Muhlenberg, Frederick August.Muhlenberg, Frederick August.—German-American patriot, brother of General Peter Muhlenberg. Elected to the Continental Congress by the Assembly of Pennsylvania 1779 and 1780; Speaker of the Assembly 1781 and 1782; Chairman Pennsylvania Convention to ratify the Constitution of the United States 1787. Member of Congress for four terms, and the first Speaker of the American House of Representatives; also Speaker in the third Congress.
Muhlenberg, Frederick August.—German-American patriot, brother of General Peter Muhlenberg. Elected to the Continental Congress by the Assembly of Pennsylvania 1779 and 1780; Speaker of the Assembly 1781 and 1782; Chairman Pennsylvania Convention to ratify the Constitution of the United States 1787. Member of Congress for four terms, and the first Speaker of the American House of Representatives; also Speaker in the third Congress.
Muhlenberg, Heinrich Melchior.Muhlenberg, Heinrich Melchior.—Founder of the Lutheran Church in America. Born Sept. 6, 1711, at Eimbeck, Hanover. Sailed 1742, and after paying a visit to the Salzburg Protestants near Savannah, Georgia, settled in Pennsylvania. Erected what is known as the oldest Lutheran Church of brick in America at Trappe, where it is still preserved. He built the Zions Church, dedicated 1769, in which by order of Congress the memorial services to George Washington were held, attended by the Senate, House and Supreme Court and many generals, and where Light Horse Harry Lee first used the phrases “First in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Muhlenberg’s three sons, all German Lutheran pastors, became famous in war, politics and natural science.
Muhlenberg, Heinrich Melchior.—Founder of the Lutheran Church in America. Born Sept. 6, 1711, at Eimbeck, Hanover. Sailed 1742, and after paying a visit to the Salzburg Protestants near Savannah, Georgia, settled in Pennsylvania. Erected what is known as the oldest Lutheran Church of brick in America at Trappe, where it is still preserved. He built the Zions Church, dedicated 1769, in which by order of Congress the memorial services to George Washington were held, attended by the Senate, House and Supreme Court and many generals, and where Light Horse Harry Lee first used the phrases “First in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Muhlenberg’s three sons, all German Lutheran pastors, became famous in war, politics and natural science.
Muhlenberg, Johann Gabriel Peter.Muhlenberg, Johann Gabriel Peter.—American general in the Revolutionary war. Born in Montgomery Co., Pa., October 1, 1746, son of Heinrich M. Muhlenberg. With his two younger brothers, Frederick August and Heinrich Ernst, he went in 1763 to Halle, Germany, to study for the ministry, returning to Philadelphia in 1766. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was pastor of the German Lutheran Community of Woodstock, Virginia. Participated actively in the measures preceding armed resistance to the unjust measures of Parliament, and on the recommendation of Washington and Patrick Henry was appointed Colonel of the Eighth (or German) regiment of Virginia. He preached to his congregation for the last time in January, 1776, on the duty of the citizen to his country, concluding with the memorable words: “There is a time for everything, for prayer, for preaching and also for fighting. The time for fighting has arrived.” He had scarcely concluded the benediction when he cast off his clerical gown and stood revealed in full regimentals. An indescribable scene of patriotic enthusiasm followed, and many of his parishioners crowded around him and enlisted for service. On February 21, 1777, he was promoted to brigadier general by order of Congress. After the defeat of the American army at Brandywine, his brigade covered the retreat with invincible bravery, and in the battle of Germantown he performed his duty with distinction, causing the enemy’s right wing to give way but unable to prevent the loss of the battle. In the storming of the redoubts at Yorktown he played a conspicuous part, commanding the light infantry which capturedthe left bulwarks of the British fortifications and decided the battle. After the war he was vice-president of the high executive Council of Pennsylvania and was elected to a seat in the first, second and sixth Congress. He was elected eight times to the position of president of the German Society of Pennsylvania. He is represented in Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington by a monument of marble presented by the State of Pennsylvania.The following interesting story of the career of General Muhlenberg, by Mrs. Elizabeth Gadsby, Historian of the Daughters of the American Revolution, is taken from the Washington “Post” of July 5, 1903:The father, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, located at Trappe, Pa., and was the founder of the Lutheran Church in America.During the Revolution the armies passed and repassed their home so frequently they never knew when the table was set whether the food prepared for themselves would be eaten by the English or American soldiers. They were frequently in great danger from the skirmishing which constantly took place all around them, and often suffered the pangs of hunger, every field of grain and forage being devastated by the armies.Peter was sent to the University of Halle, in Prussia, where, tiring of his studies and the strict confinement, he ran away and joined the Prussian dragoons, which gave him his first military ardor and ambition. After several years of hardship he left the army and studied for the ministry. He returned to America, going back to Europe to be ordained in England in 1771, and was then called to the pastorate at Woodstock, Va., to preach to the Germans who had settled on the frontier of that State.In March, 1773, the Virginia Assembly recommended a committee of correspondence, and the House of Burgesses passed a resolution making the first day of June a day of fasting and prayer in sympathy with Boston, whose port Parliament had ordered closed. Governor Dunmore declared this resolution treason, and indignantly dissolved the House of Burgesses. Great excitement prevailed. The governor, finding the people of his colony in great sympathy with the cause of freedom, aroused himself for immediate action, and endeavored to bring the Indians in hostile array against the colonists, also causing a rumor to be spread that the slaves would rise in insurrection against the colonists.In April he removed the powder from the old magazine at the Capitol. His ships were laden and ready for flight or defense. The powder was put on board the governor’s ship.The people demanded the return of the powder to Williamsburg. Dunmore became alarmed when Patrick Henry marched at the head of his volunteers toward the Capitol to capture the powder. Arrivingat Great Bridge, the first conflict took place between the English and the colonists.Dunmore kept the powder, but ordered the Receiver General to pay its full value, which sum Patrick Henry turned into the public treasury.The closing of the port of Boston caused great indignation throughout the land; memorable resolutions were introduced by George Mason, and were adopted by the Assembly.Jefferson truly said, “The closing of the port of Boston acted as an electric shock, placing every man in Virginia on his feet.”Patrick Henry was warmly supported by the Rev. Muhlenberg, who had been quietly working among his people. A meeting of patriots was called in the assembly room of the old Apollo Tavern at Williamsburg, where delegates were appointed to meet in Fairfax County, where a convention was determined upon. Muhlenberg was chosen colonel of the Eighth Regiment, he and Henry being the only civilians of the Virginia line to whom regiments were assigned.Muhlenberg was at this time only twenty-nine years of age. His well-known character gave the convention confidence that he was worthy of the trust.Hence he abandoned the altar for the sword. His people were scattered miles along the frontier of Virginia, but the news spread like fire, and the Sunday he was to preach his last sermon the rude country church could not hold the tenth of them. The surrounding woods were filled with people, horses and every sort of vehicle. It was a scene long depicted in their memories and oft told to their descendants until every schoolboy is familiar with the story.The decided step was taken by their pastor; the exciting times called forth the highest feelings in man, the love of country! Patriotism! and “Liberty or death!” was the cry.They needed but the spark to burst into flame and needless to say he supplied the flint and tinder to kindle that spark.His concluding words were:“There is a time for everything, a time to preach and a time to pray, but that time has passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come.”He pronounced the benediction, and, turning back his robe, appeared in martial array, his soldierly form clad in the uniform of a colonel.The scene beggars description and has no parallel in history.The people flocked around him, eager to be ranked among his followers.The drummers struck up for volunteers and over 300 enlisted that day.Throughout the war for independence General Washington depended on him to recruit the army in Virginia, which he never failed to dounder the most trying circumstances; men seemed to spring up like mushrooms when he needed them to replenish his oft depleted ranks.Lord Dunmore was ravishing the country; Colonel Muhlenberg followed closely on his heels. Dunmore built Great Bridge and took up quarters in Norfolk; finding himself closely hemmed in, he burned the town, then one of the finest cities in the South, for which act he was severely criticized by the British. After his defeat he took refuge in Portsmouth, still holding command of the sea, harrowing the people, destroying property, until, finding his quarters too hot, he hurriedly set sail for Grogans Island in the bay. Gen. Andrew Lewis drove him from there, and he sailed for New York, and soon after returned to England.The North now claimed the attention and eager eyes were watching there, the South resting comparatively quiet.At this time General Clinton marched South, Ben. Lee following closely in his tracks, arriving at Williamsburg March 29, 1776, just twelve days after the surrender of Boston.Colonel Muhlenberg had been in command at Suffolk. He now joined General Lee, with him following up Clinton to South Carolina. This led on to the battle of Sullivan’s Island, and Charleston, which was so disastrous to the enemy they returned at once to New York.General Lee, in his official report, says:“I know not which corps I have the greatest reason to be pleased with, Colonel Muhlenberg’s Virginians or the North Carolina troops; both are equally alert, zealous and spirited.”These, too, were raw recruits which drew such praise from the finest military critic of the day.It was well indeed for Muhlenberg to have such praise, for the usual jealousies, bickering and wrongly placed commendations followed him throughout the war, but his keen sense of duty, his noble Christian spirit ever made him forget self and kept him above petty strife throughout the long and bitter struggle.At the battles of Brandywine and Germantown Muhlenberg’s troops were ever foremost in action, and the one regiment which used the bayonet.They had no words of commendation above the other regiments from their commander. Yet the English spoke highly of their daring and bravery. Riding at the rear of his brigade, it being the last in retreat, his tired horse was too jaded to jump a fence, and he, after many weary hours in the saddle, worn with fatigue, was aroused by a ball whistling past his head and the cry running along the enemy’sline: “Pick off that officer on the white horse!” The general turned and saw a young officer single him out, only waiting for a musket, which was being loaded for him, to shoot. He drew his pistol and though at some distance, shot him through the head.General Washington chose General Muhlenberg to be with him in that terrible winter at Valley Forge. His troops were stationed along the river, in consequence, nearer the British and in more exposed condition from both cold and the enemy.His intrepid valor and endurance seemed to communicate to his soldiers, who were frequently throughout the campaign without tents, clothing or food sufficient to maintain life, and when their time of enlistment was up would return to their homes in wretched rags, be clothed by loving hands from the fruit of domestic looms and, at their beloved commander’s request, return and take up the burden of war again.His parents resided at Trappe, not far from Valley Forge, and he sometimes rode off alone at night to visit them, returning by early dawn. He several times narrowly escaped capture.In 1777 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.He was often called from Virginia, the base of his actions, to assist Washington at other points when that wise head needed a strong hand.In 1779, after one of those hard marches and months of labor, after an absence of three years from his family, while on his way home to a much-needed rest, he was ordered to Richmond and in the time of Virginia’s direst need was put at the head of all forces needed for her defense.The enemy who said, “The root of all resistance lies in the Commonwealth of Virginia and must be destroyed.”So the Americans considered it most important to be defended. The advance of General Gates was already decided upon, but without the help of the organized troops and supplies it could not be done. And Muhlenberg was again called on to collect recruits. This was no trifling task, as the militia were scattered and unpaid; but it required a man of great military skill and personal influence to fulfill this mission.His whole force, with the exception of one regiment at Fort Pitt, were prisoners at Charleston, which had been recaptured by Clinton in May, 1780. Virginia now became the seat of war. A fleet sailed up the James, ravaging with fire and sword.MAJ. GEN. PETER MUHLENBERGGeneral Muhlenberg began his march to meet them with 800 raw recruits, urging his officers to lose no opportunity to instruct and fit them for the oncoming struggle. He sent Generals Gregory and Benbury to Great Bridge, and as soon as he received reinforcementshe advanced upon Portsmouth and drove the enemy in, so harrassing them that they were forced to withdraw, and embarked for New York. This repulse of their boasted descent in Virginia proved very humiliating.The enemy being withdrawn, Governor Jefferson, with his economic views, saw fit to disband the troops. After they were disbanded General Muhlenberg’s command was about 1,000, of which General Green detached 400 for the Southern army, leaving Virginia in this defenseless condition at a most critical time, as General Phillips’ invasion with 2,200 and Benedict Arnold’s with 2,000 landed at Portsmouth January 2, 1781. At the death of General Phillips, Arnold took command; then sailed up the James to Richmond, desolating the country. A bloody record on the page of history.After driving Governor Jefferson from his capital at Richmond, General Steuben, being the only force at hand, was not able to attack or resist this onslaught.Arnold sailed down the tortuous James and fell back to Portsmouth, where he strongly intrenched himself, threatening to give the rebels such a blow as would shake the whole continent. General Greene returned to Virginia, and, with General Steuben, began to collect forces and supplies, leaving Muhlenberg to watch Arnold and keep him from further depredations.There was a project set on foot to capture Arnold personally. “Conscience makes cowards of us all,” so he who had once been brave and fearless surrounded himself with a trusty guard day and night. The attempt proved futile, as it had in New York.A detachment of the fleet under M. de Lilly arriving at this time gave General Muhlenberg great hopes of capturing the traitor. All plans were made, but the French commander deemed the Elizabeth River too shallow for his boats, and just as they were well on the eve of accomplishing this greatly desired object M. de Lilly set sail for Newport, thus dashing the revived hopes of General Muhlenberg, who had set himself to capture the traitor.The importance of capturing Arnold and dislodging the enemy in Virginia was deeply felt by Washington, and he urged on his officers to leave no means untried to accomplish that purpose. He induced Admiral Detouches to set sail for the Chesapeake, and the Marquis de Lafayette was dispatched with 1,200 of the continental line to co-operate with the fleet and take command in Virginia.General Muhlenberg and General Gregory, with a reinforcement of 800 men, were in charge at West Landing.Matters were now hastening on to the near close of hostilities.Lafayette was in command in Virginia, and Muhlenberg, as usual, was taking a heavy hand at the game.Cornwallis was being hemmed in at Yorktown, and Muhlenberg was put in command of the advance guard, which required the utmost military skill and tact, for had Cornwallis attempted to escape the whole weight of the battle would have fallen on this line, and no doubt would have proved fatal by overwhelming numbers.The British commander waited in vain for help from without, and was at last compelled to surrender on that memorable day, October 12, 1781, at Yorktown.General Muhlenberg continued in the army until the treaty of peace in 1783. The trusted warm friend of General Washington, who had ever relied on him to add to the volunteers in recruiting the army at the briefest possible notice since the first volunteers the day he forsook the altar for the sword.After the treaty of peace had been signed at Versailles he retired to a much-needed rest in the bosom of his family, where he found his home had suffered severely from the misfortunes of war.Himself broken in health and fortune, but happy in the consciousness of a duty well done, he could say with Baron Steuben, “If we win the great prize we fight for the struggle cannot be too great.”His former congregation implored him to return and take up his pastoral duties among them, but he said: “It would never do to mount the parson after the soldier.”He was then called to serve the political side of his country, and was elected to Congress in 1789, and served in that capacity until 1801. His brother was elected the first Speaker of the House of Representatives.In 1801 he was elected Senator, and in 1803 he was appointed collector of the port of Philadelphia. Until the day of his death he served his country with honor and distinction.The Luthern Church in which Muhlenberg preached was torn down about seventy-five years ago.There is a house in Woodstock, on North Main Street, partly built of the logs from the old church. On the site of the old church has been erected an Episcopal church. As Muhlenberg had taken Episcopal orders, they claim him, as well as the cemetery, which they have sold in lots. A Presbyterian Church and chapel and several business houses are on this lot.One of the oldest citizens, now eighty-four years of age, says he remembers well the old pulpit, which stood upon the lot some years after the church had been torn down.The house in which Muhlenberg lived, and in which tradition says he entertained General Washington, was torn down about twelve years ago.
Muhlenberg, Johann Gabriel Peter.—American general in the Revolutionary war. Born in Montgomery Co., Pa., October 1, 1746, son of Heinrich M. Muhlenberg. With his two younger brothers, Frederick August and Heinrich Ernst, he went in 1763 to Halle, Germany, to study for the ministry, returning to Philadelphia in 1766. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was pastor of the German Lutheran Community of Woodstock, Virginia. Participated actively in the measures preceding armed resistance to the unjust measures of Parliament, and on the recommendation of Washington and Patrick Henry was appointed Colonel of the Eighth (or German) regiment of Virginia. He preached to his congregation for the last time in January, 1776, on the duty of the citizen to his country, concluding with the memorable words: “There is a time for everything, for prayer, for preaching and also for fighting. The time for fighting has arrived.” He had scarcely concluded the benediction when he cast off his clerical gown and stood revealed in full regimentals. An indescribable scene of patriotic enthusiasm followed, and many of his parishioners crowded around him and enlisted for service. On February 21, 1777, he was promoted to brigadier general by order of Congress. After the defeat of the American army at Brandywine, his brigade covered the retreat with invincible bravery, and in the battle of Germantown he performed his duty with distinction, causing the enemy’s right wing to give way but unable to prevent the loss of the battle. In the storming of the redoubts at Yorktown he played a conspicuous part, commanding the light infantry which capturedthe left bulwarks of the British fortifications and decided the battle. After the war he was vice-president of the high executive Council of Pennsylvania and was elected to a seat in the first, second and sixth Congress. He was elected eight times to the position of president of the German Society of Pennsylvania. He is represented in Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington by a monument of marble presented by the State of Pennsylvania.
The following interesting story of the career of General Muhlenberg, by Mrs. Elizabeth Gadsby, Historian of the Daughters of the American Revolution, is taken from the Washington “Post” of July 5, 1903:
The father, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, located at Trappe, Pa., and was the founder of the Lutheran Church in America.
During the Revolution the armies passed and repassed their home so frequently they never knew when the table was set whether the food prepared for themselves would be eaten by the English or American soldiers. They were frequently in great danger from the skirmishing which constantly took place all around them, and often suffered the pangs of hunger, every field of grain and forage being devastated by the armies.
Peter was sent to the University of Halle, in Prussia, where, tiring of his studies and the strict confinement, he ran away and joined the Prussian dragoons, which gave him his first military ardor and ambition. After several years of hardship he left the army and studied for the ministry. He returned to America, going back to Europe to be ordained in England in 1771, and was then called to the pastorate at Woodstock, Va., to preach to the Germans who had settled on the frontier of that State.
In March, 1773, the Virginia Assembly recommended a committee of correspondence, and the House of Burgesses passed a resolution making the first day of June a day of fasting and prayer in sympathy with Boston, whose port Parliament had ordered closed. Governor Dunmore declared this resolution treason, and indignantly dissolved the House of Burgesses. Great excitement prevailed. The governor, finding the people of his colony in great sympathy with the cause of freedom, aroused himself for immediate action, and endeavored to bring the Indians in hostile array against the colonists, also causing a rumor to be spread that the slaves would rise in insurrection against the colonists.
In April he removed the powder from the old magazine at the Capitol. His ships were laden and ready for flight or defense. The powder was put on board the governor’s ship.
The people demanded the return of the powder to Williamsburg. Dunmore became alarmed when Patrick Henry marched at the head of his volunteers toward the Capitol to capture the powder. Arrivingat Great Bridge, the first conflict took place between the English and the colonists.
Dunmore kept the powder, but ordered the Receiver General to pay its full value, which sum Patrick Henry turned into the public treasury.
The closing of the port of Boston caused great indignation throughout the land; memorable resolutions were introduced by George Mason, and were adopted by the Assembly.
Jefferson truly said, “The closing of the port of Boston acted as an electric shock, placing every man in Virginia on his feet.”
Patrick Henry was warmly supported by the Rev. Muhlenberg, who had been quietly working among his people. A meeting of patriots was called in the assembly room of the old Apollo Tavern at Williamsburg, where delegates were appointed to meet in Fairfax County, where a convention was determined upon. Muhlenberg was chosen colonel of the Eighth Regiment, he and Henry being the only civilians of the Virginia line to whom regiments were assigned.
Muhlenberg was at this time only twenty-nine years of age. His well-known character gave the convention confidence that he was worthy of the trust.
Hence he abandoned the altar for the sword. His people were scattered miles along the frontier of Virginia, but the news spread like fire, and the Sunday he was to preach his last sermon the rude country church could not hold the tenth of them. The surrounding woods were filled with people, horses and every sort of vehicle. It was a scene long depicted in their memories and oft told to their descendants until every schoolboy is familiar with the story.
The decided step was taken by their pastor; the exciting times called forth the highest feelings in man, the love of country! Patriotism! and “Liberty or death!” was the cry.
They needed but the spark to burst into flame and needless to say he supplied the flint and tinder to kindle that spark.
His concluding words were:
“There is a time for everything, a time to preach and a time to pray, but that time has passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come.”
He pronounced the benediction, and, turning back his robe, appeared in martial array, his soldierly form clad in the uniform of a colonel.
The scene beggars description and has no parallel in history.
The people flocked around him, eager to be ranked among his followers.
The drummers struck up for volunteers and over 300 enlisted that day.
Throughout the war for independence General Washington depended on him to recruit the army in Virginia, which he never failed to dounder the most trying circumstances; men seemed to spring up like mushrooms when he needed them to replenish his oft depleted ranks.
Lord Dunmore was ravishing the country; Colonel Muhlenberg followed closely on his heels. Dunmore built Great Bridge and took up quarters in Norfolk; finding himself closely hemmed in, he burned the town, then one of the finest cities in the South, for which act he was severely criticized by the British. After his defeat he took refuge in Portsmouth, still holding command of the sea, harrowing the people, destroying property, until, finding his quarters too hot, he hurriedly set sail for Grogans Island in the bay. Gen. Andrew Lewis drove him from there, and he sailed for New York, and soon after returned to England.
The North now claimed the attention and eager eyes were watching there, the South resting comparatively quiet.
At this time General Clinton marched South, Ben. Lee following closely in his tracks, arriving at Williamsburg March 29, 1776, just twelve days after the surrender of Boston.
Colonel Muhlenberg had been in command at Suffolk. He now joined General Lee, with him following up Clinton to South Carolina. This led on to the battle of Sullivan’s Island, and Charleston, which was so disastrous to the enemy they returned at once to New York.
General Lee, in his official report, says:
“I know not which corps I have the greatest reason to be pleased with, Colonel Muhlenberg’s Virginians or the North Carolina troops; both are equally alert, zealous and spirited.”
These, too, were raw recruits which drew such praise from the finest military critic of the day.
It was well indeed for Muhlenberg to have such praise, for the usual jealousies, bickering and wrongly placed commendations followed him throughout the war, but his keen sense of duty, his noble Christian spirit ever made him forget self and kept him above petty strife throughout the long and bitter struggle.
At the battles of Brandywine and Germantown Muhlenberg’s troops were ever foremost in action, and the one regiment which used the bayonet.
They had no words of commendation above the other regiments from their commander. Yet the English spoke highly of their daring and bravery. Riding at the rear of his brigade, it being the last in retreat, his tired horse was too jaded to jump a fence, and he, after many weary hours in the saddle, worn with fatigue, was aroused by a ball whistling past his head and the cry running along the enemy’sline: “Pick off that officer on the white horse!” The general turned and saw a young officer single him out, only waiting for a musket, which was being loaded for him, to shoot. He drew his pistol and though at some distance, shot him through the head.
General Washington chose General Muhlenberg to be with him in that terrible winter at Valley Forge. His troops were stationed along the river, in consequence, nearer the British and in more exposed condition from both cold and the enemy.
His intrepid valor and endurance seemed to communicate to his soldiers, who were frequently throughout the campaign without tents, clothing or food sufficient to maintain life, and when their time of enlistment was up would return to their homes in wretched rags, be clothed by loving hands from the fruit of domestic looms and, at their beloved commander’s request, return and take up the burden of war again.
His parents resided at Trappe, not far from Valley Forge, and he sometimes rode off alone at night to visit them, returning by early dawn. He several times narrowly escaped capture.
In 1777 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
He was often called from Virginia, the base of his actions, to assist Washington at other points when that wise head needed a strong hand.
In 1779, after one of those hard marches and months of labor, after an absence of three years from his family, while on his way home to a much-needed rest, he was ordered to Richmond and in the time of Virginia’s direst need was put at the head of all forces needed for her defense.
The enemy who said, “The root of all resistance lies in the Commonwealth of Virginia and must be destroyed.”
So the Americans considered it most important to be defended. The advance of General Gates was already decided upon, but without the help of the organized troops and supplies it could not be done. And Muhlenberg was again called on to collect recruits. This was no trifling task, as the militia were scattered and unpaid; but it required a man of great military skill and personal influence to fulfill this mission.
His whole force, with the exception of one regiment at Fort Pitt, were prisoners at Charleston, which had been recaptured by Clinton in May, 1780. Virginia now became the seat of war. A fleet sailed up the James, ravaging with fire and sword.
MAJ. GEN. PETER MUHLENBERG
MAJ. GEN. PETER MUHLENBERG
General Muhlenberg began his march to meet them with 800 raw recruits, urging his officers to lose no opportunity to instruct and fit them for the oncoming struggle. He sent Generals Gregory and Benbury to Great Bridge, and as soon as he received reinforcementshe advanced upon Portsmouth and drove the enemy in, so harrassing them that they were forced to withdraw, and embarked for New York. This repulse of their boasted descent in Virginia proved very humiliating.
The enemy being withdrawn, Governor Jefferson, with his economic views, saw fit to disband the troops. After they were disbanded General Muhlenberg’s command was about 1,000, of which General Green detached 400 for the Southern army, leaving Virginia in this defenseless condition at a most critical time, as General Phillips’ invasion with 2,200 and Benedict Arnold’s with 2,000 landed at Portsmouth January 2, 1781. At the death of General Phillips, Arnold took command; then sailed up the James to Richmond, desolating the country. A bloody record on the page of history.
After driving Governor Jefferson from his capital at Richmond, General Steuben, being the only force at hand, was not able to attack or resist this onslaught.
Arnold sailed down the tortuous James and fell back to Portsmouth, where he strongly intrenched himself, threatening to give the rebels such a blow as would shake the whole continent. General Greene returned to Virginia, and, with General Steuben, began to collect forces and supplies, leaving Muhlenberg to watch Arnold and keep him from further depredations.
There was a project set on foot to capture Arnold personally. “Conscience makes cowards of us all,” so he who had once been brave and fearless surrounded himself with a trusty guard day and night. The attempt proved futile, as it had in New York.
A detachment of the fleet under M. de Lilly arriving at this time gave General Muhlenberg great hopes of capturing the traitor. All plans were made, but the French commander deemed the Elizabeth River too shallow for his boats, and just as they were well on the eve of accomplishing this greatly desired object M. de Lilly set sail for Newport, thus dashing the revived hopes of General Muhlenberg, who had set himself to capture the traitor.
The importance of capturing Arnold and dislodging the enemy in Virginia was deeply felt by Washington, and he urged on his officers to leave no means untried to accomplish that purpose. He induced Admiral Detouches to set sail for the Chesapeake, and the Marquis de Lafayette was dispatched with 1,200 of the continental line to co-operate with the fleet and take command in Virginia.
General Muhlenberg and General Gregory, with a reinforcement of 800 men, were in charge at West Landing.
Matters were now hastening on to the near close of hostilities.
Lafayette was in command in Virginia, and Muhlenberg, as usual, was taking a heavy hand at the game.
Cornwallis was being hemmed in at Yorktown, and Muhlenberg was put in command of the advance guard, which required the utmost military skill and tact, for had Cornwallis attempted to escape the whole weight of the battle would have fallen on this line, and no doubt would have proved fatal by overwhelming numbers.
The British commander waited in vain for help from without, and was at last compelled to surrender on that memorable day, October 12, 1781, at Yorktown.
General Muhlenberg continued in the army until the treaty of peace in 1783. The trusted warm friend of General Washington, who had ever relied on him to add to the volunteers in recruiting the army at the briefest possible notice since the first volunteers the day he forsook the altar for the sword.
After the treaty of peace had been signed at Versailles he retired to a much-needed rest in the bosom of his family, where he found his home had suffered severely from the misfortunes of war.
Himself broken in health and fortune, but happy in the consciousness of a duty well done, he could say with Baron Steuben, “If we win the great prize we fight for the struggle cannot be too great.”
His former congregation implored him to return and take up his pastoral duties among them, but he said: “It would never do to mount the parson after the soldier.”
He was then called to serve the political side of his country, and was elected to Congress in 1789, and served in that capacity until 1801. His brother was elected the first Speaker of the House of Representatives.
In 1801 he was elected Senator, and in 1803 he was appointed collector of the port of Philadelphia. Until the day of his death he served his country with honor and distinction.
The Luthern Church in which Muhlenberg preached was torn down about seventy-five years ago.
There is a house in Woodstock, on North Main Street, partly built of the logs from the old church. On the site of the old church has been erected an Episcopal church. As Muhlenberg had taken Episcopal orders, they claim him, as well as the cemetery, which they have sold in lots. A Presbyterian Church and chapel and several business houses are on this lot.
One of the oldest citizens, now eighty-four years of age, says he remembers well the old pulpit, which stood upon the lot some years after the church had been torn down.
The house in which Muhlenberg lived, and in which tradition says he entertained General Washington, was torn down about twelve years ago.
Nagel, Charles.Nagel, Charles.—Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Taft, 1909-13. Born in Colorado County, Texas, August 9, 1849, son of Hermann and Friedericke (Litzmann) N. Prominent lawyer, resident in St. Louis. Studied Roman law, political economy, etc., University of Berlin, 1873; (LL.D. Brown U., 1913, also Villanova U., Pa. and Wash. U., St. Louis). Admitted to bar 1873; lecturer St. Louis Law School, 1885-09. Member Missouri House of Representatives, 1881-3; president St. Louis City Council, 1893-7; member Republican National Committee 1908-12. Trustee Washington U., St. Louis.
Nagel, Charles.—Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Taft, 1909-13. Born in Colorado County, Texas, August 9, 1849, son of Hermann and Friedericke (Litzmann) N. Prominent lawyer, resident in St. Louis. Studied Roman law, political economy, etc., University of Berlin, 1873; (LL.D. Brown U., 1913, also Villanova U., Pa. and Wash. U., St. Louis). Admitted to bar 1873; lecturer St. Louis Law School, 1885-09. Member Missouri House of Representatives, 1881-3; president St. Louis City Council, 1893-7; member Republican National Committee 1908-12. Trustee Washington U., St. Louis.
Nast, Thomas.Nast, Thomas.—America’s foremost political cartoonist, originator of the Elephant, the Donkey and the Tiger as symbols for the Republican, Democratic and Tammany organizations, whom Lincoln, Grant, Mark Twain delighted to honor as their guest, the critic whose broadsides shattered the careers of hosts of political crooks and swindlers, the patriot whose faithful service won support for the cause of the country. One of the greatest fighters for truth and decency known in American history. He it was who took up the cudgel single handed against the Tweed Ring, the gang that stole four hundred millions from the New York City treasury, who answered a banker’s offer of a half million bribe with the answer: “I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars, and I am going to do it.” He did it at the peril of his life. His cartoons roused the public conscience and prodded the police into action. Boss Tweed, the looter chief, called out in despair: “Let’s stop them damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me—my constituents can’t read; but, damn it, they can see pictures!” The pitiless cartooning of Nast finally broke up the gang, with most of them ending in jail. During the Civil War his cartoons roused the nation as nothing else. When Grant was asked what man in civil life had done the best work for America, he answered: “Thomas Nast. He did as much as any man to save the Union and bring the war to an end.” This he did by his cartoons in “Harper’s” that carried messages of cheer and patriotism to the humblest cottages in the prairie. Thousands of recruits were won for the Northern cause by the simple patriotism of Nast’s cartoons. His work proved a treasure trove, during the present war, for pilfering cartoonists, who lifted copies bodily from the old volumes of “Harper’s.” Nast was born in 1840 at Landau, Bavaria. His great work in the end was ill rewarded, for having been sent to fill the consulate in Ecuador, he lost his life through fever contracted in the service of his country.
Nast, Thomas.—America’s foremost political cartoonist, originator of the Elephant, the Donkey and the Tiger as symbols for the Republican, Democratic and Tammany organizations, whom Lincoln, Grant, Mark Twain delighted to honor as their guest, the critic whose broadsides shattered the careers of hosts of political crooks and swindlers, the patriot whose faithful service won support for the cause of the country. One of the greatest fighters for truth and decency known in American history. He it was who took up the cudgel single handed against the Tweed Ring, the gang that stole four hundred millions from the New York City treasury, who answered a banker’s offer of a half million bribe with the answer: “I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars, and I am going to do it.” He did it at the peril of his life. His cartoons roused the public conscience and prodded the police into action. Boss Tweed, the looter chief, called out in despair: “Let’s stop them damned pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me—my constituents can’t read; but, damn it, they can see pictures!” The pitiless cartooning of Nast finally broke up the gang, with most of them ending in jail. During the Civil War his cartoons roused the nation as nothing else. When Grant was asked what man in civil life had done the best work for America, he answered: “Thomas Nast. He did as much as any man to save the Union and bring the war to an end.” This he did by his cartoons in “Harper’s” that carried messages of cheer and patriotism to the humblest cottages in the prairie. Thousands of recruits were won for the Northern cause by the simple patriotism of Nast’s cartoons. His work proved a treasure trove, during the present war, for pilfering cartoonists, who lifted copies bodily from the old volumes of “Harper’s.” Nast was born in 1840 at Landau, Bavaria. His great work in the end was ill rewarded, for having been sent to fill the consulate in Ecuador, he lost his life through fever contracted in the service of his country.
National Security League.National Security League.—An organization of active patriots who, with the American Defense Society and the American Protective League, spread rapidly to all parts of the country during the war toreport acts of disloyalty and soon became synonymous with repression and terror. It ultimately took on a political character and with its backing of men interested in war contracts and general profiteering, started in to defeat the re-election to Congress of members who had not voted “right.” At the instance of Representative Frear of Wisconsin, a special Congressional committee was appointed and the officers and members were summoned to appear before the committee to give testimony. The investigation revealed the fact that the secretary of the League had been a Washington lobbyist and that its backers comprised a group of financiers and heads of trusts who were using the organization to intimidate or defeat members of the House who did not vote as they were expected to vote on war measures. The list was a long one, but included J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Nicholas F. Grady, director of fifty large corporations interested in war profits; H. C. Frick, of the United States Steel Corporation; Arthur Custis James, of the Phelps-Dodge Company; Mortimer L. and Jacob Schiff, H. H. Rogers, of the Amalgamated and Anaconda Copper Companies; Charles Hayden, representing twenty-six corporations; the Guggenheimers, Cleveland H. Dodge, William Hamlin and Eversley Childs, W. K. and E. W. Vanderbilt, George W. Perkins, Clarence H. Mackay, T. Coleman Dupont, the powder king, and many others. Among the officers of the League were the late Col. Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root.Most of these names were connected with the $2,000,000 fund subscribed, contrary to the laws of the State of New York, to re-elect John Purroy Mitchel mayor of New York in November, 1917. The scandal formed the subject of an investigation by the District Attorney for the southern district of New York, and Assistant District Attorney Kilroe told the reporters that at a luncheon given by Cleveland H. Dodge during the campaign to a group of millionaires one of the participants declared: “The patriotic issue of the campaign is not doing as well as expected,” and that one member at the luncheon said: “If between that date and the election a terrible catastrophe happened to the American forces it would insure Mitchel’s election—a catastrophe such as the sinking of a transport.” Mitchel’s campaign was conducted on a purely alarmist platform, in which the Kaiser was represented as having his whole attention concentrated on whether Mitchel, the patriot, or Hylan, accused of disloyalty and pro-Germanism, would be elected; but Mitchel was buried under an avalanche of votes.Testifying before the Congressional investigating committee, Representative Cooper, of Wisconsin, declared: “This organization is financed by corporations worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and can hire college professors and secure publication in the newspapers of articles designed to deliberately mislead public opinion,” and, referringto the denial of Elihu Root and other officials of the organization that it had engaged in politics, he said: “If they are willing to testify under oath, in public, so foolishly, there is nothing they will not do in secret to serve the great, powerful corporations which they represent.” Representative Reavis read into the record a statement that 40 per cent. of the league’s “honor roll” of forty-seven Representatives voted against measures which would have made the big interests receiving tremendous war profits bear their burden of war expenses. All of those who voted for the McLemore resolution, against war and against the Julius Kahn conscription bill were put down in a “disloyalty chart,” and large sums were expended to defeat them.S. Stanwood Menken, an early president of the league, in his testimony stated that he favored an American navy which, combined with that of Great Britain, would “surpass any other two-power navy in the world,” but that, on the other hand, “he favored a reduction of armaments.”The succeeding president of the league, Charles D. Orth, was forced to admit that in publishing the league’s Congressional “disloyalty chart” he had conveyed a false impression by recording the vote on the McLemore resolution as on the merits of the resolution instead of on the vote to table it. There were innumerable other counts against the league. One was that it sent its literature to 1,400 newspapers and then read what these newspapers printed in arriving at the opinion of “the great majority of the people.” In other words, they first circulated the opinion and then accepted it as that of the people. Orth was asked if there was any good sound American stock in Illinois.“There surely is,” he answered.“Then how do you reconcile that with the fact that the men who voted against war were returned to Congress with an overwhelming majority?” he was asked by Representative Saunders, but failed to reply.Among the activities of this league was that of dictating the things to be taught in the public schools. In New York $50,000,000 is annually spent for the public school system, raised by taxes paid by all the people, and the schools should represent the people who pay for them. A New York paper of April 4, 1919, in an editorial, said: “It has been shown during the past few days that a course of economics has been adopted by our educators under the tutelage of an outside body. This outside body is the National Security League, an organization financed by the big war profiteers, whose political activity in connection with the last Congressional election constituted a grave scandal.”The Congressional committee on March 3, 1919, filed a report arraigningthe Security League, calling it “a menace to representative government,” “conceived in London,” “nursed to power by foreign interests,” “used in elections by same interests,” and revealing “the hands of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, du Pont, suggesting steel, oil, money bags, Russian bonds, rifles and radicals.”In regard to Frederic C. Coudert, a prominent New York lawyer, one of the league’s leading lights, Mr. Menken testified that he represented Great Britain, France and Russia in international matters and is counsel for the British ambassador.The originator of the league was S. Stanwood Menken, who testified that he conceived the idea while listening to a debate in the House of Commons on August 5, 1914. He is a member of the firm of Beekman, Menken & Griscom, New York lawyers, who represent a large number of corporations controlling railways and public utilities; also the Liverpool, London and Globe insurance companies, which proceeded early in the war to force the German insurance companies out of business. The firm also represents “some sugar companies and also the Penn-Seaboard Steel Company.”Charles D. Orth is a member of a New York firm dealing in sisal, from which farmers’ binding twine is made, and testified before a Senate investigating committee that he had been engaged in forming a combination to increase the price of this product. His firm had an office in London and he traveled all over Europe in the interest of his sisal business.All the heavy subscribers were shown to be men making millions in war profits and interested in silencing every voice raised to criticise the conduct of the war. Through the activity of this organization, pacifists everywhere were denounced and cast into jail. What baneful influence it was able to exercise is apparent. The Carnegie Corporation—Andrew Carnegie, president; Elihu Root, vice-president, holdings in United States Steel Corporation, with income over $6,000,000—contributed $150,000 to the league. The investigation showed that the organization had expended the following sums:July 8, 1915, to December 31, 1915$38,191.59January 1, 1916, to December 31, 191694,840.43January 1, 1917, to December 31, 1917111,324.59January 1, 1918, to December 31, 1918235,667.56$480,014.17
National Security League.—An organization of active patriots who, with the American Defense Society and the American Protective League, spread rapidly to all parts of the country during the war toreport acts of disloyalty and soon became synonymous with repression and terror. It ultimately took on a political character and with its backing of men interested in war contracts and general profiteering, started in to defeat the re-election to Congress of members who had not voted “right.” At the instance of Representative Frear of Wisconsin, a special Congressional committee was appointed and the officers and members were summoned to appear before the committee to give testimony. The investigation revealed the fact that the secretary of the League had been a Washington lobbyist and that its backers comprised a group of financiers and heads of trusts who were using the organization to intimidate or defeat members of the House who did not vote as they were expected to vote on war measures. The list was a long one, but included J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Nicholas F. Grady, director of fifty large corporations interested in war profits; H. C. Frick, of the United States Steel Corporation; Arthur Custis James, of the Phelps-Dodge Company; Mortimer L. and Jacob Schiff, H. H. Rogers, of the Amalgamated and Anaconda Copper Companies; Charles Hayden, representing twenty-six corporations; the Guggenheimers, Cleveland H. Dodge, William Hamlin and Eversley Childs, W. K. and E. W. Vanderbilt, George W. Perkins, Clarence H. Mackay, T. Coleman Dupont, the powder king, and many others. Among the officers of the League were the late Col. Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root.
Most of these names were connected with the $2,000,000 fund subscribed, contrary to the laws of the State of New York, to re-elect John Purroy Mitchel mayor of New York in November, 1917. The scandal formed the subject of an investigation by the District Attorney for the southern district of New York, and Assistant District Attorney Kilroe told the reporters that at a luncheon given by Cleveland H. Dodge during the campaign to a group of millionaires one of the participants declared: “The patriotic issue of the campaign is not doing as well as expected,” and that one member at the luncheon said: “If between that date and the election a terrible catastrophe happened to the American forces it would insure Mitchel’s election—a catastrophe such as the sinking of a transport.” Mitchel’s campaign was conducted on a purely alarmist platform, in which the Kaiser was represented as having his whole attention concentrated on whether Mitchel, the patriot, or Hylan, accused of disloyalty and pro-Germanism, would be elected; but Mitchel was buried under an avalanche of votes.
Testifying before the Congressional investigating committee, Representative Cooper, of Wisconsin, declared: “This organization is financed by corporations worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and can hire college professors and secure publication in the newspapers of articles designed to deliberately mislead public opinion,” and, referringto the denial of Elihu Root and other officials of the organization that it had engaged in politics, he said: “If they are willing to testify under oath, in public, so foolishly, there is nothing they will not do in secret to serve the great, powerful corporations which they represent.” Representative Reavis read into the record a statement that 40 per cent. of the league’s “honor roll” of forty-seven Representatives voted against measures which would have made the big interests receiving tremendous war profits bear their burden of war expenses. All of those who voted for the McLemore resolution, against war and against the Julius Kahn conscription bill were put down in a “disloyalty chart,” and large sums were expended to defeat them.
S. Stanwood Menken, an early president of the league, in his testimony stated that he favored an American navy which, combined with that of Great Britain, would “surpass any other two-power navy in the world,” but that, on the other hand, “he favored a reduction of armaments.”
The succeeding president of the league, Charles D. Orth, was forced to admit that in publishing the league’s Congressional “disloyalty chart” he had conveyed a false impression by recording the vote on the McLemore resolution as on the merits of the resolution instead of on the vote to table it. There were innumerable other counts against the league. One was that it sent its literature to 1,400 newspapers and then read what these newspapers printed in arriving at the opinion of “the great majority of the people.” In other words, they first circulated the opinion and then accepted it as that of the people. Orth was asked if there was any good sound American stock in Illinois.
“There surely is,” he answered.
“Then how do you reconcile that with the fact that the men who voted against war were returned to Congress with an overwhelming majority?” he was asked by Representative Saunders, but failed to reply.
Among the activities of this league was that of dictating the things to be taught in the public schools. In New York $50,000,000 is annually spent for the public school system, raised by taxes paid by all the people, and the schools should represent the people who pay for them. A New York paper of April 4, 1919, in an editorial, said: “It has been shown during the past few days that a course of economics has been adopted by our educators under the tutelage of an outside body. This outside body is the National Security League, an organization financed by the big war profiteers, whose political activity in connection with the last Congressional election constituted a grave scandal.”
The Congressional committee on March 3, 1919, filed a report arraigningthe Security League, calling it “a menace to representative government,” “conceived in London,” “nursed to power by foreign interests,” “used in elections by same interests,” and revealing “the hands of Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Morgan, du Pont, suggesting steel, oil, money bags, Russian bonds, rifles and radicals.”
In regard to Frederic C. Coudert, a prominent New York lawyer, one of the league’s leading lights, Mr. Menken testified that he represented Great Britain, France and Russia in international matters and is counsel for the British ambassador.
The originator of the league was S. Stanwood Menken, who testified that he conceived the idea while listening to a debate in the House of Commons on August 5, 1914. He is a member of the firm of Beekman, Menken & Griscom, New York lawyers, who represent a large number of corporations controlling railways and public utilities; also the Liverpool, London and Globe insurance companies, which proceeded early in the war to force the German insurance companies out of business. The firm also represents “some sugar companies and also the Penn-Seaboard Steel Company.”
Charles D. Orth is a member of a New York firm dealing in sisal, from which farmers’ binding twine is made, and testified before a Senate investigating committee that he had been engaged in forming a combination to increase the price of this product. His firm had an office in London and he traveled all over Europe in the interest of his sisal business.
All the heavy subscribers were shown to be men making millions in war profits and interested in silencing every voice raised to criticise the conduct of the war. Through the activity of this organization, pacifists everywhere were denounced and cast into jail. What baneful influence it was able to exercise is apparent. The Carnegie Corporation—Andrew Carnegie, president; Elihu Root, vice-president, holdings in United States Steel Corporation, with income over $6,000,000—contributed $150,000 to the league. The investigation showed that the organization had expended the following sums:
July 8, 1915, to December 31, 1915$38,191.59January 1, 1916, to December 31, 191694,840.43January 1, 1917, to December 31, 1917111,324.59January 1, 1918, to December 31, 1918235,667.56$480,014.17
Neutrality—“The Best Practices of Nations.”Neutrality—“The Best Practices of Nations.”—President Wilson’s message to Congress in August, 1913:“For the rest I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side of the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from thisside of the border.I shall follow the best practise of nations in the matter of neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms and munitions of war of any kind from the United States—a policy suggested by several interesting precedents, and certainly dictated by many manifest considerations of practical expediency. We cannot in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico, or constitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them.”
Neutrality—“The Best Practices of Nations.”—President Wilson’s message to Congress in August, 1913:
“For the rest I deem it my duty to exercise the authority conferred upon me by the law of March 14, 1912, to see to it that neither side of the struggle now going on in Mexico receive any assistance from thisside of the border.I shall follow the best practise of nations in the matter of neutrality by forbidding the exportation of arms and munitions of war of any kind from the United States—a policy suggested by several interesting precedents, and certainly dictated by many manifest considerations of practical expediency. We cannot in the circumstances be the partisans of either party to the contest that now distracts Mexico, or constitute ourselves the virtual umpire between them.”
New Ulm Massacre.New Ulm Massacre.—New Ulm, a settlement of Germans in Minnesota, was August 18, 1862, attacked by Sioux Indians, who in resentment of their ill treatment by Government agents and for the non-arrival of their annuities from Washington, took advantage of the fact that many of the male white population had departed for the war and left the homes unprotected. The Indians adopted the ruse of entering the houses of settlers under pretext of begging or trading for bread. Not suspecting any treachery, they were admitted as usual, and in an instant turned upon the friendly Germans and murdered upward of seventy men, women and children. A squad of Germans, who were using wagons with banners, headed by a band, to recruit for the Union army along the frontier, were fired upon from ambush and several killed, seven miles from New Ulm. The men were able to effect their retreat and to alarm the countryside, while soon the smoke rising from ruined homes was apprising the settlers in every direction of the occurrence of extraordinary events and to hasten them into the town for common protection. The next morning, Tuesday, August 19, the Indians were roving in every direction throughout the neighborhood; and appearing before the town, opened an attack on the outposts stationed west and southwest of the settlement. Ill equipped for such engagement, the men fell back, with the Indians forcing their way into the center of the town, where the fighting continued until nightfall, many on both sides giving up their lives in the fierce battle. On the following morning the Indians had disappeared in order to surprise the small garrison at Fort Ridgely and destroy it preparatory to a campaign of murder and rapine along the Minnesota Valley.Meantime reinforcements arrived from Mankato and St. Peter, 30 miles distant, and from Le Sueur, still more remote. But the garrison held out, and strongly reinforced and greatly embittered the Indians again marched upon New Ulm, driving everything in their way and evidently determined to destroy every homestead in the village, which was soon a mass of flames. On August 23 the whites succeeded in barricading themselves on a small area of ground, where they were in a better position to continue the uneven struggle. The fighting was not interrupted until nightfall, and was resumed the next morning, which was Sunday. After several hours of fierce fighting the Indians realized that theywere at a disadvantage, and learning from their scouts that strong reinforcements were on the way, abandoned the siege. A number of families had either wholly or partly perished and 178 homes had been destroyed. A train of 150 wagons carried the survivors, including 56 wounded and sick, to Mankato and St. Peter, comparatively few returning to New Ulm, many scattering throughout the State to begin life over again. The innocent Germans had thus paid the penalty of crimes committed by others who were permitted to profit by their fraudulent treatment of the Indians.
New Ulm Massacre.—New Ulm, a settlement of Germans in Minnesota, was August 18, 1862, attacked by Sioux Indians, who in resentment of their ill treatment by Government agents and for the non-arrival of their annuities from Washington, took advantage of the fact that many of the male white population had departed for the war and left the homes unprotected. The Indians adopted the ruse of entering the houses of settlers under pretext of begging or trading for bread. Not suspecting any treachery, they were admitted as usual, and in an instant turned upon the friendly Germans and murdered upward of seventy men, women and children. A squad of Germans, who were using wagons with banners, headed by a band, to recruit for the Union army along the frontier, were fired upon from ambush and several killed, seven miles from New Ulm. The men were able to effect their retreat and to alarm the countryside, while soon the smoke rising from ruined homes was apprising the settlers in every direction of the occurrence of extraordinary events and to hasten them into the town for common protection. The next morning, Tuesday, August 19, the Indians were roving in every direction throughout the neighborhood; and appearing before the town, opened an attack on the outposts stationed west and southwest of the settlement. Ill equipped for such engagement, the men fell back, with the Indians forcing their way into the center of the town, where the fighting continued until nightfall, many on both sides giving up their lives in the fierce battle. On the following morning the Indians had disappeared in order to surprise the small garrison at Fort Ridgely and destroy it preparatory to a campaign of murder and rapine along the Minnesota Valley.Meantime reinforcements arrived from Mankato and St. Peter, 30 miles distant, and from Le Sueur, still more remote. But the garrison held out, and strongly reinforced and greatly embittered the Indians again marched upon New Ulm, driving everything in their way and evidently determined to destroy every homestead in the village, which was soon a mass of flames. On August 23 the whites succeeded in barricading themselves on a small area of ground, where they were in a better position to continue the uneven struggle. The fighting was not interrupted until nightfall, and was resumed the next morning, which was Sunday. After several hours of fierce fighting the Indians realized that theywere at a disadvantage, and learning from their scouts that strong reinforcements were on the way, abandoned the siege. A number of families had either wholly or partly perished and 178 homes had been destroyed. A train of 150 wagons carried the survivors, including 56 wounded and sick, to Mankato and St. Peter, comparatively few returning to New Ulm, many scattering throughout the State to begin life over again. The innocent Germans had thus paid the penalty of crimes committed by others who were permitted to profit by their fraudulent treatment of the Indians.
Lord Northcliffe Controls American Papers.Lord Northcliffe Controls American Papers.—Lord Northcliffe not only owns the London “Times,” “Mail” and “Evening News,” but the Paris “Mail.” He also owns an important share of stock in the Paris “Matin” and the St. Petersburg “Novoje Vremja.” His influence in American journalism has long been known, and J. P. O’Mahoney, editor of “The Indiana Catholic and Record,” in a statement in the Indianapolis “Star,” directly charged Lord Northcliffe with owning and controlling eighteen very successful American papers in order to use them against the best interests of the American people and in the interest of Great Britain. With many of the leading newspapers under the control of a foreign publisher it is not difficult to account for the persistent misrepresentation of German policies and motives, and for the general bias of so many of the leading papers in the East. The following is the extract from Mr. O’Mahoney’s statement referred to as printed in the Indianapolis “Star” early in 1916.“Talking about foreign propaganda in our midst, Lord Northcliffe (then Sir Arthur Harmsworth), told the writer in an interview in the Walton Hotel, Philadelphia, in April, 1900:“‘The syndicate of which I am head owns or controls eighteen very successful American papers in your leading cities.We find the American service they send us very satisfactory, and we, of course, furnish them with our great European service. As you see, I am not here on pleasure only, but on business.’“When asked to name the papers ‘owned and controlled,’ the big, brainy, handsome Englishman cleverly ’sidestepped.’“Now, if eighteen or more leading papers are owned and controlled in England, is it a wonder that the ‘German plots in the United States’ are being ‘played up,’ and the English plots in the United States hushed up? Is it surprising that the people, through the news service, get only the English side of the news?”
Lord Northcliffe Controls American Papers.—Lord Northcliffe not only owns the London “Times,” “Mail” and “Evening News,” but the Paris “Mail.” He also owns an important share of stock in the Paris “Matin” and the St. Petersburg “Novoje Vremja.” His influence in American journalism has long been known, and J. P. O’Mahoney, editor of “The Indiana Catholic and Record,” in a statement in the Indianapolis “Star,” directly charged Lord Northcliffe with owning and controlling eighteen very successful American papers in order to use them against the best interests of the American people and in the interest of Great Britain. With many of the leading newspapers under the control of a foreign publisher it is not difficult to account for the persistent misrepresentation of German policies and motives, and for the general bias of so many of the leading papers in the East. The following is the extract from Mr. O’Mahoney’s statement referred to as printed in the Indianapolis “Star” early in 1916.
“Talking about foreign propaganda in our midst, Lord Northcliffe (then Sir Arthur Harmsworth), told the writer in an interview in the Walton Hotel, Philadelphia, in April, 1900:
“‘The syndicate of which I am head owns or controls eighteen very successful American papers in your leading cities.We find the American service they send us very satisfactory, and we, of course, furnish them with our great European service. As you see, I am not here on pleasure only, but on business.’
“When asked to name the papers ‘owned and controlled,’ the big, brainy, handsome Englishman cleverly ’sidestepped.’
“Now, if eighteen or more leading papers are owned and controlled in England, is it a wonder that the ‘German plots in the United States’ are being ‘played up,’ and the English plots in the United States hushed up? Is it surprising that the people, through the news service, get only the English side of the news?”
Osterhaus, Peter Joseph.Osterhaus, Peter Joseph.—Regarded by some critics the foremost German commander in the Union army, called by the Confederates “the American Bayard.” He attained the rank of major general and corps commander. Born in Coblenz in 1823. Served as a one-yearvolunteer in the Prussian army at Coblenz and rose to the rank of an officer of reserves. He participated in the German revolution and fled to America, settling at Belleville, Ill., and St. Louis. In 1861, at the outbreak of the war, he enlisted as a private in the Third German Regiment of Missouri. He soon was appointed major of the regiment and later was made colonel of the Twelfth Missouri (German) Regiment, rising to brigadier general in January, 1863, and to major general after distinguished service at Chattanooga in the same year. On September 23, 1864, he was given command of the Fifteenth Army Corps, which he commanded in Sherman’s march to the sea.He retired January 16, 1866, after continuous service for five years, rising from the pike to the highest command, never deserting the Union flag for a day, fighting thirty-four battles without losing one where he was in independent command. He lived to see the first year or two of the World War, residing at the age of ninety with a married daughter at Duisberg in the Rhinelands. His services to the Union were forgotten and his pension was cut off. Rear Admiral Hugo Osterhaus, retired in 1913, is his son. He was born in Belleville, June 15, 1851, and resides in Washington.
Osterhaus, Peter Joseph.—Regarded by some critics the foremost German commander in the Union army, called by the Confederates “the American Bayard.” He attained the rank of major general and corps commander. Born in Coblenz in 1823. Served as a one-yearvolunteer in the Prussian army at Coblenz and rose to the rank of an officer of reserves. He participated in the German revolution and fled to America, settling at Belleville, Ill., and St. Louis. In 1861, at the outbreak of the war, he enlisted as a private in the Third German Regiment of Missouri. He soon was appointed major of the regiment and later was made colonel of the Twelfth Missouri (German) Regiment, rising to brigadier general in January, 1863, and to major general after distinguished service at Chattanooga in the same year. On September 23, 1864, he was given command of the Fifteenth Army Corps, which he commanded in Sherman’s march to the sea.
He retired January 16, 1866, after continuous service for five years, rising from the pike to the highest command, never deserting the Union flag for a day, fighting thirty-four battles without losing one where he was in independent command. He lived to see the first year or two of the World War, residing at the age of ninety with a married daughter at Duisberg in the Rhinelands. His services to the Union were forgotten and his pension was cut off. Rear Admiral Hugo Osterhaus, retired in 1913, is his son. He was born in Belleville, June 15, 1851, and resides in Washington.
Palatine Declaration of Independence.Palatine Declaration of Independence.—The history of the Tryon County Committee, identified as it is with the events in New York State immediately preceding the Revolution and throughout the latter, and commemorating as it does the name of General Herkimer, is the more interesting for being probably the first, and surely among the first, to make a declaration of independence in anticipation of the formal Congressional announcement of the break with Great Britain of July 4, 1776. The claim of priority is conceded by William L. Stone in his work on the “Life of Joseph Brant-Thayendanegea,” (1830) the Indian chief who proved himself the scourge of the New York and Pennsylvania frontier settlers. Stone in Volume I, p. 67, says:It is here worthy, not only of special note, but of all admiration, how completely and entirely these border-men held themselves amenable, in the most trying exigencies, to the just execution of the laws. Throughout all their proceedings, the history of the Tryon Committees will show that they were governed by the purest dictates of patriotism, and the highest regard to moral principle. Unlike the rude inhabitants of most frontier settlements,especially under circumstances when the magistracy are, from necessity, almost powerless, the frontier patriots of Tryon County were scrupulous in their devotion to the supremacy of the laws. Their leading men were likewise distinguished for their intelligence; and while North Carolina is disputing whether she did not in fact utter a declaration of independence before it was done by Congress, by recurring to the first declaration of the Palatine Committee, noted in its proper place, the example may almost be said to have proceeded from the Valley of the Mohawk.“The Minute Book of the Committee of Safety of Tryon County, the Old New York Frontier” (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1905), contains the minutes of the meeting at which this German American Declaration of Independence was adopted. The names, reduced to their German originals, leave no doubt of the racial character of the majority of the members. The declaration adopted August 27, 1774, begins with these words:Whereas the British Parliament has lately passed an Act for raising a Revenue in America without the consent of our Representatives to abridging the liberties and privileges of the American Colonies and therefore blocking up the Port of Boston, the Freeholders and Inhabitants of Palatine District in the County of Tryon aforesaid, looking with Concern and heartfelt Sorrow on these Alarming and calamitous conditions, Do meet this 27th day of August, 1774, on that purpose at the house of Adam Loucks, Esq., (Lux) at Stonearabia and concluded the Resolves following, vizt.King George is acknowledged the lawful sovereign, but3. That we think it is our undeniable privilege to be taxed only with our Consent, given by ourselves (or by our Representatives). That Taxes otherwise laid and exacted are unjust and unconstitutional. That the late Acts of Parliament declarative of their Rights of laying internal Taxes on the American Colonies are obvious Incroachments on the Rights and Liberties of the British subjects in America.Sympathy is expressed with the people of Boston, “whom we consider brethren suffering in the Common Cause,” and that “we think the sending of Delegates from the different Colonies to a general continental Congress is a salutary measure necessary at this alarming Crisis,” etc.Section 5 of a resolution adopted nine months later, at a meeting of the Palatine Committee, May 21, 1775, expresses the declaration in even more specific form, as follows:That as we abhor a state of slavery, we do Join and unite together under all the ties of religion, honor, justice and love for our countrymen never to become slaves, and to defend our freedom with our lives and fortunes.Of the 71 names attached to the declaration, 48 were distinctly German, and six Dutch or Low German. Some of the names appear in their anglicised form in the minutes, due to clerical errors and gross indifference of their bearers; but their identification is based on the careful researches of Friedrich Kapp, the historian of the German element in New York, and others. Fuchs was changed into Fox, Teichert into Tygart and Klock into Clock. The change was also due to an inherent desire to hide the German origin of the names which assume such important historical value. That the writing ofLoucks for Lux was an error is proved by the discovery that a descendant of the same family, one Adam Lux, played quite an important part in the Baden revolution of 1849, while descendants of the Petrie family are living today in Wurtemberg, Germany. The list of 54 German signers (inclusive of the Hollanders or Low Germans) is as follows:Adam Lux, Johann Frey, Major; Andreas Finck, Jr., Major; Andreas Reiber, Peter Wagner, Lieutenant-Colonel; Johann Jacob Karl Klock, Colonel; George Ecker, Nikolaus Herckheimer, Major-General; Wilhelm Sieber, Major; Johann Pickert, Ensign; Edward Wall, Wilhelm Petrie, Surgeon; Jacob Weber, Markus Petrie, Lieutenant; Johann Petrie, George Wentz, Lieutenant; Johann Frank, Philipp Fuchs, Friedrich Fuchs, Christoph Fuchs, Adjutant; August Hess, Michel Illig, Captain; Friedrich Ahrendorf, George Herckheimer, Captain; Werner Teichert, Lorenz Zimmermann, Peter Bellinger, Lieutenant-Colonel; Johann Demuth, Adjutant; Wilhelm Fuchs, Christian Nellis, Heinrich Nellis, Heinrich Harter, Hanjost Schumacher, Major; Isaak Paris, (Elsaesser) Heinrich Heintz, Friedrich Fischer, Colonel; Johann Klock, Lieutenant; Jacob James Klock, Major; Volker Vedder, Lieutenant-Colonel; Fried. Hellmer, Captain; Rudolph Schuhmacher, Hanjost Herckheimer, Colonel; Johann Eisenlord, Captain; Friedrich Bellinger, Adam Bellinger, Second Lieutenant; Johann Keyser, First Lieutenant; Johann Bliven, Major; Wilhelm Fuchs, Lieutenant.Samuel Ten Broeck, Major; Antoon van Fechten, Adjutant; Harmanus van Slyck, Major; Abraham van Horn, Quartermaster; Willem Schuyler, Gose van Alstijn.
Palatine Declaration of Independence.—The history of the Tryon County Committee, identified as it is with the events in New York State immediately preceding the Revolution and throughout the latter, and commemorating as it does the name of General Herkimer, is the more interesting for being probably the first, and surely among the first, to make a declaration of independence in anticipation of the formal Congressional announcement of the break with Great Britain of July 4, 1776. The claim of priority is conceded by William L. Stone in his work on the “Life of Joseph Brant-Thayendanegea,” (1830) the Indian chief who proved himself the scourge of the New York and Pennsylvania frontier settlers. Stone in Volume I, p. 67, says:
It is here worthy, not only of special note, but of all admiration, how completely and entirely these border-men held themselves amenable, in the most trying exigencies, to the just execution of the laws. Throughout all their proceedings, the history of the Tryon Committees will show that they were governed by the purest dictates of patriotism, and the highest regard to moral principle. Unlike the rude inhabitants of most frontier settlements,especially under circumstances when the magistracy are, from necessity, almost powerless, the frontier patriots of Tryon County were scrupulous in their devotion to the supremacy of the laws. Their leading men were likewise distinguished for their intelligence; and while North Carolina is disputing whether she did not in fact utter a declaration of independence before it was done by Congress, by recurring to the first declaration of the Palatine Committee, noted in its proper place, the example may almost be said to have proceeded from the Valley of the Mohawk.
“The Minute Book of the Committee of Safety of Tryon County, the Old New York Frontier” (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1905), contains the minutes of the meeting at which this German American Declaration of Independence was adopted. The names, reduced to their German originals, leave no doubt of the racial character of the majority of the members. The declaration adopted August 27, 1774, begins with these words:
Whereas the British Parliament has lately passed an Act for raising a Revenue in America without the consent of our Representatives to abridging the liberties and privileges of the American Colonies and therefore blocking up the Port of Boston, the Freeholders and Inhabitants of Palatine District in the County of Tryon aforesaid, looking with Concern and heartfelt Sorrow on these Alarming and calamitous conditions, Do meet this 27th day of August, 1774, on that purpose at the house of Adam Loucks, Esq., (Lux) at Stonearabia and concluded the Resolves following, vizt.
King George is acknowledged the lawful sovereign, but
3. That we think it is our undeniable privilege to be taxed only with our Consent, given by ourselves (or by our Representatives). That Taxes otherwise laid and exacted are unjust and unconstitutional. That the late Acts of Parliament declarative of their Rights of laying internal Taxes on the American Colonies are obvious Incroachments on the Rights and Liberties of the British subjects in America.
Sympathy is expressed with the people of Boston, “whom we consider brethren suffering in the Common Cause,” and that “we think the sending of Delegates from the different Colonies to a general continental Congress is a salutary measure necessary at this alarming Crisis,” etc.
Section 5 of a resolution adopted nine months later, at a meeting of the Palatine Committee, May 21, 1775, expresses the declaration in even more specific form, as follows:
That as we abhor a state of slavery, we do Join and unite together under all the ties of religion, honor, justice and love for our countrymen never to become slaves, and to defend our freedom with our lives and fortunes.
Of the 71 names attached to the declaration, 48 were distinctly German, and six Dutch or Low German. Some of the names appear in their anglicised form in the minutes, due to clerical errors and gross indifference of their bearers; but their identification is based on the careful researches of Friedrich Kapp, the historian of the German element in New York, and others. Fuchs was changed into Fox, Teichert into Tygart and Klock into Clock. The change was also due to an inherent desire to hide the German origin of the names which assume such important historical value. That the writing ofLoucks for Lux was an error is proved by the discovery that a descendant of the same family, one Adam Lux, played quite an important part in the Baden revolution of 1849, while descendants of the Petrie family are living today in Wurtemberg, Germany. The list of 54 German signers (inclusive of the Hollanders or Low Germans) is as follows:
Adam Lux, Johann Frey, Major; Andreas Finck, Jr., Major; Andreas Reiber, Peter Wagner, Lieutenant-Colonel; Johann Jacob Karl Klock, Colonel; George Ecker, Nikolaus Herckheimer, Major-General; Wilhelm Sieber, Major; Johann Pickert, Ensign; Edward Wall, Wilhelm Petrie, Surgeon; Jacob Weber, Markus Petrie, Lieutenant; Johann Petrie, George Wentz, Lieutenant; Johann Frank, Philipp Fuchs, Friedrich Fuchs, Christoph Fuchs, Adjutant; August Hess, Michel Illig, Captain; Friedrich Ahrendorf, George Herckheimer, Captain; Werner Teichert, Lorenz Zimmermann, Peter Bellinger, Lieutenant-Colonel; Johann Demuth, Adjutant; Wilhelm Fuchs, Christian Nellis, Heinrich Nellis, Heinrich Harter, Hanjost Schumacher, Major; Isaak Paris, (Elsaesser) Heinrich Heintz, Friedrich Fischer, Colonel; Johann Klock, Lieutenant; Jacob James Klock, Major; Volker Vedder, Lieutenant-Colonel; Fried. Hellmer, Captain; Rudolph Schuhmacher, Hanjost Herckheimer, Colonel; Johann Eisenlord, Captain; Friedrich Bellinger, Adam Bellinger, Second Lieutenant; Johann Keyser, First Lieutenant; Johann Bliven, Major; Wilhelm Fuchs, Lieutenant.
Samuel Ten Broeck, Major; Antoon van Fechten, Adjutant; Harmanus van Slyck, Major; Abraham van Horn, Quartermaster; Willem Schuyler, Gose van Alstijn.
Franz Daniel Pastorius and German, Dutch and English Colonization.Franz Daniel Pastorius and German, Dutch and English Colonization.—What the Mayflower is to the Puritans, the Concord is to the descendants of the Germans who were among the pioneer settlers of America. It was this vessel that bore to American shores the first compact German band of immigrants, under the leadership of Franz Daniel Pastorius.While the first Dutch settlement, that of Manhattan Island, or New York, was founded in 1614, and that of Plymouth by the Puritans in 1620, that of Germantown, Pennsylvania, occurred in 1683, although long prior to that date Germans in large numbers were settled in the New World, and there is evidence that there were Germans among the Jamestown pioneers and those of the Massachusetts Bay colony.But German immigration is reckoned to have begun with the arrival of thirteen families from Crefeld under Pastorius. They embarked July 24, 1683, on the Concord, and arrived October 6, 1683, in Philadelphia.Pastorius was born September 26, 1651, at Sommernhausen Franconia,studied law and lived in Frankfort-on-the-Main. By the so-called Germantown patent he acquired 5,350 acres near Philadelphia from William Penn and founded Germantown. Acting for a company of Germans and Hollanders, 22,377 additional acres were acquired under the Manatauney Patent. Germantown was laid out October 24, 1685. (See “Germantown Settlement.”)The principal occupation of the settlers was textile industry, farming and the establishment of vineyards. Pastorius was elected mayor in 1688 and the next year the town was incorporated. In 1688 Pastorius and others issued a judicial protest against slavery. He became a member of the Philadelphia school-board, twice was elected to the Assembly and also acted as magistrate.Three famous families issued from this settlement.The Rittenhausens, who established the first flour and the first paper mill in America and from whom was descended the great astronomer, Rittenhouse; the Gottfrieds, from whom descended Godfrey, the inventor of the quadrant, and the Sauers, of whom Christopher Sauer attained fame as a printer.There is some analogy between the Puritans and the Crefeld colony in that they were strongly religious bodies, and of the plain people, though the Germans, unlike the Pilgrims, were not forced to leave their native country by intolerable conditions of oppression and bigotry. Another notable incident is the fact that the Pilgrims brought over the political ideas of Holland rather than of England, as they had lived in Holland for twelve years, exiled for conscience’s sake, earning their bread in a foreign land by the labor of their hands.King James had declared of the Puritans: “I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land.” Their long residence in Holland influenced their future politically, if not in the direction of tolerance, since those who joined them soon practised in America the oppression on their fellows which they had left England to escape.Dr. William Elliot Griffis agrees with Lowell “that we are worth nothing except so far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism.” Dr. Griffis says that the Dutch settlers of that period, a period when England, even down to 1752, was in her calendar, like Russia today, eleven days behind the rest of the world, “brought with them something else than what Washington Irving credits them with. They had schools and schoolmasters, ministers and churches, the best kind of land laws, with the registration of deeds and mortgages, toleration, the habit of treating the Indian as a man, the written ballot, the village community of free men, and an inextinguishable love of liberty were theirs.They originated on American soil many things, usually credited to the Puritans of New England, but which the English rule abolished.They, however who remained, assisted by Huguenot,Scotchman and German, though in a conquered province, fought the battle of constitutional liberty against the royal governors of New York night and day, and inch by inch, until, in the noble State constitution of 1778, the victory of 1648 was re-echoed.”New York he contends, “is less the fruit of English than of Teutonic civilization.” It was the institutions of Holland, not only directly, but through the medium of the Puritans, that influenced the shaping of those policies which are known as American. “They say we are an English nation,” writes Dr. Griffis in a paper read before the Congregational Club of Boston in 1891, “and they attempt to derive our institutions from England, notwithstanding that our institutions which are most truly American were never in England. The story of Holland’s direct influence on the English-speaking world is an omitted chapter.”While the Puritans were persecuting those who did not share their narrow views of heaven, setting up blue laws and the stocks, manufacturing iron manacles for the slave trade, and enriching themselves at the expense of the Indians, the Pastorius settlement was spreading the light of intelligence and impressing its stamp upon the American character in a different manner. “Here was raised the first ecclesiastical protest against slavery,” writes Dr. Griffis, “and here the first book condemning it was written. Here, also, was printed the first Bible in a European tongue (German), the first treaties on the philosophy of education, the largest and most sumptuous piece of colonial printing; and here was the first literary center and woman’s college established in America. Pennsylvania led off in establishing the freedom of the press (John Peter Zenger), in reform of criminal law, in reform of prisons, in awarding to accused persons the right of counsel for defense. In not a few features now deemed peculiarly American, besides that of honoring the Lord’s day, the State founded by William Penn is the land of first things, and the shining example. Well, who was William Penn?” continues the writer. “He was the son of a Dutch mother, Margaret Jasper, of Rotterdam. Dutch was his native tongue, as well as English.”With the greater part of these civic virtues we find the Crefeld settlement closely identified as well as the Dutch—and therefore Germanic, in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon—influence, for Pastorius himself was the author of the first protest against slavery on American soil. To this historic pioneer a monument was to be erected in 1917 at Germantown. The statue by Albert Jaegers, sculptor of Steuben in Lafayette Park, Washington, was ready for unveiling in that year but boarded up, as the war between Germany and the United States had been proclaimed in the meantime. For many months a systematic agitation was conducted by certain pseudo-patriotic societies to prevent the unveiling of the monument, on theground that it was designed to serve pro-German propaganda; the proposition was made to destroy it and fill its place with cannons captured from the Germans by troops, including men from Germantown. Among those so agitating were the Germantown Federation, Junior Order United American Mechanics, the Order of Independent Americans, the Stonemen’s Fellowship, the Patriotic Order Sons of America, the Sons of Veterans, the Loyal Orange Lodge No. 39, the Fraternal Patriotic Americans, and others. Petitions and resolutions of protest were addressed to Representative J. Hampton Moore, to whose efforts was due the appropriation of $25,000 for the monument, to Senator Penrose and to the Secretary of War, under whose jurisdiction are all monuments built at the expense of the people. The leader of the campaign was one Raymond O. Bliss. This was not in the heat of the war excitement, but in November, 1919, a year after the armistice had been signed.Comment is hardly necessary. It almost seems that it is deliberately desired to deny recognition to any American historical character not of English origin, for in Pastorius is embodied one of the strongest spirits that reacted upon the education, refinement and spiritual life of the American people; the protest against human slavery—slavery for which the Puritans were forging the shackles—adopted by the conference of German Quakers, April 18, 1688, is in the handwriting of Pastorius. A better understanding of him and his little band was entertained by John Greenleaf Whittier, when he wrote his “lines on reading the message of Governor Ritner of Pennsylvania, in 1836:”And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;Whose fathers of old sang in concert with thine,On the banks of Swatara, the songs of the Rhine,—The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to braveThe scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave:—* * *They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?The American author, E. Bettle, in “Notices of Negro Slavery in America,” says of the above body of men and their action: “To this body of humble, unpretending and almost unnoticed philanthropists belongs the honor of having been the first association who ever remonstrated against negro slavery.”Though disapproving their habits of drinking and hearty feasting at weddings and funerals, Dr. Rush, in his “Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical,” page 220, says: “If they possess less refinement than their Southern neighbors, who cultivate their land with slaves, they possess also more republican virtue.” They introduced glass-blowing and iron manufacture as early as colonial conditions would allow,and the establishment of the first iron foundry in America was the work of Baron Stiegel. They confuted Franklin’s fear of their growing influence in determining the policy of the province by responding as ardently to the call of patriotism in 1775-76 as Massachusetts.The German newspaper in Philadelphia, the “Staatsbote,” published by Henry Miller—later the official printer of Congress—was one of the papers that fanned the flames of rebellion. It was read as far as the Valley of Virginia. The edition of March 19, 1776, contains an appeal to the Germans beginning: “Remember that your forefathers immigrated to America to escape bondage and to enjoy liberty.” (Virginia Magazine, vol. x, pp. 45 ff.)History is strangely silent about any similar intellectual and cultural currents emanating from the English settlements of the early period, though latterly giving birth to a group of historians and poets who wove the garb of romance around every green New England hillside and embalmed every local event in poetic legend. While in Germantown the printing press was turning out Bibles and works of science and learning, and the people were laying the foundation of paper mills and type foundries, a harsh spirit of intolerance, superstition and religious asceticism was the rule in the Bay Colony.American colonial history reveals the fact that Englishmen, while boastful of the liberty of conscience which they claim as a divine heritage, differed from the Dutch and other Teutonic settlers in America as foremost in seeking to impose religious restrictions upon others and in offending against the doctrines of personal and religious liberty. There was very little of real democracy in the Bay Colony, but much aristocracy, according to Dr. William Elliot Griffis; for only church members had a right to vote. These Puritans could not tolerate the men of other ways of thinking, like the Quakers and the Baptists who came among them, whom they beat, branded and hanged. Both in Holland and America, this authority continues, the Pilgrim Fathers were better treated by the Dutch than by the Puritans.“Toleration is a virtue which Americans have not learned from England or from the Puritans of New England.For the origins of the religious liberty which we enjoy we must look to the Anabaptists, William the Silent and the Dutch republic.” But the Colony did not a little trade in slaves, and one of its industries was the making of manacles for the supply of the African man-stealers and traders in human flesh.The influence on American life which flowed from the settlements of the Puritans and from Pennsylvania under the charter held by William Penn, was as distinct as night and day. From the ultimate confluence of these two divergent currents of civilization American life and institutions received a certain character of harmony which concretely, may be called Americanism. Had the Puritan current remained uninfluenced by that which flowed from Pennsylvania andNew York, our country would have had the distinct stamp of bigoted middle-class England, leavened to some extent by the gentry spirit of slave-holding Virginia, and we should justly have been called an English, or even Anglo-Saxon people.But as numerous writers from other than New England regions, have shown, those institutions which we have commonly been taught to be English institutions, did not exist in England, but were brought to America from Holland and the continent, or developed here. The written ballot came from Emden in Germany; freedom of conscience was the common possession of the Teuton peoples, and not of Englishmen. When the Massachusetts Bay Colony numbered 3,000 settlers, there were but 350 freemen among them, as the condition of freemanship was made, not a property or educational test, but a religious qualification. It was not till 1641 that a code of laws was adopted. Prior to this, they had been governed by the common law of England and the precepts of the Bible.Much has been written of religious and political oppression at home which drove many Germans to settle in Pennsylvania and New York; but the New England settlement owed its founding and growth entirely to religious persecutions at home. If James I chastised the Dissenters with whips, his son Charles chastised them with scorpions. It was William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, above all men, who visited bitter persecutions upon the Puritans in the reign of Charles, and it was Laud who caused the building of the English commonwealth in the New World. The great migration set in with the ascendancy of Laud. More than 1,000 came in 1630, and as the policy of the king and Laud became more intolerable, the tide increased in volume. The people came, not singly, nor as families merely, but frequently as congregations, led by their pastors. On March 18, 1919, the British Consul presented the City of Boston with a casket made from the rails of the docks in the Old Guild Hall at Boston, England, wherein 1,620 of the Puritan refugees were tried for non-conformist proceedings.The religious differences which the Puritans fought out—and have never fought to a conclusion—in the New World, the Germans and Hollanders had decided in the Thirty Years War. Politically and religiously, the Puritans were uncompromisingly intolerant to all. They expelled Roger Williams for denying the right of the magistrate to punish for violation of the first table of the Decalogue; for denying the right of compelling one to take an oath, denouncing the union of church and state and pronouncing the King’s patent void on the ground that the Indians were the true owners of the soil. In 1656 they persecuted the Quakers; in 1692 they hanged witches. Harvard College was founded in 1636 by the Puritan clergy. Nowhere in the world was paternalism carried to such extremes as in New England.The State was founded on the Hebrew Old Testament and religion was its life. The entire political, social and industrial policy was built on religion, and Puritanism was painfully stern and somber.Had this civilization been gradually extended, uninfluenced by the institutions which were brought over from the continent by the Hollanders, German Palatines and Delaware Swedes, we should have to form a radically different conception of the American of today. The influence of the Puritans continues to make itself still felt in manifestations of bigotry and intolerance in the form of prohibition, blue laws, race antagonism, etc. Out of its midst have arisen many great and free minds, like beautiful orchids out of a swamp, but rarely great minds uninfluenced by education flowing from or gained on the continent of Europe, while the rank and file at heart remains what it always was, an imponderable mass, excluding light, dealing with external forms and interpreting the passions of life and the spiritual institutions of soul and mind by the fixed standards of an obsolete philosophy, and continues to be harsh, intolerant, hostile and fanatical.In 1631, Roger Williams arrived at Nantasket. He was a radical who claimed that no one should be bound to maintain worship against his own consent, and that the land belonged to the Indians and they ought to be paid for it. The Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered Williams to leave, and when he and five friends took up lands in Rhode Island, the Plymouth men notified him that the land he had chosen was under their control and intimated that he must move on. The next person to come into contact with colonial intolerance was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, “a pure woman of much intellectual power,” but for whose preaching and teaching there was no room in Massachusetts. The General Court, after deciding that Mrs. Hutchinson was “like Roger Williams or worse,” banished her. With William Codington and others she bought Rhode Island from the Indians and began the colonies of Portsmouth and Newport. In 1638 Rev. John Wheelwright was expelled from Massachusetts for sympathy with Mrs. Hutchinson.The Maryland English were more liberal, but their laws did not protect Jews or those who rejected the divinity of Christ. When the Commonwealth was established in England, its Commissioners in Maryland acted in a most intolerant manner, allowing no Catholics to have a seat in the legislature. They repealed the statute of toleration and prohibited Catholic worship. In the Carolinas all Christians lived harmoniously together until Lord Granville attempted to remove the religious privileges of the Colonists, by excluding all who were not members of the Anglican Church from the Colonial legislature.Massachusetts, in 1656, passed a law pronouncing the death sentence on any Quaker who, having once been banished, should return to theColony. Under this law four were actually hanged. In 1692 hundreds of people accused of witchcraft were thrown into prison; nineteen were hanged; one, an old man, was pressed to death, and two died in jail before the popular madness had run its course.A valuable contribution to the history of religious intolerance in our country, the result of English civilization, is contained in “American State Papers Bearing on Sunday Legislation,” revised and enlarged edition compiled and annotated by William Addison Blakely of the Chicago Bar and lecturer at the University of Chicago; foreword by Thomas M. Cooley. Published by “Religious Liberty,” Washington, D. C. Here we get the text of the first Sunday law on American soil, passed in Virginia in 1610:Every man or woman shall repair in the morning to the divine service and sermon preached upon the Sabbath Day, and in the afternoon to divine service and catechising, upon pain for the first fault to lose their provision and allowance for the whole week following (provisions were held in common at that day); for the second to lose the said allowanceand also to be whipt; for the thirdto suffer death. Whipping meant that the offender shall by order of such justice or justices, receive on the bare back ten lashes well laid on.In Massachusetts the law provided various penalties, according to the gravity of the offense. Ten shillings or be whipped for profaning the Lord’s day; death for presumptuous Sunday desecration; fines for traveling on the Lord’s day; boring tongue with red-hot iron, sitting upon the gallows with a rope around the offender’s neck, etc., at the discretion of the Court of Assizes and General Goal Delivery. (“Acts and Laws of the Province of Mass. Bay 1692-1719,” p. 110.) It was pretty much the same in Connecticut, where the laws explicitly prohibited “walking for pleasure,” while Maryland provided “death without benefit of clergy for blasphemy.” Practically every English colony had similar laws and ordinances. We read in Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia” (1788, p. 167):The first settlers were immigrants from England, of the English Church, just at a point of time when it was flushed with a complete victory over the religion of other persuasions. Possessed, as they became, of the power of making, administering and executing the laws, they showed equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian brethren who had emigrated to the Northern government.... Several acts of the Virginia Assembly, of 1659, 1662 and 1693, had made it penal in parents to refuse to have their children baptized, and prohibited the unlawful assembling of Quakers, had made it penal for any master of a vessel to bring a Quaker into the State, had ordered those already there, and such as should come hereafter, to be imprisoned until they should abjure the country—provided a milder penalty for the first and second return, butdeathfortheir third. If no capital executions took place here, as did in New England, it was not owing to the moderation of the Church, or spirit of the Legislature, as may be inferred from the law itself; but to historical circumstances which have not been handed down to us.William H. Taft, when President, said: “We speak with great satisfaction of the fact that our ancestors came to this country to establish freedom of religion. Well, if you are to be exact, they came to establish freedom of their own religion, and not the freedom of anybody else’s religion. The truth is that in those days such a thing as freedom of religion was not understood.”Just what American freedom was at the time that English influence was at high tide, unleavened by the liberal and tolerant ideas brought over from the European continent, may be inferred from the following extract from the “Columbian Sentinel” of December, 1789, quoted in “American State Papers:”The tithingman also watched to see that “no young people walked abroad on the even of the Sabbath,” that is, on the Saturday night (after sundown). He also marked and reported all those who “lye at home” and others who “prophanely behaved,” “lingered without dores at meeting times on the Lord’s Daie,” all “the sons of Belial strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the day.” These last two offenders were first admonished by the tithingman, then “sett in stocks,” and then cited before the Court. They were also confined in the cage on the meeting house green, with the Lord’s Day sleepers. The tithingman could arrest any who walked or rode too fast in pace to and from meeting, and he could arrest any who “walked or rode unnecessarily on the Sabbath.” Great and small alike were under his control.Even General Washington while President was interfered with on one occasion by “the tithingman.”
Franz Daniel Pastorius and German, Dutch and English Colonization.—What the Mayflower is to the Puritans, the Concord is to the descendants of the Germans who were among the pioneer settlers of America. It was this vessel that bore to American shores the first compact German band of immigrants, under the leadership of Franz Daniel Pastorius.
While the first Dutch settlement, that of Manhattan Island, or New York, was founded in 1614, and that of Plymouth by the Puritans in 1620, that of Germantown, Pennsylvania, occurred in 1683, although long prior to that date Germans in large numbers were settled in the New World, and there is evidence that there were Germans among the Jamestown pioneers and those of the Massachusetts Bay colony.
But German immigration is reckoned to have begun with the arrival of thirteen families from Crefeld under Pastorius. They embarked July 24, 1683, on the Concord, and arrived October 6, 1683, in Philadelphia.
Pastorius was born September 26, 1651, at Sommernhausen Franconia,studied law and lived in Frankfort-on-the-Main. By the so-called Germantown patent he acquired 5,350 acres near Philadelphia from William Penn and founded Germantown. Acting for a company of Germans and Hollanders, 22,377 additional acres were acquired under the Manatauney Patent. Germantown was laid out October 24, 1685. (See “Germantown Settlement.”)
The principal occupation of the settlers was textile industry, farming and the establishment of vineyards. Pastorius was elected mayor in 1688 and the next year the town was incorporated. In 1688 Pastorius and others issued a judicial protest against slavery. He became a member of the Philadelphia school-board, twice was elected to the Assembly and also acted as magistrate.
Three famous families issued from this settlement.The Rittenhausens, who established the first flour and the first paper mill in America and from whom was descended the great astronomer, Rittenhouse; the Gottfrieds, from whom descended Godfrey, the inventor of the quadrant, and the Sauers, of whom Christopher Sauer attained fame as a printer.
There is some analogy between the Puritans and the Crefeld colony in that they were strongly religious bodies, and of the plain people, though the Germans, unlike the Pilgrims, were not forced to leave their native country by intolerable conditions of oppression and bigotry. Another notable incident is the fact that the Pilgrims brought over the political ideas of Holland rather than of England, as they had lived in Holland for twelve years, exiled for conscience’s sake, earning their bread in a foreign land by the labor of their hands.
King James had declared of the Puritans: “I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land.” Their long residence in Holland influenced their future politically, if not in the direction of tolerance, since those who joined them soon practised in America the oppression on their fellows which they had left England to escape.
Dr. William Elliot Griffis agrees with Lowell “that we are worth nothing except so far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism.” Dr. Griffis says that the Dutch settlers of that period, a period when England, even down to 1752, was in her calendar, like Russia today, eleven days behind the rest of the world, “brought with them something else than what Washington Irving credits them with. They had schools and schoolmasters, ministers and churches, the best kind of land laws, with the registration of deeds and mortgages, toleration, the habit of treating the Indian as a man, the written ballot, the village community of free men, and an inextinguishable love of liberty were theirs.They originated on American soil many things, usually credited to the Puritans of New England, but which the English rule abolished.They, however who remained, assisted by Huguenot,Scotchman and German, though in a conquered province, fought the battle of constitutional liberty against the royal governors of New York night and day, and inch by inch, until, in the noble State constitution of 1778, the victory of 1648 was re-echoed.”
New York he contends, “is less the fruit of English than of Teutonic civilization.” It was the institutions of Holland, not only directly, but through the medium of the Puritans, that influenced the shaping of those policies which are known as American. “They say we are an English nation,” writes Dr. Griffis in a paper read before the Congregational Club of Boston in 1891, “and they attempt to derive our institutions from England, notwithstanding that our institutions which are most truly American were never in England. The story of Holland’s direct influence on the English-speaking world is an omitted chapter.”
While the Puritans were persecuting those who did not share their narrow views of heaven, setting up blue laws and the stocks, manufacturing iron manacles for the slave trade, and enriching themselves at the expense of the Indians, the Pastorius settlement was spreading the light of intelligence and impressing its stamp upon the American character in a different manner. “Here was raised the first ecclesiastical protest against slavery,” writes Dr. Griffis, “and here the first book condemning it was written. Here, also, was printed the first Bible in a European tongue (German), the first treaties on the philosophy of education, the largest and most sumptuous piece of colonial printing; and here was the first literary center and woman’s college established in America. Pennsylvania led off in establishing the freedom of the press (John Peter Zenger), in reform of criminal law, in reform of prisons, in awarding to accused persons the right of counsel for defense. In not a few features now deemed peculiarly American, besides that of honoring the Lord’s day, the State founded by William Penn is the land of first things, and the shining example. Well, who was William Penn?” continues the writer. “He was the son of a Dutch mother, Margaret Jasper, of Rotterdam. Dutch was his native tongue, as well as English.”
With the greater part of these civic virtues we find the Crefeld settlement closely identified as well as the Dutch—and therefore Germanic, in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon—influence, for Pastorius himself was the author of the first protest against slavery on American soil. To this historic pioneer a monument was to be erected in 1917 at Germantown. The statue by Albert Jaegers, sculptor of Steuben in Lafayette Park, Washington, was ready for unveiling in that year but boarded up, as the war between Germany and the United States had been proclaimed in the meantime. For many months a systematic agitation was conducted by certain pseudo-patriotic societies to prevent the unveiling of the monument, on theground that it was designed to serve pro-German propaganda; the proposition was made to destroy it and fill its place with cannons captured from the Germans by troops, including men from Germantown. Among those so agitating were the Germantown Federation, Junior Order United American Mechanics, the Order of Independent Americans, the Stonemen’s Fellowship, the Patriotic Order Sons of America, the Sons of Veterans, the Loyal Orange Lodge No. 39, the Fraternal Patriotic Americans, and others. Petitions and resolutions of protest were addressed to Representative J. Hampton Moore, to whose efforts was due the appropriation of $25,000 for the monument, to Senator Penrose and to the Secretary of War, under whose jurisdiction are all monuments built at the expense of the people. The leader of the campaign was one Raymond O. Bliss. This was not in the heat of the war excitement, but in November, 1919, a year after the armistice had been signed.
Comment is hardly necessary. It almost seems that it is deliberately desired to deny recognition to any American historical character not of English origin, for in Pastorius is embodied one of the strongest spirits that reacted upon the education, refinement and spiritual life of the American people; the protest against human slavery—slavery for which the Puritans were forging the shackles—adopted by the conference of German Quakers, April 18, 1688, is in the handwriting of Pastorius. A better understanding of him and his little band was entertained by John Greenleaf Whittier, when he wrote his “lines on reading the message of Governor Ritner of Pennsylvania, in 1836:”
And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;Whose fathers of old sang in concert with thine,On the banks of Swatara, the songs of the Rhine,—The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to braveThe scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave:—* * *They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?
And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;Whose fathers of old sang in concert with thine,On the banks of Swatara, the songs of the Rhine,—The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to braveThe scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave:—* * *They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?
And that bold-hearted yeomanry, honest and true,
Who, haters of fraud, give to labor its due;
Whose fathers of old sang in concert with thine,
On the banks of Swatara, the songs of the Rhine,—
The German-born pilgrims, who first dared to brave
The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave:—* * *
They cater to tyrants? They rivet the chain,
Which their fathers smote off, on the negro again?
The American author, E. Bettle, in “Notices of Negro Slavery in America,” says of the above body of men and their action: “To this body of humble, unpretending and almost unnoticed philanthropists belongs the honor of having been the first association who ever remonstrated against negro slavery.”
Though disapproving their habits of drinking and hearty feasting at weddings and funerals, Dr. Rush, in his “Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical,” page 220, says: “If they possess less refinement than their Southern neighbors, who cultivate their land with slaves, they possess also more republican virtue.” They introduced glass-blowing and iron manufacture as early as colonial conditions would allow,and the establishment of the first iron foundry in America was the work of Baron Stiegel. They confuted Franklin’s fear of their growing influence in determining the policy of the province by responding as ardently to the call of patriotism in 1775-76 as Massachusetts.
The German newspaper in Philadelphia, the “Staatsbote,” published by Henry Miller—later the official printer of Congress—was one of the papers that fanned the flames of rebellion. It was read as far as the Valley of Virginia. The edition of March 19, 1776, contains an appeal to the Germans beginning: “Remember that your forefathers immigrated to America to escape bondage and to enjoy liberty.” (Virginia Magazine, vol. x, pp. 45 ff.)
History is strangely silent about any similar intellectual and cultural currents emanating from the English settlements of the early period, though latterly giving birth to a group of historians and poets who wove the garb of romance around every green New England hillside and embalmed every local event in poetic legend. While in Germantown the printing press was turning out Bibles and works of science and learning, and the people were laying the foundation of paper mills and type foundries, a harsh spirit of intolerance, superstition and religious asceticism was the rule in the Bay Colony.
American colonial history reveals the fact that Englishmen, while boastful of the liberty of conscience which they claim as a divine heritage, differed from the Dutch and other Teutonic settlers in America as foremost in seeking to impose religious restrictions upon others and in offending against the doctrines of personal and religious liberty. There was very little of real democracy in the Bay Colony, but much aristocracy, according to Dr. William Elliot Griffis; for only church members had a right to vote. These Puritans could not tolerate the men of other ways of thinking, like the Quakers and the Baptists who came among them, whom they beat, branded and hanged. Both in Holland and America, this authority continues, the Pilgrim Fathers were better treated by the Dutch than by the Puritans.“Toleration is a virtue which Americans have not learned from England or from the Puritans of New England.For the origins of the religious liberty which we enjoy we must look to the Anabaptists, William the Silent and the Dutch republic.” But the Colony did not a little trade in slaves, and one of its industries was the making of manacles for the supply of the African man-stealers and traders in human flesh.
The influence on American life which flowed from the settlements of the Puritans and from Pennsylvania under the charter held by William Penn, was as distinct as night and day. From the ultimate confluence of these two divergent currents of civilization American life and institutions received a certain character of harmony which concretely, may be called Americanism. Had the Puritan current remained uninfluenced by that which flowed from Pennsylvania andNew York, our country would have had the distinct stamp of bigoted middle-class England, leavened to some extent by the gentry spirit of slave-holding Virginia, and we should justly have been called an English, or even Anglo-Saxon people.
But as numerous writers from other than New England regions, have shown, those institutions which we have commonly been taught to be English institutions, did not exist in England, but were brought to America from Holland and the continent, or developed here. The written ballot came from Emden in Germany; freedom of conscience was the common possession of the Teuton peoples, and not of Englishmen. When the Massachusetts Bay Colony numbered 3,000 settlers, there were but 350 freemen among them, as the condition of freemanship was made, not a property or educational test, but a religious qualification. It was not till 1641 that a code of laws was adopted. Prior to this, they had been governed by the common law of England and the precepts of the Bible.
Much has been written of religious and political oppression at home which drove many Germans to settle in Pennsylvania and New York; but the New England settlement owed its founding and growth entirely to religious persecutions at home. If James I chastised the Dissenters with whips, his son Charles chastised them with scorpions. It was William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, above all men, who visited bitter persecutions upon the Puritans in the reign of Charles, and it was Laud who caused the building of the English commonwealth in the New World. The great migration set in with the ascendancy of Laud. More than 1,000 came in 1630, and as the policy of the king and Laud became more intolerable, the tide increased in volume. The people came, not singly, nor as families merely, but frequently as congregations, led by their pastors. On March 18, 1919, the British Consul presented the City of Boston with a casket made from the rails of the docks in the Old Guild Hall at Boston, England, wherein 1,620 of the Puritan refugees were tried for non-conformist proceedings.
The religious differences which the Puritans fought out—and have never fought to a conclusion—in the New World, the Germans and Hollanders had decided in the Thirty Years War. Politically and religiously, the Puritans were uncompromisingly intolerant to all. They expelled Roger Williams for denying the right of the magistrate to punish for violation of the first table of the Decalogue; for denying the right of compelling one to take an oath, denouncing the union of church and state and pronouncing the King’s patent void on the ground that the Indians were the true owners of the soil. In 1656 they persecuted the Quakers; in 1692 they hanged witches. Harvard College was founded in 1636 by the Puritan clergy. Nowhere in the world was paternalism carried to such extremes as in New England.The State was founded on the Hebrew Old Testament and religion was its life. The entire political, social and industrial policy was built on religion, and Puritanism was painfully stern and somber.
Had this civilization been gradually extended, uninfluenced by the institutions which were brought over from the continent by the Hollanders, German Palatines and Delaware Swedes, we should have to form a radically different conception of the American of today. The influence of the Puritans continues to make itself still felt in manifestations of bigotry and intolerance in the form of prohibition, blue laws, race antagonism, etc. Out of its midst have arisen many great and free minds, like beautiful orchids out of a swamp, but rarely great minds uninfluenced by education flowing from or gained on the continent of Europe, while the rank and file at heart remains what it always was, an imponderable mass, excluding light, dealing with external forms and interpreting the passions of life and the spiritual institutions of soul and mind by the fixed standards of an obsolete philosophy, and continues to be harsh, intolerant, hostile and fanatical.
In 1631, Roger Williams arrived at Nantasket. He was a radical who claimed that no one should be bound to maintain worship against his own consent, and that the land belonged to the Indians and they ought to be paid for it. The Massachusetts Bay Colony ordered Williams to leave, and when he and five friends took up lands in Rhode Island, the Plymouth men notified him that the land he had chosen was under their control and intimated that he must move on. The next person to come into contact with colonial intolerance was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, “a pure woman of much intellectual power,” but for whose preaching and teaching there was no room in Massachusetts. The General Court, after deciding that Mrs. Hutchinson was “like Roger Williams or worse,” banished her. With William Codington and others she bought Rhode Island from the Indians and began the colonies of Portsmouth and Newport. In 1638 Rev. John Wheelwright was expelled from Massachusetts for sympathy with Mrs. Hutchinson.
The Maryland English were more liberal, but their laws did not protect Jews or those who rejected the divinity of Christ. When the Commonwealth was established in England, its Commissioners in Maryland acted in a most intolerant manner, allowing no Catholics to have a seat in the legislature. They repealed the statute of toleration and prohibited Catholic worship. In the Carolinas all Christians lived harmoniously together until Lord Granville attempted to remove the religious privileges of the Colonists, by excluding all who were not members of the Anglican Church from the Colonial legislature.
Massachusetts, in 1656, passed a law pronouncing the death sentence on any Quaker who, having once been banished, should return to theColony. Under this law four were actually hanged. In 1692 hundreds of people accused of witchcraft were thrown into prison; nineteen were hanged; one, an old man, was pressed to death, and two died in jail before the popular madness had run its course.
A valuable contribution to the history of religious intolerance in our country, the result of English civilization, is contained in “American State Papers Bearing on Sunday Legislation,” revised and enlarged edition compiled and annotated by William Addison Blakely of the Chicago Bar and lecturer at the University of Chicago; foreword by Thomas M. Cooley. Published by “Religious Liberty,” Washington, D. C. Here we get the text of the first Sunday law on American soil, passed in Virginia in 1610:
Every man or woman shall repair in the morning to the divine service and sermon preached upon the Sabbath Day, and in the afternoon to divine service and catechising, upon pain for the first fault to lose their provision and allowance for the whole week following (provisions were held in common at that day); for the second to lose the said allowanceand also to be whipt; for the thirdto suffer death. Whipping meant that the offender shall by order of such justice or justices, receive on the bare back ten lashes well laid on.
In Massachusetts the law provided various penalties, according to the gravity of the offense. Ten shillings or be whipped for profaning the Lord’s day; death for presumptuous Sunday desecration; fines for traveling on the Lord’s day; boring tongue with red-hot iron, sitting upon the gallows with a rope around the offender’s neck, etc., at the discretion of the Court of Assizes and General Goal Delivery. (“Acts and Laws of the Province of Mass. Bay 1692-1719,” p. 110.) It was pretty much the same in Connecticut, where the laws explicitly prohibited “walking for pleasure,” while Maryland provided “death without benefit of clergy for blasphemy.” Practically every English colony had similar laws and ordinances. We read in Jefferson’s “Notes on Virginia” (1788, p. 167):
The first settlers were immigrants from England, of the English Church, just at a point of time when it was flushed with a complete victory over the religion of other persuasions. Possessed, as they became, of the power of making, administering and executing the laws, they showed equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian brethren who had emigrated to the Northern government.... Several acts of the Virginia Assembly, of 1659, 1662 and 1693, had made it penal in parents to refuse to have their children baptized, and prohibited the unlawful assembling of Quakers, had made it penal for any master of a vessel to bring a Quaker into the State, had ordered those already there, and such as should come hereafter, to be imprisoned until they should abjure the country—provided a milder penalty for the first and second return, butdeathfortheir third. If no capital executions took place here, as did in New England, it was not owing to the moderation of the Church, or spirit of the Legislature, as may be inferred from the law itself; but to historical circumstances which have not been handed down to us.
William H. Taft, when President, said: “We speak with great satisfaction of the fact that our ancestors came to this country to establish freedom of religion. Well, if you are to be exact, they came to establish freedom of their own religion, and not the freedom of anybody else’s religion. The truth is that in those days such a thing as freedom of religion was not understood.”
Just what American freedom was at the time that English influence was at high tide, unleavened by the liberal and tolerant ideas brought over from the European continent, may be inferred from the following extract from the “Columbian Sentinel” of December, 1789, quoted in “American State Papers:”
The tithingman also watched to see that “no young people walked abroad on the even of the Sabbath,” that is, on the Saturday night (after sundown). He also marked and reported all those who “lye at home” and others who “prophanely behaved,” “lingered without dores at meeting times on the Lord’s Daie,” all “the sons of Belial strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the day.” These last two offenders were first admonished by the tithingman, then “sett in stocks,” and then cited before the Court. They were also confined in the cage on the meeting house green, with the Lord’s Day sleepers. The tithingman could arrest any who walked or rode too fast in pace to and from meeting, and he could arrest any who “walked or rode unnecessarily on the Sabbath.” Great and small alike were under his control.
Even General Washington while President was interfered with on one occasion by “the tithingman.”