THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
vania Dutch.” They made upon me the impression of honest, law-abiding, thrifty, cheerful and eminently good-natured folk, appearing, as to the understanding of public affairs, perhaps a trifle more sluggish than their English-speaking neighbors—which may have been owing to their unfamiliarity with the language of the country—but intelligent and alert in the exercise of local self-government, and brimful of that sort of patriotism which swears by one's country and is ready to fight and die for it. In this respect their ignorance of the English language had not, within my experience, caused them to be inferior to any class of Americans who know only English, and whose patriotism is uncontaminated by the knowledge of any other language.
The same may be said of the inhabitants of German settlements of more recent date who have come with the bona fide intention to make this country their permanent home. Among them German may long remain the language of social and business intercourse, they may be slow in acquiring easy familiarity with the English tongue, but even if they have come here for the mere purpose of bettering their fortunes, they are as a rule not slow in appreciating the benefits conferred upon them by American conditions, and in conceiving an attachment to this republic which before long ripens into genuine devotion. Striking evidence of this was presented by the zeal and promptness with which in all parts of the North by the tens of thousands of young men of German birth flocked around the Union flag at the beginning of the Civil War, and by the patriotic ardor with which, even in the South, especially in Texas, German-born citizens at the peril, and not seldom the sacrifice of their fortunes and even of their lives, stood by the national cause in defiance of the terrorism which at that period was exercised by the secession fanaticism in that region. I
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