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T‘H-‘El, F A T H ER L AN-D
SECESSIONIST NEW ENGLAND
By Frederic Franklin Schrader
BOTH as regards the allotment of the Allies’ war loan by States,
and the state of public sentiment, indicate that the seat of in-
flammatory propaganda against everything German is New England,
independent of New York City, where Wall Street and its press
organs influence the situation. - '
In New England, and wherever New England is represented in
high places, public sentiment is significantly pro-English. New Eng-
land feels itself fettered to Great Britain with a sympathy that is
hardly equalled in Canada. It is the home of Prof. Eliot, Senator
Lodge, Representative Gardner and the Providence Journal.
This feeling of loyalty in the present generation would be beau-
tiful if it were not decidedly disloyal to the United States. It is
the one section where German thought and influence have penetrated
but sparingly to leaven the masses. This influence, which in pre-
Revolutionary days exerted itself strongly in Pennsylvania and New
York State, left New England practically untouched. A new gen-
eration of Englishmen has grown up there in deplorable ignorance
of its indebtedness to Holland and the Teuton countries for insti-
tutions erroneously attributed to Great Britain-and more English
than the English. .
It was on some such occasion as a Pilgrim dinner in Boston, pos-
sibly twenty years ago, that a speaker. was loudly applauded for
declaring that the United States by right were still a,province of
England and that their rightful sovereign was Queen Victoria.
If the favor with which this interesting theory was greeted were
merely an isolated instance-it might pass as evidence of a too gen-
erous sacrifiee of libations to Bacchus, but the plain truth is that
a large element of the population of -New England is still as Tory
as it was during the Revolution and has never become reconciled to
the principles of American independence.
In New England alone it is openly held that the importance of
the Declaration of Independence has been greatly exaggerated and
that the war so happily brought to a close in 1776 decided absolutely
nothing. There men drink to the‘King of England and talk of erect-
ing monuments to British valor,‘ as though Boston were Montreal.
There eight men and nine women out of ten regard themselves
descended from the Mayfiower, forgetting that the first New Eng-
land settlers were glad to escape the tyranny of the mother country
and grateful for the refuge, hospitality and freedom of thought
granted them in Holland.
“Massachusetts wassettled by men educated eleven years in the
Dutch Republic, in l620,” writes Dr. William Elliot Griftis. “It was
the men trained in Holland who made the Plymouth settlement a
success, for the best emigrants in the next five years, or until John
Robinson died, as Palfrey shows, were emigrants from Leyden."
The same author tells us that the history of the United States has
not yet been written except by New England historians, “who have
a tendency to forget, or do not like to know, what New York, Penn-
sylvania and Virginia have done. Even yet, in the eyes of English
historians, republics are not quite respectable."
In a speech‘ before the Liberal Club of Buffalo the late Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, David J. Brewer, de-
clared:
"I know that a Massachusetts lawyer years ago sneered at the
Declaration of Independence as a collection of glittering generalities,
but it takes the audacity of a Boston preacher to say in effect that
the Declaration is a lie.”,
Justice Brewer referred to the Rev. W. T. Perrin, one of the
ablest Methodist clergymenof Boston then living. According to the
Boston Congregationalist, Perrin defended the annexation of Porto .
Rico, Hawaii and any other Spanish possessions, “holding that the
people of the country are realising the absurdity of the clause in
the Declaration of Independence -which says that the Government
derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . The
logic of events has made it our duty to do so, and duty is greater
than theory. Government derives its powers from God and God
alone, and the nations are responsible to him.“
Wisely Justice Brewer pointed out that this assumption of divine
authority has been the cry of every despot since Louis XIV, who
said: “I am the State.” 4
Only a few years ago a book issued from a New England print-
ing press, which sought to prove that Benjamin Franklin had tam-
pered with the funds entrusted to his care while Postmaster-Gem
eral of the United States, and that all the prominent men of the
Revolutionary period, practically from Washington down, were em-
bezzlers and scoundrels deserving the pillory. .
A friend writes under date of September 28th last: “Last week
a friend of mine of many years’ standing expressed openly that he
wanted the country to be a province of England. Another one, an
officeholder (four of us at whist), said nothing, but is so strongly
English that I know he agrees to it."
While New England was still torn by sectarian controversies.
and slowly emerging from her dark age of witch baiting, excom-
munication and religious persecutions, the Germans of Pennsylvania
were recording the first protest against slavery on American soil.
setting up printing offices and publishing books on philosophy and
science. The Declaration of Independence was first published in
the German language in a German newspaper in Pennsylvania.
. “VVere time and space given, it could be clearly shown that we
are less an English nation than composite of the Teutonic people,"
writes Dr. Grifiis, who has exhaustively demonstrated that some
of the most precious American institutions came from Germany
and Holland, and never were known in England.‘ XVilliam Penn,
who brought over the‘ Germans of the Falatinatc and settled them
in the State now bearing his name when their homes and farms
had been ravished and laid waste by Louis XIV, was the son of
a Teuton mother, Margaret Jasper of Rotterdam, and Dutch was
his “WV? language as well as English (Griflis). He preached in
Dutch and himself wrote “theggrand constitution of Pennsylvania."
. We are told by the New England historians that our charters of
liberty came to us by way of England, but the Great Charter, was
0fllY 3 COPY Of the great charter of the Dutch republic, and it is
significant that while Penn was writing that of‘ his State he livcd
in Emden-the oldest known home of the written ballot and one
of the cities of refuge to the English Protestant refugees-with the
laws of Friesland, the old home of the Anglo-Saxons, daily before
his eyes. Pennsylvania, in proportion to her numbers, lost more
than my ofh" Sm“ during the Civil War for freedom. Full)’
half of her governors have been descendants of the Palatines and
German settlers.
Equally the Teutonic influence was active in New York. Dr.
G“&i5v ‘'1 1“? Dfeface to “Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations,"
533'“ “HKVIHS n0.1’0)’31 Ch-‘lrter. tllercomposite people of New York.
Satlwfed from many nations, but instinct with the principles of the
free republic of Holland, were able carefully to study the founda-
f10n 0f Eovernment and" jurisprudence. In the evolution of this
c0mm0““’93l‘h "75 People were led by the lawyers rather than M’
the ClCTgY- Constantly resisting the invasion of royal prerogatives,
they formed, on an immutable basis of law and right, that Empire
State which in its construction and general features is of all those
in, the Union the most typically American. Its historical precedents
are not fm“‘d in 3 ‘"0"-'"ChY, but in a republic. It is less the fruit
of English than of Teutonic civilisation."
HII1 this State occurred the first prosecution of an American rebel.
N” “gm: “'35 Jacob Leisler, Vice Governor of the Province of
r;‘V 01' .. and he was a German. The first man legally to estab-
is the principle of the freedom of the press on American soil was
a German printer in New York,
'U"f,o”“"atel.?' New England has been writing the history Of
Amem3- While It has embalmed in the solemn annals of our
$:::fi?;i ?:"?'ham0‘f" bi’ 3 311861! New England hillside, and sur-
intimated aim a 5‘”""“‘ ?‘ “‘““’‘“3' Slow as Horn Champ CW‘
Puritans is a closed book They have made a hero of Paul Revere.
but they are Studimlsl)’ Silent about Barbara Frietchie whose an‘
cestors came from Germany ‘
oi Ow‘? their Origin to the somber English