GERMANS
477
GERMANS
mob and hammered it into an army". Nor should we
forget to cite the name of Herkimer, than whom no
braver man fought in the War for Independence. He
was the son of a Palatine immigrant, and in the battle
of Oriskany — "of all the battles of the Revolution,
the most obstinate and murderous" — those whom
Herkimer led were largely Palatines. To them and
their brave leader belongs largely the credit of making
possible the victory of Saratoga, by which the struggle
for the Hudson was ended, and the vital union of the
northern Colonies secured.
The Germans also did their duty in full in the War of 1812 and in the Mexican War. What they did to keep the United States together, can be learned from an article by General Franz Sigel, which was published at St. Louis after his death. The General calls atten- tion to the historical fact, that, three days after the surrender of Fort Sumter, when the City of Washing- ton was in imminent peril of falling into the hands of the Confederates, this catastrophe was prevented by the arrival of a detachment of infantry and cavalry from Pennsylvania, the five companies of which were chiefly composed of Germans, both from the older and from the more recent immigrant stock. Again, when St. Louis was in extreme danger of falling into the hands of the Confederacy it was four regiments of volunteers, mainly German, and one regiment com- manded by Sigel that surrounded the camp of the Confederates and made them prisoners. There were, during that war, not fewer than 176,767 Germans in the United States Army. Of the more than 5,000 officers of the German contingent, the following may here be mentioned: the exiled popular leader Fried- rich Hecker. who was one of the first to form a vohm- teer regiment, Gustav von Struve, General Blenker, General Osterhaus, Jos. Fickler, Nepomuk Katzen- mayer. General Alexander von Schimmelpfennig, General Max Weber, General Sigel, and Captain Albert Sigel, a brother of the General, August Willich, the commander of a regiment from Indiana, and especially General Carl Schurz, who commanded the eleventh corps at the battle of Gettysburg. It is deserving of mention that among the Germans, the advocates of the abolition of slavery were always prominent. The first German settlers in this country, were also signers of the first anti-slavery petition in America (1688).
Although the first German colonists themselves, for the most part, had no higher education than what was to be acquired in the German village schools of that time, they considered it their duty to establish schools for their children, and therefore, as a rule, brought teachers over with them. School attendance was always looked upon as a serious matter, almost as serious as the teaching of religion, which was com- bined with elementary instruction, so that German colonies thus paved the way for compulsory education. Men like Muehlenberg and Schlatter did much in the way of improving the schools. The development of German literature in America, including thousands of pulilications, went liand in hand with this progress. The first German Bible pulilislicd in the New World appeared in 1743, forty years before an English Bible was printed in America. The " Public Academy of the City of Philadelphia", now the University of Pennsylvania, is the first American school into which German was introduced. Gradually the language was introduced into the public schools of cities with a large German population, and numerous German private schools were established in the different parts of the country. And after educated Americans had become acquainted with German educational methods, German literature, and German science, either directly by attending German schools of learning, or indirectly from France through England, they enthusiastically advocated educational reform based upon the German models. It is no exaggeration to speak of a gradual
" Germanization" of most of the greater American
colleges. "Although Great Britain is generally re-
garded as the mother of the United States, Germany
has, from an intellectual standpoint, become more and
more the second mother of the American Republic.
More than any other country, Germany has made the
universities and colleges of America what they are to-
day — a powerful force in the development of American
Civilization" (Andrew D. White).
B. The German Catholics in America. A certain proportion of the Palatines who went to England were of the Catholic Faith, but they were not allowed to proceed to the American colonies, neither was the English government willing to permit their prolonged residence in England. They were therefore returned under government passports to the Palatinate. But of those who came later and directly to America, undoubtedly, a consitlerable number were Catholics. In 1741 the German Province of the Society of Jesus, sent out two priests to minister to the German Catho- lics in Pennsylvania. These were Father William Wappeler (born 22 January, 1711, in the Diocese of Mainz), co-founder of the mission of Conewago, and Father Theodore Schneider, a Palatine (born at Geinsheim, Diocese of Speyer, 7 April, 1703), who took up his residence at Goshenhoppen, in Berks County. Other German Jesuits came later on, among them Fathers James Frambach (died 1795 at Cone- wago), Luke Geissler (died at Lancaster, in 1786), Lawrence Graessel, who was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Carroll, but died in Philadelphia, of yellow fever, before consecration, James Pellentz, one of Bishop Carroll's vicars-general (died at Conewago in 1800), Matthias Sittensperger (changed his name to Manners), Ferdinand Steinmayr (Farmer), who, according to Bishop Carroll, founded the first Catho- lic congregation in New York (died in Philadelpliia, 17 August, 1787, in the odour of sanctity). Father Farmer was a member of the famous Philosopliical Society of Philadelphia, and was made a niemlier of the Board ofTrustees of the University of Piiihidelpliia, when that institution was chartered in 177!). To these early missionaries may be added Father John Baptist de Ritter, who was a German, though a mem- ber of the Belgian Province. He died at Goshen- hoppen, 3 February, 1787. Father Schneider was the pastor of the parish at Goshenhoppen for twenty- three years, ministering to the Catholics there and in the region for fifty miles around. Before he died, in 1764, he had the satisfaction of seeing the Church firmly established in Pennsylvania. His companion. Father Wappeler, founded the mission of the Sacred Heart at Conewago. Of him. Bishop Carroll wrote that " he was a man of much learning and unbounded zeal ". Having remained about eight years in America, and converted or reclaimed many to the Faith of Christ, he was forced by bad health to return to Europe. His successor, Father Pellentz, built the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the first in the country under that title. It is not probable that there was any large, or indeed appreciable, number of German Catholics in any other colony at that time, with the exception of Lo\iisiana, whose French in- habitants sliared and honoured their religion, whereas most of the English colcmies had severe laws against the " Papists". But gradually all were opened to Catholics.
From a letter by the Rev. Dr. Carroll to the Rev. C. Plowden, in 1785, we learn that in that year he visited Philadelphia, New York, and the upper countries of the Jerseys and Pennsylvania, "where our worthy German brethren have formed congregations". Al- though we do not know of any German settlement in the Far West during the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, we find during that period German priests labouring among the Indian tribes on the coast of the Pacific, and in the south-western States. The first
