The religious persecution and the increasing despotism of the governments in Germany meanwhile incessantly drove fresh emigrants to America, where, as they were generally sent to the extreme verge of the provinces in order to clear the ground and drive away the aborigines, numbers of them were murdered by the Indians. Switzerland also sent forth many emigrants, who settled principally in North Carolina. The people of Salzburg, whose expulsion has been detailed above, colonized Georgia in 1732. In 1742, there were no fewer than a hundred thousand Germans in North America, and, since that period, their number has been continually on the increase. Thousands annually arrived; for instance, in the years 1749 and 1750, seven thousand; in 1754, as many as twenty-two thousand; in 1797, six thousand Swabians. The famine of 1770, the participation of German mercenaries in the wars of the British in North America, at first against the French colonies, afterward against the English colonists (the German prisoners generally settled in the country), induced the Germans to emigrate in such great numbers that, from 1770 to 1791, twenty-four emigrant ships on an average arrived annually at Philadelphia, without reckoning those that landed in the other harbors.[3]
The passage by sea to the west being continually closed during the great wars with France, the stream of emigration took an easterly direction overland. Russia had extended her conquests toward Persia and Turkey. The necessity of fixing colonies in the broad steppes as in the primitive forests of America, to serve as a barrier against the wild frontier tribes, was plainly perceived by the Russian government, and Germans were once more made use of for this purpose. Extensive colonies, which at the present date contain hundreds of thousands of German inhabitants, but whose history is as yet unknown, were accordingly formed northward of the Black and Caspian Seas. Swabian villages were also built on the most southern frontier of Russia toward Persia, and in 1826 suffered severely from an inroad of the Persians.
The fall of Napoleon had no sooner reopened the passage by sea than the tide of emigration again turned toward North America. These emigrants, the majority of whom consisted of political malcontents, preferred the land of liberty to the steppes of Russia, whither sectarians and those whom the demoralization and irreligion of the Gallomanic period had filled with disgust had chiefly resorted. The Russo-Teuto colonies are proverbial for purity and strictness of morals. One Wurtemberg sectarian alone, the celebrated Rapp, succeeded during the period of the triumph of France in emigrating to Pennsylvania, where he founded the Harmony, a petty religious community. An inconsiderable number of Swiss, dissatisfied with Napoleon's supremacy, also emigrated in 1805 and built New Vevay. But it was not until after the wars, more particularly during the famine in 1816 and 1817, that emigration across the sea was again carried on to a considerable extent. In 1817, thirty thousand Swiss, Wurtembergers, Hessians, and inhabitants of the Palatinate emigrated, and about an equal number were compelled to retrace their steps from the seacoast in a state of extreme destitution on account of their inability to pay their passage and of the complete want of interest in their behalf displayed by the governments. Political discontent increased in 1818 and 1819, and each succeeding spring thirty thousand Germans sailed down the Rhine to the land of liberty in the far west. In 1820, a society was set on foot at Berne for the protection of the Swiss emigrants from the frauds practiced upon the unwary. The union of the Archduchess Leopoldine, daughter to the emperor Francis, with Dom Pedro, the emperor of the Brazils, had, since 1817, attracted public attention to South America. Dom Pedro took German mercenaries into his service for the purpose of keeping his wild subjects within bounds, and the fruitful land offered infinite advantages to the German agriculturist; but colonization was rendered impracticable by the revolutionary disorders and by the ill-will of the natives toward the settlers, and the Germans who had been induced to emigrate either enlisted as soldiers or perished. Several among them, who have published their adventures in the Brazils, bitterly complained of the conduct of Major Schäfer, who had been engaged in collecting recruits at Hamburg for the Brazils. They even accused him of having allowed numbers of their fellow-countrymen to starve to death from motives of gain, so much a head being paid to him on his arrival in the Brazils for the men shipped from Europe whether they arrived dead or alive. The publication of these circumstances completely checked the emigration to the Brazils, and North America was again annually, particularly in 1827 and after the July revolution, overrun with Germans, and they have even begun to take part in the polity of the United States. The peasants, who have been settled for a considerable period, and who have insensibly acquired great wealth and have retained the language and customs of their native country, form the flower of the German colonists in the West.[4]
In the Cape colonies, the Dutch peasants, the boors, feeling themselves oppressed by the English government, emigrated en masse, in 1837, to the north, where they settled with the Caffres, and, under their captain, Prætorius, founded an independent society, in 1839, at Port Natal, where they again suffered a violent aggression on the part of the British.
Thus are Germans fruitlessly scattered far and wide over the face of the globe, while on the very frontiers of Germany nature has designated the Danube as the near and broad path for emigration and colonization to her overplus population, which, by settling in her vicinity, would at once increase her external strength and extend her influence.
[Footnote 1: The abolition of negro slavery was first mooted by
Germans in 1688, at the great Quaker meeting in North America.]
[Footnote 2: Account of the United States by Eggerling.]
[Footnote 3: One of the most distinguished Germans in America was a person named John Jacob Astor, the son of a bailiff at Walldorf near Heidelberg, who was brought up as a furrier, emigrated to America, where he gradually became the wealthiest of all furriers, founded at his own expense the colony of Astoria, on the northwestern coast of North America, so interestingly described by Washington Irving, and the Astor fund, intended as a protection to German emigrants to America from the frauds practiced on the unwary. He resided at New York. He possessed an immense fortune and was highly and deservedly esteemed for his extraordinary philanthropy.]
[Footnote 4: The Allgemeine Zeitung of September, 1837, reports that there were at that time one hundred and fifty-seven thousand Germans in North America who were still unnaturalized, consequently had emigrated thither within the last two or three years. In Philadelphia alone there were seventy-five thousand Germans. Grund says in his work, "The Americans in 1837," "The peaceable disposition of the Germans prevents their interfering with politics, although their number is already considerable enough for the formation of a powerful party. They possess, notwithstanding, great weight in the government of Pennsylvania, in which State the governors have since the revolution always been Germans. This is in fact so well understood on all sides that even during the last election, when two democrats and a Whig candidate contended for the dignity of governor, they were all three Germans by birth and no other would have had the slightest chance of success. In the State of Ohio there are at the present date, although that province was first colonized by New-English, no fewer than forty-five thousand Germans possessed of the right of voting. The State of New York, although originally colonized by Dutch, contains a numerous German population in several of its provinces, particularly in that of Columbia, the birthplace of Martin Van Buren, the present Vice-President and future President of the republic. The State of Maryland numbers twenty-five thousand Germans possessed of votes; almost one-third of the population of Illinois is German, and thousands of fresh emigrants are settling in the valley of the Mississippi. I believe that the number of German voters or of voters of German descent may, without exaggeration, be reckoned on an average annually at four hundred thousand, and certainly in less than twenty years hence at a million. In the city of New York, the Germans greatly influence the election of the burgomaster and other city authorities by holding no fewer than three thousand five hundred votes. These circumstances naturally render the German vote an object of zealous contention for politicians of every party, and there is accordingly no dearth of German newspapers in any of the German settlements. In Pennsylvania, upward of thirty German (principally weekly) papers are in circulation, and about an equal number are printed and published in the State of Ohio. A scarcely lower number are also in circulation in Maryland.">[
Supplementary Chapter