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.[1] A glance at the history of its origin in Wisconsin will at least convince the reader of its Yankee paternity.[2]
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
