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THE  YANKEE  AND  THE  TEUTON 
IN  WISCONSIN 


AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


SCHAFER 


THE  YANKEE  AND  THE  TEUTON 
IN  WISCONSIN 


BY 
JOSEPH  SCHAFER 


Reprinted  from  the  Wisconsin  Magazine  of  History 
Volume  VI,  No.  2,  December,  1922 


THE  YANKEE  AND  THE  TEUTON  IN  WISCONSIN 

JOSEPH  SCHAFER 
I.     CHARACTERISTIC  ATTITUDES  TOWARD  THE  LAND 

Wisconsin  in  its  racial  character  is  popularly  known  to 
the  country  at  large  as  a  Teutonic  state.  That  means  the 
state  has  a  German  element,  original  and  derivative,  which 
numerically  overshadows  the  American,  English,  Irish, 
Scandinavian,  and  other  stocks  also  represented  in  the 
Badger  blend.  It  is  not  necessary  to  quarrel  with  this 
widely  accepted  theorem,  though  some  of  the  corollaries 
drawn  from  it  can  be  shown  to  be  unhistorical;  and  one  can 
demonstrate  statistically  that  if  Wisconsin  now  is,  or  at  any 
census  period  was,  a  Teutonic  state  she  began  her  statehood 
career  in  1848  as  a  Yankee  state  and  thus  continued  for 
many  years  with  consequences  social,  economic,  political, 
religious,  and  moral  which  no  mere  racial  substitutions  have 
had  power  to  obliterate.  My  purpose  in  the  present  paper 
is  to  present,  from  local  sources,  some  discussion  of  the  rela- 
tions of  Yankee  and  Teuton  to  the  land — a  theme  which 
ought  to  throw  light  on  the  process  of  substitution  men- 
tioned, revealing  how  the  Teuton  came  into  possession  of 
vast  agricultural  areas  once  firmly  held  by  the  Yankee. 

The  agricultural  occupation  of  southern  Wisconsin, 
which  brought  the  first  tide  of  immigration  from  New 
England,  western  New  York,  northern  Pennsylvania,  and 
Ohio — the  Yankee  element —  may  be  said  roughly  to  have 
been  accomplished  within  the  years  1835  and  1850.  The 
settlements  which  existed  prior  to  1835  were  in  the  lead 
region  of  the  southwest,  at  Green  Bay,  and  at  Prairie  du 
Chien.  The  population  of  the  lead  mines  was  predominantly 
of  southern  and  southwestern  origin;  that  of  the  two  other 
localities — the  ancient  seats  of  the  Indian  trade  and  more 
recent  centers  of  military  defense — was  mainly  French- 


4  Joseph  Schafer 

Canadian.  When,  in  1836,  a  territorial  census  was  taken, 
it  was  found  that  the  three  areas  named  had  an  aggregate 
population  of  nearly  9000,  of  which  more  than  5000  was  in 
the  lead  region  included  in  the  then  county  of  Iowa.  The 
Green  Bay  region  (Brown  County)  was  next,  and  the 
Prairie  du  Chien  settlement  (Crawford  County)  smallest. 

The  census,  however,  recognized  a  new  county,  Milwau- 
kee, whose  territory  had  been  severed  from  the  earlier 
Brown  County.  It  was  bounded  east  by  Lake  Michigan, 
south  by  Illinois,  west  by  a  line  drawn  due  north  from  the 
Illinois  line  to  Wisconsin  River  at  the  Portage,  and  north 
by  a  line  drawn  due  east  from  the  Portage  to  the  lake.  In 
terms  of  present-day  divisions,  the  Milwaukee  County  of 
1836  embraced  all  of  Kenosha,  Racine,  Wai  worth,  Rock, 
Jefferson,  Waukesha,  and  Milwaukee  counties,  nearly  all  of 
Ozaukee,  Washington,  and  Dodge,  a  strip  of  eastern  Green 
County,  and  most  of  Dane  and  Columbia.  In  that  imperial 
domain  the  census  takers  found  a  grand  total  of  2900  per- 
sons, or  almost  exactly  one-fourth  of  the  population  of  the 
entire  territory. 

Two  significant  facts  distinguish  the  Milwaukee  County 
census  list  from  the  lists  of  Brown,  Crawford,  and  Iowa 
counties —  the  recency  of  the  settlement  and  the  distinctive 
local  origin  of  the  settlers.  These  people  had  only  just 
arrived,  most  of  them  in  the  early  months  of  1836.  One 
could  almost  count  on  his  ten  fingers  the  individuals  who 
were  there  prior  to  the  summer  of  1835.  In  reality  they  were 
not  yet  "settled,"  for  most  of  the  rude  claim  huts — mere 
shelters  of  the  pre-log  house  stage —  were  haunted  at  night 
and  shadowed  at  noonday  by  men  only,  resident  families 
being  still  rare,  though  many  were  on  the  lakes,  at  the  ports 
of  Milwaukee  and  Chicago,  or  on  the  overland  trail  which 
was  to  end  at  the  cabin  door.  It  was  the  prophecy  of  new 
communities,  not  the  actuality,  that  the  census  taker 
chronicled  when  he  recorded  the  names  of  claim  takers  with 


6  Joseph  Schafer 

the  number  of  persons,  of  each  sex,  comprising  their  house- 
holds. We  have  reason  to  believe  that  the  numbers  were 
inscribed  almost  as  cheerfully  when  the  persons  represented 
by  them  were  still  biding  in  the  old  home  or  were  en  route 
west,  as  when  they  were  physically  present  in  the  settler's 
cabin  or  in  the  dooryard,  eager  to  be  counted. 

Unlike  the  other  populations  of  Wisconsin  at  that  time, 
the  vast  majority  of  Milwaukee  County  settlers  were 
Northeasterners.  Such  evidence  as  we  have  indicates  that 
New  York  supplied  more  than  half,  the  New  England  states, 
Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  and  Michigan  nearly  all  of  the  balance.1 
New  York's  title  to  primacy  in  peopling  Wisconsin  is  exhib- 
ited, most  impressively,  in  the  statistics  of  the  1850  census. 
At  that  time  native  Americans  constituted  63  per  cent  of 
the  total  and  New  Yorkers  had  36  per  cent  of  the  native 
majority.  Native  Americans  predominated  in  all  but  three 
of  the  twenty -six  counties,  and  in  all  but  five  those  who  were 
natives  of  New  York,  added  to  the  natives  of  Wisconsin, 
were  a  majority  of  the  American  born.  The  exceptions  were 
the  four  lead  mining  counties  of  Grant,  Iowa,  Lafayette, 
and  Green,  together  with  Richland,  which,  however,  had  so 
few  inhabitants  that  its  case  is  divested  of  any  significance. 

The  three  counties  which,  in  1850,  showed  a  majority 
of  foreign  born  inhabitants  were  Manitowoc,  Milwaukee, 
and  Washington  (the  last  named  including  the  present 
Ozaukee  County);  and  in  each  case  Germans  constituted 
more  than  half  of  that  majority.  Together  those  three 
counties  had  over  20,000,  which  was  considerably  more  than 
one-half  of  all  the  Germans  (38,054)  domiciled  in  Wisconsin 
at  that  time.  The  other  lake  shore  counties,  together  with 
Calumet,  Fond  du  Lac,  Dodge,  Jefferson,  and  Waukesha, 

1  As  the  tide  of  emigration  from  the  northeastern  states  rose  higher,  it  bore  along  a 
goodly  number  who  were  not  of  the  old  American  stock,  particularly  English  and  Irish, 
with  some  Scotch  and  Germans.  Yet,  many  of  these  were  natives  of  the  states  named 
and,  if  foreign  born,  had  enjoyed  so  long  an  apprenticeship  to  the  Yankee  system  of  life 
as  to  enable  them  faithfully  to  represent  it. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  7 

accounted  for  15,000  of  the  balance,  leaving  about  3000 
scattered  over  the  rest  of  the  state.  Thus  the  area  embraced 
by  Lake  Michigan,  Lake  Winnebago  and  lower  Fox  River, 
the  upper  reaches  of  Rock  River,  and  the  south  boundary 
of  Jefferson,  Waukesha,  and  Milwaukee  counties  was  all 
strongly  and  in  the  main  distinctively  German. 

Investigating  the  causes  which  may  have  operated  to 
concentrate  the  German  population  within  such  clearly 
defined  geographic  limits,  our  first  inquiry  concerns  the 
land  on  which  settlement  was  taking  place.  And  here  we 
find  that  the  distinguishing  fact  marking  off  the  region  in 
which  Germans  abounded  from  most  of  the  other  settled  or 
partially  settled  areas  of  the  state  was  its  originally  thickly 
wooded  character.  In  a  way  almost  startling,  and  super- 
ficially conclusive,  the  German  settlements  coincided  with 
the  great  maple  forest  of  southeastern  Wisconsin,  spreading 
also  through  the  included  pine  forest  on  Lake  Michigan 
south  of  Green  Bay. 

Returning  now  to  the  Yankee  element,  we  find  that 
although  it  was  strong  in  all  of  the  settled  districts  save  the 
five  counties  named,  it  was  more  completely  dominant  in 
some  districts  than  in  others.  For  example,  in  Walworth 
County  the  northeastern  states  furnished  96.5  per  cent  of 
the  American  population,  while  3.5  per  cent  was  furnished 
by  sixteen  other  states.  The  foreign  born  constituted  less 
than  16  per  cent  of  the  total.2  Walworth  County  was  a 
section  of  the  new  "Yankee  Land,"  which  included  in  its 
boundaries  also  the  counties  of  Racine  and  Kenosha,  Rock, 
and  at  that  time  parts  of  Waukesha  and  Jefferson.  Nowhere 
in  that  region  were  foreigners  very  numerous,  and  in  many 
localities  non-English  speaking  foreigners  were  almost 
scarce. 

Physically,  this  new  Yankee  Land  comprised  those  por- 

2  Of  whom  England,  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  Canada  combined  furnished  1920, 
Germany  460,  and  Norway  340. 


8  Joseph  Schafer 

tions  of  the  prairies  and  openings  of  southern  Wisconsin 
which  lay  not  more  than  from  sixty  to  seventy-five  miles 
from  the  lake  ports  at  Milwaukee,  Racine,  and  Kenosha. 
The  region  was  just  as  characteristically  "open  country" 
as  that  occupied  so  extensively  by  Germans  was  forested. 
One  land  type,  the  glacial  marsh  or  swale — good  for  hay  and 
pasture — was  common  to  the  two  districts  of  country.  But 
for  the  rest,  the  Yankee's  land  was  all  ready  for  the  plow  if 
it  was  prairie,  and  if  oak  openings  the  labor  of  felling  the 
scattered  trees  and  dragging  them  away  before  the  breaking 
team  was  comparatively  light. 

The  German,  on  the  other  hand,  in  order  to  subdue  his 
land  to  the  requirements  of  successful  tillage,  must  attack 
with  ax,  mattock,  and  firebrand  each  successive  acre, 
patiently  slashing  and  burning,  hewing  and  delving,  till  by 
dint  of  unremitting  toil  extended  over  an  indefinite  number 
of  years  his  farm  became  "cleared." 

Shall  we  therefore  repeat,  as  the  sober  verdict  of  history, 
the  statement  often  heard,  that  in  settling  this  new  country 
the  Yankee  showed  a  preference  for  open  land,  the  German 
for  woodland?  On  the  face  of  the  census  returns  that  seems 
to  be  the  case,  and  if  our  evidence  were  limited  to  the  census 
such  a  conclusion  would  be  well  nigh  inescapable.  Fortu- 
nately, he  who  deals  with  culture  history  problems  of  the 
American  West  has  this  advantage  over  the  Greenes  and  the 
Lamprechts  of  Europe,  that  on  such  matters  his  evidence  is 
minutely  particular,  while  theirs  is  general  to  the  point  of 
vagueness.  No  one  will  doubt  that  the  Yankee  staked  his 
claim  in  the  open  lands  because  he  preferred  those  lands  on 
account  of  the  ease  with  which  a  farm  could  be  made.  The 
question  is,  whether  the  German's  presence  in  the  woods 
rather  than  in  the  openings  or  on  the  prairies  was  with  him  a 
matter  of  preference  so  far  as  land  selection  in  itself  was 
concerned. 

Timber  for  shelter,  fuel,  building,  and  fencing  was  an 


Yankee  and  Teuton  9 

important  consideration  to  all  settlers,  including  the  Yan- 
kees. In  another  connection  I  have  shown,  from  the  records 
of  land  entries,  that  the  Yankee  settlers  in  a  prevailingly 
prairie  township  of  Racine  County  took  up  first  every  acre 
of  forested  land,  together  with  the  prairie  lands  and  marsh 
lands  adjoining  the  woods,  while  they  shunned  for  some 
years  the  big,  open,  unsheltered  prairie  where  farms  would 
be  out  of  immediate  touch  with  woods.3  Rather  than  take 
treeless  lands  near  the  lake  shore,  these  settlers  preferred  to 
go  farther  inland  where  inviting  combinations  of  groves, 
meadows,  and  dry  prairie  lands,  or  openings,  could  still  be 
found  in  the  public  domain.  Only  gradually  did  American 
settlers  overcome  their  natural  repugnance  to  a  shelterless, 
timberless  farm  home — a  repugnance  justified  by  common 
sense,  but  springing  from  the  habit  of  generations.  When, 
for  economic  reasons,  they  began  to  settle  on  the  open 
prairies,  the  planting  of  quick-growing  trees  about  the  farm- 
steads was  always  esteemed  a  work  of  fundamental  utility. 

Yankee  agricultural  settlers  found  special  inducements 
for  going  inland  in  search  of  ideal  farm  locations,  in  the  glow- 
ing advertisements  of  Yankee  speculators  who  early  pio- 
neered the  open  country  far  and  wide.  These  speculators 
concerned  themselves  primarily  with  water  powers  for 
sawmill  and  gristmill  sites  and  town  sites.  Yet  power  and 
town  sites  both  depended  for  their  development  on  the 
agricultural  occupation  of  the  surrounding  country,  and 
this  made  the  speculators  careful  to  locate  their  claims  in 
areas  of  desirable  lands  which  would  soon  be  wanted.  It 
also  made  them  doubly  active  in  proclaiming  to  immigrants 
the  agricultural  advantages  of  their  chosen  localities. 

One  may  take  up  at  random  the  land  office  records  of 
townships  in  the  older  Wisconsin,  and  in  practically  every 
case  find  proof  that  the  speculator  was  abroad  in  the  land 

3  Wisconsin  Domesday  Book,  General  Studies,  I.  History  of  Agriculture  in  Wisconsin, 
chap.  2. 


10  Joseph  S chafer 

before  the  arrival  of  the  farmer.  Along  the  banks  of  navigable 
rivers  he  took  up,  early,  such  tracts  as  seemed  to  afford  good 
steamboat  landings,  which  might  mean  towns  or  villages 
also.  Along  smaller  streams  he  engrossed  potential  water 
powers.  In  the  prairie  regions  he  seized  the  timbered  tracts 
which  commonly  lay  along  the  streams.  And  wherever 
nature  seemed  to  have  sketched  the  physical  basis  for  a 
future  town,  there  he  drove  his  stakes  and  entered  an  area 
large  enough  at  least  for  a  municipal  center. 

In  some  portions,  particularly  of  the  earliest  surveys,  the 
speculator  also  absorbed  a  goodly  share  of  the  best  farm 
land,  which  he  held  for  an  advance  when  the  immigration  of 
farmers  became  heavy.  Other  Americans,  aside  from 
Yankees,  participated  in  these  speculations,  but  the  records 
show  that  the  Yankee's  reputation  for  alertness  and  sagacity 
in  that  line  is  not  unmerited.  For  illustration,  the  plats  of 
Dane  County  townships  disclose  among  the  original  entry- 
men  who  bought  their  lands  early,  the  names  of  well  known 
speculators  like  James  D.  Doty,  Lucius  Lyon,  the  Bronsons, 
Cyrus  Woodman,  Hazen  Cheney,  and  C.  C.  Washburn— 
all  Yankees.  In  addition,  we  have  distinguished  New  Eng- 
landers  who  probably  never  came  west  but  invested  through 
the  agency  of  their  Yankee  correspondents.  Among  them 
are  Daniel  Webster,  Edward  Everett,  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son, and  Caleb  Gushing. 

To  a  considerable  extent  these  speculators,  in  paying  for 
government  lands,  employed  military  land  warrants,  usually 
purchased  at  a  heavy  discount.  "Scripping"  by  this  means 
became  more  common  after  the  Mexican  War.  A  German 
immigration  leader  wrote  at  the  close  of  1848:  "There  is  a 
man  living  in  Sheboygan  who  has  already  placed  344  of  these 
warrants  [each  good  for  160  acres]  on  government  lands  and 
intends  next  spring  to  place  200  more  on  tracts  lying  north 
of  Fox  River."4  He  did  not  say  the  man  was  a  Yankee; 

4  William  Dames,  Wie  Sieht  Es  in  Wiskonsin  Aits  (Meurs,  1849). 


Yankee  and  Teuton  11 

possibly  he  deemed  that  information  unnecessary.  For, 
although  the  German  sometimes  bought  warrants  of  the 
brokers  in  order  to  save  the  difference  between  the  price  of 
such  warrants  and  the  land  office  price  of  government  land, 
he  did  not  in  the  early  years  of  the  immigration  speculate 
in  farm  lands. 

Therein  was  one  of  the  outstanding  differences  between 
him  and  the  Yankee.  The  German  could  not  be  tolled 
into  the  interior  by  golden  promises  of  unearned  increments 
from  the  sale  of  city  lots,  of  mill  sites,  or  of  choice  farm 
lands  which  were  going  rapidly.  His  caution  and  his 
phlegm  were  a  protection.  He  was  not  particularly  respon- 
sive to  the  optimistic  prophecies  of  the  development  of  this 
region  or  that  region  in  which  this  company  or  that  promi- 
nent individual  had  interests.  For  these  reasons,  the  Ger- 
man's motives  as  a  land  seeker  were  more  legitimately 
economic  and  social  than  were  those  of  the  Yankee,  and  on 
the  basis  of  such  motives  we  can  explain  his  settlement  in 
the  woods. 

In  his  homeland  the  German  villager  loved  the  forest  for 
its  shelter,  its  recreational  hospitality,  and  the  benefits  it 
conferred  in  necessary  fuel,  timber,  bedding,  and  forage. 
A  large  proportion  of  the  early  German  immigrants  came 
from  south  German  provinces  dominated  by  such  famous 
old  forests  as  the  Schwartzwald  and  the  Odenwald.  From 
considerations  both  of  habit  and  of  economy  it  was  natural 
that  in  the  New  World  they  should  make  sure  of  an  abun- 
dance of  timber  on  the  lands  they  sought  for  future  homes. 
Yet,  there  is  no  reason  to  assume  that  the  German,  any  more 
than  the  Yankee,  courted  the  grilling  labor  of  clearing 
heavily  forested  land —  a  labor  to  him  the  more  formidable 
for  the  want  of  the  Yankee's  training  in  axmanship  and  his 
almost  unbroken  tradition  of  winning  fields  from  forests. 
Some  German  pioneers  who  were  self -helpful  struck  for  the 
openings  and  the  prairies,  and  like  the  Yankee  chose  for 


12  Joseph  Schafer 

their  farms  the  ideal  combination  of  wood,  marsh,  and  open 
land  whenever  such  a  combination  could  be  found  within 
easy  reach  of  the  market.8 

But  Germans  were  less  venturesome  than  Yankees,  or 
more  prudent,  depending  on  the  point  of  view.  In  the  old 
home  they  were  accustomed  to  haul  their  farm  produce 
many  miles  in  going  to  the  markets  and  fairs.  But  there  the 
roads  were  passable  at  all  seasons.  In  the  New  World, 
where  all  was  in  the  making,  the  roads  were  often  impas- 
sable and  always — except  in  winter — so  rough  and  trouble- 
some as  to  daunt  those  who  were  not  to  the  manner  born.6 
Hence  the  German  settler's  idea  of  what  constituted  a  safe 
distance  from  the  lake  ports  within  which  to  open  a  farm 
differed  from  the  Yankee's  idea.  There  is  one  striking  illus- 
tration of  that  difference.  Along  the  Illinois  boundary  from 
Lake  Michigan  westward  was  the  strip  of  prairie  and  open- 
ings twenty -four  miles  wide  and  seventy -eight  long  which 
was  divided  into  Racine  and  Kenosha  counties  (on  the 
lake),  Walworth,  and  Rock.  We  have  already  called  that 
region  the  new  Yankee  Land  and  have  seen  the  Yankee 
farmers  spread  over  it  with  seeming  disregard  to  distance 
from  the  lake  ports,  each  being  intent  rather  on  finding  an 
ideal  combination  of  desirable  kinds  of  land.  The  three 
divisions  of  the  strip  contained  almost  equal  numbers  of 
Yankees — these  people  evidently  believing  that  canals, 
roads,  plank  roads,  and  railways  would  come  to  them  when 
needed,  while  a  good  farm  location  once  lost  was  gone 
forever;  and  being  willing  also,  until  such  improvements 
should  come,  to  haul  their  crops  sixty  or  seventy-five  miles 
to  market.  Not  so  the  few  Germans  who  entered  this 
Yankee  Land  prior  to  1850.  More  than  four-fifths  of  them 
were  in  the  section  nearest  the  lake  (Racine  and  Kenosha 

5  For  example,  see  William  Dames,  Wie  Sieht  Es  in  Wisconsin  Aus. 

8  See  J.  F.  Diederichs,  Diary.  Translated  by  Emil  Baensch.  Account  of  a  trip  from 
Milwaukee  to  Manitowoc. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  13 

counties),  and  less  than  one-thirtieth  in  Rock  County,  the 
farthest  west  of  the  strip. 

The  movement  into  the  prairies  and  openings  of  the 
southeast  had  been  going  on  for  about  four  years  before 
the  Germans  began  coming  to  Wisconsin,  and  so  many 
selections  of  first  choice,  second  choice,  and  even  third 
choice  land  had  been  made  that  newcomers  were  already 
at  a  disadvantage  in  that  region,  especially  if  a  number  of 
them  desired  to  settle  near  together  in  a  body,  which  was 
the  case  of  Old  Lutheran  congregations  who  made  up  the 
earliest  German  immigrations.  Moreover,  most  of  the 
Yankees  were  business-like  farmers  who  generally  planned 
for  fairly  large  farms,  in  order  to  make  money  by  raising 
wheat.  They  were  mainly  men  who  had  sold  small  farms 
in  the  East  in  order  to  secure  larger,  or  sons  of  large  farmers. 
Most  of  them  had  money  or  credit  to  enable  them  to  acquire 
land,  construct  buildings  and  fences,  buy  stock,  and  begin 
farming  operations.  Having  found  good  land  by  canvass- 
ing the  whole  region,  they  were  not  to  be  dislodged  until, 
with  the  failure  of  wheat  crops  at  a  later  time,  the  spirit  of 
emigration  sent  numbers  of  them  to  fresh  wheat  lands 
farther  west,  thus  making  opportunity  for  well-to-do 
Germans  to  buy  their  improved  farms,  which  they  did  to 
a  great  extent. 

Meantime,  the  forested  lands  pivoting  on  Milwaukee, 
the  most  promising  of  the  lake  ports,  were  open  to  entry  at 
the  land  office  or  to  purchase  at  private  sale  on  easy  terms. 
The  Yankee  had  not  altogether  shunned  those  lands.  There, 
as  elsewhere,  he  had  been  looking  for  good  investments, 
and  the  project  for  the  Milwaukee  and  Rock  River  Canal, 
which  was  to  traverse  a  portion  of  the  forested  area  through 
the  present  Milwaukee,  Waukesha,  and  Jefferson  counties, 
favored  speculation  in  farm  lands  as  well  as  in  mill  sites 
and  town  sites.  Besides,  there  is  evidence  that  some  of 
the  poorer  Yankee  immigrants  who  felt  unable  at  once  to 


14  Joseph  S chafer 

maintain  themselves  on  open  land  farms,  often  settled 
first  in  the  woods,  where  they  began  making  improvements 
with  ax  and  fire,  only  to  sell  out  promptly  at  an  advance 
and  go  to  the  prairie  or  openings  to  establish  permanent 
farms.  But  most  of  the  forested  land  was  still  "Congress 
land"  when  the  Germans  began  coming  to  Wisconsin. 

The  German  "Pilgrims,"  as  the  first  colony  was  called, 
arrived  at  Milwaukee  early  in  October,  1839,  their  leader 
being  Henry  von  Rohr.  Within  a  month  they  had  decided 
on  a  location,  in  the  western  part  of  township  9,  range  21 
east  (the  town  of  Mequon,  Ozaukee  County),  and  had 
made  numerous  purchases  of  government  land.  They 
selected  a  tract  of  high,  rolling  land,  heavily  timbered,  well 
watered,  and  with  an  extensive  marsh  near  by  in  the  public 
domain  which  would  furnish  free  hay  and  pasture.7  The 
situation  was  similar  to  that  which  was  chosen,  near  Water- 
town  (in  the  town  of  Lebanon),  a  few  years  later  by  a 
German  colony  from  the  same  region.  They  also  took  a 
tract  of  heavily  timbered  upland  neighbored  by  an  extensive 
marsh.  "Here,"  said  their  leader,  "we  have  both  wood  and 
hay"  ("HolzundHeu")* 

Many  of  the  colonists  in  these  two  congregations  were 
very  poor.  Those  who  had  means  lent  to  the  indigent  to 
enable  them  to  emigrate.  For  them  it  would  have  been 
madness  to  go  to  the  prairies,  where  such  absolute  neces- 
sities as  fuel,  building  material,  and  fencing  might  cost  ready 
money  and  at  best  would  be  difficult  to  procure.  In  the 
woods  trees  cut  on  the  spot  were  used  to  build  cabin  and 
log  house,  stable,  garden  and  field  enclosure.  Some  of  the 
German  families  were  months  without  draft  ox  or  even 

7  Those  who  filed  with  von  Rohr  and  on  the  same  day  (Nov.  5,  1839)  took  up  most  of 
sections  17,  18,  19,  and  20.    All  of  these  lands  were  described  by  the  surveyor  as  "second 
rate"  and  all  had  a  heavy  forest  covering  consisting  of  sugar  maple,  lynn,  birch,  alder, 
black  and  white  oak,  ash,  elm,  ironwood,  etc.,  together  with  some  cedar  in  the  swamps. 
The  land  lay  on  both  sides  of  the  creek,  along  which  was  some  meadow,  but  the  big  marsh 
was  farther  east. 

8  William  F.  Whyte,  "Settlement  of  Lebanon,"  in  Wisconsin  Historical  Society, 
Proceedings,  1915,  105. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  15 

cow.  All  work  was  performed  by  hand,  including  the  carry- 
ing of  logs  from  the  spot  where  the  trees  were  felled  to  the 
place  where  they  were  to  be  rolled  up  to  make  the  cabin 
wall.  To  such  settlers,  bringing  timber  from  a  distance 
would  have  been  among  the  impossibilities.  Their  place 
was  in  the  forest,  where  labor  alone  was  required  for  making 
the  beginnings  of  a  self-sustaining  home. 

In  thousands  of  later  instances,  Germans  who  came  to 
Wisconsin  on  their  own  slender  means  were  in  a  similar 
case  to  these  early  seekers  of  religious  freedom.  An  im- 
migrant of  1848,  J.  F.  Diederichs,  has  left  a  diary  and 
letters  from  which  the  process  of  home  making  in  the 
woods  can  be  reconstructed.9  Diederichs,  after  consider- 
able search,  found  eighty  acres  of  good  government  land 
nine  miles  from  Manitowoc,  where  early  in  winter  he  settled 
down  to  work  alongside  of  several  other  Germans  who 
were  as  poor  as  himself.  The  location  was  favorable,  being 
near  a  port.  "What  good  is  there,"  he  writes,  "to  possess 
the  finest  land  and  be  6,  8  or  10  days  journey  from  market."10 
The  first  step  was  to  build  a  cabin,  the  next  to  bring  his 
family  from  Milwaukee  and  with  a  few  dollars  borrowed  for 
the  purpose  to  lay  in  supplies  for  them.  Then  he  erected  a 
comfortable  log  house  and  continued  clearing  till,  by  the 
middle  of  May,  he  had  two  acres  ready  partly  for  garden 
and  partly  for  potatoes,  corn,  and  beans  to  provide  the 
family  with  food.  Diederichs  realized  that  "to  begin  such 
work  at  the  age  of  44  is  some  job,"  and  recognized  that  not 
he  and  his  wife  but  the  children  would  be  the  chief  bene- 
ficiaries. Nevertheless,  the  joy  of  creation  was  not  wholly 
denied  him.  He  had,  he  said,  the  "prettiest"  location; 
house  set  on  a  commanding  knoll,  with  a  pure  limpid  stream 
flowing  within  a  few  yards  of  it,  along  whose  course  was 
some  open  land,  making  a  "layout  for  the  finest  pastures." 

9  MS.  translation  by  Emil  Baensch. 

10  Page  29  in  printed  German  edition. 


16  Joseph  Schafer 

And  there  was  timber  enough  on  his  eighty  to  be  worth 
$30,000  in  the  home  town  of  Elberfelt.  Of  this,  he  would 
gladly  make  his  friends  in  Germany  a  present  of  about 
$20,000  worth! 

The  question  of  nearness  to  market  was  a  determinant 
also  in  the  cases  of  Germans  who  were  well  enough  off  to 
take  open  lands.  William  Dames  found,  for  himself  and 
associates,  a  favorable  tract  near  Ripon.  It  contained  160 
acres  prairie,  320  acres  openings,  and  160  acres  of  low 
prairie  or  meadow  land.  The  advantages  of  that  neigh- 
borhood, he  wrote,  were  these :  first,  the  prospectively  near 
market,  by  way  of  the  Fox  River  Canal  to  be  completed 
the  following  spring;  second,  the  excellence  of  the  soil; 
third,  the  ease  with  which  the  land  could  be  made  into 
productive  farms.  There  one  need  not  subject  himself  to 
the  murderous  toil  incident  to  farm  making  in  the  woods. 
And,  fourth,  the  healthfulness  of  the  climate  and  the  superb 
drinking  water. 

One  bit  of  information  which  Dames  conveyed  to  his 
fellow  Germans  who  were  contemplating  immigration  to 
Wisconsin,  was  that  the  Yankees  (by  which  term  he 
described  all  native  Americans)  and  the  Scotch  settlers  of 
that  neighborhood  were  becoming  eager  to  sell  their  partly 
improved  farms,  preparatory  to  moving  into  the  newer 
region  north  of  Fox  River.  He  advised  Germans  able  to  do 
so  to  buy  such  farms,  which  were  to  be  had  in  plenty  not 
only  in  Fond  du  Lac  County  but  near  Watertown,  near 
Delafield,  and  even  near  Milwaukee — prices  varying  with 
the  improvements,  nearness  to  the  city,  etc.  He  seemed  to 
think  the  Germans  but  ill  adapted  to  pioneering.  Let  the 
German  immigrant,  he  said,  buy  a  partly  cleared  farm ;  then 
he  could  follow  his  calling  in  ways  to  which  he  was  accus- 
tomed. Moreover,  since  such  farms  produced  fairly  well 
even  under  the  indifferent  treatment  accorded  them  by 
the  Yankee  farmers,  the  German  farmer  need  have  no  fear 
of  failure. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  17 

The  advice  to  purchase  farms  already  begun  was  widely 
followed  by  the  financially  competent  German  immigrants. 
Ownership  records  of  one  Milwaukee  County  township  show 
that  the  lands  were  originally  taken  mainly  by  Irish  and 
Americans,  yet  in  1850  nearly  one-half  of  the  settlers  were 
Germans;  and  there  is  no  reason  to  regard  that  case  as 
singular.  Probably  the  Germans  who  bought  improved 
farms  were  as  numerous  as  those  who  bought  Congress 
land.  Many  poor  men  worked  as  farm  hands  for  some 
years  and  then  bought  small  improved  farms  in  preference 
to  buying  Congress  land. 

The  experience  of  an  1849  immigrant,  Johannes  Kerler, 
illustrates  the  less  common  case  of  Germans  who  arrived 
with  considerable  means.  Kerler  brought  with  him  to 
Milwaukee  a  sum,  derived  from  the  sale  of  a  profitable 
business,  which  would  have  enabled  him  to  buy  scores  of 
mill  sites  and  town  sites  in  the  public  domain.  Instead,  he 
limited  his  investment  to  a  200-acre  farm  seven  miles  from 
the  city,  paying  for  the  land,  including  all  crops  and  live- 
stock, $17  per  acre.  The  buildings  consisted  of  a  log  house 
and  a  cabin.  One-half  the  farm  was  divided  between  plow 
land  and  meadow;  the  balance — 100  acres — supported  a 
dense  forest  growth.  Kerler  at  once  erected  a  barn  for  his 
cattle,  and  a  good  two-story  frame  house  for  the  family. 
Then  he  went  to  farming  and  quickly  transformed  the 
earlier  crude  homestead  into  a  fruitful  and  beautiful  farm, 
the  show  place  of  the  neighborhood.11 

Social  forces  are  among  the  imponderables,  and  yet 
their  influence  in  controlling  the  distribution  of  immigration 
must  have  been  considerable.  The  fact  that  nearly  all 
incoming  Germans  landed  in  Milwaukee,  where  were 
acquaintances  and  often  friends,  tended  in  a  hundred  subtle 
ways  to  attach  the  newcomers  to  that  community.  Before 

11  This  farm,  located  in  the  town  of  Greenfield,  Milwaukee  County,  was  afterwards 
divided  among  Kerler's  three  sons.  A  portion  of  it,  at  least,  is  I  believe  still  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  family.  Louis  F.  Frank,  Pioneer  Jahre  (Milwaukee,  1911). 


18  Joseph  Schafer 

1850  Milwaukee  had  come  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  German 
city.  "There,"  said  one  immigrant,  "more  German  than 
English  is  spoken."  It  had  its  German  churches,  schools, 
clubs,  societies,  and  recreational  features,  all  of  which 
constituted  powerful  attractions.  It  was  the  most  impor- 
tant industrial  center  of  the  state,  with  a  relatively  large 
demand  for  the  labor  which  with  farm  work  was  the  poorer 
immigrant's  sole  means  of  getting  a  financial  start.  In 
addition,  it  was  the  commercial  metropolis,  and  that  the 
German  was  firmly  tethered  to  his  market  has  already  be- 
come clear. 

The  construction  of  the  Milwaukee  and  Mississippi 
Railroad,  begun  in  1849  and  completed  to  Prairie  du  Chien 
in  1857,  partially  freed  the  German  immigrant  from  his 
dread  of  being  marooned  in  the  interior.  Desirable  govern- 
ment lands  accessible  to  the  proposed  railroad  were  generally 
taken  up  several  years  before  the  completion  of  the  road, 
and  among  the  entrymen  in  certain  districts  were  many 
newly  arrived  Germans.  This  was  true  to  some  extent  in 
Dane  County,  but  more  noticeably  so  farther  west.  In  Iowa 
County  and  in  Grant  were  sheltered  pleasant  and  fertile 
valleys,  opening  toward  the  Wisconsin,  which  would  be 
served  by  the  railroad  when  completed,  and  which  had  long 
been  in  touch  with  the  world  by  means  of  steamers  plying 
on  the  Wisconsin.  In  those  valleys,  and  on  the  wider  ridges 
between  them,  the  Germans  competed  with  others  for  the 
choicest  locations  on  government  and  state  lands.  Land 
entry  records  for  two  townships  in  Blue  River  valley  show, 
by  1860,  out  of  an  aggregate  of  122  foreign  born  families  59 
of  German  origin,  while  the  American  families  numbered 
93.  A  similar  proportion  doubtless  obtained  in  other  towns 
south  of  the  river. 

Directly  opposite  these  townships,  in  the  same  survey 
range  but  lying  on  the  north  side  of  Wisconsin  River,  was 
the  town  of  Eagle,  whose  settlement  was  almost  exactly 


Yankee  and  Teuton  19 

contemporaneous  with  that  of  the  Blue  River  valley.  But 
Eagle,  in  1860,  had  20  foreign  born  families  to  108  American, 
and  of  the  20  only  13  were  German. 

Inasmuch  as  the  people  on  the  two  banks  of  the  river 
had  a  common  market — Muscoda,  which  was  a  station  on 
the  railroad — and  the  lands  of  Eagle  were  more  fertile  and 
quite  as  well  watered,  the  question  why  the  Germans  avoided 
that  town  and  made  homes  south  of  the  river  is  surely 
interesting,  and  possibly  significant. 

There  were  two  important  differences  between  the  two 
districts.  In  Blue  River  the  valley  land,  to  use  the  sur- 
veyor's phrase,  was  "thinly  timbered  with  oak,"  while  in 
the  valley  of  Mill  Creek,  or  Eagle  Creek,  opposite  was  a 
dense  forest  dominated  by  the  sugar  maple  but  containing 
big  timber  of  several  varieties,  and  dense  undergrowth. 
In  a  word,  it  was  a  heavily  timbered  area.  Now  the  Ger- 
mans near  Lake  Michigan  had  given  ample  proof  of  gal- 
lantry in  attacking  forest  covered  farms,  yet  when  the 
choice  was  before  them  of  taking  such  land  in  Richland 
County  or  easily  cleared  land  of  poorer  quality  in  Grant, 
almost  with  one  accord  they  selected  the  latter. 

We  cannot  be  certain  that  the  difference  in  the  timbered 
character  of  the  land  was  the  sole  motive  determining  the 
choice,  though  doubtless  it  was  the  most  important.  The 
railroad  ran  on  the  south  side  of  the  river  and  the  principal 
trading  center  was  on  that  side.  Settlers  in  Blue  River 
valley  could  therefore  reach  the  market  by  a  direct,  un- 
broken haul  with  teams  over  public  roads.  Those  in  Eagle 
at  first  were  obliged  to  use  the  ferry  in  crossing  the  river, 
and  later  they  had  to  cross  on  a  toll  bridge  except  in  mid- 
winter, if  the  river  was  frozen  to  a  safe  depth,  when  they 
crossed  on  the  ice.  These  transportation  conditions  might 
have  deterred  some  Germans  from  settling  north  of  the 
river,  even  if  the  lands  there  had  been  as  lightly  timbered 
as  those  on  the  south  side.  Taken  together,  the  two  causes 


20  Joseph  Schafer 

virtually  served  to  blockade  that  district  against  settlers  of 
their  type. 

But  if  the  Germans  declined  the  rdle  of  foresters,  by 
refusing  to  settle  in  a  partially  isolated  town  like  Eagle, 
the  Yankees  did  the  same.  New  Yorkers  and  New  England- 
ers  were  scarcer  there  than  Prussians  or  Hanoverians.  The 
town  was  occupied  mainly  by  families  from  Ohio,  Kentucky, 
Missouri,  Indiana — with  a  few  from  Virginia  and  North 
Carolina;  in  short,  by  men  who  had  enjoyed  or  endured 
a  recent  experience  as  frontiersmen  in  heavily  wooded 
regions.  So  many  belonged  to  the  class  described  by  Eggles- 
ton  in  The  Circuit  Rider,  The  Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  and  The 
Gray  sons,  that  the  name  "Hoosier  Hollow,"  applied  to  one 
of  the  coulees,  seems  perfectly  normal. 

To  the  Yankee,  we  may  be  sure,  the  heavy  woods  in  the 
town  of  Eagle  were  a  sufficient  deterrent  to  settlement 
there.  The  Germans  shunned  it  either  because  they  dis- 
liked heavy  clearing  when  it  could  be  avoided  and  when  no 
compensating  advantages  offered,  as  was  the  case  near  the 
lake  shore;  or  because  they  disliked  the  risk  and  the  expense 
of  crossing  the  river  to  market;  or  for  both  of  these  reasons 
combined.  Probably  either  reason,  singly,  would  have 
sufficed. 

By  way  of  summary,  we  may  say  that  as  a  land  seeker  the 
Yankee's  range  exceeded  that  of  the  German.  Both  clung  to 
the  lake  ports  as  their  market  base.  But  the  Yankee's 
optimism  painted  for  him  a  roseate  future  based  on  an 
experimental  knowledge  of  material  development  for  which 
the  German's  imagination  was  largely  unprepared.  The 
New  Yorker  had  witnessed,  in  his  home  state,  the  almost 
miraculous  transformation  of  rural  conditions  through  the 
construction  of  a  system  of  canals;  and  canal  building 
affected  Vermont,  Pennsylvania,  and  Ohio  only  less  pro- 
foundly than  the  Empire  State.  To  the  Yankee,  therefore, 
who  cast  his  lot  in  the  favored  lands  of  Wisconsin  it  seemed 


Yankee  and  Teuton  21 

that  nothing  could  halt  the  march  of  improvement.  The 
chief  point  was  to  obtain  prompt  possession  of  the  right  kind 
of  farm.  Having  this,  he  could  count  on  doing  a  big  agri- 
cultural business  as  a  wheat  grower,  which  promised  gener- 
ous financial  rewards.  But  if  for  any  reason  he  failed  to  get 
the  right  kind  of  farm,  if  improvements  were  unexpectedly 
dilatory,  or  if  the  land  ceased  to  respond  to  his  demand  for 
wheat  and  more  wheat,  he  "sold  out"  with  slight  com- 
punction and  went  elsewhere,  confident  of  success  on  a  new 
frontier,  especially  the  great  wheat  plains.  To  him  land  was 
a  desirable  commodity,  but  by  no  means  a  sacred  trust. 

The  German,  on  the  other  hand,  came  from  a  land  of 
very  gradual  change.  Although  agricultural  conditions 
there  were  actually  considerably  modified  in  the  first  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  he  still,  for  the  most  part,  looked 
upon  his  dwindling  patrimony  as  the  basis,  not  of  a  money 
making  business,  but  of  a  livelihood.  If,  by  the  com- 
bined labor  of  all  members  of  the  household,  the  family 
could  be  fed,  clothed,  and  sheltered,  the  heavy  obligations 
to  church  and  state  redeemed,  and  a  few  gulden  seques- 
tered for  times  of  emergency,  the  peasant  was  content. 
His  land  was  his  home.  It  had  been  his  father's,  grand- 
father's, great-grandfather's.  The  original  estate  was 
parted  into  ever  more  and  smaller  divisions,  as  generation 
succeeded  generation,  until  the  tracts  of  many  holders  were 
at  last  too  small  to  support  the  families.  These  had  no 
choice  but  to  sell  and  go  to  the  city,  or  go  to  America.  This 
condition  was  one  of  the  most  general  economic  causes  of  the 
large  German  immigration  to  this  and  other  states.  When 
the  German  farmer,  or  other  German,  came  to  Wisconsin 
and  bought  a  piece  of  land,  one  purpose  dominated  his 
mind — to  make  a  farm  for  a  home,  and  establish  a  family 
estate.  In  the  beginning  it  did  not  occur  to  him  to  speculate 
in  land,  although  in  this  as  in  other  things  he  proved  an  apt 
pupil.  Accustomed  to  a  very  limited  acreage,  he  was  not 


22  Joseph  Schafer 

like  the  Yankee  ambitious  to  secure  a  large  domain.  Habit- 
uated to  intensive  tillage,  a  partly  made  farm  having  ten 
or  twelve  acres  of  cleared  land  was  to  him  an  ample  equip- 
ment for  making  a  living  in  agriculture.  Enlarging  fields 
meant  a  surplus  and  mounting  prosperity.  If  he  took  raw 
land,  he  could  count  on  clearing  enough  in  a  couple  of 
winters  with  his  own  hands  to  raise  food  crops,  and  he 
looked  upon  the  prospect  of  spending  ten,  twenty,  or 
twenty -five  years  in  fully  subduing  his  80-  or  100-acre  farm 
with  no  unreasoning  dread  or  carking  impatience.  The  re- 
mark of  Diederichs  characterized  the  German  preemptor: 
"If  I  once  have  land  enough  under  cultivation  to  raise  our 
food  supplies,  I  will  win  through."  Whereas  the  Yankee 
wanted  to  break  40,  60,  80,  or  100  acres  of  prairie  or  openings 
the  first  year,  the  German  contemplated  the  possession  of  a 
similar  acreage  of  tillable  land  in  ten,  fifteen,  or  twenty 
years. 

But  once  in  possession  of  a  tract  of  land,  the  German 
tended  to  hold  on,  through  good  years  and  bad  years,  as  if 
his  farm  were  the  one  piece  of  land  in  the  world  for  him  and 
his.  The  Yankee,  already  given  to  change  in  the  East, 
tended  in  the  West,  under  the  stimulus  of  machine-aided 
wheat  culture,  to  regard  land  lightly,  and  to  abandon  one 
tract  for  another  on  the  principle  that  the  supply  was 
inexhaustible  and  that  one  social  environment  was  apt  to 
be  as  satisfactory  as  another.  He  had  before  him  the  great 
wheat  plains,  the  Pacific  coast,  the  inland  empire  and  the 
parks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Latterly  his  range  has 
widened  to  include  the  plains  of  the  Assiniboin,  the  Saskat- 
chewan, and  Peace  River.  For  more  than  half  a  century  he 
was  free  to  roam,  to  pick  and  choose  land  even  as  he  picked 
and  chose  in  southern  Wisconsin — the  slower,  more  cautious, 
or  more  timid  German  buying  his  farm  when  he  was  ready  to 
sell. 

It  was  peaceful  penetration,  involving  no  sabre  rattling 


Yankee  and  Teuton  23 

but  much  canny  bargaining,  sober  casting  up  of  accounts, 
and  cheerful  jingling  of  specie.  The  Yankees,  more  specula- 
tive to  the  last,  more  imaginative  and  space-free,  pressed 
ever  toward  the  borders  of  the  primitive,  drawn  by  the  same 
lure  of  wealth  quickly  and  easily  acquired  which  brought  so 
many  of  them  to  the  prairies  of  Wisconsin  in  the  earlier 
days.  The  Germans,  fearing  distance  more  than  debt,  con- 
fident in  their  ability  to  make  grain  crops  grow  and  farm 
stock  fatten  if  cnly  they  had  a  sure  market  for  cattle  and  for 
crops,  remained  behind  to  till  the  abandoned  fields  and 
occupy  the  deserted  homes.  Thus,  so  far  as  Wisconsin's 
farming  areas  are  concerned,  the  shadow  of  the  Yankee  has 
grown  less  in  the  land,  while  the  tribe  of  the  Teuton  has 
increased. 

What  tendencies  may  have  been  induced  by  the  passing 
of  the  frontier  and  the  resurgence  of  a  population  deprived 
of  its  former  temptation  to  expand  into  new  regions;  what 
social  changes  were  implied  in  the  agricultural  revolution 
which  compels  the  daily  application  of  science  to  the  busi- 
ness of  farming;  what  readjustments  in  relationships  were 
involved  in  the  modification  of  the  Teutonic  type  with  the 
coming  upon  the  stage  of  the  second  and  third  generations 
of  Germans;  how  the  Germans  in  turn  have  reacted  to  the 
competition  of  groups  having  their  origin  in  other  foreign 
countries,  like  the  Scandinavians,  Bohemians,  and  Poles — 
all  these  are  questions  the  answers  to  which  would  aid  us  to 
determine  "where  we  are  and  whither  we  are  tending." 
But  their  discussion  will  have  to  be  postponed  to  later  issues 
of  this  magazine. 


THE  YANKEE  AND  THE  TEUTON  IN  WISCONSIN 

JOSEPH  SCHAFER 
II     DISTINCTIVE  TRAITS  AS  FARMERS 

The  agricultural  traits  and  peculiarities  of  the  nineteenth 
century  Yankees  were  the  resultant  of  partly  contradictory 
forces,  some  of  them  evolutionary,  others  devolutionary. 
In  England  the  period  of  the  Puritan  migration  to  America 
and  the  half-century  antecedent  thereto  was  a  time  of 
vigorous  agricultural  change  marked  by  many  improve- 
ments in  cultivation  and  in  land  management.  The  agrarian 
revolution  introduced  by  the  transfer  of  church  properties  to 
aymen  was  accompanied  by  enclosures  and  a  widespread 
tendency  to  shift  from  an  uneconomical  crop  economy  to  an 
agriculture  governed  by  business  principles.  In  this  new 
system  the  production  of  farm  animals — especially  sheep — 
the  fertilization  of  the  soil,  rotation  of  crops,  and  livestock 
improvement  were  main  factors.  Forces  and  interests  were 
set  in  motion  at  this  time  which,  a  century  or  so  later,  made 
farming  the  concern  of  many  of  England's  leading  minds, 
whose  wise  and  persistent  experimentation  benefited  the 
whole  civilized  world. 

The  few  thousand  immigrants  to  the  New  England  colo- 
nies, founders  of  America's  Yankeedom,  were  not  all  farmers. 
Some  were  fishermen,  some  were  small  tradesmen,  others 
craftsmen;  a  few  were  professional  men  and  soldiers.  But  a 
goodly  proportion  were  land  owners  and  peasants,  and  all 
had  a  more  or  less  direct  knowledge  of  the  principles  and 
processes  which  governed  English  agriculture.  The  in- 
fluence of  habit,  always  a  determining  factor  in  the  transfer 
of  civilization  from  an  old  land  to  a  new,  caused  the  oc- 
casional reproduction  in  New  England  of  some  features  of 
English  farming,  especially  under  village  conditions.  The 


262  Joseph  Schafer 

common  field  system  in  Old  Salem  reflected  a  disappearing 
element  in  English  farm  life,  while  the  commons  of  hay, 
commons  of  pasture,  commons  of  wood,  and  commons  of 
mast,  with  their  administrative  "hay  reeve,"  "hog  reeve," 
"wood  reeve,"  herdsmen,  and  shepherds,  mark  a  natural 
imitating  of  the  ways  of  parish  life  at  home. 

But  there  were  differences  in  the  conditions  "at  home" 
and  in  America  as  wide  as  those  symbolized  by  the  terms 
"insular,"  and  "continental,"  applied  to  the  geography  of 
the  two  countries.  Chief  among  these  differences  were  the 
generally  forested  character  of  the  new-world  land,  the 
necessity  of  adapting  tillage  to  an  unfamiliar  climate,  in 
part  to  new  food  cereals,  especially  Indian  corn,  and  the 
absolute  dependence  upon  markets  which  could  be  created 
or  opened  by  the  colonists  themselves.  It  was  in  fact  the 
problem  of  a  market  which  so  long  subordinated  farming 
proper  in  New  England  to  a  species  of  country  living  in 
which  small  patches  of  arable  supplied  most  of  the  family's 
food,  while  forest  and  stream  were  the  objects  of  exploita- 
tion for  marketable  furs,  for  medicinal  plants,  and  for  timber 
products.  Yankee  ingenuity,  which  justly  became  pro- 
verbial, had  an  assignable  cause.  It  was  not  an  inherited 
quality,  or  one  which  was  imported  and  conserved;  it  was  a 
distinctively  American  product,  explained  by  the  situation 
of  the  average  New  England  farmer — who  was,  by  force  of 
circumstances,  more  of  a  mechanic  and  woods  worker 
than  a  cultivator  of  the  soil.  His  house,  especially  in  winter, 
was  a  busy  workshop  where  clapboards,  staves,  hoops, 
heading,  ax  handles,  and  a  variety  of  other  articles  of 
utility  and  salability  were  always  in  course  of  manufacture. 
All  the  farm  "tinkering"  was  additional  thereto. 

In  his  contest  with  the  forest  for  a  livelihood,  the  Yankee 
farmer  was  gradually  changed  from  the  eastern  New  Eng- 
land village  type  to  that  of  the  American  "pioneer."  His 
axmanship  was  unrivaled,  his  skill  in  woodscraft,  his  re.- 


Yankee  and  Teuton  263 

sourcefulness  in  the  face  of  untried  situations  were  equal  to 
the  best.  When  the  time  came  for  taking  agricultural  pos- 
session of  broad  spaces  in  the  northern  and  western  interior, 
the  Yankee  was  the  instrument,  shaped  by  four  genera- 
tions of  American  history,  to  achieve  that  object.1 

This  general  "handiness"  was  gained  not  without  a 
partial  loss  of  such  acquired  knowledge  and  skill  in  agricul- 
ture proper  as  the  first  immigrants  brought  from  England. 
Close,  careful  cultivation  was  impossible  among  the  stumps 
and  girdled  trees  of  new  clearings;  the  amplitude  of  natural 
meadows  and  the  superabundance  of  "browse"  relieved 
settlers  from  the  sharp  necessity  of  providing  artificially 
for  the  winter  feeding  of  cattle;  the  mast  of  oak  trees  and 
the  wealth  of  nuts,  supplementing  summer  "greens,"  roots, 
grass,  and  wild  apples,  supplied  most  of  the  requisites  for 
finishing  off  pork.  Under  these  conditions  farming  even 
at  best  was  an  entirely  different  thing  from  what  it  had 
been  at  home.  At  its  worst,  it  was  a  crude  process,  afford- 
ing a  vegetative  kind  of  existence,  but  nothing  more.  In 
fact,  farming  in  the  New  England  states  hardly  attained  the 
status  of  a  business  until  the  nineteenth  century,  though 
in  some  portions  it  gave  the  farmer  and  his  family  a  generous 
living  and  afforded  a  few  luxuries.  It  made  thousands  of 
persons  independent  proprietors  who  could  not  have  reached 
that  station  at  home;  it  gave  the  farmers  as  a  class  a  com- 
manding influence  in  politics  and  society;  "embattled,"  it 
enabled  them  to  wrest  their  country's  independence  from 
the  awkward  hands  of  a  bungling  monarchy.  In  short,  it 
contributed  incalculably  to  their  importance  as  men  in 
history.  The  indications  are,  however,  that  as  farmers  the 

1  Michel  Chevalier,  Society,  Manners,  and  Politics  in  the  United  States  (Boston,  1839), 
chap,  x,  112-113,  117,  says:  "Loading  a  wagon  with  a  plough,  a  bed,  a  barrel  of  salt  meat, 
the  indispensable  supply  of  tea  and  molasses,  a  Bible  and  a  wife,  and  with  his  axe  on  his 
shoulder,  the  Yankee  sets  out  for  the  West,  without  a  servant,  without  an  assistant, 
often  without  a  companion,  to  build  himself  a  log  hut,  six  hundred  miles  from  his  father's 
roof,  and  clear  away  a  spot  for  a  farm  in  the  midst  of  the  boundless  forest.  .  .  .  He  is 
incomparable  as  a  pioneer,  unequalled  as  a  settler  of  the  wilderness." 


264  Joseph  Schafer 

fourth  generation  of  Mayflower  descendants  were  decidedly 
inferior  to  the  original  Pilgrims  and  Puritans. 

The  third  generation  were  probably  less  skillful  than  the 
fourth.  For,  by  the  time  of  the  Revolution  there  were 
farming  areas  in  southern  New  England  that  were  looking 
up.  Timothy  Dwight,  near  the  end  of  the  century,  found 
and  recorded  some  of  the  evidences  of  a  movement  to  im- 
prove cultivation,  to  fertilize  the  soil,  to  better  the  character 
of  farm  livestock — a  movement  which  had  been  going  for- 
ward under  impulses  communicated  from  England,  where 
the  eighteenth  century  was  peculiarly  fruitful  in  agricultural 
development.  Dwight  was  enough  of  an  idealist  to  ap- 
preciate the  limits  of  the  improvement  thus  far  reached. 
Yet  he  did  insist,  with  evident  justice,  that  the  farming  of 
the  Connecticut  valley  and  of  eastern  Massachusetts  was  at 
least  respectable.  Fields  were  well  cleared  and  carefully 
cultivated,  clover  began  to  be  used  as  a  feeding  and  green 
manure  crop,  the  beginnings  had  been  made  of  a  system  of 
rotation  of  crops,  livestock  was  of  relatively  good  quality— 
especially  in  certain  Connecticut  towns  which  were  already 
noted  for  the  weight  of  the  bullocks  they  furnished  to  the 
commissary  department  of  Washington's  army.  By  that 
time,  also,  leading  men  in  New  England  lent  their  influence 
toward  the  building  up  of  the  agricultural  interest;  agricul- 
tural societies  were  organized  and  essays  on  agriculture  came 
to  have  considerable  vogue.  Some  importations  of  pure- 
bred livestock  from  England  took  place.  The  first  merino 
sheep  were  brought  in  from  France,  then  larger  numbers 
from  Spain  by  Consul  William  Jarvis.  In  1810  Elkanah 
Watson  established  his  Berkshire  County  Agricultural 
Society,  with  the  county  fair  which  became  the  model  for 
subsequent  county  and  state  fairs  the  country  over. 

When  Tom  Paine  predicted  in  1776  that  an  independent 
America  would  prosper  "as  long  as  eating  continues  to  be- 


Yankee  and  Teuton  265 

the  custom  of  Europe,"2  he  assumed  one  point  about  which 
some  doubt  might  in  future  arise:  Would  Europe  always 
have  the  wherewithal  to  purchase  American  foodstuffs  at 
prices  which  would  compensate  our  people  for  growing 
them  and  delivering  them  to  the  market?  During  the 
continuance  of  the  long  revolutionary  and  Napoleonic  wars, 
Europe  managed  to  make  good  Paine's  prophecy,  and 
prices  at  the  close  of  the  wars  ruled  high.  There  followed 
the  great  expansion  era  which  spread  American  farmers 
over  the  New  West,  both  south  and  north,  into  which 
Yankees  entered  to  a  large  extent. 

The  good  prices  did  not  hold.  Food  could  be  raised 
cheaply,  but  markets  were  costly  to  reach,  even  with  the 
new  wizardry  of  the  steamboat,  and  something  gigantic 
was  called  for  in  the  way  of  internal  improvements.  The 
answer  was  at  first  canals,  afterwards  railroads.  At  the 
same  time,  something  had  to  be  done  by  the  farmer  himself 
if  the  entire  structure  of  American  agriculture,  now  be- 
coming conscious  of  its  own  embarrassments,  was  not  to  go 
down.  The  answer  to  this  was  better  farming.  It  was  in 
1819,  the  panic  year,  that  John  S.  Skinner  founded  at 
Baltimore  the  American  Farmer,  first  of  the  distinctively 
farm  journals  which  almost  immediately  had  a  small  group 
of  successors.  Among  them  were  the  New  England  Farmer, 
the  Albany  Cultivator,  the  Pennsylvania  Farmer,  the  Rural 
New  Yorker,  the  Vermont  Farmer,  the  Ohio  Farmer,  etc. 

Yankeedom  was  a  good  social  soil  for  these  journals. 
The  all  but  universal  literacy  of  the  people,  their  curiosity, 
their  love  of  argument  and  disputation,  their  habit  of 
experimentation,  all  tended  both  to  give  currency  to  the 
new  ideas  presented  and  to  sift  the  practical  and  valuable 
from  the  merely  theoretic  and  futile.  Thus  was  intro- 
duced, in  a  period  of  prevailing  "hard  times,"  a  meliorating 
influence  destined  to  reach  a  very  large  proportion  of  the 

1  See  his  Common  Sense  (Philadelphia,  1791). 


266  Joseph  Schafer 

settlers  in  those  sections,  particularly  Vermont,  western 
New  York,  northern  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio,  from  which 
the  bulk  of  the  Yankee  pioneers  of  Wisconsin  were  drawn  a 
quarter  of  a  century  later.  The  effect  of  county  and  state 
fairs  was  to  deepen  and  fructify  the  influence  of  the  new 
agricultural  press. 

It  will  be  understood  that  the  actual  "shoring  up"  of 
agricultural  practice  came  about  with  relative  slowness. 
Yet,  it  soon  began  here  and  there,  and  by  a  kind  of  mild  in- 
fection spread  gradually  over  wide  areas.  Only  in  crisis 
periods,  with  the  introduction  of  new  methods  to  suit  new 
market  conditions,  was  progress  ever  very  rapid.  To 
illustrate,  as  early  as  1820  Josiah  Quincy  was  advocating 
and  practising  the  summer  soiling  of  cattle,  especially 
milch  cows,  and  demonstrating  the  profitableness  of  the 
system  for  the  region  near  Boston.  It  was  a  long  time 
before  soiling  became  common  even  in  that  district,  but 
this  experiment  engendered  better  care  of  livestock.  The 
same  careful,  experimental  farmer  demonstrated  the  econo- 
my of  using  good-sized  whole  potatoes  for  seed,  as  against 
the  practice  of  planting  seed  ends  and  small  tubers;  other 
farmers  were  slow  to  adopt  the  idea,  which  is  not  yet  uni- 
versally followed,  yet  some  improvement  doubtless  came 
from  the  publication  of  Quincy's  findings. 

What,  then,  were  the  general  farming  habits  of  the 
Yankees  who  form  the  background  of  Wisconsin's  pioneer 
age?  First  of  all,  they  lived  in  decent  houses  which  were 
usually  of  lumber.  Dwight  contended  that  not  one  New 
England  village  in  a  hundred  was  disfigured  with  the  pres- 
ence of  even  one  log  house.  He  also  gives  the  result  of  a 
count  made  in  1810  of  the  log  houses  along  the  road  from 
New  Haven  to  Windsor  in  Vermont,  thence  across  the 
Green  Mountains  to  Middlebury,  and  back  by  a  direct 
route  to  New  Haven,  a  distance  of  over  460  miles,  much  of 
it  through  new  settlements.  It  showed  only  fifteen  to 


Yankee  and  Teuton  267 

Middlebury  and  thirty -two  on  the  return  route.  It  seems 
to  have  been  a  matter  of  pride  with  the  Yankee  to  desert 
his  pioneer  log  house  as  quickly  as  possible.  His  personal 
skill  with  tools,  and  abundance  of  saw  timber,  made  the 
construction  of  a  frame  house  a  family  undertaking  calling 
for  labor  indeed,  but  only  a  minimum  of  hired  skill;  and 
for  little  material  involving  the  outlay  of  actual  money.  So 
the  frame  houses  rose  wherever  the  Yankees  settled.  Along 
the  great  road  from  Albany  to  Buffalo,  in  western  New 
York,  they  began  to  spring  up  before  the  settlements  were 
ten  years  old.  When,  about  twenty-five  years  later, 
travelers  passed  that  way  they  saw  many  houses  of  squared, 
framed  timbers,  covered  over  neatly  with  boards  at  the 
sides  and  ends,  and  roofed  with  shingles.3  These  common 
frame  houses  were  sufficiently  inartistic,  no  doubt.  Per- 
haps, as  one  traveler  remarks,  they  did  look  like  "huge 
packing  boxes."  Similar  architectural  designs  can  be 
seen  scattered  over  the  West — and  the  East,  too — at  this 
late  date.  Still,  they  were  more  commodious  than  the 
log  houses,  and  improved  the  families'  living  conditions. 
The  next  stage  was  likely  to  mark  a  very  distinct  advance. 
"In  the  more  cleared  and  longer  settled  parts  of  the  coun- 
try," says  a  none  too  sympathetic  English  traveler,  "we 
saw  many  detached  houses,  which  might  almost  be  called 
villas,  very  neatly  got  up,  with  rows  of  wooden  columns  in 
front,  aided  by  trees  and  tall  shrubs  running  round  and 
across  the  garden  which  was  prettily  fenced  in,  and  embel- 
lished with  a  profusion  of  flowers."  Yankees  had  the 
habit  of  building  by  the  roadside,  whatever  the  economic 
disadvantages  of  such  a  situation,  because  it  enabled  them 
to  keep  in  touch  with  the  world — a  reason  which  is  by  no 
means  frivolous,  and  for  them  highly  characteristic. 

We  have  no  such  definite  account  of  the  Yankee  farmers' 

3  See  Captain  Basil  Hall,  Travels  in  North  America  in  tiie  Years  1827  and  1828  (Edin- 
burgh, 1829),  i,  130. 


268  Joseph  Schafer 

barns  as  of  those  of  Pennsylvania  Germans.  It  is  true  that 
Dwight,  speaking  for  the  older  New  England,  suggests 
that  the  barn  was  apt  to  be  a  much  better  structure  than 
the  house.  The  custom,  however,  noted  by  travelers  in 
New  York  and  elsewhere,  of  letting  cattle  run  at  large  all 
winter  without  shelter  other  than  trees  and  brush,  and  per- 
haps the  straw  pile  or  rick  of  marsh  hay,  argues  that  stabling 
was  furnished  for  only  a  minimum  number  of  work  oxen, 
horses — if  such  there  were — and  perhaps  in  some  cases  cows 
in  milk.  It  undoubtedly  was  not  the  practice  to  house  stock 
cattle,  or  even — except  in  isolated  cases — to  feed  them  in 
sheds.  The  advocates  of  careful  sheltering  who  wrote  for 
the  agricultural  journals  recognized  that  the  weight  of 
opinion  was  against  sheltering  stock.  They  compromised 
with  that  opinion  by  recommending  sheds  for  young  stock 
and  dry  cows,  and  warm  barns  only  for  milking  cows  and 
work  animals.4  Yet,  some  of  the  leading  cattle  feeders 
of  the  Genesee  valley,  as  late  as  the  year  1842,  were  content 
to  scatter  loads  of  hay  over  meadows  and  through  brush 
patches  for  the  hundreds  of  beef  cattle  they  were  wintering.5 
The  livestock,  except  sheep  and  pigs,  was  still  by  1840 
prevailingly  of  no  breed.  Nevertheless,  Durhams  and 
Devons  were  coming  into  use.  The  Patroon  stock  of 
shorthorns,  introduced  in  1824  from  England  by  Stephen 
Van  Rensellaer,  of  Albany,  gained  its  first  customers  ap- 
parently among  the  English  farmers  of  western  New  York, 
but  gradually  made  its  way  among  the  Yankees  as  well. 
Other  importations  were  soon  made,  so  that  by  1840  there 
were  several  prominent  herds  of  purebreds  in  that  section 
of  the  state.  In  1842  it  was  said  of  the  Genesee  County  Fair 
that  "with  the  exception  of  some  working  oxen  and  one 
cow  not  a  single  animal  of  native  cattle  was  in  the  yard. 
All  were  either  pure  or  grade  Durhams  or  Devons.  .  .  . 

*  American  Agriculturist,  i  (1842),  115  ff. 

6  Captain  Robert  Barclay,  Agricultural  Tour  in  the  United  States  .  .  .  (London, 
1842).  41. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  269 

Bulls  were  shown  by  some  six  or  seven  competitors.  Among 
them  were  four  thoroughbred  ones  and  one  of  those  im- 
ported."6 It  is  clear  that  by  the  time  emigration  to  Wis- 
consin began  to  take  place,  actual  progress  had  been  made 
and  the  entire  body  of  Yankee  farmers  had  been  indoctri- 
nated with  the  idea  of  better  livestock.  Sheep  and  pigs 
were  already  largely  improved,  the  former  prevailingly 
through  the  cross  with  the  merinos,  the  latter  with  Berk- 
shires  and  other  English  breeds.  The  Morgan  horse,  a 
Vermont  product,  was  gaining  wide  popularity. 

From  what  has  been  said  of  the  care  of  livestock,  it 
follows  that  the  possibilities  of  the  farm  for  the  manufacture 
of  fertilizer  were  generally  neglected.  English  travelers 
were  apt  to  insist  that  this  neglect  was  universal,  but  there 
were,  of  course,  numerous  exceptions.  Farming  was  exten- 
sive, not  intensive.  Lands  were  cleared  by  chopping  or 
"slashing"  the  timber,  burning  brush  and  logs,  then  harrow- 
ing among  the  stumps  to  cover  the  first-sown  wheat  seed. 
In  a  few  years,  with  the  rotting  of  the  smaller  stumps  and 
the  roots,  the  plow  could  be  used,  though  always  with  em- 
barrassment on  account  of  the  large  stumps  which  thickly 
studded  the  fields.  These  disappeared  gradually,  being  al- 
lowed to  stand  till  so  fully  decayed  that  a  few  strokes  with 
ax  or  mattock  would  dislodge  them.  As  late  as  1830  many 
fields  in  western  New  York  were  stump  infested. 

Wheat  was  the  great,  almost  the  sole,  market  crop, 
and  it  was  grown  year  after  year  till  the  soil  ceased  to 
respond.  From  bumper  yields  of  twenty-five  or  thirty 
bushels  per  acre  the  returns  fell  off  to  twenty,  fifteen,  and 
then  twelve,  ten,  or  even  eight.  The  process  of  decline  was 
well  under  way  when  the  immigration  to  Wisconsin  set  in, 
and  already  the  turn  had  come  toward  a  more  definite 
livestock  economy,  which  in  large  portions  of  New  York 
soon  gave  rise  to  a  system  of  factory  cheese  making.  A 

6  American  Agriculturist,  i,  311. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  271 

main  reason  for  the  removal  to  the  West,  on  the  part  of 
farmers  whose  holdings  were  too  small  to  make  successful 
stock  farms,  or  who  refused  to  abandon  wheat  raising  as  a 
business,  was  that  lands  in  the  West  could  be  had  already 
cleared  by  nature.  Many  half -cleared  farms,  with  custom- 
ary buildings  and  fences,  could  in  the  forties  be  purchased  in 
western  New  York  for  from  four  to  eight  dollars  per  acre. 
Instead  of  buying  these  farms,  the  young  men  preferred 
going  to  Michigan,  Illinois,  Iowa,  or  Wisconsin,  those  having 
such  farms  for  sale  doing  likewise  after  selling  out  to  neigh- 
bors, usually  the  larger  farmers,  who  elected  to  remain 
and  change  their  system  of  farming.  In  Vermont  we  have 
a  similar  story,  in  Ohio  the  same.  The  Yankee  farmers  who 
came  to  Wisconsin  were  generally  at  home  either  small 
farmers  or  the  sons  of  farmers  large  or  small ;  while  a  certain 
proportion  of  the  larger  farmers,  by  reason  of  debt  or  desire 
to  extend  their  business,  also  sold  out  and  came  west  to  buy 
cheap  lands  on  the  prairies  or  in  the  openings. 

An  agriculture  which  dates  from  before  the  time  of 
Tacitus,  and  which  acquired  permanent  characteristics  from 
the  influence  of  Roman  merchants,  monastics,  and  feuda- 
tories in  Roman  and  medieval  times,  was  bound  to  differ 
widely  and  even  fundamentally  from  the  agriculture  of  a  far 
flung  American  frontier.  The  Germans  who  met  the 
Yankee  immigrants  in  primitive  Wisconsin  brought  an 
inheritance  of  habit  and  training  analogous  to  that  of  the 
English  Puritan  emigrants  to  New  England,  but  with  the 
difference  that  the  Germans'  training  had  continued  two 
hundred  years  longer,  on  similar  lines.  They  were  old- 
world  cultivators,  the  Yankees  new-world  cultivators. 

Tacitus  says  in  one  place:  "The  Germans  live  scattered 
and  apart,  as  a  spring,  a  hill,  or  a  wood  entices  them."7 

7  Germania  (translated  slightly  differently  in  University  of  Pennsylvania  Translations 
and  Reprints),  11. 


272  Joseph  Schafer 

Nineteenth  century  German  economists  complained  that 
German  farmsteads  were  seated  often  most  inconveniently 
with  reference  to  the  management  of  the  farm  lands  per- 
taining to  them.  They  had  been  established,  in  the  days 
of  long  ago,  by  lakeside,  brook,  or  river  under  conditions 
in  which  access  to  water  was  the  most  important  single 
consideration.  They  had  never  been  moved,  although 
gradually  the  arable  stretched  far  back  from  the  dwelling, 
and  the  pasture  perhaps  was  located  in  a  wholly  detached 
area.8  This  description  applies  to  portions  of  northern 
Germany  where  farms  were  large  and  farming  had  the  status 
of  a  regular  and  dignified  business. 

Many  individuals  and  families  came  to  Wisconsin  from 
/  districts  like  Mecklenburg,  Prussia,  Pomerania,  though  in 
the  emigrations  of  the  1840's  and  fifties  the  great  majority 
were  from  southern  and  central  German  states.  It  will  be 
one  of  the  interesting  inquiries  in  connection  with  our  study 
of  local  influences  in  Wisconsin  towns  (Domesday  Book 
Studies) ,  how  far  the  special  regional  inheritances  of  foreign 
born  settlers  manifested  themselves  in  Wisconsin  com- 
munities. The  presumption,  about  the  north  German, 
would  be  that  his  farming  operations  would  tend  to  be  on 
a  large  scale,  under  a  business  system  which — in  this  new 
land — would  slough  off  such  anacronisms  as  the  dislocated 
farmstead,  and  present  the  features  of  an  ideal  establish- 
ment. But  it  may  be  that  the  forest  was  such  a  powerful 
leveler  as  to  obliterate  most  of  the  regional  distinctions 
among  immigrants.  Our  chief  concern,  at  all  events,  is 
with  that  great  body  of  German  farmers,  and  intending 
farmers,  who  came  from  the  southwestern  states  of  the  re- 
cent Empire,  especially  Alsace,  Baden,  Wlirttemberg, 
Rhine  Palatinate,  Rhenish  Prussia,  Hesse,  Nassau,  West- 
phalia— to  some  extent  Bavaria  and  Saxony. 

8  J.  H.  von  Thiinen,  Der  Isolierte  Staat  (Berlin,  1875),  103  ff.,  "Ueber  die  Lage  der 
Hofe  in  Mecklenburg."  . 


Yankee  and  Teuton  273 

The  fundamental  facts  about  the  home  conditions  of  these 
people,  so  far  as  they  were  farmers  at  home,  were  the  small- 
ness  of  their  holdings,  their  intensive  cultivation,  and  the 
almost  universal  village  type  of  life.  Travelers  of  about 
1840  describe  the  typical  middle  Rhine  country  as  a  highly 
cultivated  plain  without  division  hedges  or  fences  other 
than  the  tree-bordered  roads,  with  no  separate  farm  dwell- 
ings and  with  no  livestock  in  sight.  The  crops  of  several 
kinds  being  arranged  in  various  shaped  fields,  patches,  and 
strips,  the  plain  looked  like  the  proverbial  "crazy-quilt." 
Villages  were  huddled  at  the  edges  of  woods,  and  occasion- 
ally in  the  midst  of  the  cultivated  area.  Their  houses, 
which  were  not  arranged  on  a  regular  plan,  were  usually 
large  stone  structures,  the  farm  yard,  with  tools,  imple- 
ments, manure  and  compost  heaps,  occupying  a  kind  of 
court  at  the  rear. 

As  a  rule,  all  animals  were  housed  winter  and  summer. 
Here  was  an  important  difference  to  the  farming  of  the 
north,  where  large  herds  of  cattle  could  be  seen  pasturing 
ample  meadows,  or  ruminating  in  the  shade  of  buildings 
or  of  woods.  The  soiling  system  was  universally  practiced 
in  summer.  Grass  land  being  scarce  and  precious,  feed 
for  the  cows  was  laboriously  gathered  along  the  brookside,  in 
the  open  spaces  of  the  forest,  along  all  the  roads,  in  the 
cemeteries,  and  the  greens  before  the  houses.  The  weeds 
and  thinnings  from  the  growing  crops  went  to  the  same 
object.  Vegetable  tops  were  a  great  resource  in  late  summer 
and  fall,  and  patches  of  clover,  while  insuring  green  feed, 
furnished  hay  as  well.  In  places  the  growing  of  sugar 
beets  for  the  market  was  a  leading  agricultural  enterprise, 
and  the  tops  of  the  beets  were  carefully  cured  for  winter 
feed. 

The  cultivation  was  intensive  both  in  that  it  aimed  at 
the  maximum  produce  from  given  areas,  and  in  that  the 
crops  raised  included  some  which  called  for  very  special 


274  Joseph  Schafer 

care.  Some  sections  grew  tobacco,  in  connection  with 
which  much  hand  work  was  indispensable.  This  crop 
also  called  for  care  in  seed  selection,  in  germinating,  and  in 
preparing  the  ground  for  the  reception  of  the  young  plants. 
Beet  culture  for  sugar  making  involved  perhaps  not  less 
care,  and  doubtless  more  hand  labor.  Of  similar  but  less 
particularity  was  the  growing  of  root  crops  for  stock  feed, 
the  orcharding,  which  was  general,  and  the  vine  dressing, 
incident  to  the  business  of  special  districts. 

There  were,  of  course,  many  farmers  and  farms  in  the 
region  indicated  and  in  other  contributory  regions, which  were 
not  so  widely  different  from  the  average  of  those  in  America. 
Yet,  on  the  whole,  it  can  be  said  that  the  German  husband- 
man, in  training  and  habit,  was  analogous  to  our  modern 
truck  farmer  or  orchardist,  rather  than  to  our  general 
farmer.  He  was  a  specialist  in  soils,  in  fertilizing  and  pre- 
paring them  for  different  crops,  in  planting,  stirring,  weeding, 
irrigating;  in  defending  plants  against  insect  pests,  seasonal 
irregularities,  and  soil  peculiarities;  he  throve  by  hoeing, 
dragging,  trimming,  pruning,  sprouting;  by  curing  and  con- 
serving plants,  roots,  grasses,  grains,  and  fruits.  His  live- 
stock economy  was  incidental,  yet  very  important.  It 
supplied  the  necessary  fertilizer  to  maintain  soil  pro- 
ductivity; it  afforded  milk,  beef,  pork,  butter,  cheese,  wool. 
It  gave  him  his  draft  animals,  often  cows  instead  of  oxen, 
and  economized  every  bit  of  grass  and  forage  which  his  situa- 
tion produced. 

Improvement  of  livestock  appears  to  have  affected 
southwestern  Germany  prior  to  1850  very  little  as  compared 
with  the  pastoral  countries  of  England,  Holland,  Friesland, 
and  north  Germany.  The  animals  kept  by  the  village 
farmers  were  therefore  not  remarkable  for  quality.  But 
they  were  usually  well  housed,  and  the  feed  and  care  they 
received  made  up  in  considerable  measure  for  the  absence  of 
superior  blood. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  275 

The  various  states  of  Germany,  by  1840,  were  maintain- 
ing schools  of  agriculture,  a  species  of  experiment  stations 
for  the  dissemination  of  such  scientific  agricultural  informa- 
tion as  was  then  available.  To  some  extent,  therefore, 
farming  was  beginning  to  be  scientific.  But,  prevailingly 
it  was  intensely  practical,  the  appropriate  art  connected 
with  the  growing  of  every  distinct  crop  being  handed  on 
from  father  to  son,  from  farmer  to  laborer. 

One  could  almost  predict  how  farmers  thus  trained 
would  react  to  the  new  environment  of  the  Wisconsin 
wilderness.  Taking  up  a  tract  of  forested  land  or  buying 
a  farm  with  a  small  clearing  upon  it,  their  impulse  would  be, 
with  the  least  possible  delay,  to  get  a  few  acres  thoroughly 
cleared,  subdued  to  the  plow,  and  in  a  high  state  of  tilth. 
Exceptions  there  were,  to  be  sure,  but  on  the  whole  the 
German  pioneers  were  not  content  to  slash  and  burn  their 
timber.  After  the  timber  was  off,  the  stumps  must  come 
out,  forthwith,  to  make  the  tract  fit  for  decent  cultivation. 
Was  it  the  Germans  who  introduced  in  land  clearing  the 
custom  of  "grubbing"  instead  of  "slashing"?  This  meant 
felling  the  tree  by  undermining  it,  chopping  off  roots  under- 
ground at  a  safe  depth,  taking  out  grub  and  all,  instead  of 
cutting  it  off  above  ground.  In  timber  of  moderate  growth 
this  practice  proved  fairly  expeditious  and  highly  success- 
ful, for  once  a  tract  was  grubbed,  the  breaking  plow  en- 
countered no  serious  obstruction.  A  good  "grubber" 
among  later  immigrants  could  always  count  on  getting  jobs 
from  established  German  farmers.9 

To  the  American,  who  was  content  to  plow  around  his 
stumps  every  year  for  a  decade,  to  cultivate  around  them, 
cradle  or  reap  around  them,  it  seemed  that  his  German 

9  In  southwestern  Wisconsin,  about  1870,  a  respectable  German  farmer  announced 
to  his  relatives  the  marriage  of  his  daughter  to  a  man  who  had  arrived  but  recently  and 
had  the  status  of  a  mere  laborer.  To  parry  all  questions  about  the  suitability  of  the  groom, 
who  was  known  to  be  addicted  to  liquor  and  other  vices,  the  farmer  added:  "I'm  very 
willing  to  give  him  my  daughter,  for  he  is  the  best  'grubber'  I've  ever  had  on  my  farm." 


276  Joseph  Schafer 

neighbor  was  using  some  kind  of  magic  to  exorcise  his 
stumps.  The  magic  was  merely  human  muscle,  motivated 
by  a  psychology  which  inhibited  rest  so  long  as  a  single 
stump  remained  in  the  field. 

The  German  not  only  used  the  heaps  of  farm  yard 
fertilizer  which,  on  buying  out  the  original  entryman,  he 
commonly  found  on  the  premises,  but  he  conserved  all 
that  his  livestock  produced,  and  frequently,  if  not  too 
distant  from  town  or  village,  became  a  purchaser  of  the 
commodity  of  which  liverymen,  stock  yard  keepers,  and 
private  owners  of  cow  or  horse  were  anxious  to  be  relieved. 
The  manufacture  of  fertilizer  was  a  prime  reason  for  stabling 
his  livestock.  The  other  was  his  fixed  habit  of  affording 
animals  such  care.  Not  all  Germans  built  barns  at  once, 
but  the  majority  always  tried  to  provide  warm  sheds,  at 
least,  whereas  Yankee  and  Southwesterner  alike  were  very 
prone  to  allow  their  animals  to  huddle,  humped  and  shiver- 
ing, all  winter  on  the  leeward  side  of  house  or  granary,  or  in 
clumps  of  sheltering  brush  or  trees.10  The  German  was 
willing  to  occupy  his  log  house  longer,  if  necessary,  in  order 
to  gain  the  means  for  constructing  adequate  barns  and 
sheds. 

Germans  were  not  one-crop  farmers.  The  lands  they 
occupied,  usually  forested,  could  not  be  cleared  fast  enough 
at  best  to  enable  them  to  raise  wheat  on  a  grand  scale,  as 
the  Yankees  did  in  the  open  lands  of  the  southeast  and 
west.  Their  arable  was  extended  only  a  few  acres  per 
year,  and  while  that  was  being  done  the  German  farmers 
grew  a  little  of  everything — wheat,  rye,  corn,  oats,  barley, 
potatoes,  roots.  Clover  was  to  them  a  favorite  forage,  hay, 
and  green  manure  crop.  In  growing  it,  they  used  gypsum 
freely.  This  policy  of  clover  growing,  adopted  gradually 

10  When  John  Kerler  settled  near  Milwaukee  in  1848,  he  bought  a  farm  on  which 
was  no  provision  for  sheltering  livestock  other  than  work  animals.  He  built  a  barn  at 
once,  refusing  to  permit,  for  a  single  winter,  the  cruel  American  practice  of  leaving  cattle 
out  in  the  cold.  His  case  is  typical. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  277 

by  all  farmers,  was  one  of  the  means  finally  relied  on  by 
the  wheat  farmers  to  restore  the  productivity  of  their 
abused  soils. 

In  ways  such  as  the  above,  German  farmers  helped  to 
save  Wisconsin  agriculture  in  the  period  of  stress  when 
wheat  growing  failed  and  before  cooperative  dairying 
entered.  They  were  not  the  chief  influence  in  popularizing 
improved  livestock.  Credit  for  that  innovation  must  be 
awarded  to  the  Yankees.  They  had  resumed  in  the  eastern 
states  the  English  tradition  of  breeding,  and  brought  it  into 
Wisconsin  where,  by  means  of  state  and  county  fairs  and  an 
active  agricultural  press,  it  was  ultimately  borne  in  upon 
the  minds  of  all  farmers,  Germans  among  the  rest.11 

Neither  did  the  Germans  lead  in  developing  the  new 
agriculture,  of  which  cooperative  dairying  was  the  key- 
stone. Yankee  leadership  therein,  too,  was  the  dominant 
influence.  Yet,  it  was  the  Germans,  Scandinavians,  and 
other  foreigners — and  numerically  Germans  were  in  the 
majority — who,  by  virtue  of  their  agricultural  morale, 
their  steadiness  in  carrying  out  plans,  their  patience  and 
perseverance,  have  made  the  dairy  business  of  Wisconsin  the 
great  industry  it  has  become. 

Above  all,  the  Germans  persisted  as  farmers.  They 
prospered  not  dramatically,  like  some  of  the  more  success- 
ful of  the  Yankee  farmers,  but  by  little  and  little  they  saved 
money,  bought  more  land,  better  stock,  and  built  better 
homes.  WThen  Yankee  farmers,  discouraged  or  impover- 
ished by  the  failure  of  wheat,  offered  their  farms  for  sale 
preparatory  to  "going  west,"  Germans  who  had  managed 
their  smaller  farms  more  carefully  stood  ready  to  buy;  when 
Yankees  who  were  tired  of  being  "tied  to  a  cow"  wanted  to 
go  to  Montana,  Oregon,  or  Wyoming  to  raise  steers  by 
wholesale,  on  the  ranching  plan,  they  sold  out  to  Germans 
who  made  the  dairy  farms  pay  larger  dividends  year  by 

11  See  the  author's  History  of  Agriculture  in  Wisconsin  (Madison,  1922),  passim. 


278  Joseph  Schafer 

year.  When  Yankee  farmers  retired  to  the  city,  or  went 
into  business,  which  in  recent  decades  they  have  done  by 
thousands,  Germans  were  among  those  who  were  the  keenest 
bidders  for  their  farm  properties.  In  a  word,  the  German 
has  succeeded  agriculturally  through  the  more  and  more 
perfect  functioning,  in  this  new  land,  of  qualities  imparted 
by  the  training  and  inheritance  which  he  brought  with 
him  from  the  old  world.  On  the  whole,  Germans  have  kept 
clear  of  speculation,  preferring  to  invest  their  savings  in 
neighboring  lands  with  which  they  were  intimately  familiar, 
or  to  lend  to  neighboring  farmers  on  farm  mortgage  security. 
In  the  aggregate,  German  farmers  in  Wisconsin  have  long 
had  vast  sums  at  interest.  The  Institute  for  Research  in 
Land  Economics  (University  of  Wisconsin)  has  completed 
investigations  which  show  that  the  nation's  area  of  lowest 
farm  mortgage  interest  rates  (5 . 2  per  cent  or  less)  coincides 
very  closely  with  the  great  maple  forest  of  eastern  Wiscon- 
sin, which  has  been  held,  from  the  first,  predominantly  by 
German  farmers. 

We  have  no  desire  to  minimize  the  factor  contributed  to 
Wisconsin's  agriculture  by  the  Yankees.  They  were  the 
prophets  and  the  organizers  of  the  farmers'  movement. 
Their  inherent  optimism,  their  speculative  bent,  their 
genius  for  organization  were  indispensable  to  its  success. 
"Anything  is  possible  to  the  American  people,"  shouted  the 
mid-century  American  orator  from  a  thousand  Fourth  of 
July  rostrums,  therein  merely  reflecting  what  the  mass  of 
his  hearers  religiously  believed.  When  agriculture  had  to 
be  remade  in  Wisconsin,  the  Yankee's  intelligence  told  him 
in  what  ways  it  must  be  improved,  and  his  tact,  courage, 
and  address  enabled  him  to  enlist  and  organize  the  means 
for  remaking  it.  When  the  Yankee  was  convinced,  by  his 
farm  paper  or  by  the  exhibitions,  that  a  purebred  animal 
was  a  good  investment,  his  speculative  spirit  sent  him  to  his 
banker  to  borrow  a  thousand  dollars,  and  to  a  distant- 


Yankee  and  Teuton  279 

breeder  to  make  what  his  more  timid  German  neighbor 
would  call  a  "mighty  risky  investment" — for  the  animal 
might  die!  Finally,  when  local  organization  was  required 
to  secure  a  cheese  factory,  a  creamery,  or  a  dairy  board  of 
trade,  the  Yankee  by  virtue  of  his  community  leadership 
was  usually  able  to  effect  the  desired  result. 

Wisconsin's  almost  unique  success  in  agriculture  is  due  to 
no  single  or  even  dual  factor.  But  among  the  human  ele- 
ments which  have  been  most  potent  in  producing  the  result, 
none  is  of  more  significance  than  the  fortunate  blend  in  her 
population  of  the  Yankee  and  the  Teuton. 


THE  YANKEE  AND  THE  TEUTON  IN 
WISCONSIN 

JOSEPH  SCHAFER 
HI    SOME  SOCIAL  TRAITS  OF  YANKEES 

Harriet  Martineau,  the  English  traveler  who  in  1837 
published  a  book  entitled  Society  in  America,  was  deeply 
impressed  with  New  England's  concern  for  education. 
"All  young  people  in  these  villages,"  she  says,  "are  more 
or  less  instructed.  Schooling  is  considered  a  necessary  of 
life.1  I  happened  to  be  looking  over  an  old  almanac  one 
day,  when  I  found,  among  the  directions  relating  to  the 
preparations  for  winter  on  a  farm,  the  following:  'Secure 
your  cellars  from  frost.  Fasten  loose  clapboards  and 
shingles.  Secure  a  good  schoolmaster.' ' 

We  do  not  know  what  almanac  Miss  Martineau  con- 
sulted. But  a  glance  at  a  file  of  the  Farmer's  Almanack, 
begun  in  1793  by  Robert  B.  Thomas  and  circulated  by 
him  for  more  than  half  a  century  all  over  New  England, 
shows  her  quotation  to  be  fully  justified  in  spirit  if  not  in 
letter.  As  early  at  least  as  the  year  1804,  Mr.  Thomas 
included  in  his  directions  for  the  month  of  November,  the 
indispensable  item  of  education  in  connection  with  other 
activities:  "Now  let  the  noise  of  your  flail  awake  your 
drowsy  neighbors.  Bank  up  your  cellars.  Now  hire  a  good 
schoolmaster  and  send  your  children  to  school  as  much  as 
possible." 

The  nation  was  young  in  1804.  Parts  of  it  were  new  and 
for  that  reason  had  made  but  meager  educational  progress; 
other  parts  were  backward  for  different  reasons.  But  in 
the  older  states  of  New  England  popular  education  had 
flourished  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years.  This  point, 

1  Editor's  italics. 


4  Joseph  Schafer 

stressed  by  a  score  of  writers,  illustrated  by  legal  enactments, 
court  decrees,  town  records,  and  anniversary  sermons, 
cannot  be  over-emphasized  in  a  summary  of  the  social 
contributions  which  the  Yankees  made  to  the  new  western 
societies  they  helped  to  build.  Notwithstanding  all  that 
has  been  written  to  prove  the  priority,  in  this  or  that 
feature  of  American  educational  progress,  of  other  social 
strains  or  geographical  areas,  history  may  confidently 
assign  to  the  Yankee  priority  in  the  attainment  of  universal 
literacy  on  an  extensive  scale. 

Once  the  Puritan  had  convinced  himself  that  the 
temptation  to  ignorance  came  from  "ye  old  deluder  Satan,'* 
whose  fell  purpose  was  to  keep  men  from  a  knowledge  of  the 
Scriptures  and  thus  the  more  readily  win  them  for  his  own, 
he  hesitated  not  to  require  the  maintenance  of  schools  in 
all  towns  and  neighborhoods  under  his  jurisdiction.  He 
was  also  concerned  to  recruit  an  "able  and  orthodox  minis- 
try" to  take  the  places  of  the  aging  pastors  who  had 
come  from  England  and  to  supply  the  needs  of  new  settle- 
ments. Harvard  College  could  turn  out  the  ministers,  if 
it  had  properly  prepared  young  men  to  work  upon.  So 
the  larger  towns  were  required  to  maintain  grammar 
schools  in  addition  to  the  common  schools.  Thus  we  have, 
as  early  as  1647,  provision  for  schooling  from  the  lowest 
rudiments  up  through  the  college  course. 

The  original  religious  motive  for  maintaining  these 
schools  persisted.  But  other  motives  were  added  as  the 
Puritans  perceived  how  notably  secular  interests,  as  well 
as  religious,  were  served  by  schooling.  For  one  thing,  young 
persons  who  could  read,  write,  and  cipher  had  a  distinct 
advantage  in  worldly  matters  over  those  who  could  not. 
Cheats  and  "humbugs,"  of  whom  every  community  had 
its  share,  made  victims  of  the  ignorant,  while  they  fled  from 
the  instructed  even  as  their  master,  Satan,  was  supposed 
to  flee  from  them.  Many  New  England  stories  were 


Yankee  and  Teuton  5 

designed  to  carry  the  lesson,  especially  to  parents,  that 
the  best  legacy  children  could  receive  was  good  schooling, 
without  which  wealth  and  property  would  quickly  melt 
away.2 

Apart,  also,  from  such  negative  worldly  advantages  as 
we  have  named,  one  who  had  enjoyed  good  schooling  might 
thereby  hope  to  share  in  many  special  social  privileges 
from  which  the  unlettered  were  debarred.  New  England 
life  on  the  religious  side  centered  in  the  church,  on  the 
civic  side  in  the  town.  Each  of  the  two  institutions  re- 
quired a  full  set  of  elective  officers,  ranked  according  to 
the  importance  of  the  offices  filled,  and  all  of  these  were 
chosen  from  the  instructed  portion  of  the  community.  To 
be  a  deacon  in  the  church  or  a  selectman  on  the  town 
board  might  not  be  financially  remunerative,  but  it  imparted 
a  dignity  to  the  individual  and  a  social  status  to  the  family 
which  caused  these  offices  to  be  highly  prized.  The  older 
theory  was  that  only  good  churchmen  could  fill  either 
type  of  office.  Gradually,  the  town  offices,  which  paid 
something  in  cash  and  yielded  considerable  political  power, 
came  to  be  sought  with  increasing  frequency  by  men  who 
might  have  no  interest  in  the  church.  "Jethro  Bass" 
was  typical,  not  unique,  in  his  scheming  to  be  chosen 
selectman,  and  the  training  offered  by  the  district  school 
was  looked  upon  as  a  minimum  basis  for  such  preferment. 
Said  the  Farmer's  Almanack  for  November,  1810:  "Send 
your  children  to  school.  Every  boy  should  have  a  chance 
to  prepare  himself  to  do  common  town  business." 

The  great  majority  were  satisfied  with  the  elementary 
training  afforded  by  the  district  schools,  kept  for  a  few 
months  in  winter.  But  the  presence  of  learned  men  in 
every  community  and  the  existence  of  secondary  schools 
and  colleges  tolled  a  good  many  on  the  way  to  advanced 
instruction  who  had  no  plans  for  professional  careers.  From 

2  An  example  is  in  Abram  E.  Brown,  Legends  of  Old  Bedford  (Boston,  1892). 


6  Joseph  Schafer 

farm,  factory,  and  counting-room,  even  from  among  those 
before  the  mast,  went  boys  to  academy  and  college,  while 
female  seminaries  springing  up  here  and  there  took  care  of 
the  educational  interests  of  selected  groups  of  girls.  Such 
schools  were  not  free,  but  their  benefits  were  easy  to  attain, 
the  principal  requisite  being  pluck  and  a  willingness  to 
work  both  at  earning  money  and  at  the  studies.  Girls 
and  boys  alike  could  usually  earn  their  way  by  teaching 
in  the  common  schools.  Thus  the  educational  system 
propagated  itself,  with  the  result  that  men  and  women  of 
intelligence,  culture,  and  refinement  became  widely  dis- 
persed through  Yankeedom,  and  learning  was  recognized 
as  an  aid  to  the  good  life  as  well  as  a  guarantee  of  the  successful 
life.  This  was  a  fundamental  condition  of  that  literary 
flowering  which  marked  the  middle  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  It  insured  the  poets,  historians,  orators, 
and  novelists  an  audience  which  waxed  ever  larger  as 
province  after  province  in  the  West  was  added  to  New 
England's  spiritual  empire. 

Let  us  not,  however,  picture  to  ourselves  a  Yankee 
society  wholly  suffused  with  intellectual  and  spiritual  light. 
The  Yankees  had  no  such  illusions  about  themselves. 
Listen  to  Timothy  Dwight's  description  of  a  class  of  New 
Englanders  who  could  not  live  "in  regular  society.  They 
are  too  idle,  too  talkative,  too  passionate,  too  prodigal, 
and  too  shiftless  to  acquire  either  property  or  character. 
They  are  impatient  of  the  restraints  of  law,  religion  and 
morality,  grumble  about  the  taxes  by  which  rulers,  minis- 
ters and  schoolmasters  are  supported — at  the  same  time 
they  are  usually  possessed,  in  their  own  view,  of  uncommon 
wisdom;  understand  medical  science,  politics,  and  religion 
better  than  those  who  have  studied  them  through  life  .  .  ." 
He  represents  the  type  as  the  pioneering  or  forester  class, 
who  had  "already  straggled  onward  from  New  England" 
to  far  distant  settlements,  and  whose  going  he  was  not 


Yankee  and  Teuton  1 

disposed  to  lament.  "In  mercy,"  he  says,  "to  the  sober, 
industrious,  and  well  disposed  inhabitants,  Providence 
has  opened  in  the  vast  western  wilderness  a  retreat  suffi- 
ciently alluring  to  draw  them  from  the  land  of  their  nativity. 
We  have  many  troubles  even  now,  but  we  should  have 
many  more  if  this  body  of  foresters  had  remained  at  home."3 
The  above  citation  doubtless  contains  an  element  of 
exaggeration,  due  to  D wight's  ingrained  conservatism. 
He  was  outraged  by  the  radical  views  no  less  than  by  the 
erratic  and  ignorant  harangues  he  heard  "by  many  a  kitchen 
fire,  in  every  blacksmith's  shop,  and  in  every  corner  of 
the  streets  .  .  ."  Yet  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact 
that  he  here  sketches  for  us  some  Yankee  social  traits 
of  rather  extended  application  which  were  important  in 
the  building  of  the  West.  These  people  belonged  to  the 
outstandingly  non-conformist  type.  They  were  suffi- 
ciently independent — contemptuous,  one  might  say — of 
established  customs  and  institutions  to  be  willing,  with 
what  ignorance  or  awkwardness  soever,  to  bring  about 
changes,  some  of  which  were  sadly  needed.  Religiously 
they  were  apt  to  be  come-outers.  It  was  largely  among 
this  class  that  were  recruited  the  Millerites,  Millennialists, 
and  original  Latter  Day  Saints,  together  with  many  other 
minor  sects  and  factions.  In  politics,  when  all  orthodox 
New  England  was  Whig,  they  were  mainly  Democratic; 
many,  however,  backed  the  program  of  Nativism;  in  the 
person  of  John  Brown  they  exemplified  the  principle  of 
direct  action  as  applied  to  slavery.  The  social  innovator, 
the  medical  quack,  and  the  political  demagogue  found 
among  them  welcome  and  encouragement,  sometimes 
to  the  temporary  distress  of  society,  often  to  its  ultimate 
benefit.  Not  unlike  the  original  Puritans  who  represented 
"the  dissidence  of  dissent  and  the  protestantism  of  the 
protestant  religion,"1  they  constituted  a  dynamic  social 

3  Timothy  Dwight,  Travels  in  New  England  and  New  York  (New  Haven,  Conn., 
1821),  ii,  459,  462. 

4  Edmund  Burke,  On  Conciliation. 


8  Joseph  Schafer 

element  although  wanting  in  the  intellectual  and  religious 
training,  the  political  morale,  and  perhaps  the  heroism 
which  distinguished  the  original  planters  of  Massachusetts 
Bay.  They  had  the  spirit  of  the  revolutionary  New  England- 
ers,  who  were  described,  not  inaptly,  as  "hard,  stubborn, 
and  indomitably  intractable."  They  were  the  backbone 
of  Shays's  rebellion.  In  many  ways  they  illustrate  the 
qualities  which,  at  various  times  in  our  later  history,  have 
served  as  the  fulcrum  of  revolutionary  change. 

Dwight's  foresters  were  merely  the  extreme  manifesta- 
tion, the  caricature,  of  a  much  larger  class  of  heady,  self 
sufficient,  opinionated,  and  troublesome  persons  who  equally 
with  the  sober,  church  going,  instructed,  conformist  type 
were  the  product  of  New  England  conditions.  The  cords 
of  restraint  were  drawn  so  taut  in  the  parishes  and  towns, 
that  the  person  who  was  determinedly  "different"  was 
compelled  to  break  them  and  become  a  kind  of  social 
pariah  in  order  to  gain  the  freedom  his  soul  craved.  It 
was  not  an  accident  that  so  large  a  proportion  of  that  class 
went  to  the  frontier.  They  found  there  a  less  rigorous 
church  discipline,  freedom  from  taxes  for  the  support  of  the 
established  church,  and  a  more  flexible  state  of  society  in 
the  midst  of  which  they  might  hope  to  function.  In  western 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut,  in  Vermont,  New  Hamp- 
shire, and  Maine,  they  were  numerous  at  the  opening  of 
the  National  period.  Soon  large  numbers  emigrated  to 
western  New  York,  to  northern  Pennsylvania,  to  Ohio, 
thence  throughout  the  West.  They  made  up  an  appreciable 
part  of  the  thronging  Yankee  immigration  which  seized 
upon  Wisconsin's  prairies  and  oak  openings  between  1835 
and  1850,  and  their  presence  has  left  its  impress  upon  our 
social  history.  Still  the  experiences  of  older  frontiers,  such 
as  western  New  York,  had  already  modified  the  type. 

When  all  necessary  deductions  have  been  made,  how- 
ever, the  church  remained  equally  with  the  school  a  domin- 


Yankee  and  Teuton  9 

ant  note  in  the  Yankee's  social  landscape.  His  "meeting 
house,"  not  infrequently  in  New  England  a  gem  of  eccle- 
siastical architecture,  fulfilled  his  artistic  ideal;  the  congre- 
gation was  the  "household  of  faith"  which  claimed  his 
undeviating  loyalty;  the  pastor  was  "guest  and  philosopher" 
in  his  home  whenever  he  chose  to  honor  it  with  his  presence. 
To  men  and  women  alike,  attendance  upon  the  church 
services  was  the  principal  Sabbath  day  duty  and  the 
chief  physical  and  mental  diversion  of  the  whole  week. 
It  was  an  old  custom  to  linger  after  the  morning  sermon 
for  a  social  chat  either  in  the  church  yard,  when  the  weather 
permitted,  or  else  at  a  near-by  tavern;  and  while  the  talk 
was  ostensibly  about  the  sermon,  gossip,  bits  of  practical 
information,  and  even  a  shy  kind  of  love  making  were  often 
interwoven,  tending  to  make  this  a  genuine  community 
social  hour. 

The  tradition  that  the  minister  must  be  a  man  of 
learning  was  of  incalculable  social  importance.  His  advice 
was  called  for  under  every  conceivable  circumstance  of 
individual  and  community  need.  He  assisted  about  the 
employment  of  schoolmasters  and  was  the  unofficial 
supervisor  of  the  school.  He  enjoined  upon  negligent 
parents  the  duty  of  sending  their  children,  and  he  had 
an  eye  for  the  promising  boys — lads  o'pairts,  as  the  Scotch 
say — whom  he  encouraged  to  prepare  for  professional  life. 
He  fitted  boys  to  enter  the  academy  and  sometimes  tutored 
college  students.  In  the  rural  parish  the  minister  occupied 
the  church  glebe,  which  made  him  a  farmer  with  the  rest. 
He  was  apt  to  read  more  widely  and  closely  in  the  agricul- 
tural press,  or  in  books  on  husbandry,  than  his  neighbors, 
thereby  gaining  the  right  to  offer  practical  suggestions 
about  many  everyday  matters.  Some  ministers  were 
writers  for  agricultural  journals.  Many  contributed  to 
local  newspapers  items  of  news  or  discussions  of  public 
questions  in  which  their  parishioners  were  interested  with 
themselves. 


10  Joseph  S chafer 

The  home  missionary  idea  was  inherent  in  the  New 
England  system  both  as  respects  religion  and  education. 
Older,  better  established  communities  always  felt  some 
responsibility  for  the  newer.  Since  settlement  proceeded 
largely  by  the  method  of  planting  new  townships  of  which 
the  raw  land  was  purchased  by  companies  from  the  colonial 
and  state  governments,  it  was  possible  for  the  larger  com- 
munity to  give  an  impetus  to  religion  and  education  under 
the  terms  of  township  grants.  This  was  accomplished 
by  reserving  in  each  grant  three  shares  of  the  land — "one 
for  the  first  settled  minister,  one  for  the  ministry  forever, 
and  one  for  the  school."  Other  grants  of  raw  land  were 
made  for  the  support  of  academies.  Here  we  have  the 
origin  of  the  system  of  land  grants  in  aid  both  of  the  common 
schools  and  of  state  universities,  in  the  western  states. 
The  grants  for  religion  necessarily  were  discontinued  after 
the  adoption  of  the  national  constitution.6 

The  religious  unity  established  by  the  Puritans,  and 
maintained  for  a  time  by  the  simple  method  of  rigorously 
excluding  those  holding  peculiar  doctrines,  gave  way  to 
considerable  diversity  in  the  late  eighteenth  and  early 
nineteenth  centuries.  Episcopalianism  made  some  progress 
in  the  older  settlements,  and  Unitarianism  created  a  great 
upheaval,  while  toward  the  frontiers  the  Methodists  and 
Baptists  flourished  more  and  more.  These  several  elements, 
by  1820,  were  powerful  enough  politically  to  secure  the 
abolition  of  the  ancient  tax  for  the  support  of  the  established 
(Congregational  or  Presbyterian)  church — a  tax  which  had 
long  caused  ill  feeling  between  West  and  East,  and  no 
doubt  had  contributed  to  the  growth  of  dissenting  churches. 
These  frontier  churches  had  the  characteristics  of  the 
frontier  populations.  Their  ministers  were  less  learned, 
their  morale  less  exacting,  their  religion  less  formal  and 

'The  Ohio  Company's  grant,  1787,  contained  a  reservation  for  religion  as  well  as 
grants  for  education.  Joseph  Schafer,  Origin  of  the  System  of  Land  Grants  in  Aid  of  Educa- 
tion, Wisconsin  University  Bulletin,  History  Series,  Vol.  1,  No.  1  (Madison,  1902). 


Yankee  and  Teuton  11 

ritualistic,  their  ordinances  less  regularly  and  habitually 
enforced.  But  there  was  an  emotionalism  which  in  a 
measure  compensated  for  defects  of  training,  for  looseness 
of  habit  and  negligence  in  the  practice  of  religion.  In  a 
word,  the  camp  meeting  type  of  Christianity  prevailed 
widely  along  the  frontier,  and  that  type  entered  Wisconsin 
Territory  with  the  numerous  Methodist  and  Baptist  settlers 
from  New  York  and  New  England.  As  early  as  August, 
1838,  such  a  camp  meeting  was  held  under  Methodist 
leadership  in  the  woods  near  Racine;  it  was  attended  by 
hundreds  of  pioneer  families  drawn  from  the  sparsely 
settled  neighborhoods  for  many  miles  around.  Its  appoint- 
ments were  of  the  typical  frontier  kind,  though  one  would 
expect  less  boisterousness  in  the  manifestations  of  emotion 
among  those  people  than  seems  to  have  accompanied 
similar  gatherings  in  the  Southwest.6 

The  stated  religious  services  in  early  Wisconsin,  as  in 
every  frontier  region,  were  apt  to  be  less  frequent  than  in 
older  communities.  Ministers  were  too  few  in  number  and 
neighborhoods  too  impecunious  to  justify  each  locality  in 
supporting  a  minister.  The  circuit  riding  custom  prevailed 
generally  among  all  denominations.  One  preacher  traveled, 
on  foot,  six  hundred  miles,  making  the  round  in  six  weeks. 
Each  group  of  churches  also  had  its  conferences,  which 
were  occasions  for  planning  missionary  effort,  for  unitedly 
attacking  special  religious  or  social  abuses,  and  for  pro- 
moting constructive  community  effort.  The  ablest  speakers 
addressed  such  gatherings ;  the  membership  of  the  churches 
concerned  and  others  attended,  in  addition  to  the  delegates; 
and  important  religious,  social,  or  moral  results  sometimes 
flowed  from  them. 

Another  peculiar  Yankee  institution  allied  at  once  to 
the  school  and  the  church,  was  the  lyceum  or  local  co- 
operative organization  for  bringing  lecturers  to  the  com- 

6  See  Edward  Eggleston,  The  Circuit  Rider  and  The  Graysons. 


12  Joseph  S  chafer 

munity.  The  settlements  in  southeastern  Wisconsin  had 
their  lyceums  at  an  early  date,  and  many  distinguished 
public  men  from  the  East  had  occasion  to  visit  this  new 
Yankeeland  in  the  capacity  of  lecturer.  Among  them  were 
Horace  Greeley,  Bayard  Taylor,  and  James  Russell  Lowell. 

Reform  movements,  however,  though  usually  receiving 
valuable  aid  from  churches,  lyceums,  mechanics'  institutes, 
and  other  permanent  organizations  of  men  for  public 
discussion,  had  a  way  of  creating  special  organizations  to 
propagate  themselves.  That  was  true  of  the  temperance 
movement,  which  by  the  time  of  the  Yankee  immigration 
into  Wisconsin  was  under  vigorous  headway.  Beginning, 
in  serious  form,  about  1820,  the  intervening  years  witnessed 
the  creation  of  hundreds  of  local  temperance  societies  in 
New  England  and  New  York,  and  the  federation  of  these 
societies  into  state  societies.  These  central  organizations 
stimulated  the  movement  by  sending  out  lecturers,  con- 
ducting a  newspaper  propaganda,  and  issuing  special 
publications.  Some  of  their  tracts  are  said  to  have  been 
scattered  "like  the  leaves  of  autumn,"  all  over  New  England 
and  New  York. 

One  of  these  tracts  affected  the  social  history  of  Wiscon- 
sin very  directly.  It  is  known,  traditionally,  as  "The  Ox 
Discourse,"  because  it  was  based  on  Exodus  21:28-29: 
"If  an  ox  gore  a  man  or  woman,  that  they  die:  then  the 
ox  shall  be  surely  stoned,  and  his  flesh  shall  not  be  eaten; 
but  the  owner  of  the  ox  shall  be  quit.  But  if  the  ox  were 
wont  to  push  with  his  horn  in  time  past,  and  it  hath  been 
testified  to  his  owner,  and  he  hath  not  kept  him  in,  but 
that  he  hath  killed  a  man  or  a  woman;  the  ox  shall  be 
stoned,  and  his  owner  also  shall  be  put  to  death."  The 
sermon  on  this  text  produced  a  great  sensation  and  gained 
many  new  adherents  to  the  temperance  cause.  Among 
these  were  two  brothers,  Samuel  F.  and  Henry  Phoenix, 
who  were  storekeepers  in  a  New  York  village  and  sold 


Yankee  and  Teuton  13 

much  whisky.  They  publicly  destroyed  all  the  liquor 
they  had  on  hand  and  became  crusaders  in  the  temperance 
cause.  In  the  spring  of  1836  Colonel  Samuel  F.  Phoenix 
selected  in  Wisconsin  a  "Temperance  Colony  claim,"  on 
which  he  settled  that  summer.  Then  he  rode  to  Belmont 
and  induced  the  first  territorial  legislature  to  set  off  from 
Milwaukee  County  a  county  to  be  known  as  Walworth, 
in  honor  of  the  chancellor  of  the  state  of  New  York,  who 
was  a  noted  temperance  leader.  He  named  the  village 
begun  by  him  Delavan,  in  honor  of  E.  C.  Delavan,  pioneer 
temperance  editor  and  at  that  time  chairman  of  the  execu- 
tive committee  of  the  New  York  State  Temperance  Society. 
Colonel  Phoenix  lectured  on  temperance,  helped  to  organize 
early  temperance  societies,  rebuked  his  neighbors — es- 
pecially the  New  Yorkers — for  employing  whisky  at  raisings, 
and,  before  his  death  in  1840,  had  succeeded  in  giving 
a  powerful  impulse  to  the  movement  in  southeastern 
Wisconsin. 

Another  dramatic  figure  in  early  temperance  annals 
was  Charles  M.  Goodsell,  who  in  1838  settled  at  Lake 
Geneva  and  built  the  first  mill  operated  in  Wralworth 
County.  He  was  of  Connecticut  birth,  and  his  father 
owned  and  managed,  among  other  properties,  a  whisky 
distillery.  Goodsell,  however,  when  he  came  west  from 
New  York  State,  was  a  most  determined  opponent  of  the 
traffic  in  intoxicants.  Soon  after  opening  his  mill  a  local 
company  erected  in  Lake  Geneva  a  distillery  for  making 
corn  whisky.  Goodsell  warned  them,  he  says,  not  to 
expect  him  to  grind  their  grain  and  they  installed  a  grinding 
apparatus  of  their  own.  But,  their  machinery  proving 
inadequate,  they  finally  sent  a  grist  of  corn  to  GoodselPs 
mill,  demanding,  as  under  the  law  they  had  a  right  to  do, 
that  it  be  "ground  in  turn."  Goodsell  refused,  thereby 
producing  a  tense  situation,  for  the  pioneer  farmers  looked 
to  the  distillery  as  a  cash  market  for  their  grain.  Finally, 


14  Joseph  S chafer 

the  distillers  brought  suit,  won  a  verdict,  and  Goodsell 
appealed.  But  meantime,  he  rode  to  Madison,  where  the 
legislature  was  sitting,  and  procured  the  adoption  of  an 
amendment  to  the  law  regulating  milling,  to  the  effect: 
"Nothing  in  this  section  contained  shall  be  construed  to 
compel  the  owners  or  occupiers  of  mills  to  grind  for  distilling, 
or  for  sale  or  merchant  work."  This  proviso,  adopted  in 
1841,  remained  a  feature  of  the  statute  for  many  years.7 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  pioneer  Yankee  society, 
even  in  Walworth  County,  was  prevailingly  of  the  temper- 
ance variety.  All  testimony,  both  of  the  reformers  and  of 
others,  tends  to  show  that  a  large  majority  was  at  first  in 
the  opposition.  Frontier  history  would  indicate  that 
excessive  indulgence  in  whisky  was  apt  to  be  more  common 
during  the  primitive  phase  of  settlement  than  later,  due 
perhaps  to  the  looser  social  and  religious  organization. 

Wisconsin  may  be  said  to  have  been  born  to  the  tem- 
perance agitation  which,  in  a  few  years'  time,  produced 
societies  pledged  to  total  abstinence  all  over  the  southeastern 
part  of  the  state  and  in  many  other  localities.  In  March, 
1843,  a  legislative  temperance  society  was  organized  with  a 
list  of  twenty-four  signers.  The  house  of  representatives 
at  the  time  had  twenty-six  members,  the  council  thirteen, 
or  a  total  of  thirty -nine.  So  a  decided  majority  was  aligned 
with  the  movement.  Moses  M.  Strong  was  chosen  presi- 
dent, which  was  considered  a  triumph  for  the  cause,  and 
much  interest  was  aroused  by  the  adherence  of  William  S. 
Hamilton,  who  is  reported  to  have  addressed  one  of  the 
society's  meetings.8 

The  temperance  agitation  everywhere  received  a  notable 
impetus  from  the  adoption  in  1851  of  the  prohibition  law 

7  GoodseH,  who  was  one  of  the  founders  of  Beloit  College,  removed  later  to  North- 
field,  Minnesota,  and  became  one  of  the  founders  of  Carlton  College.    S.  A.  Dwinnell, 
Reedsburg  (Wis.)  Free  Press,  December  24,  1874. 

8  Madison  City  Express,  March  14,  March  23,  and  April  27,  1843.    Strong  and  Hamil- 
ton are  not  reputed  to  have  been  total  abstainers. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  15 

by  the  state  of  Maine.  Immediately  other  states  moved 
for  the  same  objective,  and  in  Wisconsin  a  referendum  vote 
was  taken  in  1853  which  resulted  favorably  to  prohibition, 
though  no  enactment  followed.9  In  that  election  the 
southeastern  counties  were  overwhelmingly  for  the  Maine 
law.  Walworth  gave  1906  votes  for  it  and  733  against, 
Rock  2494-432,  Racine  1456-927.  Milwaukee  at  the  same 
time  voted  against  prohibition  by  4381  to  1243.  This 
shows  where  was  to  be  found  the  powerful  opposition  to 
legislation  of  this  nature,  which  was  destined  to  increase 
rather  than  diminish  with  the  strengthening  of  the  German 
element  already  very  numerous. 

From  the  time  of  the  Maine  law  agitation  the  com- 
munities dominated  by  Yankees  were  generally  found 
arrayed  in  favor  of  any  proposal  for  limiting  or  suppressing 
the  liquor  traffic,  although,  as  we  shall  see  in  later  articles, 
no  large  proportion  of  their  voters  ever  joined  the  Prohibi- 
tion party.  They  did  not  succeed  in  abolishing  drunkenness, 
though  it  became  very  unfashionable  to  indulge  heavily 
in  spirituous  liquors  and  the  proportion  of  total  abstainers 
among  the  younger  generation  steadily  increased.  Yankees 
furnished  a  very  small  per  cent  of  those  who  gained  their 
livelihood  through  occupations  connected  directly  with 
intoxicating  liquors,  except  as  such  traffic  was  carried  on 
incidentally  as  a  feature  of  the  drug  business.  The  disfavor 
with  which  saloon  keeping,  brewing,  and  distilling  have 
long  been  regarded  among  that  class  of  the  population  is 
explained  by  the  fervor  and  thoroughness  of  the  early 
temperance  campaigns. 

Because  of  their  attitude  on  the  liquor  question,  on 
Sunday  laws,  and  other  matters  pertaining  to  the  regulation 
of  conduct,  the  Yankees  have  always  been  looked  upon 
by  other  social  strains  as  straight-laced  and  gloomy.  In 
this  judgment  men  have  been  influenced  more  than  they 

9  The  vote  stood,  for  prohibition,  27,519;  against,  24,109. 


16  Joseph  Schafer 

are  aware  by  the  traditions  of  Puritanism  which  it  was 
supposed  the  Yankees  inherited.  They  recalled  the  story 
of  how  Bradford  stopped  Christmas  revelers  and  sent  them 
to  work;  they  pictured  Puritan  children  as  forbidden  to 
laugh  and  talk  on  the  Sabbath  day;  and  some  may  have 
heard  the  story  of  how  Washington,  while  president,  was 
once  stopped  by  a  Connecticut  tithing  man  who  must  be 
informed  why  His  Excellency  fared  forth  on  the  Lord's 
Day  instead  of  resting  at  his  inn  or  attending  public  wor- 
ship.10 

Two  remarks  may  be  made  on  this  point.  First,  while 
Puritanism  unquestionably  had  a  somber  discipline,  there 
was  not  lacking  even  among  Puritans  the  play  instinct 
which  persisted  in  cropping  out  despite  all  efforts  of  the 
authorities  at  repression.  Second,  the  nineteenth  century 
Yankees  register  a  wide  departure  from  early  Puritanism 
in  their  social  proclivities,  and  the  difference  was  particu- 
larly marked  in  the  West.  Even  church  services  were 
modified  to  fit  the  needs  of  the  less  resolute  souls.  Music 
became  an  important  feature  and  it  was  adapted  more  or 
less  to  special  occasions.11  Sunday  Blue  Laws  were  gradually 
relaxed,  though  never  abandoned  in  principle.  Well-to-do 
city  people  allowed  themselves  vacation  trips,  visits  to  water- 
ing places ,  and  to  scenic  wonders  like  Niagara  Falls . 12  In  town 
and  country  alike  dancing  became  an  amusement  of  almost 
universal  vogue,  though  protested  by  some  religionists, 
and  rural  neighborhoods  found  bowling  such  a  fascinating 
game  for  men  and  boys  that  the  almanac  maker  thought 
well  to  caution  his  readers  against  over-indulgence  therein.13 
Ball  playing,  picnicing,  sleighing,  coasting,  skating  were 

10  The  story  was  printed  in  the  Columbian  Centinel,  Boston,  December,  1789. 

11  See  Diary  of  Sarah  Connell  Ayer  (Portland,  Me.,  1910),  227. 

12  See  Almon  Danforth  Hodges  and  His  Neighbors  (Boston,  1909),  217-218. 

13  "At  sun  two  hours  high,"  says  the  Farmer's  Almanack,  1815,  "the  day  is  finished  and 
away  goes  men  and  boys  to  the  bowling  alley.    Haying,  hoeing,  plowing,  sowing  all  must 
give  way  to  sport  and  toddy.    Now  this  is  no  way  for  a  farmer.    It  will  do  for  the  city  lads 
to  sport  and  relax  in  this  way,  and  so  there  are  proper  times  and  seasons  for  farmers  to ' 
take  pleasure  of  this  sort,  for  I  agree  that  all  work  and  no  play  makes  Jack  a  dull  boy." 


Yankee  and  Teuton  17 

among  the  outdoor  sports  much  indulged  in  by  Yankees, 
while  family  and  neighborhood  visiting,  the  quilting  bee, 
donation  parties,  church  socials,  and  the  like  furnished 
indoor  recreation.  The  circus  and  the  "cattle  show"  were 
events  in  the  western  Yankeeland  equal  in  social  significance 
to  Artillery  Day  in  Boston. 

Thus,  while  it  is  true  that  Yankees  were  a  sober  people, 
of  prevailingly  serious  mien  and  purpose,  they  were  not 
averse  to  the  relaxations  of  play  and  recreation.  The 
question  whether  or  not  the  Yankees  were  fun  loving 
cannot  be  answered  by  yes  or  no.  If  we  mean  by  fun  the 
rollicking  joviality  characteristic  of  irresponsible,  carefree 
folk,  the  answer  is  no.  Many  Yankees  found  their  best 
fun  in  work  or  business.  To  the  David  Harum  type,  which 
was  fairly  numerous,  a  horse  trade  was  more  fun  than  a 
picnic.  Some  Boston  merchants  were  so  immersed  in  their 
business  that,  though  very  pious,  they  nevertheless  spent 
Sunday  afternoon  going  over  their  books  and  writing 
business  letters.14  Being  serious  minded,  they  tended  to 
make  their  chief  concern  an  obsession,  and  could  hardly 
be  happy  away  from  it.  But  the  majority  were  quite  as 
ready  to  amuse  themselves  out  of  working  hours,  as  are 
the  Italians  or  other  social  stocks  that  have  a  reputation 
for  fun  and  frolic. 

The  Yankees  also  found  intellectual  enjoyment  in  culti- 
vating quickness  of  retort,  in  giving  utterance  to  clever 
if  homely  aphorisms,  and  in  a  kind  of  whimsical  humor. 
These  traits  emerge  in  their  vernacular  literature  like 
"Major  Jack  Downing's"  Thirty  Years  out  of  the  Senate, 
and  especially  Lowell's  Biglow  Papers.  "The  squire'll  have 
a  parson  in  his  barn  a  preachin'  to  his  cattle  one  o'  these 
days,  see  if  he  don't,"  said  one  of  "Tim  Bunker's"  shiftless 
neighbors  by  way  of  summarizing  the  squire's  over-niceness 
in  caring  for  his  Jersey  cows.  "Ez  big  ez  wat  hogs  dream 

14  See  Hodges  and  His  Neighbors,  94. 


18  Joseph  S chafer 

on  when  they're  most  too  fat  to  snore";  "that  man  is  mean 
enough  to  steal  acorns  from  a  blind  hog";  "the  coppers 
ain't  all  tails";  "pop'lar  as  a  hen  with  one  chicken";  "quick- 
er'n  greased  lightnin'";  "a  hen's  time  ain't  much";  "handy 
as  a  pocket  in  a  shirt";  "he's  a  whole  team  and  the  dog 
under  the  wagon";  "so  thievish  they  had  to  take  in  their 
stone  walls  at  night";  "so  black  that  charcoal  made  a 
chalk  mark  on  him";  "painted  so  like  marble  that  it  sank 
in  water" — the  above  are  all  Yankeeisms  of  approved 
lineage  and  illustrate  a  characteristic  type  of  Yankee  humor. 
The  example  below  is  of  a  rarer  sort.  "Pretty  heavy  thunder 
you  have  here,"  said  the  English  Captain  Basil  Hall  to  a 
lounger  in  front  of  a  Massachusetts  tavern.  "Waal,  we  do," 
came  the  drawling  reply,  "considerin'  the  number  of  the 
inhabitants." 

About  the  time  that  Yankees  began  to  emigrate  to 
Wisconsin  a  talented  French  writer,  Michel  Chevalier,  gave 
the  world  a  brilliant  and  on  the  whole  favorable  characteri- 
zation of  them.  "The  Yankee,"  he  says,  "is  reserved, 
cautious,  distrustful;  he  is  thoughtful  and  pensive,  but 
equable;  his  manners  are  without  grace,  modest  but  digni- 
fied, cold,  and  often  unprepossessing;  he  is  narrow  in  his 
ideas,  but  practical,  and  possessing  the  idea  of  the  proper, 
he  never  rises  to  the  grand.  He  has  nothing  chivalric 
about  him  and  yet  he  is  adventurous,  and  he  loves  a  roving 
life.  His  imagination  is  active  and  original,  producing, 
however,  not  poetry  but  drollery.  The  Yankee  is  the 
laborious  ant;  he  is  industrious  and  sober  and,  on  the 
sterile  soil  of  New  England,  niggardly;  transplanted  to 
the  promised  land  in  the  west  he  continues  moderate  in 
his  habits,  but  less  inclined  to  count  the  cents.  In  New 
England  he  has  a  large  share  of  prudence,  but  once  thrown 
into  the  midst  of  the  treasures  of  the  west  he  becomes  a 
speculator,  a  gambler  even,  although  he  has  a  great  horror 
of  cards,  dice,  and  all  games  of  chance  and  even  of  skill 


Yankee  and  Teuton  19 

except  the  innocent  game  of  bowls."  Chevalier  also  says: 
"The  fusion  of  the  European  with  the  Yankee  takes  place 
but  slowly,  even  on  the  new  soil  of  the  west ;  for  the  Yankee 
is  not  a  man  of  promiscuous  society;  he  believes  that 
Adam's  oldest  son  was  a  Yankee." 

The  Yankee  was  not  more  boastful  than  other  types  of 
Americans,  though  his  talent  for  exaggerative  description 
was  marked.  Yet  he  had  a  pronounced  national  obsession 
and  was  uncompromising  in  his  patriotism:  "This  land 
o'ourn,  I  tell  ye's  got  to  be  a  better  country  than  man  ever 
see,"  was  put  into  a  Yankee's  mouth  by  one  of  their  own 
spokesmen  and  represents  the  Yankee  type  of  mild  jingoism. 
It  is  full  cousin  to  that  other  sentiment  which  also  this  writer 
assigns  to  him: 

Resolved,  that  other  nations  all,  if  set  longside  of  us, 
For  vartoo,  larnin,  chiverlry,  aint  noways  wuth  a  cuss.ls 

These  are  but  cruder  expressions  of  ideas  dating  from  the 
Revolutionary  War,  and  of  which  Timothy  Dwight,  who 
was  not  a  poet  by  predestination,  gave  us  in  verse  a  noble 
example : 

Columbia,  Columbia,  to  glory  arise, 

The  queen  of  the  world,  and  child  of  the  skies ! 

Thy  genius  commands  thee;  with  rapture  behold, 

While  ages  on  ages  thy  splendors  unfold. 

Thy  reign  is  the  last,  and  the  noblest  of  time, 

Most  fruitful  thy  soil,  most  inviting  thy  clime; 

Let  the  crimes  of  the  east  ne'er  encrimson  thy  name, 

Be  freedom,  and  science,  and  virtue,  thy  fame. 

It  need  not  be  supposed  that  all  Yankees  who  came  to 
Wisconsin  or  other  western  states  were  familiar  with  these 
glowing  lines.  But  it  is  almost  certain  that,  in  the  common 
schools  of  Yankeedom,  most  of  them  had  thrilled  to  the 
matchless  cadences  of  Webster's  reply  to  Hayne.  What 
more  was  needed,  by  way  of  literary  support,  to  a  pride 
of  country  which,  if  a  trifle  ungenerous  to  others,  was  based 
on  facts  all  had  experienced. 

B  J.  R.  Lowell,  Biglow  Papers. 


JOSEPH  S CHAFER 

IV  SOME  SOCIAL  TRAITS  OF  TEUTONS 
The  year  1832,  celebrated  in  Wisconsin  history  as  the 
time  when  the  lead  miners  and  other  pioneers  destroyed  the 
power  of  the  Rock  River  Indians,  was  remembered  by  later- 
coming  German  immigrants  for  a  very  different  reason.  It 
was  toward  the  end  of  March  in  that  year,  the  place  Trier 
(Treves),  the  ancient  capital  of  the  western  "Ceesars,"  a  city 
which  is  still  rich  in  the  massive  ruins  of  its  Roman  foretime. 
As  the  story  goes,  the  boys  of  one  form  in  the  old  Gymnasium 
were  being  entertained  at  the  house  of  a  professor,  where, 
boy-like,  they  were  playing  indoor  games  accompanied  with 
much  laughter  and  general  hilarity.  Suddenly  one  of  their 
younger  classmates  rushed  breathless  into  the  room,  exclaim* 
ing:  "Goethe  is  dead !'n  During  the  balance  of  the  evening, 
the  less  serious  of  the  youngsters  having  returned  to  their 
interrupted  play,  this  boy  engaged  with  his  instructors  in 
eager  discussion  of  Goethe's  life  and  writings. 

The  youth  in  question  was  Karl  Marx,  whose  later  history 
exhibits  a  wide  divergence  from  the  exclusively  literary  career 
prophesied  by  his  boyhood  scholastic  interests.  The  classmate 
who  is  authority  for  this  incident  continued  in  Marx's  com- 
pany the  Gymnasium  studies ;  he  then  performed  his  one  year 
minimum  of  military  service,  and  having  secured  some  busi- 
ness experience  sailed  away  as  an  immigrant  to  the  new  world, 
settling  on  a  Wisconsin  farm.  In  the  course  of  a  long  life  he 
often  reverted  to  the  story  of  Goethe,  whose  works,  as  well  as 
those  of  Schiller  and  Lessing,  made  a  part  of  his  home  library. 
These  great  names  never  failed  to  kindle  his  pride  in  the 

1  The  death  of  Goethe  occurred  on  the  twenty-second  of  March.  The  news 
must  have  taken  several  days  in  travel. 


4  Joseph  Schafer 

intellectual  achievements  of  the  German  people,  whose 
governments  at  the  time  of  his  emigration  in  1841  seemed  to 
him  a  compound  of  despotism  and  inefficiency.2 

Doubtless  there  were  Germans  of  the  immigration  to  Wis- 
consin who  knew  not  Goethe,  or  if  in  a  hazy  way  they  did 
know  who  he  was,  had  no  intellectual  right  to  judge  his 
merits.  But  the  more  intelligent  were  sure  to  possess  some 
knowledge  of  the  writings  of  their  greatest  poet  and  of  lesser 
men  who  still  were  great  in  the  world's  estimation.  Hence  it 
was  that  Germans  who  at  that  period  went  to  the  new  world, 
while  acknowledging  by  their  flight  the  political,  economic, 
and  social  obstacles  to  a  successful  life  in  Prussia,  Bavaria, 
Baden,  Westphalia,  or  Luxemburg,  were  always  able  to 
maintain  a  self-respecting  attitude  when  confronted  with  the 
pretensions  of  those  Americans  who  were  unsympathetic, 
jingoistic,  or  boastful.  German  immigrants  might  grant 
much  to  superior  cleverness,  to  the  stupendous  achievements 
of  a  liberty  loving  race,  domiciled  in  a  peaceful  continent  and 
dowered  with  free  lands  and  boundless  opportunity ;  but  they 
remembered  that  William  Tell  and  Faust  and  The  Laocoon 
were  written  by  Germans. 

Though  many  immigrants  were  far  from  being  literary, 
they  doubtless  possessed,  on  the  average,  a  knowledge  of 
German  masterpieces  fully  equivalent  to  the  knowledge 
which  Americans  possessed  of  the  English  Classics.  For  edu- 
cation was  looking  up,  and  while  most  of  the  immigrants 
from  German  states,  like  those  from  other  European  coun- 
tries, were  of  the  peasant  class,  which  was  usually  the  most 
backward,  still  by  1840  nearly  all  were  sure  to  have  enjoyed 
some  systematic  schooling.  At  an  earlier  period  this  might 
have  been  otherwise.  The  condition  of  limited  serfdom,  re- 
moved but  a  generation  earlier,  operated  powerfully  to  neu- 
tralize such  benevolent  plans  for  universal  instruction  as  kings 

*  Prussians  were  apt  to  console  themselves  for  the  pusillanimity  of  King 
Frederick  William  III  by  harking  back  to  the  really  strong  if  ruthless  monarchy 
of  Frederick  the  Great,  familiarly  spoken  of  as  Der  Alte  Fritz, 


Yankee  and  Teuton  5 

and  ministers  proclaimed.  For  the  peasants  were  directly 
subordinate  to  the  local  lords,  who  often  felt  "that  an  ignor- 
ant labor  supply  was  less  likely  to  seek  to  better  its  condition 
by  demands  upon  them.  .  .  ."3  The  great  national  reform 
movement  which  came  to  fruition  after  the  close  of  the  Napo- 
leonic wars  swept  away  many  of  the  disabilities  of  the  com- 
mon people,  and  developed  in  Prussia  and  other  states  a 
system  of  universal  education  as  the  surest  means  of  national 
upbuilding. 

The  excellencies  of  the  Prussian  school  system  prior  to 
1840  became  the  theme  of  flattering  reports  on  the  part  of 
educators  in  many  lands.  The  celebrated  philosopher  Victor 
Cousin  made  it  the  basis  for  his  plan  of  educational  reform  in 
France;  the  Scotch,  English,  and  Irish  discussed  it;  Horace 
Mann  proclaimed  it  to  the  school  authorities  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  Calvin  E.  Stowe  recommended  it  to  the  legislature 
of  Ohio.  That  system  may  not  have  possessed  all  of  the 
virtues  which  the  ordinances  quoted  by  Cousin  imply.*  Yet 
it  had  the  one  excellence  to  which  educationally  all  others  are 
subsidiary — a  well-trained  teaching  force.  Indeed,  if  there 
is  anything  which  seems  miraculous  in  the  swift  and  thorough- 
going transformation  of  school  conditions  in  Prussia  during 
the  first  forty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  is  explained 
by  the  provision  which  the  state  made  for  normal  schools  and 
the  supply,  through  their  agency,  of  teachers  enough  to  man 
all  the  schools.  "In  the  lowest  school  in  the  smallest  and  ob- 
scurest village,"  says  Horace  Mann,  "or  for  the  poorest  class 
in  overcrowded  cities;  in  the  schools  connected  with  pauper 
establishments,  with  houses  of  correction  or  with  prisons — in 
all  these  there  was  a  teacher  of  mature  age,  of  simple,  un- 
affected and  decorous  manners."  Mann  also  made  it  clear 
that  every  such  teacher  was  possessed  of  adequate  scholarship 

*Guy  Stanton  Ford,  Stein  and  the  Era  of  Reform  in  Prussia,  1807-1816 
(Princeton,  N.  J.,  1922),  185. 

*  Victor  Cousin,  Report  on  the  State  of  Public  Instruction  in  Prussia.  Trans- 
lated by  Sarah  Austin.  London,  1834. 


6  Joseph  Schafer 

and  special  training  for  the  work  of  the  schoolroom.5  Such  a 
statement  could  not  be  made  at  that  time  about  Massachu- 
setts, where  popular  education  was  already  two  hundred  years 
old,  nor  could  it  be  made  with  equal  confidence  of  other 
German  countries,  though  several  of  these  approximated  the 
Prussian  standard  and  most  of  them  were  earnestly  promot- 
ing education  along  the  same  lines  and  by  the  use  of  similar 
means. 

We  must  therefore  regard  the  generation  of  the  German 
exodus  from  which  [Wisconsin  profited  so  largely  in  the  later 
1840's  and  the  1850's,  as  almost  universally  literate  and  usu- 
ally well  grounded  in  the  rudiments  of  an  education.  The 
intelligent,  reading,  writing,  and  slow  but  careful  figuring 
German  peasant  immigrants  constituted  the  best  testimonial 
to  the  efficacy  of  German  systems  of  instruction  for  the  com- 
mon people.  The  Gymnasia,  the  real  Schule,  the  universities, 
sent  forth  representatives  of  the  highest  German  culture  to 
honor  the  learned  professions,  the  literary,  philosophical,  and 
scientific  circles  of  America. 

On  the  basis  of  formal  school  instruction  alone,  the  his- 
torian of  early  Wisconsin  would  be  compelled  to  assign  first 
place  in  social  fitness  to  the  immigrants  from  Germany. 
Neither  the  Irish,  the  English,  nor  even  the  Yankee  pioneers 
on  the  average  had  enjoyed  as  thorough  a  training  as  had 
Prussians,  Saxons,  Hessians,  or  Badeners.  Yet,  school  train- 
ing is  never  all  there  is  of  education,  and  it  may  constitute  but 
a  small  portion  of  it.  No  one  questions  that  the  social  charac- 
ter of  Prussian  and  other  German  peasants  was  far  higher  in 
1840  than  it  had  been  in  1800,  and  this  was  due  to  a  variety  of 
causes,  of  which  schooling  was  only  one.  In  part  it  was  due 
to  the  abolition  of  serfdom,  in  part  to  the  reorganization  of 
municipal  life ;  also,  largely  to  the  religious  agitation  of  the 
period,  to  the  movements  for  political  reform,  and  especially 

•See  Life  and  Works  of  Horace  Mann  (Boston,  1891),  iii,  346ff. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  7 

to  the  widespread,  momentous,  and  gripping  spirit  of  nation- 
alism. 

Nevertheless,  despite  their  superb  educational  equipment 
plus  other  incentives,  the  Prussians  still  seemed  to  intelligent 
American  observers  in  a  very  retarded  social  condition. 
Horace  Mann,  who  wrote  most  enthusiastically  of  their 
schools  and  was  sympathetic  toward  the  Germans  in  every 
respect,  in  a  passage  of  almost  classic  force  and  beauty  writ- 
ten in  1843,  tells  us  why  education  in  Prussia  accomplished 
for  the  people  so  much  less  than  one  might  expect.  For  one 
thing,  he  says,  the  pupils  left  school  too  early — at  the  age  of 
fourteen,  which  was  their  time  for  beginning  regular  and 
heavy  work.  Then,  too,  books  for  further  self -instruction 
were  lacking.  There  was  in  Prussia  nothing  analogous  to  the 
Massachusetts  district  school  libraries.  "But,"  he  continues, 
"the  most  potent  cause  of  Prussian  backwardness  and  incom- 
petency  is  this — when  the  children  come  out  from  the  school 
they  have  little  use  either  for  the  faculties  that  have  been 
developed,  or  for  the  knowledge  that  has  been  acquired. 
Their  resources  have  not  been  brought  into  demand;  their 
powers  are  not  roused  or  strengthened  by  exercise.  Our 
common  phrases,  'the  active  duties  of  life' ;  'the  responsibili- 
ties of  citizenship';  'the  stage,  the  career,  of  action';  'the 
obligations  to  posterity' ; — would  be  strange  sounding  words 
in  the  Prussian  ear.  .  .  .  Now,  although  there  is  a  sleeping 
ocean  in  the  bosom  of  every  child  that  is  born  into  the  world, 
yet  if  no  freshening,  life-giving  breeze  ever  sweeps  across  its 
surface,  why  should  it  not  repose  in  dark  stagnation  forever." 
The  bill  of  particulars  with  which  the  great  educator  clinches 
his  indictment  of  the  Prussian  system,  while  it  aims  to  de- 
scribe accurately  only  the  then  existing  condition  in  Prussia, 
might  be  equally  applicable  to  almost  any  other  absolutist, 
paternalistic  state.  All  responsibility  for  the  people's  wel- 
fare was  assumed  by  the  monarch,  who  in  turn  was  actively 


8  Joseph  Schafer 

aided  by  a  hierarchy  of  officials  in  state  and  church,  in  the 
central  government  and  the  local  administrative  areas. 

Of  this  officialdom,  particularly  in  its  military  and  civil 
aspects,  the  nobility  was  not  merely  the  corner  stone  but  the 
essential  part  of  the  structure.  The  church,  loyal  to  its  tradi- 
tions, was  much  more  democratic,  men  of  every  class  being 
found  in  each  of  its  official  grades.  The  newly  developed 
educational  system  gave  to  the  common  man  another  signifi- 
cant opportunity,  since  teaching  candidates  were  drawn  in 
large  numbers  from  the  middle  and  lower  classes,  and  were 
given  at  public  expense  the  training  necessary  to  fit  them  for 
permanent  positions  in  the  various  types  of  schools.  On  the 
whole,  however,  life  beyond  the  school,  which  among  Ameri- 
cans of  that  day  commonly  yielded  the  major  part  of  educa- 
tion, was  in  Prussia  far  less  fruitful.  For,  the  American, 
whose  formal  schooling  had  been  limited,  was  sure  to  multiply 
its  efficacy  many  times  through  the  intensely  original  char- 
acter of  his  activities.  In  these  he  was  apt  to  employ  every- 
thing he  had  learned,  and  constantly  to  learn  more  for  the 
sake  of  applying  the  new  knowledge  to  challenging  situa- 
tions. 

The  contrast  between  the  average  Prussian's  life  and  the 
average  American's  life  was  sharp  and  decisive.  The  boy 
leaving  school  at  fourteen  in  Frederick  William's  country 
was  thrust  at  once  into  a  routine  of  severe  labor,  controlled  by 
others.  Either  he  might  be  on  a  farm,  where  his  duties  were 
fixed  by  custom  and  minutely  directed  by  parent  or  employer; 
or  he  might  be  apprenticed  to  a  trade  which  would  give  him 
seven  years  under  an  exacting  master.  Assuming  that  he 
remained  in  his  native  region,  his  career  thenceforth  would  be 
determined  with  the  minimum  of  personal  effort.  The 
American  boy  whose  schooling  stopped  at  an  early  age  might 
go  west  and  start  a  new  farm  home  in  a  new  environment, 
with  every  incentive  toward  employing  his  best  powers  to 


Yankee  and  Teuton  9 

win  unusual  success;  he  might  go  to  the  city  and  engage  in 
some  business ;  attend  school  to  prepare  for  a  profession ;  or 
settle  down  on  the  ancestral  acres  under  social  and  economic 
conditions  which  called  for  almost  continuous  readjustments, 
and  kept  his  mind  on  the  stretch  to  bring  these  about. 

The  governmental  arrangements  in  America  were  inher- 
ently educational;  in  Prussia  they  were  the  reverse,  save 
when,  with  revolutionary  fury,  the  people  rose  to  seek  their 
destruction  or  reform.  In  Prussia,  says  Horace  Mann,  "the 
subject  has  no  officers  to  choose,  no  inquiry  into  the  char- 
acter or  eligibility  of  candidates  to  make,  no  vote  to  give.  He 
has  no  laws  to  enact  or  abolish.  He  has  no  questions  about 
peace  or  war,  finance,  taxes,  tariffs,  post  office,  or  internal 
improvements  to  decide  or  discuss.  He  is  not  asked  where 
a  road  shall  be  laid,  or  how  a  bridge  shall  be  built,  although 
in  the  one  case  he  has  to  perform  the  labor  and  in  the  other 
to  supply  the  materials.  .  .  .  The  tax  gatherer  tells  him  how 
much  he  is  to  pay,  the  ecclesiastical  authority  plans  a  church 
which  he  must  build ;  and  his  spiritual  guide,  who  has  been  set 
over  him  by  another,  prepares  a  creed  and  a  confession  of 
faith  all  ready  for  his  signature.  He  is  directed  alike  how 
he  must  obey  his  King  and  worship  his  God." 

The  schools  of  Prussia  inculcated  religion  and  morality  as 
sedulously  as  they  taught  geography,  singing,  and  writing, 
the  methods  used  being  highly  praised  by  American  peda- 
gogical experts.  This  universal  insistence  on  the  ethical  con- 
tent of  life  could  not  fail  to  produce  results  more  or  less  in 
harmony  with  the  aims  of  great  ethical  philosophers,  like  Kant 
of  Konigsberg,  a  teacher  of  the  learned  whose  "categorical 
imperative,"  popularized  in  that  epoch,  has  not  yet  gone  into 
the  philosophical  discard.  The  average  German  immigrants 
of  the  1840's  knew  little  of  Kant  or  the  Kantian  school  of 
ethics.  But  of  honesty,  truthfulness,  and  fidelity  to  the 
plighted  word  they  knew  much,  because  those  were  practical 


10  Joseph  Scliafer 

virtues  with  which  in  school  if  not  at  home  all  were  indoc- 
trinated. Thrift  and  industry  were  additional  but  funda- 
mental virtues  which  were  widely  diffused.  It  is  hard  for  an 
empty  sack  to  stand  upright.  The  reason  why  in  America 
a  German's  note  was  more  often  worth  face  value  than  that 
of  some  other  classes  was  because  the  German  usually  labored 
unceasingly  and  saved  what  he  earned,  thus  enabling  him  to 
meet  his  obligation.6 

They  were  not  all  saints,  these  Germans,  and  in  the  matter 
of  personal  morality  the  Prussians  particularly  seem  in  those 
days  to  have  deserved  much  of  the  criticism  directed  against 
them.7  However,  it  is  not  necessary  to  regard  even  the 
Prussians  as  more  lax  than  most  other  continentals,  and  their 
character  is  always  explainable  as  a  vulgarized  aping  of  the 
low  if  gilded  immoralities  of  court  and  aristocracy.  Matters 
of  this  sort  do  not  lend  themselves  readily  to  statistical  in- 
quiry. But  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  in  France,  Prussia, 
Austria,  or  any  other  country  of  continental  Europe  the 
private  morals  of  the  common  people  were  better  on  the 
whole  than  those  of  the  upper  classes.  In  America,  where  im- 
migrants from  those  countries  came  into  contact  with  a  self- 
governing  people  of  simple  habits  and  prevailingly  high 
ideals  of  personal  conduct,  though  with  numerous  individual 
divergences  from  the  type,  sharp  attention  was  bound  to  be 
directed  to  this  feature  in  the  character  of  foreigners,  and 
the  Germans  attracted  their  full  share  of  suspicion  and  dis- 
favor from  the  stricter  sort  of  Americans. 

Such  suspicions  were  heightened  by  certain  social  customs 
of  the  Germans  to  which  Americans  reacted  adversely.  Sun- 

6Cf.  Franklin's  views  on  the  comparative  thrift  of  English  and  of  German 
laborers,  and  note  his  tentative  explanation  of  the  difference.  The  Complete 
Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin  (compiled  and  edited  by  John  Bigelow,  New  York 
and  London,  1887),  ii,  291ff.  Letter  to  Peter  Collinson,  dated  Philadelphia,  9  May, 

7  By  writers  like  Samuel  Laing,  in  his  Notes  of  a  Traveller  on  the  Social  and 
Political  State  of  France,  Prussia,  Switzerland,  Italy,  and  Other  Parts  of  Europe 
(London,  1864),  especially  108-115. 


11 

day  amusements  were  all  but  universal  among  them.  Trav- 
elers in  Germany  dwell  upon  the  gaiety  observed  in  the 
villages,  or  in  the  city  parks  and  the  beer  gardens,  the  distinc- 
tive costumes  of  different  localities  lending  color  and  interest 
to  the  scenes.  Music  was  cultivated  in  every  German  com- 
munity ;  all  Germans  could  sing  and  a  large  proportion  could 
perform  on  musical  instruments.  One  was  "as  certain  to  see 
a  violin  as  a  blackboard  in  every  schoolroom."8  Wherever 
Germans  gathered  together — and  Sunday,  since  it  was  the 
weekly  holiday,  was  their  day  for  assembling — there  was  sing- 
ing and  dancing,  usually  accompanied  by  the  drinking  of 
beer  or  wine  to  stimulate  hilarity.  This  drinking  was  not 
necessarily  excessive,  because  most  Germans  were  moderate 
in  their  appetites  for  alcohol,  some  were  unable  to  spend 
much,  and  all  were  economical  (sparsam).  The  dances  dif- 
ered  from  those  favored  in  this  country,  being  mainly  "round 
dances,"  and  the  standards  of  decorum  in  the  relations  of  the 
sexes  were  different  also.  No  wonder  that,  when  German 
families  settled  in  groups  near  our  own  people,  Yankee 
fathers  and  mothers  often  shook  their  heads  doubtfully  in 
contemplating  the  influence  upon  their  children  of  these  un- 
familiar social  customs. 

It  is  probable  that  the  vigor  with  which  among  this  resili- 
ent people  amusements  were  carried  on  had  a  definite  rela- 
tion to  the  intensity,  monotony,  and  sordidness  of  the  labor 
from  which  they  were  a  recoil.  At  all  events,  with  more 
leisure  on  week  days  and  an  opportunity  to  do  his  work  under 
pleasanter  conditions,  the  German  readily  adapted  himself 
to  a  type  of  relaxation  which  was  less  boisterous  and  more 
genteel.  His  work  and  his  living  being  what  they  were,  it  is 
doubtful  if  anything  better  in  the  form  of  amusements  could 
have  been  expected  of  him.  Travelers  from  England  and 

8  Life  and  Works  of  Horace  Mann  (Boston,  1891),  iii,  346ff.  See  also 
Reminiscences  of  Carl  Schurz  (New  York,  1907),  i,  40. 


12  Joseph  S chafer 

America,  on  their  visits  to  Germany,  were  impressed  with 
the  wholesomeness  of  the  Sunday  picnics,  the  rambles  through 
the  forests,  the  frolics  on  the  village  greens  and  in  the  parks 
adjacent  to  the  towns  and  cities.9 

With  all  his  sociability,  joviality,  and  occasional  levity, 
the  German  was  not  devoid  of  an  element  of  austerity.  This 
was  one  secret  of  his  ability  to  achieve.  Whatever  the  work 
might  be,  he  settled  himself  to  its  performance  with  a  grim 
determination  expressive  of  century-long  training.  The 
mechanic,  from  his  apprentice  years,  was  habituated  to  long 
hours  of  unremitting  but  improving  toil.  The  farmer 
(bauer)  was  a  traditional  daylight-saver  and  a  night-worker 
besides,  such  excessive  labor  being  compulsory  under  the  sys- 
tem of  serfdom,  when  the  peasant's  time  was  levied  upon  to 
a  very  large  extent  by  the  lord.  The  German  schools  incul- 
cated similar  habits  of  relentless  application  to  the  work  in 
hand,  and  even  the  government  bureaus,  under  rigorous  task- 
masters like  old  Friedrich  Wilhelm  and  his  son  Frederick 
the  Great,  enforced  compliance  with  the  ideal  of  a  patient, 
steady  "grind"  which  not  inaptly  typified  the  German  in  the 
eyes  of  other  peoples.  The  German  often  performed  less 
work  in  the  time  consumed  than  an  alert  Yankee  would  have 
performed  in  a  shorter  day;  his  tools  and  implements  were 
generally  awkward  and  inefficacious;  even  in  scholarship  he 
not  infrequently  took  the  long  way  around  to  reach  his  goal — 
but  he  usually  reached  it  because  he  had  no  notion  of  turning 
back  or  of  stopping  at  a  halfway  point  on  his  job.  Persistent 
rather  than  brilliant,  more  industrious  than  inventive,  the 
German  toiled  on,  content  if  he  always  had  something  to  show 
for  his  labor.  The  contrast,  in  that  generation,  between  the 
German  at  work  and  the  German  at  play  is  the  contrast  be- 

8  See  William  Howitt,  Rural  and  Domestic  Life  of  Germany  (London,  1842), 
passim.  That  portion  of  Carl  Schurz's  work  (see  note  8  ante)  which  describes 
his  boyhood  life  at  Liblar  throws  much  light  on  the  amusements  indulged  in  by 
the  people.  There  is  a  delightful  account  of  the  Schiitzenfest,  or  marksmanship 
contest,  on  pages  46-48  and  pages  81-83. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  13 

tween  a  man  governed  by  an  intense  purpose  to  accomplish 
a  given  task,  whether  interesting  or  not,  and  the  same  man 
intent  on  accomplishing  nothing  with  every  physical,  intel- 
lectual, and  emotional  evidence  of  enjoying  the  process. 
Some  men  carry  into  their  play  the  morale  which  governs 
them  in  their  work;  others  import  into  their  work  the  spirit 
of  their  play.  In  the  case  of  the  mid-nineteenth  century  Ger- 
man the  two  aspects  of  his  existence,  work  and  play,  diif  ered 
in  spirit  quite  as  much  as  in  content. 

The  Germans  had  their  Puritan  sects,  like  the  Moravians 
and  other  pietists,  whose  attitude  was  distinctly  other-worldly, 
to  whom  play  was  a  sedate  if  not  a  solemn  activity.  Such 
people  disapproved  of  dancing  and  beer  drinking  Germans 
quite  as  heartily  as  of  profane  whiskey  drinking  and  quarrel- 
some Americans  or  Irish.  Individuals  and  colonies  of  the 
pietistic  classes  passed  into  the  emigrations,  and  thus  Wiscon- 
sin's German  population  contained  most  of  the  elements  to  be 
found  at  the  same  time  in  the  German  states.  This  illustrates 
one  difficulty  in  generalizing  about  social  characteristics; 
there  are  so  many  exceptions  to  be  noted  that  the  generaliza- 
tion loses  much  of  its  validity. 

Craftsmanship  was  a  prevalent  accomplishment  among 
the  Germans  of  the  early  emigration.  Every  shipload  of 
emigrants  of  which  we  have  a  social  analysis  had  a  large 
proportion  of  craftsmen,  who  were  either  established  mem- 
bers of  the  city  and  village  industrial  class,  or  else  belonged 
to  the  peasantry  and  had  learned  a  craft  in  order  to  improve 
their  status.  Trades  were  learned  exclusively  under  the  ap- 
prenticeship system,  the  candidate  usually  living  in  the 
master's  home  and  giving  service  at  the  master's  will.  When 
he  reached  the  journeyman  stage  he  was  privileged  to  find 
work  for  himself,  a  quest  which  though  usually  fruitful  in 
educational  results  often  proved  disappointing  from  a  mone- 
tary point  of  view.  In  those  cases  the  journeyman  was 
peculiarly  open  to  the  temptation  to  emigrate.  Arrived  in 


14  Joseph  S chafer 

this  country,  the  chances  of  finding  employment  in  the  line 
of  his  training  varied.  Sometimes  they  were  excellent,  at 
other  times  poor,  depending  mainly  upon  the  craft  repre- 
sented. Carpenters  were  in  great  demand,  as  were  also 
blacksmiths,  wheelwrights,  millwrights,  masons,  bricklayers, 
plasterers,  and  in  general  all  representatives  of  the  building 
trades  and  of  trades  ministering  to  farmers.  Others  were  in 
occasional  demand.  But,  if  a  dyer,  or  a  slater,  or  a  cabinet 
maker,  or  a  silversmith,  or  a  tile  maker,  or  a  weaver,  or  a 
wood  carver  happened  to  find  himself  in  America  without  a 
market  for  his  peculiar  skill,  he  always  had  the  resource  of 
taking  land  and  commencing  as  a  farmer.  Many  craftsmen, 
indeed,  came  with  the  set  purpose  of  doing  that  immediately 
upon  their  arrival;  others  contemplated  a  farming  career 
after  a  period  devoted  to  their  specialty.  In  some  or  all  of 
these  ways  Germans  trained  as  craftsmen  came  to  be  widely 
distributed  over  the  farming  areas  of  Wisconsin  as  well  as 
among  the  cities,  towns,  and  villages. 

The  possession  of  special  skill  in  any  line,  like  the  posses- 
sion of  special  scientific  knowledge,  raises  a  man  in  social  es- 
timation, and  every  trained  worker  properly  regards  himself 
with  satisfaction  as  being  not  quite  "as  other  men  are."  In 
addition  to  the  social  training  which  came  to  him  as  an  incident 
of  his  apprenticeship  and  journeyman's  experience,  the  Ger- 
man craftsman  often  was  able  to  challenge  the  respect  and 
admiration  of  his  American  neighbors  by  making  articles  of 
cunning  workmanship  which  to  them  seemed  wonderful  be- 
cause they  did  not  understand  the  processes  involved. 
Agriculture  being  regarded  as  an  unskilled  occupation,  the 
artisan  farmer  also  was  very  apt  to  lord  it  over  the  peasant 
farmer  of  his  own  nationality.  Craftsmanship,  in  a  word, 
established  a  kind  of  rank  among  Germans  in  this  country 
because  it  was  a  recognized  means  of  personal  and  social 
progress  at  home. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  15 

Statistics  are  impossible  to  procure,  but  the  testimony  of 
men  and  women  familiar  with  early  conditions  in  Wisconsin 
proves  that  the  German  population  of  the  state  in  early  days 
varied  quite  as  widely  in  social  characteristics  as  did  the 
American  population,  though  America  had  no  distinctive 
peasant  class.  Accordingly,  although  in  the  beginnings  of 
American  contacts  with  their  Prussian  or  Westphalian 
neighbors  these  were  lumped  together  indiscriminately  as 
"Dutchmen,"  differences  soon  began  to  emerge.  In  the 
course  of  a  few  years  a  class  of  "fine  old  Germans"  was  rec- 
ognized in  almost  every  community  to  supplement  the  well- 
known  type  of  "fine  old  Yankee  gentlemen."  These  select 
Germans  were  very  apt  to  be  men  who  had  been  trained  as 
craftsmen,  or  men  who  had  enjoyed  the  advanced  scientific  or 
literary  instruction  afforded  in  the  higher  schools  and  the 
universities  of  the  homeland.  In  the  cities,  especially  Mil- 
waukee, were  many  Germans  who  had  been  prominent  in 
business  lines  as  well  as  in  the  professions. 

The  question  has  sometimes  arisen  why  so  many  of  the 
second-generation  Germans  appear  inferior  in  social  char- 
acter to  their  immigrant  parents.  A  hint  of  the  reason  is 
found  in  what  has  just  been  said.  Whatever  elements  of 
superiority  were  shown  by  the  immigrant  artisan-farmers  or 
the  highly  educated  Germans,  the  social  advantages  accru- 
ing therefrom  were  personal,  and  in  a  slightly  developed 
western  society  could  not  be  handed  on  to  the  next  genera- 
tion. In  the  cities  it  frequently  was  possible  for  men  of  high 
ideals  and  fine  social  status  to  provide  equivalent  opportunities 
for  their  children.  But  not  so  on  frontier  farms.  There  it 
was  a  rare  case  when  an  education  or  training  like  that 
received  by  the  father  in  the  old  country  could  be  supplied. 
Accordingly,  the  sons  of  the  most  intelligent,  dignified,  and 
worthy  German  farmer,  if  they  became  farmers  in  succes- 
sion, might  perhaps  turn  out  mere  farmers,  with  none  of  the 


16  Joseph  S chafer 

graces  or  exceptional  social  virtues  of  the  parents,  and 
little  except  the  memory  of  a  parent's  high  respectability  to 
distinguish  them  from  the  farmer  sons  of  the  clumsiest 
peasant. 

However,  this  is  but  half  the  story.  If  the  superior  Ger- 
mans reared  families  incapable  of  remaining  on  their  own 
social  plane,  other  types  of  Germans,  who  in  their  own 
persons  counted  for  less,  frequently  had  the  happiness  to  see 
their  children  advance  to  a  position  perceptibly  higher  than 
their  own.  Natural  gifts,  industry,  the  social  opportunities 
which  yield  to  the  key  of  economic  success  availed  much. 
Sometimes  the  presence  of  a  good  school,  a  wise  and  helpful 
pastor  or  some  other  worthy  friend  gave  the  necessary  im- 
pulse. The  process,  in  fact,  does  not  differ  essentially  from 
that  which,  throughout  American  pioneer  history,  has  enabled 
the  deserving  to  press  forward  and  permitted  the  weak, 
indolent,  or  vicious  to  fall  behind  in  the  social  competition. 
It  is  impossible  to  say  how  many  German  families  made  a 
step,  or  several  steps,  upward,  and  how  many  others  slipped 
back.  The  delinquents  may  perhaps  exceed  the  meritorious 
in  number,  but  probably  not,  and  the  impression  that  the 
children  of  German  immigrants  shame  their  parents  is  almost 
certainly  an  illusion  which  would  be  likely  to  disappear  if 
the  facts  were  fully  known. 

The  social  institutions  of  Wisconsin,  based  on  the  earlier 
Yankee  and  southwestern  immigrations,  were  profoundly 
influenced  by  the  German  immigration  of  the  late  forties  and 
the  fifties  of  last  century.  Milwaukee,  the  center  of  Ger- 
man influence  (the  Deutsche  Athen) ,  became  a  city  in  which 
the  German  language  was  spoken  and  read  by  many  English 
speaking  persons,  in  order  to  facilitate  communication  and 
trade  with  the  numerically  dominant  German  element.  The 
Germans  maintained  advanced  schools  for  instruction  in  both 
English  and  German ;  their  parochial  schools  were  conducted 


Yankee  and  Teuton  17 

mainly  in  German;  the  immigrants  themselves  felt  no  com- 
pulsion to  learn  English,  and  their  children,  in  many  cases, 
however  well  educated,  spoke  the  language  of  the  country 
with  very  imperfect  accent. 

The  universal  respect  in  which  the  German  language  was 
held,  and  the  extent  to  which  it  was  affected  by  others  than 
Germans,  provided  an  admirable  social  soil  for  the  develop- 
ment of  German  music  and  the  cultivation  of  German  litera- 
ture. Hardly  had  the  immigrants  established  themselves 
when,  in  1847,  they  founded  at  Milwaukee  their  first  singing 
society,  which  was  followed  three  years  later  by  the  famous 
and  far-reaching  Musikverein.  A  German  theater  followed 
promptly,  and  became  a  permanent  feature  of  Milwaukee's 
intellectual  life.10  The  Turnverein  fostered  in  America  Fa- 
ther Jahn's  conception  of  athletics,  while  restaurants  and  beer 
gardens  gave  an  old  world,  continental  atmosphere  to  public 
recreation.  Holidays  assumed  a  German  aspect.  The  Christ 
Child  displaced  St.  Nicholas  not  alone  in  Milwaukee,  but  in 
scores  of  towns,  villages,  and  hamlets,  and  innumerable  farm 
homes  scattered  over  Wisconsin.  The  joyous  German  Wei- 
nacht  made  way  easily  against  the  more  somber  Puritan 
Christmas,  which,  however,  had  already  brightened  a  good 
deal  in  its  progress  from  the  seventeenth  century  to  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

In  general,  Germans  did  not  insist  with  extreme  perti- 
nacity upon  the  retention  of  their  own  social  customs,  and 
wherever  people  of  that  nationality  were  intermingled  with  a 
larger  number  of  Americans,  the  process  by  which  they  as- 
similated American  habits  of  living,  American  social  usages, 
and  even  ways  of  acting,  speaking,  and  thinking  was  very 
rapid.  In  the  schools  of  a  Yankee  neighborhood  the  children 
of  German  settlers,  in  many  cases,  could  not  be  distinguished 

10  Albert  Bernhard  Faust,  The  German  Element  in  the  United  States  (Boston, 
1909),  ii,  472. 


18  Joseph  S chafer 

by  their  manner  of  speech  from  the  Yankee  children.  On 
the  other  hand,  in  communities  made  up  wholly  or  mainly  of 
Germans,  the  grandchildren  continue  to  have  trouble  with 
the  th  sound  in  English  words,  and  manifest  other  linguistic 
peculiarities.  And  this  difference  is  merely  symptomatic. 
To  this  day,  it  is  easy  to  reconstruct,  in  case. of  the  average 
person  of  German  descent,  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  was 
brought  up.  If  he  comes  from  Milwaukee,  or  from  some 
rural  "Dutch  settlement,"  that  fact  is  usually  clear  from  a 
hundred  trifling  intimations.  If  he  was  brought  up  in  a  non- 
German  community  (so  adaptable  is  the  race),  a  change  of 
name  from  the  German  Weiss  to  the  English  White,  or  from 
Schwartz  to  Black,  would  ordinarily  suffice  to  disguise  the 
fact  that  he  is  of  German  descent  at  all.  Germans  thus 
brought  up  are  apt  to  have  made  their  religious  affiliations 
and  their  intimate  social  relationships  harmonize  with  those 
of  the  leading  American  element  of  the  community,  so  that 
these  quite  as  much  as  their  speech  would  tend  to  conceal  their 
racial  origin. 

Wisconsin  writers  have  made  much  of  the  fact  that  emi- 
grating German  revolutionists  came  to  this  state  largely  in 
1848  and  the  years  following.  That  fact,  significant  as 
bringing  to  Wisconsin  Carl  Schurz,  who  became  the  most 
noted  liberal  American  statesman  and  publicist  of  German 
birth,  has  perhaps  been  overstressed.  At  least,  it  can  safely 
be  said  that  for  every  revolutionist  disembarked  at  Milwau- 
kee or  Sheboygan  or  Manitowoc,  probably  a  full  score  of 
plain,  everyday,  conventional  Germans  filtered  into  the  state's 
population  during  the  same  time.  The  important  point  about 
the  revolutionists  is  not  their  relative  numbers,  but  their  char- 
acter and  the  leadership  they  helped  to  supply  in  the  affairs 
of  the  new  commonwealth.  Newspaper  editors  who  possessed 
exceptional  literary  and  scholastic  attainments  came  from 
that  class;  some  found  their  way  into  the  legislature,  and 


19 

many  served  the  cause  of  liberal  government  on  the  local 
plane. 

The  name  of  Schurz  was  one  to  conjure  with,  as  Ameri- 
can politicians  were  quick  to  discover.  He  figured  prom- 
inently in  Wisconsin  state  politics  only  a  few  years,  but  as  a 
national  leader  his  influence  in  attaching  the  Germans  to  the 
causes  he  advocated  was  especially  strong  in  this  state,  which 
claimed  him  as  her  own.  Schurz's  high  character  and  attain- 
ments, coupled  with  his  political  successes  in  this  country, 
were  a  source  of  pride  to  thousands  of  Wisconsin  Germans 
who  shared  not  at  all  his  revolutionary  views.  Enough  that, 
like  Goethe,  he  was  a  great  German,  and  that  he  had  gained 
the  respect  and  confidence  of  large  sections  of  the  Ameri- 
can people.  It  ministered  to  the  self-respect  of  the  average 
German  settler  to  feel  that  his  people  had  contributed  some- 
thing of  value  to  the  life  of  the  nation  and  state. 

Later  arrivals  from  Germany,  and  especially  from  Prus- 
sia, brought  with  them  an  intense  pride  of  nationalism  and 
enthusiasm  for  German  achievement  in  the  wars  against 
Austria  and  against  France.  The  difference  in  attitude  be- 
tween immigrants  of  1880  and  those  of  forty  years  earlier 
was  antipodal.  Many  of  the  former  had  served  in  the  vic- 
torious wars  and  abounded  in  military  incidents  and  in  stories 
of  Bismarck,  of  Kaiser  Wilhelm  I,  and  Crown  Prince 
Frederick  William  (Unser  Fritz).  These  men  obviously 
belonged  to  a  new  generation  of  Germans,  and  they  have 
exerted  a  powerful  influence  upon  our  recent  history.  But 
the  Germans  who  deserve  special  recognition  along  with  the 
Yankees,  as  founders  of  the  commonwealth  and  its  institu- 
tions, are  those  of  the  earlier  immigrations  from  a  Fatherland 
which  as  yet  was  united  only  in  culture,  while  politically  its 
states  remained  dissevered. 


THE  YANKEE  AND  THE  TEUTON  IN 
WISCONSIN 

JOSEPH  SCHAFER 
V    SOCIAL  HARMONIES  AND  DISCORDS 

The  "Sons  of  the  Pilgrims"  of  Milwaukee  held  in 
December,  1850,  their  customary  banquet  to  celebrate  the 
historic  landing  on  Plymouth  Rock.  The  occasion  was  one 
which  stimulated  the  flow  of  oratory  and  the  display  of 
quaint  Yankee  humor  and  sparkling  wit.  Among  the  toasts, 
some  of  which  embodied  genuine  wisdom,  was  the  following : 
"Our  adopted  state.  She  has  gathered  her  sons  from 
many  lands  and  given  them  all  a  home  amid  her  bounty 
and  her  beauty.  May  the  elements  of  strength  and  greatness 
peculiar  to  each  be  here  transplanted  and  united  to  form 
a  perfect  commonwealth."1 

The  sentiment  was  notably  generous,  voiced  as  it  was 
by  one  out  of  the  many  and  diverse  population  elements, 
and  we  now  see  that  it  was  also  prophetic.  But  the  attain- 
ment of  the  ideal  here  advanced  was  not  to  result  from  an 
effortless,  unconscious  process.  Much  history  is  involved 
in  the  relations  of  Yankee  and  Teuton — to  say  nothing  of 
other  stocks — which  reveals  a  general  tendency  to  helpful 
cooperation,  but  presents,,  on  the  other  hand,  episodes 
marked  by  animosity,  jealousy,  and  social  estrangement. 
If  there  were  social  harmonies,  there  were  also  discords. 

As  early  as  1850  Milwaukee  contained  more  Germans 
than  Yankees.  Out  of  an  aggregate  population  of  20,059 
the  census  taker  had  designated  3880  as  natives  of  the 
New  England  states  and  New  York,  while  5958  were  born 
in  Germany.  The  entire  American  element  (aside  from 

1  Daily  Free  Democrat,  December  27,  1850. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  149 

natives  of  Wisconsin,  who  were  children  of  the  foreign 
born  as  well  as  of  the  American  born)  amounted  to  5113, 
while  the  number  of  foreigners  was  12,036.  Of  these,  more 
than  3000  were  Irish  and  about  1300  English.  Thus  the 
German  was  numerically  the  dominant  social  factor  in 
the  city. 

Nevertheless,  in  all  but  numbers  the  Yankee  element 
remained,  as  it  had  been  from  the  beginning  of  the  town's 
growth,  in  a  position  of  acknowledged  leadership.  There 
would  be  no  difficulty  in  proving  that  socially,  industrially, 
and  commercially  the  places  of  power  were  occupied  by  the 
"down-easters,"  while  in  politics,  although  their  control  was 
being  challenged  from  one  side  or  another,  they  were  still 
far  from  recognizing  a  master. 

Yankees  were  the  promoters  of  those  far-reaching 
improvements,  like  the  various  plank  roads,  and  especially 
the  railroads,  which  were  destined  to  unite  the  extensive 
new  settlements  with  Milwaukee  and  thus  guarantee  the 
future  greatness  of  the  city.  They  were  largely  engaged 
in  the  carrying  trade  on  the  Lakes.  They  controlled  the 
flour  milling  business,  the  leading  industry  of  the  city,  in 
which  was  concentrated  probably  more  capital  than  was 
invested  in  all  other  lines  of  manufacturing  carried  on  at 
that  time.  They  were  also  prominent  in  wholesale  merchan- 
dising and  owned  the  most  pretentious  retail  stores. 

Their  general  preeminence  in  the  professions  was  undis- 
puted. They  had  most  of  the  lawyers,  a  large  proportion 
of  the  physicians,  the  editors  of  English  language  papers, 
the  Protestant  clergymen,  the  teachers.  Public  opinion, 
with  a  reservation  to  be  stated  presently,  was  mainly  of 
their  making,  both  in  the  city  itself  and — through  the  agency 
of  a  widely  read  newspaper  press — in  the  state  at  large. 
On  all  questions  affecting  public  education,  social  morality, 
health,  and  recreation,  as  well  as  business  or  industry,  the 
American  portion  of  the  community  was  very  apt  to  mass 


150  Joseph  S chafer 

behind  Yankee  leadership;  and  the  English  speaking 
section  of  the  foreign  population  was  not  averse  to  doing 
the  same,  at  least  under  ordinary  circumstances.  Often, 
indeed,  such  was  the  prestige  of  the  Yankees,  their  initiative 
was  followed  unquestioningly  by  American  and  foreigner 
alike. 

But  the  weight  of  numbers  being  with  the  Germans, 
the  bulk  of  whom  did  not  speak  or  read  English — though 
there  were  numerous  exceptions, — it  was  natural  that 
there  should  have  developed  a  community  leadership  within 
their  own  group,  and  such  leadership  would  be  determinative 
in  cases  of  divergence  from  American  ideas.  The  presence 
of  this  great  body  of  non-English  speaking  persons,  clothed 
with  political  power  and  wielding  also  a  goodly  share  of 
economic  power,  especially  as  manifested  in  consumption, 
tended  in  itself  to  generate  a  more  amiable  attitude  and 
more  moderate  policies  on  the  part  of  the  dominant  class. 

For  the  Germans  were  a  coherent,  prosperous,  and  grow- 
ing element  in  the  city.  They  began  coming  in  1839,  and 
during  the  succeeding  decade  the  annual  accretions  waxed 
gradually  larger.  After  the  revolution  of  1848  the  tide  of 
emigration,  especially  from  the  countries  and  provinces 
along  the  Rhine,  was  swollen  to  unprecedented  proportions, 
Milwaukee  and  the  whole  state  profiting  largely  therefrom. 
But,  already  before  1850  Milwaukee's  streets,  business 
places,  and  homes  were  so  habituated  to  German  speech, 
that  most  visitors  unhesitatingly  described  it  as  a  German 
city.  "In  the  colony  of  Herman  alone,"  wrote  Carl  de  Haas 
in  1848,  "among  all  the  United  States  is  the  population  so 
preponderantly  German."2  This  writer  also  says,  as  do 
other  chroniclers  of  his  race,  that  not  alone  the  speech  of 
his  country,  but  also  the  national  habits  and  customs 
prevailed  exceedingly  in  Milwaukee;  that  the  Americans 
made  many  concessions  to  the  Germanism  of  the  environ- 

*  Nordamerika,  Wisconsin,  Calumet.    Winke  fur  Auswanderer  (edition  of  1849),  64. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  151 

ment — merchants,  for  example,  learning  the  language 
themselves,  or  at  least  keeping  clerks  in  their  establish- 
ments who  could  speak  it,  in  order  to  attract  German  trade. 

The  emigration  which  began  in  1839  as  a  religious 
movement,  a  congregation  of  Old  Lutherans  fleeing  the 
pressure  of  the  illiberal  policy  of  Prussia's  king,  was  con- 
tinued thereafter  mainly  from  economic  and  social  motives. 
An  examination  of  the  census  schedules  of  1850  for  Mil- 
waukee reveals  its  general  character  better  than  volumes 
of  reminiscent  testimony.  The  census  shows  that,  among 
the  5958  Germans  in  the  city,  1165  (if  the  count  is  accurate) 
were  craftsmen.  There  were  house  carpenters,  ship  car- 
penters, smiths,  wheelwrights,  millwrights,  cabinet  makers, 
masons,  plasterers,  painters,  brickmakers,  tailors,  shoe- 
makers, saddlers,  watchmakers,  coppersmiths,  silversmiths 
and  goldsmiths,  barbers,  bakers,  brewers,  cigar  makers, 
musicians,  sailors,  and  many  more.  In  contrast  to  the 
large  number  of  craftsmen,  those  employed  at  common 
labor  numbered  only  461,  while  the  aggregate  of  those  who 
may  be  described  as  business  men  was  248.  A  total  of 
45  persons  fall  in  the  class  of  professional  men.  Many,  even 
of  the  laborers,  possessed  some  property,  thus  showing  that 
they  were  of  a  substantial,  home-making  type.  A  good 
many  of  the  craftsmen  owned  homes,  some  of  the  business 
men  were  possessed  of  real  estate  to  an  appreciable  extent, 
and  there  were  a  very  few  capitalists  whose  properties  were 
valued  at  from  $20,000  to  $50,000. 

The  significance  to  the  city  of  having  among  the  popula- 
tion so  large  a  body  of  thoroughly  trained  and  skilled  artisans 
cannot  readily  be  overstated.  It  toned  up  all  building  opera- 
tions and  enabled  them  to  keep  pace  with  the  city's  rapidly 
growing  needs;  it  facilitated  the  establishment  and  ex- 
pansion of  industries  depending  upon  a  full  supply  of 
skilled  labor;  it  gave  the  city  a  fine  body  of  industrious,  well 
paid  residents  as  homemakers  and  citizens — at  a  tune 


152  Joseph  S chafer 

when  American  artisans  were  very  prone  to  seek  land 
and  raise  farm  produce.  American  business  and  industrial 
leaders  in  Milwaukee  appreciated  the  German  craftsmen 
who  contributed  largely  to  the  prosperity  of  the  city;  and 
the  same  may  be  said  of  the  common  laborers. 

The  appearance  of  Germans  with  capital  which  sought 
investment  in  lines  of  business  already  pursued  by  Americans 
was  no  doubt  less  welcome,  and  to  some  it  may  have  seemed 
like  an  intrusion.  Generally,  however,  Germans  began  their 
business  enterprises  on  so  modest  a  scale,  and  built  them 
up  so  gradually,  that  no  serious  economic  dislocations  could 
have  been  felt  in  consequence.  In  some  cases  the  German 
business  men  merely  undertook  to  meet  demands  created 
by  the  presence  of  their  own  people,  which  demands  were 
not  fully  cared  for  by  existing  American  enterprise.  Perhaps 
no  better  illustration  of  this  tendency  can  be  found  than  the 
local  tobacco  trade.  "Groceries,"  of  course,  carried  the 
"plug  tobacco"  used  so  widely  in  those  days  by  Americans 
of  all  classes,  while  drug  stores  handled  cigars.  But  smoking 
was  more  nearly  universal  among  European  immigrants 
than  among  Americans.  Germans  accordingly  set  up 
tobacco  shops,  which  usually  included  a  department  for 
the  manufacture  of  cigars.  The  investments  were  all 
small,  ranging  from  $50  to  $4000,  but  the  payroll  was  of  some 
consequence  to  the  city  and  the  output  considerable.  It 
is  believed  that  all  firms  of  tobacconists  or  cigar  manu- 
facturers listed  by  the  census  takers  in  1850  were  Germans. 

Another  industry  in  which  Germans  were  prominent  in 
1850  was  tanning.  This  they  did  not  monopolize,  for 
several  non-German  tanners  were  operating  at  the  same 
time.  But  G.  Pfister  and  Company,  Tanners,  had  an 
investment  of  $35,000  and,  employing  thirty-five  men, 
manufactured  an  annual  product  valued  at  $45,000,  while 
all  other  tanneries  taken  together  had  an  aggregate  invest- 
ment of  less  than  $7500. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  153 

In  boot  and  shoe  manufacturing  one  American  firm 
was  far  in  the  lead.3  Yet,  on  a  smaller  scale,  German  firms 
were  participating  in  the  business  actively,  while  German 
craftsmen  were  an  important  element  in  the  success  of 
all  shoe  manufacturers.  A  similar  statement  will  hold 
true  in  the  department  of  brickmaking.  A  large  number 
of  Germans  worked  in  the  brickyards  as  experts,  and 
several  had  small  plants  of  their  own.  But  the  big  brick- 
yard of  the  city  was  not  managed  by  Germans.4  There 
was  one  single  rope  maker,  who  was  a  German,  and  also  one 
glove  and  mitten  manufacturer,  who  was  also  German. 
Both  of  these  industries  were  small. 

There  remains  the  historically  important  Milwaukee 
industry  of  beer-brewing,  popularly  supposed  to  have  been 
introduced  by  immigrants  from  Munich  and  other  centers 
of  beer  manufacture  in  the  fatherland.  The  census  lists 
a  total  of  ten  establishments  designated  as  breweries.  Of 
these,  seven  were  owned  by  Germans  and  three  by  non- 
Germans.  The  investments  by  the  latter  aggregated 
$27,000,  those  of  the  former  $20,900.  But  the  sum  of  the 
annual  products  of  the  German  breweries  was  $41,062, 
while  the  aggregate  product  of  the  others  was  $32,425. 
The  non-German  brewery  which  had  the  largest  investment 
was  doing  an  annual  business  valued  at  less  than  the 
investment,  while  one  of  the  German  breweries  having  only 
$3000  invested  reported  a  product  valued  at  $18,000.5 

When  we  consider  mercantile  lines  as  distinguished  from 
the  industrial,  Germans  were  prominent  in  those  which 
called  for  moderate  investments.  They  had  many  small 
grocery  stores  scattered  through  the  city,  a  number  of 
meat  markets,  and  of  course  a  goodly  proportion  of  liquor 

8  Bradley  and  Metcalf . 

4  It  was  managed  by  G.  and  J.  Burnham,  who  had  an  investment  of  $10,000. 

5  This  was  John  Braun's.  Best  and  Company  had  the  largest  investment  among  the 
German  brewers,  $7400,  but  their  output  was  only  $11,250.    Other  German  brewers  were 
Weizt,  Englehardt,  StoLz  and  Schuder,  H.  Nunnemacher,  and  H.  Beverung. 


154  Joseph  Schafer 

saloons.  There  were  also  several  German  clothing  stores, 
confectioneries,  and  bakeries.  That  their  business  men 
expected  to  sell  almost  exclusively  to  Germans  is  indi- 
cated by  the  fact  that  for  the  most  part  they  advertised 
only  in  the  German  language  papers — the  Wisconsin  Banner 
and  the  Volksfreund, —  not  in  the  English  papers.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  American  merchants,  as  we  have  already 
seen,  catered  to  the  German  trade  by  providing  German 
salesmen,6  and  they  also  advertised  extensively  in  the 
German  papers. 

There  were  German  taverns  which  did  a  thriving  trade; 
the  restaurants  made  the  sojourner  from  Berlin  feel  at  home; 
and  the  German  beer  gardens  were  the  despair  of  the 
pious  Yankee  mothers  of  boys.  So  indispensable  did 
German  musicians  become,  that  when  the  Sons  of  the 
Pilgrims  banqueted,  a  brass  band  directed  by  a  German 
bandmaster  discoursed  "martial  as  well  as  festive"  music. 

One  other  form  of  cooperation  between  Yankee  and 
Teuton  deserves  to  be  mentioned — the  employment  of 
German  girls  in  Yankee  homes.  This  custom,  testified  to 
by  German  writers  and  indicated  unmistakably  by  the 
census,  was  widespread.  Such  service  was  an  immediate 
resource  to  the  poorer  immigrant  families,  and  a  boon  to 
the  American  families  as  well.  By  that  means  numbers  of 
future  German  homemakers  came  promptly  into  possession 
of  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Yankees,  acquired  their 
speech,  and  gained  some  insight  into  their  distinctive 
views  of  life. 

The  least  numerous  of  the  special  classes  into  which  we 
have  analyzed  the  German  population  of  Milwaukee,  in 
1850,  was  the  professional  class.  Yet  it  is  not  for  that 
reason  least  important,  for  the  little  group  of  forty-five7 

8  If  our  count  is  correct,  the  1850  census  lists  as  "clerks"  fifty-one  Germans.  Doubt- 
less many  of  these  were  serving  in  American  stores. 

7  Or  thirty-sir,  if  we  omit  the  teachers,  some  of  whom  at  least  were  probably  not 
liberally  educated. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  155 

persons  contained  most  of  the  individuals  whose  views 
swayed  public  opinion  among  the  6000  Milwaukee  Germans. 
Among  them  were  two  newspaper  editors,  each  in  charge 
of  a  German  language  paper.  There  were  six  lawyers,  nine 
teachers,  and  eleven  clergymen  and  preachers.  Four  of 
the  preachers  are  described  as  German  Lutheran,  one  was 
Evangelical,  and  one  Methodist.8  Two,  Joseph  Salzman 
and  Franz  Fusseden,  were  Catholic  priests.  One,  F.  W. 
Heifer,  was  called  a  "rationalist  preacher."  Two,  John 
Mlihlhauser  and  G.  Klligel,  were  merely  called  preachers. 

It  is  not  strange  that  medicine,  among  all  the  professions, 
should  have  had  the  strongest  representation.  A  physician, 
wherever  trained,  is  equipped  to  practice  anywhere,  while 
a  lawyer,  clergyman,  editor,  or  teacher  is  obliged  to  prepare 
for  service  by  first  fitting  himself  into  the  community  he  is 
to  serve.  German  medical  education  was  far  superior  to 
American  at  that  time,  and,  in  the  western  states  at  least, 
the  supply  of  trained  physicians  was  below  the  require- 
ments. There  were  communities  in  Wisconsin  where  not 
one-fourth  of  the  practitioners  were  graduates  of  medical 
schools  or  had  honestly  earned  the  title  of  "doctor."9 
This  condition  made  a  splendid  opportunity  for  German 
physicians,  who  could  hope  to  win  the  patronage  of  Ameri- 
cans as  well  as  Germans.  That  the  prospect  was  alluring 
to  them  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  Milwaukee  at  the  census 
date  in  1850  had  seventeen  German  physicians,  some  of 
them  already  men  of  note  in  the  community. 

The  Yankees  and  the  Germans  came  into  such  close 
and  intimate  contacts  in  Milwaukee,  that  it  is  easier  to 
study  their  normal  attitudes  there  than  in  the  outlying 
portions  of  the  state.  On  the  whole  those  relations,  in  the 

8  The  Lutherans  included  a  FT.  Lachner,  C.  Eisenmeyer,  and  Ludwig  Dulitz;  the 
Evangelical  preacher  was  Christian  Holl,  and  the  Methodist,  Christian  Barth. 

6  The  Western  Medical  Society  of  Wisconsin,  representing  the  counties  of  Grant, 
Iowa,  and  Lafayette,  reported  in  December,  1850,  that  out  of  sixty  persons  engaged  in 
the  practice  of  medicine  in  that  area,  only  twelve  were  entitled  to  be  called  "doctor." 
Daily  Free  Democrat,  January  8,  1850. 


156  Joseph  S chafer 

period  terminating  with  the  Civil  War,  appear  to  have  been 
marked  by  mutual  respect,  if  not  active  friendship.  At  all 
events,  if  there  were  differences  causing  ill  will  on  one  side 
or  the  other,  these — so  far  as  they  were  the  outgrowth  of  the 
social,  economic,  or  commercial  interplay  of  the  two  groups 
— rarely  became  serious  enough  to  be  reflected  in  the 
public  press.  The  prosperity  of  the  city,  providing  usually 
full  employment  and  adequate  returns  to  all  who  wanted 
to  work,  made  the  bond  between  capitalist  and  employees 
satisfactory,  and  this  solved  one  important  aspect  of  the 
class  problem.  The  absence  of  any  decided  public  interest 
in  the  immigrant  problem  as  affecting  the  city — other  than 
politically — is  a  fact  which  obtrudes  itself  upon  one  who 
canvasses  the  Milwaukee  papers,  English  and  German, 
during  the  fourteen  years  which  intervened  between  the 
first  constitutional  convention  and  the  election  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  to  the  presidency. 

Yet,  there  are  not  wanting  evidences  that  the  two 
groups  were  quite  distinct  and  that  the  Germans,  as  a 
foreign  group,  were  sensitively  class  conscious.  This  is 
shown,  for  example,  by  the  race  appeals  in  their  business 
advertisements.  To  call  attention  to  one's  nationality  when 
offering  services  of  a  personal  nature,  like  those  of  the 
physician,  or  the  dentist,  or  even  the  druggist,  is  reasonable 
and  correct.  But  there  is  no  good  ground  for  assuming 
that  nationality  makes  a  difference  to  the  purchaser  of 
lime.  Why  then  the  advertisement  of  a  Deutsche  Kalk  Haus 
(German  lime  house),  unless  there  was  a  feeling  that  the 
German  dealer  would  be  favored  by  German  buyers  simply 
because  he  was  German?  This  is  a  typical  example  which 
goes  to  show  the  existence  of  a  city  within  a  city,  a  German 
Milwaukee  which  tended  to  live  its  own  group  life,  for  which, 
as  already  explained,  it  possessed,  within  itself,  great 
facilities. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  157 

Occasionally  some  relatively  minor  happening  threw 
this  feeling  of  separateness  into  strong  relief,  as  when,  in 
1850,  a  German  scholar  published  in  the  Milwaukee  papers 
of  his  language  the  story  of  his  relations  with  the  chancellor 
and  board  of  regents  of  the  University.  He  thought  they 
had  promised  him  a  chair,  but  afterwards  they  made  it 
plain  that  no  contract  had  been  closed  with  him.  He  may 
or  may  not  have  had  cause  of  complaint.  But  what  he 
professed  to  do  was  to  lay  the  whole  matter  before  the 
Germans  of  Wisconsin,  in  order  that  they  might  know  how 
the  board  of  regents  "flouts  the  wishes  of  the  German 
citizens,"  how  it  keeps  its  promises  "to  Germans,"  and 
how  little  it  regards  the  rules  of  ordinary  courtesy  "in 
dealing  with  Germans."10  No  doubt  the  design  was  to 
bring  political  pressure  to  bear  on  the  regents,  but  the 
device  would  not  have  been  resorted  to  had  not  the  recog- 
nized racial  unity  among  the  Germans  rendered  that  a  hope- 
ful plan. 

In  a  society  like  the  present  Milwaukee,  where  inter- 
racial marriages  are  a  daily  occurrence,  and  one  is  rarely 
conscious  of  race  in  cases  of  that  kind,  the  condition  of 
seventy  years  ago  seems  almost  incomprehensible.  For,  a 
close  scrutiny  of  the  entire  census  record  for  Milwaukee 
in  1850  reveals  that  marriages  between  Germans  and  Ameri- 
cans of  all  derivations  at  that  time  were  excessively  rare.. 
The  aggregate  number  of  such  unions  was  twelve.  But  of 
marriages  between  Yankees  and  Germans  I  can  provisionally 
identify  only  six,  as  follows:  Margaret,  twenty-six  years 
of  age,  born  in  Germany,  was  the  wife  of  John  H.  Butler,  a 
livery-stable  keeper,  born  in  New  York.  Hiram  Brooks, 
twenty-seven,  born  in  New  York,  was  married  to  Mary, 
twenty-three,  born  in  Hesse  Darmstadt.  James  Ridgeway, 
thirty,  a  cooper,  native  of  New  York,  was  married  to  Mary, 
born  in  Prussia.  Abram  Davis,  twenty-five,  a  cooper,  born 

10  "The  University  and  the  Germans,"    Daily  Wisconsin  Banner,  August  23,  1850. 


158  Joseph  S  chafer 

in  New  York,  was  married  to  C-,  twenty-three,  native  of 
Bavaria.  Joseph  Stadter,  thirty-three,  physician,  rated 
at  $2000,  who  was  born  in  Bavaria,  was  married  to  Sarah 
Ann,  nineteen,  born  in  New  York  (but  a  female  who  was  a 
member  of  the  family,  and  may  have  been  this  woman's 
mother,  bore  a  German  name).  Finally,  William  Stamm, 
thirty-two,  painter,  native  of  Bremen,  was  married  to 
Lucy,  twenty-eight,  a  native  of  Massachusetts. 

It  is  not  possible  to  determine  how  many  of  the  American 
born  persons  represented  in  the  six  cases  may  have  belonged 
to  German  families,  but  doubtless  some  did.  At  all  events, 
we  can  assert  that  in  Milwaukee  at  that  time,  with  its  nearly 
6000  Germans  and  nearly  4000  Yankees,  not  more  than  six 
cases  can  be  found  of  marriages  between  them.  No  com- 
mentary is  needed  to  establish  the  fact  of  the  virtual 
segregation  of  the  two  great  population  groups.11  If  Cheva- 
lier, the  French  philosopher,  was  right  in  his  conviction 
that  "the  Yankee  is  not  a  man  of  promiscuous  society," 
it  is  equally  true  that  the  German  at  that  time  was  exces- 
sively clannish.  His  clannishness  was  due,  no  doubt,  to 
natural  and  inevitable  causes,  but  the  fact  needs  to  be  recog- 
nized by  the  student  of  history. 

This  disposition  on  the  part  of  Germans  to  "hang 
together"  was  promptly  discovered  by  American  politicians 
and  exploited  for  partisan  and  personal  ends.  The  out- 
standing fact  of  the  political  history  of  the  period  under 
review  is  the  attachment  of  the  immigrant  Germans  to  the 
Democratic  party.  That  relation  was  all  but  absolute 
and  universal  during  the  1840's,  though  a  gradual  change 
took  place  in  the  last  half  of  the  next  decade.  There  was 
nothing  mysterious  about  it.  Germans  found  the  country, 

u  The  remaining  cases  of  marriages  between  Germans  and  Americans  were  briefly  as 
follows:  A  whitewasher,  born  in  Pennsylvania,  was  married  to  a  German  woman;  tailor, 
born  "in  U.  S.,"  married  to  a  German;  a  weaver,  born  in  Germany,  married  to  a  woman 
born  in  Pennsylvania;  a  laborer,  born  in  Ohio,  married  to  a  German  woman;  a  stage 
driver,  born  in  Ohio,  married  to  a  German  woman;  a  minister  (M.  E.),  native  of  Hanover, 
married  to  a  woman  born  in  Illinois. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  159 

on  their  arrival,  living  under  a  Democratic  administration, 
to  which  they  looked  for  favors  and  usually  not  in  vain.  The 
Democratic  party  was  liberal  in  the  bestowal  of  lands;  it 
contended  manfully  against  the  principle  of  monopoly, 
especially  in  banking  and  other  corporate  activities;  and 
it  emphasized  the  doctrine  of  the  equality  of  all  men.  The 
Germans,  like  the  Irish  and,  in  fact,  all  immigrants,  were 
strongly  attracted  by  the  principles  professed  in  Democratic 
platforms.  The  very  word  "democracy,"  had  its  winning 
appeal.  "Democracy,"  wrote  the  editor  of  the  Banner  in 
1850,  "is  a  glorious  word.  There  are  few  other  words,  in 
any  language,  which  can  be  compared  to  it.  To  the  poor 
man  it  is  peculiarly  precious  since  he  is  aware  that  he  owes 
to  it  his  escape  from  the  serfdom  in  which  his  oppressors 
held  him,  and  can  now  look  up  into  heaven  and  thank  his 
God  that  he  has  ceased  to  be  a  serf.  Democracy  knows 
no  distinctions  between  man  and  man.  She  sets  all  upon 
the  broad  foundation  of  equality."12 

The  enormous  prestige  gained  by  the  Democratic  party 
under  Jackson's  leadership  easily  floated  the  administrations 
of  Van  Buren  and  Polk.  But,  as  an  influence  toward  cap- 
tivating the  foreign  element  in  Wisconsin,  no  other  Demo- 
cratic principle  had  quite  the  efficacy  of  the  liberal  suffrage 
provision  which  the  party  in  power  adopted  at  the  begin- 
ning of  our  history  as  a  state. 

In  Michigan  the  makers  of  the  state  constitution  had 
granted  the  voting  privilege  to  all  aliens  who  were  bona 
fide  residents  and  who  had  declared  their  intention  to  become 
citizens.  That  clause  in  her  organic  law  drew  the  criticism 
of  Whig  members  of  Congress,  but  she  was  admitted  to  the 
union  in  spite  of  their  opposition,  and  thus  was  established 
the  principle  that  men  might  be  voters  without  being 
citizens.  When,  in  1846,  the  territorial  legislature  of 

"Daily  Wisconsin  Banner,  August  1,  1850  (translation). 


160  Joseph  Schafer 

Wisconsin  provided  by  law  for  the  holding  of  a  constitutional 
convention,  a  similar  proviso  was  made  to  govern  the  elec- 
tion of  delegates  to  the  convention. 

In  Milwaukee  County  the  Democrats  nominated  eight 
candidates  for  delegates.  Dr.  Franz  Huebschmann  was  the 
sole  German  named.  The  Wisconsin  Banner,  while  remark- 
ing that  Germans  constituting  one-third  of  the  population 
were  to  have  but  a  single  delegate,  urged  Germans  to  vote 
as  one  man  for  him.  He  was  needed,  said  the  editor, 
especially  to  contend  for  equality  in  the  voting  privilege,  for 
which  he  had  striven  manfully  during  the  past  three  years. 
In  the  neighbor  county  of  Washington,  Germans  were 
urged  to  support  two  Irish  candidates  who  favored  equality 
of  the  voting  privilege  and  whom  the  Whigs  (so  it  was 
asserted)  were  trying  to  defeat  by  the  same  wiles  they 
employed  against  Huebschmann.  The  moral  of  the  Banner 
editorials  was :  "Don't  trust  the  Whigs.  They  have  always 
opposed  the  rights  of  the  foreign  born."13  In  preparation 
for  the  vote  on  delegates,  Milwaukee  Germans  who  had  not 
declared  their  intention  were  given  every  direction  for 
completing  that  formality,  and  the  indications  are  that  a 
large  number  of  voters  were  newly  made  for  the  occasion. 

Dr.  Huebschmann,  in  the  first  convention,  was  a  power- 
ful advocate  of  equality,  giving  as  the  chief  ground  in  favor 
of  the  principle  that  it  would  tend  to  bring  Americans  and 
foreigners  into  more  harmonious  relations  with  one  another. 
"The  more  distinctions  you  make  between  them  politi- 
cally," he  said,  "the  more  you  delay  this  great  end  [amal- 
gamation], which  is  so  essential  to  the  future  welfare  of  this 
state.  And,  in  fact,  I  regard  only  one  measure  equally 
important  as  the  political  equality  which  I  ask  for,  and  that 
is  a  good  common  school  system.  .  .  .  Political  equality 
and  good  schools  will  make  the  people  of  Wisconsin  an  en- 

u  Wisconsin  Banner,  August  29,  1846. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  161 

lightened  and  happy  people.  They  will  make  them  one 
people."14 

On  the  educational  question  Huebschmann  found  the 
Yankee  majority  of  the  convention  eager  to  welcome  his 
cooperation.  On  the  subject  of  suffrage  their  unity  was  less 
complete.  While  party  lines  were  not  strictly  drawn,  the 
chief  contenders  for  equality  were  leading  Democrats  and 
the  chief  opponents  leading  Whigs.  But  both  conventions 
adopted  the  principle,  the  first  not  quite  frankly,  and 
with  the  admission  of  Wisconsin  into  the  union  all  foreign 
born  persons  who  had  resided  in  the  state  one  year  prior 
to  any  election  had  the  right  to  vote,  provided  they  had 
declared  their  intention  to  become  citizens  of  the  United 
States. 

The  adoption  of  such  a  liberal  suffrage  provision  in  the 
teeth  of  the  nativist  movement  which  had  affected  all  parts 
of  the  country  more  or  less,  was  considered  a  great  triumph 
of  Democratic  principles.  And  there  is  no  doubt  about  the 
gratitude  of  adoptive  citizens  to  the  party  which  secured 
them  the  boon.  To  the  Germans  it  seemed  thenceforward 
a  simple  question  of  loyalty  to  support  the  Democratic 
party,  through  thick  and  thin,  through  good  report  and  evil 
report.  Inasmuch  as  the  Democratic  party  also  supported 
the  Germans'  views  on  the  subject  of  temperance  (prohibi- 
tion), soon  to  become  a  burning  issue,15  and  in  their  contest 
with  the  more  serious  manifestations  of  Know-Nothingism, 
which  in  this  state  reached  its  climax  somewhat  later,  one 
almost  wonders  how  any  of  the  Germans  were  able  to  detach 
themselves  from  that  party,  despite  its  failure  to  represent 
them  on  the  slavery  and  free-soil  issues. 

The  temperance  movement  and  nativism  were  the  chief 
grounds  of  political  contention  between  Germans  and 
Yankees  during  this  period.  The  first  of  these  broke,  in 

14  Wis.  Hist.  Colls.,  xxvii,  235. 

14  See  this  magazine,  vi,  395-398  (June,  1923). 


162  Joseph  Schafer 

1853-55,  on  the  rock  of  German — which  meant  Democratic 
—opposition.  For,  although  a  referendum  vote  had  gone 
in  favor  of  the  enactment  of  a  "Maine  Law,"  the  Demo- 
cratic legislature  chosen  at  the  same  time  refused  to  accept 
the  result  as  mandatory,  and  did  not  pass  the  law.  And 
when  the  first  Republican  legislature  did  pass  such  a  law,  in 
the  early  months  of  the  year  1855,  Barstow,  the  Democratic 
governor,  vetoed  the  bill.  Never  thereafter  did  the  tem- 
perance issue  become  as  acute  as  it  had  been  during  the  seven 
years  immediately  following  statehood,  but  it  is  not  strange 
that  their  record  on  that  question  was  one  of  the  standing 
arguments  against  Republicanism  among  the  German 
voters.16 

The  Know-Nothing  issue,  which  was  supposed  to  be  dying 
out  at  the  time  of  the  Wisconsin  constitutional  conventions, 
1846-1848,  revived  after  the  Mexican  War,  figured  promi- 
nently in  the  defeat  of  General  Scott  in  1852,  and  in  this 
state  as  well  as  in  some  other  states  rose  to  dramatic  and 
even  tragic  interest  in  1855.  Thereafter  it  declined,  to  pass 
away  for  the  time  being  with  the  election  of  Lincoln  and  the 
engulfing  of  the  nation  in  war. 

But  the  Know-No thingism  of  1855  was  regarded  by  the 
Democratic  party  as  sinister  because,  as  that  party  professed 
to  believe,  it  had  got  itself  incorporated  as  an  important  if 
not  controlling  element  in  the  new  Republican  party.  This 
the  Republican  leaders  and  organs  denied  with  vigor,  but 
it  is  true  that  the  general  council  of  the  American  party  in 
this  state  urged  the  support  of  the  Republican  candidates 
and  professed  to  have  contributed  20,000  votes  toward  the 
election  of  Bashford.  The  Republicans  had  no  objection  to 
Know-Nothing  votes,  but  they  feared  that  the  endorse- 

16  "Events  teach  us,"  said  the  Banner  und  Volksfreund,  October  15, 1855  (in  the  thick 
of  the  bitter  Barstow-Bashford  campaign),  "that  the  Shanghais  (Republicans)  despite 
their  prating  of  antislavery,  are  further  removed  from  actual  human  freedom  than  the 
slaveholders  themselves.  The  occurrences  of  the  past  year,  during  which  the  Shanghais 
have  been  dominant  in  various  state  legislatures,  have  shown  us  that  this  party  is  the  in- 
cubator of  the  temperance  law."  This  line  was  followed  vigorously  through  the  campaign. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  163 

ment  of  their  ticket  by  the  Know-Nothings  would  cost  them 
more  foreign  born  votes  than  it  would  gain  them  nativists. 
It  was  tactically  wise  for  the  Democrats,  and  especially  the 
German  Democratic  press,  to  keep  the  "Republican-Know- 
No thing"  idea  before  their  people — and  they  made  the  best 
use  of  the  opportunity. 

"Temperance,"  after  all,  was  regarded  by  the  Germans  as 
merely  a  manifestation  of  Puritan  fanaticism,  which  must 
be  opposed  in  the  interest  of  personal  liberty.  Much  as 
they  disliked  it,  their  opposition  does  not  seem  to  have 
developed  excessive  bitterness  against  the  believers  in  or 
practicers  of  temperance.  But  nativism,  which  demanded 
that  the  suffrage  be  limited  to  citizens ;  that  naturalization  be 
made  more  difficult;  that  in  some  departments,  as  in  the 
army,  natives  be  favored  to  the  exclusion  of  the  foreign 
born,  this  they  felt  to  be  a  deliberate  and  vicious  attack 
upon  the  rights  of  the  foreign  born  as  a  class.  The  advocacy 
of  these  principles  involved  much  discussion  of  the  unfitness 
of  foreigners,  their  ignorance,  their  sordidness,  their  "un- 
American"  habits  and  customs,  in  one  important  respect 
their  "anti-American"  religion. 

All  of  this  inevitably  roused  a  bitter,  fighting  resentment 
on  the  part  of  all  foreigners,  as  it  did  among  radical  natives 
also,  and  it  is  well  known  that  many  parts  of  the  country 
suffered  in  consequence  from  riots  and  other  manifestations 
of  a  class  war.  In  Wisconsin  there  was  less  overt  hostility 
than  in  some  states  where  the  foreign  elements  were  not  so 
powerful.17  The  Know-Nothing  party  as  such  functioned 
seriously  only  in  the  one  year  1855,  and  its  propaganda 
was  relatively  mild-mannered.18  Its  chief  objects  of 
attack  were  the  foreign  born  Catholics,  which  class  included 

"Note,  for  example,  the  Louisville,  Kentucky,  riots  in  which  the  Germans  were 
driven  from  the  city.  The  Wisconsin  Democracy,  in  August,  1855,  made  that  the  excuse 
for  a  resolution  refusing  seats  in  the  convention  to  men  of  Know-Nothing  proclivities. 
See  Argus  and  Democrat  (Madison),  August  29,  1855. 

18  See  the  Milwaukee  American,  1855-1856,  which  was  the  party  organ. 


164  Joseph  S  chafer 

a  majority  of  the  Irish  but  only  a  fraction  of  the  Germans, 
most  of  whom — probably — were  either  Lutheran  or  Re- 
formed, with  an  appreciable  number  of  non-churchmen 
or  "free-thinkers."19  Nevertheless,  nativism,  as  entangled 
in  the  political  psychology  of  this  eventful  year,  had  its  full 
share  in  producing  a  tragedy  in  this  state  also. 

It  came  in  the  form  of  a  lynchirig,  carried  out  with  hideous 
barbarism  by  a  body  of  the  ruder  Germans  of  Washington 
County,  in  August,  1855.  It  seems  that  a  sickly,  weak 
witted  boy  of  nineteen,  named  George  DeBar — a  native  of 
New  York  State — f elt  himself  aggrieved  by  a  German  farmer 
and  proposed  to  administer  a  beating.  This  he  partly 
accomplished,  at  the  farmer's  home,  but  his  victim  fled 
into  the  field,  where  he  found  a  hiding  place.  Meantime, 
DeBar  ran  amuck,  and  meeting  the  man's  wife  stabbed  her 
severely  but  not  fatally.  He  next  pursued  a  fifteen-year-old 
boy,  Paul  Winderling,  who  was  living  with  the  farmer, 
attacked  him  with  his  pocketknife,  and  killed  him.  He 
then  burned  the  farmer's  cabin.  DeBar  afterwards  solemnly 
assured  his  attorneys  that  the  only  part  of  the  transaction  he 
could  remember  was  striking  the  farmer  himself  with  a  stone 
knotted  in  his  handkerchief.  The  belief  was  widespread  that 
he  became  unbalanced  mentally  at  this  point,  which  theory 
is  really  the  simplest  explanation  of  his  horrible  crime,  com- 
mitted without  assignable  motive. 

Immediately  on  DeBar's  arrest  a  plan  was  hatched  to 
storm  the  jail,  take  him  out,  and  hang  him.  The  death 
penalty  had  been  abolished  at  the  instance,  as  many  felt, 
of  the  Yankee  sentimentalists,  and  the  ignorance  of  some 
suggested  that,  since  hanging  was  only  justice  in  a  case  like 
this,  and  the  state  refused  to  execute  a  criminal,  the  people 
themselves  had  a  right  to  take  the  matter  into  their  own 

14  Those  belonging  to  the  Turner  Society  are  generally  classified  as  "free  thinkers." 
The  Turner  Zeitung,  national  organ  of  the  Society  in  1855,  was  Republican  in  its  politics, 
which  probably  influenced  the  result  in  Wisconsin. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  165 

hands.  Unfortunately,  a  similar  case  had  happened  two 
weeks  earlier  at  Janesville,  in  which  the  avenging  crowd  was 
made  up  of  Americans.20  It  was  suggested  by  some  that 
DeBar  was  himself  a  Know-Nothing,  or  at  least  trained  with 
the  Know-Nothing  element,  and  there  were  dire  whispers 
about  the  trial  judge,  Charles  H.  Larrabee.  Doubtless 
these  rumors  were  altogether  wild.  The  nineteen-year-old 
DeBar,  practically  non  compos  mentis,  was  of  no  possible 
political  consequence,  while  Judge  Larrabee  at  the  time  was 
as  sound  a  Democrat  as  could  be  found.21  But  passions 
once  fully  aroused  hurl  reason  from  its  throne,  and  so  it  was 
in  this  case.  The  rowdies  gathered  at  a  drinking  place  in 
West  Bend,  and  decided  on  a  lynching. 

Judge  Larrabee  convened  a  special  session  of  court, 
impaneled  a  grand  jury,  and  having  summoned  two  com- 
panies of  militia — the  Union  Guards  of  Ozaukee  County,  a 
German  company,  and  the  Washington  Guards,  another 
German  company,  of  Milwaukee — to  come  up  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  prisoner,  had  him  conveyed  to  the  courthouse 
and  examined.  The  grand  jury  brought  in  a  true  bill, 
charging  murder  in  the  first  degree.  To  this  the  prisoner,  on 
the  advice  of  his  attorneys,  pleaded  "not  guilty."  The 
multitude  which  had  been  permitted  to  press  into  the  court 
room,  despite  the  judge's  instruction  to  the  militia  to  limit 
the  number  to  the  seating  capacity  of  the  room,  fairly  raged 
when  they  found  a  trial  would  be  required,  and  before 
the  prisoner  took  many  steps  in  the  direction  of  the  jail, 
they  seized  him  and  made  way  with  him. 

The  severest  censure  was  leveled  against  the  militia 
companies  and  their  leaders.  All  the  American  writers 
whose  statements  appear  in  the  Sentinel  charge  that  these 
companies  fraternized  with  the  lynching  party,  and  practi- 

s°The  Mayberry  lynching.     The  lynchers  were  loggers  from  an  up-river  camp 
belonging  to  the  murdered  man. 

21  See  his  letter,  MS,  to  Lyman  Draper,  August  28, 1855. 


166  Joseph  Schafer 

cally  assert  that  they  had  an  understanding  by  which  the 
prisoner  was  to  be  given  up  to  them.  The  captain  of  the 
Milwaukee  company,  who  was  a  veteran  of  the  Mexican 
War — though  a  German  immigrant — insisted  with  vigor 
that  his  company  did  all  it  could  to  prevent  the  lynching. 
He  did  not  speak  for  the  Union  Guards  of  Ozaukee.  All 
witnesses  agree  that  one  of  the  Union  Guard  officers, 
Lieutenant  Beger,  performed  his  duty  manfully  and  heroi- 
cally, but  the  weight  of  the  testimony  condemns  the  com- 
panies as  organizations,  and  especially  their  captains.  It 
would  seem  that  two  companies  of  militia,  if  well  led,  ought 
to  have  been  able  with  the  butts  of  their  guns  to  hold  off  a 
rabble  of  three  hundred  men,  and  no  witness  puts  the  num- 
ber higher  than  that,  while  some  declare  the  rush  was 
made  by  not  more  than  thirty -five  men. 

In  the  Milwaukee  captain's  statement,  as  in  the  state- 
ments of  other  German  apologists  for  the  militia,  we  come  at 
once  upon  the  political  note.  They  could  not  expect  the 
"Know-Nothing  American  writers"  to  tell  the  truth  about 
the  tragedy.  In  other  words,  they  found  in  the  politics  of 
the  time  an  opportunity  to  charge  prejudice  against  Ameri- 
cans, and  by  that  means  to  dodge  the  real  issue.  Two  Ger- 
man writers  of  West  Bend,  one  of  them  the  undersheriff, 
bitterly  denounced  both  the  militia  companies  and  the 
lynchers,  and  both  more  than  hint  that  the  passions  which 
led  to  the  lynching  were  partly  religious,.  Here,  undoubted- 
ly, we  come  upon  one  of  the  signs  of  division  among  the 
Germans  themselves.  It  is  possible  that  these  two  Germans 
were  politically  opposed  to  the  main  body  of  their  fellow- 
countrymen,  for  by  this  time  a  light  minority  had  already 
been  attracted  away  from  the  Democratic  party.  However, 
we  do  not  know  that  this  was  true,  and  merely  call  attention 
to  the  several  psychological  attitudes  which,  from  the 
testimony,  we  know  the  case  disclosed. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  167 

Of  greatest  interest  is  the  attitude  of  English  and  German 
language  papers  of  Democratic  and  Republican  proclivities. 
The  Sentinel  continued  to  admit  contributions  on  the  West 
Bend  tragedy  for  approximately  two  weeks.  It  also  pub- 
lished the  results  of  an  investigation  made  on  the  ground  by 
one  of  its  staff,  and  a  petition  to  the  governor,  said  to  have 
been  signed  by  186  residents  of  Washington  County,  who 
asked  for  the  disbandment  of  the  two  accused  companies 
and  the  withdrawal  of  their  officers'  commissions.  But  the 
Sentinel  does  not  appear  to  have  tried  by  means  of  the 
incident  to  influence  the  political  situation  which  was  about 
to  become  superheated.  At  all  events,  what  it  published 
would  all  have  been  legitimate  as  news.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Banner  und  Volksfreund^  while  condemning  the 
lynching,  made  no  demand  for  the  punishment  of  the 
lynchers.  It  tried  to  exculpate  the  militia  companies 
(accepting  the  Milwaukee  captain's  testimony  as  against 
all  other  evidence),  and  deliberately  charged  that  the 
Sentinel,  in  publishing  the  above-mentioned  petition,  was 
playing  for  political  advantage.  This  charge  was  absurd 
on  its  face,  for  the  success  of  the  new  Republican  movement 
which  the  Sentinel  had  espoused  depended  on  its  ability  to 
detach  Germans  from  the  Democratic  party,  which  assured- 
ly could  not  be  done  by  playing  into  the  hands  of  the 
Know-No  things,  and  the  Sentinel  did  not  hesitate  to  declare 
the  Know-Nothing  support  a  handicap  to  the  party. 

Both  American  and  German  testimony  discloses  the  exis- 
tence in  Washington  County  of  a  strong  German  party  of 
law  and  order.  They  deplored  the  lynching  and  urged  the 
apprehension  and  trial  of  the  ringleaders.  They  realized 
that  the  crime  would  put  a  stigma  upon  their  race  as  well 
as  upon  the  county  and  the  state.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
although  some  of  the  lynchers  were  identified  in  the  verdict 

22  In  the  year  1855  the  Wisconsin  Banner  and  the  Volksfreund  were  united  and  became 
the  Wisconsin  Banner  und  Volksfreund. 


168  Joseph  Schafer 

of  the  coroner's  jury,  it  must  be  recorded  that  no  earnest 
effort  was  made  to  punish  them.23  Nor  was  any  step  of  an 
official  character  taken  (so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  find) 
to  determine  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  militia  companies 
and  their  officers.  In  fact,  the  Democratic  press  of  the 
state,  evidently  fearful  of  sacrificing  some  German  Demo- 
cratic votes,  which  that  year  were  all  needed,  deliberately 
tried  to  darken  council  by  confounding  this  case  in  principle 
not  only  with  the  Mayberry  case,  which  it  resembled,  but 
also  with  another  of  an  entirely  different  nature,  to  which 
we  must  give  passing  attention. 

In  the  previous  year,  1854,  occurred  at  Milwaukee  the 
famous  Glover  rescue.  Glover  was  a  runaway  slave  who 
had  been  apprehended  by  his  self-styled  owner,  brutally 
man-handled,  and  confined  in  the  Milwaukee  County 
jail  for  safekeeping.  Sherman  M.  Booth,  editor  of  the 
Daily  Free  Democrat,  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Republican 
party,  a  vigorous  free-soil  and  antislavery  partisan,  and 
the  man  in  the  state  who  was  perhaps  most  feared  and  hated 
by  the  Democracy,  had  argued  hotly  for  the  protection  of 
Glover's  rights  against  the  man  claiming  him  under  the 
"unconstitutional"  compromise  law  of  1850.  Booth  called 
a  public  meeting  at  the  courthouse  for  the  purpose,  as  he 
claimed,  of  concerting  measures  for  helping  Glover  without 
the  use  of  force.  But  the  upshot  was  a  rescue  party  which 
battered  down  the  door  of  the  jail,  took  Glover  out,  and  by 
various  shifts  and  transfers  on  the  underground  railway, 
carried  him  to  Canada  and  freedom.  Booth  was  then  made 
to  suffer  for  all  that  had  been  done;  he  was  tried  in  the 
federal  court,  convicted,  fined,  and  given  a  jail  sentence. 

3  "Fifteen  participators  in  the  lynching  affair  were  indicted  and  tried  for  the  murder 
of  DeBar  in  May,  1856.  They  were  acquitted,  as  the  testimony  did  not  sustain  the  allega- 
tion that  'he  came  to  his  death  by  hanging,'  there  being  a  reasonable  doubt  as  to  his  being 
alive  when  he  was  hung  the  last  time."  History  of  Washington  and  Ozaukee  Counties  (1881), 
358.  Editor's  italics. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  169 

We  cannot  go  into  the  details  of  the  Booth  case,  a 
cause  celebre  in  ante-Civil  War  political  history.  But  the 
Democratic  papers,  after  the  DeBar  lynching,  ostenta- 
tiously bemoaned  the  fact  that  due  to  recent  events  "neither 
national  nor  state  laws"  could  hereafter  be  enforced  in 
Wisconsin.  The  beginning  of  the  trouble  was  the  setting 
at  naught  of  the  national  law  for  the  rendition  of  slaves,  in 
which  the  arch  Republican  Booth  was  ringleader.  The 
Mayberry  lynching  and  the  DeBar  lynching  followed  in 
natural  sequence.  These  editors  did  not  choose  to  analyze 
the  difference  between  the  Glover  case  and  the  others — the 
fact  that  the  one  was  a  rescue  performed  at  their  own 
risk  by  philanthropic  men,  the  others  brutal  killings  com- 
mitted by  men  crazed  with  the  lust  of  blood  vengeance.  In 
other  words,  the  Democratic  press,  including  those  papers 
printed  in  the  German  language,  attempted  the  impossible 
feat  of  arranging  in  the  same  straight  line  the  "higher  law" 
and  the  lower  law. 

Of  course,  the  Republican  press  retorted  handsomely, 
and  probably  with  considerable  political  effect,  that  if  the 
apologists  for  mob  law  in  Kansas  were  "in  favor  of  the  exe- 
cution of  the  fugitive  slave  act  in  Wisconsin"  they  would 
like  their  avowal  to  that  effect.24  It  is  well  known  that 
during  the  1855  campaign,  as  in  the  previous  year,  a  good 
many  Germans  were  converted  from  their  old-time  Demo- 
cratic allegiance.25  But  both  parties  were  too  intent  on  their 
immediate  political  objects  to  risk  pressing  for  an  investiga- 
tion of  the  West  Bend  tragedy,  which  might  have  alienated 
a  large  section  of  the  German  vote  in  three  German  counties. 

24  See  a  brilliant  editorial  by  Colonel  David  Atwood,  in  the  Daily  State  Journal  at 
Madison,  for  August  13,  1855. 

26  See  the  article  in  Banner  und  Volksfreund,  July  28,  1855,  entitled  "The  So-Called 
Republicans:"  "We  encounter  in  the  Watertown  Anzeiger  the  following  appropriate  article 
concerning  the  so-called  Republican  (vulgarly  Shanghai)  party,  by  which  so  many  Ger- 
mans were  duped  at  the  last  election  and  which  expects  to  repeat  the  same  swindling 
tactics  in  the  approaching  election."  (Translation).  The  election  of  Coles  Bashford  as 
governor  was  due  in  part  to  German  votes. 


170  Joseph  S chafer 

It  is  not  impossible  that  politics  was  responsible  for  the 
severity  of  the  onslaught  upon  the  militia  companies,  since 
the  nativist  propaganda  for  an  exclusively  American 
militia  would  be  quick  to  seize  upon  such  an  opportunity, 
and  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  politics  of  the  case 
was  all  on  one  side.  Yet,  unless  the  governor  was  in  pos- 
session of  facts  which  were  withheld  from  the  public,  the 
least  that  could  be  said  against  the  companies  is  that  they 
exhibited  criminal  inefficiency.  From  this  distance,  it  looks 
as  if  politics  affected  the  Republican  attitude  as  well  as 
the  Democratic;  as  if  crime  was  condoned  in  the  interest  of 
party  success,  since  one  party  was  intent  on  holding  its 
former  German  adherents  and  the  other  was  determined 
to  take  as  many  of  them  as  possible  into  the  opposition 
camp. 

Whether  or  not  the  incident  leaves  the  stain  of  blood  on 
the  path  of  Wisconsin  politics,  it  marks  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  a  race  war  between  Germans  and  Americans 
which  this  general  period  affords.  And  by  Americans  we 
practically  mean  Yankees.  For  it  was  a  truth  which  the 
German  press  sensed  instinctively,  that  the  Republican 
party — made  up  of  "shreds  and  patches,"  as  was  said, — 
embracing  prohibitionists,  abolitionists,  free-soilers,  nativ- 
ists,  and  Whigs,  was  dominated  by  the  "Puritan"  element.26 
A  glance  at  the  history  of  its  origin  in  Wisconsin  will  at 
least  convince  the  reader  of  its  Yankee  paternity.27 

However,  the  Republican  party  changed  radically  in 
character  during  the  next  few  years,  and  as  the  German 
population  came  to  be  distributed  between  it  and  the  Demo- 
cratic party,  a  healthier  social  tone  was  the  result.  The 

28  "The  temperance  swindle,"  says  Banner  und  VolLtfreund,  October  16,  1855,  "is 
an  outflow  of  Puritan  bigotry  and  comports  with  other  of  their  pious  pretensions,  for 
example,  such  a  rigorous  observance  of  the  Sabbath  as  will  reduce  all  sociability  to  the 
condition  of  a  Puritan  graveyard.  For  this  sort  of  thing,  also,  is  the  Republican  party 
the  fruitful  soil.  The  Know-Nothings  harmonize,  in  these  matters,  with  the  Republicans." 

27  Success  was  to  render  it  practically  as  cosmopolitan  as  a  protracted  career  of 
triumphs  had  long  since  rendered  the  Democratic  party. 


Yankee  and  Teuton  171 

political  campaign  of  1856,  when  Fremont  was  candidate 
for  the  presidency,  was  conducted  with  such  enthusiasm 
by  Wisconsin  Republicans,  as  to  make  serious  inroads  on 
the  Democratic  German  vote.  A  number  of  prominent 
German  leaders  took  the  stump  for  Fremont,  speaking  in 
the  German  language  to  German  audiences  with  telling 
effect.  Thereafter,  in  successive  state  campaigns  and  in 
the  presidential  canvass  of  1860,  the  Germans  of  Wisconsin 
were  electrified  by  the  compelling  oratory  of  their  greatest 
campaigner,  Carl  Schurz,  to  whom  the  success  of  the 
Lincoln  ticket,  both  in  Wisconsin  and  other  western  states 
harboring  many  Germans,  was  largely  due.  Such  partici- 
pation was  doing  much  to  justify  the  prophecy  of  Dr. 
Huebschmann — that  political  equality  would  help  to  make 
the  people  of  Wisconsin  "one  people." 


Photo  by 
Edward  C.  Nelson 


WM.  STEPHEN  HAMILTON,  FOUNDER  OF  MUSCODA 


MUSCODA,  1763-1856 
JOSEPH  SCHAFER 

The  light  which  local  inquiry  can  shed  upon  general 
history  is  well  illustrated  from  a  variety  of  viewpoints  in  the 
story  of  the  Wisconsin  village  which  is  the  subject  of  this 
sketch. 

Muscoda  as  a  present-day  railway  station  is  inconspicu- 
ously located  on  the  Chicago,  Milwaukee  and  St.  Paul 
line,  Prairie  du  Chien  division,  at  the  distance  of  fifty-six 
miles  almost  due  west  from  Madison,  one  hundred  and 
fifty- two  from  Milwaukee;  it  is  forty-two  miles  east  from 
Prairie  du  Chien.  The  village  was  begun  at  the  river  bank 
on  the  south  side  of  Wisconsin  River,  in  section  1,  township 
8  north,  range  1  west  of  the  fourth  principal  meridian.  It 
stretches  south  from  the  river  toward  the  flanking  hills 
about  three-fourths  of  a  mile,  the  main  portion  now  cluster- 
ing about  the  depot,  whereas  the  "Old  Town"  lay  farther 
north  and  hugged  the  river  bank. 

The  ground  on  which  Muscoda  stands  is  a  portion  of  the 
sandy  plain,  the  outwash  of  the  erosion  process  by  which  the 
Wisconsin  and  its  larger  tributaries  worked  their  way 
through  the  sandstone  stratum.  The  upper  courses  of  these 
tributaries  and  the  smaller  streams  which  feed  them  have 
laid  down  flood  bottoms  of  rich  alluvium.  Often,  too,  the 
bench  land  of  their  valleys  is  a  fertile  limestone  soil  inter- 
mingled with  clayey  patches  and  occasional  streaks  of  sand. 
These  are  all  characteristics  of  the  "Driftless  Area,"  as  the 
geologists  have  named  this  region,  because  the  various 
primordial  movements  of  glacial  ice,  so  influential  in  modi- 
fying the  topography  elsewhere,  passed  around  instead  of 
over  it,  leaving  no  "drift"  upon  it.  The  terrain  is  just  what 
the  eroding  waters  in  the  course  of  countless  ages  made  it — a 


Joseph  Schafer 

system  of  regular  valleys  perfectly  drained  and  bounded 
by  symmetrically  sculptured  hills  or  bluffs,  which  exhibit 
a  level  sky  line  and  decrease  in  altitude  steadily  till  at  the 
heads  of  the  streams  they  merge  in  the  great  plateau  or 
"prairie"  of  southern  Wisconsin.  The  valleys  ma^e  natural 
and  not  ill-graded  highways  from  the  prairie  to  the  Wiscon- 
sin River,  while  the  ranges  of  bluffs  separating  them  appear 
like  promontories  running  out  fingerwise  from  the  main 
plateau  and  terminating  either  where  two  smaller  streams 
converge  or  at  the  edge  of  the  lower  plain  laid  down  by  the 
Wisconsin. 

The  principal  stream  entering  the  Wisconsin  from  the 
south,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Muscoda,  is  Blue  River — the 
"Riviere  Bleu"  of  the  French  traders.  It  has  several  head 
streams  rising  in  township  6-1  E,  and  a  large  affluent  named 
the  Fennimore  rising  in  6-1  W,  the  Six  Mile  Creek,  rising  in 
7-1  E  and  Sandy  Branch  which  heads  in  8-1  E.  There 
are  also  several  small  branches  entering  the  Fennimore  from 
7-2  W.  In  its  lower  course  the  Blue  River  swerves  to  the 
west,  entering  the  Wisconsin  near  Blue  River  Station,  in 
Township  8-2  W,  but  its  rich  upper  valleys  and  those  of  its 
tributaries  have  always  been  mainly  within  the  trade  area  of 
Muscoda.  North  of  the  Wisconsin  the  valleys  most  inti- 
mately associated  with  Muscoda  are  Indian  Creek,  Eagle 
Creek,  and  Knapp's  Creek  in  Richland  County.  The 
"Sand  Prairie,"  by  which  name  the  sandy  plain  along  the 
Wisconsin  on  the  south  side  has  long  been  known,  and  a 
narrow  tract  of  shelving  land  between  the  river  and  the  hills 
on  the  north  are  also  within  the  Muscoda  area. 

Since  the  bluffs  are  mostly  rough  land,  with  only  limited 
areas  on  their  summits  where  the  soil  is  deep,  free  from 
stones,  and  sufficiently  even  for  cultivation,  and  the  sand 
prairie  comparatively  infertile,  Muscoda  as  a  trade  center 
suffers  from  the  low  average  productivity  of  her  territory. 
Still,  from  pioneer  days  the  long  valleys  beyond  the  sand 


Muscoda,  1763-1856  5 

prairie  have  yielded  abundant  harvests;  the  roads  through 
them  from  the  high  prairie  to  the  south  opened  to  Muscoda's 
merchants  for  some  years  a  great  trade  in  livestock  and  grain 
beyond  her  legitimate  boundaries;  while  the  cross  ranges 
which  run  out  from  the  high  prairie  northward  approximate- 
ly fifteen  miles  forced  the  only  rival  railway,1  when  it  came, 
back  upon  the  great  ridge,  leaving  the  north  trending  valleys 
still  as  a  whole  tributary  to  Muscoda. 

THE  BACKGROUND 

According  to  Father  Verwyst,  a  distinguished  authority, 
the  name  Muscoda  is  a  corruption  of  the  Chippewa  word 
"Mashkodeng"  which  means  "prairie."  A  similar  corrup- 
tion occurs  in  the  name  "Muscatine,"  a  town  in  Iowa,  and 
there  was  a  tribe  of  Indians  on  the  Upper  Fox  River  called 
Mascouten  (prairie  Indians). 

The  earlier  name  of  the  place  was  English  Prairie,  and 
while  it  is  clear  that  geography  suggested  "Prairie"  (or 
Savannah),  there  are  various  traditions  to  explain  the  asso- 
ciation of  the  word  "English"  with  it.  One  is  that  some 
English  families  were  settled  there  as  early  as  1812  and  that 
they  were  massacred  by  the  Indians.  Another,  that  the  place 
was  so  named  from  the  fact  that  Colonel  McKay,  who 
descended  the  river  in  1814  with  a  regiment  of  British 
troops  to  capture  Prairie  du  Chien,  encamped  at  this  place 
which  thereafter  was  called  English  Prairie. 

A  more  hopeful  clue  to  the  origin  of  the  name  occurs  in 
the  journal  of  Willard  Keyes,  a  young  New  Englander  who 
passed  down  the  river  with  a  party  in  1817.  He  writes, 
under  date  of  August  29,  1817:  "pass  a  place  called  'English 
meadow'  from  an  English  trader  and  his  son,  said  to  have 
been  murdered  there  by  the  savages,  20  Leagues  to  Prairie 

1  The  Chicago  and  Northwestern.  It  follows  in  the  sector  south  of  Muscoda  the 
old  military  road  from  Fort  Winnebago  to  Fort  Crawford.  Towns  taking  some  of  Mus- 
coda's former  trade  are  Montfort,  Fennimore,  and  Cobb. 


6  Joseph  Schafer 

du  Chien."2  Now,  the  fact  of  "an  English  trader  and  his 
son"  being  murdered  at  some  point  on  the  Wisconsin  River 
between  the  Portage  and  Prairie  du  Chien  is  well  established. 
In  the  journal  of  Lieut.  James  Gorrell,  the  first  English 
commandant  at  Green  Bay  after  the  ejection  of  the  French, 
we  read,  under  date  of  June  14,  1763:  "The  traders  came 
down  from  the  Sack  [Sauk]  country,  and  confirmed  the 
news  of  Landsing  and  his  son  being  killed  by  the  French." 
When  all  the  Sauk  and  Foxes  had  arrived  at  Green  Bay  a 
few  days  later  they  told  Gorrell  that  their  people  were  all  in 
tears  "for  the  loss  of  two  English  traders  who  were  killed 
by  the  French  in  their  lands,  and  begged  leave  ...  to 
cut  them  [the  French]  in  pieces."3 

In  the  following  summer,  1764,  Garrit  Roseboom  testi- 
fied, that  "about  the  latter  end  of  April,  1763,  he  was  going 
from  the  Bay  [Green  Bay]  to  the  Soaks  [Sauk]  to  look  for 
his  Partner  Abrah[a]m  Lancing  who  had  been  up  there, 
being  told  that  he  was  killed,  that  on  his  way  he  met  some 
Indians  coming  down  with  some  Packs  [of  furs],  which  he 
knew  to  be  his,  and  which  they  said  he  could  have  for  paying 
the  carriage.  That  both  the  French  and  Indians  told  him, 
Mr.  Lancing  and  his  son  were  killed  by  two  Frenchmen" 
who  were  servants  of  Mr.  Lansing  and  who  afterwards 
escaped  to  the  Illinois  Indians.4 

When  we  reflect  how  persistent  is  the  memory  of  great 
tragedies  and  recall  that  some  of  the  French  traders  and 
voyageurs  who  were  on  the  river  when  the  murder  took 
place  remained  there  for  many  years  and  handed  down  the 
traditions  of  the  river  to  their  successors,  it  is  not  hard  to 
believe  that  it  was  the  story  of  Abraham  Lansing  and  his 
son,  slightly  altered,  which  Willard  Keyes  heard  from  the 
rivermen  as  his  boat  drifted  along  the  "English  meadow"  in 

3  Wisconsin  Magazine  of  History,  III,  852. 
*  Wisconsin  Historical  Collections,  I,  38,  41. 

4  Wis.  Hist.  Colls.  XVIII,  263-64. 


Muscoda,  1763-1856  1 

1817.  The  French  traders  in  whose  company  he  was  would 
not  be  likely  to  ascribe  the  murder  to  their  own  people  so 
long  as  there  were  "savages"  who  might  just  as  well^serve 
as  scapegoats.  We  may  consider  it  almost  certain,  then, 
that  the  place  came  to  be  called  English  Prairie  from  the 
gruesome  crime  of  1763,  which  had  occurred  almost  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  before  the  postoffice  of  that  name  was 
established,  and  more  than  half  a  century  prior  to  the  voy- 
age of  Willard  Keyes.  Jonathan  Carver,  who  visited  a  vil- 
lage of  the  Fox  Indians  at  that  place  in  1766,  does  not  use  the 
name;  but  neither  does  he  mention  the  story  of  the  murder 
which  occurred  only  three  years  before. 

No  definite  information  about  the  fur  trade  at  English 
Prairie,  aside  from  the  record  in  Lansing's  case,  has  come 
down  to  us.  Tradition  has  it  that  Laurent  Rolette,  brother 
of  the  famous  Prairie  du  Chien  trader,  Joseph  Rolette, 
traded  there  for  some  years,  going  later  to  the  Portage.  It 
appears  also  that  some  time  before  the  arrival  of  white  set- 
tlers a  trader  named  Armstrong  operated  in  that  neighbor- 
hood. But  no  details  have  been  preserved  and  we  can  only 
infer  from  the  fact  that  Indians  were  still  numerous  when 
settlers  came  that  the  trade  at  English  Prairie  in  earlier 
times  was  probably  important. 

It  was  the  Black  Hawk  War  and  the  treaties  following  it 
that  produced  the  revolutionary  change  in  the  life  of  the 
natives  in  this  region.  From  that  time  forward  Indians 
could  live  south  of  the  river  only  on  sufferance,  though  they 
were  permitted  to  roam  the  forests  to  the  northward  for 
about  a  quarter  of  a  century  longer.  During  the  Black 
Hawk  War  a  detachment  of  Colonel  Henry  Dodge's 
Mounted  Volunteers  went  to  English  Prairie,  another  de- 
tachment going  at  the  same  time  to  Prairie  du  Chien. 
Between  them  these  two  bodies  of  troops  scoured  both  sides 
of  the  Wisconsin  from  the  mouth  to  the  Portage,  dislodging 
all  natives.  English  Prairie  was  also  the  camping  ground  for 


8  Joseph  Schafer 

a  military  company  composed  of  friendly  Indians  recruited 
at  Green  Bay  and  led  to  Prairie  du  Chien  by  Samuel  C. 
Stambaugh  in  July,  1832.  The  route  of  march  was  from 
Green  Bay  to  the  Portage,  thence  to  Sugar  Creek  (near 
Blue  Mounds),  thence  to  Fort  Dodge  (Dodgeville) ,  thence 
to  English  Prairie,  thence  to  Prairie  du  Chien  "with  one 
other  camping  between." 

RELATION  TO  THE  LEAD  MINES 

History  repeats  itself  in  making  the  Indian  War  of 
1832  the  impulse  to  a  great  new  expansion  movement 
among  American  pioneers.  Just  as  the  Pequod  War  of 
1638  by  familiarizing  the  coast  settlers  of  Massachusetts 
with  the  rich  lands  of  the  interior  enticed  them  westward, 
and  as  the  Seven  Years'  War  destroyed  the  last  obstacle 
to  western  and  northern  expansion  in  New  England,  so  in  a 
very  real  sense  this  war  made  the  beginnings  of  the  agricul- 
tural settlement  in  Wisconsin.  Immediately  after  the  Black 
Hawk  War  the  survey  of  the  lands  in  southern  Wisconsin 
began.  In  the  four  years,  1832  to  1836,  the  entire  region 
from  the  Illinois  line  north  to  the  Wisconsin,  the  Fox,  and 
Green  Bay,  and  from  the  Mississippi  to  Lake  Michigan, 
was  checked  off  into  townships  and  sections.  Hardy,  re- 
sourceful government  surveyors,  with  their  crews  (usually 
two  chainmen  and  one  axman)  traversed  every  square  mile, 
whether  prairie,  forest,  valley,  or  bluff.  In  1834  a  land 
office  was  opened  at  Mineral  Point  for  the  sale  of  lands  in 
the  western  portion  of  Michigan  Territory  (as  it  was  then) . 

The  ranges  of  townships  numbered  1  W  and  1  E,  of 
which  the  townships  numbered  eight  (Muscoda  and 
Pulaski)  bounded  by  the  Wisconsin,  were  for  some  years  the 
northernmost,  were  surveyed  by  Sylvester  Sibley  in  1833. 
The  next  year  those  lands  were  offered  for  sale  and  some 
tracts  along  the  river  were  actually  sold  to  private  individu- 
als. Among  the  purchasers  were  Thomas  Jefferson  Par- 


10  Joseph  Schafer 

rish  and  Charles  Bracken,  who  were  well-known  lead  miners 
and  smelters  living  farther  south.  Others  among  the  early 
land  owners  of  Township  8-1  W  have  been  identified  as 
mining  men. 

The  lead  mines,  while  known  and  worked  by  Indians  and 
a  few  traders  for  many  years,  received  the  first  large  body 
of  emigrants  in  1828,  when  several  thousand  came  scattering 
out  widely  over  the  territory  which  now  constitutes  Grant, 
Iowa,  and  Lafayette  counties  in  Wisconsin,  together  with 
adjacent  parts  of  Iowa.  These  were  the  lead  miners  who 
under  Dodge  and  Hamilton  fought  the  Black  Hawk  War. 
It  was  these  hardy  pioneers  who  as  troopers  patrolled  the 
Wisconsin  River  and  who  finally  delivered  the  coup  de 
grace  to  Black  Hawk's  band  far  to  the  north  on  the  banks  of 
the  Mississippi. 

Many  of  the  lead  miners  were  shrewd  business  men 
always  on  the  lookout  for  good  financial  prospects.  With 
the  knowledge  of  new  regions  gained  during  the  war,  either 
from  personal  observation  or  from  reliable  report,  with  the 
sense  of  a  new  era  opening  to  settlement  and  expansion  in 
the  region  dependent  for  transportation  facilities  on  the 
Mississippi  and  Wisconsin  rivers,  it  is  not  strange  that  some 
of  them  should  have  been  interested  in  river  points  lying 
as  far  outside  the  mineral  belt  proper  as  did  English  Prairie. 

A  RIVER  PORT 

For  it  is  clear  that  it  was  water  and  not  lead  that  the 
pioneers  of  Muscoda  sought.  Surveyors  and  prospectors 
had  found  no  hopeful  signs  of  mineral  north  of  townships 
6-1  W  and  7-1  E.  A  few  years  later  (1839)  Dr.  David  Dale 
Owen,  the  geologist,  made  his  famous  survey  of  the  lead 
region  and  excluded  from  it  everything  north  of  the  heads 
of  Blue  River  in  townships  6  and  7-1  E.  When  the  lands 
in  township  8-1  W  were  offered  for  sale  in  November,  1834, 
it  was  precisely  the  river  front  lots  and  subdivisions  which 


Muscoda,  1763-1856  11 

were  taken  first.  Parrish  entered  fractional  lots  2  and  3 
of  section  1;  Frederick  Bronson  the  northeast  fraction  of 
the  southeast  quarter  of  section  1 ;  Isaac  Bronson  the  south 
half  of  the  southeast  fractional  quarter;  Garrit  V.  Denniston 
the  southeast  half  of  the  fractional  southwest  quarter;  and 
Denniston  and  Charles  Bracken  fraction  No.  4  of  fractional 
section  1.  Other  water  front  tracts  in  section  2  were  bought 
by  Denniston  at  this  time;  between  1836  and  1841  other 
tracts  in  the  same  sections  were  bought  by  others.  All  of 
these  lands  were  obviously  deemed  favorable  locations  for  a 
prospective  town  dependent  on  river  transportation. 

The  way  in  which  the  village  was  begun,  by  the  erection 
of  a  smelting  furnace,  is  rather  startling,  in  view  of  the 
absence  of  lead  in  the  region  adjacent.  The  motives  which 
induced  Colonel  William  S.  Hamilton  of  Wiota  to  build  a 
furnace  at  English  Prairie  can  only  be  conjectured. 

Colonel  Hamilton  was  the  son  of  the  great  Alexander 
Hamilton,  Washington's  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  As  a 
lad  of  seventeen  in  1814  he  entered  West  Point  but  resigned 
in  1817  to  accept  a  commission  as  deputy  surveyor-general 
under  Col.  William  Rector,  surveyor-general  for  Illinois, 
Missouri,  and  Arkansas.  From  that  time  young  Hamilton 
was  almost  continuously  in  the  West,  though  he  made  one 
trip  east,  on  horseback,  to  see  his  mother.  He  was  in 
Wisconsin  as  early  as  1825  and  in  1827  began  his  career  as  a 
lead  miner  and  smelter  in  what  is  now  Lafayette  County 
at  Wiota  or  Hamilton's  Diggings.  He  took  part  in  the 
Indian  troubles  of  1827,  and  also  in  the  Black  Hawk  War. 

It  is  not  known  with  certainty  when  Hamilton  estab- 
lished his  furnace  at  English  Prairie.  Tradition  says  it  was 
in  the  year  1835.  If  the  furnace  was  operating  then,  it  is 
strange  that  so  careful  an  observer  as  Featherstonhaugh, 
who  dropped  down  the  Wisconsin  in  August,  1835  and 
stopped  at  English  Prairie  to  draw  a  sketch  of  its  landscape, 


12  Joseph  S chafer 

should  have  failed  to  note  that  fact.5  We  are  probably 
justified  in  asserting  that  the  furnace  was  not  there  at  that 
time.  But  we  know  it  was  there  in  1837,  for  Captain 
Frederick  Marryat,  a  famous  English  writer  who  descended 
the  river  in  that  year,  saw  "a  small  settlement  called  the 
English  prairie"  where  there  was  a  "smel ting-house  and  a 
steam  saw-mill."6  I  incline  to  think  the  year  1836  was  the 
date  of  its  beginning.  In  1835  Hamilton  was  a  candidate  for 
member  of  the  Council  from  the  western  part  of  Michigan 
Territory.  His  canvass  was  conducted  in  the  lead  mining 
region  and  his  advertisement  appeared  in  the  Galena 
papers.  He  was  elected  to  and  became  president  of  the 
so-called  "Rump"  Council  which  met  at  Green  Bay  Janu- 
ary 1,  1836  and  sat  for  two  weeks.  During  that  session 
the  town  of  Cassville,  on  the  Mississippi,  was  designated 
as  the  territorial  capital,  Hamilton  making  the  principal 
argument  in  favor  of  the  movement.  Much  interest  was 
manifested  in  internal  improvements  designed  to  develop  a 
through  line  of  transportation  via  the  Wisconsin  and  Fox 
rivers.7  The  territory  of  Wisconsin  was  just  being  organ- 
ized by  Congressional  action  and  great  expectations  were 
being  awakened  in  consequence. 

The  miners  and  smelters  had  theretofore  sold  their  lead 
through  the  commission  merchants  of  Galena,  by  whom  it 
was  sent  to  St.  Louis.  But  as  new  mines  were  opened  farther 
and  farther  north,  the  cost  of  transportation  to  Galena — by 
means  of  the  "sucker  teams"8 — steadily  increased.  More- 
over, in  the  year  1836-37  the  price  of  lead  declined  so 
alarmingly  that  little  of  it  was  made  and  the  smelters  had 

6  Featherstonhaugh  was  obviously  in  error  in  calling  that  stopping  place  Prairie 
de  la  Bay.    The  context  shows  it  must  have  been  English  Prairie.    See  his  A  Canoe  Voyage 
on  the  Minnay  Sotor,  I,  199-201. 

•  Wis.  Hist.  Colls.  XIV,  147. 

7  The  Portage  canal  was  begun  in  1836  by  a  private  company.      Its  completion  waa 
promised  in  1837.    See  Governor  Dodge's  message  to  the  Legislative  Assembly,  Belmont, 
Oct.  26,  1836. 

8  Ox-teams  owned  by  Illinois  farmers. 


Muscoda,  1763-1856  13 

nearly  all  ceased  to  operate.  Yet,  it  was  felt  that  prices 
would  rise  again  promptly  in  response  to  the  demand  for 
lead.  In  the  same  period,  due  no  doubt  partly  to  the  hard- 
ships of  the  miners  and  smelters,  there  was  widespread  and 
loud  dissatisfaction  with  the  treatment  accorded  the  lead 
owners  by  the  Galena  middlemen.  Efforts  were  made  to 
establish  some  other  lead  shipping  port  as  a  rival  to  Galena, 
which  helps  to  explain  the  rise  of  both  Cassville  and  Potosi. 

The  inference  from  these  facts  is  that  Hamilton  prob- 
ably thought  he  saw  in  a  smelter  located  at  the  steamboat 
landing  at  English  Prairie  a  possibility  of  immediate  profit, 
even  though  margins  were  very  narrow,  and  a  chance  to 
build  up  a  flourishing  business.  He  could  buy  the  cheapest 
ore — that  which  was  produced  near  the  northern  edge  of 
the  lead  region,  Centerville,  Wingville,  and  Highland.  The 
haul  from  those  places  would  be  short  and  all  down  grade 
and  if  the  mineral  were  taken  direct  from  the  mines  there 
would  be  no  rehandling  until  the  bars  of  pure  lead  were 
ready  to  be  dumped  from  the  furnace  floor  into  the  hold 
of  the  steamer.  The  teams  employed  to  bring  down  the  raw 
mineral  could  carry  freight  back  the  fifteen  or  twenty  miles 
to  the  mines  much  more  cheaply  than  it  could  be  trans- 
ported from  Galena  or  Cassville  three  or  four  times  as  far. 
Finally,  abundant  supplies  of  wood  were  at  hand  to  feed 
the  furnace,  and  French  rivermen  were  a  source  from  which 
to  recruit  labor. 

To  an  enterprising,  speculative,  acquisitive  character 
like  Hamilton,  who  had  no  family  to  tie  him  to  a  particular 
spot,  such  arguments  would  appeal  strongly,  and  there  is  no 
inherent  reason  why  the  venture  should  not  have  suc- 
ceeded. Hamilton  operated  the  furnace,  either  personally 
or  by  proxy,  at  least  till  1838  and  possibly  longer,  selling  it 
finally  to  Thomas  Jefferson  Parrish,  whose  principal  mining 
and  smelting  business  was  located  at  the  head  of  Blue 
River,  afterwards  Montfort. 


14  Joseph  Schafer 

The  fact  that  Parrish  owned  the  ground  at  the  steam- 
boat landing  and  that  in  1837  he  was  postmaster  at  English 
Prairie  (then  called  Savannah)  suggests  that  he  may  have 
been  a  partner  in  the  business  from  the  first  and  perhaps 
local  manager  of  the  furnace.  At  all  events,  Hamilton 
continued  his  business  at  Wiota  and  very  soon  cut  loose 
entirely  from  the  English  Prairie  venture.9  That  place, 
under  the  name  of  Savannah  or  English  Prairie,  was  a 
calling  place  for  river  steamers  as  early  as  1838  and  is 
scheduled  as  forty-one  miles  from  the  mouth  of  the  Wiscon- 
sin.10 It  was  said  that  the  only  boat  which  regularly  plied 
on  the  river  in  that  year  was  the  Science,  piloted  by  Captain 
Clark,  who  made  his  first  voyage  in  June,  1838. u  But  there 
were  doubtless  visits  from  steamers  running  to  Fort  Winne- 
bago  (Portage)  during  that  and  earlier  years. 

In  one  of  the  Milwaukee  papers  for  1841  is  a  statement 
that  "four  sucker  teams"  had  brought  in  lead  from  Thomas 
Parrish's  furnace  "near  Muscoday  in  Grant  County."  This 
reference  has  been  taken  as  proof  that  the  Muscoda  furnace 
was  still  in  operation.  I  think  it  refers  not  to  the  Muscoda 
furnace  but  to  one  of  several  furnaces  Parrish  was  conduct- 
ing in  the  lead  region  near  the  heads  of  Blue  River.  The 
phrase  "near  Muscoday"  used  as  far  from  the  lead  region 
as  Milwaukee  may  very  well  mean  some  place  fifteen  or 
twenty  miles  from  the  Wisconsin;  and  the  word  "near" 
instead  of  "at"  certainly  excludes  Muscoda  itself.  Setting 
this  evidence  aside,  there  is  no  proof  that  the  Muscoda  fur- 
nace was  operated  as  late  as  1841.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  there  proof  of  its  earlier  discontinuance.  We  simply  do 

9  Hamilton  went  to  California  during  the  gold  rush,  finding,  however,  not  a  fortune 
but  an  untimely  grave. 

10  See  Abel,  Henry  I.     Geographical,  Geological,  and  Statistical  Chart  of  Wisconsin 
and  Iowa,  Phila.  1838.    The  fare  for  passengers  from  St.  Louis  to  Helena  (it  was  doubtless 
the  same  to  Savannah)  was  in  the  cabin  from  $10  to  $15  and  on  the  deck  from   $2 
to  $4. 

11  Smith,  William  R.,  Observations,  44. 


Muscoda,  1763-1856  15 

not  know  how  long  it  was  kept  alive  or  how  large  a  business 
it  developed  at  the  "Landing." 

SIGNS  OF  HARD  TIMES 

Two  things  suggest  that  the  little  village  failed  to  develop 
a  "boom"  or  even  to  gain  a  basis  for  healthy  growth.  These 
are  the  land  entries  in  the  territory  adjacent  and  the  story 
of  the  post  office.  Practically,  there  were  no  new  entries  of 
land  between  the  years  1841  and  1849.  This  is  true  for  all 
the  townships  in  the  tributary  region — 7,  8,  and  9,  range 
1  W,  and  7,  8,  and  9,  range  1  E.  The  post  office  under  the 
name  of  Savannah  appears  in  the  government  list  for  the 
first  time  in  the  report  for  1837.  At  that  time  Thomas  J. 
Parrish  was  postmaster.  In  1839  S.  A.  Holley  was  post- 
master, the  office  then  being  listed  as  English  Prairie.  The 
postmaster's  compensation  was  $5.68.  Charles  Stephen- 
son's  compensation  in  1841  was  even  smaller,  $3 .36,  the  ne 
proceeds  of  the  office  amounting  to  only  $7.55.  In  1843, 
for  the  first  time,  the  post  office  was  called  Muscoda.  The 
postmaster  was  Levi  J.  D.  Parrish,  who  received  as  com- 
pensation $9 . 29,  the  net  proceeds  of  the  office  having  risen 
to  $16.51. 

It  is  probable  that  most  of  the  seeming  prosperity  of 
1843  was  due  to  the  presence  of  the  land  office,  which  had 
been  removed  from  Mineral  Point  to  Muscoda  in  1842. 
Some  have  charged  that  the  change  was  brought  about 
through  James  D.  Doty's  influence  in  order  to  save  the 
town.  If  so,  the  scheme  failed,  for  the  land  office  promptly 
went  back  to  Mineral  Point  in  1843,  and  May  16,  1845,  the 
post  office  department  discontinued  the  office  at  Muscoda. 
Muscoda  was  not  listed  in  the  post  office  report  for  1847  or 
in  the  report  for  1849.  In  1851  it  reappears,  with  James 
Moore  as  postmaster.  Now  the  compensation  is  $39 . 74  and 
the  net  proceeds  $53 . 09.  The  exact  date  of  its  restoration 


16  Joseph  Schafer 

is  not  given  but  it  must  have  been  as  early  as  1850,  and 
possibly  1849  or  even  1847.12 

BEGINNINGS  OF  SETTLEMENT 

The  reopening  of  the  Muscoda  post  office,  about  1850, 
synchronizes  with  the  first  movement  of  pioneer  farmers 
into  the  good  lands  tributary  to  that  place.  A  number  of 
tracts  of  land  were  purchased  by  actual  settlers  in  this  and 
adjoining  townships  in  the  years  1849  to  1851.  Indeed, 
Conrad  Kircher's  purchase  dates  from  1847.  Charles  Miller 
and  Emanuel  Dunston  bought  land  in  1849;  Isaac  Dale  and 
Moses  Manlove  in  1851.  We  know  also  that  the  Moore 
family  owned  land  at  Muscoda  as  early  as  1851.  Across 
the  river,  in  township  9-1  W,  Robert  Galloway,  William 
Pickering,  William  and  Andrew  Miller,  and  two  or  three 
others  bought  in  1849;  several  in  1850;  and  a  few  others  be- 
fore 1854,  when  the  great  rush  came. 

A  similar  story  can  be  told  for  township  9-1  E  (now 
Orion)  where  J.  H.  Schuermann  and  Daniel  Mainwaring 
(settlers)  bought  lands  in  1849;  Albert  C.  Dooley  in  1850; 

12  If  the  office  was  not  open  in  1847  it  is  hard  to  explain  the  language  used  by  a 
correspondent  of  the  Prairie  du  Chien  Patriot,  Feb.  23,  1847,  who  says:  -"The  mail  from 
.  .  .  Mineral  Point  to  Muskoda  goes  but  once  a  week.  There  is  no  post  office  in  Richland 
County;  their  post  office  is  at  Muskoda."  The  census  of  1846  assigns  to  the  northern 
district  of  Grant  County  1,482  persons.  It  is  possible  to  identify  in  the  lists  of  heads  of 
families  six  families  whose  later  homes  were  at  or  near  Muscoda.  They  are  John  D.  Par- 
rish,  James  Smith,  Manuel  Denston  [Dunston?],  Thomas  Waters,  Wm.  Garland,  and 
Richard  Hall.  All  of  these  are  met  with  again  in  the  census  returns  for  Dec.  1,  1847, 
where  the  "Muscoday  Precinct  of  Grant  County  is  listed  separately.  The  precinct  seems 
to  have  included  townships  7  and  8-1  W  and  townships  7  and  8-2  W,  or  the  present  towns 
of  Muscoda,  Castle  Rock.Watterstown,  and  Hickory  Grove.  That  precinct  is  credited  with 
thirteen  families  aggregating  77  persons.  Aside  from  the  families  mentioned  above 
(except  Denston)  we  find  the  names  of  S.  [R?]  Carver,  J.  Moore,  N.  Head,  M.  Manlove, 
D.  Manlove,  I.  Dale,  S.  Smith,  D.  Smith,  and  A.  Mills.  Garland  is  credited  with  a  family 
consisting  of  nine  males  and  two  females,  which  confirms  the  statement  in  the  county 
history  that  he  was  managing  a  hotel  in  Muscoda  at  that  time.  Moses  Manlove  has  a 
family  of  seven  males  and  five  females  which  suggests  a  second  hotel  or  "boarding  house." 
Most  of  the  other  families  mentioned  probably  lived  some  distance  from  Muscoda  on 
farms.  Aside  from  those  in  Muscoda  Precinct  of  Grant  County,  several  families  living 
in  Iowa  County,  township  8  1-E,  must  have  depended  for  their  supplies  either  on  Muscoda 
or  on  Highland.  These  were  John  Pettygrove,  A.  Palmer,  A.  Bolster,  three  Knowlton 
families,  Mathias  Schafer,  Henry  Gottschall,  Vincent  Dziewanawski,  and  the  two  Wall- 
bridges.  If  Richland  County  settlers  really  were,  as  reported,  getting  their  mail  at 
Muscoda,  that  would  mean,  according  to  the  census,  that  235  persons  living  north  of  the 
Wisconsin  must  have  done  some  trading  at  that  place.  The  county  history  says  the  old 
log  house  once  used  as  the  land  office  served  in  1847  as  the  store. 


Muscoda,  1763-1856  17 

and  Jacob  Roggy  in  1851.  One  of  the  purchasers  of  1848, 
John  H.  Siegrist,  was  probably  the  earliest  actual  settler  in 
the  township.  A  half  dozen  families  bought  in  township 
8-1  E  as  early  as  1849;  and  a  few  others  were  added  before 
1854.  A  very  few  settlers  were  to  be  found  in  township 
7-1  W  prior  to  1854,  and  while  there  were  a  good  many 
settlers  and  miners  in  township  7-1  E,  the  greater  part  of 
that  township  was  served  from  Highland  where  a  post 
office  was  established  as  early  at  least  as  1847  and  where 
there  was  much  lead  mining  activity,  and  from  Blue  River 
which  had  a  post  office  from  1839.  These  mining  centers 
doubtless  drew  their  supplies  from  the  steamers  unloading  at 
Muscoda,  for  the  road  to  the  river  at  that  point  had  been 
open  for  many  years,  but  settlement  was  more  numerous 
and  local  activity  much  more  intense,  as  revealed  by  the 
post  office  returns.  The  Highland  post  office  led  the  Mus- 
coda post  office  in  importance  for  just  about  ten  years — from 
1847  to  1856.  With  the  coming  of  the  railroad,  Muscoda 
drew  ahead. 

THE  RAILROAD 

If  one  had  no  other  evidence  than  the  sales  of  land  at  the 
United  States  Land  Office,  it  would  still  be  clear  that  in  the 
years  1854  to  1856  something  important  was  astir  affecting 
the  value  of  lands  in  those  townships  (7,  8,  and  9 — 
1  W,  and  7,  8,  and  9 — 1  E)  which  pivot  on  Muscoda 
as  the  trading  point.  For,  while  up  to  1854  only  scattering 
tracts  of  land  had  been  entered,  and  those  largely  by  specu- 
lators using  military  land  warrants  in  making  payment  to  the 
government,  by  1856  nearly  every  forty-acre  subdivision  of 
first-rate  land  and  much  of  the  second-rate  land  also  was 
under  private  ownership.  And  the  state  lands  in  the  town- 
ships had  also  been  purchased  to  the  same  extent.  Besides, 
the  vast  majority  of  the  purchasers  of  government  land 
during  those  years  were  actual  settlers,  with  only  an  occa- 
sional speculator.13 

13  This  is  not  true  of  the  state  lands,  which  went  mainly  to  speculators  first,  then  to 
settlers. 


18  Joseph  S chafer 

These  facts  challenge  attention  and  call  for  an  explana- 
tion. Wisconsin  had  been  in  course  of  settlement  for  about 
two  decades.  The  earliest  settlements  were  in  the  south- 
eastern and  eastern  parts  of  the  state  where  the  economic 
support  was  the  market  reached  by  the  Great  Lakes  and 
the  Erie  Canal;  and  in  the  southwestern  section  where  the 
basis  of  prosperity  had  been  lead-mining.  The  lead  found 
its  market  mainly  down  the  Mississippi,  though  increasingly 
the  superiority  of  the  route  open  to  the  lake  ports  had 
impressed  itself  upon  the  people. 

At  the  legislative  session  of  1841-42  a  bill  was  intro- 
duced for  the  chartering  of  a  railroad  from  Milwaukee,  via 
Madison,  to  Potosi.  Despite  continuous  effort,  the  first 
railroad  bill  to  pass,  in  1847,  provided  only  for  a  railroad 
from  Milwaukee  to  Waukesha.  In  1848  this  was  by  law 
extended  to  the  Mississippi. 

The  agitation  of  plans  for  a  railroad  from  Lake  Michi- 
gan to  the  Mississippi  tended  to  give  the  lake  route  an  over- 
shadowing importance  in  the  popular  mind.  Actual  con- 
struction work  on  the  Milwaukee- Waukesha  section  began 
in  1849;  that  portion  of  the  road  was  completed  by  the  end 
of  the  year  1850,  and  in  another  year  it  was  practically 
completed  to  Whitewater  on  Rock  River.  It  reached  Madi- 
son in  the  year  1854. 

The  intention  of  the  company  had  been  to  build  to  the 
Wisconsin  River  so  as  to  intercept  steamboat  transportation 
at  or  near  Arena.  Thence  the  road  might  run  along  the 
river  to  its  mouth,  or  it  might  run  along  the  ridge  between 
the  Wisconsin  and  the  south  flowing  streams,  reaching  the 
Mississippi  at  some  point,  like  Potosi,  lower  down.  By 
the  year  1853  it  had  been  determined  to  follow  the  Wiscon- 
sin Valley  route  to  the  Mississippi,  and  during  that  summer 
the  line  was  surveyed  from  the  mouth  of  Black  Earth  Creek 
to  Prairie  du  Chien. 


Muscoda,  1763-1856  19 

It  can  easily  be  imagined  how  the  clangor  of  railway 
construction  echoed  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of  intending 
settlers.  That  they  should  have  watched,  with  greedy  eye, 
the  reports  of  progress  of  the  location  of  the  road  and 
hurried  away  to  the  land  office  as  soon  as  it  was  definitely 
located,  to  buy  the  good  lands  adjacent  to  the  right-of-way, 
is  a  perfectly  normal  phenomenon.  The  township  plats 
showing  original  purchasers  of  the  government  land  tell  the 
story.  In  section  1,  township  7-1  W,  four  forty-acre  tracts 
were  bought  in  1854;  eleven  in  1855;  and  one  in  1856.  In 
section  2,  one  in  1854;  twelve  in  1855;  and  two  in  1857.  A 
single  forty  had  been  bought  as  early  as  1847.  The  other 
sections  of  that  township  show  very  similar  dates  and  pro- 
portions in  the  entries;  the  same  is  true  of  the  other  town- 
ships of  the  group.  The  1854  entry  men  were  those  who 
pursued  the  railway  surveyors  with  keenest  determination. 
The  slower  ones  came  mainly  in  the  two  years  following, 
during  which  trains  actually  were  put  on  the  roadbed.  In 
October,  1856,  the  village  of  Muscoda,  which  had  main- 
tained a  precarious  existence  for  twenty  years,  awoke  to 
newness  of  life  at  the  sound  of  the  puffing  locomotive.  And 
the  beginning  of  permanent  prosperity  for  the  village  meant 
the  beginning  of  prosperity  for  the  rural  neighborhood 
tributary  to  it. 


POPULAR  CENSORSHIP  OF  HISTORY  TEXTS 

JOSEPH  SCHAFER 

Wisconsin  has  now  a  unique  law  on  the  subject  of 
school  history  texts.  That  law  provides,  section  1 : 

No  history  or  other  textbook  shall  be  adopted  for  use  or  be  in  any 
district  school,  city  school,  vocational  school  or  high  school  which 
falsifies  the  facts  regarding  the  War  of  Independence  or  the  War  of  1812 
or  which  defames  our  nation's  founders  or  misrepresents  the  ideals  and 
cause  for  which  they  struggled  and  sacrificed,  or  which  contains  propa- 
ganda favorable  to  any  foreign  government. 

The  method  provided  in  other  sections  of  the  law  for 
banishing  textbooks  which  have  been  adopted  but  which 
are  repugnant  to  the  above  provision  is  as  follows:  Upon 
complaint  of  any  five  citizens,  filed  with  the  state  superin- 
tendent of  public  instruction,  a  hearing  shall  be  arranged, 
to  be  held  before  the  state  superintendent  or  his  deputy, 
in  the  county  from  which  the  complaint  came.  Previous 
notice  must  have  been  given  through  the  press  to  the 
public  and  by  mail  to  the  complainants  and  to  the  pub- 
lishers of  the  textbook  complained  of.  A  decision  must 
be  rendered  within  ten  days.  If  the  book  shall  be  found 
obnoxious  to  the  provisions  of  the  law,  that  fact  shall  be 
noted  by  the  state  superintendent  in  the  list  of  books  for 
schools  which  he  publishes  annually.  Thereafter  the 
book  so  listed  may  be  used  only  during  the  remainder  of 
the  year  in  which  the  state  superintendent  publishes  it  as 
proscribed.  The  penalty  for  retaining  it  beyond  the  time 
limit  shall  be  the  loss  to  the  school  or  district  concerned 
of  the  state  aid  normally  falling  to  its  share. 

The  passage  of  this  bill  in  the  senate  with  only  one  vote 
against  it,  created  a  good  deal  of  surprise,  which  changed 
to  admiration  for  the  oratorical  powers  of  its  author  and 
sponsor,  Senator  John  Cashman  of  Manitowoc  County, 


4  Joseph  Schafer 

when  it  was  learned  that  his  impassioned  appeal  to  patriot- 
ism figuratively  swept  senators  "off  their  feet." 

History  students  can  have  no  quarrel  with  the  motive 
assigned  by  Senator  Cashman  for  the  passage  of  this  law. 
He  says:  "The  history  of  a  nation  is  its  proudest  asset. 
It  includes  the  record  of  its  great  men,  their  ideals,  sacrifices, 
and  achievements.  To  preserve  that  history  in  all  its 
original  purity  and  teach  it  to  the  rising  generations  is  a 
nation's  first  duty/'  With  every  word  in  that  stirring 
exordium  the  historically  minded  man  or  woman  will 
cordially  agree.  Thoughtful  persons,  whether  historians 
or  not,  will  also  sympathize  with  Senator  Cashman  when 
he  undertakes  to  rebuke  anything  approaching  levity  in 
characterizing  the  fathers  of  the  Republic  or  captiousness 
in  criticizing  their  policies,  motives,  and  achievements. 
Unfortunately,  there  always  have  been  among  writers 
some  who  display  a  certain  air  of  "smartness"  or  super- 
ciliousness which  hardly  comports  with  the  inherent  dignity 
of  the  historian's  office,  or  with  the  aim  of  doing  equal  and 
exact  justice  to  all  persons  and  to  all  causes  discussed. 
Yet  it  will  probably  be  no  light  task  to  convince  an  impartial 
umpire  that  writers  of  textbooks  which  have  been  adopted 
for  use  in  the  schools,  after  careful  scrutiny  by  boards  of 
education  and  other  school  officers  responsible  to  the 
people,  have  been  guilty  of  "treason  to  the  nation,"  as 
Senator  Cashman  seems  to  think  has  often  been  the  case.1 
The  framers  of  the  constitution,  with  wise  prevision, 
limited  the  application  of  the  word  "treason"  in  such  a 
way  as  to  exclude  that  indefinite  class  of  crimes  known 
elsewhere  under  the  name  of  constructive  treason,  which 
in  England  and  other  countries  had  provided  a  favorable 
soil  for  plotters  of  revenge  against  individuals  and  in  times 
of  high  tension  always  yielded  a  sinister  harvest  of  oppres- 
sion and  suffering.  So  they  defined  treason  against  the 

1  Speech  of  Senator  Cashman,  Wisconsin  Magazine  of  History,  vi,  444-449  (June,  1923 ). 


Popular  Censorship  of  History  Texts  5 

United  States  narrowly  as  consisting  only  in  "levying 
war  against  them  or  in  adhering  to  their  enemies,  giving 
them  aid  and  comfort,"  and  they  also  provided  that  con- 
viction under  a  charge  of  treason  could  be  secured  only 
on  the  testimony  of  two  witnesses  to  the  same  overt  act 
or  confession  in  open  court. 

This  view  of  the  fathers  as  relates  to  treason  was  of 
course  lost  sight  of  during  the  Civil  War,  when  in  the 
North  it  used  to  be  fashionable  for  men  to  pillory  as  "fool" 
or  "traitor"  (with  an  emphatic  expletive)  anyone  who  had 
the  temerity  to  vote  the  Democratic  ticket;  it  was  lost 
sight  of  in  the  recent  war  when  men  were  called  traitors 
because  they  refused  to  buy  liberty  bonds  or  because  they 
declared  the  draft  a  violation  of  the  rights  of  the  individual ; 
and  it  is  likewise  lost  sight  of  when  we  condemn  under 
the  term  treason  opinions  on  history  which  we  may  regard 
as  too  favorable  to  our  nation's  one-time  enemies,  or  too 
contemptuous  of  the  characters  or  the  acts  of  our  own 
distinguished  men  of  a  past  age.  It  would  be  strange  if 
the  impulses  engendered  by  the  war  and  the  peace  were 
not  reflected  more  or  less  in  editions  of  books  prepared 
since  1917.  It  is  probably  true  that  some  authors  have 
overstressed  the  "hands  across  the  sea"  sentiment,  while 
others  perhaps  lean  unduly  in  an  opposite  direction.  But 
that  any  of  them  have  been  guilty  of  treasonable  acts  or 
even  intentions  is  what  no  one  who  knows  the  historical 
profession  can  believe  without  the  most  explicit  proof. 

But  this  question  of  treason  aside,  the  problem  still 
remains  to  determine  what  is  the  history  of  our  country 
"in  all  its  original  purity."  What  shall  be  the  test  of  purity 
inasmuch  as,  happily,  there  is  no  established  list  of  author- 
ized books  or  records  from  which  writers  must  derive  their 
facts?  Are  they  not  compelled  either  to  investigate  each 
point  for  themselves  or  to  accept  as  probably  correct  the 
results  of  other  men's  investigations?  To  be  sure,  every 


6  Joseph  Schafer 

important  event  creates  its  own  legend  or  tradition,  and 
such  legends  tend  to  be  preserved  and  to  be  handed  down 
from  generation  to  generation.  But  legends  are  not  history. 
No  one  worthy  to  rank  as  a  careful  historian  would  presume 
to  write  the  history  of  the  Great  War  on  the  basis  of  legends 
now  crystallizing  about  it.  No  more  can  one  write  the  history 
of  the  Revolution  on  such  a  legendary  basis.  This  view, 
that  much  which  once  was  thought  to  be  history  but  was  in 
fact  mere  legend,  is  not  in  any  sense  new.  James  Russell 
Lowell,  who  ranks  among  the  very  distinguished  Americans 
of  the  last  generation,  wrote,  in  1864,  that  the  early  reports 
of  the  battle  of  Lexington  claimed  for  the  Yankee  minute- 
men  a  non-resistant  attitude. 

The  Anglo  Saxon  could  not  fight  without  the  law  on  his  side.  But 
later,  when  the  battle  became  a  matter  of  local  pride,  the  muskets  that 
had  been  fired  at  the  Red  coats  under  Pitcairn  almost  rivalled  in  number 
the  pieces  of  furniture  that  came  over  in  the  Mayflower.  Indeed,  who- 
ever has  talked  much  with  Revolutionary  pensioners  knows  that  those 
honored  veterans  were  no  less  remarkable  for  imagination  than  for 
patriotism.  It  should  seem  that  there  is  nothing  on  which  so  little 
reliance  can  be  placed  as  facts,  especially  when  related  by  one  who  saw 
them.  It  is  no  slight  help  to  our  charity  to  recollect  that,  in  disputable 
matters,  every  man  sees  according  to  his  prejudices,  and  is  stone  blind 
to  whatever  he  did  not  expect  or  did  not  mean  to  see.  Even  where  no 
personal  bias  can  be  suspected,  contemporary  and  popular  evidence 
is  to  be  taken  with  great  caution,  so  exceedingly  careless  are  men  as 
to  exact  truth,  and  such  poor  observers,  for  the  most  part  of  what  goes 
on  under  their  eyes.2 

It  is  hardly  necessary  at  this  late  day  to  insist  that  no 
writer  is  justified  in  building  his  narrative  of  events  on 
unverified  tradition.  He  must  try  to  penetrate  to  the 
truth  that  lies  behind  the  legend  (which  in  some  cases 
will  differ  very  widely  from  the  legend  itself) .  It  is  no  easy 
task  at  best  to  perform  a  successful  piece  of  historical 
research,  and  the  questions  on  which  final  agreements 
have  been  reached  are  not  numerous.  Accordingly,  if 
the  law  should  be  so  construed  as  to  enforce  banishment 
from  the  schools  of  any  book  which  can  be  proved  incorrect 

2  Essay  on  The  Rebellion* 


Popular  Censorship  of  History  Texts  7 

in  some  of  its  alleged  facts  without  regard  to  their  impor- 
tance, no  textbooks  will  be  left  in  the  schools,  for  none  are 
impeccable.  True,  the  Cashman  law  would  condemn  only 
for  falsifying  the  history  of  the  Revolutionary  War  and 
the  War  of  1812,  leaving  four  other  foreign  wars  in  which 
our  country  has  engaged,  and  the  great  Civil  War,  to  be 
treated  without  other  restraint  than  that  contained  in  the 
last  clause  of  section  1,  denouncing  propaganda  in  favor 
of  any  foreign  government.  But  under  that  sole  provision 
it  might  still  prove  embarrassing  for  a  writer  to  tell  the 
truth  about  the  Mexican  War  and  possibly  the  others  also, 
for  the  term  propaganda — as  the  whole  world  has  learned 
lately — is  a  most  elastic  one.  Presumably,  the  propaganda 
test  applies  as  well  to  other  phases  of  history  as  to  the 
military  phases,  wherefore  an  author  of  a  textbook  is  apt, 
under  a  strict  construction  of  this  law,  to  be  haled  into  court 
on  the  charge  of  propaganda  if  he  should  consider  it  his 
duty  to  say  a  single  thing  in  commendation  of  any  other 
nation.  For,  will  there  not  always  be  found,  in  any  school 
district,  five  citizens  whose  views  collide  with  those  of  the 
author;  and  if  so,  what  is  to  prevent  a  case  being  called? 
Surely  a  word  in  favor  of  France  would  be  resented  by 
some;  a  word  in  favor  of  Great  Britain  would  be  resented 
by  others;  a  word  in  favor  of  Germany  would  offend  still 
others ;  and  so  on  through  the  list.  In  the  present  mournful 
state  of  general  unrest  and  want  of  confidence  among 
nations,  an  author  would  tread  unsafely  on  any  ground  out- 
side the  "three-mile  limit." 

It  does  not  follow  from  the  fact  that  under  the  law  it  is 
easy  to  bring  cases,  that  convictions  would  be  equally  easy. 
Presumably  the  state  superintendent  has  had  knowledge 
of  all  books  now  in  use  in  the  schools  and,  in  effect  if  not 
in  form,  has  approved  them.  This  he  would  not  have  done 
had  he  considered  any  of  them  purveyors  of  treason  or 
excessively  faulty  in  statement.  Moreover,  as  judge  in 


8  Joseph  Schafer 

cases  that  may  arise  under  this  law,  the  superintendent 
will  be  bound  to  take  judicial  notice  of  some  things.  For 
example,  it  is  common  knowledge  that  no  history  text 
is  perfect  either  on  its  factual  side,  in  its  literary  qualities, 
or  in  the  author's  perspective  of  events;  that  few  writers 
display  at  all  times  perfect  taste,  and  none  perfect  judg- 
ment, in  their  criticisms  of  men  and  their  comments  on 
historical  actions  and  movements;  that  a  given  textbook 
may  be  valuable,  despite  minor  defects  in  all  of  the  above 
points,  by  reason  of  its  superior  arrangement,  its  psycho- 
logical adaptation  to  children's  needs,  and  the  success 
with  which  it  communicates  to  them  the  main  features 
and  the  spirit  of  American  history.  He  will  also  be  obliged 
to  rule  that  the  truth  is  not  malicious  propaganda  and  he 
is  bound  to  maintain  an  author's  right  to  liberty  of  research. 
It  goes  without  saying  that  if  a  book  is  palpably  and 
grossly  inaccurate;  if  it  gives  the  child  a  wholly  erroneous 
view  of  history;  if  it  is  crassly  censorious  of  America's 
great  men;  if  it  is  written  in  a  spirit  tending  to  destroy 
American  ideals;  if  it  tends  to  make  boys  and  girls  ashamed 
of  American  character  and  achievements,  not  in  exceptional 
instances  here  and  there,  but  generally;  then  there  would 
hardly  be  a  question  about  the  duty  of  getting  rid  of  it 
with  all  convenient  promptness.  But  would  it  not  be 
strange  if,  with  the  superintendent  and  other  educational 
experts  on  guard,  such  a  book  had  got  itself  adopted? 
On  general  principles  one  would  expect  that  only  in  the 
rarest  cases  would  this  law  come  into  operation;  for  it 
ought  not  to  be  easy  for  a  thoroughly  unworthy  book  to 
elude  the  critical  eyes  of  publishers,  editors,  school  super- 
i  ntendents,  teachers,  and  school  boards,  to  be  finally 
detected  and  exposed  by  some  school  patron  or  other 
private  citizen.  No  doubt  such  cases  are  possible,  but 
one  could  hardly  conceive  them  to  be  of  common  occurrence. 
Misgivings  are  aroused,  therefore,  by  the  report  that  at  the 


Popular  Censorship  of  History  Texts  9 

legislative  hearing  Senator  Cashman  denounced,  by  name, 
five  well  known  and  widely  used  textbooks. 

If  the  Senator's  historical  views,  as  published  in  the 
Senate  Journal  under  date  of  March  1,  1923,  are  intended 
to  be  made  the  platform  in  a  campaign  to  purify  the  history 
teaching  of  our  schools,  the  upshot  may  prove  widely 
different  from  what  is  now  anticipated;  for  among  those 
views,  the  derivation  of  which  is  not  indicated,  are  some 
which  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  expressed  in  any  existing 
textbook.  For  example,  Senator  Cashman  holds  that 
our  country  is  indebted  to  Holland  "for  town  and  county 
representation  in  a  legislature."  Americans  have  long 
been  taught  that,  in  the  picturesque  phrase  of  John  Fiske, 
"self-government  broke  out  in  Virginia"  in  1619  by  reason 
of  the  fact  that  these  people  were  English.  We  are  aware 
of  no  investigations  which  have  brought  forth  evidence 
compelling  the  abandonment  of  that  view,  though  some 
very  extravagant  claims  have  been  made  for  the  Dutch 
influence  upon  both  colonial  politics  and  colonial  education. 
He  also  holds  that  "our  free  public  school  system  came 
from  Prussia."  If  by  this  were  meant  merely  that  Prussian 
influence  has  been  felt  in  the  creation  of  a  system  of  state 
supervision  of  education,  and  in  the  strengthening  of  a 
school  system  already  in  existence,  we  would  gladly  concur. 
But  the  statement  is  too  sweeping  to  admit  of  such  an  inter- 
pretation. Wisconsin  Germans  ought  to  be  very  glad  to 
assign  to  New  England  colonies  and  states  the  chief  influence 
in  giving  us  the  public  school  system  because,  in  the  present 
state  of  research,  that  appears  to  be  where  the  credit  belongs. 
To  all  that  the  Senator  says  about  the  selection  of  immi- 
grants for  America,  the  development  in  the  colonies  them- 
selves of  a  new  and  vivid  love  of  liberty  which  found 
expression  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  stupid 
tyranny  of  George  III,  and  the  heroic  sufferings  and 
achievements  of  patriots  in  the  Revolution,  we  utter  a 


,0 


Joseph  Schafer 


hearty  Amen;  realizing,  of  course,  that  his  statement 
is  necessarily  a  crowded  summary,  cast  in  oratorical  mould, 
and  not  designed  as  a  complete  exposition  of  his  views. 
But,  in  thus  concurring  we  do  not  yield  up  our  sympathy 
with  the  aphorism  of  Edmund  Burke,  that  in  their  reaction 
to  tyranny  the  colonists  "are  descendants  of  Englishmen." 
The  same  reservations  might  be  made  with  reference 
to  Senator  Cashman's  statement  on  the  constitution.  And 
yet  a  fair  interpretation  of  what  he  says  on  that  subject 
compels  us  to  class  him  with  those  extreme  worshipers  of 
that  document  who,  like  the  authors  of  the  New  York 
teachers'  test  oath,  would  maintain  the  constitution, 
unchanged,  at  any  cost.  Speaking  of  the  fathers  and 
their  work,  he  says:  "Then  they  wrote  and  the  states 
adopted  the  supreme  law  of  the  land,  the  American  consti- 
tution, the  most  sublime  public  document  that  ever  came 
forth  from  the  mind  and  soul  of  man,  establishing  a  system 
of  government  based  upon  the  consent  of  the  governed, 
with  religious  liberty  protected,  inherent  rights  guaranteed, 
to  be  written  in  indestructible  letters  into  the  pages  of  the 
nation's  laws."  [Editor's  italics.]  It  is  a  well  known 
view  of  the  present  progressives,  as  it  was  of  the  framers 
themselves,  that,  great  as  was  the  original  constitution, 
it  was  still  far  from  being  perfect.  Also,  most  progressives 
now  accept  in  principle  the  conclusions  of  Charles  A. 
Beard,  the  historian  whose  recent  investigations  on  this 
point  are  now  well  known,  that  the  constitution  represents 
a  partial  reaction  from  the  democracy  of  the  Revolution, 
and  was  designed  in  part  to  set  limitations  upon  the  popular 
will.  While  venerating  the  constitution,  progressives  in 
the  main  believe  that  such  restrictions  as  the  legislative 
election  of  senators,  the  appointment  and  life  tenure  of 
judges  (some  would  include  the  mode  of  electing  the 
president),  were  intentionally  anti-democratic,  and  that 
these  and  other  defects  which  time  has  revealed  ought  to 


Popular  Censorship  of  History  Texts  1 1 

be  subject  to  modification  whenever  the  people  desire  the 
changes.  The  mode  of  amendment  having  been  designed 
to  make  changes  difficult,  or  impossible  (though  in  recent 
years  several  changes  have  been  adopted),  leading  pro- 
gressives have  long  held  that  that  fundamental  article 
ought  to  be  amended  first  in  order  to  facilitate  other 
changes.  This  was  Justice  John  B.  Winslow's  opinion, 
put  forth  in  1912;  it  was  the  burden  of  an  important  plank 
in  the  La  Follette  national  platform  the  same  year;  that 
doctrine  was  preached,  at  least  in  spirit,  by  the  late  President 
Roosevelt.  In  short,  it  is  a  progressive  principle  that  the 
constitution  must  cease  to  be  a  fetish — a  dead  hand  upon 
the  present  and  the  future — and  must  be  adjusted,  from 
time  to  time,  to  existing  social,  economic,  and  political 
conditions.  The  document  represents,  for  the  time,  a 
mighty  triumph  of  constructive  statesmanship,  so  pro- 
gressive leaders  believe,  and  it  should  not  be  changed  "for 
light  or  transient  causes,"  much  less  revolutionized,  but 
"it  was  designed  for  a  rural  or  semi-rural  state."  The 
men  who  made  it  "however  able  could  not  anticipate  or 
solve  the  new  problems  of  life  and  government  which  have 
come  upon  us  in  the  last  half  century."3 

To  follow  Senator  Cashman's  outline  of  American 
history  into  the  recent  period  to  the  all-engrossing  event 
of  the  World  War  and  America's  participation  therein 
would  be  fruitless.  Not  one  of  us  can  conscientiously 
claim  to  be  an  impartial  investigator  with  respect  to  things 
which  have  wrenched  our  souls.  We  cannot  abdicate  our 
own  personalities.  In  treating  the  war,  all  that  any  his- 
torian at  present  could  hope  to  do  would  be  to  state  his 
views  with  becoming  restraint  and  concede  that  those 
views  may  ultimately  prove  to  be  quite  wrong.  A  censorship 
law  of  fifty  years  hence  (if  our  people  shall  then  still  adhere 
to  the  censorship  idea)  would  be  sure  to  condemn  the 

3  John  B.  Winslow,  quoted  in  La  FoUette's  Magazine,  vol.  iv,  no.  20,  p.  6. 


12  Joseph  Schafer 

teaching  of  what  some  of  us  now  piously  believe  with  refer- 
ence to  this  feature  of  history;  just  as  a  censorship  law  of 
today,  if  it  included  in  its  scope  the  Civil  War,  would  con- 
demn the  teaching  of  some  things  which  nearly  one-half 
the  voters  of  Wisconsin  sincerely  believed  in  1864.  "Time 
is  the  great  sifter  and  winnower  of  truth,"  and  we  must 
consent  to  leave  these  matters  to  the  investigators  of  our 
grandchildren's  generation.  Yet  the  gravest  danger  to  be 
feared  from  the  law  we  are  now  discussing  lies  in  the  psycho- 
logical probability  that  every  second  man's  opinion  of  a 
given  history  will  be  based  not  on  what  the  author  says 
about  the  Revolution,  or  the  Constitution,  or  the  War  of 
1812,  but  on  what  he  says  about  the  recent  war  and  the 
League  of  Nations.  In  other  words,  the  reader  who  is 
prejudiced  against  an  author  on  account  of  his  last  chapter, 
which  is  almost  sure  to  be  unsatisfactory  to  many,  will 
find  the  first,  the  middle,  and  all  other  chapters  reeking 
with  faults,  and  this  even  while  personally  he  may  be 
unconscious  of  having  imbibed  a  prejudice  at  all. 

There  is  a  possibility  that,  as  an  engine  for  expelling 
books  now  used,  the  law  will  become  a  dead  letter,  first, 
because  it  may  prove  unexpectedly  difficult  for  a  dissatisfied 
citizen  to  persuade  four  others  to  act  with  him  in  making 
complaint,  which  however  is  not  probable;  second,  because 
of  the  clamor  of  those  in  the  district  who  are  not  keen  for 
or  against  the  book,  but  who  realize  that  if  it  is  thrown  out 
all  old  copies  will  be  worthless  and  they  will  have  to  pay 
for  new  books  at  the  opening  of  the  next  school  year;  third, 
because  the  first  cases  brought  may  go  against  the  com- 
plainants and  discourage  others  from  multiplying  com- 
plaints. But,  the  popular  psychology  being  what  it  is, 
there  is  an  equal  chance  that  the  law  may  foster  a  wide- 
spread disposition  to  attack  history  books,  geography  books, 
civics  books,  and  even  readers ;  that  it  may  keep  educational 
matters  in  a  state  of  turmoil,  engendering  much  social 


Popular  Censorship  of  History  Texts  13 

bitterness  due  to  the  clashing  of  parties  and  interests 
over  questions  raised  in  the  school-book  fights.  In  such 
controversies  teachers  would  be  the  first  to  suffer,  because 
their  opinions  would  be  called  for  at  once,  which  would 
place  them  between  two  fires;  and  no  surer  way  could  be 
found  to  degrade  the  social  influence  of  our  schools  than 
by  keeping  the  teachers  in  a  state  of  perpetual  anxiety. 

We  have  reason  to  think  that  Senator  Cashman,  an 
acknowledged  friend  and  promoter  of  education,  would 
deeply  deplore  such  a  result.  If  he  had  anticipated  anything 
of  the  kind,  doubtless  he  would  have  refrained  from  offering 
his  bill.  But  laws,  like  children,  when  they  get  out  of  hand, 
have  a  way  of  surprising  their  progenitors.  However, 
we  have  the  law  and  must  use  it  to  the  best  ends. 

If  every  one  in  position  of  leadership  or  authority  in 
relation  to  it — and  among  those  are  members  of  this  Society 
—shall  feel  a  responsibility  for  guiding  discussion  into 
proper  channels;  if  debate  on  school-book  questions  shall 
be  kept  not  merely  free  but  also  parliamentary  in  form  and 
spirit;  if  we  all  insist  that  differences  of  view  must  be 
treated  tolerantly;  if  we  can  secure  from  the  public  toward 
the  arguments  and  facts  in  these  cases  a  measure  of  that 
openness  of  mind  which  characterizes  the  American  juror 
sworn  to  try  a  case  fairly  on  the  evidence,  it  may  be  possible 
to  mitigate  or  prevent  the  evils  apprehended. 

And  if,  without  discouraging  research,  the  law  shall 
merely  enforce  through  future  adoptions  the  idea  that  good 
taste  is  as  obligatory  upon  the  textbook  maker  as  good 
manners  are  upon  the  private  individual,  one  point  will 
have  been  gained.  We  trust  this  may  not  be  won  at  the 
expense  of  a  disposition  to  whittle  down  the  truth  to  fit  a 
supposed  demand,  or  that  it  will  result  in  substituting 
books  written  by  dishonest  or  spineless  persons  for  those 
written  by  men  and  women  of  real  character  and  scholarship. 

In  the  midst  of  the  late  war  the  school  supervisors  of 


14  Joseph  Schafer 

a  western  state  discovered  what  they  believed  to  be  propa- 
ganda favorable  to  one  of  America's  enemies,  and  demanded 
the  expulsion  of  the  book  from  the  schools.  The  superin- 
tendent, being  a  wise  and  thoughtful  man,  prepared  and 
printed  a  page  of  corrective  criticism,  which  all  teachers 
were  asked  to  paste  in  the  accused  book  and  to  teach  to  the 
children  with  the  regular  text.  By  that  simple  device  he 
saved  the  people  of  the  state  many  thousands  of  dollars 
which  would  have  been  paid  for  an  inferior  text,  if  the 
book  had  been  expelled.  If  the  law  shall  permit  such  a 
handling  of  the  borderline  cases,  does  it  not  seem  that  in  a 
time  when  we  are  at  peace  with  all  nations,  we  could  act 
with  equal  calmness,  equal  justice  to  authors  or  publishers, 
and  equal  regard  for  the  interests  of  the  people  who  have  to 
buy  school  books? 


Schafer,  Joseph 

590       The  Yankee  and  the  Teuton 
G3S2    in  Wisconsin 


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