Chapter I (7)

In the Schoharie Valley the summer of 1778 passed without any notable events, but the Indians under Brant in June of that year destroyed Cobelskill. The Indians lured the local company of defenders under Captain Braun into an ambush and practically wiped it out. No less than 23 of the men were killed, others were seriously wounded and only six escaped. The women and children fled into the woods, from which they were able to watch the Indians set fire to their homes and barns. Brant here did not follow up his success, but returned to the Susquehanna, where he and his loyalists wrought the fearful historic carnage among the settlements in the Wyoming Valley, and in July attacked the Mohawk Valley settlements.

=About this time the English government offered a prize of $8 for every American scalp.= In consequence of this barbarous edict, the border war, which had so far been mainly conducted between regular military forces, degenerated into a series of savage melees. Indians and Tories sought to bring in as many scalps as possible, and murdered children, mothers and old men in order to earn the promised reward of eight dollars. More than one German settler found, on returning home from his fields in the evening, his family butchered, wife and children lying scalped and mutilated in their dwellings or in front of their doorsteps, their skulls crushed if the scalping process was too slow. Scalping became a recognized industry and was conducted for business.

In the evening, after a successful raid, the Indians would stretch the scalps on sticks to dry during the night, while the captured relatives, bound hand and foot, were compelled to witness the revolting process, exposed to a similar fate at the least betrayal of grief, or doomed to suffer a slow death by torture from fire.

An entire bundle of dried scalps, amounting to 1,062 in number, taken by the Seneca Indians, fell into the hands of a New England expedition against the Indians. It was accompanied by a prayer and a complete inventory addressed to the British Governor, Handimand. There were eight items, as follows:

Lot 1: 43 scalps of soldiers of Congress killed in
battle. 62 scalps of farmers killed in their houses.

Lot 2: 92 scalps of farmers killed in their houses
surprised by day, not by night, as the first lot.
The red color, applied to the hoops of wood, which
were used to stretch the scalp, indicated the
difference.

Lot 3: 97 scalps of farmers killed in their fields,
different colors denoting whether killed with
tomahawk or rifle ball.

Lot 4: 102 scalps of farmers, mostly young men.

Lot 5: 88 scalps of women, those with blue hoops cut
from the heads of mothers.

Lot 6: 193 scalps of boys of different ages killed with
clubs or hatchets, some with knives or bullets.

Lot 7: 121 scalps of girls, large and small.

Lot 8: 122 scalps of various kinds, among them 29
babies’ scalps, carefully stretched on small white
hoops.

The accompanying prayer was worded as follows:

Father, we wish that you send these scalps to the Great
King that he may look at them and be refreshed at their
sight--recognize our fidelity and be convinced that his
presents have not been bestowed upon a thankless people.

It was written by James Crawford (spelled Craufurd), January 3, 1782, from Tioga, seeming to indicate that most of the scalps came from the New York frontier. The information is based on Campbell’s “Annals of Tryon County,” pp. 67-70 (appendix).

During 1779 the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys were not molested. In order to punish the Indians for their atrocities in the Wyoming Valley, as well as the western part of New York, Washington had induced Congress to fit out an expedition against the Indians under Sullivan. In August, 1779, General Sullivan and his aide, General Clinton, invaded the valley with 5,000 men, moved against the Six Nations and devastated their territory, crushing them August 29 at Newton, near Elmira, and pursuing them as far as the Genesee Valley, where he destroyed more than forty of their villages. The lack of provisions drove the Indians and their Tory friends into Canada, where they remained quiescent until 1780.

But Sullivan’s course had lacked the requisite energy and, while they had suffered severely, the Indians were by no means discouraged, but, on the contrary, filled with bitter resentment, and as early as the spring of 1780 they reappeared in New York and resumed their former raids.

On April 3 they surprised Riemenschneider’s Bush, a few miles north of Little Falls, burned the flour mill and carried off nineteen prisoners, among them John Windecker, George Adler, Joseph Neumann and John Garter. The latter died from mistreatment; the others were taken to Canada, but released when peace was restored.

During a scouting expedition commanded by Lieutenant Woodworth of Fort Dayton the Americans came into contact with Indians double their number. A fierce hand to hand conflict ensued and only 15 of the Germans escaped; several were taken prisoners and Woodworth fell with more than half his men, who were later buried in a common grave on the spot.

This encouraged the Indians to new atrocities, as this style of warfare was most to their liking. No settler was henceforth safe from surprise and attack; he slept with his gun beside him and at the least sound bounded from his bed to be prepared and to sell his life at least as dearly as possible. Now and then more extensive raids occurred. Brant was the soul and inspiration of every enemy movement. His real purposes were always disguised by skilful manouvers. His spies were everywhere and he was always well informed of everything going on in the valley. He would pretend to attack one place while, in reality, reserving his blow for another, thus keeping the settlers in a constant state of terror and doubt.

In this manner he learned, toward the end of July, 1780, that General Clinton had sent the troops in Canajoharie to Fort Schuyler for the protection of the stored supplies at that place, and on August 2, at the head of 500 Indians and Tories, suddenly hurled himself upon Canajoharie and instituted a perfect bloodbath. No effective resistance could be rendered, as the entire male population capable of bearing arms was absent. Sixteen men remained dead where they had fallen, 60 women and children were taken prisoners, the church, 63 houses, with their barns and stables, were reduced to ashes, upward of 300 cattle were killed or driven off. All the agricultural implements and tools were lost, so that the survivors were even prevented from gathering their crops ripening in the fields. The fate of Canajoharie was impending over the heads of every other settlement, and nowhere was there the least hope of assistance or the least prospect of peace and quiet.

It would be tiresome to enumerate the many Indian attacks on German settlers in the valley, and these examples out of innumerable instances of heroic deeds (see “Schell”) performed by our German ancestors must suffice.

The frontier history of our country abounds in such examples down to the period of the Civil War, when the Germans of New Ulm, Minnesota, again, practically for the last time as settlers, were exposed to Indian massacres in their march to extend our far-flung battle line of civilization into the regions of the primeval wilderness. This border history is dominated by the names of the German, Dutch and English race. No Frenchmen, Russians, Italians or any of the races of southwestern Europe have any share in the reduction of the forests and prairies to the spirit of American sovereignty. French and Spanish settlements remained always a thing apart with never diminishing attachments to Europe, and before and after the Revolution the French were our enemies.

=Inventions.=--Among the many evidences of German moral and intellectual obliquity cited to justify our indignation was their lack of inventive genius, Prof. Brander Matthews in particular alleging that the Germans had contributed nothing to making possible the automobile, the aeroplane, the telephone, the submarine, the art of photography, etc.

The aeroplane, the automobile and the submarine were each made possible by the invention of the gas engine, and the gas engine was invented by Gottlieb Daimler. By combining Lillienthal’s “glider” with Daimler’s gas engine, the aeroplane became feasible. The first employment of the modern gas engine was by Daimler in running a motorcycle.

Wilhelm Bauer, a Bavarian corporal, in 1850 constructed a submersible craft at Kiel, which though it eventually came to grief, was practically operated and served to spread terror in the Danish navy, which discreetly withdrew from its blockading operations. It was equipped with torpedoes but was navigated by manual operation, no other power being available at that early period. (Boston Transcript.)

The first man to speak over a wire with the aid of electric power and to call his instrument a “telephone,” was Philipp Reis, of Frankfort. In 1868 the inventor wrote as follows: “Incited thereto by my lessons in physics in the year 1860, I attacked a work begun much earlier concerning the organs of hearing, and soon had the joy of seeing my pains rewarded with success, since I succeeded in inventing an apparatus by which it is possible to make clear and evident the functions of the organs of hearing, but with which one can also reproduce tones of all kinds at any desired distance by means of the galvanic current. I named the instrument ‘telephone.’” In Manchester, before the Literary and Philosophical Society, Reis’ telephone was shown in 1865 by Professor Cliften. The invention was however too soon for the world. To Reis’ great disappointment, the Physical Society of Frankfort took no further notice of the invention, the luster of which shone upon them. Other societies treated it as a scientific toy. The Naturalists’ Assembly, including all the leading scientific men of Germany, had, indeed, welcomed him at Giesen; but too late. His sensitive temperament had met with too many rebuffs, and the fatal disease with which he was already stricken told upon his energies. In 1873 he disposed of all his instruments and tools to Garnier’s Institute. To Herr Garnier he made the remark that he had shown the world the way to a great invention which must now be left to others to develop. On January 14, 1874, he was released by death. In December, 1878, a monument was erected to him in the cemetery of Friedricksdorf with the inscription under a medallion portrait: “Here rests Philipp Reis, born January 7, 1834; died January 14, 1874. To its deserving member, the Inventor of the Telephone, by the Physical Society of Frankfort-on-Main. Erected 1878.” (See “Philipp Reis, Inventor of the Telephone; a Biographical Sketch with Documentary Testimony, Translation of the Original Papers of the Inventor and Contemporaneous Publications,” by Sylvanus Thompson, B. A. DSc., Professor of Experimental Physics in University College, Bristol.)

The first modern photographic lens was invented by J. Petzval, of Vienna; the rectilinear lens by Steinheil; the Jena glass and anastigmatic lens by Abbe and Schott, of Jena, Prussia.

=English View of Paul Jones.=--In the process of rewriting the history of the United States, as now in progress, in what light will American school children be taught to regard their great naval hero, John Paul Jones, whose remains in a Paris cemetery were exhumed about twenty years ago by order of our government and brought back to America with all the solemn pomp paid to the greatest of men? England’s estimate of him is evidenced by clippings of the contemporary English press, which Don C. Seitz a few years ago compiled into “Paul Jones, His Exploits in English Seas.” It contains clippings of three types: first, slanders on Jones’ personal character; secondly, false reports as to his activities and capture; thirdly, editorial comment in which political morals are deduced or the consequences of his raids are touched upon.

In the first category come such passages as the following:

“Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser,” May 8, 1778: The
captain of the Ranger, John Paul, was some time ago master
of a vessel called the John, belonging to Kirkudbright,
stood a trial in London for the murder of his carpenter and
was found guilty, but made his escape.

This is the seed, evidently, from which grew the following tale:

“Morning Post and Daily Advertiser,” Thursday, September
30, 1779: “Paul Jones, or John Paul, which is his real
name, is a man of savage disposition. He was for many
years a commander of a coasting vessel, in which time he
committed many barbarities upon his crew--one of which will
forever stamp his character as a dark assassin. Between
Whitehaven and Bristol he took a deep dislike to one of
his crew and meditated revenge, which he performed as
follows: One evening upon deck he behaved with more than
common civility toward him, and calling him aside to do
something of the ship’s duty, the unsuspecting man went,
when Jones desired him to lay hold of a rope which was out
of reach; Jones then desired him to stand on a board (the
board having been so balanced that a small weight would
overturn it), which he did, when he fell into the sea and
was drowned.... Thus he got rid of an innocent man without
being suspected of murder.”

This story was repeated in a number of other papers with suitable variations, and once, on the authority of a “reliable lady of our acquaintance,” the then equivalent of our “reliable, well-informed sources.” Some of the news sheets accuse him, moreover, of being the son of a gardener, of owing his watchmaker money for several years, of knocking down his schoolmaster with a club, of cold-bloodedly sinking a boat-load of deserters with solid shot; of cowardice in refusing to fight a duel; of dishonesty in money matters; of “concealing a quantity of lead in his clothes to sink himself, should he be overcome by the English.”

=Jefferson on English Hyphenates and English Perfidy.=--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, Pennsylvania: “Those who have no wish but for the peace of their country and its independence of all foreign influence have a hard struggle indeed, overwhelmed by a cry as loud and imposing as if it were true, of being under French influence, and =this raised by a faction composed of English subjects residing among us=, or such as are =English in all their relations and sentiments=. However, patience will bring all to rights, and we shall both live to see the mask taken from their faces and our citizens be made sensible on which side true liberty and independence are sought.”

Thomas Jefferson to John Langdon, the Governor of New Hampshire: “But the Anglo-men, it seems, have found out a much safer means than to risk chances of death or disappointment. That is that we should first =let England plunder us=, as she has been doing for years, and then ally ourselves with her and enter into the war. This, indeed, is making us a mighty people and what is to be our security, that when embarked for her in the war she will not make a separate peace, and leave us in the lurch. Her good faith! The faith of a nation of merchants! The PUNCIA FIDES of modern Carthage! Of the friend and protectress of Copenhagen! Of a nation which never admitted the chapter of morality in her political code and is now avowing that whatever she can make hers, is hers by right! Money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations. But in addition to this the nature of the English nation forbids of its reliance upon her engagements and it is well known that =she has been the least faithful to her alliances of all nations of Europe=, since the period of her history wherein she has been distinguished for her commerce and corruption and that is to say, under the Houses of Stewart and Brunswick.”

=Jefferson’s Tribute to German Immigration.=--From Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Gov. Claiborne: “Of all foreigners I should prefer Germans.”

=“Kultur” in Brief Statistical Form.=--A brief statistical abstract of comparative data which vitally illustrates German “kultur” before the war, has been compiled by D. Trietsch and published by Lehmann of Munich under the title of “Germany: A Statistical Stimulant.”

Basis of Comparison Germany England France
Standard of civilization:
Illiterates among every 10,000
recruits 2 100 320
Expenditure for education in
million dollars 219 96 65.25
Books published (1912) 34,800 12,100 9,600
Nobel prizes for scientific
achievements 14 3 3

Economy and public intercourse:
Grain harvest in million tons 25.8 6.10 16.6
Production of wheat in hectares 23.6 21.0 13.3
Potato harvest in million tons 54.0 6.8 16.7
Foreign trade (not including
colonies), in million dollars 2.51 1.71 1.18
Post offices, in thousands, 1912 51.2 24.5 14.6
Telephones, in thousands, 1912 1310 733 304

State of prosperity, etc.:
Public wealth, in billion
dollars, 1914 53.75 86.25 61.25
Annual income in billion dollars 10.75 8.75 6.25
Saving bank deposits, in billion
dollars, 1911 4,475 1,175 1,125
Aver. savings bank deposits, in
dollars 200 82.25 78
Taxes, dollars, per capita 10 18.25 20

State of peace and amount of
armament:
Number of years of war between
1800 and 1896 12 21 27
Expenditure for armament in 1913,
in dollars, per capita 5.46 8.26 7.46

=Knobel, Caspar.=--It was Caspar Knobel, a German-American, eighteen years of age, who, in command of a detachment of fourteen men of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry, arrested President Jefferson Davis of the Southern Confederacy, near Abbeville, Ga., and it was a German-American, Maj. August Thieman, who was in command of Fortress Monroe while Mr. Davis was confined there. Knobel, after two days’ march without food, discovered the camp of the Confederate leader, and, throwing back the flap of his tent, placed him under arrest. He received a part of the reward offered by the Union for President Davis’ capture, and was given a gold medal. (Washington “Herald,” May 10, 1908.) Maj. August Thieman died at Valentine, Nebr., in utter destitution. He had served as an enlisted man and officer continuously for over forty-two years. His record, on file in the War Department, shows that he took active part in 242 battles, and was wounded seven times. He served in the United States, Mexico, Egypt, and other places, and held autograph letters from, and was well acquainted with Lincoln, Davis and Stonewall Jackson. It was Gov. Thieman who was in charge of Fortress Monroe while Mr. Davis and his family were prisoners there.

=Know Nothing or American Party.=--A political party which came into prominence in 1853. Its fundamental principle was that the government of the country should be in the hands of native citizens. At first it was organized as a secret oath bound fraternity; and from their professions of ignorance in regard to it, its members received the name of Know Nothings. In 1856 it nominated a presidential ticket, but disappeared about 1859, its Northern adherents becoming Republicans, while most of its Southern members joined the short-lived Constitutional Union party. It was preceded by the Native American party, formed about 1842, an organization based on hostility to the participation of foreign immigrants in American politics, and to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1844 it carried the city elections in New York and Philadelphia, and elected a number of Congressmen. It disappeared within a few years, after occasioning destructive riots against Catholics in Philadelphia and other places. In St. Louis a Know Nothing mob, led by E. C. Z. Judson (“Ned Buntline”), attempted to destroy Turner Hall, the German Athletic Club, but was easily repelled by a group of resolute Germans, who guarded the approaches by stationing guns at the four street corners and riflemen on top of the adjacent houses. T. W. Barnes, in his life of Thurlow Weed, writes: “If a member of the order was asked about its practices, he answered that he knew nothing about them, and ‘Americans’ for that reason soon came to be called Know Nothings!”

=Koerner, Gustav.=--One of the most conspicuous fighters in the Civil War period, “whose important life is well documented,” Prof. A. B. Faust, of Cornell University, says, “in his two-volume memoirs. They furnish abundant evidence of the fact, well established by recent historical monographs, that the balance of power securing the election of Lincoln, with all its far-reaching consequences, lay with the German vote of the Middle West. Koerner’s modesty and unselfishness were extraordinary. He repeatedly sacrificed his chance for political preferment in deference to others less capable, and he surprised his political friends at the opening of the war by refusing high military rank, because, he said, he had not had the training needed for an officer. Koerner was elected lieutenant-governor of the State of Illinois, 1853-56, and in 1861 was appointed by Lincoln to succeed Schurz as minister to Spain. Koerner had the honor of being one of Lincoln’s pall-bearers, for few men had been closer to the martyr President before the election. Schurz, Koerner and Lieber,” declares Prof. Faust, “represent at their best, the idealism and independence, the honest, unselfish patriotism, and the intelligent action of the Germans in American politics. =Their existence in American politics had not been marked by the holding of many offices, but on great national issues their presence has always been strongly felt. In the fact that they were not seeking anything for themselves lay their strength, their independence and their power for good. The independent voter is the despair of the politician and the salvation of the country.=”

=Kudlich, Dr. Hans, the Peasant Emancipator.=--The name of Dr. Hans Kudlich has been coupled with that of Abraham Lincoln as “the great emancipator.” Through measures carried by him through the Austrian Parliament, attended with revolutionary outbreaks, violence and bloodshed--he himself being wounded in the struggle--14,000,000 Austrian peasants were finally relieved from serfdom. Dr. Kudlich fled to the United States in 1854 and died at Hoboken, N. J., November 11, 1917, aged 94.

He was born in Lohenstein, Austrian Silesia, October 23, 1823. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Vienna and joined the students’ revolutionary movement, and, failing to secure consideration for a petition for the freedom of the press, of religion and of speech, he participated in the students’ revolt in 1848 against Metternich. The government’s draft of a constitution affording no satisfaction, the Academic Legion and the workmen marched under arms and forced the suspension of the constitution and of the popular assembly. He was sent as delegate to the first Austrian Parliament when still under 25 years of age after being severely wounded.

In his three-volume “Memoirs and Reviews,” published in Vienna in 1873, he describes the peasant as simply without rights, bound to the soil--half serfs--ruled by nobles who were nearly free to do with them as they liked, compelled to work on their landlord’s estates without wages three days a week, boarding themselves and furnishing their own implements, horses, wagons, plows and other tools. Added to this were countless interests, money and titles, all of which were paid by the poor peasant to his rich master. The heirs of a peasant who died had to pay to the landlord 10 per cent. of the realized value of the farm. On top of this the landlord was at the same time his own policeman and court of last resort, with power to incarcerate the peasant and even to condemn him to be flogged, while the suffering peasants were further subjected to the assessment of tithes by the church and to payment of taxes to the communes, road improvements and quartering of troops.

“In near-by Prussia,” he writes, “those oppressive measures had long been abolished. Looking across the border, the Austrian peasants of Silesia became still more clearly conscious of their degradations.”

His first parliamentary act was to introduce a bill to abolish involuntary servitude. It was debated six weeks in open session, but in the end a fully satisfactory law was passed and approved by the Emperor.

The bold course of the young parliamentarian created a sensation throughout Austria, and a colossal ovation to the “peasant emancipator” was instituted in Vienna, taking the form of a torchlight procession with twenty-four deputations of peasants from all parts of Austria participating.

A new revolutionary movement was soon inaugurated because of the course of the government toward Hungary. In the riots Count Latour, the Minister of War, was brutally murdered and the ungovernable populace scored a temporary victory until Vienna was invested and taken by Field Marshal Windischgraetz. Kudlich’s attempt to recruit a peasant legion to relieve Vienna ended dismally and led to his indictment for high treason. Parliament was forcibly dissolved and Kudlich fled to Germany, where he was joined by one of his confederates, Oswald Ottendorfer. The young revolutionist was received with open arms by the revolutionary party of Baden, and he was appointed secretary to the Minister of Justice, Fries. Here he made the acquaintance of his later friends, Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel. The revolution failed and Dr. Kudlich, with the remainder of Sigel’s Baden army, fled to Switzerland. Here he remained four years, studying medicine, but even here the long arm of the Austrian reactionary government reached him, and, being ordered by the Swiss government to leave the country, he came to the United States and at Hoboken established a lucrative practice. He was active in politics and an outspoken abolitionist before the Civil War, but never accepted an office.

Repeatedly he revisited his old home across the sea; first in 1872, after the passage of the amnesty act of 1867, on which occasion he was received with princely ovations in many cities. Everywhere pains were taken to commemorate his service as the peasant emancipator by monuments and other evidences of the respect and love with which he was regarded.

=Langlotz, Prof. C. A.=--Composer of famous Princeton College song, “Old Nassau,” one of the songs of which it is said that they will never die, and sung by fifty-four Princeton classes. Was born in Germany, the son of a court musician at Saxe-Meiningen. Prof. Langlotz came to the United States in 1856, already a distinguished musician, opened a studio in Philadelphia, and later became instructor of German at Princeton. He composed “Old Nassau” in 1859. Died at Trenton, N. J., November 25, 1915.

=Lehman, Philip Theodore.=--Born in the electorate of Saxony, emigrated to this country and became one of the secretaries of William Penn; and in that capacity wrote the celebrated letter to the Indians of Canada, dated June 23, 1692, the original of which is framed and hung up in the Capitol at Harrisburg.

=Lehmann, Frederick William.=--Solicitor General of the United States, December, 1910-12, and prominent lawyer, resident of St. Louis. Born in Prussia, February 28, 1853. Government delegate and chairman committee on plan and scope Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists, St. Louis, 1904; chairman commissions on congresses and anthropology, Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company; president St. Louis Public Library, 1900-10; chairman Board of Freeholders City of St. Louis; president American Bar Association; second vice president Academy of Jurisprudence.

=Leisler, Jacob.=--The first American rebel against the British misrule in America to die for his principles. When the people of the Colonies heard of the revolution in England, they at once made movements to regain law and freedom. In New York, on May 31, 1689, Jacob Leisler a (German) Commissioner of the Court of Admiralty, took the fort on Manhattan Island, declared for the Prince of Orange, and planted six cannon within the fort, from which the place was ever afterwards called “The Battery.” A committee of safety was formed which invested Leisler with the powers of a governor. When, however, a dispatch arrived from the authorities of Great Britain, directed to “such person as, for the time being, takes care for preserving the peace and administering the laws in his majesty’s province in New York,” Leisler, considering himself governor, dissolved the Committee of Safety and organized the government throughout the whole province. There was division among the New Yorkers. The minority, being mostly the English aristocracy, were against Leisler; but the people in great majority were in sympathy with him. It was the old conflict between the few and the many, with “all the people” sure to win in the end.... Jacob Leisler was probably among the first of far-sighted men to see the necessity of union against the French.... To him, the importance of a federation of all the colonies seemed vital. After vainly trying to get other governors to unite with him, Leisler, early in 1690, sent a small fleet against Quebec.

From the very first New York was infested with that sentiment for unison which she has shown in all political disturbances and wars throughout all her history. Very appropriately, on her soil, was held the first Congress to propose an elaborate plan of union.... A hard-drinking Englishman, named Sloughter, was appointed the royal governor of New York. On his arrival Leisler refused to surrender the fort and government, until convinced that Sloughter was the regularly appointed agent of the King. Those who hated Leisler seized this opportunity of having him and Milborne, his son-in-law, imprisoned. After a short and absurd trial, they were condemned, and the governor, when drunk, signed an order of execution. On May 16, 1691, Leisler and Milborne were hanged on the spot east of the Park in New York City where stands the “Tribune” building, opposite which are the statues of Benjamin Franklin and Nathan Hale, and near which the figure of Leisler may yet come to resurrection in bronze. The outrageous act of the King was disapproved. In 1695, by an act of Parliament, Leisler’s name was honored, indemnity was paid to his heirs, and the remains of these victims of judicial murder were honorably buried within the edifice of the Reformed Dutch Church. No unprejudiced historian can but honor Leisler, the lover of union, and the champion of the people’s rights. (“The Romance of American Colonization,” by William Elliot Griffis, D. D.)

A bust of Leisler was unveiled a few years ago at New Rochelle, N. Y., as Governor Leisler had given welcome to the French refugees coming to New York, and made provision for them by purchasing land at New Rochelle. Leisler sought in 1690 to do what Benjamin Franklin tried to accomplish in 1740 toward a union of the colonies for mutual protection.

Benson J. Lossing calls Leisler “the first martyr to the democratic faith of America.”

=Lieber, Francis.=--One of the most distinguished German Americans of the Civil War period, was born in Berlin in 1793, and as a schoolboy enlisted under Blücher and participated in the battle of Ligny, which immediately preceded the battle of Waterloo, and was wounded, returning home to resume his work as a schoolboy. Studied at Jena, Halle and Dresden, and taking part in public movements which were characterized as dangerous, was twice arrested, and at twenty-one took part in the Greek struggle. He left Germany in 1825 and spent a year in England, after which he came to the United States. After passing a short time in Boston, he went to Philadelphia, where he engaged in the preparation of the “Encyclopedia Americana,” modeled upon “Brockhau’s Conversations Lexikon;” it was published in Philadelphia. After preparing an elaborate scheme for the management of Girard College, he engaged on independent authorship, went to the University of South Carolina in 1835 as Professor of History and Political Economy, and there wrote and taught until 1857, when he gladly left the South.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he was quietly settled at Columbia College in New York, but one of his sons entered the Confederate service, another joined the Illinois troops in the Union army, and a third was given a commission in the regular army, while he himself began the work of legal adviser to the Government on questions of military and international law. In this capacity he prepared a code of instructions for the government of the armies of the United States in the field, and thenceforth was in constant employment in that direction, putting his vast store of learning at the disposal of the authorities on every fitting occasion. Although at an earlier period he had written in a somewhat disparaging tone of the aims and status of the German Americans, he saw that his apprehensions were at fault, as some 200,000 German-born Americans and above 300,000 German Americans of the second and third generations served in the Union Army.

He maintained a close correspondence with the leading German professors, Bluntschli, Mohl and Holtzendorff, and did much to secure in Germany a proper appreciation of the great work done for the world by securing the perpetuation of the American Union, and later on to make America alive to the merits of the struggle with France which secured German unity. His busy life ended in 1872.

His services, says one biographer, were of a kind not often within the reach and range of a single life, and his memory deserves to be honored and kept green in both his native and his adopted country. He was well represented on the battlefields for the Union by his two sons, Hamilton, who served in the 92nd Illinois, and died in 1876, an officer in the regular army, and Guido, who long after perpetuated Lieber’s name in the register of the regular army institution. The death of another son on the Confederate side was another sacrifice to the Union cause.

His “Instructions for the Armies in the Field,” General Order No. 100, published by the government of the United States, April 24, 1863, was the first codification of international articles of war, and marked an epoch in the history of international law and of civilization, says Rosengarten, and his contributions to military and international law, published at various times during the Civil War, together with his other miscellaneous writings on political science, were reprinted in two volumes of his works, issued by J. B. Lippincott & Co., in 1881, and these, with his memoirs and the tributes paid him by President Gilman and Judge Thayer, are his best monuments. A memoir by T. S. Perry also deserves attention.

=Light Horse Harry Lee.=--Delivered the famous eulogy on Washington, in which occur the words, “First in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” Dec. 27, 1799, in the German Lutheran Church in Philadelphia. (Representative Acheson of Pennsylvania.)

=Lincoln of German Descent.=--For some years a very interesting discussion has been going on among historians as to the ancestry of President Lincoln. Some claim that he was of English descent and others that his forebears were German. Each disputant gives facts to uphold his theory and is unconvinced by the other, so that the discussion is not yet closed.

When Lincoln became a candidate for President, one Jesse W. Fell prepared his campaign biography. When he asked Lincoln for details as to his ancestors he received this reply: “My parents were born in Virginia of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My parental grandfather emigrated from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in which both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, etc.”

Nicolay and Hay, who were secretaries to the President and intimate with him, published an extensive biography in 1890. Prof. M. D. Learned, editor of the German-American Annals, made a special study of the subject, and published the results in 1910. Both of these authorities uphold the English descent. L. P. Hennighausen, of Baltimore, is the leading advocate of the German descent.

Both parties agree that the grandfather of the President was also named Abraham; that he came from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky; that his father, John, came to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania; and that these ancestors were Quakers, or non-combatants. Grandfather Abraham bought 400 acres in Kentucky, and on his Land Warrant in 1780, and also in the Surveyor’s Certificate in 1785, the name is spelled “Linkhorn” in each instance.

The first named biographers claim that John’s father was Mordecai, who came from Hingham, Mass., to Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1725. His father was Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England in 1635, and settled in the above named New England town. The descendants of this family spread over New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The German name “Linkhorn” is brushed aside as the blunder of a clerk.

The argument for a German ancestry does not go so far back in genealogy, and bases itself more on geography and spelling. It so happens that Berks County and Rockingham County were solid German settlements. In the Pennsylvania county the German dialect is still in general use, and the “Reading Adler,” a German newspaper established in 1796, was issued until 1913, still being one of the few journalistic centenarians in the country. When Washington, as a young man, was surveying Rockingham County, “he was attended by a great concourse of people, who followed him through the woods and would speak none but German.” Many of these settlers were non-combatants, that is, Quakers or Mennonites.

That the name “Linkhorn” in the two documents mentioned is not a mistake is shown by the fact that in the Surveyor’s Certificate is the signature, “Abraham Linkhorn.” And what is even more puzzling and curious, the two witnesses sign as “Josiah Lincoln” and “Hananiah Lincoln.” A search of Virginia records from 1766 to 1776 shows that Clayton Abraham Linkhorn was the youngest officer in the militia, and his name, appearing on many different pages, is always spelled in that manner. On the census lists and tax lists in Pennsylvania the names Benjamin, John, Michael, and Jacob Linkhorn appear, and Nicolay and Hay state that in Tennessee and Kentucky the family name is also thus spelled.

This divergence of opinion is not confined to historians, but has even innoculated the Lincoln family. Some years ago David J. Lincoln, of Birdsboro, Berks Co., Pa., published a pedigree of the Lincoln family. This was at once challenged by Geo. Lincoln, of Hingham, Mass., who published a wholly different pedigree.

The evidence in favor of Lincoln’s German descent cannot be waved aside as the error of a clerk. The purchaser of a strip of land would not expose his title to future legal complications without insisting on a correction of his name, whereas five years and two months elapsed between the issue of the landoffice warrant and the surveyor’s certificate, in which the alleged error is distinctly duplicated. Again the name “Linkhorn” appears under the name of two witnesses spelling their names “Lincoln,” conclusive proof that the distinction was a conscious performance and not an accident. A reasonable conclusion would be that other members of the family had begun to spell their name “Lincoln” instead of “Linkhorn,” probably following popular use in a community predominantly of English ancestry, as is the case of so many names in the German counties of Pennsylvania. When Koester is anglicised into Custer, Hauk into Hawke, Reyer into Royer, Greims into Grimes and Brauer into Brower, as evidenced by many tombstones of long-dead ancestors, it is a most plausible inference that the same process evolved “Lincoln” from “Linkhorn.”

Illustration: Land Warrant No. 3334, Issued to Abraham
Linkhorn, 1780. The Original in Possession of Colonel
R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky.

Illustration: Surveyor’s Certificate Issued to Abraham
Linkhorn, 1785, from Record Book “B,” Page 60, in
the Office of Jefferson County, Ky.

A bit of interesting collateral evidence in favor of the Linkhorn hypothesis is supplied the editor of the present book by Mrs. G. W. Garvey, who resided in Hoboken, N. J., until 1919, when she removed to California. Mrs. Garvey’s maiden name was Bennett. Her grandparents resided in close proximity to the family of the Lincolns in Illinois. Her grandmother, Mrs. Dameron, often spoke of the Lincolns as neighbors who were referred to as “Dutch” people, “because the Lincolns were in the habit of killing a hog in the fall and making sausages and sauerkraut,” which were among the delicacies exchanged among their neighbors and friends, a typical German custom.

=Leutze, Eugene Henry Cozzens.=--Rear Admiral, U. S. N., born in Dusseldorf, Germany, 1847. Appointed to U. S. Naval Academy by President Lincoln, 1863; graduated 1867. While on leave of absence from academy volunteered on board “Monticello” on N. Atlantic Squadron in 1864. Served on numerous surveys, at Naval Academy, 1886-90; Washington Navy Yard, 1892-96; commander “Michigan,” “Alert,” “Monterey,” and participated in taking city of Manila; commandant Navy Yard, Cavite, P. I., 1898-1900; sup’t naval gun factory, Washington, 1900-02; commander “Maine,” then member Board of Inspection and Survey; then commandant Navy Yard, Washington, and sup’t naval gun factory; retired by operation of law, Nov. 16, 1909, but continued on active duty; commandant Navy Yard and Station, New York, 1910.

=Long, Francis L.=--Was a sergeant in Custer’s command. On the day before the massacre, Long volunteered to carry a message from Gen. Custer through the Indian lines to Major Reno, calling for help. Long got through and Reno moved, but camped at night, and thus failed to save the heroic command. Long was the first trooper to arrive on the scene of the massacre. He was also one of the six survivors of the ill-fated Greely arctic expedition. The New York “Sun” said of him the day after his death, June 8, 1916.:

His Viking constitution and an utter absence of nervousness
rendered him almost impervious to the ills of most
explorers put on a short diet in a desolate land. He became
the hunter of the Greely party, and it was chiefly through
him that the commander himself was saved. He never tired
of adventure, making several Arctic trips after his first
hazardous polar experiment, the last being when he was past
50. Except Rear Admiral Peary, it is said he spent more
time north of the Arctic circle than any other white man.

For the last dozen or more years Sergeant Long had charge
of the local weather bureau at night, making up the chart
and telling the newspapers what folks hereabouts might
expect next day. He was an expert meteorologist and
frequently made better local predictions than his superiors
at Washington.

Born at Wurtemberg, Germany. Came to the United States as a boy and entered the army at 18.

=Ludwig, Christian.=--Purveyor of the Revolutionary Army. Born in Giessen, Germany, 1720; fought in the Austrian army against the Turks, and under Frederick the Great against Austria. Sailed the oceans for seven years and settled in Philadelphia in 1754. Served on numerous committees during the Revolution, and was popularly called the “governor of Latitia Court,” where he owned a bakery. When a resolution was passed by the Convention of 1776 to raise money for arms, and grave doubt was expressed in regard to the feasibility of the plan, Ludwig addressed the President of the Convention in these words: “Although I am only a poor ginger-bread baker, put me down for £200,” which silenced all further objection. By a resolution of Congress (May 3, 1777), Ludwig was given the contract to supply the American army with bread. Here he demonstrated his sterling honesty. His predecessors had furnished 100 pounds of bread to 100 pounds of flour. He declared: “Christoph Ludwig does not intend to get rich out of the war; 100 pounds of flour make 135 pounds of bread, and I shall furnish that.” He was very friendly with Washington, and the commander in chief repeatedly entertained him at table, calling him his “honest friend.” Ludwig bequeathed his not inconsiderable fortune to the object of establishing a fund for a free school for poor children without distinction as regards religion or previous condition.

=Liberty Loan Subscriptions.=--The German element passed heroically the test of their loyalty in the amounts subscribed to the Third Liberty Loan for the prosecution of the war, and, as usual, they far exceeded the record of other racial elements. The Central Loan Committee gave out a summary on May 3, 1918, which showed the following subscriptions:

Germans $18,000,000
Polish 9,500,000
Bohemians 440,000
Italians 8,500,000
Swedish 420,000
South Slavs 149,000
Russians 145,000
Lithuanians 66,500
Danes 281,000
Armenians 190,000
Belgians 700,000
South Americans 5,825,000
Chinese 31,000

The subscriptions of the English and French are not given. A letter addressed to the Central Committee for a more complete report, embodying the subscriptions of all foreign-born citizens, brought the reply that the figures were not available, and no comparison is therefore possible of the relative amounts given by the French and English-born.

=Ideals of Liberty.=--When discussing the question of liberty and the ideals of political freedom, it is safer to consult the recognized authorities on ancient and modern history, famous students of constitutional affairs, than to accept the dictum of political opportunists whose judgments and pronouncements vary with the shift of the wind.

The World War over night transformed the stupid, slow-going, dull-witted German, the “Hans Breitmann” of Leland, and the familiar “Fritz and his little dog Schneider,” into a world figure of adroitness and supernatural finesse in all the arts of deception. From a sodden, beer-guzzling, sauerkraut-eating Falstaff, he was suddenly changed into a finished product of macchiavelian cleverness, or into a knight errant charging around the world to suppress other people’s liberty, and the embodiment of all that stands for autocracy.

While we were at war a good deal of this sort of figure painting was tolerable; but long before we entered the war, it was dangerous for the plain American citizen to express any view that did not describe every German as a Hun and Boche. Yet all the time our libraries were littered with the Latin classics, with Hume, Montesquieu, Guizot and other famous authors, who actually contradicted this verdict of Rudyard Kipling and his followers, and who, we presume, may now be safely taken from the shelf and opened without exposing one to the risk of being prosecuted for high treason, since they speak rather well of our late enemies.

“Liberty,” said the Roman poet Lucanus, “is the German’s birthright.” “It is a privilege,” wrote the Roman historian Florus, “which nature has granted to the Germans, and which the Greeks, with all their art, knew not how to obtain.” Hume, the great English historian, says: “If our part of the world maintain sentiments of liberty, honor, equity and valor, superior to the rest of mankind, it owes these advantages to the seed implanted by those generous barbarians.” “Liberty,” observed Montesquieu, “that lovely thing, was discovered in the wild forests of Germany.” And Guizot, the French historian and statesman, in his “History of Civilization” (Lecture II), makes this observation:

It was the rude barbarians of Germany who introduced this
sentiment of personal independence, this love of personal
liberty, into European civilization; it was unknown among
the Romans, it was unknown in the Christian Church; it
was unknown in nearly all the civilizations of antiquity.
The liberty that we meet with in ancient civilizations is
political liberty; it is the liberty of the citizen. We are
indebted for it to the barbarians who introduced it into
European civilization, in which, from its first rise it has
played so considerable a part and has produced such lasting
and beneficial results that it must be regarded as one of
the fundamental principles.

Mr. Walter S. McNeill tells us that “in some respects the German (Constitution) is more democratic than our own,” while Professor Burgess (author of the standard work, “Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law”) teaches us that “of the three European constitutions which we are examining, only that of Germany contains in any degree the guarantees of individual liberty which the Constitution of the United States so richly affords” (Book II, chapter 1, page 179, Vol. 1), whereas his opinion of England, as expressed in “The European War of 1914,” is that “there is no longer a British Constitution according to the American idea of constitutional government.... In this only true sense of constitutional government, the British Government is a despotism.... The Russian economic and political systems have more points of likeness with the British than is usually conceived.”

Frank Harris (“England or Germany?” p. 30) writes: “Great Britain is among the least free of modern nations. Her chief titles to esteem belong to the past.” Prof. Yandell Henderson (Yale): “Modern Germany is as unlike the Germany of Frederick the Great, out of which it has developed, as America of to-day is unlike the America of the stagecoach.”

Germany cannot be at once the country painted by Mr. Wilson in 1917 and the country he painted in 1919. In his speech before the A. F. of L. convention in November, 1917, he said:

“All the intellectual men of the world went to school to her. As a university man I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany; men who have resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching training, particularly in the principles of science and the principles that underlie modern material achievement. Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent industries of the world, and the label ‘Made in Germany’ was a guarantee of good workmanship and sound material.”

In his address to the French Academy of Moral and Political Science, Paris, May 10, 1919, the same speaker said:

“A great many of my colleagues in American university life got their training, even in political science, as so many men in civil circles did, in German universities.... And it has been a portion of my effort to disengage the thought of American university teachers from the misguided instruction which they had received on this side of the sea.”

And this is the tribute he pays to Prussia in his chapter on Prussian government in his “The State:”

“Prussia has achieved a greater perfection in administrative organization than any other European State.... The modern Prussian constitution is one which may be said to rest on a scientific basis.”

=Marix, Adolph.=--Rear Admiral U. S. N. Born at Dresden, Germany, 1848. Graduated Naval Academy 1868. Served on various European and Asiatic stations; Judge Advocate of “Maine” court of inquiry; Captain of port of Manila, 1901-03; commanded “Scorpion” during Spanish-American war and was promoted for conspicuous bravery; chairman Lighthouse Board, retired May 10, 1910. Died in 1919.

=Massachusetts Bay Colony Contained Germans.=--The first Germans in New England arrived, as far as we know, with the founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. The proof of this fact, as well as the influence of this first small group, is found in one of the most important pamphlets published in connection with New England colonization, “The Planter’s Plea” (1630). This tract, published in London shortly after the departure of Winthrop’s Puritan fleet, and supposed to have been written by John White, the “patriarch of Dorchester,” and the “father of Massachusetts Bay Colony,” contains the following statement: “It is not improbable that partly for their sakes, and partly for respect to some Germans that are gone over with them, and more that intend to follow after, even those which otherwise would not much desire innovation, of themselves yet for maintaining of peace and unity (the only solder of a weak, unsettled body) will be won to consent to some variations from the forms and customs of our church.”

Some of the early New England Germans reached there via New Amsterdam; we find them in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Boston, etc. In 1661 the ship surgeon, Felix Christian Spoeri, of Switzerland, paid a visit to Rhode Island. His narrative of New England (“Amerikanische Reisebeschreibung Nach den Caribes Inseln und Neu Engelland”) is one of the few of German pen on early American colonial times still extant--(From “First Germans in North America and the German Element of New Netherland,” by Otto Lohr, G. E. Stechert & Co., New York, 1912.)

=Massow, Baron Von.=--Member of Mosby’s Men on the Confederate side during Civil War. According to a statement of Gen. John S. Mosby, Baron von Massow joined his command on coming to this country from Prussia, where he was attached to the general staff; was severely wounded in an engagement with a California regiment in Fairfax County near Washington, D. C., on which occasion he displayed conspicuous gallantry. He was then discharged and returned to Germany, serving later in the Austro-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian wars. The last that Col. Mosby heard of him was that he was commanding the Ninth Corps in the German army. (From a statement of Gen. Mosby, Feb. 12, 1901.)

=McNeill, Walter S.=--Prominent lawyer and law lecturer at Richmond, Va., discussing the “Burgerliches Gesetzbuch,” which is the codified common law of Germany, says:

“As a crystallization of human, not divine, justice, let our lawyers compare the German Code with the Federal statutes and decisions, or the legislative or judicial law of any of our States. Then we can get at something definite, not imaginary, concerning civil liberty in Germany.... The less said by way of comparing German with American criminal law the better.”

=Memminger, Christoph Gustav.=--Secretary of the Treasury in the Confederate Cabinet, appointed 1861. Born in Mergentheim, Wurtemberg.

=Mergenthaler, Ottmar.=--Inventor of the Mergenthaler Linotype machine, used in almost every printing office throughout the world. Born in Wurtemberg, Germany, and arrived in Baltimore in 1872, working at his trade of clock and watch manufacturer. The Linotype was the result of years of study and experimentation and represents as great an advance over hand composition as the sewing machine does over the sewing needle.