Part 17
=Knobel, Caspar.=--It was Caspar Knobel, a German-American, eighteen years of age, who, in command of a detachment of fourteen men of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry, arrested President Jefferson Davis of the Southern Confederacy, near Abbeville, Ga., and it was a German-American, Maj. August Thieman, who was in command of Fortress Monroe while Mr. Davis was confined there. Knobel, after two days’ march without food, discovered the camp of the Confederate leader, and, throwing back the flap of his tent, placed him under arrest. He received a part of the reward offered by the Union for President Davis’ capture, and was given a gold medal. (Washington “Herald,” May 10, 1908.) Maj. August Thieman died at Valentine, Nebr., in utter destitution. He had served as an enlisted man and officer continuously for over forty-two years. His record, on file in the War Department, shows that he took active part in 242 battles, and was wounded seven times. He served in the United States, Mexico, Egypt, and other places, and held autograph letters from, and was well acquainted with Lincoln, Davis and Stonewall Jackson. It was Gov. Thieman who was in charge of Fortress Monroe while Mr. Davis and his family were prisoners there.
=Know Nothing or American Party.=--A political party which came into prominence in 1853. Its fundamental principle was that the government of the country should be in the hands of native citizens. At first it was organized as a secret oath bound fraternity; and from their professions of ignorance in regard to it, its members received the name of Know Nothings. In 1856 it nominated a presidential ticket, but disappeared about 1859, its Northern adherents becoming Republicans, while most of its Southern members joined the short-lived Constitutional Union party. It was preceded by the Native American party, formed about 1842, an organization based on hostility to the participation of foreign immigrants in American politics, and to the Roman Catholic Church. In 1844 it carried the city elections in New York and Philadelphia, and elected a number of Congressmen. It disappeared within a few years, after occasioning destructive riots against Catholics in Philadelphia and other places. In St. Louis a Know Nothing mob, led by E. C. Z. Judson (“Ned Buntline”), attempted to destroy Turner Hall, the German Athletic Club, but was easily repelled by a group of resolute Germans, who guarded the approaches by stationing guns at the four street corners and riflemen on top of the adjacent houses. T. W. Barnes, in his life of Thurlow Weed, writes: “If a member of the order was asked about its practices, he answered that he knew nothing about them, and ‘Americans’ for that reason soon came to be called Know Nothings!”
=Koerner, Gustav.=--One of the most conspicuous fighters in the Civil War period, “whose important life is well documented,” Prof. A. B. Faust, of Cornell University, says, “in his two-volume memoirs. They furnish abundant evidence of the fact, well established by recent historical monographs, that the balance of power securing the election of Lincoln, with all its far-reaching consequences, lay with the German vote of the Middle West. Koerner’s modesty and unselfishness were extraordinary. He repeatedly sacrificed his chance for political preferment in deference to others less capable, and he surprised his political friends at the opening of the war by refusing high military rank, because, he said, he had not had the training needed for an officer. Koerner was elected lieutenant-governor of the State of Illinois, 1853-56, and in 1861 was appointed by Lincoln to succeed Schurz as minister to Spain. Koerner had the honor of being one of Lincoln’s pall-bearers, for few men had been closer to the martyr President before the election. Schurz, Koerner and Lieber,” declares Prof. Faust, “represent at their best, the idealism and independence, the honest, unselfish patriotism, and the intelligent action of the Germans in American politics. =Their existence in American politics had not been marked by the holding of many offices, but on great national issues their presence has always been strongly felt. In the fact that they were not seeking anything for themselves lay their strength, their independence and their power for good. The independent voter is the despair of the politician and the salvation of the country.=”
=Kudlich, Dr. Hans, the Peasant Emancipator.=--The name of Dr. Hans Kudlich has been coupled with that of Abraham Lincoln as “the great emancipator.” Through measures carried by him through the Austrian Parliament, attended with revolutionary outbreaks, violence and bloodshed--he himself being wounded in the struggle--14,000,000 Austrian peasants were finally relieved from serfdom. Dr. Kudlich fled to the United States in 1854 and died at Hoboken, N. J., November 11, 1917, aged 94.
He was born in Lohenstein, Austrian Silesia, October 23, 1823. He studied jurisprudence at the University of Vienna and joined the students’ revolutionary movement, and, failing to secure consideration for a petition for the freedom of the press, of religion and of speech, he participated in the students’ revolt in 1848 against Metternich. The government’s draft of a constitution affording no satisfaction, the Academic Legion and the workmen marched under arms and forced the suspension of the constitution and of the popular assembly. He was sent as delegate to the first Austrian Parliament when still under 25 years of age after being severely wounded.
In his three-volume “Memoirs and Reviews,” published in Vienna in 1873, he describes the peasant as simply without rights, bound to the soil--half serfs--ruled by nobles who were nearly free to do with them as they liked, compelled to work on their landlord’s estates without wages three days a week, boarding themselves and furnishing their own implements, horses, wagons, plows and other tools. Added to this were countless interests, money and titles, all of which were paid by the poor peasant to his rich master. The heirs of a peasant who died had to pay to the landlord 10 per cent. of the realized value of the farm. On top of this the landlord was at the same time his own policeman and court of last resort, with power to incarcerate the peasant and even to condemn him to be flogged, while the suffering peasants were further subjected to the assessment of tithes by the church and to payment of taxes to the communes, road improvements and quartering of troops.
“In near-by Prussia,” he writes, “those oppressive measures had long been abolished. Looking across the border, the Austrian peasants of Silesia became still more clearly conscious of their degradations.”
His first parliamentary act was to introduce a bill to abolish involuntary servitude. It was debated six weeks in open session, but in the end a fully satisfactory law was passed and approved by the Emperor.
The bold course of the young parliamentarian created a sensation throughout Austria, and a colossal ovation to the “peasant emancipator” was instituted in Vienna, taking the form of a torchlight procession with twenty-four deputations of peasants from all parts of Austria participating.
A new revolutionary movement was soon inaugurated because of the course of the government toward Hungary. In the riots Count Latour, the Minister of War, was brutally murdered and the ungovernable populace scored a temporary victory until Vienna was invested and taken by Field Marshal Windischgraetz. Kudlich’s attempt to recruit a peasant legion to relieve Vienna ended dismally and led to his indictment for high treason. Parliament was forcibly dissolved and Kudlich fled to Germany, where he was joined by one of his confederates, Oswald Ottendorfer. The young revolutionist was received with open arms by the revolutionary party of Baden, and he was appointed secretary to the Minister of Justice, Fries. Here he made the acquaintance of his later friends, Carl Schurz and Franz Sigel. The revolution failed and Dr. Kudlich, with the remainder of Sigel’s Baden army, fled to Switzerland. Here he remained four years, studying medicine, but even here the long arm of the Austrian reactionary government reached him, and, being ordered by the Swiss government to leave the country, he came to the United States and at Hoboken established a lucrative practice. He was active in politics and an outspoken abolitionist before the Civil War, but never accepted an office.
Repeatedly he revisited his old home across the sea; first in 1872, after the passage of the amnesty act of 1867, on which occasion he was received with princely ovations in many cities. Everywhere pains were taken to commemorate his service as the peasant emancipator by monuments and other evidences of the respect and love with which he was regarded.
=Langlotz, Prof. C. A.=--Composer of famous Princeton College song, “Old Nassau,” one of the songs of which it is said that they will never die, and sung by fifty-four Princeton classes. Was born in Germany, the son of a court musician at Saxe-Meiningen. Prof. Langlotz came to the United States in 1856, already a distinguished musician, opened a studio in Philadelphia, and later became instructor of German at Princeton. He composed “Old Nassau” in 1859. Died at Trenton, N. J., November 25, 1915.
=Lehman, Philip Theodore.=--Born in the electorate of Saxony, emigrated to this country and became one of the secretaries of William Penn; and in that capacity wrote the celebrated letter to the Indians of Canada, dated June 23, 1692, the original of which is framed and hung up in the Capitol at Harrisburg.
=Lehmann, Frederick William.=--Solicitor General of the United States, December, 1910-12, and prominent lawyer, resident of St. Louis. Born in Prussia, February 28, 1853. Government delegate and chairman committee on plan and scope Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists, St. Louis, 1904; chairman commissions on congresses and anthropology, Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company; president St. Louis Public Library, 1900-10; chairman Board of Freeholders City of St. Louis; president American Bar Association; second vice president Academy of Jurisprudence.
=Leisler, Jacob.=--The first American rebel against the British misrule in America to die for his principles. When the people of the Colonies heard of the revolution in England, they at once made movements to regain law and freedom. In New York, on May 31, 1689, Jacob Leisler a (German) Commissioner of the Court of Admiralty, took the fort on Manhattan Island, declared for the Prince of Orange, and planted six cannon within the fort, from which the place was ever afterwards called “The Battery.” A committee of safety was formed which invested Leisler with the powers of a governor. When, however, a dispatch arrived from the authorities of Great Britain, directed to “such person as, for the time being, takes care for preserving the peace and administering the laws in his majesty’s province in New York,” Leisler, considering himself governor, dissolved the Committee of Safety and organized the government throughout the whole province. There was division among the New Yorkers. The minority, being mostly the English aristocracy, were against Leisler; but the people in great majority were in sympathy with him. It was the old conflict between the few and the many, with “all the people” sure to win in the end.... Jacob Leisler was probably among the first of far-sighted men to see the necessity of union against the French.... To him, the importance of a federation of all the colonies seemed vital. After vainly trying to get other governors to unite with him, Leisler, early in 1690, sent a small fleet against Quebec.
From the very first New York was infested with that sentiment for unison which she has shown in all political disturbances and wars throughout all her history. Very appropriately, on her soil, was held the first Congress to propose an elaborate plan of union.... A hard-drinking Englishman, named Sloughter, was appointed the royal governor of New York. On his arrival Leisler refused to surrender the fort and government, until convinced that Sloughter was the regularly appointed agent of the King. Those who hated Leisler seized this opportunity of having him and Milborne, his son-in-law, imprisoned. After a short and absurd trial, they were condemned, and the governor, when drunk, signed an order of execution. On May 16, 1691, Leisler and Milborne were hanged on the spot east of the Park in New York City where stands the “Tribune” building, opposite which are the statues of Benjamin Franklin and Nathan Hale, and near which the figure of Leisler may yet come to resurrection in bronze. The outrageous act of the King was disapproved. In 1695, by an act of Parliament, Leisler’s name was honored, indemnity was paid to his heirs, and the remains of these victims of judicial murder were honorably buried within the edifice of the Reformed Dutch Church. No unprejudiced historian can but honor Leisler, the lover of union, and the champion of the people’s rights. (“The Romance of American Colonization,” by William Elliot Griffis, D. D.)
A bust of Leisler was unveiled a few years ago at New Rochelle, N. Y., as Governor Leisler had given welcome to the French refugees coming to New York, and made provision for them by purchasing land at New Rochelle. Leisler sought in 1690 to do what Benjamin Franklin tried to accomplish in 1740 toward a union of the colonies for mutual protection.
Benson J. Lossing calls Leisler “the first martyr to the democratic faith of America.”
=Lieber, Francis.=--One of the most distinguished German Americans of the Civil War period, was born in Berlin in 1793, and as a schoolboy enlisted under Blücher and participated in the battle of Ligny, which immediately preceded the battle of Waterloo, and was wounded, returning home to resume his work as a schoolboy. Studied at Jena, Halle and Dresden, and taking part in public movements which were characterized as dangerous, was twice arrested, and at twenty-one took part in the Greek struggle. He left Germany in 1825 and spent a year in England, after which he came to the United States. After passing a short time in Boston, he went to Philadelphia, where he engaged in the preparation of the “Encyclopedia Americana,” modeled upon “Brockhau’s Conversations Lexikon;” it was published in Philadelphia. After preparing an elaborate scheme for the management of Girard College, he engaged on independent authorship, went to the University of South Carolina in 1835 as Professor of History and Political Economy, and there wrote and taught until 1857, when he gladly left the South.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he was quietly settled at Columbia College in New York, but one of his sons entered the Confederate service, another joined the Illinois troops in the Union army, and a third was given a commission in the regular army, while he himself began the work of legal adviser to the Government on questions of military and international law. In this capacity he prepared a code of instructions for the government of the armies of the United States in the field, and thenceforth was in constant employment in that direction, putting his vast store of learning at the disposal of the authorities on every fitting occasion. Although at an earlier period he had written in a somewhat disparaging tone of the aims and status of the German Americans, he saw that his apprehensions were at fault, as some 200,000 German-born Americans and above 300,000 German Americans of the second and third generations served in the Union Army.
He maintained a close correspondence with the leading German professors, Bluntschli, Mohl and Holtzendorff, and did much to secure in Germany a proper appreciation of the great work done for the world by securing the perpetuation of the American Union, and later on to make America alive to the merits of the struggle with France which secured German unity. His busy life ended in 1872.
His services, says one biographer, were of a kind not often within the reach and range of a single life, and his memory deserves to be honored and kept green in both his native and his adopted country. He was well represented on the battlefields for the Union by his two sons, Hamilton, who served in the 92nd Illinois, and died in 1876, an officer in the regular army, and Guido, who long after perpetuated Lieber’s name in the register of the regular army institution. The death of another son on the Confederate side was another sacrifice to the Union cause.
His “Instructions for the Armies in the Field,” General Order No. 100, published by the government of the United States, April 24, 1863, was the first codification of international articles of war, and marked an epoch in the history of international law and of civilization, says Rosengarten, and his contributions to military and international law, published at various times during the Civil War, together with his other miscellaneous writings on political science, were reprinted in two volumes of his works, issued by J. B. Lippincott & Co., in 1881, and these, with his memoirs and the tributes paid him by President Gilman and Judge Thayer, are his best monuments. A memoir by T. S. Perry also deserves attention.
=Light Horse Harry Lee.=--Delivered the famous eulogy on Washington, in which occur the words, “First in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” Dec. 27, 1799, in the German Lutheran Church in Philadelphia. (Representative Acheson of Pennsylvania.)
=Lincoln of German Descent.=--For some years a very interesting discussion has been going on among historians as to the ancestry of President Lincoln. Some claim that he was of English descent and others that his forebears were German. Each disputant gives facts to uphold his theory and is unconvinced by the other, so that the discussion is not yet closed.
When Lincoln became a candidate for President, one Jesse W. Fell prepared his campaign biography. When he asked Lincoln for details as to his ancestors he received this reply: “My parents were born in Virginia of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My parental grandfather emigrated from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky, about 1781 or 1782. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in which both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, etc.”
Nicolay and Hay, who were secretaries to the President and intimate with him, published an extensive biography in 1890. Prof. M. D. Learned, editor of the German-American Annals, made a special study of the subject, and published the results in 1910. Both of these authorities uphold the English descent. L. P. Hennighausen, of Baltimore, is the leading advocate of the German descent.
Both parties agree that the grandfather of the President was also named Abraham; that he came from Rockingham County, Va., to Kentucky; that his father, John, came to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania; and that these ancestors were Quakers, or non-combatants. Grandfather Abraham bought 400 acres in Kentucky, and on his Land Warrant in 1780, and also in the Surveyor’s Certificate in 1785, the name is spelled “Linkhorn” in each instance.
The first named biographers claim that John’s father was Mordecai, who came from Hingham, Mass., to Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1725. His father was Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England in 1635, and settled in the above named New England town. The descendants of this family spread over New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The German name “Linkhorn” is brushed aside as the blunder of a clerk.
The argument for a German ancestry does not go so far back in genealogy, and bases itself more on geography and spelling. It so happens that Berks County and Rockingham County were solid German settlements. In the Pennsylvania county the German dialect is still in general use, and the “Reading Adler,” a German newspaper established in 1796, was issued until 1913, still being one of the few journalistic centenarians in the country. When Washington, as a young man, was surveying Rockingham County, “he was attended by a great concourse of people, who followed him through the woods and would speak none but German.” Many of these settlers were non-combatants, that is, Quakers or Mennonites.
That the name “Linkhorn” in the two documents mentioned is not a mistake is shown by the fact that in the Surveyor’s Certificate is the signature, “Abraham Linkhorn.” And what is even more puzzling and curious, the two witnesses sign as “Josiah Lincoln” and “Hananiah Lincoln.” A search of Virginia records from 1766 to 1776 shows that Clayton Abraham Linkhorn was the youngest officer in the militia, and his name, appearing on many different pages, is always spelled in that manner. On the census lists and tax lists in Pennsylvania the names Benjamin, John, Michael, and Jacob Linkhorn appear, and Nicolay and Hay state that in Tennessee and Kentucky the family name is also thus spelled.
This divergence of opinion is not confined to historians, but has even innoculated the Lincoln family. Some years ago David J. Lincoln, of Birdsboro, Berks Co., Pa., published a pedigree of the Lincoln family. This was at once challenged by Geo. Lincoln, of Hingham, Mass., who published a wholly different pedigree.
The evidence in favor of Lincoln’s German descent cannot be waved aside as the error of a clerk. The purchaser of a strip of land would not expose his title to future legal complications without insisting on a correction of his name, whereas five years and two months elapsed between the issue of the landoffice warrant and the surveyor’s certificate, in which the alleged error is distinctly duplicated. Again the name “Linkhorn” appears under the name of two witnesses spelling their names “Lincoln,” conclusive proof that the distinction was a conscious performance and not an accident. A reasonable conclusion would be that other members of the family had begun to spell their name “Lincoln” instead of “Linkhorn,” probably following popular use in a community predominantly of English ancestry, as is the case of so many names in the German counties of Pennsylvania. When Koester is anglicised into Custer, Hauk into Hawke, Reyer into Royer, Greims into Grimes and Brauer into Brower, as evidenced by many tombstones of long-dead ancestors, it is a most plausible inference that the same process evolved “Lincoln” from “Linkhorn.”
Illustration: Land Warrant No. 3334, Issued to Abraham Linkhorn, 1780. The Original in Possession of Colonel R. T. Durrett, Louisville, Ky.
Illustration: Surveyor’s Certificate Issued to Abraham Linkhorn, 1785, from Record Book “B,” Page 60, in the Office of Jefferson County, Ky.
A bit of interesting collateral evidence in favor of the Linkhorn hypothesis is supplied the editor of the present book by Mrs. G. W. Garvey, who resided in Hoboken, N. J., until 1919, when she removed to California. Mrs. Garvey’s maiden name was Bennett. Her grandparents resided in close proximity to the family of the Lincolns in Illinois. Her grandmother, Mrs. Dameron, often spoke of the Lincolns as neighbors who were referred to as “Dutch” people, “because the Lincolns were in the habit of killing a hog in the fall and making sausages and sauerkraut,” which were among the delicacies exchanged among their neighbors and friends, a typical German custom.