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.