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THE GERMAN AMERICANS STRENGTH IN NUMBERS Almost any list of Americans-the roster of a baseball team, a class attendance sheet, a telephone book-includes a large number of German names. Some are not obviously German (Houser, Newman, or Berger), and often even the individual who bears the name is not certain of its origin. Americans of most ethnic backgrounds have intermarried to such an extent that about two-thirds now claim multiple ancestry, and German Americans are no exception. In 1986, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, for the first time in more than 300 years the leading ancestral background of America's residents was no longer British, but German. Roughly 44 million Americans, or 18 percent of the populace, claimed sole or partial German heritage, a few hundred thousand more than claimed British descent. Because the German-American population is so large, it is hard to generalize about it. Americans of German descent spring up in virtually every occupation, live in every state, and hold a spectrum of political and religious beliefs. In short, they typify America. Indeed, the vast majorities are Americans of long standing; only 4 percent of today's 44 million German Americans were born in Germany. The term German American encompasses a number of peoples. Before 1871, Germany was not a nation, but a collection of dozens of small state kingdoms, and principalities, each with its own ruler, customs, and regional dialect. Over seven centuries speckled with migrations, wars, and religious conflict, these lands covered much of north central Europe, from the North Sea to the Nieman River near Kaunas, Lithuania. So speakers of German came from what are now parts of Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Immigration officials in the New World sometimes listed people as Germans although Germany was not their land of origin. If the annals of history have sometimes lumped diverse people under one umbrella term-German-it is a simplification we must now acknowledge, if not embrace. PRESENT FROM THE INCEPTION Beginning in 1683, Germans formed the first substantial group of non-English-speaking immigrants to settle in America. By the outbreak of the revolutionary war in 1776, their numbers had reached 225,000. More so than most other ethnic groups, who arrived in the 19th and 20th centuries, German immigrants have had more time to adapt, intermarry, and to disperse throughout the nation. The revolutionary war and subsequent conflicts in both America and Europe slowed immigration, but Germans continued to sail to these shores. Beginning in the late 1830s, they came to America in record numbers, surpassed only by the Irish. They thereby retained their status as the largest non-English-speaking group. In 1882 alone, a quarter of a million Germans arrived in the United States. The Germans who arrived during this later period (1816-90) differed in several ways from those who had arrived earlier. Whereas most German immigrants of the 18th century came from the Palatine or Württemberg, states along the Rhine River in the southern and western regions of the German lands, those in the second wave of immigration came mainly from the north and east-Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. Those who came before 1871, the year Germany was unified, tended to be loyal to their particular state or locality, rather than to Germany as a whole. Thus, Germans were not inclined to bond as one identifiable group in the United States. Albert, John and Mathilda Caroline Dorothy Poppe Severt immigrated in 1875, four years after Germany had become a unified state. Even today, a recent German immigrant may refer to him- or herself as a Saxon, Bavarian, or Berliner. German immigrants came not only from all parts of Germany but also from all walks of life and for many different reasons. In the 18th century, religious persecution prompted many emigrants to cross the Atlantic, often in groups-families, parishes, and sometimes-entire communities traveled together. In the 19th century, political oppression at home encouraged many idealistic and utopian plans for a free colony of Germans in the United States. These new immigrants were often better educated and more politically minded than their predecessors. Still, the overwhelming majority of immigrants came in search of better economic opportunities. In the years before the Civil War, German newcomers tended to be independent craftsmen or farmers and their families, who could afford the cost of passage and could meet the demands of the developing and still largely agricultural countries of the United States and Canada. After the Civil War, the rapid growth of industry in America and the advent of the more convenient and affordable steamship enticed German day laborers who had no families and no special skills. The 20th century created yet another sort of immigrant, the wartime refugee, especially just before and during World War II. The total number of refugees was comparatively small, but they made an impact in the sciences, business, and the arts. Many were Jews, who were joined by Catholics, Protestants, and others who professed no religion, in fleeing Hitler's regime of 1933-45. Events in America served to divide further a population that had already been broken up along religious, class, and territorial lines. Because they arrived during different periods and at a variety of ports, German immigrants settled all over the United States. Many gravitated to cities, where they blended into the general population more quickly than they would have in the countryside. Though German Americans are now dispersed across the continent, their history and culture figure most evidently in a handful of strongholds: St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and parts of the Middle Atlantic states and the upper Midwest. (The fabled Pennsylvania Dutch are not Dutch but Germans, whose name for themselves, Deutsche, was misunderstood by their Yankee neighbors.) In those locales they have long been the dominant group, though fierce anti-German sentiment aroused by World War I effectively discouraged German cohesiveness in all but the sturdiest of their communities. The sheer number of German immigrants, their 300 years of immigration, their diversity in class, religion, and occupation, and their experiences in the United States have all played a role in their rapid assimilation and subsequent lack of visibility. Yet these same factors have also allowed them to influence American culture in a multitude of ways. HIGH AND LOW GERMAN The German dialect was divided into High German in the south and Low German in the north. High German refers to the low coastal plain in the north. Boats go down the Rhine in a northwesterly direction from Basel to Rotterdam and down the Elbe in a northwesterly direction from Dresen to Hamburg. Because maps often hang on walls with north at the top, we say "up north" and "down south," just as the Germans say "up in Schleswig" and "down in Bavaria" (unten in Bayern), so it is sometimes hard to remember that High Germany is in the south and Low Germany is in the north. The High German sound shift, which altered most consonants, began soon after the Alemanni and Bavarians reached the Alps following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The High German sound shift gradually spread northward into central Germany and affected standard German, while the North Germans clung to the unshifted consonants of the other Germanic languages such as Dutch and English. Thus the German dialects were divided into High German in the south and Low German in the north. SETTLING THE NEW NATION The American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars in Europe (1801-15), and the War of 1812 all discouraged emigration to the New World. Instead, the first 40 years of the American republic were years of assimilation rather than expansion for the German-American population. Still, immigrants trickled in. In 1804, a group of separatists from Württemberg founded Harmony, Pennsylvania. Like many of their 18th-century forerunners, these settlers-known as Rappists after their leader, George Rapp-sought to live by the Scriptures. They practiced celibacy, and residents signed over all personal wealth to create their "Community of Goods." In 1814, the Rappists moved to Indiana, where they established New Harmony on 30,000 acres, but "to avoid malaria and bad neighbors" they headed back to Pennsylvania 1O years later. Their final home was Economy, on the Ohio River, 20 miles north of Pittsburgh. Here, finally, they found prosperity-oil wells, coal mines, and numerous factories sprang up by the 1820s. Wisconsin Farm Scene by Paul A. Seifert (1840-1921), watercolor, ca. 1880. Other American communities founded by religious Germans and run-often very successfully on the principle of common ownership of property cropped up later: Zoar, Ohio, in 1819; Bethel, Missouri, in 1844; Aurora, Oregon, and Amana, Iowa, in 1856. But by and large, the emigrant leaving his home for religious reasons was a rarity in the I9th century. A Württemberg government survey found that among those leaving the state in 1817, almost 90 percent left "to overcome famine, shrinking means, and unfavorable prospects." This was reflected in the makeup of the emigrant groups: while in the 18th century entire communities left Germany together, in the 19th century almost all emigrants traveled as individuals or in small family groups, Not all chose America; two-thirds of the emigrants set out for Austria-Hungary or for Russia. During the 1820s, only 6,000 to 8,000 Germans reached the United States. By the end of the decade, several factor were encouraging German emigration. Overpopulation and a shortage of cash for trade, combined with the traditional practice of Realteilungsbrecht-the division of the family farm among many descendants-created enormous economic pressures. Many families had coped with shrinking farmlands by taking up handicrafts such as Clockmaking or weaving, but after the end of the Napoleonic Wars Germany was flooded with cheap factory made English goods that brought disaster to German family industries. The appearance of Gottfried Duden's book Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America in 1829, thus was timely. His account of life on a small farm in Missouri sounded idyllic to those who saw their way of life fast slipping away from them. NEXT STOP: MISSOURI With a population of about 70,000, Missouri became a state in 1821. Duden purchased 270 acres of land in present-day Warren County, Missouri, in 1824 and he was soon convinced that planned farm communities of Germans were feasible. "No plan in this age," he wrote, "can promise more for the individual or group." The careful advice he gave was less compelling than his descriptions of daily life. Duden spent the hour before breakfast "shooting partridges, pigeons, or squirrels, and also turkeys," and the rest of the day unfolded in a leisurely fashion: he read, strolled in his garden, visited neighbors, and "delight[ed] in the beauties of nature." His assurances that the educated man could make a go of it on the American frontier fed the imaginations of many young liberals in Germany, intellectuals disgusted with the reactionary policies the German states adopted after the Napoleonic Wars. The Giessen Emigration Society, founded in 1833, was the first of many such organized emigration movements to try to profit by the disenchantment in the old country. Their pamphlets, widely distributed in southwest Germany, urged readers to join them and help found "a free German state, a rejuvenated Germany in North America." The Giessener Gesellschaft society developed plans to concentrate Germans in a territory which could eventually be admitted to the Union as a German State. During the decades that followed, three states came under consideration for such ambitious dreams - Missouri, Texas, and Wisconsin. That state was never realized, as a group of about 500 emigrants under the society's auspices disbanded upon reaching St. Louis. Many of the Giesseners were dubbed "Latin Farmers" because of their classical education. They soon discovered that pioneer farming was not as leisurely as Duden had described. Karl Buchele, in an 1855, summarized their predicament: "The German philosopher who ... has here become a farmer, finds that the American axe is more difficult to wield than the Pen, and that the plow and the manure-fork are very matter-of-fact and stupid tools." Another disgruntled immigrant labeled Duden a Lugenhund (lying dog), and Duden felt compelled to retract some of his own advice in an 1837 sequel to his 1829 book. In the time between the two books, however, more than 50,000 Germans emigrated, many of them at Duden's suggestion. Many came from areas of Germany Hannover and Oldenburg, for example-that had previously lost few citizens. The Latin Farmers formed the vanguard of German settlement in Missouri, and the ' quickly spread into southern Illinois. In spite of all gloomy predictions, they came to be an important local influence, establishing libraries, schools, and newspapers. A colonization attempt inspired by the Giessener Society later in the decade proved even more successful In 1837, the German Philadelphia Settlement Society bought about 12,000 acres in Gasconade County, across the river from Duden's land, then dispatched an advance party of 17 to spend the winter on the property. This group was joined by a steadily increasing flow of members from back east, and by 1839, when it was incorporated, Hermann, Missouri, boasted 450 inhabitants, 90 houses, 5 stores, 2 inns, and a post office. The society dissolved in 1840, but Hermann and the surrounding district gave rise to a prosperous fruit growing and wine-producing industry. In this "Little Germany," wrote a visitor, "one forgets that one is not actually in Germany itself" THE TAMING OF TEXAS As German immigration accelerated in the 1840s (tripling from the 125,000 arrivals of the previous decade), the desire to bolster cultural and economic ties with the New World became popular in Germany. Yet colonization proved no easier than it had been in the 1830s. All over Germany, local societies to aid the emigrant sprang up, but without a unified central government the region could not promote the concerted settlement that such countries as France and England managed. Independent attempts-like that of the Giessener Society-tended instead to open up areas for subsequent immigrants who acted on their own. Such was the case in Texas. An independent republic from 1836 to 1845, Texas was a likelier prospect than Midwestern states for colonization schemes. The Germania Society of New York, founded in 1838, chose Texas because "the plan of founding a pure German state in the midst of the American Union would arouse the opposition of the American people." An outbreak of fever among settlers in Galveston in 1838, however, forced the society to abort its plans. News of Texas had reached the northeastern states of Germany by way of a letter sent in 1832 by immigrant Friedrich Ernst to a friend in Oldenburg praising the land and life in Texas. Published first in an Oldenburg newspaper and then in a book on Texas, the letter induced the first wave of German immigrants-mostly from the states of Oldenburg, Westphalia, and Holstein-to emigrate to Texas. One man whose imagination was captured by Ernst's letter wrote that it depicted a beautiful landscape "with enchanting scenery and delightful climate similar to that of Italy" and "the most fruitful soil and republican government." These attractions enticed settlers much like those who had responded to Gottfried Duden's descriptions of Missouri. Like the Latin Farmers, some of these newcomers were disillusioned upon their arrival. One immigrant, Rosa von Roeder Kleberg, wrote, "My brothers had pictured pioneer life as one of hunting and fishing, of freedom from the restraints of Prussian society; and it was hard for them to settle down to the drudgery and toil of splitting rails and cultivating the field, work which was entirely new to them." Between 1831 and Ernst's arrival, Germans continued to go to Texas, but compared to the influx of Germans into Missouri, Texan settlement was slight. In 1836, the total number of Germans barely exceeded 200. Texas seemed too remote to most immigrants. It was also vulnerable to attack by Comanche Indians from the west. Nevertheless, in 1843 the republic was chosen for a colonization project known as the Adelsverein (nobles club). Composed of 24 rulers and nobles, the Germania Society aimed, "out of purely philanthropical reasons," to "devote itself to the support and direction of German emigration to Texas." No doubt Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, the commissioner general of the project, envisioned other, more glorious objectives when he wrote tight money spurred tens of that "the eyes of all Europe are fixed on us and our undertaking." The society's prospectus detailed the terms of new Fatherland beyond the Seas." For the equivalent of $120, a person received free passage and 40 acres in west-central Texas. From December 1844 (when the first 3 shiploads of immigrants landed at Carlshafen, later renamed Indianola) to 1847 (when the society went bankrupt), more than 7,000 Germans were transported to Texas under the auspices of the Adelsverein. Prince Carl von Solms-Braunfels proved to be an incompetent leader, preoccupied with decorum rather than the nuts and bolts of founding a town. He built a stockade, called Sophienburg in honor of his lady, and manned it with a courtly company of soldiers. He did, however, with 180 subscribers, found the town of New Braunfels in 1845. This settlement, wrote one American visitor, was an eventual success, "in spite of the Prince, who appears to have been an amiable fool, aping, among the log-cabins, the nonsense of medieval courts." In 1845, the prince was replaced as commissioner general, but adversity dogged the immigrants. Comanches threatened attack; the United States had begun its war with Mexico over the annexation of Texas; and the society was debt ridden. One thousand of the settlers died in squalid camps on the coast. Those who survived were encouraged to spread out over new land northwest of New Braunfels. Particularly notable was the founding of Fredericksburg in April 1846. Named in honor of Prince Frederick of Prussia, it was the first white settlement in the northwest hill country of Texas, and by 1850 it had a population of nearly 2,000. An enthusiastic inhabitant wrote to a friend: If you work only half as much as in Germany, you can live without troubles. In every sense of the word, we are free. The Indians do us no harm; on the contrary, they bring us meat and horses to buy. We still live so remote from other people that we are lonely, but we have dances, churches, and schools. Such letters spurred further emigration to Texas, unmanaged by any colonization society. Estimates of the number of Germans who settled in Texas before the Civil War reach as high as 30,000. In 1857, a Orleans editor wrote that every ship leaving from that port for Galveston was "crowded with Germans of some wealth ... going to select a future home. " The area of heaviest German concentration stretched from Galveston northwest to Austin, New Braunfels, Fredericksburg. In Texas, as in Missouri (and later, Wisconsin), the idea of a "new Germany" was never realized. The idea did, however, encourage settlement in rural, undeveloped areas of the country. And a large proportion of Germans arriving in the United States in the period from 1830 to 1860 looked as well to a different kind of destination for a new life: the growing cities of the Midwest. GROWING WITH THE CITIES There was a variety of reasons for heavy German settlement in Midwestern cities during the 19th century. For the lower-middle-class immigrants of the earlier period (1830-45), Cincinnati, Ohio; St. Louis, Missouri; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offered the skilled craftsmen many opportunities for employment in agriculturally related occupations (brewing, tanning, and milling). To farmers, cities offered a stopover, a place to earn enough money to buy land in the surrounding countryside. St. Louis also became the home for those the cultured Germans who had tried, and then abandoned, the difficult life of the pioneer farmer. After 1845, with the incoming German population composed more and more of people with little means and few skills, laborers were drawn to the Midwest by the promise of plentiful employment in fields such as construction and transportation. One writer gave this advice: "Lose no time ... in working your way out of New York and directing your steps westward, where labor is plentiful and sure to meet with its reward." Travel routes, westward from New York or north from New Orleans, played a major role in determining the destination of may 19th-centry immigrants. Natural and man-made waterways were the "highways" of the 1830s and 1840s. The Erie Canal, opened in October 1825, was especially important, linking the Atlantic coast with the region beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Arriving in New York (the busiest port of the mid-19th century), an immigrant could take a steamboat up the Hudson River to Albany; a week's trip from Albany on the Erie Canal landed him in Buffalo. From Buffalo, the Great Lakes provided access to Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Minnesota. The advent of the railroads made travel much easier-by 1851, an immigrant with some money to spare could cover the distance from New York to Lake Erie by train. Populations reflected this advance. Chicago in 1845 was eight percent German; by 1860, when it had become the hub of the flourishing rail system, Germans accounted for one-quarter of the city's total inhabitants. Chicago filched its status as the center of the Midwest from Cincinnati. Situated at the point where the Great and Little Miami rivers flow into the Ohio, Cincinnati was the boomtown of the 1830s, the era of the waterways. Germans contributed substantially to its growth: By 1841, 28 percent of the total population was German; 10 years earlier the figure was only 5 percent, By 1850, when Cincinnati was known as the "Queen City of the West," the German community (including those born in America) made up half its population. From 1847 to 1855, a period of especially high European immigration because of poor harvests in the Old World, Germans flocked to Wisconsin. A state bureau of immigration, railroad companies, and eager immigrants themselves encouraged settlement in the new state, which entered the Union in 1848. One German-language newspaper sold stationery preprinted with a "brief but true" description of Wisconsin. Milwaukee, settled in 1836 where the Milwaukee River flows into Lake Michigan, attracted many of the newcomers. More than 8,000 Germans arrived there during the 1850s, and in 1860, Germans accounted for 16,000 out of a total population of 45,000. Unlike the Irish, who also formed a substantial immigrant population in Milwaukee, Germans tended to flock together in their own neighborhoods. Likewise, in Cincinnati, the focus of the German community was an area known as "Over-the-Rhine," across the canal from the main part of town. St. Louis, however (where from 1830 to 1850 the population exploded from 7,000 to 77,860), did not boast an exclusively German neighborhood. Its German population-22,340 in 1850, and more 50,000 just 10 years later-was spread throughout the city's 28 districts. Jews also figured largely in the migration from Germany to the United States in these years. Between 1840 and 1880 the Jewish-American population grew from 15,000 to 250,000 persons, most of them Germans. Like their Christian contemporaries, they took their skills and culture primarily to Midwestern cities, though the Jews tended to be merchants rather than artisans or laborers. A handful became highly successful owners of department stores; others, mostly in New York, built substantial houses of banking and finance, such as the Lehman, Kuhn, and Loeb families. Immigrant Levi Strauss, for instance, started a dry-goods store that became the blue jeans empire of today. The seeds of Reform Judaism, a modernization of some traditional Jewish practices and beliefs that is now the largest of Judaism's three main branches, also came from Germany with the immigrants and got its real start in America, led by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise in Cincinnati. The German Jews settled in tightly knit communities to better practice their faith-and because they were barred from many neighborhoods. Differences in neighborhood arrangements from city to city raise a question about how German Christians or Jews and native-born Americans got along. Did the l9th-century German immigrants band together more than any group at any time, as one historian, John Hawgood, claimed? Or did they move into the mainstream of American life willingly and rapidly? SETTLING IN, FITTING IN The following comments, made by a visitor to a 19th Midwestern German community, seem to support Hawgood's theory: Life in this settlement is only very slightly modified by the influence of the American environment. Different in language and customs, the Germans isolate themselves perhaps too much from the earlier settlers and live a life of their own, entirely shut off. Although this observer was writing about a relatively secluded rural settlement in southern Illinois, urban life did not always foster rapid assimilation into an American way of life either. More than half a million people emigrated from Germany between 1852 and 1854 alone (many of them from areas in northern and eastern Germany previously unaffected by emigration). Sometimes a German immigrant felt a strong pressure to, in the words of one immigrant writer, "transform himself into a complete Yankee." But thanks to their large numbers, most Germans found it easy to preserve at least some distinctive elements of their culture. Preservation of the mother tongue was of paramount importance in a person's battle to preserve ethnic identity. As an example, Albert and Mathida Poppe Severt were very adamant all their lives that only German was to be spoken in their home or in their presence. If grandchildren spoke English, they would be ignored or sent home. For the Otto Severt boys, this presented a problem when they started school and they didn't have a good command of English. The Evangelical St. Johns Church in Arpin, Wisconsin with Otto August Severt being a charter member, continued to conduct services in German until 1917 with an English service conducted only twice monthly. The church continued to keep records in German until 1928. Even in St. Louis, bastion of the idealistic Germans of the recent immigration, the editors of a prominent German newspaper, the Anzeiger des Westens, mourned "the laming and corruption of the German language." A German-language school was established in St. Louis in 1836, two years before the city's public school opened. By 1860, there were 38 German schools in the city, most affiliated with Protestant and Catholic churches (though one was Jewish and one freethinking, or nonreligious). The very number of German children in these schools provided so much competition with the 35 public schools that in 1864 the local school board voted to include German language instruction in the public school curriculum. There was one earlier exception to the rule of division by language: In 1850, John Kerler, Jr., stated that "Milwaukee is the only place in which I found that the Americans concern themselves with learning German, and where the German language and German ways are bold enough to take a foothold." Kerler described another attraction of Milwaukee its "inns, beer cellars, and billiard and bowling alleys, as well as German beer." Indeed, by 1850 there were 7 German breweries in Milwaukee; a decade later there were 19, some with taverns or beer gardens where informal gatherings over German-style lager beer helped young men feel at home. Whole families also gathered there. In fact, in every major Midwestern city, beer gardens like the Milwaukee Garden (established in 1850 and said to accommodate more than 12,000 patrons), took the place of public parks. Suburban "refreshment gardens" appeared on the outskirts of many Midwestern towns. Germans were also known for more formal social arrangements. The middle-class German immigrant brought to the urban and rural Midwest a tradition of forming and joining associations. These clubs, or Vereine, provided members both cultural and social nourishment, including drama, debate, and sharpshooter clubs. Many grew out of a love of music. The Missouri Republican observed that "the Germans best among all nations understand how to make music subservient to social enjoyment." Gesangvereine, or German singing societies, were especially visible. Baltimore's Liederkranz, founded in 1836, stated its objective as "improvement in song and in social discourse through the same." The singing societies built concert halls, produced operas, and organized national choral festivals where groups from all over the country gathered to entertain huge audiences. One of America's greatest musical families started with Leopold Damrosch, a German immigrant of 1871 who founded an opera company. His son, Frank, was director of the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and another son, Walter, was a conductor with the Metropolitan Opera Company and the New York Symphony Orchestra in the early 20th century. Perhaps most characteristics of the German immigrants were the Turnvereine, or gymnastic clubs. Founded in Germany by Friedrich Jahn in 1811 as a means of promoting well being through exercise, the clubs' programs also advocated nationalism and the need to defend the fatherland against Napoleon. In this sense, early Turnvereine were much like training camps. In America, "turners" still practiced gymnastics (the St. Louis School system enlisted the head of a local club to organize its physical education system), but they also arranged picnics, parades, and dances, serving a social as well as a sporting purpose. Some clubs took on the role of all-purpose community house in the 20th century. The Turnverein in Yorkville, New York City's largest German district, offered kindergarten classes to any neighborhood child before closing its doors in 1985. Others limited their offerings: The club in downtown Milwaukee became a German-style restaurant, its walls decorated with photographs of past gymnasts. Churches set up their own brand of Vereine. Particularly common in Catholic parishes, these organizations ranged from mutual benefit associations (akin to insurance companies) to women's rosary and fund- raising societies. In Baltimore, a group called the Sisters of Charity was responsible for that city's first hospital, established in 1846. German Jews and Protestants also had their own associations. THE FORTY-EIGHTERS A particular boost to the sense of German ethnic identity came with the forty-eighters, a group of 4,000 to 10,000 Germans who arrived in America as refugees from the failed political revolutions and social-reform movements of 1848. On the whole they were liberal, agnostic, and intellectual, traits that threatened or offended many of the more established immigrants. But the influence of the forty-eighters on the cultural and political life of the German-American community was tremendous, and many worked to unite divergent groups of German Americans around issues that concerned Palatines and Berliners, Catholics and Protestants alike. In the years immediately following their arrival, the forty-eighters continued to support, from across the ocean, the liberal cause in Germany. But troubling events in this country increasingly drew their attention. As early as 1835, antiforeign feelings had led to the establishment of the Know-Nothing party (so called because members continually claimed they "knew nothing" of the movement); by the early 1850s (coincidental with high mid-century immigration), the "nativism" favored by the Know-Nothings was on the rise. Nativists tried-through petition, legislation, ostracism, and open abuse -to restrict the entry of immigrants into the United States and to limit the rights of those who had already arrived. One German custom especially appalling to native-born Americans was drinking beer on the Sabbath. Many native-born Americans followed the English Puritan tradition of refraining from frivolous activities such as dancing, bowling, and drinking on Sundays. Most German Americans had no such traditional restrictions on Sabbath behavior, and their Sunday drinking caused such outrage that movements to restrict or prohibit liquor consumption arose in several states. Although most German immigrants agreed that moderation in drinking was a good idea, they viewed these legal efforts as direct attacks on both their way of life and their religious freedom. In Wisconsin (which by 1855 was heavily German), one newspaper lambasted "the Temperance Swindle" for reducing "all sociability to the condition of a Puritan graveyard." A German theater owner in St. Louis in 1861 defied a police order to close on Sunday, whereupon 40 officers arrived to prevent the audience from entering. The culture gap had an uglier side. An 1855 riot in Louisville., Kentucky, led by the Know-Nothings, was one of the era's more blatant and violent manifestations of anti-German feeling. Catholics (both German and Irish) were frequently victims of attacks by nativists, who wanted a Protestant America. In the years immediately preceding the Civil War, opponents of slavery were also targets. Many of the more prominent German Americans, including most of the forty-eighters, spoke out against slavery, antagonizing slave owners and their supporters. Most of these activists, moved by the strong anti-slavery stance of Republicans such as forty-eighter Carl Schurz, joined the Republican party soon after its founding in 1854. Although the average German immigrant did not own slaves, the Democratic party retained significant German-American support because it had formed the primary opposition to the Know-Nothing party in the past. In general, German Americans felt more strongly about the preservation of the Union than about the abolition of slavery. By the time Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860, seven southern states had already seceded from the Union, and German Americans (Republicans and Democrats alike) frowned upon this breach of national unity. After all, it was the search for economic and political stability that had motivated many of them to emigrate. In December 1860, pro-Southern soldiers known as Minute Men resolved to further the cause of secession in the border state of Missouri. But the next May, federal troops thwarted their plans, capturing the pro-Southern state militia at Camp Jackson, near St. Louis. Many of the soldiers who stopped the Minute Men were German volunteers, members of Turnvereine or of Wide-Awake clubs (German organizations originally formed to protect Republican speakers at political rallies in Missouri). The result was that Missouri stayed in the Union, and German-American soldiers received much of the credit for the political victory. Thousands of young German Americans-from Pennsylvania to Colorado-fought in the Civil War. Henry A. Kircher, 19, a first-generation American from Belleville, Illinois, left a record of his Civil War experiences in his letters home to his family. He initially joined the 9th Illinois Infantry but soon left, at least partially in response to ethnic tensions between Germans and Americans in that regiment. With a few other Germans from Belleville, he then joined the 12th Missouri Infantry, a regiment composed primarily of foreigners and led by German officers with such names as Osterhaus, Schadt, Wangelin, and Ledergreber. In August 1864, after the Battle at Ringgold Gap (Georgia), Kircher's right arm and left leg were amputated; Captain Joseph Ledergreber died from shots through the lungs and spine. In sum, thousands of German Americans were injured or lost their life in battle. From the time the Civil War ended in April 1865 to well into the next century, German Americans pointed to these sacrifices for the Union as proof of their patriotism. For many, the Civil War would mark a turning point in their sense of themselves as American citizens. INDUSTRIALIZATION AND WAR Two themes characterize German immigration in the decades between the Civil War and World War I. The first was a great increase in the number of new arrivals. The 1880s were the peak years of this exodus from the fatherland: In that decade, 1,445,181 Germans made their way across the Atlantic, about a quarter of a million of them in 1882 alone. But a second, countervailing force was at work. In these same years, emigration from southern and eastern Europe began to climb, so that Germans fell sharply as a percentage of America's foreign-born population. Whereas in 1854 Germans accounted for about half of all foreign-born persons in America, by the 1890s that figure had fallen to less than one-fifth. Compared to the wave of Italians, Russian Jews, Scandinavians, Poles, and others, the Germans were in some senses part of the old America, a cultural presence that harked back to colonial times. These two facts changed the nature of the Germans' adaptation to their new homeland. The source of German immigration was shifting, too. Whereas pre-Civil War immigrants hailed from the Southwestern agricultural regions along the Rhine, the later arrivals were more likely to emigrate from the Hesses or Nassau. These northeastern states were dominated by estate agriculture, in which land was farmed commercially rather than by individual families. Consequently, a growing percentage of the emigrants were day laborers who had worked other people's fields, and who also, upon arriving in America, found most of the farmland occupied.