Their True Faith And Allegiance (1917) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE EXILES THE high tides of German immigration during the first seventy years of the nineteenth century were marked by the political troubles in the old country, ? the suppression of the student societies and turners in 1820, the revolution of 1832 and the more important revolution of 1848. Each of these disturbances sent its quota of political refugees to America. Some sought America merely as a temporary asylum, intending to return when conditions in the old country had improved. Others, despairing of the struggle for national unity and freedom in Germany, hoped to realize their ideals by founding a German state in the American west. The leaders in this movement were Paul Follen and Friedrich Munch, ? names which in the last few years have been given much prominence by German- American organizations. "We must not," these enthusiasts argued, "leave Germany without at least taking the first steps towards realizing German national unity and freedom; we will lay the foundations of a new and free Germany in the great North American Republic. We will take with us as many as possible of our best people, and will provide for others to follow; thus may we be able to establish in one of the American territories an essentially German state as a refuge for those who have found conditions in Germany intolerable." Numerous societies were formed to facilitate the immigration necessary to accomplish this purpose. Niks' Register remarks in a contemporary paragraph that "a plan is in progress in the southwest of Germany to make up a state and ship it over to America to become the twenty-fifth member of the confederacy." One such state arrived at New Yorkwith a complete outfit, including a telescope and a town bell, but disintegrated on the long trip to St. Louis. The territories of...