Scenes such as these, and quite as amusing, were of constant occurrence in those days in Philadelphia. “All night long in that sweet little village was heard the soft note of the pistol and the dying scream of the victim.” Now, be it noted, that a stuffed dead duck had become the gonfalon or banner of the Republicans, and where it swung there the battle was fiercest. There was a young fellow from South Carolina, who had become a zealous Union man, and who made up for a sinful lack of sense by a stupendous stock of courage. One morning there came into the office an object—and such an object! His face was all swathed and hidden in bloody bandages; he was tattered, and limped, and had his arm in a sling.
“In the name of Heaven, who and what are you?” I exclaimed. “And who has been passing you through a bark-mill that you look so ground-up?”
In a sepulchral voice he replied, “I’m ---, and last night I carried the dead duck!”
Till I came on the Press there was, it may be said, almost no community between the Germans of North Philadelphia and the Americans in our line. But I had become intimate with Von Tronk, a Hanoverian of good family, a lawyer, and editor, I believe, of the Freie Presse. I even went once or twice to speak at German meetings. In fact, I was getting to be considered “almost as all de same so goot ash Deutsch,” and very “bopular.” One day Von Tronk came with a request. There was to be an immense German Republican Massenversammlung or mass-meeting in a great beer-garden. “If Colonel Forney could only be induced to address them!” I undertook to do it. It was an entirely new field to him, but one wondrous rich in votes. Now Colonel Forney, though from Lancaster County and of German-Swiss extraction,
knew not a word of the language, and I undertook to coach him.
“You will only need one phrase of three words,” I said, “to pull you through; but you must pronounce them perfectly and easily. They are Freiheit und Gleichheit, ‘freedom and equality.’ Now, if you please, fry-height.”
The Colonel went at his lesson, and being naturally clever, with a fine, deep voice, in a quarter of an hour could roar out Freiheit und Gleichheit with an intonation which would have raised a revolution in Berlin. We came to the garden, and there was an immense sensation. The Colonel had winning manners, with a manly mien, and he was duly introduced. When he rose to speak there was dead silence. He began—
“Friends and German Fellow-citizens:—Yet why should I distinguish the words, since to me every German is a friend. I am myself, as you all know, of unmingled German extraction, and I am very, very proud of it. But there is one German sentiment which from a child has been ever in my heart, and from infancy ever on my lips, and that sentiment, my friends, is Freiheit und Gleichheit!”
If ever audience was astonished in this world it was that of the Massenversammlung when this burst on their ears. They hurrahed and roared and banged the tables in such a mad storm of delight as even Colonel Forney had never seen surpassed. Rising to the occasion, he thundered on, and as he reached the end of every sentence he repeated, with great skill and aptness, Freiheit und Gleichheit.
“You have made two thousand votes by that speech, Colonel,” I said, as we returned. “Von Tronk will manage it at this crisis.” After that, when the Colonel jested, he would called me “the Dutch vote-maker.” This was during the Grant campaign.