History Of German Immigration In The United States

George von Skal

• Editorial: Jazzybee Verlag
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783849659059
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: North American History

This work is intended to be a record of all that Germans have accomplished in the United States a record of honest endeavor, energy, perseverance, strength and achievement. It shall, in addition, show the part that the American citizen of German blood has taken in the making of these United States, in peace and war, on the battlefield as well as in the counting house, the workshop and laboratory, in the realm of science and education or in the long fight that was necessary to extend civilization and culture over a continent. The book contains a history of German immigration in the United States from the first settlements to the present day, showing what the Germans were who left the fatherland, why they came, and what they did in their new country. Every incident throwing light upon the work done by the German element has been made use of to give a complete, though concise, and impartial recital of its activity, and a description of the influence it has exerted upon the development of the Union. In the second part the biographies of many Americans of German nativity or descent are given. History is not complete if it chronicles only the deeds of the few who in times of strife and combat rise above the surface; it must tell us of the many who have fought and succeeded. The value of so large and important a part of the American people as the German immigrants and their descendants can be fully understood only if it is shown how many of them have been successful, and how they have, by long and earnest travail, risen to unusual heights.

SUCCESSFUL GERMAN-AMERICANS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

CARL SCHURZ

Was born March 2, 1829, in the village of Liblar, near Cologne; in 1840 he entered the Catholic Gymnasium of Cologne, and in 1846 proceeded to the University of Bonn with the intention of studying philosophy and history. Like many other ardent and generous-minded young students, he fell under the influence of Professor Johann Gottfried Kinkel. Kinkel was a poet, an orator, an idealist, a man fitted by nature to arouse the enthusiasm of youth, and ready, when occasion called, to at test his faith by his works. He threw himself unreservedly into the revolutionary movement of 1848, and served as a private among the insurgents in the spring of 1849. Schurz, following the example of his friend and teacher, served as adjutant of General Tiedemann, and, when the latter surrendered the fortress of Rastatt with forty-five hundred revolutionary troops on July 21, 1849, he made an almost miraculous escape from it through the sewer connecting with the Rhine, and fled to Switzerland. In the following summer he returned to Berlin, under an assumed name, for the purpose of liberating Kinkel, who had been taken prisoner, tried for treason, and sentenced to imprisonment for life. With the aid of wealthy sympathizers, this daring and romantic project was carried to a successful conclusion in November, 1850, and created a sensation throughout Europe. Friedrich Spielhagen, the popular novelist, born in the same year as Schurz, and his fellow-student and friend at Bonn, has embalmed this adventure as a stirring episode in his book "Die von Hohenstein," in which Schurz figures as Wolfgang von Hohenstein, and Kinkel as Dr. Münzer. In fact, a more remarkable instance of self-sacrifice and heroism for friendship's sake has seldom been recorded, and it demonstrated the singular nobility of Schurz's character. Schurz and Kinkel escaped on a Mecklenburg vessel to Leith in Scotland. Of the latter we may here take leave, merely mentioning that, after a five years residence in this country, he held a professorship at a girls school in London, where he also established a German newspaper, Hermann, in 1866 accepted a call to the Polytechnikum in Zurich, and died there on November 15, 1882. Schurz spent about two years in London and Paris, supporting himself by giving music lessons and by acting as correspondent of. German newspapers. In July, 1852, he married Margaret Meyer, the daughter of a well-known Hamburg merchant. The match was a romantic one, the acquaintance being traceable to the fame of Schurz's exploit in liberating Kinkel, and was the beginning of a long and happy union, broken only by the death of the wife in March, 1876. In September, 1852, Schurz crossed the ocean and took up his abode in Philadelphia, where he remained for three years, removing then to Watertown, Wis. He attached himself at once to the newly formed Republican party, and in the following year, 1856, made German speeches which contributed so materially to carrying Wisconsin for Fremont by a majority of more than thirteen thousand votes, that in 1857, although he had but just become a citizen, he was nominated Republican candidate for lieutenant-governor, and came within one hundred and seven votes of an election. Two years later he was offered the same nomination and declined it. His first English speech, made in 1858, during the senatorial contest in Illinois between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Doug las, attracted general attention, and was widely circulated under the title of "The Irrepressible Conflict." In the following year he began the practice of the law in Milwaukee. On a lecturing tour through New England he made a decided impression by attacking the ideas and policy of Douglas, and by opposing a proposed Constitutional amendment directed against naturalized citizens. The latter subject he again brought before the National Republican Convention of May, 1860, which he attended as chairman of the Wisconsin delegation, and which, upon his motion, incorporated in the fourteenth paragraph of the party platform a declaration unequivocally pledging the Republican party against all legislation by which the existing political rights of immigrants could be impaired or abridged. Moreover, he supported George William Curtis in his successful appeal for the insertion in the platform of the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, which had been denied to Mr. Giddings. although he steadily cast the vote of his whole delegation for William H. Seward, Schurz was appointed a member of the committee to notify Lincoln of his nomination; a member of the National Republican Committee, consisting of one representative from each state; and also a member of the Executive Committee, which then consisted of only seven members. During the ensuing canvass he made many brilliant speeches in German and in English, which were an important factor in bringing about the election of Lincoln, who, after his inauguration, recognized the valuable services of Schurz by appointing him United States minister to Spain. Schurz presented his credentials to Queen Isabella on July 16, 1861, but in December resigned his post, and, after a brief visit to his native land, returned to his adopted country in January, 1862, to take service in the Union Army. He was commissioned brigadier-general in April, and on June seventeenth took command of a division in the corps of General Franz Sigel, participating in the second battle of Bull Run (August twenty-ninth and thirtieth). He was appointed major-general on March 14, 1863, and on May second commanded a division of General Oliver O. Howard's Eleventh Army Corps, at the battle of Chancellorsville. With the same corps he participated in the battles of Gettysburg and Chattanooga, and served under Sherman in the Georgia campaigns. The surrender of General Johnston to General Sherman on April 26, 1865, terminated the war; and Schurz, having obtained leave of absence, proceeded at once to Washington and resigned his commission as general. His resignation was filed May fifth, and was the first one received by the War Department, with the sole exception of General Sigel s, which was filed May fourth. In the summer of 1865 Schurz was commissioned by President Johnson to make a tour of the South ern States and prepare a report on their condition and the state of public sentiment. He made a careful and conscientious study of the subject, and embodied the result of his investigations in a candid and judicial-minded report, in which he recommended that before readmitting the rebellious states to full political rights a Congressional committee be sent there to make a thorough survey of the ground and suggest appropriate legislation. In the winter of 1865-66 Schurz was Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune; in 1866 he went to Detroit and became editor of the Detroit Post; in 1867 he removed to St. Louis to become editor and, with Emil Pretorius, joint proprietor of the Westliche Post. At this time he made a journey to Europe, and was received in Germany with distinguished consideration; in an interview with Bismarck the latter requested him to give a history of his Kinkel exploit, and, after listening to the account with great interest, remarked that he thought in Schurz's place he would have acted in the same way. Having been appointed temporary chairman of the Republican Convention of May, 1868, which nominated General Grant, Schurz was instrumental in inserting in the platform a resolution recommending a general amnesty. Even during the war, and while in active service in the field, Schurz had not intermitted his activity as a political orator, but had occasionally taken leave of absence when it seemed necessary to rouse public sentiment to support the Administration, and in 1864 had made some notable speeches in the second Lincoln canvass. As a matter of course he was one of the most effective speakers in the campaign of 1868, which resulted in the first election of Grant. On January 19, 1869, the Legislature of Missouri elected him senator, and he took his seat at the special session beginning March fourth, being the first German-born citizen who had ever been a member of the upper house of Congress. The career of Carl Schurz in the Senate would have been sufficiently remarkable if regarded merely as a demonstration of his great gifts as a parliamentary orator and of his readiness as a debater. He was not only the most effective speaker in the Republican party, but the greatest orator who has appeared in Congress in our generation. Unlike many of his most distinguished colleagues, he never resorted to inflated or bombastic rhetoric, and never stooped to any of the well-worn artifices with which demagogues from time immemorial have been wont to tickle the ears of the mob. As was truly said of him, he always spoke as a rational man to rational men; he was always sure of his subject and always full of it, and the natural consequence was that he always had something to say that was worthy of serious attention even from those who might differ from him in opinion. His unusual natural gifts for oratory he had sedulously cultivated by a diligent study of the best models, with the remarkable result that although he had arrived at man's estate before acquiring a practical acquaintance with our language, his English style very rarely, and even then only very slightly, betrayed his foreign birth and education; and in acquiring so perfect a command of a foreign idiom he had never in any degree forfeited his mastery of his native tongue. To his other qualities he added a quick wit and a biting sarcasm, which could cut very deep without ever overstepping the bounds of parliamentary decorum, and which made him formidable both in attack and in defense. In fine, we might say, speaking on Bacon's hint, that he was at once a full man, a ready man, and an exact man. But he has a better claim than that to the respect of the American people. It is Bacon, again, who tells us that "talk is but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love," and Schurz's greatness as an orator lies in this, that he not only spoke as a rational man to rational men, but as a man of heart and of conscience, who judges other men by himself, and feels that his best hold is in appealing to the better nature of his hearers. What he said of Sumner in his unsurpassed eulogy of the Massachusetts sena tor, that "he stands as the most pronounced idealist among the public men of America," might with equal truth be said of himself. The course of events has taken his part in nearly all the controversies which put him at odds with his party in the Senate. He was in advance of public sentiment, not so much by reason of any superior foresight or political sagacity, as because of his fidelity to his ideals, and his conviction that, in the long run, truth was bound to prevail. He was the original Independent in politics, and the whole political faith of the Independent can be educed from his utterances. He was a warm advocate of civil service reform, of tariff reform, of currency reform, at a time when the friends of any kind of reform were few and far between, and had nothing to expect from either party but obloquy and sneers. Perhaps the greatest practical service he rendered at this time was in his unwavering advocacy of correct principles on the currency question. He was almost the only public man who never made any concession on this point to ignorant public clamor, and his mastery of the subject was equal to the honesty and courage with which he stood for the right. The two speeches against inflation and in favor of a return to specie payments which he made in the Senate on January 14 and February 24, 1874, were models of sound doctrine. Of the second of them Professor Bonamy Price of Oxford, certainly a sober-minded and competent critic, said that it was the ablest speech ever made on banking in any parliament, that its range and solidity were wonderful, and that it offered a body of detailed doctrine which almost throughout will bear the test of the closest examination. Any adequate account of Schurz's course in the Senate will confirm the judgment of William M. Evarts that Schurz had presented, under adverse circumstances, an instance of an elevated American statesman, and the opinion of James Russell Lowell, who thought his loss to the Senate a national misfortune. The complimentary dinner at which the sentiments just quoted found expression was given to Schurz on April 27, 1875, to mark the regret which honest men of all par ties felt at his retirement from the Senate, at his being (in the words of one of them) "exiled from one party by his independence and principles, and repelled by the other apparently because it is too ignorant to recognize his value in public life." It was certainly an unusual tribute to be tendered to a man whose public life was apparently closed, and it found an appropriate echo on the following day in a banquet and serenade given by Germans, and a few weeks later in another banquet given to him in Berlin by Americans and attended by many Germans of distinction. But a more signal vindication awaited him on his return from Europe. Although he had broken with and defied the Republican party by taking sides against it in the Louisiana question, in the matter of the Ku-Klux laws, in advocating a general amnesty; although he had opposed the Administration in the San Domingo discussion, in the debates on the sale of arms to France, and on abuses in the New York Custom House; although he had originated the Liberal Republican movement in Missouri in 1870, and had thereby given the first impetus to the current of independence in politics which has since swept the country; although he had presided over the Liberal convention of May, 1872, which nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency and had advocated (with much reluctance, it is true) the election of Greeley; although he had done all these things, and many others that equally demonstrated how little amenable he was to the ordinary canons of party discipline, and how much he placed the cause above the party in spite of all this, no sooner had he returned home, than he was appealed to by the Ohio Republican Committee to stump that state in favor of Hayes and honest money, as against Allen and inflation. Within a week he was in harness, and resumed, with all his wonted boldness and brilliancy, the good fight against financial folly, quackery, and knavishness which he had fought in the Senate, and which he was to fight over again for many years to come. It was to his valiant efforts more than to those of any other one man that the victory then achieved was due. In the presidential election in the following year he once more cast in his lot with the Republican party, believing, as did many other Independents, that sound currency and civil service reform were, on the whole, safer with Hayes and his following than with the Democratic supporters of Tilden. There was an impression abroad that he had received positive pledges from Hayes that civil service reform would be carried out in good faith. At all events he threw himself into the canvass with his customary energy, and his appointment by. Hayes to the secretaryship of the interior was only a just recognition of the importance of his services, and at the same time a partial redemption of the pledge, if a pledge there was, in regard to civil service reform, of which it was on all sides admitted that Schurz was a sincere and ardent advocate. So well was this understood by the enemies of the reform that, while his nomination was pending, they spread a report that his confirmation would be opposed by some Republicans from a "dispassionate belief" that he did not possess business experience and administrative ability enough for the proper discharge of the multifarious duties of the office. The du ties of the office were, indeed, multifarious, but Schurz was soon to convince the country that an idealist can be a very practical man in any business which is compatible with honesty, industry, intelligence, and courage. He was confirmed on March eleventh, and before a week had expired he assured the clerks that no removals would be made except for cause, unless the force had to be reduced, in which case the least competent would be removed; that no promotions would be made except for merit, and that, as there were no vacancies, no recommendations to office would be entertained. This was not empty declamation, for Schurz did not even bring a new pr...