Colin Ross, "Unser Amerika", Chapter 28

 V.

The German Mass Immigration

in America

28.

Human Rights and the Anglo-Saxon

Supremacy

As it was in no small part Americans of German blood, under a German leader, who fought through the last decisive hostilities of the War of Independence, so it was a German who proclaimed the news of this in the night streets of Philadelphia, the seat of Congress. The American historian John Fiske reports in his History of the American Revolution that the German night watchman of Philadelphia proclaimed the third hour of the morning of October 24, 1781 with the words: ,,Bascht dree oglock und Corn-val-lis is da-kenl"

In the following years, the old American Germanism reaches its peak: In Pennsylvania, a German-born man becomes governor. Here, as in Ohio, the German language is introduced into the schools. Publications of the state legislatures appear in German as well as English. The backlash, however, comes unexpectedly quickly. Half a century later, when German mass immigration begins, it seems to have been completely forgotten that among the "real" long-established Americans there are also those of German descent. No one in America remembers that independence and freedom were also fought for by Germans. On the contrary, the image has changed completely. In the tradition, the Germans in America no longer appear as fighters for America's freedom, but as her oppressors. Of Steuben and Kalb, of Herchheimer and Mühlenberg, of the Virginian riflemen and Pennsylvanian regiments, no one knows anything any more, but only of the Hessian and Brunswick regiments which, sold to England by shameless and dishonorable German princes, fought against the American revolutionaries. The "Germans in the War of Independence" are now the "Hessians," a designation which to this day has retained an evil connotation in America.

The same thing happens to the entire German community in Pennsylvania, in New York, in Virginia, it falls into oblivion, sinks into insignificance. An age after the Revolution it plays a lesser role than before it, when the Union Jack still flew over America and the Palatine and Swabian peasants were still subjects of His British Majesty.

It is not easy to understand why and how this happened, but only if one succeeds in doing so, one will be able to penetrate to the root of the question why the non-Anglo-Saxon blood in the United States, especially the German, could not reach its rightful place until today, why, in spite of all its merits for America, a slight deficiency, a touch of inferiority and "un-American" remained attached to it. I believe the explanation for this lies in the conceptual content of the words "America" and "American." For the men and classes who created and led the United States, and who still lead it today, this conceptual content was purely Anglo-Saxon. America was, of course, something of its own, something special, the highest thing imaginable. But that it could only be Anglo-Saxon was equally self-evident. This conception, which was so compellingly expressed that the other nationalities submitted to it, went back to the beginnings of America, to the War of Independence.

The leaders in that war, when it began, were still "Englishmen." Only in its course did they become "Americans." From this it is explained that for them the United States of America had to be English by nature. Since they gave form and character to the young state, these have had an effect up to the present day, even though the content has long since ceased to correspond to it as a result of the mass immigration of foreign peoples.

The common view of history is that the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies were already Americans before the dispute with England broke out. It is therefore convinced that secession from the mother country would have been inevitable in any case, even if George III and his ministers had been less stiff-necked in the disputed questions. in the contentious issues.

This view is understandable for a time that marveled at the extraordinary formative power of the American soil and climate, that witnessed how people of the most diverse races became Americans within one or two generations in such a way that nothing seemed to be left of their genetic makeup, and in any case they knew no other ambition than to assimilate as closely as possible in every respect to the long established, the "hundred percenters".

There is no question that America's power of assimilation is extraordinarily strong. Obviously, apart from climate and environment, a number of factors play a role, which have not yet been researched sufficiently, perhaps atmospheric currents, electrical tensions and the like. In any case, everyone who has lived in America for a longer period of time knows that he reacts differently to many things there than he does in Europe, and in many ways he is a completely different person.

Thus, the British "colonists" who had been sitting on American soil for a hundred, a hundred and fifty years and more, must have become "Americans" long ago, and to a certain extent, of course, they were. On the one hand, however, the influence of the "ancestral spirits" of the American soil is evidently not nearly so strong on the Atlantic coast as in the West and Midwest, especially not in its northern part, in the New England states. On the other hand, it seems as if foreign soil, foreign sun, and foreign air-electrical tensions only bring their formative power to full fruition when they coincide with an idea, with a psychic influence.

At any rate, the New Englanders, the Virginians, and also the New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians, insofar as they were of British descent, did not at first think of themselves as Americans at all. Their grievances against the mother country during the first period of turmoil were merely to be fully recognized and not to be second-class Englishmen.

This sentiment continued even when they were already at war with England. Even Washington, at the beginning of the struggle, rejected with disgust the idea of detachment from England and independence. The first Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia, addressed an address of surrender to the king, solemnly denying any desire for independence. The same was still done by the second Congress, which met after Lexington, Concord, and the fall of Fort Ticonderoga. It was not until the king rejected one peace feeler after another and enlisted foreign mercenaries against the rebellious colonies that the decision was made to declare independence.

How much they felt English even then is shown by Jefferson's first draft. In it, a lively appeal is made to the "British brethren" and complaints are made that they "send over not only soldiers of our blood, but also Scottish and foreign mercenaries". So one still felt as Englishmen in such a way that one even spoke of Scots as foreigners. The whole wounded pride of the colonists, who were not taken for granted, spoke from the sentence: "Together we could have been a free and great people, but a union of greatness and freedom seems beneath their dignity. So be it, since they will have it; the road to happiness and glory is open to us, too; we will tread it, apart from them."

However, there was another tone in the Declaration of Independence, which spoke of universal equality and human rights. The passages dealing with this were regarded by later generations as the real essence of the Declaration of Independence, the great liberating act, the cry "In tyrannos," the appeal to all mankind by which America placed itself forever at the head of freedom and progress. It is very likely, however, that they had a substantially different meaning for Jefferson and Congress. Yes, I even dare to make the heretical assertion that the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man was originally nothing more than the Declaration of the Right of Self-Determination of Peoples issued by the British during the World War, that is, a propaganda statement.

The man who gave the impetus to the Declaration of Independence was not an American. He was a foreigner who came to America as an immigrant, even more so as one who today would probably be called "undesirable" and denied entry. He had gone to sea on a privateer, then been a lacemaker in his native country, but had soon given up his business and become a tax collector. He was dismissed for neglect of duty and struggled to get by by taking lessons. He succeeded once again in getting a job in the tax department, but it did not last long there, and so, after divorcing his wife, he emigrated to the American colonies. According to his attitude he was an internationalist - yes, today one should perhaps say: Bolshevik! In any case, he wrote of himself: "My fatherland is the world." And he made this word true; for scarcely a year in America, he wrote seditious vituperative pamphlets, and subsequently he was active in no less than three countries as a revolutionary, in some cases in a leading position.

That man was Thomas Paine. It may at first sight seem surprising that I should call him a foreigner, born at Thelford in the county of Norfolk. But after all, the thirteen colonies had already existed for over a century and a half. Even if the colonists were still British and even at the beginning of the War of Independence still felt British, an American characteristic had developed. Compared to native-born Americans from long-established families such as Washington, Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, the former laced-brush maker and tax collector who had just arrived in the country seemed to be a foreigner and an immigrant.

That is the peculiarity of America as a European daughter continent, that Europeans immediately feel at home in the New World and can transform themselves into Americans overnight, so to speak. Such rapidly Americanized Europeans, like Carl Schurz, have more than once exercised a decisive political influence and pushed the United States forward in a direction from which natives initially recoiled.

It was exactly the same with the breakaway from England. The colonists jealously guarded their self-government, which they had long possessed, and they especially did not want to be taxed by the London Parliament. But to apostatize, to break away from the mother country? - No, no one had ever had such a heretical, treasonous thought, let alone expressed it, even after Lexington, after shots had been fired and blood had flowed. There one organized the resistance, but nevertheless only around its vested rights and liberties against the encroachments of the crown to protect. When the king did not give in, as had been expected, but angrily pounded the table and immediately bought up foreign mercenaries in the time-honored British manner, in order to bring his rebellious subjects to reason and submission by force, the need was great. This had not been expected, and a general uncertainty set in. What should one do now? Then this foreigner came along, this emigrant who had just landed, and wrote a booklet forty pages thick, which he called "Common Sense. In it he made it clear to the colonists, trembling before their enraged father, that they were free Americans, and that there was only one way for them: the Declaration of Independence.

This little paper on "Common Sense" struck like lightning. It was as if the stranger had voiced a thought that had lain dormant in everyone's soul, but which they had not yet dared to grasp. In the twinkling of an eye, a hundred thousand copies of the seditious pamphlet were distributed, and loyal subjects who had dared to voice their grievances became revolutionaries, boldly and audaciously demanding full freedom. Five months after the appearance of Paine's battle cry, independence was declared.

The man who wrote the text of the Declaration of Independence was a natural-born American, infected too by the revolutionary human-gratification thoughts of a Thomas Paine. But in Congress there were a number of cautious, well-adjusted citizens for whom Jefferson's first version sounded too revolutionary and rebellious. So they changed the reddest passages, but left enough to be able to stand before the world with a loud fanfare for humanity.

It is extremely captivating to read the American Declaration of Independence in the original, in Jefferson's draft with all the deletions and amendments. Jefferson kept writing of the inherent rights of man. This phrase did not seem unobjectionable to the merchants and planters who made up Congress. After all, they had to see to it that the lower classes, the small tradesmen, the shoppers and forced laborers did not derive rights for themselves from the document. So the word "innate" was deleted.

Then fell the whole long indictment of slavery. It contained wonderful points of attack against the king, but after all, one was partly a slaveholder oneself, and one preferred not to touch this sacred institution. Jefferson himself was one of them, and although he was against slavery all his life, he never gave freedom to his own. Rather, he chose a truly American way out. In order not to be constantly reminded of the curse-worthy institution of slavery by the sight of his blacks, he had underground passages laid from the slave quarters to the service rooms as into the mansion. In this way, he avoided the sight of his colored servants whenever possible.

When Jefferson wrote the beautiful sentence that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with the same inherent and inalienable rights, he thought of himself, and that he was just as much as the conceited Englishmen in the British Isles who looked down on him as a "Colonial. Besides, this sentence read beautifully and sounded great. That one of his slaves, who served him daily, could ever have thought of applying the same sentence to himself was far too grotesque to be suspected.

Equality, human rights, democracy, these were contemporary currents, catchwords that had reached the American colonies from Europe. Rousseau and the encyclopedists had coined them, but no one thought of their realization, not even in America, least of all there. The authoritative men in the thirteen colonies were, of course, in favor of self-government, but still only of their own. They were landowners, slaveholders, rich merchants and financiers. They would never have dreamed of allowing small artisans and farmers to participate in government, let alone white indentured servants or black slaves.

Fundamental questions of humanity, however, cannot be evaded by a trick or a gimmick, or solved by double interpretation. Thus, the ambiguity of the basic constitutional document is inherent in the whole subsequent development of the Union. If human rights had been proclaimed not only as revolutionary propaganda, but really honestly and fundamentally, and thus also if slavery had been abolished, all the blood and misery of the Civil War would have been spared. At that time, slavery would have been relatively easy to abolish. Its economic importance was declining, and it had real significance only in Georgia and the two Carolinas; and these were the most insecure cantons in the sense of the struggle for independence anyway. It was only through cotton culture and cotton gin that slavery became vital to the entire South.

Thoughts and ideas expressed in the right form and at the right moment, however, are more dangerous than fire, more effective than armies. Thus the Declaration of the Rights of Man had effects which its authors could never have dreamed of. Above all, it introduced into the whole political and public life of the United States that contradiction and hypocrisy from which it still suffers today. One was thoroughly aristocratic in the circles which made the Revolution, and which have maintained themselves in leadership ever since, but one had to govern under the mask of democracy. One was English through and through, but since one had spoken in the name of humanity, and the declaration on which the new states rested proceeded from the general equality and equal right of all, one could not well turn away immigrants of non-British blood when they knocked at the gates of the new paradise. After all, the state had been expressly declared as such and coins had been struck bearing the inscription: "A refuge for the oppressed of all peoples!"

But if one made an exception with human rights, then others could creep in, and thus the gates were opened to Anglo-Saxon supremacy. The Anglo-Saxon colonists remained British by nature and blood even after the Declaration of Independence. They saw the United States as an Anglo-Saxon-Protestant country, and for them, Americanizing meant Anglicizing as a matter of course. They made this demand in all harmlessness to all "Americans," whatever their blood might be. The good conscience for this demand and the necessary moral background, however, was given to them by the proclamation of human rights in the Declaration of Independence.

After that, America's mission was to make all people free and happy. How could this be done other than by Americanizing them! The American, i.e. the Anglo-Saxon blood could not be transmitted to them, but the American constitution, customs and institutions could. For such gifts, one could rightly expect eternal gratitude and willing submission to the Anglo-American claim to leadership.

By being and remaining English, but proclaiming human rights as a principle, the leading classes degraded the ethnic Germans in the States to second-class Americans and at the same time deprived them of the possibility of revolting against them.