The French populace was enthusiastically on the side of Napoleon in the Mexican adventure, as attested by the proceedings in the French legislature, especially by the scenes in the Senate, February 24, 1862, and in the Corps Legislatif, June 26 of the same year, when Billault, Minister of Foreign Affairs, spoke on French aims in Mexico. On March 23, 1865, Druyn de Lluys, the French Premier, notified Mr. Seward, our Secretary of State, that American intervention in favor of Juarez, the Mexican patriot, would lead to a declaration of war on the part of France. The necessary military preparations had been made by Marshal Bazaine, who, as related by Paul Garlot in “L’Empire de Maximilian” (Paris, 1890), had erected “fortified supports” at the United States frontier and made certain “arrangements” with Confederate leaders.
“In our dark hours and the great convulsions of our war,” said Charles Sumner, then chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Senate, in New York, September 11, 1863, “France is forgetting her traditions.”
Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin Franklin.—In his pointed comments on the disfavor with which practical politicians regard the independent voter inpolitics, Prof. A. B. Faust, of Cornell University, in his valuable work, “The German Element in the United States,” says of conditions in Pennsylvania preceding the Revolution: “The Germans, with few exceptions, could not be relied upon either by demagogues or by astute party men to vote consistently with their party organization. The politician catering to the German vote often found himself strangely deceived. He never expected that the German might think for himself and vote as seemed right to him. The politician in his wrath would declare the Germans politically incapable. From his point of view they were un-American. They did not cling to one party. The fact of the matter is, they were independent voters, and they appeared as such at a very early period. Benjamin Franklin made the discovery before the Revolutionary War, and he was provoked to an extent surprising in that suave diplomatist.” In a letter to Peter Collinson, dated Philadelphia, May 9, 1753, Franklin says:
I am perfectly of your mind that measures of great temper are necessary with the Germans, and am not without apprehension that through their indiscretion, or ours, or both, great disorders may one day among us.
Then he speaks of the ignorance of the Germans, their incapability of using the English language, the impossibility of removing their prejudices—“not being used to liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it,” etc.
They are under no restraint from any ecclesiastical government; they behave, however, submissively enough to the civil government, which I wish they may continue to do, for I remember when they modestly declined to meddle in our elections, but now they come in droves and carry all before them except in one or two counties.
The last sentence, comments Faust, betrays the learned writer of the letter; the uncertainty of their votes is the cause for his accusations of ignorance and prejudice.
On the point of ignorance we get contradictory evidence in the same letter. “Few of their children in the country know English. They import many books from Germany and of the six printing houses in the province, two are entirely German, two are half-German, half English, and but two entirely English. (This large use and production of books disproves want of education. Their lack of familiarity with the English language was popularly looked upon as ignorance.—Faust.) They have one German newspaper and one half German. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch (German) and English. The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places, only German. They begin of late to make all their bonds and other legal instruments in theirown language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our courts, where the German business so increases that there is continued need of interpreters; and I suppose within a few years they will also be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our legislators what the other half say. In short, unless the stream of importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so outnumber us that the advantages we have will, in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”
