling hope that Germany proved herself the friend of the Union. Whereas England would not loan the Lincoln administration $10,000,000, six times that amount was forthcoming from Germany.

When in 1870 a disposition developed here to supply France with arms against Germany, some heated debates took place in the Senate, in which events of 1861-65 were naturally brought up for review, and it is interesting to quote from the debates of that period as reported in the “Globe Congressional Record,” 3rd Session, 41st Congress. Part II. From pp. 953-955:

Mr. Stewart, Senator from Nevada: “Allow me to call the
attention of the Senator from Tennessee to the fact, which
he must recollect, of the amount of our bonds that were
taken in Germany at the time we needed that they should be
taken, and =when they were prohibited from the Exchange in
London and from the Bourse in Paris, and not allowed to be
on the markets there at all= on account of the state of
public opinion there, =while Germany alone came in and took
five or $600,000,000 at a time when we needed money more
than anything else, to sustain our credit=. That is a fact
showing sympathy, certainly.”

Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, quoted on p. 954, said:

They (the Germans) sent us men; they recruited our armies
with men; they helped to save the life of this nation.
Though the French were our ancient allies, the Germans have
been our modern allies.

And well did Senator Charles Sumner put it when he declared in the United States Senate, (“Congressional Record,” 3rd Session, 41st Congress, Page 956): “We owe infinitely to Germany.”

A formal acknowledgement of our debt to Germany during the most critical stage of our history was made by Secretary of State William H. Seward through the American Minister at Berlin, in May, 1863, as follows:

You will not hesitate to express assurance of the constant
good will of the United States toward the king and the
people who have dealt with us in good faith and great
friendship during the severe trials through which we have
been passing.

At the close of the war, the Prussian deputies, some 260 in number, on April 26, 1865, submitted an address to the American Minister in Berlin, in which the following language occurs:

Living among us you are witness of the heartfelt sympathy
which this people have ever preserved for the people of the
United States during the long and severe conflict. You are
aware that Germany has looked with pride and joy on the
thousands of her sons, who, in this struggle, have arrayed
themselves on the side of law and justice. You have seen
with what joy the victories of the Union have been hailed
and how confident our faith in the final triumph of the
great cause of the restoration of the Union in all its
greatness has ever been, even in the midst of adversity.

While there is a strong tendency in certain directions to ignore or obscure the facts of American history by imputing some vaguely unpatriotic motive to those who prefer to see the United States travel the same conservative path which has made it the dominating power of the world, after 140 years of devotion to the patriotic standards established by the founders of the Republic, it shall not deter us from calling attention to the testimony of a great American, James G. Blane, by quoting certain passages from his book, “Twenty Years in Congress,” which leave no doubt what his attitude would be to-day. The quotations are taken from Vol. II, p. 447:

From the government of England, terming itself liberal
with Lord Palmerston at its head, Earl Russel as Foreign
Secretary, Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the Duke of Argyll as Lord Privy Seal, and Earl Cranville
as Lord President of the Council, not one friendly word
was sent across the Atlantic. A formal neutrality was
declared by government officials, while its spirit was
daily violated. If the Republic had been a dependency of
Great Britain, like Canada or Australia, engaged in civil
strife, it could not have been more steadily subjected to
review, to criticism, and to the menace of discipline.
The proclamations of President Lincoln, the decisions of
Federal Courts, the orders issued by commanders of the
Union armies, were frequently brought to the attention of
Parliament, as if America were in some way accountable to
the judgment of England. Harsh comment came from leading
British statesmen; while the most ribald defamers of the
United States met with cheers from a majority of the House
of Commons and indulged in the bitterest denunciation of
a friendly government without rebuke from the Ministerial
benches.

(Vol. II, Chap. 20): March 7, 1862, Lord Robert Cecil,
in discussing the blockade of the southern coast, said:
“The plain matter of fact is, as every one who watches
the current of history must know, that the =Northern
States of America never can be our sure friends=, for
this simple reason: not merely because the newspapers
write at each other, or that there are prejudices on each
side, but because we are rivals, rivals politically,
rivals commercially. We aspire to the same position. We
both aspire to the government of the seas. We are both
manufacturing people, and in every port, as well as at
every court, we are rivals to each other.”

March 26, 1863, Mr. Laird of Birkenhead: “The institutions
of the United States are =of no value whatever=, and have
reduced the very name of liberty to an utter absurdity.” He
was loudly cheered for saying this.

April, 1863, Mr. Roebuck declared: “That the whole conduct
of the people of the North is such as proves them not only
unfit for the government of themselves, but unfit for the
courtesies and the community of the civilized world.”

Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of England, asserted that:
“As far as my influence goes, I am determined to do all
I can =to prevent the reconstruction of the Union=.”--“I
hold that it will be of the greatest importance that the
reconstruction of the Union should not take place.”

February 5, 1863, Lord Malmesbury spoke disdainfully of
treating with so extraordinary a body as the government
of the United States, and referred to the horrors of the
war--“=horrors unparalleled even in the wars of barbarous
nations=.”

England confidently believed that the North would suffer a crushing defeat, and the same opinion was held by the French government. Napoleon the Third felt absolutely confident that the South would triumph. (See “France’s Friendship for the United States.”)

The London “Times” in 1862 voiced English sentiment against the Union in a manner that has been paralleled only by its denunciations of Germany at the present time. It said:

“To bully the weak, to triumph over the helpless, to
trample on every law of country and customs, wilfully to
violate the most sacred interests of human nature--to defy
as long as danger does not appear, and as soon as real
peril shows itself, to sneak aside and run away--these are
the virtues of the race which presumes to announce itself
as the leader of civilization and the prophet of human
progress in these latter days.”