The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin/5
THE YANKEE AND THE TEUTON IN WISCONSIN
Joseph Schafer
V. SOCIAL HARMONIES AND DISCORDS
The "Sons of the Pilgrims" of Milwaukee held in December, 1850, their customary banquet to celebrate the historic landing on Plymouth Rock. The occasion was one which stimulated the flow of oratory and the display of quaint Yankee humor and sparkling wit. Among the toasts, some of which embodied genuine wisdom, was the following: "Our adopted state. She has gathered her sons from many lands and given them all a home amid her bounty and her beauty. May the elements of strength and greatness peculiar to each be here transplanted and united to form a perfect commonwealth."[1]
The sentiment was notably generous, voiced as it was by one out of the many and diverse population elements, and we now see that it was also prophetic. But the attainment of the ideal here advanced was not to result from an effortless, unconscious process. Much history is involved in the relations of Yankee and Teuton—to say nothing of other stocks—which reveals a general tendency to helpful coöperation, but presents, on the other hand, episodes marked by animosity, jealousy, and social estrangement. If there were social harmonies, there were also discords.
As early as 1850 Milwaukee contained more Germans than Yankees. Out of an aggregate population of 20,059 the census taker had designated 3880 as natives of the New England states and New York, while 5958 were born in Germany. The entire American element (aside from natives of Wisconsin, who were children of the foreign born as well as of the American born) amounted to 5113, while the number of foreigners was 12,036. Of these, more than 3000 were Irish and about 1300 English. Thus the German was numerically the dominant social factor in the city.
Nevertheless, in all but numbers the Yankee element remained, as it had been from the beginning of the town's growth, in a position of acknowledged leadership. There would be no difficulty in proving that socially, industrially, and commercially the places of power were occupied by the "down-easters," while in politics, although their control was being challenged from one side or another, they were still far from recognizing a master.
Yankees were the promoters of those far-reaching improvements, like the various plank roads, and especially the railroads, which were destined to unite the extensive new settlements with Milwaukee and thus guarantee the future greatness of the city. They were largely engaged in the carrying trade on the Lakes. They controlled the flour milling business, the leading industry of the city, in which was concentrated probably more capital than was invested in all other lines of manufacturing carried on at that time. They were also prominent in wholesale merchandising and owned the most pretentious retail stores.
Their general preëminence in the professions was undisputed. They had most of the lawyers, a large proportion of the physicians, the editors of English language papers, the Protestant clergymen, the teachers. Public opinion, with a reservation to be stated presently, was mainly of their making, both in the city itself and—through the agency of a widely read newspaper press—in the state at large. On all questions affecting public education, social morality, health, and recreation, as well as business or industry, the American portion of the community was very apt to mass behind Yankee leadership; and the English speaking section of the foreign population was not averse to doing the same, at least under ordinary circumstances. Often, indeed, such was the prestige of the Yankees, their initiative was followed unquestioningly by American and foreigner alike.
But the weight of numbers being with the Germans, the bulk of whom did not speak or read English—though there were numerous exceptions,—it was natural that there should have developed a community leadership within their own group, and such leadership would be determinative in cases of divergence from American ideas. The presence of this great body of non-English speaking persons, clothed with political power and wielding also a goodly share of economic power, especially as manifested in consumption, tended in itself to generate a more amiable attitude and more moderate policies on the part of the dominant class.
For the Germans were a coherent, prosperous, and growing element in the city. They began coming in 1839, and during the succeeding decade the annual accretions waxed gradually larger. After the revolution of 1848 the tide of emigration, especially from the countries and provinces along the Rhine, was swollen to unprecedented proportions, Milwaukee and the whole state profiting largely therefrom. But, already before 1850 Milwaukee's streets, business places, and homes were so habituated to German speech, that most visitors unhesitatingly described it as a German city. "In the colony of Herman alone," wrote Carl de Haas in 1848, "among all the United States is the population so preponderantly German."[2] This writer also says, as do other chroniclers of his race, that not alone the speech of his country, but also the national habits and customs prevailed exceedingly in Milwaukee; that the Americans made many concessions to the Germanism of the environment—merchants, for example, learning the language themselves, or at least keeping clerks in their establishments who could speak it, in order to attract German trade.
The emigration which began in 1839 as a religious movement, a congregation of Old Lutherans fleeing the pressure of the illiberal policy of Prussia's king, was continued thereafter mainly from economic and social motives. An examination of the census schedules of 1850 for Milwaukee reveals its general character better than volumes of reminiscent testimony. The census shows that, among the 5958 Germans in the city, 1165 (if the count is accurate) were craftsmen. There were house carpenters, ship carpenters, smiths, wheelwrights, millwrights, cabinet makers, masons, plasterers, painters, brickmakers, tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, watchmakers, coppersmiths, silversmiths and goldsmiths, barbers, bakers, brewers, cigar makers, musicians, sailors, and many more. In contrast to the large number of craftsmen, those employed at common labor numbered only 461, while the aggregate of those who may be described as business men was 248. A total of 45 persons fall in the class of professional men. Many, even of the laborers, possessed some property, thus showing that they were of a substantial, home-making type. A good many of the craftsmen owned homes, some of the business men were possessed of real estate to an appreciable extent, and there were a very few capitalists whose properties were valued at from $20,000 to $50,000.
The significance to the city of having among the population so large a body of thoroughly trained and skilled artisans cannot readily be overstated. It toned up all building operations and enabled them to keep pace with the city's rapidly growing needs; it facilitated the establishment and expansion of industries depending upon a full supply of skilled labor; it gave the city a fine body of industrious, well paid residents as homemakers and citizens—at a time when American artisans were very prone to seek land and raise farm produce. American business and industrial leaders in Milwaukee appreciated the German craftsmen who contributed largely to the prosperity of the city; and the same may be said of the common laborers.
The appearance of Germans with capital which sought investment in lines of business already pursued by Americans was no doubt less welcome, and to some it may have seemed like an intrusion. Generally, however, Germans began their business enterprises on so modest a scale, and built them up so gradually, that no serious economic dislocations could have been felt in consequence. In some cases the German business men merely undertook to meet demands created by the presence of their own people, which demands were not fully cared for by existing American enterprise. Perhaps no better illustration of this tendency can be found than the local tobacco trade. "Groceries," of course, carried the "plug tobacco" used so widely in those days by Americans of all classes, while drug stores handled cigars. But smoking was more nearly universal among European immigrants than among Americans. Germans accordingly set up tobacco shops, which usually included a department for the manufacture of cigars. The investments were all small, ranging from $50 to $4000, but the payroll was of some consequence to the city and the output considerable. It is believed that all firms of tobacconists or cigar manufacturers listed by the census takers in 1850 were Germans.
Another industry in which Germans were prominent in 1850 was tanning. This they did not monopolize, for several non-German tanners were operating at the same time. But G. Pfister and Company, Tanners, had an investment of $35,000 and, employing thirty-five men, manufactured an annual product valued at $45,000, while all other tanneries taken together had an aggregate investment of less than $7500.
In boot and shoe manufacturing one American firm was far in the lead.[3] Yet, on a smaller scale, German firms were participating in the business actively, while German craftsmen were an important element in the success of all shoe manufacturers. A similar statement will hold true in the department of brickmaking. A large number of Germans worked in the brickyards as experts, and several had small plants of their own. But the big brickyard of the city was not managed by Germans.[4] There was one single rope maker, who was a German, and also one glove and mitten manufacturer, who was also German. Both of these industries were small.
There remains the historically important Milwaukee industry of beer-brewing, popularly supposed to have been introduced by immigrants from Munich and other centers of beer manufacture in the fatherland. The census lists a total of ten establishments designated as breweries. Of these, seven were owned by Germans and three by non-Germans. The investments by the latter aggregated $27,000, those of the former $20,900. But the sum of the annual products of the German breweries was $41,062, while the aggregate product of the others was $32,425. The non-German brewery which had the largest investment was doing an annual business valued at less than the investment, while one of the German breweries having only $3000 invested reported a product valued at $18,000.[5]
When we consider mercantile lines as distinguished from the industrial, Germans were prominent in those which called for moderate investments. They had many small grocery stores scattered through the city, a number of meat markets, and of course a goodly proportion of liquor saloons. There were also several German clothing stores, confectioneries, and bakeries. That their business men expected to sell almost exclusively to Germans is indicated by the fact that for the most part they advertised only in the German language papers—the Wisconsin Banner and the Volksfreund,—not in the English papers. On the other hand, the American merchants, as we have already seen, catered to the German trade by providing German salesmen,[6] and they also advertised extensively in the German papers.
There were German taverns which did a thriving trade; the restaurants made the sojourner from Berlin feel at home; and the German beer gardens were the despair of the pious Yankee mothers of boys. So indispensable did German musicians become, that when the Sons of the Pilgrims banqueted, a brass band directed by a German bandmaster discoursed "martial as well as festive" music.
One other form of coöperation between Yankee and Teuton deserves to be mentioned—the employment of German girls in Yankee homes. This custom, testified to by German writers and indicated unmistakably by the census, was widespread. Such service was an immediate resource to the poorer immigrant families, and a boon to the American families as well. By that means numbers of future German homemakers came promptly into possession of the manners and customs of the Yankees, acquired their speech, and gained some insight into their distinctive views of life.
The least numerous of the special classes into which we have analyzed the German population of Milwaukee, in 1850, was the professional class. Yet it is not for that reason least important, for the little group of forty-five[7] persons contained most of the individuals whose views swayed public opinion among the 6000 Milwaukee Germans. Among them were two newspaper editors, each in charge of a German language paper. There were six lawyers, nine teachers, and eleven clergymen and preachers. Four of the preachers are described as German Lutheran, one was Evangelical, and one Methodist.[8] Two, Joseph Salzman and Franz Fusseden, were Catholic priests. One, F. W. Helfer, was called a "rationalist preacher." Two, John Mühlhauser and G. Klügel, were merely called preachers.
It is not strange that medicine, among all the professions, should have had the strongest representation. A physician, wherever trained, is equipped to practice anywhere, while a lawyer, clergyman, editor, or teacher is obliged to prepare for service by first fitting himself into the community he is to serve. German medical education was far superior to American at that time, and, in the western states at least, the supply of trained physicians was below the requirements. There were communities in Wisconsin where not one-fourth of the practitioners were graduates of medical schools or had honestly earned the title of "doctor."[9] This condition made a splendid opportunity for German physicians, who could hope to win the patronage of Americans as well as Germans. That the prospect was alluring to them is shown by the fact that Milwaukee at the census date in 1850 had seventeen German physicians, some of them already men of note in the community.
The Yankees and the Germans came into such close and intimate contacts in Milwaukee, that it is easier to study their normal attitudes there than in the outlying portions of the state. On the whole those relations, in the period terminating with the Civil War, appear to have been marked by mutual respect, if not active friendship. At all events, if there were differences causing ill will on one side or the other, these—so far as they were the outgrowth of the social, economic, or commercial interplay of the two groups—rarely became serious enough to be reflected in the public press. The prosperity of the city, providing usually full employment and adequate returns to all who wanted to work, made the bond between capitalist and employees satisfactory, and this solved one important aspect of the class problem. The absence of any decided public interest in the immigrant problem as affecting the city—other than politically—is a fact which obtrudes itself upon one who canvasses the Milwaukee papers, English and German, during the fourteen years which intervened between the first constitutional convention and the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.
Yet, there are not wanting evidences that the two groups were quite distinct and that the Germans, as a foreign group, were sensitively class conscious. This is shown, for example, by the race appeals in their business advertisements. To call attention to one's nationality when offering services of a personal nature, like those of the physician, or the dentist, or even the druggist, is reasonable and correct. But there is no good ground for assuming that nationality makes a difference to the purchaser of lime. Why then the advertisement of a Deutsche Kalk Haus(German lime house), unless there was a feeling that the German dealer would be favored by German buyers simply because he was German? This is a typical example which goes to show the existence of a city within a city, a German Milwaukee which tended to live its own group life, for which, as already explained, it possessed, within itself, great facilities.
Occasionally some relatively minor happening threw this feeling of separateness into strong relief, as when, in 1850, a German scholar published in the Milwaukee papers of his language the story of his relations with the chancellor and board of regents of the University. He thought they had promised him a chair, but afterwards they made it plain that no contract had been closed with him. He may or may not have had cause of complaint. But what he professed to do was to lay the whole matter before the Germans of Wisconsin, in order that they might know how the board of regents "flouts the wishes of the German citizens," how it keeps its promises "to Germans," and how little it regards the rules of ordinary courtesy "in dealing with Germans."[10] No doubt the design was to bring political pressure to bear on the regents, but the device would not have been resorted to had not the recognized racial unity among the Germans rendered that a hopeful plan.
In a society like the present Milwaukee, where inter-racial marriages are a daily occurrence, and one is rarely conscious of race in cases of that kind, the condition of seventy years ago seems almost incomprehensible. For, a close scrutiny of the entire census record for Milwaukee in 1850 reveals that marriages between Germans and Americans of all derivations at that time were excessively rare. The aggregate number of such unions was twelve. But of marriages between Yankees and Germans I can provisionally identify only six, as follows: Margaret, twenty-six years of age, born in Germany, was the wife of John H. Butler, a livery-stable keeper, born in New York. Hiram Brooks, twenty-seven, born in New York, was married to Mary, twenty-three, born in Hesse Darmstadt. James Ridgeway, thirty, a cooper, native of New York, was married to Mary, born in Prussia. Abram Davis, twenty-five, a cooper, born in New York, was married to C—, twenty-three, native of Bavaria. Joseph Stadter, thirty-three, physician, rated at $2000, who was born in Bavaria, was married to Sarah Ann, nineteen, born in New York (but a female who was a member of the family, and may have been this woman's mother, bore a German name). Finally, William Stamm, thirty-two, painter, native of Bremen, was married to Lucy, twenty-eight, a native of Massachusetts.
It is not possible to determine how many of the American born persons represented in the six cases may have belonged to German families, but doubtless some did. At all events, we can assert that in Milwaukee at that time, with its nearly 6000 Germans and nearly 4000 Yankees, not more than six cases can be found of marriages between them. No commentary is needed to establish the fact of the virtual segregation of the two great population groups.[11] If Chevalier, the French philosopher, was right in his conviction that "the Yankee is not a man of promiscuous society," it is equally true that the German at that time was excessively clannish. His clannishness was due, no doubt, to natural and inevitable causes, but the fact needs to be recognized by the student of history.
This disposition on the part of Germans to "hang together" was promptly discovered by American politicians and exploited for partisan and personal ends. The outstanding fact of the political history of the period under review is the attachment of the immigrant Germans to the Democratic party. That relation was all but absolute and universal during the 1840's, though a gradual change took place in the last half of the next decade. There was nothing mysterious about it. Germans found the country, on their arrival, living under a Democratic administration, to which they looked for favors and usually not in vain. The Democratic party was liberal in the bestowal of lands; it contended manfully against the principle of monopoly, especially in banking and other corporate activities; and it emphasized the doctrine of the equality of all men. The Germans, like the Irish and, in fact, all immigrants, were strongly attracted by the principles professed in Democratic platforms. The very word "democracy," had its winning appeal. "Democracy," wrote the editor of the Banner in 1850, "is a glorious word. There are few other words, in any language, which can be compared to it. To the poor man it is peculiarly precious since he is aware that he owes to it his escape from the serfdom in which his oppressors held him, and can now look up into heaven and thank his God that he has ceased to be a serf. Democracy knows no distinctions between man and man. She sets all upon the broad foundation of equality."[12]
The enormous prestige gained by the Democratic party under Jackson's leadership easily floated the administrations of Van Buren and Polk. But, as an influence toward captivating the foreign element in Wisconsin, no other Democratic principle had quite the efficacy of the liberal suffrage provision which the party in power adopted at the beginning of our history as a state.
In Michigan the makers of the state constitution had granted the voting privilege to all aliens who were bona fide residents and who had declared their intention to become citizens. That clause in her organic law drew the criticism of Whig members of Congress, but she was admitted to the union in spite of their opposition, and thus was established the principle that men might be voters without being citizens. When, in 1846, the territorial legislature of Wisconsin provided by law for the holding of a constitutional convention, a similar proviso was made to govern the election of delegates to the convention.
In Milwaukee County the Democrats nominated eight candidates for delegates. Dr. Franz Huebschmann was the sole German named. The Wisconsin Banner, while remarking that Germans constituting one-third of the population were to have but a single delegate, urged Germans to vote as one man for him. He was needed, said the editor, especially to contend for equality in the voting privilege, for which he had striven manfully during the past three years. In the neighbor county of Washington, Germans were urged to support two Irish candidates who favored equality of the voting privilege and whom the Whigs (so it was asserted) were trying to defeat by the same wiles they employed against Huebschmann. The moral of the Banner editorials was: "Don't trust the Whigs. They have always opposed the rights of the foreign born."[13] In preparation for the vote on delegates, Milwaukee Germans who had not declared their intention were given every direction for completing that formality, and the indications are that a large number of voters were newly made for the occasion.
Dr. Huebschmann, in the first convention, was a powerful advocate of equality, giving as the chief ground in favor of the principle that it would tend to bring Americans and foreigners into more harmonious relations with one another. "The more distinctions you make between them politically," he said, "the more you delay this great end [amalgamation], which is so essential to the future welfare of this state. And, in fact, I regard only one measure equally important as the political equality which I ask for, and that is a good common school system.... Political equality and good schools will make the people of Wisconsin an enlightened and happy people. They will make them one people."[14]
On the educational question Huebschmann found the Yankee majority of the convention eager to welcome his coöperation. On the subject of suffrage their unity was less complete. While party lines were not strictly drawn, the chief contenders for equality were leading Democrats and the chief opponents leading Whigs. But both conventions adopted the principle, the first not quite frankly, and with the admission of Wisconsin into the union all foreign born persons who had resided in the state one year prior to any election had the right to vote, provided they had declared their intention to become citizens of the United States.
The adoption of such a liberal suffrage provision in the teeth of the nativist movement which had affected all parts of the country more or less, was considered a great triumph of Democratic principles. And there is no doubt about the gratitude of adoptive citizens to the party which secured them the boon. To the Germans it seemed thenceforward a simple question of loyalty to support the Democratic party, through thick and thin, through good report and evil report. Inasmuch as the Democratic party also supported the Germans' views on the subject of temperance (prohibition), soon to become a burning issue,[15] and in their contest with the more serious manifestations of Know-Nothingism, which in this state reached its climax somewhat later, one almost wonders how any of the Germans were able to detach themselves from that party, despite its failure to represent them on the slavery and free-soil issues.
The temperance movement and nativism were the chief grounds of political contention between Germans and Yankees during this period. The first of these broke, in 1853-55, on the rock of German—which meant Democratic—opposition. For, although a referendum vote had gone in favor of the enactment of a "Maine Law," the Democratic legislature chosen at the same time refused to accept the result as mandatory, and did not pass the law. And when the first Republican legislature did pass such a law, in the early months of the year 1855, Barstow, the Democratic governor, vetoed the bill. Never thereafter did the temperance issue become as acute as it had been during the seven years immediately following statehood, but it is not strange that their record on that question was one of the standing arguments against Republicanism among the German voters.[16]
The Know-Nothing issue, which was supposed to be dying out at the time of the Wisconsin constitutional conventions, 1846-1848, revived after the Mexican War, figured prominently in the defeat of General Scott in 1852, and in this state as well as in some other states rose to dramatic and even tragic interest in 1855. Thereafter it declined, to pass away for the time being with the election of Lincoln and the engulfing of the nation in war.
But the Know-Nothingism of 1855 was regarded by the Democratic party as sinister because, as that party professed to believe, it had got itself incorporated as an important if not controlling element in the new Republican party. This the Republican leaders and organs denied with vigor, but it is true that the general council of the American party in this state urged the support of the Republican candidates and professed to have contributed 20,000 votes toward the election of Bashford. The Republicans had no objection to Know-Nothing votes, but they feared that the endorsement of their ticket by the Know-Nothings would cost them more foreign born votes than it would gain them nativists. It was tactically wise for the Democrats, and especially the German Democratic press, to keep the "Republican-Know-Nothing" idea before their people—and they made the best use of the opportunity.
"Temperance," after all, was regarded by the Germans as merely a manifestation of Puritan fanaticism, which must be opposed in the interest of personal liberty. Much as they disliked it, their opposition does not seem to have developed excessive bitterness against the believers in or practicers of temperance. But nativism, which demanded that the suffrage be limited to citizens; that naturalization be made more difficult; that in some departments, as in the army, natives be favored to the exclusion of the foreign born, this they felt to be a deliberate and vicious attack upon the rights of the foreign born as a class. The advocacy of these principles involved much discussion of the unfitness of foreigners, their ignorance, their sordidness, their "un-American" habits and customs, in one important respect their "anti-American" religion.
All of this inevitably roused a bitter, fighting resentment on the part of all foreigners, as it did among radical natives also, and it is well known that many parts of the country suffered in consequence from riots and other manifestations of a class war. In Wisconsin there was less overt hostility than in some states where the foreign elements were not so powerful.[17] The Know-Nothing party as such functioned seriously only in the one year 1855, and its propaganda was relatively mild-mannered.[18] Its chief objects of attack were the foreign born Catholics, which class included a majority of the Irish but only a fraction of the Germans, most of whom—probably—were either Lutheran or Reformed, with an appreciable number of non-churchmen or "free-thinkers."[19] Nevertheless, nativism, as entangled in the political psychology of this eventful year, had its full share in producing a tragedy in this state also.
It came in the form of a lynching, carried out with hideous barbarism by a body of the ruder Germans of Washington County, in August, 1855. It seems that a sickly, weak witted boy of nineteen, named George DeBar—a native of New York State—felt himself aggrieved by a German farmer and proposed to administer a beating. This he partly accomplished, at the farmer's home, but his victim fled into the field, where he found a hiding place. Meantime, DeBar ran amuck, and meeting the man's wife stabbed her severely but not fatally. He next pursued a fifteen-year-old boy, Paul Winderling, who was living with the farmer, attacked him with his pocketknife, and killed him. He then burned the farmer's cabin. DeBar afterwards solemnly assured his attorneys that the only part of the transaction he could remember was striking the farmer himself with a stone knotted in his handkerchief. The belief was widespread that he became unbalanced mentally at this point, which theory is really the simplest explanation of his horrible crime, committed without assignable motive.
Immediately on DeBar's arrest a plan was hatched to storm the jail, take him out, and hang him. The death penalty had been abolished at the instance, as many felt, of the Yankee sentimentalists, and the ignorance of some suggested that, since hanging was only justice in a case like this, and the state refused to execute a criminal, the people themselves had a right to take the matter into their own hands. Unfortunately, a similar case had happened two weeks earlier at Janesville, in which the avenging crowd was made up of Americans.[20] It was suggested by some that DeBar was himself a Know-Nothing, or at least trained with the Know-Nothing element, and there were dire whispers about the trial judge, Charles H. Larrabee. Doubtless these rumors were altogether wild. The nineteen-year-old DeBar, practically non compos mentis, was of no possible political consequence, while Judge Larrabee at the time was as sound a Democrat as could be found.[21] But passions once fully aroused hurl reason from its throne, and so it was in this case. The rowdies gathered at a drinking place in West Bend, and decided on a lynching.
Judge Larrabee convened a special session of court, impaneled a grand jury, and having summoned two companies of militia—the Union Guards of Ozaukee County, a German company, and the Washington Guards, another German company, of Milwaukee—to come up for the protection of the prisoner, had him conveyed to the courthouse and examined. The grand jury brought in a true bill, charging murder in the first degree. To this the prisoner, on the advice of his attorneys, pleaded "not guilty." The multitude which had been permitted to press into the court room, despite the judge's instruction to the militia to limit the number to the seating capacity of the room, fairly raged when they found a trial would be required, and before the prisoner took many steps in the direction of the jail, they seized him and made way with him.
The severest censure was leveled against the militia companies and their leaders. All the American writers whose statements appear in the Sentinel charge that these companies fraternized with the lynching party, and practically assert that they had an understanding by which the prisoner was to be given up to them. The captain of the Milwaukee company, who was a veteran of the Mexican War—though a German immigrant—insisted with vigor that his company did all it could to prevent the lynching. He did not speak for the Union Guards of Ozaukee. All witnesses agree that one of the Union Guard officers, Lieutenant Beger, performed his duty manfully and heroically, but the weight of the testimony condemns the companies as organizations, and especially their captains. It would seem that two companies of militia, if well led, ought to have been able with the butts of their guns to hold off a rabble of three hundred men, and no witness puts the number higher than that, while some declare the rush was made by not more than thirty-five men.
In the Milwaukee captain's statement, as in the statements of other German apologists for the militia, we come at once upon the political note. They could not expect the "Know-Nothing American writers" to tell the truth about the tragedy. In other words, they found in the politics of the time an opportunity to charge prejudice against Americans, and by that means to dodge the real issue. Two German writers of West Bend, one of them the undersheriff, bitterly denounced both the militia companies and the lynchers, and both more than hint that the passions which led to the lynching were partly religious. Here, undoubtedly, we come upon one of the signs of division among the Germans themselves. It is possible that these two Germans were politically opposed to the main body of their fellow-countrymen, for by this time a light minority had already been attracted away from the Democratic party. However, we do not know that this was true, and merely call attention to the several psychological attitudes which, from the testimony, we know the case disclosed.
Of greatest interest is the attitude of English and German language papers of Democratic and Republican proclivities. The Sentinel continued to admit contributions on the West Bend tragedy for approximately two weeks. It also published the results of an investigation made on the ground by one of its staff, and a petition to the governor, said to have been signed by 186 residents of Washington County, who asked for the disbandment of the two accused companies and the withdrawal of their officers' commissions. But the Sentinel does not appear to have tried by means of the incident to influence the political situation which was about to become superheated. At all events, what it published would all have been legitimate as news. On the other hand, the Banner und Volksfreund,[22] while condemning the lynching, made no demand for the punishment of the lynchers. It tried to exculpate the militia companies (accepting the Milwaukee captain's testimony as against all other evidence), and deliberately charged that the Sentinel, in publishing the above-mentioned petition, was playing for political advantage. This charge was absurd on its face, for the success of the new Republican movement which the Sentinel had espoused depended on its ability to detach Germans from the Democratic party, which assuredly could not be done by playing into the hands of the Know-Nothings, and the Sentinel did not hesitate to declare the Know-Nothing support a handicap to the party.
Both American and German testimony discloses the existence in Washington County of a strong German party of law and order. They deplored the lynching and urged the apprehension and trial of the ringleaders. They realized that the crime would put a stigma upon their race as well as upon the county and the state. But, as a matter of fact, although some of the lynchers were identified in the verdict of the coroner's jury, it must be recorded that no earnest effort was made to punish them.[23] Nor was any step of an official character taken (so far as I have been able to find) to determine the guilt or innocence of the militia companies and their officers. In fact, the Democratic press of the state, evidently fearful of sacrificing some German Democratic votes, which that year were all needed, deliberately tried to darken council by confounding this case in principle not only with the Mayberry case, which it resembled, but also with another of an entirely different nature, to which we must give passing attention.
In the previous year, 1854, occurred at Milwaukee the famous Glover rescue. Glover was a runaway slave who had been apprehended by his self-styled owner, brutally man-handled, and confined in the Milwaukee County jail for safekeeping. Sherman M. Booth, editor of the Daily Free Democrat, one of the founders of the Republican party, a vigorous free-soil and antislavery partisan, and the man in the state who was perhaps most feared and hated by the Democracy, had argued hotly for the protection of Glover's rights against the man claiming him under the "unconstitutional" compromise law of 1850. Booth called a public meeting at the courthouse for the purpose, as he claimed, of concerting measures for helping Glover without the use of force. But the upshot was a rescue party which battered down the door of the jail, took Glover out, and by various shifts and transfers on the underground railway, carried him to Canada and freedom. Booth was then made to suffer for all that had been done; he was tried in the federal court, convicted, fined, and given a jail sentence.
We cannot go into the details of the Booth case, a cause célèbre in ante-Civil War political history. But the Democratic papers, after the DeBar lynching, ostentatiously bemoaned the fact that due to recent events "neither national nor state laws" could hereafter be enforced in Wisconsin. The beginning of the trouble was the setting at naught of the national law for the rendition of slaves, in which the arch Republican Booth was ringleader. The Mayberry lynching and the DeBar lynching followed in natural sequence. These editors did not choose to analyze the difference between the Glover case and the others—the fact that the one was a rescue performed at their own risk by philanthropic men, the others brutal killings committed by men crazed with the lust of blood vengeance. In other words, the Democratic press, including those papers printed in the German language, attempted the impossible feat of arranging in the same straight line the "higher law" and the lower law.
Of course, the Republican press retorted handsomely, and probably with considerable political effect, that if the apologists for mob law in Kansas were "in favor of the execution of the fugitive slave act in Wisconsin" they would like their avowal to that effect.[24] It is well known that during the 1855 campaign, as in the previous year, a good many Germans were converted from their old-time Democratic allegiance.[25] But both parties were too intent on their immediate political objects to risk pressing for an investigation of the West Bend tragedy, which might have alienated a large section of the German vote in three German counties.
It is not impossible that politics was responsible for the severity of the onslaught upon the militia companies, since the nativist propaganda for an exclusively American militia would be quick to seize upon such an opportunity, and it is not to be supposed that the politics of the case was all on one side. Yet, unless the governor was in possession of facts which were withheld from the public, the least that could be said against the companies is that they exhibited criminal inefficiency. From this distance, it looks as if politics affected the Republican attitude as well as the Democratic; as if crime was condoned in the interest of party success, since one party was intent on holding its former German adherents and the other was determined to take as many of them as possible into the opposition camp.
Whether or not the incident leaves the stain of blood on the path of Wisconsin politics, it marks the nearest approach to a race war between Germans and Americans which this general period affords. And by Americans we practically mean Yankees. For it was a truth which the German press sensed instinctively, that the Republican party—made up of "shreds and patches," as was said,—embracing prohibitionists, abolitionists, free-soilers, nativists, and Whigs, was dominated by the "Puritan" element.[26] A glance at the history of its origin in Wisconsin will at least convince the reader of its Yankee paternity.[27]
However, the Republican party changed radically in character during the next few years, and as the German population came to be distributed between it and the Democratic party, a healthier social tone was the result. The political campaign of 1856, when Frémont was candidate for the presidency, was conducted with such enthusiasm by Wisconsin Republicans, as to make serious inroads on the Democratic German vote. A number of prominent German leaders took the stump for Frémont, speaking in the German language to German audiences with telling effect. Thereafter, in successive state campaigns and in the presidential canvass of 1860, the Germans of Wisconsin were electrified by the compelling oratory of their greatest campaigner, Carl Schurz, to whom the success of the Lincoln ticket, both in Wisconsin and other western states harboring many Germans, was largely due. Such participation was doing much to justify the prophecy of Dr. Huebschmann—that political equality would help to make the people of Wisconsin "one people."
Footnotes[edit]
48 Daily Free Democrat, December 27, 1850.
49 Nordamerika, Wisconsin, Calumet. Winke für Auswanderer (edition of 1849), 64.
50 Bradley and Metcalf.
51 It was managed by G. and J. Burnham, who had an investment of $10,000.
52 This was John Braun's. Best and Company had the largest investment among the German brewers, $7400, but their output was only $11,250. Other German brewers were Weizt, Englehardt, Stolz and Schuder, H. Nunnemacher, and H. Beverung.
53 If our count is correct, the 1850 census lists as "clerks" fifty-one Germans. Doubtless many of these were serving in American stores.
54 Or thirty-six, if we omit the teachers, some of whom at least were probably not liberally educated.
55 The Lutherans included a Fr. Lachner, C. Eisenmeyer, and Ludwig Dulitz; the Evangelical preacher was Christian Holl, and the Methodist, Christian Barth.
56 The Western Medical Society of Wisconsin, representing the counties of Grant, Iowa, and Lafayette, reported in December, 1850, that out of sixty persons engaged in the practice of medicine in that area, only twelve were entitled to be called "doctor." Daily Free Democrat, January 8, 1850.
57 "The University and the Germans," Daily Wisconsin Banner, August 23, 1850.
58 The remaining cases of marriages between Germans and Americans were briefly as follows: A whitewasher, born in Pennsylvania, was married to a German woman; tailor, born "in U. S.," married to a German; a weaver, born in Germany, married to a woman born in Pennsylvania; a laborer, born in Ohio, married to a German woman; a stage driver, born in Ohio, married to a German woman; a minister (M. E.), native of Hanover, married to a woman born in Illinois.
59 Daily Wisconsin Banner, August 1, 1850 (translation).
60 Wisconsin Banner, August 29, 1846.
61 Wis. Hist. Colls., xxvii, 235.
62 See this magazine, vi, 395-398 (June, 1923).
63 "Events teach us," said the Banner und Volksfreund, October 15, 1855 (in the thick of the bitter Barstow-Bashford campaign), "that the Shanghais (Republicans) despite their prating of antislavery, are further removed from actual human freedom than the slaveholders themselves. The occurrences of the past year, during which the Shanghais have been dominant in various state legislatures, have shown us that this party is the incubator of the temperance law." This line was followed vigorously through the campaign.
64 Note, for example, the Louisville, Kentucky, riots in which the Germans were driven from the city. The Wisconsin Democracy, in August, 1855, made that the excuse for a resolution refusing seats in the convention to men of Know-Nothing proclivities. See Argus and Democrat (Madison), August 29, 1855.
65 See the Milwaukee American, 1855-1856, which was the party organ.
66 Those belonging to the Turner Society are generally classified as "free thinkers." The Turner Zeitung, national organ of the Society in 1855, was Republican in its politics, which probably influenced the result in Wisconsin.
67 The Mayberry lynching. The lynchers were loggers from an up-river camp belonging to the murdered man.
68 See his letter, MS, to Lyman Draper, August 28, 1855.
69 In the year 1855 the Wisconsin Banner and the Volksfreund were united and became the Wisconsin Banner und Volksfreund.
70 "Fifteen participators in the lynching affair were indicted and tried for the murder of DeBar in May, 1856. They were acquitted, as the testimony did not sustain the allegation that 'he came to his death by hanging,' there being a reasonable doubt as to his being alive when he was hung the last time." History of Washington and Ozaukee Counties (1881), 358. Editor's italics.
71 See a brilliant editorial by Colonel David Atwood, in the Daily State Journal at Madison, for August 13, 1855.
72 See the article in Banner und Volksfreund, July 28, 1855, entitled "The So-Called Republicans:" "We encounter in the Watertown Anzeiger the following appropriate article concerning the so-called Republican (vulgarly Shanghai) party, by which so many Germans were duped at the last election and which expects to repeat the same swindling tactics in the approaching election." (Translation). The election of Coles Bashford as governor was due in part to German votes.
73 "The temperance swindle," says Banner und Volksfreund, October 16, 1855, "is an outflow of Puritan bigotry and comports with other of their pious pretensions, for example, such a rigorous observance of the Sabbath as will reduce all sociability to the condition of a Puritan graveyard. For this sort of thing, also, is the Republican party the fruitful soil. The Know-Nothings harmonize, in these matters, with the Republicans."
74 Success was to render it practically as cosmopolitan as a protracted career of triumphs had long since rendered the Democratic party.