wars” with which the American settlers had to contend in the early
history of the colonies long antedated the Revolution, and massacres
were instigated by French policy of conquest and retaliation. In
the Revolution a number of patriotic Frenchmen, nursing a long
grievance against France’s ancient enemy, England, saw opportunity
to enfeeble their country’s hated rival. Encouraged by Frederick
the Great, who had a score to settle with England for the treachery
which Bute had practiced against him in paying secret subsidies to
Frederick’s enemy, Austria, while England was allied with him, by
heroic efforts they succeeded in sending succor to the colonies
in the form of troops (many of them Germans) under Lafayette.
This is so well understood that the American historian, Benson J.
Lossing, specifically points out in his writings what he calls the
“superstition” that we owe our “being as a nation to the generosity
of the French monarch and the gallantry of French warriors.”
Revealing the motives that governed France, he writes:
In the Seven Years War, which ended with the treaty of
1763, France had been thoroughly humbled by England.
Her pride had been wounded. She had been shorn of vast
possessions in America and Asia. She had been compelled, by
the terms of the treaty, to cast down the fortifications
of Dunkirk and to submit forever to the presence of an
English commissioner, without whose consent not a single
paving stone might be moved on the quay or in the harbor
of a French maritime city. This was an insult too grievous
to be borne with equanimity. Its keenness was maintained
by the tone of English diplomacy, which was that of a
conqueror--harsh, arrogant, and often uncivil. A desire for
relief from the shame became a vital principle of French
policy, =and the most sleepless vigilance was maintained
for the discovery of an opportunity to avenge the injury
and efface the mortification=.
The quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies,
which rapidly assumed the phase of contest after the
port of Boston was closed, early in the summer of 1774,
attracted the notice and stimulated the hope of the French
government. But it seemed hardly possible for a few
colonists to hold a successful or even effective contest
with powerful England--“the mistress of the seas;” and it
was not until the proceedings of the First Continental
Congress had been read in Europe, the skirmish at Lexington
and the capture of Ticonderoga had occurred, and the Second
Congress had met, thrown down the gauntlet of defiance at
the feet of the British ministry and been proclaimed to be
“rebels” that the French cabinet saw gleams of sure promise
that England’s present trouble would be sufficiently
serious to give France the coveted opportunity to strike
her a damaging blow.
Lossing sums up our debt to France in the following words:
That all assistance was afforded, primarily, as a part of a
State policy for the benefit of France;
That the French people as such never assisted the
Americans; for the French democracy did not comprehend
the nature of the struggle, and had no opportunity for
expression, and the aristocracy, like the government, had
no sympathy with their cause;
That the first and most needed assistance was from a French
citizen (Beaumarchais), favored by his government for State
purposes, who hoped to help himself and his government;
That, with the exception of the services of Lafayette and
a few other Frenchmen, at all times, and those of the army
under Rochambeau, and the navy under De Grasse, for a few
weeks in the seventh year of the struggle, the Americans
derived no material aid from the French;
That the moral support offered by the alliance was
injurious because it was more than counterpoised by the
relaxation of effort and vigilance which a reliance upon
others is calculated to inspire, and the creation of hopes
which were followed by disappointment;
That the advantages gained by the French over the English,
because of their co-operation with the Americans, were
equivalent to any which the Americans acquired by the
alliance;
That neither party then rendered assistance to the other
because of any good will mutually existing, but as a means
of securing mutual benefits; and
That the Americans would doubtless have secured their
independence and peace sooner without their entanglements
with the French than with it.
A candid consideration of these facts, in the light of
present knowledge on the subject, compels us to conclude
that there is no debt of gratitude due from Americans to
France for services in securing their independence of Great
Britain which is not cancelled by the services done by the
Americans at the same time in securing for France important
advantages over Great Britain. And when we consider these
facts and the conduct of the French toward us during a
large portion of the final decade of the last century, and
of the decade of this just closed--=the hostile attitude,
in our national infancy, of the inflated Directory,
sustained by the French people, and the equally hostile
attitude, in the hour of our greatest national distress, of
the imperial cabinet, also sustained by the French people,
Americans cannot be expected to endure with absolute
complacency the egotism which untruthfully asserts that
they owe their existence as a nation to the generosity and
valor of the French=.
Though President Wilson brought back from Paris a treaty of alliance
between the United States, England and France, which he asked the
Senate, on July 29, 1919, to ratify, and declared that “we are
bound to France by ties of friendship which we have always regarded
and shall always regard as peculiarly sacred,” he stated in a much
earlier work, “The State,” that though the Congress at Philadelphia
had explicitly commanded Franklin, Adams and Jay, the American
commissioners, to be guided by the wishes of the French court in the
peace negotiations, “it proved impracticable, nevertheless, to act
with France; for she conducted herself, not as the ingenuous friend
of the United States, but only as the enemy of England, and, as first
and always, a subtle strategist for her own interests and advantage.
The American commissioners were not tricked, and came to terms
separately with the English.”
Having accomplished the object of giving aid in humbling England
through the loss of her colonies, the French, far from remaining
our friends, became our enemies, and from 1797 to 1835 we find the
messages of the Presidents abounding in complaints of the treatment
France was according our young merchant marine on the high seas.
In 1798 we found ourselves in a state of war with France. “Such an
outburst had not been known,” says the historian, Elson, “since
the Battle of Lexington.” Patriotic songs were written, and one of
these, “Hail, Columbia,” still lives in our literature. Washington
was again called to the command of the American army, but beyond some
engagements at sea, no blows were actually struck.
But ere long France was again at her old tricks. In 1851 we were
on the eve of war over the Hawaiian Islands, which France had
seized, though knowing that she could never hold them save as the
result of a successful war. On June 18, 1851, Secretary of State
Webster instructed the American minister in Paris to say that the
further enforcement of the French demands against Hawaii “would
tend seriously to disturb our friendly relations with the French
government.”
The third conspicuous instance of France’s persistent enmity to us
was at a time when President Lincoln was harrassed by the distressing
events of the most critical hours of the rebellion and the
possibility of England and France together undertaking the cause of
the Confederacy. England had been approached by the Emperor, Napoleon
III, with a proposal for an alliance, and in both countries the Union
cause was at its lowest ebb.
Justin McCarthy in his “History of Our Own Times” (II, p. 231) says:
“The Southern scheme found support only in England and in France.
In all other European countries the sympathy of the people and
government alike went with the North.... Assurances of friendship
came from all civilized countries to the Northern States except from
England and France alone.”
While the Northern and Southern States were engaged in a death
grapple, Napoleon III was defying the Monroe Doctrine by invading
Mexico, and in 1862 was sending instructions to the French general,
Forey, as follows:
People will ask you why we sacrifice men and money to
establish a government in Mexico. In the present state of
civilization the development of America can no longer be
a matter of indifference to Europe.... =It is not at all
to our interest that they should come in possession of the
entire Gulf of Mexico, to rule from there the destinies of
the Antilles and South America, and control the products of
the New World.=
After Lee’s surrender General Slaughter of the Confederate army
opened negotiations with the French Marshal Bazaine for the transfer
of 25,000 Confederate soldiers to Mexico, and many distinguished
Confederate officers cast their lot with the French to establish
Maximilian on the throne. General Price was commissioned to recruit
an imperial army in the Confederate States. Governor Harris of
Tennessee and other Americans naturalized as Mexicans and now
took the lead in a colonization scheme of vast proportions. The
North became thoroughly alarmed. A French army co-operating with
Confederate expatriates could not be tolerated on the Mexican border.
The government at Washington lodged an emphatic protest with the
French government, and an army of observation of 50,000 men under
General Sheridan was dispatched to the Rio Grande, ready to cross
into Mexico and attack Bazaine at a moment’s notice. =The American
minister in Paris was instructed by Seward to insist on a withdrawal
of the French forces from Mexico, and as the French government was in
no position to engage in a war in a distant country against a veteran
army of a million men it was forced to yield.=
“The Emperor of the French,” writes McCarthy (p. 231), “fully
believed that the Southern cause was sure to triumph, and that the
Union would be broken up; he was even willing to hasten what he
assumed to be the unavoidable end. He was anxious that England should
join with him in some measures to facilitate the success of the South
by recognizing the Government of the Southern Confederation. He got
up the Mexican intervention, which assuredly he would never have
attempted if he had not been persuaded that the Union was on the eve
of disruption.”
The French populace was enthusiastically on the side of Napoleon
in the Mexican adventure, as attested by the proceedings in the
French legislature, especially by the scenes in the Senate, February
24, 1862, and in the Corps Legislatif, June 26 of the same year,
when Billault, Minister of Foreign Affairs, spoke on French aims
in Mexico. On March 23, 1865, Druyn de Lluys, the French Premier,
notified Mr. Seward, our Secretary of State, that American
intervention in favor of Juarez, the Mexican patriot, =would lead to
a declaration of war on the part of France=. The necessary military
preparations had been made by Marshal Bazaine, who, as related by
Paul Garlot in “L’Empire de Maximilian” (Paris, 1890), had erected
“fortified supports” at the United States frontier and made certain
“arrangements” with Confederate leaders.
=“In our dark hours and the great convulsions of our war,” said
Charles Sumner, then chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations
in the Senate, in New York, September 11, 1863, “France is forgetting
her traditions.”=
=Benjamin Franklin.=--In his pointed comments on the disfavor
with which practical politicians regard the independent voter in
politics, Prof. A. B. Faust, of Cornell University, in his valuable
work, “The German Element in the United States,” says of conditions
in Pennsylvania preceding the Revolution: “The Germans, with few
exceptions, could not be relied upon either by demagogues or by
astute party men to vote consistently with their party organization.
The politician catering to the German vote often found himself
strangely deceived. He never expected that the German might think
for himself and vote as seemed right to him. The politician in his
wrath would declare the Germans politically incapable. From his point
of view they were un-American. They did not cling to one party.
The fact of the matter is, they were independent voters, and they
appeared as such at a very early period. Benjamin Franklin made the
discovery before the Revolutionary War, and he was provoked to an
extent surprising in that suave diplomatist.” In a letter to Peter
Collinson, dated Philadelphia, May 9, 1753, Franklin says:
I am perfectly of your mind that measures of great temper
are necessary with the Germans, and am not without
apprehension that through their indiscretion, or ours, or
both, great disorders may one day among us.
Then he speaks of the ignorance of the Germans, their incapability
of using the English language, the impossibility of removing their
prejudices--“not being used to liberty, they know not how to make a
modest use of it,” etc.
They are under no restraint from any ecclesiastical
government; they behave, however, submissively enough to
the civil government, which I wish they may continue to do,
for I remember when they modestly declined to meddle in our
elections, but now they come in droves and carry all before
them except in one or two counties.
The last sentence, comments Faust, betrays the learned writer of
the letter; the uncertainty of their votes is the cause for his
accusations of ignorance and prejudice.
On the point of ignorance we get contradictory evidence in the same
letter. “Few of their children in the country know English. They
import many books from Germany and of the six printing houses in
the province, two are entirely German, two are half-German, half
English, and but two entirely English. (This large use and production
of books disproves want of education. Their lack of familiarity with
the English language was popularly looked upon as ignorance.--Faust.)
They have one German newspaper and one half German. Advertisements
intended to be general are now printed in Dutch (German) and English.
The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages, and
in some places, only German. They begin of late to make all their
bonds and other legal instruments in their own language, which
(though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our courts,
where the German business so increases that there is continued need
of interpreters; and I suppose within a few years they will also
be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our legislators
what the other half say. In short, unless the stream of importation
could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously
propose, they will soon so outnumber us that the advantages we have
will, in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language, and even
our government will become precarious.”
Illustration: GERMAN PIONEERS
Group of the Monument Erected to the Memory of the Settlers
of Germantown, Pa., by Albert Jaegers.
It is obvious from many indications that Benjamin Franklin did not
adhere to his point of view and learned to regard the Germans in a
far more favorable light than in 1753, twenty-three years before the
Declaration of Independence. The Revolution, as Bancroft relates,
found no Tories among the German settlers of Pennsylvania, but
a unanimous sentiment for independence, and their full quota of
fighting men in the American ranks.
When queried before the English Parliament concerning the
dissatisfaction of the Americans with the Stamp Act, he was asked how
many Germans were in Pennsylvania. His answer was, “About one-third
of the whole population, but I cannot tell with certainty.” Again the
question was put whether any part of them had seen service in Europe.
He answered, “Many, as well in Europe as America.”
When asked whether they were as dissatisfied with the Stamp Act
as the native population, he said, “Yes, even more, as they are
justified, because in many cases they must pay double for their stamp
paper and parchments.”
If the German element felt the injustice of the Stamp Act more
keenly than their neighbors, the conclusion is patent that they
could not have been ignorant, as the illiterate and ignorant were
least affected by its harshness. Even the honor of being the first
printer of German books belongs to Franklin, for he furnished three
volumes of mystical songs in German for Conrad Beissel, 1730-36. When
the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia (1743) agitated for the
foundation of the “Public Academy of the City of Philadelphia,” the
institution that later developed into the University of Pennsylvania,
Franklin designed its curriculum and recommended the study of German
and French, besides English. In 1766 he attended a meeting of the
Royal Society of Science in Göttingen while on a trip through
Germany and visited Dr. Hartmann in Hanover to see his apparatus for
electrical experiments. He was made a member of the Göttingen learned
society.
Conclusive proof of Franklin’s change of view is furnished by his
testimony before a committee of the British House of Commons in
1766. Referring to the Germans, who, he said, constituted about
one-third of the population of 160,000 whites in Pennsylvania, he
described them as “a people who brought with them the greatest
of wealth--industry and integrity, and characters that had been
superpoised and developed by years of suffering and persecution.”
(Penn. Hist. Magazine, iv, 3.)
=Frederick the Great and the American Colonies.=--Because Frederick
the Great was a Hohenzollern and a Prussian, it became the fashion
early in the course of the war to frown upon all mention of
his connection with the revolutionary struggle of our American
forefathers, and his statue before the military college, which was
unveiled with so much ceremony during President Roosevelt’s term, was
discreetly taken from its pediment and consigned to the obscurity of
a cellar as soon as we entered the war. Yet Frederick was the sincere
friend of the Colonies and contributed largely if not vitally to
the success of the struggle for American independence. The evidence
rests upon something better than tradition. A more just opinion of
his interest in the success of the Colonies than has been expressed
of late by his detractors is contained in the works of English and
American writers of history having access to the facts, who were
not under the spell of active belligerency and the influence of a
propaganda that has magically transformed George III into a “German
king.”
Had Russia in 1778 formed an alliance with England, Russian troops
would have swelled the forces arrayed against the American patriots
to such proportions that the result of the struggle presumably would
have been different. The influence of Prussia in that relation is
a chapter of history practically closed to most students. But for
immense bribes to Count Panin, Catherine the Great’s premier, paid
by Frederick the Great, as testified by British authorities, Russia
would have extended aid to England in her struggle with the Colonies
which might have proved decisive.
It was England’s interest to secure, if possible, the alliance
of Russia, and, as in the Seven Years War, to involve France in
continental complications. In 1778 there seemed every reason to
expect the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. The continuance of
the war gave an increased importance to an alliance with Russia,
and while the Dutch appealed to Catherine on the ground that Great
Britain had broken with Holland solely on account of the armed
neutrality, the English government offered to hand over Minorca as
the price of a convention.
In 1778 Catherine was approached by the English government through
Sir James Harris and invited to make a defensive and offensive
alliance. But the opposition of the Premier, Nikolai Ivanovich, Count
Panin, influenced by Frederick the Great, prevented any rapprochement
between England and Russia, and Catherine declared her inability
to join England against France unless the English government bound
itself to support her against the Turks.
“The Prussian party, headed by Panin at St. Petersburg,” writes
Arthur Hassall, M. A., in “The Balance of Power, 1715-1789,” p.
338; (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), “had won its last
triumph, and all chance for an Anglo-Russian alliance had for the
moment disappeared.... Since 1764 Count Panin had been the head of
the Prussian party at the Russian capital, and the Prussian alliance
had been the keystone of Catherine’s policy.... =Frederick the
Great, partly by immense bribes to Panin, had kept Catherine true
to the existing political system, and had contributed to prevent
Russian assistance from being given to England during the American
struggle.=” (P. 361.)
Writing to his minister in Paris, Goltz, in August and September,
1777, Frederick said: “You can assure M. de Maurepas that I have
no connection whatever with England, nor do I grudge France any
advantage she may gain in the war with the Colonies.... Her first
interest requires the enfeeblement of Great Britain, and the way
to do this is to make it lose its colonies in America.... The
present opportunity is more favorable than ever before existed, and
more favorable than is likely to occur in three centuries.... The
independence of the colonies will be worth to France all which the
war will cost.”
Bancroft writes: “While Frederick was encouraging France to strike
a decisive blow in favor of the United States, their cause found an
efficient advocate in Marie Antoinette.” On April 7, 1777, Frederick
wrote: “France knows perfectly well that it has absolutely nothing
to apprehend from me in case of war with England.... =If it= (the
English crown) =would give me all the millions possible I would
not furnish it two small files of my troops to serve against the
colonies.= Neither can it expect from me a guaranty of its electorate
of Hanover.”
Bancroft comments: “The people of England cherished the fame of the
Prussian king as in some measure their own. Not aware how basely
Bute had betrayed him, they unanimously desired the renewal of his
alliance; and the ministry sought to open the way for it through his
envoy in France.” Frederick replied, “No man is further removed than
myself from having connections with England. We will remain on the
same footing on which we are with her.” Bancroft says: “Frederick
expressed more freely his sympathy with the United States.”
The port of Emden could not receive their cruisers for want of a
fleet or a fort to defend them from insult; =but he offered them an
asylum in the Baltic at Danzig=. He attempted, though in vain, to
dissuade the Prince of Anspach from furnishing troops to England,
and he forbade the subsidiary troops both of Anspach and Hesse to
pass through his domains. The prohibition which was made as public as
possible, and just as the news arrived of the surrender of Burgoyne,
resounded through Europe; and he announced to the Americans that it
was given him “to testify his good will to them.”
Every facility was afforded to the American commissioners to purchase
and ship arms from Prussia. Before the end of 1777 he promised not to
be the last to recognize the independence of the United States, and
in January, 1778, his minister, Schulenburg, wrote officially to one
of the commissioners in Paris: “The king desires that your generous
efforts may be crowned with complete success. He will not hesitate
to recognize your independency when France, which is more directly
interested in the event of the contest, shall have given the example.”