prepared his campaign biography. When he asked Lincoln for details
as to his ancestors he received this reply: “My parents were born
in Virginia of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps
I should say. My parental grandfather emigrated from Rockingham
County, Va., to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782. His ancestors, who were
Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort
to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended
in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in
which both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham,
etc.”
Nicolay and Hay, who were secretaries to the President and intimate
with him, published an extensive biography in 1890. Prof. M. D.
Learned, editor of the German-American Annals, made a special study
of the subject, and published the results in 1910. Both of these
authorities uphold the English descent. L. P. Hennighausen, of
Baltimore, is the leading advocate of the German descent.
Both parties agree that the grandfather of the President was
also named Abraham; that he came from Rockingham County, Va.,
to Kentucky; that his father, John, came to Virginia from Berks
County, Pennsylvania; and that these ancestors were Quakers, or
non-combatants. Grandfather Abraham bought 400 acres in Kentucky, and
on his Land Warrant in 1780, and also in the Surveyor’s Certificate
in 1785, the name is spelled “Linkhorn” in each instance.
The first named biographers claim that John’s father was Mordecai,
who came from Hingham, Mass., to Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1725.
His father was Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England in 1635,
and settled in the above named New England town. The descendants of
this family spread over New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky
and Tennessee. The German name “Linkhorn” is brushed aside as the
blunder of a clerk.
The argument for a German ancestry does not go so far back in
genealogy, and bases itself more on geography and spelling. It so
happens that Berks County and Rockingham County were solid German
settlements. In the Pennsylvania county the German dialect is
still in general use, and the “Reading Adler,” a German newspaper
established in 1796, was issued until 1913, still being one of the
few journalistic centenarians in the country. When Washington, as
a young man, was surveying Rockingham County, “he was attended by
a great concourse of people, who followed him through the woods
and would speak none but German.” Many of these settlers were
non-combatants, that is, Quakers or Mennonites.
That the name “Linkhorn” in the two documents mentioned is not a
mistake is shown by the fact that in the Surveyor’s Certificate is
the signature, “Abraham Linkhorn.” And what is even more puzzling and
curious, the two witnesses sign as “Josiah Lincoln” and “Hananiah
Lincoln.” A search of Virginia records from 1766 to 1776 shows that
Clayton Abraham Linkhorn was the youngest officer in the militia, and
his name, appearing on many different pages, is always spelled in
that manner. On the census lists and tax lists in Pennsylvania the
names Benjamin, John, Michael, and Jacob Linkhorn appear, and Nicolay
and Hay state that in Tennessee and Kentucky the family name is also
thus spelled.
This divergence of opinion is not confined to historians, but has
even innoculated the Lincoln family. Some years ago David J. Lincoln,
of Birdsboro, Berks Co., Pa., published a pedigree of the Lincoln
family. This was at once challenged by Geo. Lincoln, of Hingham,
Mass., who published a wholly different pedigree.
The evidence in favor of Lincoln’s German descent cannot be waved
aside as the error of a clerk. The purchaser of a strip of land
would not expose his title to future legal complications without
insisting on a correction of his name, whereas five years and two
months elapsed between the issue of the landoffice warrant and the
surveyor’s certificate, in which the alleged error is distinctly
duplicated. Again the name “Linkhorn” appears under the name of two
witnesses spelling their names “Lincoln,” conclusive proof that
the distinction was a conscious performance and not an accident. A
reasonable conclusion would be that other members of the family had
begun to spell their name “Lincoln” instead of “Linkhorn,” probably
following popular use in a community predominantly of English
ancestry, as is the case of so many names in the German counties
of Pennsylvania. When Koester is anglicised into Custer, Hauk into
Hawke, Reyer into Royer, Greims into Grimes and Brauer into Brower,
as evidenced by many tombstones of long-dead ancestors, it is a most
plausible inference that the same process evolved “Lincoln” from
“Linkhorn.”
Illustration: Land Warrant No. 3334, Issued to Abraham
Linkhorn, 1780. The Original in Possession of Colonel
R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky.
Illustration: Surveyor’s Certificate Issued to Abraham
Linkhorn, 1785, from Record Book “B,” Page 60, in
the Office of Jefferson County, Ky.
A bit of interesting collateral evidence in favor of the Linkhorn
hypothesis is supplied the editor of the present book by Mrs. G.
W. Garvey, who resided in Hoboken, N. J., until 1919, when she
removed to California. Mrs. Garvey’s maiden name was Bennett.
Her grandparents resided in close proximity to the family of the
Lincolns in Illinois. Her grandmother, Mrs. Dameron, often spoke of
the Lincolns as neighbors who were referred to as “Dutch” people,
“because the Lincolns were in the habit of killing a hog in the fall
and making sausages and sauerkraut,” which were among the delicacies
exchanged among their neighbors and friends, a typical German custom.
=Leutze, Eugene Henry Cozzens.=--Rear Admiral, U. S. N., born in
Dusseldorf, Germany, 1847. Appointed to U. S. Naval Academy by
President Lincoln, 1863; graduated 1867. While on leave of absence
from academy volunteered on board “Monticello” on N. Atlantic
Squadron in 1864. Served on numerous surveys, at Naval Academy,
1886-90; Washington Navy Yard, 1892-96; commander “Michigan,”
“Alert,” “Monterey,” and participated in taking city of Manila;
commandant Navy Yard, Cavite, P. I., 1898-1900; sup’t naval gun
factory, Washington, 1900-02; commander “Maine,” then member Board
of Inspection and Survey; then commandant Navy Yard, Washington, and
sup’t naval gun factory; retired by operation of law, Nov. 16, 1909,
but continued on active duty; commandant Navy Yard and Station, New
York, 1910.
=Long, Francis L.=--Was a sergeant in Custer’s command. On the day
before the massacre, Long volunteered to carry a message from Gen.
Custer through the Indian lines to Major Reno, calling for help. Long
got through and Reno moved, but camped at night, and thus failed to
save the heroic command. Long was the first trooper to arrive on the
scene of the massacre. He was also one of the six survivors of the
ill-fated Greely arctic expedition. The New York “Sun” said of him
the day after his death, June 8, 1916.:
His Viking constitution and an utter absence of nervousness
rendered him almost impervious to the ills of most
explorers put on a short diet in a desolate land. He became
the hunter of the Greely party, and it was chiefly through
him that the commander himself was saved. He never tired
of adventure, making several Arctic trips after his first
hazardous polar experiment, the last being when he was past
50. Except Rear Admiral Peary, it is said he spent more
time north of the Arctic circle than any other white man.
For the last dozen or more years Sergeant Long had charge
of the local weather bureau at night, making up the chart
and telling the newspapers what folks hereabouts might
expect next day. He was an expert meteorologist and
frequently made better local predictions than his superiors
at Washington.
Born at Wurtemberg, Germany. Came to the United States as a boy and
entered the army at 18.
=Ludwig, Christian.=--Purveyor of the Revolutionary Army. Born in
Giessen, Germany, 1720; fought in the Austrian army against the
Turks, and under Frederick the Great against Austria. Sailed the
oceans for seven years and settled in Philadelphia in 1754. Served on
numerous committees during the Revolution, and was popularly called
the “governor of Latitia Court,” where he owned a bakery. When a
resolution was passed by the Convention of 1776 to raise money for
arms, and grave doubt was expressed in regard to the feasibility of
the plan, Ludwig addressed the President of the Convention in these
words: “Although I am only a poor ginger-bread baker, put me down
for £200,” which silenced all further objection. By a resolution of
Congress (May 3, 1777), Ludwig was given the contract to supply the
American army with bread. Here he demonstrated his sterling honesty.
His predecessors had furnished 100 pounds of bread to 100 pounds of
flour. He declared: “Christoph Ludwig does not intend to get rich
out of the war; 100 pounds of flour make 135 pounds of bread, and
I shall furnish that.” He was very friendly with Washington, and
the commander in chief repeatedly entertained him at table, calling
him his “honest friend.” Ludwig bequeathed his not inconsiderable
fortune to the object of establishing a fund for a free school for
poor children without distinction as regards religion or previous
condition.
=Liberty Loan Subscriptions.=--The German element passed heroically
the test of their loyalty in the amounts subscribed to the Third
Liberty Loan for the prosecution of the war, and, as usual, they
far exceeded the record of other racial elements. The Central Loan
Committee gave out a summary on May 3, 1918, which showed the
following subscriptions:
Germans $18,000,000
Polish 9,500,000
Bohemians 440,000
Italians 8,500,000
Swedish 420,000
South Slavs 149,000
Russians 145,000
Lithuanians 66,500
Danes 281,000
Armenians 190,000
Belgians 700,000
South Americans 5,825,000
Chinese 31,000
The subscriptions of the English and French are not given. A letter
addressed to the Central Committee for a more complete report,
embodying the subscriptions of all foreign-born citizens, brought
the reply that the figures were not available, and no comparison is
therefore possible of the relative amounts given by the French and
English-born.
=Ideals of Liberty.=--When discussing the question of liberty
and the ideals of political freedom, it is safer to consult the
recognized authorities on ancient and modern history, famous students
of constitutional affairs, than to accept the dictum of political
opportunists whose judgments and pronouncements vary with the shift
of the wind.
The World War over night transformed the stupid, slow-going,
dull-witted German, the “Hans Breitmann” of Leland, and the familiar
“Fritz and his little dog Schneider,” into a world figure of
adroitness and supernatural finesse in all the arts of deception.
From a sodden, beer-guzzling, sauerkraut-eating Falstaff, he was
suddenly changed into a finished product of macchiavelian cleverness,
or into a knight errant charging around the world to suppress other
people’s liberty, and the embodiment of all that stands for autocracy.
While we were at war a good deal of this sort of figure painting was
tolerable; but long before we entered the war, it was dangerous for
the plain American citizen to express any view that did not describe
every German as a Hun and Boche. Yet all the time our libraries were
littered with the Latin classics, with Hume, Montesquieu, Guizot
and other famous authors, who actually contradicted this verdict of
Rudyard Kipling and his followers, and who, we presume, may now be
safely taken from the shelf and opened without exposing one to the
risk of being prosecuted for high treason, since they speak rather
well of our late enemies.
“Liberty,” said the Roman poet Lucanus, “is the German’s birthright.”
“It is a privilege,” wrote the Roman historian Florus, “which nature
has granted to the Germans, and which the Greeks, with all their art,
knew not how to obtain.” Hume, the great English historian, says: “If
our part of the world maintain sentiments of liberty, honor, equity
and valor, superior to the rest of mankind, it owes these advantages
to the seed implanted by those generous barbarians.” “Liberty,”
observed Montesquieu, “that lovely thing, was discovered in the wild
forests of Germany.” And Guizot, the French historian and statesman,
in his “History of Civilization” (Lecture II), makes this observation:
It was the rude barbarians of Germany who introduced this
sentiment of personal independence, this love of personal
liberty, into European civilization; it was unknown among
the Romans, it was unknown in the Christian Church; it
was unknown in nearly all the civilizations of antiquity.
The liberty that we meet with in ancient civilizations is
political liberty; it is the liberty of the citizen. We are
indebted for it to the barbarians who introduced it into
European civilization, in which, from its first rise it has
played so considerable a part and has produced such lasting
and beneficial results that it must be regarded as one of
the fundamental principles.
Mr. Walter S. McNeill tells us that “in some respects the German
(Constitution) is more democratic than our own,” while Professor
Burgess (author of the standard work, “Political Science and
Comparative Constitutional Law”) teaches us that “of the three
European constitutions which we are examining, only that of Germany
contains in any degree the guarantees of individual liberty which
the Constitution of the United States so richly affords” (Book
II, chapter 1, page 179, Vol. 1), whereas his opinion of England,
as expressed in “The European War of 1914,” is that “there is
no longer a British Constitution according to the American idea
of constitutional government.... In this only true sense of
constitutional government, the British Government is a despotism....
The Russian economic and political systems have more points of
likeness with the British than is usually conceived.”
Frank Harris (“England or Germany?” p. 30) writes: “Great Britain is
among the least free of modern nations. Her chief titles to esteem
belong to the past.” Prof. Yandell Henderson (Yale): “Modern Germany
is as unlike the Germany of Frederick the Great, out of which it
has developed, as America of to-day is unlike the America of the
stagecoach.”
Germany cannot be at once the country painted by Mr. Wilson in 1917
and the country he painted in 1919. In his speech before the A. F. of
L. convention in November, 1917, he said:
“All the intellectual men of the world went to school to her. As a
university man I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany; men
who have resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they get such
thorough and searching training, particularly in the principles of
science and the principles that underlie modern material achievement.
Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent
industries of the world, and the label ‘Made in Germany’ was a
guarantee of good workmanship and sound material.”
In his address to the French Academy of Moral and Political Science,
Paris, May 10, 1919, the same speaker said:
“A great many of my colleagues in American university life got their
training, even in political science, as so many men in civil circles
did, in German universities.... And it has been a portion of my
effort to disengage the thought of American university teachers from
the misguided instruction which they had received on this side of the
sea.”
And this is the tribute he pays to Prussia in his chapter on Prussian
government in his “The State:”
“Prussia has achieved a greater perfection in administrative
organization than any other European State.... The modern Prussian
constitution is one which may be said to rest on a scientific basis.”
=Marix, Adolph.=--Rear Admiral U. S. N. Born at Dresden, Germany,
1848. Graduated Naval Academy 1868. Served on various European
and Asiatic stations; Judge Advocate of “Maine” court of inquiry;
Captain of port of Manila, 1901-03; commanded “Scorpion” during
Spanish-American war and was promoted for conspicuous bravery;
chairman Lighthouse Board, retired May 10, 1910. Died in 1919.
=Massachusetts Bay Colony Contained Germans.=--The first Germans
in New England arrived, as far as we know, with the founding of
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. The proof of this fact, as well
as the influence of this first small group, is found in one of the
most important pamphlets published in connection with New England
colonization, “The Planter’s Plea” (1630). This tract, published
in London shortly after the departure of Winthrop’s Puritan fleet,
and supposed to have been written by John White, the “patriarch of
Dorchester,” and the “father of Massachusetts Bay Colony,” contains
the following statement: “It is not improbable that partly for their
sakes, and partly for respect to some Germans that are gone over
with them, and more that intend to follow after, even those which
otherwise would not much desire innovation, of themselves yet for
maintaining of peace and unity (the only solder of a weak, unsettled
body) will be won to consent to some variations from the forms and
customs of our church.”
Some of the early New England Germans reached there via New
Amsterdam; we find them in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Boston, etc. In
1661 the ship surgeon, Felix Christian Spoeri, of Switzerland, paid a
visit to Rhode Island. His narrative of New England (“Amerikanische
Reisebeschreibung Nach den Caribes Inseln und Neu Engelland”) is
one of the few of German pen on early American colonial times still
extant--(From “First Germans in North America and the German Element
of New Netherland,” by Otto Lohr, G. E. Stechert & Co., New York,
1912.)
=Massow, Baron Von.=--Member of Mosby’s Men on the Confederate side
during Civil War. According to a statement of Gen. John S. Mosby,
Baron von Massow joined his command on coming to this country from
Prussia, where he was attached to the general staff; was severely
wounded in an engagement with a California regiment in Fairfax County
near Washington, D. C., on which occasion he displayed conspicuous
gallantry. He was then discharged and returned to Germany, serving
later in the Austro-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian wars. The last
that Col. Mosby heard of him was that he was commanding the Ninth
Corps in the German army. (From a statement of Gen. Mosby, Feb. 12,
1901.)
=McNeill, Walter S.=--Prominent lawyer and law lecturer at Richmond,
Va., discussing the “Burgerliches Gesetzbuch,” which is the codified
common law of Germany, says:
“As a crystallization of human, not divine, justice, let our lawyers
compare the German Code with the Federal statutes and decisions, or
the legislative or judicial law of any of our States. Then we can get
at something definite, not imaginary, concerning civil liberty in
Germany.... The less said by way of comparing German with American
criminal law the better.”
=Memminger, Christoph Gustav.=--Secretary of the Treasury in the
Confederate Cabinet, appointed 1861. Born in Mergentheim, Wurtemberg.
=Mergenthaler, Ottmar.=--Inventor of the Mergenthaler Linotype
machine, used in almost every printing office throughout the world.
Born in Wurtemberg, Germany, and arrived in Baltimore in 1872,
working at his trade of clock and watch manufacturer. The Linotype
was the result of years of study and experimentation and represents
as great an advance over hand composition as the sewing machine does
over the sewing needle.
=Military Establishments of Warring Nations.=--Germany, occupying
the third place in population of eight leading powers, stood in the
second place in regard to enlistment in her army and navy, behind
Russia and England, respectively. Her expenditures for maintaining
the armed force, however, were surpassed by those of England, Russia
and France, and in the case of the navy, by those of the United
States as well. The per capita cost of her armaments was $4.54, while
that of France was $7.91 and that of England $9.97, or twice the
capita expenditure of Germany. The following table gives a comparison
of population and enlistment in army and navy of eight of the leading
countries: (E. Dallmer.)
Enlistment
(Peace strength)
Population Army Navy
England 45,000,000 254,500 137,500
Russia 160,100,000 1,290,000 52,463
France 39,300,000 720,000 60,621
Germany 64,900,000 810,000 66,783
United States 94,800,000 89,000 64,780
Italy 33,900,000 250,000 33,095
Austria-Hungary 49,400,000 390,000 17,581
Japan 52,200,000 250,000 51,054
The estimated expenditure for the year 1913-14 was as follows:
Per
Army Navy Total Capita
England $224,300,000 $224,140,000 $448,440,000 $9.97
Russia 317,800,000 122,500,000 440,300,000 2.75
France 191,431,580 119,571,400 311,002,980 7.91
Germany 183,090,000 111,300,000 294,390,000 4.54
United States 94,266,145 140,800,643 235,066,788 3.30
Italy 82,928,000 51,000,000 133,928,000 3.95
Austria-Hungary 82,300,000 42,000,000 124,300,000 2.52
Japan 49,000,000 46,500,000 95,500,000 1.85
Germany maintained a navy larger than that of the United States and
a standing army of 810,000, at an expense of but $1.24 per capita
more than that of the United States with a standing army of 75,000.
In addition the United States is burdened with a pension system
involving large expenditures.
Under President Wilson the United States in peace outstripped the
great military powers of the world in militarism, and the 64th
Congress passed bills appropriating a larger sum of money for army
and navy purposes than Germany did in anticipation of being attacked
by a coalition of France, England, Russia and Japan, as will appear
from the following table of comparative appropriations:
United States, 1917 $294,565,623
Germany, 1914 294,390,000
-----------
$175,623
=Minuit, or Minnewit, Peter.=--Director General of the New
Netherlands, purchased the island of Manhattan, the present site of
New York City, from the Indians for 60 guldens. Born in Wesel on the
lower Rhine. According to a report of Pastor Michaelis, who opened
the first divine service in the Dutch language in New Amsterdam in
1623, Peter Minuit acted as deacon of the Reformed Church in Wesel
and accepted a similar assignment in the newly founded church of
Manhattan. Later entered the service of Sweden, and in 1637 commanded
an expedition which founded New Sweden in the Delaware River region
near Cape Henlopen and Christian Creek. (See “Dutch and German.”)
=Morgan, J. Pierpont.=--American banker and financier, appointed by
the British Government to look after British interests in America
and known as “Great Britain’s ammunition agent.” In a speech in
Parliament, Lloyd George stated that D. A. Thomas would “co-operate
with Messrs. Morgan & Co., the accredited agents of the British
Government.” Morgan floated the famous Russian ruble and $500,000,000
English-French loans and was the chief promoter of the arms and
ammunition industry to supply the Allies. The trade in munitions
before we entered the war was upward of two billion dollars, of
which the Morgan interests received 2 per cent., or $40,000,000 in
commissions, exclusive of large additional profits from the companies
engaged in the manufacture of munitions in which he and his friends
were interested. Under a just construction of neutrality, for Morgan
to act against a friendly power under a commission from a foreign
government would subject him to arrest under a specific statute
of the United States. His niece, nee Burns, is the wife of First
Viscount Lewis Harcourt of Nuneham Park, Oxford.