The “Sons of the Pilgrims” of Milwaukee held in December, 1850, their
customary banquet to celebrate the historic landing on Plymouth Rock.
The occasion was one which stimulated the flow of oratory and the
display of quaint Yankee humor and sparkling wit. Among the toasts,
some of which embodied genuine wisdom, was the following: “Our adopted
state. She has gathered her sons from many lands and given them all a
home amid her bounty and her beauty. May the elements of strength and
greatness peculiar to each be here transplanted and united to form a
perfect commonwealth.”[48]
The sentiment was notably generous, voiced as it was by one out of
the many and diverse population elements, and we now see that it was
also prophetic. But the attainment of the ideal here advanced was not
to result from an effortless, unconscious process. Much history is
involved in the relations of Yankee and Teuton--to say nothing of other
stocks--which reveals a general tendency to helpful coöperation, but
presents, on the other hand, episodes marked by animosity, jealousy,
and social estrangement. If there were social harmonies, there were
also discords.
As early as 1850 Milwaukee contained more Germans than Yankees. Out
of an aggregate population of 20,059 the census taker had designated
3880 as natives of the New England states and New York, while 5958
were born in Germany. The entire American element (aside from natives
of Wisconsin, who were children of the foreign born as well as of the
American born) amounted to 5113, while the number of foreigners was
12,036. Of these, more than 3000 were Irish and about 1300 English.
Thus the German was numerically the dominant social factor in the city.
Nevertheless, in all but numbers the Yankee element remained, as it
had been from the beginning of the town’s growth, in a position of
acknowledged leadership. There would be no difficulty in proving that
socially, industrially, and commercially the places of power were
occupied by the “down-easters,” while in politics, although their
control was being challenged from one side or another, they were still
far from recognizing a master.
Yankees were the promoters of those far-reaching improvements, like
the various plank roads, and especially the railroads, which were
destined to unite the extensive new settlements with Milwaukee and
thus guarantee the future greatness of the city. They were largely
engaged in the carrying trade on the Lakes. They controlled the flour
milling business, the leading industry of the city, in which was
concentrated probably more capital than was invested in all other lines
of manufacturing carried on at that time. They were also prominent in
wholesale merchandising and owned the most pretentious retail stores.
Their general preëminence in the professions was undisputed. They had
most of the lawyers, a large proportion of the physicians, the editors
of English language papers, the Protestant clergymen, the teachers.
Public opinion, with a reservation to be stated presently, was mainly
of their making, both in the city itself and--through the agency of a
widely read newspaper press--in the state at large. On all questions
affecting public education, social morality, health, and recreation, as
well as business or industry, the American portion of the community was
very apt to mass behind Yankee leadership; and the English speaking
section of the foreign population was not averse to doing the same,
at least under ordinary circumstances. Often, indeed, such was the
prestige of the Yankees, their initiative was followed unquestioningly
by American and foreigner alike.
But the weight of numbers being with the Germans, the bulk of whom did
not speak or read English--though there were numerous exceptions,--it
was natural that there should have developed a community leadership
within their own group, and such leadership would be determinative in
cases of divergence from American ideas. The presence of this great
body of non-English speaking persons, clothed with political power
and wielding also a goodly share of economic power, especially as
manifested in consumption, tended in itself to generate a more amiable
attitude and more moderate policies on the part of the dominant class.
For the Germans were a coherent, prosperous, and growing element in the
city. They began coming in 1839, and during the succeeding decade the
annual accretions waxed gradually larger. After the revolution of 1848
the tide of emigration, especially from the countries and provinces
along the Rhine, was swollen to unprecedented proportions, Milwaukee
and the whole state profiting largely therefrom. But, already before
1850 Milwaukee’s streets, business places, and homes were so habituated
to German speech, that most visitors unhesitatingly described it as a
German city. “In the colony of Herman alone,” wrote Carl de Haas in
1848, “among all the United States is the population so preponderantly
German.”[49] This writer also says, as do other chroniclers of
his race, that not alone the speech of his country, but also the
national habits and customs prevailed exceedingly in Milwaukee;
that the Americans made many concessions to the Germanism of the
environment--merchants, for example, learning the language themselves,
or at least keeping clerks in their establishments who could speak it,
in order to attract German trade.
The emigration which began in 1839 as a religious movement, a
congregation of Old Lutherans fleeing the pressure of the illiberal
policy of Prussia’s king, was continued thereafter mainly from economic
and social motives. An examination of the census schedules of 1850
for Milwaukee reveals its general character better than volumes of
reminiscent testimony. The census shows that, among the 5958 Germans in
the city, 1165 (if the count is accurate) were craftsmen. There were
house carpenters, ship carpenters, smiths, wheelwrights, millwrights,
cabinet makers, masons, plasterers, painters, brickmakers, tailors,
shoemakers, saddlers, watchmakers, coppersmiths, silversmiths and
goldsmiths, barbers, bakers, brewers, cigar makers, musicians, sailors,
and many more. In contrast to the large number of craftsmen, those
employed at common labor numbered only 461, while the aggregate of
those who may be described as business men was 248. A total of 45
persons fall in the class of professional men. Many, even of the
laborers, possessed some property, thus showing that they were of a
substantial, home-making type. A good many of the craftsmen owned
homes, some of the business men were possessed of real estate to
an appreciable extent, and there were a very few capitalists whose
properties were valued at from $20,000 to $50,000.
The significance to the city of having among the population so large
a body of thoroughly trained and skilled artisans cannot readily be
overstated. It toned up all building operations and enabled them to
keep pace with the city’s rapidly growing needs; it facilitated the
establishment and expansion of industries depending upon a full supply
of skilled labor; it gave the city a fine body of industrious, well
paid residents as homemakers and citizens--at a time when American
artisans were very prone to seek land and raise farm produce. American
business and industrial leaders in Milwaukee appreciated the German
craftsmen who contributed largely to the prosperity of the city; and
the same may be said of the common laborers.
The appearance of Germans with capital which sought investment in lines
of business already pursued by Americans was no doubt less welcome,
and to some it may have seemed like an intrusion. Generally, however,
Germans began their business enterprises on so modest a scale, and
built them up so gradually, that no serious economic dislocations could
have been felt in consequence. In some cases the German business men
merely undertook to meet demands created by the presence of their own
people, which demands were not fully cared for by existing American
enterprise. Perhaps no better illustration of this tendency can be
found than the local tobacco trade. “Groceries,” of course, carried
the “plug tobacco” used so widely in those days by Americans of all
classes, while drug stores handled cigars. But smoking was more nearly
universal among European immigrants than among Americans. Germans
accordingly set up tobacco shops, which usually included a department
for the manufacture of cigars. The investments were all small, ranging
from $50 to $4000, but the payroll was of some consequence to the
city and the output considerable. It is believed that all firms of
tobacconists or cigar manufacturers listed by the census takers in 1850
were Germans.
Another industry in which Germans were prominent in 1850 was tanning.
This they did not monopolize, for several non-German tanners were
operating at the same time. But G. Pfister and Company, Tanners, had
an investment of $35,000 and, employing thirty-five men, manufactured
an annual product valued at $45,000, while all other tanneries taken
together had an aggregate investment of less than $7500.
In boot and shoe manufacturing one American firm was far in the
lead.[50] Yet, on a smaller scale, German firms were participating in
the business actively, while German craftsmen were an important element
in the success of all shoe manufacturers. A similar statement will hold
true in the department of brickmaking. A large number of Germans worked
in the brickyards as experts, and several had small plants of their
own. But the big brickyard of the city was not managed by Germans.[51]
There was one single rope maker, who was a German, and also one glove
and mitten manufacturer, who was also German. Both of these industries
were small.
There remains the historically important Milwaukee industry of
beer-brewing, popularly supposed to have been introduced by immigrants
from Munich and other centers of beer manufacture in the fatherland.
The census lists a total of ten establishments designated as breweries.
Of these, seven were owned by Germans and three by non-Germans. The
investments by the latter aggregated $27,000, those of the former
$20,900. But the sum of the annual products of the German breweries
was $41,062, while the aggregate product of the others was $32,425.
The non-German brewery which had the largest investment was doing an
annual business valued at less than the investment, while one of the
German breweries having only $3000 invested reported a product valued
at $18,000.[52]
When we consider mercantile lines as distinguished from the industrial,
Germans were prominent in those which called for moderate investments.
They had many small grocery stores scattered through the city, a number
of meat markets, and of course a goodly proportion of liquor saloons.
There were also several German clothing stores, confectioneries, and
bakeries. That their business men expected to sell almost exclusively
to Germans is indicated by the fact that for the most part they
advertised only in the German language papers--the _Wisconsin Banner_
and the _Volksfreund_,--not in the English papers. On the other hand,
the American merchants, as we have already seen, catered to the German
trade by providing German salesmen,[53] and they also advertised
extensively in the German papers.
There were German taverns which did a thriving trade; the restaurants
made the sojourner from Berlin feel at home; and the German beer
gardens were the despair of the pious Yankee mothers of boys. So
indispensable did German musicians become, that when the Sons of the
Pilgrims banqueted, a brass band directed by a German bandmaster
discoursed “martial as well as festive” music.
One other form of coöperation between Yankee and Teuton deserves to be
mentioned--the employment of German girls in Yankee homes. This custom,
testified to by German writers and indicated unmistakably by the
census, was widespread. Such service was an immediate resource to the
poorer immigrant families, and a boon to the American families as well.
By that means numbers of future German homemakers came promptly into
possession of the manners and customs of the Yankees, acquired their
speech, and gained some insight into their distinctive views of life.
The least numerous of the special classes into which we have analyzed
the German population of Milwaukee, in 1850, was the professional
class. Yet it is not for that reason least important, for the little
group of forty-five[54] persons contained most of the individuals
whose views swayed public opinion among the 6000 Milwaukee Germans.
Among them were two newspaper editors, each in charge of a German
language paper. There were six lawyers, nine teachers, and eleven
clergymen and preachers. Four of the preachers are described as German
Lutheran, one was Evangelical, and one Methodist.[55] Two, Joseph
Salzman and Franz Fusseden, were Catholic priests. One, F. W. Helfer,
was called a “rationalist preacher.” Two, John Mühlhauser and G.
Klügel, were merely called preachers.
It is not strange that medicine, among all the professions, should
have had the strongest representation. A physician, wherever trained,
is equipped to practice anywhere, while a lawyer, clergyman, editor,
or teacher is obliged to prepare for service by first fitting himself
into the community he is to serve. German medical education was far
superior to American at that time, and, in the western states at least,
the supply of trained physicians was below the requirements. There were
communities in Wisconsin where not one-fourth of the practitioners
were graduates of medical schools or had honestly earned the title of
“doctor.”[56] This condition made a splendid opportunity for German
physicians, who could hope to win the patronage of Americans as well
as Germans. That the prospect was alluring to them is shown by the
fact that Milwaukee at the census date in 1850 had seventeen German
physicians, some of them already men of note in the community.
The Yankees and the Germans came into such close and intimate contacts
in Milwaukee, that it is easier to study their normal attitudes
there than in the outlying portions of the state. On the whole those
relations, in the period terminating with the Civil War, appear to
have been marked by mutual respect, if not active friendship. At all
events, if there were differences causing ill will on one side or
the other, these--so far as they were the outgrowth of the social,
economic, or commercial interplay of the two groups--rarely became
serious enough to be reflected in the public press. The prosperity of
the city, providing usually full employment and adequate returns to
all who wanted to work, made the bond between capitalist and employees
satisfactory, and this solved one important aspect of the class
problem. The absence of any decided public interest in the immigrant
problem as affecting the city--other than politically--is a fact which
obtrudes itself upon one who canvasses the Milwaukee papers, English
and German, during the fourteen years which intervened between the
first constitutional convention and the election of Abraham Lincoln to
the presidency.
Yet, there are not wanting evidences that the two groups were quite
distinct and that the Germans, as a foreign group, were sensitively
class conscious. This is shown, for example, by the race appeals in
their business advertisements. To call attention to one’s nationality
when offering services of a personal nature, like those of the
physician, or the dentist, or even the druggist, is reasonable and
correct. But there is no good ground for assuming that nationality
makes a difference to the purchaser of lime. Why then the advertisement
of a _Deutsche Kalk Haus_ (German lime house), unless there was a
feeling that the German dealer would be favored by German buyers simply
because he was German? This is a typical example which goes to show the
existence of a city within a city, a German Milwaukee which tended to
live its own group life, for which, as already explained, it possessed,
within itself, great facilities.
Occasionally some relatively minor happening threw this feeling of
separateness into strong relief, as when, in 1850, a German scholar
published in the Milwaukee papers of his language the story of his
relations with the chancellor and board of regents of the University.
He thought they had promised him a chair, but afterwards they made it
plain that no contract had been closed with him. He may or may not
have had cause of complaint. But what he professed to do was to lay
the whole matter before the Germans of Wisconsin, in order that they
might know how the board of regents “flouts the wishes of the German
citizens,” how it keeps its promises “to Germans,” and how little it
regards the rules of ordinary courtesy “in dealing with Germans.”[57]
No doubt the design was to bring political pressure to bear on the
regents, but the device would not have been resorted to had not the
recognized racial unity among the Germans rendered that a hopeful plan.
In a society like the present Milwaukee, where inter-racial marriages
are a daily occurrence, and one is rarely conscious of race in
cases of that kind, the condition of seventy years ago seems almost
incomprehensible. For, a close scrutiny of the entire census record
for Milwaukee in 1850 reveals that marriages between Germans and
Americans of all derivations at that time were excessively rare. The
aggregate number of such unions was twelve. But of marriages between
Yankees and Germans I can provisionally identify only six, as follows:
Margaret, twenty-six years of age, born in Germany, was the wife of
John H. Butler, a livery-stable keeper, born in New York. Hiram Brooks,
twenty-seven, born in New York, was married to Mary, twenty-three, born
in Hesse Darmstadt. James Ridgeway, thirty, a cooper, native of New
York, was married to Mary, born in Prussia. Abram Davis, twenty-five,
a cooper, born in New York, was married to C--, twenty-three, native
of Bavaria. Joseph Stadter, thirty-three, physician, rated at $2000,
who was born in Bavaria, was married to Sarah Ann, nineteen, born
in New York (but a female who was a member of the family, and may
have been this woman’s mother, bore a German name). Finally, William
Stamm, thirty-two, painter, native of Bremen, was married to Lucy,
twenty-eight, a native of Massachusetts.
It is not possible to determine how many of the American born persons
represented in the six cases may have belonged to German families, but
doubtless some did. At all events, we can assert that in Milwaukee
at that time, with its nearly 6000 Germans and nearly 4000 Yankees,
not more than six cases can be found of marriages between them. No
commentary is needed to establish the fact of the virtual segregation
of the two great population groups.[58] If Chevalier, the French
philosopher, was right in his conviction that “the Yankee is not a man
of promiscuous society,” it is equally true that the German at that
time was excessively clannish. His clannishness was due, no doubt, to
natural and inevitable causes, but the fact needs to be recognized by
the student of history.
This disposition on the part of Germans to “hang together” was promptly
discovered by American politicians and exploited for partisan and
personal ends. The outstanding fact of the political history of the
period under review is the attachment of the immigrant Germans to the
Democratic party. That relation was all but absolute and universal
during the 1840’s, though a gradual change took place in the last half
of the next decade. There was nothing mysterious about it. Germans
found the country, on their arrival, living under a Democratic
administration, to which they looked for favors and usually not in
vain. The Democratic party was liberal in the bestowal of lands; it
contended manfully against the principle of monopoly, especially in
banking and other corporate activities; and it emphasized the doctrine
of the equality of all men. The Germans, like the Irish and, in fact,
all immigrants, were strongly attracted by the principles professed
in Democratic platforms. The very word “democracy,” had its winning
appeal. “Democracy,” wrote the editor of the _Banner_ in 1850, “is a
glorious word. There are few other words, in any language, which can
be compared to it. To the poor man it is peculiarly precious since he
is aware that he owes to it his escape from the serfdom in which his
oppressors held him, and can now look up into heaven and thank his
God that he has ceased to be a serf. Democracy knows no distinctions
between man and man. She sets all upon the broad foundation of
equality.”[59]
The enormous prestige gained by the Democratic party under Jackson’s
leadership easily floated the administrations of Van Buren and Polk.
But, as an influence toward captivating the foreign element in
Wisconsin, no other Democratic principle had quite the efficacy of the
liberal suffrage provision which the party in power adopted at the
beginning of our history as a state.
In Michigan the makers of the state constitution had granted the
voting privilege to all aliens who were _bona fide_ residents and
who had declared their intention to become citizens. That clause in
her organic law drew the criticism of Whig members of Congress, but
she was admitted to the union in spite of their opposition, and thus
was established the principle that men might be voters without being
citizens. When, in 1846, the territorial legislature of Wisconsin
provided by law for the holding of a constitutional convention, a
similar proviso was made to govern the election of delegates to the
convention.
In Milwaukee County the Democrats nominated eight candidates for
delegates. Dr. Franz Huebschmann was the sole German named. The
_Wisconsin Banner_, while remarking that Germans constituting one-third
of the population were to have but a single delegate, urged Germans to
vote as one man for him. He was needed, said the editor, especially
to contend for equality in the voting privilege, for which he had
striven manfully during the past three years. In the neighbor county
of Washington, Germans were urged to support two Irish candidates who
favored equality of the voting privilege and whom the Whigs (so it was
asserted) were trying to defeat by the same wiles they employed against
Huebschmann. The moral of the _Banner_ editorials was: “Don’t trust the
Whigs. They have always opposed the rights of the foreign born.”[60] In
preparation for the vote on delegates, Milwaukee Germans who had not
declared their intention were given every direction for completing that
formality, and the indications are that a large number of voters were
newly made for the occasion.
Dr. Huebschmann, in the first convention, was a powerful advocate of
equality, giving as the chief ground in favor of the principle that
it would tend to bring Americans and foreigners into more harmonious
relations with one another. “The more distinctions you make between
them politically,” he said, “the more you delay this great end
[amalgamation], which is so essential to the future welfare of this
state. And, in fact, I regard only one measure equally important as the
political equality which I ask for, and that is a good common school
system.... Political equality and good schools will make the people of
Wisconsin an enlightened and happy people. They will make them one
people.”[61]
On the educational question Huebschmann found the Yankee majority
of the convention eager to welcome his coöperation. On the subject
of suffrage their unity was less complete. While party lines were
not strictly drawn, the chief contenders for equality were leading
Democrats and the chief opponents leading Whigs. But both conventions
adopted the principle, the first not quite frankly, and with the
admission of Wisconsin into the union all foreign born persons who had
resided in the state one year prior to any election had the right to
vote, provided they had declared their intention to become citizens of
the United States.
The adoption of such a liberal suffrage provision in the teeth of the
nativist movement which had affected all parts of the country more or
less, was considered a great triumph of Democratic principles. And
there is no doubt about the gratitude of adoptive citizens to the party
which secured them the boon. To the Germans it seemed thenceforward a
simple question of loyalty to support the Democratic party, through
thick and thin, through good report and evil report. Inasmuch as the
Democratic party also supported the Germans’ views on the subject of
temperance (prohibition), soon to become a burning issue,[62] and in
their contest with the more serious manifestations of Know-Nothingism,
which in this state reached its climax somewhat later, one almost
wonders how any of the Germans were able to detach themselves from
that party, despite its failure to represent them on the slavery and
free-soil issues.
The temperance movement and nativism were the chief grounds of
political contention between Germans and Yankees during this period.
The first of these broke, in 1853-55, on the rock of German--which
meant Democratic--opposition. For, although a referendum vote had gone
in favor of the enactment of a “Maine Law,” the Democratic legislature
chosen at the same time refused to accept the result as mandatory,
and did not pass the law. And when the first Republican legislature
did pass such a law, in the early months of the year 1855, Barstow,
the Democratic governor, vetoed the bill. Never thereafter did the
temperance issue become as acute as it had been during the seven years
immediately following statehood, but it is not strange that their
record on that question was one of the standing arguments against
Republicanism among the German voters.[63]
The Know-Nothing issue, which was supposed to be dying out at the
time of the Wisconsin constitutional conventions, 1846-1848, revived
after the Mexican War, figured prominently in the defeat of General
Scott in 1852, and in this state as well as in some other states rose
to dramatic and even tragic interest in 1855. Thereafter it declined,
to pass away for the time being with the election of Lincoln and the
engulfing of the nation in war.
But the Know-Nothingism of 1855 was regarded by the Democratic party
as sinister because, as that party professed to believe, it had got
itself incorporated as an important if not controlling element in the
new Republican party. This the Republican leaders and organs denied
with vigor, but it is true that the general council of the _American_
party in this state urged the support of the Republican candidates
and professed to have contributed 20,000 votes toward the election of
Bashford. The Republicans had no objection to Know-Nothing votes, but
they feared that the endorsement of their ticket by the Know-Nothings
would cost them more foreign born votes than it would gain them
nativists. It was tactically wise for the Democrats, and especially the
German Democratic press, to keep the “Republican-Know-Nothing” idea
before their people--and they made the best use of the opportunity.
“Temperance,” after all, was regarded by the Germans as merely
a manifestation of Puritan fanaticism, which must be opposed in
the interest of personal liberty. Much as they disliked it, their
opposition does not seem to have developed excessive bitterness against
the believers in or practicers of temperance. But nativism, which
demanded that the suffrage be limited to citizens; that naturalization
be made more difficult; that in some departments, as in the army,
natives be favored to the exclusion of the foreign born, this they
felt to be a deliberate and vicious attack upon the rights of the
foreign born as a class. The advocacy of these principles involved
much discussion of the unfitness of foreigners, their ignorance, their
sordidness, their “un-American” habits and customs, in one important
respect their “anti-American” religion.
All of this inevitably roused a bitter, fighting resentment on the
part of all foreigners, as it did among radical natives also, and it
is well known that many parts of the country suffered in consequence
from riots and other manifestations of a class war. In Wisconsin
there was less overt hostility than in some states where the foreign
elements were not so powerful.[64] The Know-Nothing party as such
functioned seriously only in the one year 1855, and its propaganda was
relatively mild-mannered.[65] Its chief objects of attack were the
foreign born Catholics, which class included a majority of the Irish
but only a fraction of the Germans, most of whom--probably--were either
Lutheran or Reformed, with an appreciable number of non-churchmen
or “free-thinkers.”[66] Nevertheless, nativism, as entangled in the
political psychology of this eventful year, had its full share in
producing a tragedy in this state also.
It came in the form of a lynching, carried out with hideous barbarism
by a body of the ruder Germans of Washington County, in August,
1855. It seems that a sickly, weak witted boy of nineteen, named
George DeBar--a native of New York State--felt himself aggrieved by
a German farmer and proposed to administer a beating. This he partly
accomplished, at the farmer’s home, but his victim fled into the field,
where he found a hiding place. Meantime, DeBar ran amuck, and meeting
the man’s wife stabbed her severely but not fatally. He next pursued a
fifteen-year-old boy, Paul Winderling, who was living with the farmer,
attacked him with his pocketknife, and killed him. He then burned the
farmer’s cabin. DeBar afterwards solemnly assured his attorneys that
the only part of the transaction he could remember was striking the
farmer himself with a stone knotted in his handkerchief. The belief
was widespread that he became unbalanced mentally at this point, which
theory is really the simplest explanation of his horrible crime,
committed without assignable motive.
Immediately on DeBar’s arrest a plan was hatched to storm the jail,
take him out, and hang him. The death penalty had been abolished at
the instance, as many felt, of the Yankee sentimentalists, and the
ignorance of some suggested that, since hanging was only justice in
a case like this, and the state refused to execute a criminal, the
people themselves had a right to take the matter into their own
hands. Unfortunately, a similar case had happened two weeks earlier at
Janesville, in which the avenging crowd was made up of Americans.[67]
It was suggested by some that DeBar was himself a Know-Nothing, or
at least trained with the Know-Nothing element, and there were dire
whispers about the trial judge, Charles H. Larrabee. Doubtless these
rumors were altogether wild. The nineteen-year-old DeBar, practically
_non compos mentis_, was of no possible political consequence, while
Judge Larrabee at the time was as sound a Democrat as could be
found.[68] But passions once fully aroused hurl reason from its throne,
and so it was in this case. The rowdies gathered at a drinking place in
West Bend, and decided on a lynching.
Judge Larrabee convened a special session of court, impaneled a grand
jury, and having summoned two companies of militia--the Union Guards of
Ozaukee County, a German company, and the Washington Guards, another
German company, of Milwaukee--to come up for the protection of the
prisoner, had him conveyed to the courthouse and examined. The grand
jury brought in a true bill, charging murder in the first degree.
To this the prisoner, on the advice of his attorneys, pleaded “not
guilty.” The multitude which had been permitted to press into the
court room, despite the judge’s instruction to the militia to limit
the number to the seating capacity of the room, fairly raged when they
found a trial would be required, and before the prisoner took many
steps in the direction of the jail, they seized him and made way with
him.
The severest censure was leveled against the militia companies and
their leaders. All the American writers whose statements appear in the
_Sentinel_ charge that these companies fraternized with the lynching
party, and practically assert that they had an understanding by which
the prisoner was to be given up to them. The captain of the Milwaukee
company, who was a veteran of the Mexican War--though a German
immigrant--insisted with vigor that his company did all it could to
prevent the lynching. He did not speak for the Union Guards of Ozaukee.
All witnesses agree that one of the Union Guard officers, Lieutenant
Beger, performed his duty manfully and heroically, but the weight of
the testimony condemns the companies as organizations, and especially
their captains. It would seem that two companies of militia, if well
led, ought to have been able with the butts of their guns to hold off a
rabble of three hundred men, and no witness puts the number higher than
that, while some declare the rush was made by not more than thirty-five
men.
In the Milwaukee captain’s statement, as in the statements of other
German apologists for the militia, we come at once upon the political
note. They could not expect the “Know-Nothing American writers” to tell
the truth about the tragedy. In other words, they found in the politics
of the time an opportunity to charge prejudice against Americans, and
by that means to dodge the real issue. Two German writers of West Bend,
one of them the undersheriff, bitterly denounced both the militia
companies and the lynchers, and both more than hint that the passions
which led to the lynching were partly religious. Here, undoubtedly, we
come upon one of the signs of division among the Germans themselves. It
is possible that these two Germans were politically opposed to the main
body of their fellow-countrymen, for by this time a light minority had
already been attracted away from the Democratic party. However, we do
not know that this was true, and merely call attention to the several
psychological attitudes which, from the testimony, we know the case
disclosed.
Of greatest interest is the attitude of English and German language
papers of Democratic and Republican proclivities. The _Sentinel_
continued to admit contributions on the West Bend tragedy for
approximately two weeks. It also published the results of an
investigation made on the ground by one of its staff, and a petition to
the governor, said to have been signed by 186 residents of Washington
County, who asked for the disbandment of the two accused companies
and the withdrawal of their officers’ commissions. But the _Sentinel_
does not appear to have tried by means of the incident to influence
the political situation which was about to become superheated. At all
events, what it published would all have been legitimate as news. On
the other hand, the _Banner und Volksfreund_,[69] while condemning the
lynching, made no demand for the punishment of the lynchers. It tried
to exculpate the militia companies (accepting the Milwaukee captain’s
testimony as against all other evidence), and deliberately charged
that the _Sentinel_, in publishing the above-mentioned petition, was
playing for political advantage. This charge was absurd on its face,
for the success of the new Republican movement which the _Sentinel_ had
espoused depended on its ability to detach Germans from the Democratic
party, which assuredly could not be done by playing into the hands of
the Know-Nothings, and the _Sentinel_ did not hesitate to declare the
Know-Nothing support a handicap to the party.
Both American and German testimony discloses the existence in
Washington County of a strong German party of law and order. They
deplored the lynching and urged the apprehension and trial of the
ringleaders. They realized that the crime would put a stigma upon their
race as well as upon the county and the state. But, as a matter of
fact, although some of the lynchers were identified in the verdict of
the coroner’s jury, it must be recorded that no earnest effort was made
to punish them.[70] Nor was any step of an official character taken (so
far as I have been able to find) to determine the guilt or innocence of
the militia companies and their officers. In fact, the Democratic press
of the state, evidently fearful of sacrificing some German Democratic
votes, which that year were all needed, deliberately tried to darken
council by confounding this case in principle not only with the
Mayberry case, which it resembled, but also with another of an entirely
different nature, to which we must give passing attention.
In the previous year, 1854, occurred at Milwaukee the famous Glover
rescue. Glover was a runaway slave who had been apprehended by his
self-styled owner, brutally man-handled, and confined in the Milwaukee
County jail for safekeeping. Sherman M. Booth, editor of the _Daily
Free Democrat_, one of the founders of the Republican party, a vigorous
free-soil and antislavery partisan, and the man in the state who was
perhaps most feared and hated by the Democracy, had argued hotly for
the protection of Glover’s rights against the man claiming him under
the “unconstitutional” compromise law of 1850. Booth called a public
meeting at the courthouse for the purpose, as he claimed, of concerting
measures for helping Glover without the use of force. But the upshot
was a rescue party which battered down the door of the jail, took
Glover out, and by various shifts and transfers on the underground
railway, carried him to Canada and freedom. Booth was then made to
suffer for all that had been done; he was tried in the federal court,
convicted, fined, and given a jail sentence.
We cannot go into the details of the Booth case, a _cause célèbre_ in
ante-Civil War political history. But the Democratic papers, after the
DeBar lynching, ostentatiously bemoaned the fact that due to recent
events “neither national nor state laws” could hereafter be enforced
in Wisconsin. The beginning of the trouble was the setting at naught
of the national law for the rendition of slaves, in which the arch
Republican Booth was ringleader. The Mayberry lynching and the DeBar
lynching followed in natural sequence. These editors did not choose to
analyze the difference between the Glover case and the others--the fact
that the one was a rescue performed at their own risk by philanthropic
men, the others brutal killings committed by men crazed with the lust
of blood vengeance. In other words, the Democratic press, including
those papers printed in the German language, attempted the impossible
feat of arranging in the same straight line the “higher law” and the
lower law.
Of course, the Republican press retorted handsomely, and probably
with considerable political effect, that if the apologists for mob
law in Kansas were “in favor of the execution of the fugitive slave
act in Wisconsin” they would like their avowal to that effect.[71] It
is well known that during the 1855 campaign, as in the previous year,
a good many Germans were converted from their old-time Democratic
allegiance.[72] But both parties were too intent on their immediate
political objects to risk pressing for an investigation of the West
Bend tragedy, which might have alienated a large section of the German
vote in three German counties.
It is not impossible that politics was responsible for the severity of
the onslaught upon the militia companies, since the nativist propaganda
for an exclusively American militia would be quick to seize upon such
an opportunity, and it is not to be supposed that the politics of the
case was all on one side. Yet, unless the governor was in possession of
facts which were withheld from the public, the least that could be said
against the companies is that they exhibited criminal inefficiency.
From this distance, it looks as if politics affected the Republican
attitude as well as the Democratic; as if crime was condoned in the
interest of party success, since one party was intent on holding its
former German adherents and the other was determined to take as many of
them as possible into the opposition camp.
Whether or not the incident leaves the stain of blood on the path
of Wisconsin politics, it marks the nearest approach to a race war
between Germans and Americans which this general period affords. And
by Americans we practically mean Yankees. For it was a truth which the
German press sensed instinctively, that the Republican party--made
up of “shreds and patches,” as was said,--embracing prohibitionists,
abolitionists, free-soilers, nativists, and Whigs, was dominated by
the “Puritan” element.[73] A glance at the history of its origin in
Wisconsin will at least convince the reader of its Yankee paternity.[74]
However, the Republican party changed radically in character
during the next few years, and as the German population came to be
distributed between it and the Democratic party, a healthier social
tone was the result. The political campaign of 1856, when Frémont was
candidate for the presidency, was conducted with such enthusiasm by
Wisconsin Republicans, as to make serious inroads on the Democratic
German vote. A number of prominent German leaders took the stump
for Frémont, speaking in the German language to German audiences
with telling effect. Thereafter, in successive state campaigns and
in the presidential canvass of 1860, the Germans of Wisconsin were
electrified by the compelling oratory of their greatest campaigner,
Carl Schurz, to whom the success of the Lincoln ticket, both in
Wisconsin and other western states harboring many Germans, was largely
due. Such participation was doing much to justify the prophecy of Dr.
Huebschmann--that political equality would help to make the people of
Wisconsin “one people.”
[Illustration:
_Photo by Edward C. Nelson_