Chapter I (6)

A clear statement of the English Parliament’s attitude toward the United States in the Civil War is contained in the autobiography of Sir William Gregory, K. C. M. G. (Member of Parliament and one-time Governor of Ceylon), edited by Lady Gregory (London, 1894), pp. 214-6: “The feeling of the upper classes undoubtedly predominated in favor of the South, so much so that when I said in a speech that the adherents of the North in the House of Commons might all be driven home in one omnibus, the remark was received with much cheering.”

Among those who invested in the Confederate bonds were many Members of Parliament and editors of London newspapers. Prominent among them was Gladstone. “Donahoe’s Magazine,” April, 1867, published a list of prominent investors in Confederate bonds, which shows that 29 persons lost a total of $4,490,000 in such investments. The list follows:

Lbs.
Sir Henry de Hington, Bart 180,000
Isaac Campbell & Co. 150,000
Thomas Sterling Begley 140,000
Marquis of Bath 50,000
James Spence 50,000
Beresford Hope 50,000
George Edward Seymour 40,000
Charles Joice & Co. 40,000
Messrs. Ferace 30,000
Alexander Colie & Co. 20,000
Fleetwood, Polen, Wilson & Schuster, Directors
of Union Bank of London, together 20,000
W. S. Lindsay 20,000
Sir Coutts Lindsay, Bart 20,000
John Laced, M. P. from Birkenhead 20,000
M. B. Sampson, Editor of Times 15,000
John Thadeus Delane, Editor of Times 10,000
Lady Georgianna Time, Sister of Lord
Westmoreland 10,000
J. S. Gillet, Director of the Bank of England 10,000
D. Forbes Campbell 8,000
George Peacock, M. P. 5,000
Lord Warncliff 5,000
W. H. Gregory, M. P. 4,000
W. J. Rideout, London Morning Post 4,000
Edward Ackroyd 1,000
Lord Campbell 1,000
Lord Donoughmore 1,000
Lord Richard Grosvenor
Hon. Evelyn Ashley, Priv. Sec. to Lord
Palmerston 500
Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone 20,000
--------
Total Losses £898,000

The present holders of these bonds have never despaired of being able some day to collect the amounts from the United States Treasury, and it will only need a closer alliance between the United States and Great Britain, as proposed by the advocates of an Anglo-Saxon amalgamation, to bring these claims to the front.

=Germans in Civil War.=--Four authors have dealt exhaustively with the subject of the German-born soldiers in the Union army. They are Wilhelm Kaufmann in his valuable work, “The Germans in the American Civil War” (R. Oldenbourg, Berlin and Munich, 1911), J. G. Rosengarten, “The German Soldier in the Wars of the United States” (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1890), Frederic Phister, “Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States” (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883) and B. A. Gould, “Investigations in the Statistics of American Soldiers” (New York, 1869).

The first three are more or less founded on the latter, but in Kaufmann, particularly, many errors of computation on the part of Gould are shown up which increase the number credited to the German participants in the Civil War. Rosengarten is particularly valuable as reference in regard to the share of the Germans in the Revolutionary War. According to Gould, more Germans served in the Union army than any other foreigners. This is substantiated by all the writers. Kaufmann proves that the colossal total of 216,000 native-born Germans fought in the Union army. In addition the army included 300,000 sons of German-born parents and 234,000 Germans of remoter extraction. Besides the Germans fighting in the ranks, Kaufmann holds that the roster of generals and other high officers of the Union army contained more names of German than of any foreign nationality. He also calls attention to the fact that a large number of German aristocrats, including such eminent names as von Steuben, Count Zeppelin, von Sedlitz, von Wedel, von Schwerin, and one German prince (Prinz zu Salm-Salm) took the field in behalf of the Union. Prince Salm-Salm was accompanied by his wife who performed valuable service as a nurse.

Professor Burgess writes: “The German and German American contingent in our armies amounted, first and last, to some 500,000 soldiers. They were led by such men as Heintzelmann, Rosecrans, Schurz, Sigel, Osterhaus, Willich, Hartranft, Steinwehr, Wagner, Hecker and a thousand others. Mrs. Jefferson Davis, the wife of the Confederate President has often said to me that without the Germans the North could never have overcome the armies of the Confederacy; and unless that had been accomplished then, this continent would have been, since then, the theatre of continuous war instead of the home of peace.”

Gould’s figures of the relative number of foreign-born soldiers in the Union army are as follows:

Germans 187,858
British Americans 53,532
English 45,508
Irish 144,221
Other foreigners 48,410
Foreigners not otherwise designated 26,145

According to these figures, the Germans constituted upward of 37% of the foreign-born soldiers in the Union army, while the English numbered less than 8%. The Anglo-Saxon, therefore, is not represented in a critical stage of the nation’s struggle for survival in proportion to the importance assigned him in our affairs at the present day.

Kaufmann, in analyzing these figures, shows that the number was understated as regards the Germans and overstated as regards the Canadians. More than 36 per cent. of the Union troops furnished by the State of Missouri were born in Germany, and the Germans furnished more troops pro rata, according to the census of 1860, than any other racial element, including native born Americans. It is interesting to note that the States in which the Germans were largely represented made the largest response to President Lincoln’s first call for volunteers. The call, issued April 15, 1861, was for 75,000 volunteers to serve three months. New England was the center of the agitation and the hot-bed of the abolition movement. Lincoln’s call was responded to by 91,816 men.

New England was represented by only 11,987
New York 12,357
Pennsylvania 20,175
Ohio 12,357
Missouri 10,591

Taking Gould’s figures, the State of Missouri and the State of New York each sent more German-born soldiers to the war than either Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, West Virginia, Minnesota or Kansas sent native-born troops, and the German-born Union soldiers from these two states together (67,579 men) formed a larger contingent than the native-born contingent of either New Jersey or Maine, and larger than New Hampshire, Vermont and Delaware together (64,600 men). Pennsylvania furnished more German-born troops than Delaware, District of Columbia or Kansas separately furnished native Americans. Six States--New York, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin--furnished more German-born soldiers to defend the country than Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut did native sons. More German-born Union soldiers came from New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Missouri than native-born from Massachusetts. The effort of Provost Marshal Fry to charge about 200,000 desertions and innumerable cases of bounty jumpers to the account of foreign-born element in the Union army leaves the Germans unscathed, since he showed that “especially in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey the number of deserters is especially large.” In the New England States there were but 5,077 German enlistments out of 369,800 (Gould) all told, and the desertions in those states as well as New York and New Jersey, in view of the large German enlistments in the Western States not named as noted for desertions, must be charged to some other element. It was the practice to blame all the evils during the war on the foreign-born and to shift to their patient shoulders the sins of commission and omission of others.

It is impossible for lack of space to name more than a comparatively few of the Germans who as officers distinguished themselves in the Civil War. Several omitted in the list below will be found under their names in separate paragraphs. In many instances the German officers who by their efficiency and splendid training in Germany had laid the foundation of notable victories were callously deprived of all credit, and in the case of others jealousy and a deeply grounded racial antipathy intervened to prevent them from obtaining the rank to which they were by education, experience and achievements entitled. In any case where it was an issue between a native and a foreigner, the latter was sure to suffer. Those named below were born in Germany and do not include American-born Germans like Generals Rosecrans, Heintzelmann, Hartrauft, Custer, etc.

Franz Sigel, Major General and Corps Commander; born 1824, at Sinsheim, Baden; died in New York in 1902. His memory is honored by two equestrian statues. A detailed account of his achievements is not considered necessary here. His name has been a household word.

Adolf von Steinwehr, probably the best-grounded military officer among the Germans in the Union army, Division Commander and Brigadier General; born 1822 in Blankenburg, in the Harz, died 1877 in Buffalo. Prussian officer and military instructor in Potsdam. Served in the Mexican war. Distinguished himself at Gettysburg, where he held Cemetery Hill, (for which Gen. Howard received the thanks of Congress), gathered the remnants of the 11th and 1st corps, and continued the defense July 2 and 3.

August von Willich, one of the most famous fighters in the Union army, a typical “Marshal Forward.” Brevet Major General and Division Commander; born in Posen 1810, died at St. Marys, Ohio, 1878. Made possible the advance of Rosecrans’s army upon Chattanooga by taking Liberty and Hoover’s Gap in the Alleghanies. Earned laurels at Chickamauga and set an heroic example to the whole army by leading his nine regiments up Missionary Ridge and sharing the great victory with Sheridan.

Julius Stahel, German-Hungarian. Perfected the organization of the Union Cavalry. Generals Hooker and Heintzelmann pronounced Stahel’s cavalry regiment to be the best they had ever seen. At Lincoln’s request, to this cavalry was confided the defense of Washington. Was made Major General simultaneously with Schurz. Commanded the vanguard of Hunter’s army in the Shenandoah Valley, was attacked by the Confederate Cavalry under Jones on the march to Staunton, repulsed the attack and pursued his opponent to Piedmont, where he found the enemy strongly entrenched. Stahel repulsed all attacks until Hunter’s arrival and won the medal for bravery. Though seriously wounded, he led his squadron in a brilliant assault, broke through the enemy’s lines and scattered the opposing forces.

Gottfried Weitzel; Major General and Corps Commander; born in the Palatinate; educated at West Point; lieutenant in the engineer corps, U. S. A. Commanded a division under Grant, and at the head of the 25th army corps was the first to enter Richmond, April 3, 1865, where the next day he received President Lincoln. The following dispatch explains itself:

WAR DEPARTMENT,
Washington, April 3, 10 A. M.
To Major General Dix:

It appears from a dispatch of General Weitzel, just
received by this Department, that our forces under his
command are in Richmond, having taken it at 8:30 this A. M.

E. M. STANTON, Sec’y of War.

August V. Kautz; Brevet Major General; born in Pfarzheim, distinguished cavalry leader. Served during the Mexican war. Commanded the 24th army corps, with which he entered Richmond with Weitzel. Became Major General in the regular army after the war. Admiral Albert Kautz was his brother.

Colonel Asmussen, Chief of Staff to General O. O. Howard; former Prussian officer. Resigned as the result of serious wounds.

Ludwig Blenker, born 1812 in Worms, died 1863 in Pennsylvania. Served in Greece and in the Baden revolution. Became famous for covering the retreat at the first battle of Bull Run.

Heinrich Bohlen, born 1810 in Bremen; killed in battle at Freeman’s Ford on the Rappahannock, August 21, 1862. Brigade Commander under Blenker; distinguished himself at Cross Keys.

Adolf Buschbeck, Brigadier General; a Prussian officer from Coblenz; military instructor at Potsdam. Died 1881. Distinguished himself in the two battles of Bull Run and at Cross Keys, and became the real hero of Chancellorsville; fought gallantly at Gettysburg and Missionary Ridge, and was in Sherman’s march through Georgia, gaining new laurels in the bloody battles of Peachtree Creek, and at Ezra Church, July 28, 1864, where Buschbeck repulsed the enemy three times. With Willich and Wangelin the most noted German American fighter in the Union army.

Hubert Dilger, a former artillery officer in Baden, although never attaining a rank beyond that of captain, distinguished himself in numerous battles for the Union. By many considered the ablest artillery officer in the northern army. Commanded the only gun which was effectively served in the defense of Buschbeck’s brigade at Chancellorsville. Its escape from destruction was almost miraculous. Was famous throughout the army.

Leopold von Gilsa, former Prussian officer; brigadier general; rendered distinguished service in numerous campaigns, but failed of promotion through the admitted intrigues of the Princess Salm-Salm.

Wilhelm Grebe; born in Hildersheim. Received from Congress medal for personal bravery; was cashiered for fighting a duel, but restored twenty years after by an act of Congress.

Franz Hassendeubel, one of the most distinguished engineer officers in the Northern army; born 1817 in Germersheim, Palatinate. Came to America in 1842; engineer officer in Mexican war; built the ten forts that defended St. Louis. Brigadier General in 1863. Fatally wounded on a tour of inspection around Vicksburg, died July 17, 1863. Hassendeubel Post, G. A. R., St. Louis, perpetuates his memory.

Ernst F. Hoffmann, former Prussian engineer officer, born in Breslau. Chief engineer 11th army corps. Highly praised by General J. H. Wilson.

George W. Mindel, brevet major general, twice awarded the medal for bravery, the first time for directing the assault of a regiment which pierced the enemy’s center in the battle of Williamsburg, May 3, 1862, the second time in the march through Georgia; officer on McClellan’s and Phil Kearney’s staffs; distinguished himself at Missionary Ridge. Born in Frankfort and buried in Arlington.

Edward G. Salomon, brevet brigadier general, organized a Hebrew company in Hecker’s 82d Illinois, and became its Colonel when Hecker was wounded; rendered distinguished service throughout the war, and was appointed governor of Washington territory.

Alexander von Schimmelpfennig, one of the most noted German-American fighting generals; died 1865 from the hardships of the war. Former Prussian officer. Recruited the 74th Pennsylvania regiment, one of the elite regiments in the Army of the Potomac. In the second battle of Bull Run his brigade hurled General Jackson’s crack troops back over the railroad beyond Cushing’s Farm. Fought with distinction at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and was the first to enter the hotbed of secession, Charleston, S. C. He was an officer, one of many Germans, whose memory deserved to live for their deeds, and whose deserts were minimized by those who envied them.

Theodore Schwan, general in the regular army, from Hanover; rose from the ranks; fought against the Mormons and took part in twenty battles during the Civil War. Received the medal for personal bravery from Congress, and after the war became an Indian fighter; military attache to the American embassy in Berlin 1892; published his military studies, which were highly praised. Was the real conqueror of Porto Rica, Spanish-American War, in which he commanded a division of 20,000 men under General Miles.

Hugo von Wangelin descended from an old Mecklenburg noble family; educated in a Prussian military school; came to America at the age of 16. Fought almost continually alongside of Osterhaus throughout the war. His brigade earned undying glory at Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Ringgold, Ga., where he lost an arm. He whistled “Yankee Doodle” while the surgeons were sawing through the bone. Wangelin held Bald Hill before Atlanta, after the Union troops had been previously driven off. Engaged in fifty battles and was four years continually on the firing line. His “vacations” were periods of convalescense from wounds.

Max von Weber; fought under Sigel in the Baden revolution. Colonel of the 20th New York (Turners) 1861, until appointed brigadier general. Commanded Fortress Monroe and won distinction in the fights around Norfolk. At Antietam he commanded the third brigade of the third division French in Sumner’s corps, and still held the position at Rulett’s House after Sedgwick’s left had been enveloped, exposed to a murderous fire until relieved by Kimball’s brigade and after repeatedly repulsing the enemy. He was seriously wounded.

=Germans in the Confederate Army.=--Among the German-born officers in the Confederate army the most distinguished was General Jeb Stuart’s chief of staff, Heros von Borcke, a brilliant cavalry leader. Prussian officer. Came to America 1862 to offer his services to the Confederacy and was immediately assigned to duty with the great Confederate cavalry chief, Gen. Stuart, and became his right hand. Was seriously wounded at Middleburg and for months his life hung by a thread; was rendered unfit for service and in the winter of 1864 was sent to England on a secret mission by the Confederate government, but peace interrupted his activity. Was highly popular in the army and received more recognition than any German officer on the Northern side; his visit to the South twenty years after the close of the war was turned into a public ovation. His sword hangs in the Capitol at Richmond.--John A. Wagener, brigadier general and later mayor of Charleston, S. C. Born in Bremerhaven 1824. Defended Fort Walker, which he had built. Two of his sons, one aged 15, here served under their father. Half of the garrison was killed or wounded. It was Wagener who surrendered Charleston to his countryman, General Schimmelpfennig.--Gust. Adolf Schwarmann; Colonel in Gen. Wise’s Legion.--J. Scheibert; major in the Prussian Engineer Corps; came over as an observer but became an officer in Stuart’s Cavalry. Wrote a military book on the war, published in Germany. Gen. Lee told him on the battlefield of Chancellorsville: “Give me Prussian discipline and Prussian formation for my troops and you would see quite different results.”--Gustav Schleicher, born in Darmstadt. Well-known Congressman from Texas, after the war; commemorated in a memorial speech by President Garfield; chiefly active in devising fortifications.--Baron von Massow (see under “M.”).--Schele de Ver, Maximillian; born in Pommerania; Prussian reserve officer; professor at the Virginia State University, Richmond; Colonel of a Confederate regiment and emissary to Germany to espouse the Confederate cause.--R. M. Streibling; battery chief in Longstreet’s Corps; former Brunswick artillery officer.--August Reichard; former Hanoverian officer, tried to form a unit of German militia companies and after many disappointments succeeded in organizing a German battalion consisting of Steuben Guards, Capt. Kehrwald; Turner Guards, Capt. Baehncke; Reichard Sharpshooters, Capt. Muller; Florence Guards, Capt. Brummerstadt. The battalion with four Irish companies was merged into the 20th Louisiana with Reichard as Colonel and served with distinction in many battles, the regiment suffered frightful losses at Shiloh.--Karl F. Henningsen, in 1860, appointed advisor to Governor Wise of Virginia; born in Hanover; fought in the Carlist army in Spain at 17, then in Russia, participated in the Hungarian revolution and became leader of a filibuster party in Nicaragua.--August Buechel, Confederate brigadier general, former officer at Hesse-Darmstadt, killed in the battle of Pleasant Hill, La., struck by seven bullets; also served in the Mexican war.--W. K. Bachmann, Captain, Charleston German artillery; rendered distinguished service.

=Germantown Settlement.=--On March 4, 1681, a royal charter was issued to William Penn for the province of Pennsylvania, and on March 10, 1682, Penn conveyed to Jacob Telner, of Crefeld, Germany, doing business as a merchant in Amsterdam; Jan Streypers, a merchant of Kaldkirchen, a village in the vicinity of Holland, and Dirck Sipmann, of Crefeld, each 5,000 acres of land, to be laid out in Pennsylvania. On June 11, 1683, Penn conveyed to Gavert Remke, Lenard Arets and Jacob Isaac Van Bebber, a baker, all of Crefeld, 1,000 acres of land each, and they, together with Telner, Streypers and Sipmann, constituted the original Crefeld purchasers.

The present generation is indebted to former Governor Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, LL.D., of Pennsylvania, at one time presiding judge of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, and senior vice president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, for important information on the settlement of Germantown, and directly to his book, “The Settlement of Germantown, Pa., and the Beginning of German Emigration to North America,” a valuable historical compilation, now out of print. “The settlement of Germantown, in 1683,” he writes, “was the initial step in the great movement of people from the regions bordering on the historic and beautiful Rhine, extending from its source in the mountains of Switzerland to its mouth in the lowlands of Holland, which has done so much to give Pennsylvania her rapid growth as a colony, her almost unexampled prosperity, and her foremost rank in the development of the institutions of the country.”

From the pages of his book we learn that the “Concord,” which bore the Germantown settlers to our shores, was a vessel of 500 tons, William Jeffries, master. She sailed July 24, 1683, from Gravesend, with the following passengers and their families:

Lenard Arets, Abraham Op den Graeff, Dirck Op den Graeff, Hermann Op den Graeff, William Streypers, Thonas Kunders, Reynier Tyson, Jan Seimens, Jan Lensen, Peter Keurlis, Johannes Bleikers, Jan Lucken and Abraham Tunes, all Low Germans. The date of her arrival was October 6, 1683.

The three Op den Graeffs were brothers. Herman was a son-in-law of Van Bebber; they were accompanied by their sister Margaretha, and their mother, and they were cousins of Jan and William Streypers, who were also brothers. The wives of Thonas Kunders and Lenard Arets were sisters of the Streypers, and the wife of Jan was the sister of Reynier Tyson (Theissen). Peter Keurlis was also a relative, and the location of the signatures of Jan Lucken and Abraham Tunes on the certificate of the marriage of the son of Thonas Kunders with a daughter of William Streypers in 1700 indicates that they, too, were connected with the group by family ties. “It is now ascertained definitely,” writes Governor Pennypacker, “that eleven of these thirteen emigrants were from Crefeld, and the presumption that their two companions, Jan Lucken and Abraham Tunes, came from the same city is consequently strong. This presumption is increased by the indication of relationship and the fact that the wife of Jan Seimens was Mercken Williamsen Lucken.”

Pastorius had sailed six weeks earlier and had arrived in Philadelphia August 20, 1683. Governor Pennypacker has traced with remarkable minuteness the movements of the first concrete German settlement, and his invaluable work should not be allowed to slumber in a few surviving copies, now selling as high as $50 as literary curiosities, on the shelves of a few large libraries, but should be reprinted and made accessible to a larger reading public. The influence of this settlement in later generations is discussed elsewhere. (See under “Pastorius.”) The history of the “Concord” is given in Seidensticker’s “Bilder aus der Deutsch-Pennsylvanischen Geschichte” and valuable information is contained in “The German Element in the United States,” by Albert B. Faust, (Houghton Mifflin Company), who has done more than any other American author to gather the scattered records of German immigration, culture and influence and to present them within the convenient compass of two volumes.

Illustration: THONAS KUNDERS’ HOUSE,
5109 Main Street, Germantown, Pa.

Thonas Kunders’ house, 5109 Main street, Germantown, is the only house of the original settlers that can be accurately located. Thonas Kunders was a dyer by trade. His death occurred in the fall of 1729. He was the ancestor of the Conard and Conrad families. Among his descendants is included Sir Samuel Cunard, founder of the Cunard line of steamships. Here the first meeting of the Society of Friends in Germantown was held, and it was from the members of this little meeting that a public protest against slavery was issued early in 1688. Following is a summary of Germantown events:

1683--August 16--Pastorius reaches Philadelphia.
1683--October 6--Thirteen families from Crefeld reach
Philadelphia and settle Germantown.
1688--First protest against slavery issued here.
1690--First paper mill in America established here.
1705--First portrait in oil painted in America, made in
Germantown by Dr. Christopher Witt.
1708--First Mennonite meeting house in America built in
Germantown.
1719--February 17--Death of Pastorius.
1732--April 8--David Rittenhouse born at Germantown.
1743--First Bible in America in a foreign tongue printed in
Germantown by Christopher Sauer.
1760--Germantown Academy founded.
1764--Sauer begins publication of first religious magazine in
America.
1770--First American book on pedagogy published.
1772-73--First type ever cast in America made in Germantown.

--(“Guidebook to Historic Germantown.”)

=Why Germany Strengthened Her Army, Told by Asquith.=--(From a London dispatch by Marconi wireless to the New York “Times” under date of January 1, 1914): “The ‘Daily Chronicle’ this morning publishes the conversation with the Chancellor’s consent.... Another reason which the Chancellor (Asquith) gave was that the continental nations were directing their energies more and more to strengthening their land forces. =‘The German army,’ he said, ‘was vital to the very life and independence of the nation itself, surrounded as Germany was by nations each of which possessed armies almost as powerful as her own.... Hence Germany was spending huge sums of money on the expansion of her military resources.’=”

=Hagner, Peter.=--First to hold the position of Third Auditor of the U. S. Treasury upon the creation of that office in 1817 under President Monroe. Served the government 57 years and died at Washington, July 16, 1849, aged seventy-seven. Born in Philadelphia, October 1, 1772.

=Hartford Convention, The.=--In no section of the country was there louder acclaim of President Wilson’s public insinuations of disloyalty against German Americans than in New England. The Boston papers particularly distinguished themselves in applauding this unwarranted sentiment. And it came with particularly bad grace from this section, which long antedated the South in measures designed to embarrass and disrupt the Union. During the War of 1812 the New England banks sought to cripple the federal government in securing the necessary money to prosecute the war against England, and late in 1814 the legislature of Massachusetts called a convention of the New England states to meet at Hartford in December of that year. The sessions were secret and while the discussion was never published they were commonly held to be treasonable and intended to destroy the Union. The Convention recognized the principle of secession by proclaiming that “a severence of the Union by one or more states, against the will of the rest and especially in the time of war, can be justified only by absolute necessity.” The Convention made demands, the apparent intention of which was “to force these demands upon an unwilling administration while it was hampered by a foreign war, or in case of refusal to make such refusal a pretext for dismembering the Union.... An additional object of the Convention was to hamper and cripple the administration to the last degree, and at a moment when the country was overrun by a foreign foe, to overthrow the party in power, or to break up the Union. The men of this Convention were among the leading Federalists of the country, and with all their good qualities it is evident that their patriotism was shallow.” (“History of the United States” by Henry William Elson, Ph. D., Litt. D., The MacMillan Company, p. 446-447.) The work of the Convention came to naught. Peace put a stop to its intended mischief.

=Hempel.=--German American inventor of the much patented iron “quoin,” used to lock type in the form, and in common use by printers.

=New York Herald Urges Hanging of German Americans.=--The New York “Herald,” owned and directed by James Gordon Bennett, since deceased; who for thirty-five years was a resident of Paris, in its issue of July 12, 1915, advocated the lynching of German Americans by referring to them as “Hessians” and adding: “A rope attached to the nearest lamp post would soon bring to an end their career of crime.”

=Hereshoffs and Cramps.=--Who in the great yachting world of America has not heard of the Hereshoffs, the famous builders of racing yachts whose achievements won international fame for the United States? The original Hereshoff, Karl Friedrich, was born in Minden, Germany, and came to this country an accomplished engineer in 1800, establishing himself at Providence, R. I., where he married the daughter of John Brown, a shipbuilder. Their son and their grandsons took up naval architecture, and their remarkable achievements culminated in the fast racing yachts designed by John B., famous as the blind yacht builder, whose vessels successfully defended the American Cup against English contestants in several great international trials. The Cramps, great American ship builders, are also of German descent. Johann Georg Krampf, the founder, was a native of Baden, who came to the U. S. in the middle of the 17th century, and members of the family established what is now one of the greatest shipbuilding firms in the world.

=Herkimer, General Nicholas.=--Won the battle of Oriskany, which many regard as the decisive battle of the Revolution. Was the eldest son of Johann Jost Herkimer (or Herchheimer), a native of the German Palatinate, and one of the original patentees of what is now part of Herkimer County, N. Y. Was commissioned a lieutenant in the Schenectady militia, January 5, 1758, and commanded Fort Herkimer that year when the French and Indians attacked the German Flats. Appointed colonel of the first battalion of militia in Tryon County in 1775, and represented his district in the County Committee of Safety, of which he was chairman. Was commissioned brigadier general Sept. 5, 1776, by the Convention of the State of New York, and August 6, 1777, commanded the American forces at the battle of Oriskany, where he received a mortal wound but directed the battle from under a tree until its successful conclusion, dying ten days later at his home, the present town of Danube, N. Y.

Congress testified its appreciation of his service by twice passing resolutions requesting New York to erect a monument at the expense of the United States. A statue of the famous German American has finally been erected at Herkimer, N. Y., through the liberality of former U. S. Senator Warner Miller. The battle of Oriskany was fought by the Mohawk Valley Germans without assistance, other reports notwithstanding. A part of the American troops under Herkimer refused to co-operate and left the Germans to the number of only 800 to engage the enemy alone.

Quoting an American writer: “The battle of Oriskany was one of the most important battles of the Revolution, and General Washington said it was ‘the first ray of sunshine.’ The British forces, under Col. St. Leger, had landed at Oswego, coming from Canada, under orders to march through the Mohawk Valley to Albany, there to join Burgoyne, who was coming down from Canada with a large army, by way of Lake Champlain. These two forces were to meet at Albany and then go down the Hudson River, thus dividing the forces of the Americans. If this plan had succeeded doubtless the Revolution would have failed. However, the defeat of St. Leger at Oriskany sent his army back to Canada, and the defeat of Burgoyne later at Saratoga ended the entire movement and led to the final victory at Yorktown.”

H. W. Elson, in his “History of the United States of America,” says, “Oriskany was without exception the bloodiest single conflict in the war of the Revolution.... Nothing more horrible than the carnage of that battle has ever occurred in the history of warfare.”

Illustration: GENERAL HERKIMER

In the Magazine of American History for August, 1884, was printed an exhaustive article, “The Story of a Monument,” dealing largely with General Herkimer, the Battle of Oriskany, the character of its hero and the details of his personality and his surroundings. The author, S. W. D. North, quotes ex-Governor Dorsheimer as declaring at the Centennial Celebration: “Oriskany was a German fight. The words of warning and encouragement, the exclamations of praise and of pain, the shouts of battle and of victory, and the command which the wounded Herkimer spoke and the prayers of the dying, were in the German language.” The author holds, however, that even then the admixture of races had played pranks with the German names, until today the descendants of many of the participants in that “German fight” would not know the names of their ancestors if spelled on the roster as they were spelled correctly at the time Oriskany was fought. The problem was further complicated by the fact, says North, that the original Palatinates and their descendants who comprised the bulk of the yeomanry of the Mohawk Valley in the Revolution, were not an educated people. General Herkimer would be called an ignorant man these days. One of the most curious of the few existing specimens of his manuscript is preserved by the Oneida Historical Society, and throws a strange light on the mixed jargon in which even the hero of Oriskany issued his military orders and incidentally proves that the present spelling of his name was not his own way:

“Ser you will order your bodellyen do merchs immeedeetleh
do fordedward weid for das brofiesen and amonieschen fied
for on betell. Dis yu will dis ben your berrell--from frind.

NICOLAS HERCHHEIMER.

“To Cornell pieder bellinger
“ad de flets
“Ochdober 18, 1776”

Rendered into English, the order reads as follows:

“Sir: You will order your battalion to march immediately to
Fort Edward with four days’ provisions and ammunition fit
for one battle. This you will disobey (at) your peril.

From (your) Friend,
NICOLAS HERCHHEIMER.

“To Colonel Peter Bellinger, at the Flats.
“October 18, 1776.”

The Herkimer homestead is still preserved, and has now become an institution under the care of the State of New York. Agitation to bring this about was initiated by the German American Alliance, which raised the money to make the homestead a national memorial. The legislature granted a charter placing it under the care of the German American Alliance and the Daughters of the American Revolution, who for years co-operated peacefully in the loving task entrusted to them. Late in December, 1919, the last German American connected with the committee was forced out as a result of the desire to obliterate every reminder of the share of the German element in the memorial. (See “Palatine Declaration of Independence” elsewhere.)

=The Hessians.=--The bitter partisan feeling during the war has led to a widespread misrepresentation of the share which the Germans took in the Revolutionary War. The employment by England of some thousands of mercenaries recruited in Anspach and Hessia against the American colonies has been extended to include all Germany, regardless of the fact that there was no more ardent supporter of the cause of the colonists in Europe than the King of Prussia. The Hessians were sold to Great Britain at so much per head by their ruler. Their traffic was scathingly denounced by Frederick and the infamous transaction severely condemned by Schiller in his play, “Cabal and Love.”

Hessia represented to the rest of Germany, at that time composed of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and other States, about what Delaware represents to the whole of the United States. To blame all Germany for the misconduct of an unconscionable princeling is the extreme of injustice. Counting the German regiments under Rochambeau, nominally designated as Frenchmen, and the large number of German settlers in the ranks of Washington’s army under Herkimer, Muhlenberg, Steuben, Woedtke, Pulaski, etc., the Hessian-Anspach contingent was more than offset by the Germans fighting for the cause of American independence.

Thousands of Hessians were induced by their German countrymen to come over and enlist under the banner of the colonists. Pulaski’s flying squadron was recruited from these deserters. Some of the best troops in Washington’s immediate surrounding were former Hessians, and a Hessian deserter became one of Washington’s most trusted messengers in matters of war.

At the end of the war the country was full of Hessians. Many settled in Lebanon, Lancaster and Reading, Pa., and about 1,600 settled four miles from Winchester, Va., in 1781. Some of the sterling troops which made up Jackson’s Stonewall brigade in the Civil War were made up of the descendants of the Germans, many of them Hessians, who settled in the Shenandoah Valley.

If the Hessians, fighting reluctantly for a cause in which they had no heart, must be condemned by public sentiment, what shall be said of the native Americans, the Tory element, 26,000 of whom fled to Canada, while thousands of others fought in the English ranks against their own kin? Among the troops surrendered at Yorktown under Lord Cornwallis and General O’Hara, we find enumerated a body of South Carolina militiamen called “Volunteers,” “the Royal American Rangers,” etc., not counting the American deserters who had joined Cornwallis during the siege. (See “Frederick the Great and the American Colonies.”)

=Hillegas, Michael.=--First Treasurer of the United States, appointed July 29, 1776; son of German parents; born in Philadelphia, where his father was a well-to-do merchant. Served till Sept. 2, 1789. Hillegas with several other patriotic citizens came to the aid of the government in the Spring of 1780 with his private means to relieve the distress of Washington’s soldiers, and in 1781 became one of the founders of the Bank of North America, which afforded liberal support to the government during its financial difficulties. When a man named Philip Ginter submitted to him a piece of coal which he had found on Mauch-Chunk Hill, Hillegas pronounced it genuine coal, and with several others founded the Lehigh Coal Mining Co. and acquired 10,000 acres of coal land from the State of Pennsylvania. Died in Philadelphia, Sept. 29, 1804.

=House, Col. E. M.=--It is claimed that the part played by Col. E. M. House in the diplomatic history of the war has been correctly gauged by but few persons, and these attribute to him the exercise of a greater influence in shaping the program of the Wilson administration than any one else, not excepting the President. Some have sought to trace an intimate connection between the policies that invested the Chief Executive with more power than any president before him with an anonymous novel, “Philip Dru, Administrator,” generally attributed to Colonel House, in which a comprehensive program is laid down for the government of the United States by Dru after finishing a successful war.

It is undeniable that a more than casual analogy may be found between the lines of policy defined in the novel and those seemingly followed by the administration down to the Versailles conference.

“Philip Dru” is the story of an American Cromwell, who prevented an alliance between England and Germany and made one between England and the United States. In the novel Dru wages a successful civil war and sets himself up as the administrator of the country, establishing a dictatorship, remodels our system of government, conquers and incorporates Mexico, remodels our relations with Canada, establishes a close bond with England, wipes out all memories of the Civil War by having Grant and Lee clasp hands on the same pediment, elects his own president and assigns to each of the powers its allotted space in the universe, after which he disappears like the good fairy of the books.

A passage from the novel affords fair insight into its philosophy. On page 156 the author makes Dru say: “For a long time I have known that this hour would come, and there would be those of you who stand affrighted at the momentous change from constitutional government to despotism, no matter how pure and exalted you might believe my intentions to be. But in the long watches of the night I conceived a plan of government which, =by the grace of God=, I hope to be able to give to the American people. My life is consecrated to our cause and, hateful as the thought of assuming supreme power, I can see no other way clearly, and I would be recreant to my trust if I faltered in my duty.”

The book thus takes on a strange prophetic character, considering that it was published in 1912, two years before the outbreak of the war, as though the writer had laid down a great plan of action which he was in the process of carrying out when the elections of 1918 raised an unexpected obstacle to its further execution.

The close friendship between President Wilson and Colonel House, according to the latter’s biographer, dates from the time when, after having considered Mayor Gaynor of New York and found himself disappointed in his expectations, Colonel House decided to make Wilson President in 1912. In the selection for the Cabinet two prominent Texans, Attorney General Gregory and Postmaster General Burleson, were named, and many others were by him designated for responsible positions. It has been pointed out in certain quarters that many of the most important measures leading up to and including the war bear a more or less striking resemblance to those outlined in “Philip Dru,” even to the investment of the President with almost absolute powers. Colonel House’s residence in New York became the calling place of foreign ambassadors, where vital questions of State and our international relations were dealt with before they reached the President. Count Bernstorff, former German ambassador to the United States, testified before the Reichstag Commission investigating the war that he handed Colonel House an important note on peace which was never heard of afterward.

Colonel House has been called “the mysterious;” he seeks distinction in doing his work in secrecy, rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies in ways not readily apparent, laying out his policies without revealing his hand and executing well-devised plans without the noise and trumpery of cheap publicity. In this manner he is credited with shaping the policies of the administration at the peace conference, where he was, next to the President, the principal representative of the United States, working congenially with Clemenceau and Lloyd George and acting as moderator on the President in the latter’s earlier demands for a stricter observance on the part of the Allies of his Fourteen Points. As related in a Paris correspondence in the New York “Tribune,” dated April 16, 1919, “President Wilson, realizing that he had not sufficient ground for further refusing to meet the demands of the three European allies, accepted the formula which Clemenceau and Lloyd George had worked out for reparations and accepted the plan which Colonel House had previously approved for the surrender of the Saar Valley by Germany for a long period of years, after which a plebiscite shall be held.”

A biographer of Colonel House says that the colonel’s father was born in England and came to the United States during the Texas war for independence against Mexico, in which he participated. Texas having attained its independence, the elder House wanted Texas to become a colony of England, a project which, fortunately, did not materialize. During the Civil War, it is claimed, he acted for England in facilitating British blockade runners. As a boy Colonel House attended a school in England taught by the father of Lloyd George and the friendship between the latter and Colonel House dates back to their youth. During his stay in England he formed many close attachments for prominent young Englishmen, and, on coming into his father’s extensive property in Texas, he led the life of an English country gentleman and entertained many English gentlemen of family and fortune. His brother-in-law is Dr. Sydney Mezes, president of New York City College, who acted as chairman of the Frontier Commission at the Paris Peace Conference, and his son-in-law is Gordon Auchincloss, who acted as secretary to Colonel House.

=The Humanity of War.=--About the time of the sinking of the Lusitania, our official notes on this and other subjects in the negotiations with Germany teemed with appeals to humanity. No such view was accepted by England. In the British note of March 13, 1915, Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, told the President: “There can be no universal rule based on considerations of morality and humanity.”

=Illiteracy.=--As a related element of interest in the study of the war from a cultural as well as a military angle the illiteracy of some of the contesting and neutral nations bears strongly on the question:

France 14.1%
Belgium 12.7%
Greece 57.2%
Italy 37.0%
Portugal 68.9%
Roumania 60.6%
Russia 69.0%
Serbia 78.9%
United Kingdom 1.0%
Austria-Hungary 18.7%
Germany 0.05%
Denmark 0.0?%
Netherlands 0.08%
Prussia 0.02%
Switzerland 0.03%
Sweden 0.0?%

United States, 7.7% population over 10 years. Of this, the native white population of native parents furnished 3.7% of the illiterates; the native white of foreign or mixed parentage, 1.1%. The negroes are down with 30.4% illiteracy, less than that of Italy or Greece and several other European States engaged in the task of making the world safe for democracy. Even our Indian population (45.3%) shows less illiteracy than Greece, Serbia or Roumania. The illiteracy of our white foreign-born population is recorded at 12.7%.

=Immigration.=--How much does the United States owe to immigration, as regards the growth of population? Frederick Knapp, worked out a table covering the period from 1790 to 1860, the beginning of the Civil War, intended to show what the normal white population at the close of each decade would have been as a result of only the surplus of births over deaths of 1.38 percent each year, compared with the result as established by the official census figures.

“Natural” Growth Census Figures
1790 3,231,930
1800 3,706,674 4,412,896
1810 4,251,143 6,048,450
1820 4,875,600 8,100,056
1830 5,591,775 10,796,077
1840 6,413,161 14,582,008
1850 7,355,422 19,987,563
1860 8,435,882 27,489,662

The natural increase of the white population in 160 years would have been only 5,203,952, whereas it was 24,257,732, an increase of 19,053,780 over the natural growth. Statistics show that in 1790 an American family averaged 5.8; in 1900 but 4.6. During the earlier period each family averaged 2.8 children, in 1900 but 1.53, a decline of nearly 50 per cent.

Wilhelm Kaufmann (“Die Deutschen im Am. Burgerkriege,”) makes an ingenious calculation of the value of the immigration of the nineteenth century to the U. S. in dollars and cents. Fifty years ago, he says, a human being had a market price. An adult slave about 1855 was valued at an average of $1,100. Estimating, for the sake of argument, a white immigrant at the same price, the 19,500,000 immigrants for the stated period would represent a value of $21,450,000,000; but as a white man performed three times as much work as a slave, besides having a larger claim on life and a much higher intelligence, a white immigrant represented four times the value of a slave. What value, for instance, was an Ericson to the Union army in the summer of 1862, or a Lieber, a Schurz, a Mergenthaler or a Carnegie? But 22 percent of the total immigration was made up of children under 15 years of age. According to the New York Immigration authorities (1870) every German immigrant averaged a possession of $150 cash on his arrival, representing a total value, as regards German immigration alone, of $750,000,000. A famous English economist says: “One of the imports of the U. S., that of the adult and trained immigrants, would be in an economic analysis underestimated at £100,000,000 ($500,000,000) a year.”--Thorold Rogers, Lectures in 1888, “Economic Interpretations of History,” (p. 407). And the American, James Ford Rhodes (Vol. I, p. 355): “The South ignored, or wished to ignore, the fact that able-bodied men with intelligence enough to wish to better their conditions are the most valuable products on earth, and that nothing can redound more to the advantage of a new country than to get men without having been at the cost of rearing them.”

Because the working conditions in Germany were exceptionally favorable, immigration from the German Empire before the war had reached by far the smallest stage of that of any of the leading nations, save France, where the birthrate has been stationary for many years. The figures for 1914 were only 35,734, while the immigration from Greece was 35,832; Italian immigration in that year reached a total of 283,738 and from Russia 255,660, while England sent us 35,864, Scotland 10,682 and Wales 2,183. In 1915 only 7,799 Germans arrived, while England sent us 21,562. The money brought by the Germans totaled $1,786,130, or $221.50 a head, while money brought by the English totaled $3,467,458, a little over $160 a head.

German immigration was never a pauper immigration and of itself refutes the assertion that German immigration was due to fear of military service or political oppression.

The first German immigration from the Palatinate, 237 years ago, was mainly due to the criminal ravages of the French under Louis XIV; that of 1848 was incident mainly to the revolution in Baden, based upon a longing of all thinking Germans for a united Germany, and that of the subsequent period was the spontaneous outpouring of an overpopulated country not yet adjusted to commercial and industrial expansion and the great spread of German enterprise in ship-building and manufacture. As soon as this development had reached a decisive stage, immigration practically ceased. Those who came here obeyed a great economic law by which every man seeks to supply an existing vacancy for his industry; they did not come as beggars, but were welcomed because they were needed. There was no religious oppression in Germany, and in Prussia Frederick the Great proclaimed in the middle of the eighteenth century the doctrine, “In my country every man can serve God in his own way.” If immigration is an infallible sign of the dissatisfaction of the immigrant with conditions at home which drives him to go to another country, the fact that less than 36,000 German immigrants arrived in America in 1914 against a total of 73,417 from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, proves that conditions were vastly better in Germany than in the United Kingdom. (The figures are from the “New York World Almanac” for 1916.)

Anthony Arnoux gives the following table of the total German immigration into the United States for five years, from 1908 to 1912:

1908 17,951
1909 19,980
1910 22,773
1911 18,900
1912 13,706

The latest statistics available, made public in December, 1919, place the total number of immigrants arriving at American ports for the past 100 years at 33,200,103.

From Great Britain (including Irish) 24.7% 8,206,675
From Germany, 16.6% 5,494,539
From Italy, 12.4% 4,100,740
From Russia, 10% 3,311,400
From Scandinavia, 6.4% 2,134,414

For the fiscal year ending in June, 1919, 237,021 immigrants were admitted and 8,626 were turned back, a net total of 245,647. During the same period 216,231 immigrants left the country. The immigrants arriving totaled a per capita wealth of $112, a total of $15,831,247. Foreign-born soldiers serving in the army during the war were given citizenship to the number of 128,335.

=Indians, Tories and the German Settlements.=--The descendants and successors of those who form the very foundation of the government of the United States, bled and died for its existence, cannot suffer themselves to be segregated into a class of tolerated citizens whose voices may be silenced at will. The history of the German element is too closely interwoven with the records of the past and as an element it is too much a part of the bone and muscle of the American nation to remain silent when told that the history of the United States is to be rewritten and the deeds of their forefathers are to be forgotten for the glorification of the Tories who, with their Indian allies, burned the homes of German settlers and dragged their women and children into captivity.

A gruesome chapter of their endurance is supplied by the events in New York State during the Revolutionary War, and notably those events that transpired in the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys. It was the German element in New York State which stood the brunt of the forages of Joseph Brant, the Indian chief, educated by Sir William Johnson and renowned as no other Indian in the history of America for his atrocities under the direction of his English and Tory patrons.

He began operations in July, 1778, by surprising a little settlement of only seven families at Andrustown, Herkimer County, killing two and dragging the women into captivity. It was followed by the attack on the German Flats. This was a settlement of nearly 1,000 souls with about 70 houses, protected by two forts, Fort Dayton and Fort Herkimer. The rich harvest of summer had just been gathered when Brant invaded the valley. Three of the four scouts sent out to report his movements were killed by the Indians; the fourth, John Helmer, returned the last day of August, 1778, and reported the approach of the enemy. The inhabitants, so far as they were able, fled to the protection of the forts with everything movable. With the approach of darkness the next day Brant arrived near the forts with 300 Indians and 152 Tories. He immediately set fire to the abandoned houses with their barns, stables and other buildings and drove off the horses and cattle without daring to attack the forts. The attack resulted in the destruction of 63 houses, 57 barns, three flour and two saw mills, and the loss of 235 horses, 229 head of cattle, 269 sheep and 93 oxen. Two men only lost their lives.