The German element had fought for the independence of America in the Revolution to the full limit of its quota, which was considerable; it had outstripped every other element in furnishing troops for the Union army; it had stood loyally by the government in every other crisis of its history, and it was not aware that the Germans living3,000 miles away under a government of their own had ever followed any policy save one of pronounced friendship for the United States.
Having no political adhesion among themselves, having never contemplated the possibility of being turned upon by their fellow citizens, fostering the spirit of conviviality, sociability, and cultivating song and art rather than politics, they had relied confidently on the impartiality of laws of the land to protect them in their rights as well as to exact the performance of their duties as American citizens.
Their forefathers had been foremost in the winning of the West; more than any others they formed the far-flung battle line that encountered the invasion of the red hordes in the French-Indian wars; more of their number had perished in Indian massacres, from Canajoharie to New Ulm, than of any other race; they could defiantly challenge any other element to show a greater influence in educational, cultural and general academic directions, and in the words of that truly great American woman, Miss Jane Addams, the German American element was entitled to be heard.
It is unfortunately an Anglo-American trait to be easily lashed into a fanatical mob spirit by prominent spokesmen, in singular disregard of its avowed democracy. The history of our country teems with examples of unbridled violence against any non-conforming spirit that ever developed. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote:
The influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be the leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen, the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day, stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived.
It began with the hanging of witches; it was continued in the mobbing of Quakers; at one time we mobbed English actors, and in the Astor Place riots of New York, because we abhorred an English actor, Macready, eighteen persons were killed. There were the anti-Masonic riots, the anti-Catholic emeutes, the Know Nothing riots; later the anti-abolitionist riots in Boston and elsewhere; the Copperhead mobs, the Sandlot riots, and dozens of others, down to the burning of negroes by demonstrative communities charging themselves with the administration of savage justice.
It happened to be the turn of the Germans, forming 26 per cent. of the total population, and so intermixed that nothing can ever segregate the cross-currents of blood that courses through the veins of the American people.
In the Revolution Prussia had given refuge to American cruisers at Danzig, the port which, under the treaty we are helping to distrain from her German motherland, and had bribed Catherine the Great’s minister to prevent the sending of Russian troops to help England fight the American colonists; in the Civil War, besides giving theirsons to the cause of the Union, the Germans had come to our rescue with their money when most needed. Was it astonishing that the so-called German element was stunned and staggered by the sudden reversion of sentiment from one of complete spiritual and national accord to one of vindictive malice by neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend?
It is perhaps true, as has been assumed, that certain influential members of the administration received an inordinate shock at the suggestion, from whatever source it came, that the German Americans would be likely to rise in revolution, and that a panic seized Washington at such a prospect, so that all measures were considered fair that would tend to put down the Germans and keep them in complete subjection by a system of terrorism. It is certain that no evidence has been disclosed by the endless investigations that have been going on which tended to establish the guilt of any member of the race as to plots against the government.
The Attorney General called for 200,000 volunteers to act as agents of the Department of Justice to report all disloyal talk or on the identity of persons suspected of being “pro-German.” To be known as having sympathized with the Central Powers, no matter what one’s action was after we entered the war, was to insure one’s footsteps and movements to be dogged by spies. No home was sacred, and the least indiscreet utterance was ground for a report, arrest and indictment under the so-called Espionage Act, which the New York “American” of February 24, 1917, described as “simply the infamous Alien and Sedition laws under another name,” passed in 1789, during the presidency of John Adams, which consigned the party that passed it to eternal oblivion.