“Swordmaker of the Confederacy.”
“Swordmaker of the Confederacy.”—Louis Haiman, born in Colmar, Prussia, who came to the United States at a tender age with his family and was brought to Columbus, Georgia, then a small village. At the outbreak of the Civil War Haiman was following the trade of a tinner. “His work,” according to the Atlanta “Constitution,” was successful, “and in 1861 he opened a sword factory to supply the Confederacy a weapon that the South at the time had poor facilities for making. Such was Haiman’s success that in a year’s time his factory covered a block in the town of Columbus and was the most extensive business in the place. The first sword made by Haiman was presented to Col. Peyton H. Colquitt, and was one of the handsomest in all the Southern army. It was inlaid with gold, and was constantly used by Colonel Colquitt up to the time of his death. After that Haiman made swords for the officers of the Confederate army, and his first order came from Captain Wagner, in charge of the arsenal at Montgomery, Ala.Later on, to supply the needs of the troops in Southern Georgia and Alabama, he added a manufactory of firearms and accoutrements to his establishment. When the Federal army occupied Georgia Haiman’s property was confiscated and turned into a federal arsenal. General Wilson, commander of the army of occupation, proposed to restore to Haiman his property if he would take the oath of allegiance to the Federal authority, but Haiman’s unswerving loyalty to the cause of the South would not for a moment allow him to brook such a suggestion, and with the departure of the troops his factory was razed to the ground. His swords came to be famous in the ranks of the Confederacy, and their temper and durability have often called to mind the supreme test of swords related in ‘Ivanhoe’ between the leaders of Christendom and heathendom, Richard Coeur de Lion and Saladin. After the war, with the resources left him, he entered business at Columbus, that of manufacturing plows.”
Tolstoy on American Liberty.
Tolstoy on American Liberty.—Although Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, New York City, never surrendered the decoration bestowed upon him by the Kaiser, and though he had delivered sundry sound scoldings to England for her professed fears of German aggression, in the days before the war, his name stands out conspicuously among a considerable number of heads of colleges for the suppression of free speech and liberty of conscience in regard to the war. A number of the professors, several of international fame, were compelled to resign under the pressure exercised from above, and Columbia became known for its spirit of intolerance. Among those who felt this was Count Ilya Tolstoy, son of the famous Russian author and philosopher, himself a man of distinction in those fields.
In February, 1917, even before we entered the war, Tolstoy’s engagement to deliver a lecture at a meeting of the International Club in the assembly room of Philosophy Hall, Columbia University, was summarily cancelled, although he had delivered the same lecture without molestation at Princeton a few days before. In an interview the distinguished savant said:
“The action of Columbia University was no insult to me. It was an insult to the vaunted institution of free speech in this country. I shall go back to Russia and tell them the story. I shall tell them how New York prevented me from giving the lecture I gave before thousands in Moscow. They will be astonished. My countrymen have made your heralded freedom of speech a shibboleth of liberty—in our land.... It matters little. I am surprised, but not hurt. Only I have learned that Russia has much more freedom from personal prejudice, in many ways, than this country has.”—New York “American,” February 12, 1917.
Commercial Treaty with Germany and How it Was Observed.
Commercial Treaty with Germany and How it Was Observed.—One of the most humane and liberal treaties in the history of nations was that entered into between the United States and Prussia in 1799. It was renewed in 1828 and became the treaty governing the relations between Germany and ourselves in 1871 on the establishment of the German Empire.
This treaty was in force in 1917 when we entered the war. Some high eulogiums have been passed upon this treaty, which was signed by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Quincy Adams, and, in 1828, by Henry Clay, on the part of the United States, and by the authorized representative of Frederick the Great, on the other. In his comments on this treaty, Theodore Lyman, Jr., a writer with a strong Tory tendency and chary of praise as regards Prussia, makes the following observations in his “The Diplomacy of the United States” (1828):
This treaty, which has been called a beautiful abstraction, is remarkable for the provisions which it contains: Blockades of every description were abolished—the flag covered the property—contrabands were exempted from confiscation, though they might be employed for the use of the captor on payment of their full value. This, we believe, is the only treaty ever made by America in which contrabands were not subject to confiscation, nor are we aware that any other modern treaty contains this remarkable provision. We are probably indebted to Dr. Franklin for the articles.