Houses, including Nicholas Longworth, the son-in-law of Theodore
Roosevelt, was cast by Representative Sherwood of Toledo. He enlisted
in the Union Army April 16, 1861, as a private and was mustered out
as Brigadier-General October 8, 1865; was in 43 battles and 123
days under fire and was six times complimented in special orders by
commanding generals for gallant conduct in battle; commanded his
regiment in all the battles of the Atlanta campaign, and after the
battles of Franklin and Nashville, Tenn., upon the recommendation
of the officers of his brigade and division, he was made brevet
brigadier general by President Lincoln for long and faithful service
and conspicuous gallantry at the battles of Resaca, Atlanta, Franklin
and Nashville.
=War of 1870-71.=--What may be expected from the process of rewriting
our school histories of American events by the friends of England is
patent from the manner in which some of the most vital historical
data of the world’s history was distorted during the war. For
example, it has been persistently dinned into the minds of Americans
that France was trapped into war with Prussia in 1870 by the subtle
diplomatic strategy of Bismarck, who is represented as having forged
a dispatch. The facts are easily accessible in “Bismarck, the Man and
the Statesman,” published by Harper Brothers in 1899, in which the
episodes and events, including the manner of the alleged dispatch,
are treated with a degree of candor that can leave no doubt as to
the responsibility for the war. It can be found in Chapter XXVII,
entitled “The Ems Dispatch.”
The facts in the case are that France desired war with Prussia, but
was taken by surprise when it found the South German states allied
with Prussia, instead of rushing to the aid of France, as Napoleon
III had confidently expected. If a nation can be inflamed to go to
war by a dispatch which simply recorded that King William of Prussia
had refused to intermeddle with the succession to the Crown of Spain
and declined to continue the discussion of the subject with the
French minister, Benedetti, it is hardly probable that the war could
have been prevented under any circumstances. Accordingly, France
declared war, not Prussia. Napoleon III at the time was regulating
affairs throughout the universe, in Italy as well as in Mexico, where
he set up a throne supported by French arms, which violated the
Monroe Doctrine and almost brought us to grips with France.
The popular description of France as a peace-loving nation is not
borne out by many centuries of her history, as even Frenchmen admit.
The Cock of Gaul is a fighting cock, declares Deputy Pierre Brizon in
a recent (1919) issue of the French periodical, “La Vague:”
They fired cannon to announce Peace!
What would you have done? They are used to blood! They are
the sons of the “Cock of Gaul.”
And the “Cock of Gaul” through the centuries has carried
war over the whole world--into Italy, into Germany, into
Spain, into England, into Switzerland, into Austria, into
Ireland, into the Scandinavian countries, into Russia, into
Syria, to the Indies, to Mexico, into Algeria, into Tunis,
to the Antilles, to Senegal, into the Congo, to Madagascar,
into China, to Morocco, to the Ends of the Earth.
No people for a thousand years have been more warlike than
the French. No one has had to an equal degree with them the
silly vanity of “glory” and of “victory.” No one has caused
more blood to run over the earth.
Of course, this does not furnish an excuse for the Vandals,
the Mongols, the Turks, the Russians, the English or the
Prussians.
No, but--they fired cannon in Paris to announce Peace!
The absurdity that Prussia lured France into a war in 1870 is
repudiated by no less an authority than Premier Georges Clemenceau.
In an article which he contributed to the “Saturday Evening Post,” of
October 24, 1914, under the title, “The Cause of France,” (p. 1, col.
2), he states:
In 1870 Napoleon III in a moment of folly declared war on
Germany [should be Prussia] without even having the excuse
of being in a state of military preparedness. =No true
Frenchman has ever hesitated to admit that the wrongs of
that day were committed by our side. Dearly we have paid
for them.=
=War Lies Repudiated by British Press.=--The following article deals
with venerable subjects that have done much to inflame international
hatred and misunderstandings. It is taken from the Glasgow “Forward,”
of Glasgow, Scotland (1919), and will have a tendency, it is hoped,
to enlighten the minds of many who have believed everything that was
printed about war’s atrocities:
We are continually receiving requests for information about the
Lusitania, poison gas, aerial bombs, corpse fat, and other popular
stock-in-trade of the warmonger. We cannot keep repeating our
exposures of wartime falsehoods and delusions, and we ask our readers
to keep the following facts beside them, and refrain from subjecting
us to a continual stream of postal queries.
“Was the Lusitania armed?”
No. But she was carrying munitions of war. Lord Mersey, chairman of
the Court of Enquiry into the sinking of the Lusitania, said: “The
5,000 cases of ammunition on board were 50 yards away from where the
torpedo struck the ship” (Glasgow “Evening Citizen” report, July 17,
1915).
“Did the German people rejoice?”
No. There was neither hilarity nor medals nor school beflagging.
The London “Times” reported that “Vorwarts” “deeply deplored” the
sinking. So did the German naval critic, Captain Persius.
Mr. John Murray, the publisher, issued last October an authoritative
book from the pen of the correspondent of the Associated Press of
America in Germany, Mr. George A. Schreiner, who was in Germany
during the Lusitania period. Mr. Schreiner’s dispatches were
extensively quoted in the patriotic British press, and his testimony
is above suspicion. His book, “The Iron Ration” (pp. 291-2), says:
The greatest shock the German public received was the news
that the Lusitania had been sunk.
For a day or two a minority held that the action was
eminently correct. But even that minority dwindled rapidly.
For many weeks the German public was in doubt as to what
it all meant. The thinking element was groping about in
the dark. What was the purpose of picking out a ship with
so many passengers on board? Then the news came that the
passengers had been warned not to travel on the steamer.
That removed all doubt that the vessel had been singled out
for attack.
The government remained silent. It had nothing to say. The
press, standing in fear of the censor and his power to
suspend publication, was mute. Little by little it became
known that there had been an accident. The commander of the
submarine sent out to torpedo the ship had been instructed
to fire at the forward hold, so that the passengers could
get off before the vessel sank. Either a boiler of the
ship or (they continued) an ammunition cargo had given
unlooked-for assistance to the torpedo. The ship had gone
down. Nothing weaned the German public so much away from
the old order of government as did the Lusitania affair.
The act seemed useless, wanton, ill-considered. The
doctrine of governmental infallibility came near to being
wrecked. The Germans began to lose confidence in the wisdom
of the men who had been credited in the past with being the
very quintessence of all knowledge, mundane and celestial.
Admiral Tirpitz had to go. Germany’s allies, too, were
not pleased. In Austria and Hungary the act was severely
criticized, and in Turkey I found much disapproval of the
thing.
“The ‘Old Contemptible’ Lie.”
The “New Illustrated” (Lord Northcliffe’s latest journalistic
venture) declared, in March of this year:
The story that the Kaiser called General French’s force
a “contemptible little army” served a useful purpose in
working up fierce anger against the enemy in Britain, but
it was an invention. The Kaiser was not so foolish as to
say what the German General Staff would have known to be
nonsense.
“The Corpse Fat Lie.”
The “Times” started the lie that the Germans had built factories for
extracting grease from the bodies of dead soldiers. This grease was
used as margarine.
Lord Robert Cecil latterly admitted in the House of Commons that
there was no evidence of the story; but, of course, he believed the
Germans capable of it. The London comic (?) papers issued cartoons of
a German looking at a pot of grease and soliloquizing: “Alas! my poor
brother!” But the lie was finally exposed and disappeared even from
the stock-in-trade of the British Workers’ League--and, God knows,
they were loth to let anything go.
“Who first bombed from the sky?”
The National War Savings Committee issued synopses of their lantern
lectures last year for propaganda purposes. Here are the synopses of
the two slides dealing with the first bomb dropped on towns:
A lantern picture, entitled “War in the Air,” by C. G. Grey (editor
of “Aeroplane”), issued by the National War Savings Committee,
Salisbury Square, London, E. C. 4 (page 7).
“Slide 32--The navy’s land machines went over to Belgium and it is
to the credit of the R. N. A. S. that =the first hostile missiles
which fell on German soil were bombs dropped by R. N. A. S. pilots on
Cologne and Dusseldorf=....
“Slide 35--=It is interesting to note that these early raids by the
R. N. A. S. were the first example of bomb-dropping attacks from
the air in any way=, and the only pity is that we had not at the
beginning of the war enough aeroplanes.”
“Priority in poison gas.”
The Glasgow “Evening News” (January 26, 1918) frankly admitted that:
It appears that mustard gas, generally believed to have
been invented by the Germans, was discovered by the late
Professor Guthrie at the Royal College, Mauritius.
The London “Times,” on August 2, 1914, reproduced from the French
government organ, “Le Temps,” a paragraph reporting that M. Turpin
has offered to the French Ministry of War a shell filled with a
chemical compound discovered by him, and called Turpinite. Numbers
of these shells seem to have been used by the French artillery, and
they were essentially such gas shells as the Germans are now using.
Numerous correspondents, claiming to be eye-witnesses, reported their
terrible effects in the British press during October and November,
1914. We learned that the gas liberated from the explosion of one of
these shells was enough to asphyxiate an entire platoon of Germans.
After death they were observed to be standing erect and shoulder
to shoulder in their trenches, and, after killing them with this
marvelous celerity, the gas would roll on and stifle entire flocks
of sheep feeding in fields in their rear. The British press writers
saw nothing to blame in the use against Germans of Turpinite; on the
contrary, they openly exulted in its terrible effects. Subsequently,
much to their regret, Turpinite was given up, because it was so
dangerous to the munition workers who had to pour it into the shell
cases. Some weeks later the Germans began to use with more success
the same expedient.
The London “Illustrated News” (May 13, 1915) published a “thrilling”
picture of 5 German officers asphyxiated by British lyddite. The
descriptive lines below the picture say:
“One of the correspondents at the front tells a thrilling story
of the havoc wrought by lyddite shells used by our artillery in
Flanders. The fumes of the lyddite are very poisonous, so much so
that some of our troops wore masks for the nose and mouth. After one
battle, in which the German trenches had been shelled with lyddite,
an officer found a card party of five officers stone dead. Looking at
them in the bright moonlight, he was struck by their resemblance to
waxwork figures. They were in perfectly natural poses, but the bright
yellow of their skins showed the manner of their death--asphyxiation
by lyddite.”
The first inventor of poison gas was Lord Dundonald during the
Crimean war (see “The Panmure Papers,” published in 1908 by Hodder &
Stoughton, and the “Candid Review,” August, 1915). It was at the time
of the Crimean war rejected by the English as “too horrible.”
There were, of course, atrocities during the war--German, Austrian,
Italian, British, Serbian, French. All war is an atrocity, but =the
hate= was fanned and the murder kept going by the steady press
campaigns of mendacity in every country, and here in Britain we were
subjected to more than our fair share of it.
=Washington’s Bodyguard.=--At the outbreak of the war of independence
Herkimer, Muhlenberg and Schlatter gathered the Germans in the Mohawk
Valley and the Virginia Valley together and organized them into
companies for service. Baron von Ottendorff, another German soldier,
recruited and drilled the famous Armand Legion. And when Washington’s
first bodyguard was suspected of treasonable sentiments and plans
it was dismissed and a new bodyguard, consisting almost entirely of
Germans, was formed. This new bodyguard was supported by a troop of
cavalry consisting entirely of Germans, under the command of Major
Barth von Heer, one of Frederick the Great’s finest cavalry officers.
This troop stood by Washington during the entire war, and twelve of
them escorted him to Mt. Vernon when he retired.--(“The European War
of 1914,” by Prof. John W. Burgess, Chap. IV, p. 115.)
=Washington’s Tribute.=--The Philadelphia German Lutherans held a
memorial service on May 27, 1917, made doubly impressive at Zion’s
Church, by the circulation of a letter written to the congregation by
George Washington, in reply to congratulations on his first election
as President of the United States. The letter concludes with the
following words:
From the excellent character for dilligence, sobriety and
virtue which the Germans in general, who are settled in
America have ever maintained, I cannot forbear felicitating
myself on receiving from respectable a number of them
such strong assurance of their affection for my person,
confidence in my integrity, and real zeal to support me
in my endeavors for promoting the welfare of our common
country.
Similar expressions are contained in a letter written by
Jefferson, which see elsewhere. The church to whose congregation
Washington’s letter was addressed, is the most historic church in
the northern part of the United States, since it was built in 1742,
under the direction of the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in
America, Heinrich M. Muhlenberg, father of General Muhlenberg, of
Revolutionary fame. For 178 years the service has been conducted in
the German language.
=Weiser, Conrad.=--Along with Franz Daniel Pastorius, Jacob Leisler
and John Peter Zenger, the name of Conrad Weiser deserves to be
commemorated as one of the outstanding figures of early American
history, for no man of his period exercised such influence with
the Indians or did so much to promote the peaceful development of
the settlements by insuring the friendship of the Six Nations. The
following sketch of this famous character in American history is
taken from “Eminent Americans” by Benson J. Lossing:
“One of the most noted agents of communication between the white men
and the Indians was Conrad Weiser, a native of Germany, who came to
America in early life and settled with his father in the present
Schoharie County, N. Y., in 1713. They left England in 1712 and were
seventeen months on the voyage. Young Weiser became a great favorite
with the Iroquois Indians in the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys, with
whom he spent much of his life. Late in 1714 the elder Weiser and
about thirty other families who had settled in Schoharie, becoming
dissatisfied with attempts to tax them, set out for Tulpehocken in
Pennsylvania, by way of the Susquehanna River, and settled there.
But young Weiser was enamoured of the free life of the savage. He
was naturalized by them and became thoroughly versed in the language
of the whole Six Nations, as the Iroquois Confederacy in New York
was called. He became confidential interpreter and messenger for
the Province of Pennsylvania among the Indians and assisted at many
important treaties. The governor of Virginia commissioned him to
visit the grand council at Onondago in 1737 and with only a Dutchman
and three Indians he traversed the trackless forest for 500 miles
for that purpose. He went on a similar mission from Philadelphia
to Shamokin (Sunbury) in 1744. At Reading he established an Indian
agency and trading post. When the French on the frontier made
hostile demonstrations in 1755 he was commissioned a colonel of a
volunteer regiment from Berks County, and in 1758 he attended the
great gathering of Indian chiefs in council with white commissioners
at Easton. Such was the affection of the Indians for Weiser that for
many years after his death they were in the habit of visiting his
grave and strewing flowers upon it. Mr. Weiser’s daughter married
Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, D. D., the founder of the Luthern Church
in America.”
One of his grandsons was General Muhlenberg, another was the first
Speaker of the House of Congress. General Washington said of him:
“Posterity will not forget his just deserts.”
=Wetzel, Lou.=--The present generation is not too old to recall the
flood of Indian stories of their youth, for in the ‘70s the Indian
was still a factor in the contest for the development of the West
and the papers at times contained thrilling accounts of battles with
Indians on our frontier. Cooper was still a much-read novelist, and
less famous writers still sought their inspiration in the French and
Indian wars, the wars which the English and Tories, with their Indian
allies, carried into the valleys of the Schoharie and the Mohawk,
as well as in the bloody conflicts in Kentucky and Ohio. In these
stories no names were of more frequent occurrence than those of Lou
Wetzel, the scout and Indian fighter, and Simon Girty, the renegade.
Both these names are strictly historic. Wetzel, was next to Daniel
Boone, the most famous frontiersman of our early middle west history.
His father was born in the Palatinate and came to Pennsylvania,
settling afterwards in Ohio, where each of his four sons won fame as
frontiersmen, scouts and guides, but above all, Lou, who after an
eventful career and many hairbreadth escapes, died in Texas and was
buried on the banks of the Brazos. Other noted Indian fighters of
the period who were of German descent were Peter Nieswanger, Jacob
Weiser, Carl Bilderbach, John Warth and George Rufner. The Poes, too,
were well known in early border history, and were the sons of German
settlers from Frederick County, Md. The elder, Frederick Poe, who
moved west in 1774, and died in 1840 at the age of 93, was, like his
younger brother, Andrew, a typical backwoodsman, contesting for every
foot of ground with the native Indian.
=Wirt, William.=--Famous jurist and author. During three presidential
terms Attorney General of the United States; appointed by President
Monroe to that office in 1817-18; resigned under John Quincy
Adams, March 3, 1829. Born at Bladensburg, Md., November 18, 1772,
becoming a poor orphan at an early age. Learned Latin and Greek and
studied law at Montgomery Court House, being licensed to practice
in the fall of 1792. Commenced his professional career at Culpeper
Courthouse, Va., the same year and soon became eminent socially and
professionally. In 1802 received the appointment of chancellor of
the eastern district of Virginia. Wrote his beautiful essays under
the name of “The British Spy” and in 1807 prosecuted Aaron Burr for
treason. His great speech on that occasion made him famous. Was a
member of the Virginia Legislature in 1808, and from that time until
after the war pursued his profession successfully until summoned into
the Cabinet of President Monroe. In 1832 he was nominated by the
anti-Masonic party for President of the United States, but received
only the electoral vote of Vermont. He died February 18, 1834. The
most famous production of his pen is a “Life of Patrick Henry.” Mr.
Wirt never forgot his German antecedance and during 1833 engaged in
founding a colony of Germans in Florida, but the venture was not
successful. Lossing says “he was greatly esteemed in Richmond for his
talents and social accomplishments.”
=Wirtz, Captain H., of Andersonville Prison.=--For many years after
the Civil War, Andersonville Prison served as the outstanding symbol
of the atrocities practiced upon Union prisoners by the Southern
Confederacy. The prison was commanded by Captain Wirtz, who was
subsequently tried by a court martial at Washington and hanged.
General Lee’s nephew, and his biographer, has stated that General
Lee used his influence to save him by showing that Wirtz was not
primarily responsible for the sufferings of Union prisoners under
his care, but that these were in a large measure due to the blockade
against Southern ports, which prevented the landing of medicines
and supplies. Because of his name, Wirtz has been cited by Prof.
John D. Lawson, of Columbia, Mo., and others, as a typical personal
embodiment of German brutality. Mr. Louis Benecke, a prominent
attorney, of Brunswick, Mo., who himself was for seven months a
Union prisoner in a Confederate prison, and who afterwards became
the historian of the Association of Ex-Union Prisoners of War, has
shown that Wirtz was not a native of Germany. Mr. Benecke says:
“As the record shows, his grandfather was a French wine merchant
at Bonnerville, France, and his name was there spelled with a ‘V’
instead of a ‘W.’ The father of Wirtz located in Switzerland, near
Geneva, and while there changed his name to Wirtz, conforming to the
phonetic of the French ‘V.’ It is further shown that the mother of
Captain H. Wirtz was a French Italian. A prisoner of German descent,
believing Wirtz to be a German, applied to him for a favor, and
insinuated that his nationality entitled him to some consideration,
to which Wirtz replied, ‘Je ne suis allemagne; je suis Suis.’ Wirtz
at no time or place ever claimed to be anything but a Swiss or French
descent.”
=Wistar, Caspar.=--In 1717 emigrated to America from Hilspach,
Germany, where he was born in 1696, and established what is supposed
to be the first glass factory in America in New Jersey, thirty miles
from Philadelphia. (It is believed that an earlier glass factory was
established by Germans in Virginia.)
=Zane, Elizabeth.=--Described as the handsome and vivacious daughter
of Col. Zane (Zahn), founder of Wheeling, W. Va. In 1782 a fort near
Zane’s loghouse on the site of the present city was attacked by a
band of British soldiers and 186 Indian savages. The defenders of
the fort were reduced from 42 to 12, and as the supply of powder
was running low, the little garrison seemed doomed. The enemy was
covering every approach to Zane’s loghouse, about sixty yards
distant, where a full keg of powder was stored. It was to get this
powder that Miss Zane responded when volunteers were called for,
arguing that not a man could be spared while a girl would not be
missed. Despite every protest she set out on her daring journey,
leisurely opened the back gate and crossed the ground as coolly
as though for a stroll. The British and Indians were dumbfounded,
and did not realize what her plan was until she returned, carrying
the keg under a table cloth. They then opened fire on her, several
bullets passing through her clothing, but the heroic girl reached
the blockhouse unscathed and enabled the defenders to hold out until
relief came.
=Ziegler, David, Revolutionary Soldier and Indian Fighter.=--American
soldier and first mayor of Cincinnati; born at Heidelberg, August
18, 1748; served under General Weismann in the Russian army under
Catharine II and took part in the Turkish-Russian campaign which
ended with the capture of the Krim in 1774. Came to America in the
same year and settled in Lancaster, Pa.
Joined the battalion of General William Thompson which appeared
before Boston, August 2, 1775, where it was placed under command
of General Washington. Ziegler was adjutant and the soul of the
battalion, more than half of which was composed of German Americans,
and which was the second regiment, after that of Massachusetts, to be
enlisted under Washington’s standard.
Ziegler served throughout the War of Independence as an officer and
was repeatedly mentioned for distinguished service. On account of his
ability was appointed by General St. Clair, Commissioner-General for
the Department of Pennsylvania. Rendered great service in drilling
troops and introducing discipline. Major Denny, in his diary, refers
to him in these words: “As a disciplinarian, he has no superior in
the whole army.”