The German soldier in the wars of the United States
by Joseph George Rosengarten
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Excerpt:
The share of the Germans in the wars of the United States is by no means limited to that of the Rebellion. From the very outset of their settlement in this country they always stood ready to take their place in its defence. On the borders of what was then the West, the early German immigrants were steady in their support of the British flag against their hereditary enemies, the French. This was natural enough, for many of the Germans who first came to this country did so in order to seek refuge from the French invaders, who rode rough-shod over their humble homes in the districts of Germany devastated by French soldiers. Even among those who came here to find a new home in which they could worship God in their own way, while they sympathized with the Quakers in their doctrine of not bearing arms voluntarily, the German blood did not easily accommodate itself to the doctrine -of non-resistance, and when they could not make friends of the Indians by peaceful means, the German settlers did not hesitate to take up arms in defence of their homes. The Germans of Pennsylvania and New York responded freely to the summons to defend their new country against the French and their allies, the Indians. They gave freely of their men and their means to the cause of liberty in the war of the Revolution. They took a full share in the war of 1812, and in the Mexican war. Finally, wherever the Germans were strongest in number, they were represented in even more than proportionate strength in the forces raised for the defence of the Union. From New York and Pennsylvania they went forth in great strength in regiments and individually. They saved Missouri to the Union, and Ohio and Illinois and Indiana and Wisconsin and Kansas may well point with pride to their German citizens as foremost in doing their duty in war and in peace. The story of their achievements in war is a subject on which little has hitherto been said.
The Germans from the Palatinate had been scattered on the frontier, facing the Indians and the French in New York and Pennsylvania. The early settlers in South and North Carolina and Georgia were also largely recruited from the Germans, and they, too, had still another hostile force to meet, that of the Spanish troops and Indians, whose masters were unwilling to see their territory threatened and diminished. The good Moravians gave up their settlements in Georgia rather than fight, and thus lost the fruits of some years of labor in their schools and churches. The sturdy Protestants from the Palatinate were not afraid to take up arms in defence of their own homes, and in a very short time the British government, which had brought them here as an act of benevolence, found a good return in the services rendered by the German settlers as peace-makers with the Indians, and when necessary, as soldiers against the French and the Spanish and their native allies.
Jacob Leisler, the first American rebel, was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and came to New York as a soldier in the pay of the West India Company. He engaged in trade and took sea-ventures, on one of which, in 1678, he was captured by the Turks, and compelled to secure his freedom by a large ransom. He was a rebel, but he did not act without the hearty support of the mass of the people, nor did he use his power corruptly or basely. He had the support of a large and growing majority of the people, and both by political and social alliances with the best men of the colony, he took his place at their head. He was led into violence by his passionate fear and hatred of the Catholics, and although he was hanged on May 15, 1691, the victim of a counterrevolution, Parliament in 1695 passed an act reversing the attainder of Leisler and his associates and annulling all the convictions. The act not only recognized his appointment by the Assembly, but treats it as confirmed by letters royal. The record of New York is indelibly stained by the cruelty and sacrifice through political malice of two brave and active lives, and Leisler is another instance of the German soldier serving and falling for his adopted country and in assertion and defence of principles now of universal acceptance.
In 1711, Governor Hunter entered upon a large scheme for introducing laborers into the province of New York. He found them in the German districts known as the Palatinate, where the French had ravaged the country and impoverished the people. He secured from the British government a grant of ten thousand pounds for the project, and entered into a contract to transport the immigrants, and to maintain them for a while, in return for their labor. The number is commonly stated at three thousand persons, but authorities differ on the subject. At a hearing in London in 1720, a committee of the Palatines, as they were called, placed the original migration at between three and four thousand; statistics show that two thousand two hundred and twenty-seven went upon the lands provided upon the banks of the Hudson, while three hundred and fifty-seven remained in New York. A third immigration occured in 1722. Their coming was a marked event, for it added nearly ten per cent, to the total population. Governor Hunter declared that the enterprise involved a loss of twenty thousand pounds. They found homes in the Mohawk Valley, where Palatine Bridge and the town of German Flats preserve their memory.*
John Peter Zenger established the New York Weekly jfournal on November 5, 1733. He came over when a boy in the Palatine migration, and was an apprentice to Bradford in Philadelphia. Zenger was arrested and imprisoned by Governor Cosby for his attacks, the papers containing them burned by the hangman, and the matter was then transferred to the courts. Zenger was reproached as an emigrant, daring to touch on the royal representative and his prerogatives. Arrested in 1734, he was at first denied pen, ink, and paper, yet
* Hendrich Frey, a native of Zurich, Switzerland, settled west of Palatine Bridge in the Mohawk Valley before 1700.
he contrived to edit the Journal from his prison. The grand jury refused to find a bill for libel, and proceedings were instituted by information by the Attorney-General. Defended by Andrew Hamilton, a Quaker, who came from Philadelphia specially, Zenger's case became a turning-point on the great question of the truth justifying a libel. Hamilton attacked the claim of the governor, denounced the practice of information for libel, and asserted that this was not the cause of a poor printer, but of liberty and of every American. The triumphant result secured by Hamilton has made his name famous in the judicial history of America. Zenger's trial overthrew the effort of arbitrary power to suppress free speech, to control courts of justice, to rule by royal prerogative. The jury turned the judge out of court, and Zenger was sustained in the right to criticise the administration, and his criticisms were declared to be true and just. Zenger therefore gained for the people the freedom of the press, and through it their right to deliberate and act so as best to secure their rights.
