Raymond Lohne

Team of Friends: A New Lincoln Theory and Legacy

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns-Goodwin has written a marvelous study entitled Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. In it, she makes the case that Lincoln's picking and handling of his cabinet reveals his political genius. However, early on she says something more insightful when she writes, "it is clear that Lincoln won the nomination because he was the shrewdest and canniest of them all." Indeed, Kearns-Goodwin argues that being "more accustomed to relying upon himself to shape events, he took the greatest control of the process leading up to the nomination, displaying a fierce ambition, an exceptional political acumen, and a wide range of emotional strengths, forged in the crucible of personal hardship, that took his unsuspecting rivals by surprise."¹

I would like to suggest one more crucial element that helped Lincoln to "take his rivals by surprise." My theory is that Lincoln correctly read the ethno-political landscape of the North; that he shrewdly and cannily picked and handled a German "team of friends" to help him gain access to that population, and that he secretly purchased a German newspaper to guarantee himself a wide hearing among them. Lastly, studying the German contingent in the Lincoln epic reveals an ethnic legacy he left behind in the city of Chicago (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Lincoln as seen through German eyes.
Engraving taken from Rudolph Cronau, Chicago und sein Deutschtum (Cleveland, German-American Biographical Pub. Co., 1901–1902).

Lincoln and the Germans of Illinois

Abraham Lincoln would certainly have been aware of the growing importance of Germans in America and Illinois as he lived for fifty years in a square-shaped area bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Lake Michigan, and Indiana that had become a magnet for German immigrants (Figure 2).² German millenarians had founded the Harmony Society on the Wabash River in 1814.³ Pennsyl-vanian Germans had a prosperous settlement near Brownville in Jack-son County as early as 1815, where one writer described them as an "industrious, though not enterprising people, usually farmers of moderate means, who lived comfortably, and kept their associations mainly among themselves."⁴ In 1819, Ferdinand Ernst visited Illinois, and when he learned that the muddy village of Vandalia on the Kaskaskia River was to become the state capitol in 1820, he used his wealth to buy property and settle an estimated ninety German families by the following year.⁵

Figure 2. Lincoln's living area in relation to the German Population in the United States in 1870. Adapted from the 9th U.S. Census.

Lincoln's early legislative career began fourteen years later when he entered the Illinois State House of Representatives in Vandalia on November 29, 1834. Vandalia was by then a thriving German settlement. Lincoln's "preparation for greatness," as Illinois Senator Paul Simon (1985–1997) described his emergent political career, included an awareness of growing German influence in the state.⁶

Yet no matter how much Lincoln learned about the voting preferences of German rural folks, at some point he also had to understand the importance of the emerging concentrations of urban Germans, especially in Illinois. The official census of 1850 counted 851,470 people in Illinois and of these only 38,160 were Germans with 5,094 living in Chicago, where they made up some seventeen percent of the population. By the presidential election of 1860, that number quadrupled, when the census showed 22,230 Germans, comprising 20.35% of the city's population.⁷

The continual failure of revolution in the German states from 1829 through 1849, especially the 1848 Revolution, led to the exodus of a broad swath of the German people that included the middle-class as much as artisans, mechanics, peasants, and servants.⁸ This influx became one of the fortunate intersections of Lincoln's life, as they were a democratically oriented body of skilled and hard-working people who came to an exploding city in need of their skill and labor. By 1870, Germans became the largest ethnic group in Illinois, and in Chicago, there were some 59,299 Germans constituting 19.83 percent of the city's population. Of the 51,114 workers in manufacturing and mechanical industries in Chicago in 1870 14,251 were German-born, 12,519 American-born, and 11,445 Irish-born. Germans, therefore, represented 41.02 percent of the total foreign-born population. Lincoln had to take this sizable population into his political considerations.⁹

By the time Lincoln began his climb to prominence in national politics in 1858, Chicago had become a long- familiar place to him. Between July 5, 1847 when he first came as a newly elected United States Congressman to Chicago's River and Harbor Convention and October of 1858, Lincoln visited the city at least twenty times, many of them for extended periods. This coincided with the rising numbers of immigrants to the city, which became saturated with Germans on the North Side and Irish on the South Side. How would this community have looked to Lincoln? Chicago would have presented Lincoln with a scene where church spires competed with mainsail masts and grain elevators as the tallest structures in sight, and so simply by looking at the skyline Lincoln would have learned where the Germans were by the style of their church architecture (Figure 3). As early as 1837, missionary work among German Evangelical Lutherans had produced an all-brick church by 1844 at the corner of Wabash and Monroe Streets, and similar missions in 1843 created St. Paul's German Evangelical Lutheran church at the corner of LaSalle and Ohio Streets by 1846. Also in that year, both St. Peter's Catholic Church, on Washington Street between Wells and Franklin, and St. Joseph's Catholic Church, at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Cass Street, began serving parishioners. By June of 1847, German Catholics were numerous enough to ask the Irish-dominated Catholic hierarchy for a German bishop. Lincoln also would have been aware of the streets named after the German poets Goethe and Schiller Streets on the North Side. Germans mattered in Chicago.¹⁰

Figure 3. Chicago, engraving c. 1845, from J. Wellington, A Business Advertiser and General Directory of the City of Chicago for the Year 1845–46.

To this community must be added the German Jewish Men of the West (Kehilath Anshe Mayriv), who formed the first Jewish congregation in the city by the time of the River and Harbor Convention. They had already celebrated Chicago's first Day of Atonement by 1845, and in 1846, the Jewish Burial Ground Society had purchased an acre of area now in Lincoln Park. The European Revolutions of 1848, among other factors, also swelled their numbers (Figure 4).¹¹

Figure 4. Important German sites in Chicago in 1847. The numbers designate wards. Adapted from J.H. Colton, New York City, 1855, Chicago Public Library, Special Collections Department.

Aside from religious institutions in the city, at some point Lincoln certainly encountered a variety of secular institutions in the German community. In the ethnic spaces a network of individual and Gemeinde und Gesellschaften (communities and societies) were enmeshed in what historian, Frederick C. Luebke has called "associational complexes," which were largely gender-specific and self-sustaining.¹² German-Americans were long known for their penchant for joining clubs, which included everything from schutzenvereine (shooting and precision drilling clubs) to secret societies, such as the Masons and Odd Fellows.¹³ The Germans also formed many kinds of humanitarian agencies, mutual aid societies, and an immense variety of other kinds of clubs. Three of the most stable and important were the Arbeiter-vereine, the Turnvereine, and middle-class singing societies, all which at some point thrust their organizations into the political arena. Lincoln would have been aware of these activities because they also closely paralleled American political culture expressions with the use of brass bands, oratory, singers, floats, transparencies, uniforms, flags, tableaux vivants, fireworks, and gunfire.¹⁴

Lincoln and the 1848 Revolutionaries

Historian Moses Rischin writes "no other major ethnic group in America had encountered the full brunt of the forces of modernity—nationalism, liberalism, industrialism, and socialism—both in its country of origin and its country of adoption- with the swirling intensity of German-America."¹⁵ When Lincoln returned to Springfield from the U.S. House of Representatives on March 31, 1849, he literally came back to a revolutionary center. A few of the most important individuals who Lincoln so shrewdly brought into his political orbit where Gustav Korner, Friedrich Hecker, Peter Joseph Osterhaus, Franz Sigel, Carl Schurz, and George Schneider.

Primarily is Gustav Körner, a man whose Memoirs and personal papers have been largely neglected by most Lincoln scholars. In fact, in most biographies of Lincoln, Körner's contributions to Lincoln's political rise are found relegated to the cursory footnotes. Yet without a doubt Körner was the single, most important German Lincoln ever befriended (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Gustave Philipp Koerner, 1836. Engraving from Gustav Körner in Thomas J. McCormack, ed., The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1809–1896: Life-sketches Written at the Suggestion of His Children, 2 Vols. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Torch Press, 1909).

In some ways, their lives were parallel paths that converged from dissimilar backgrounds. When Lincoln came to Decatur in March 1830, Körner was at the University of Munich among the student revolutionaries inspired by the successful July Revolution in France, which forced Bourbon Charles X to abdicate to Orléanist Louise-Philippe. He subsequently spent four months in prison for being a noted ringleader during the student disturbance, which resulted in the closing of the university. Upon his release, he went to the University of Heidelberg, where he finished a doctorate in law in 1832, and had a broadsword duel with fellow law student Friedrich Hecker, wounding him badly across the breast and hand. Körner was not so much as touched, but he unwittingly created a lifetime bond with Hecker.

These arrogant and idealistic young men, living in a period of stifling reaction, took a democratic political stance found rarely in the German states closest to France, such as the Rhineland-Palatinate, the Kingdom of Bavaria, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, and Körner was a participant in a remarkable event. In the Germanic Confederation, any kind of political gatherings were forbidden to the common people, and transportation to them was in any case very costly and difficult. Yet an estimated 30,000 people managed to gather at the Hambach castle in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, in the chief city of the Palatinate. For two days beginning on May 26–27, 1832, young people voiced their complaints and their highest hopes. The Germanic Confederation and princely rule were denounced, constitutional government praised, and national unity demanded. Historian Hajo Holborn wrote that this was the first time in German history that "women were invited to a political meeting and participated in large numbers," and where the "use of black, red, and gold colors of the students' unions as emblems of the gathering crowd made them the colors of the popular movement in Germany."¹⁶

The Hambachfest must have affected Dr. Körner profoundly, because just ten months later, on April 3, 1833, in his own hometown of Frankfurt am Main, he was one of about fifty conspirators involved in an attack upon the two main city guardhouses and the arsenal at the police facility and jail. This admixture of students and soldiers had planned to seize cannon, muskets, and ammunition; free political prisoners accused of breaking press-censorship laws, and begin ringing the great Sturmglocke (storm bell) of the Dom, the signal for the people to come in from the countryside. At that point, the democratic revolution would be announced to them, and they would join in.

Unfortunately, they were walking into a trap. Unlike the French, as Holborn wrote, they had mounted merely a "childish" attempt at a "putsch." Betrayed by both a spy in their midst, and the reluctance of the common people to rise, nine students were killed, twenty-four were seriously wounded, and by August 3, 1833, Gustav Körner found himself riding into downtown Belleville, Illinois.¹⁷

Although he entered Lincoln's special domain in June of 1835 when he rode a horse the sixty-five miles from Belleville to Vandalia for his Illinois Bar Examination, the first time Lincoln appears in Körner's memoirs was during the presidential election of 1840, when the Democratic stronghold of Belleville was assaulted by the Whigs during the Hard Cider Campaign, and Lincoln came along to stump. Although the "St. Louis and Illinois Whig papers gave it in anticipation great puffs," and had engaged "a great many speakers of reputation," the "meeting was rather small," wrote Körner, and:

... no doubt this disappointment had its effect upon Mr. Lincoln, who seemed rather depressed and was less happy in his remarks than usual. He sought to make much of the point that he had seen in Belleville that morning a fine horse sold by a constable for the price of twenty-seven dollars, all due to the hard times produced by the Democrats. He was somewhat nonplussed by the constable, who was in the crowd, crying out that the horse had but one eye.

Körner could not remember how Lincoln "got out of this scrape," but he did recall that "no one in the crowd would have dreamed that he was one day to be their President."¹⁸

Körner was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1842–1843, the first German in the Illinois Legislature, and in 1845, Governor Ford appointed him to the Illinois State Supreme Court. By 1852, he was campaigning in Chicago with his friends Stephen A. Douglas, E.B. Washburne, Long John Wentworth, and Norman Judd. With these Democrats, Körner won the Lieutenant Governorship under Joel Aldrich Matteson. Elected for a four-year term, he would serve during the crucial years between 1853 and 1857. At the Republican State Convention in May of 1860, Lincoln named Körner one of his seven personal delegates-at-large. He represents Lincoln's earliest and most influential "friend" among the Germans.

Another one of the important 1848 revolutionaries that Lincoln befriended was Friedrich Hecker, who was "a sort of idol with the liberal-minded" according to Körner. The German citizens of New York had given him "a very flattering ovation" when he landed in October of 1851, as had those of St. Louis and Cincinnati, where Hecker also started up a Turnverein. However, he surprised his old dueling partner of Heidelberg by showing up and announcing he had made Belleville his headquarters. Upon learning of his arrival, the citizens gave him an ovation in the courthouse square as well.¹⁹

Just two years younger than Körner and Lincoln, Hecker had been born September 28, 1811 in Eichtersheim, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, the son of a prosperous lawyer (court councilor) of Prince-Primate von Dalberg. He went on to earn a doctorate in law from the University of Heidelberg, and he took up the practice in Mannheim in 1838. By 1842, he had won election to a seat in the lower chamber of the Baden State Assembly, which was where the revolution found him, as an outspoken and charismatic leader of the liberal opposition.

Hecker joined Gustav Struve in publicly calling for an armed uprising of the people on April 12, 1848. Two days later, on April 14, Hecker was marching at the head of a small contingent of revolutionaries who had formed up in Constance. Like his classmate before him, Hecker planned to arouse the people as he went along, his first objective being the city of Karlsruhe. Hecker's force was met and routed in the Black Forest by troops from Baden and Hesse. He fled to Switzerland and waited for the revolution to re-start. When he realized that it was not going to, he came to America. Körner helped him locate a three-hundred acre farm of "very rich prairie and part timber," three miles east of Lebanon, Illinois, upon which Hecker would live to the end of his life.²⁰ He would play a key part in Lincoln's political rise.

There were many other revolutionaries headed to the area as well, and they would also become important in the Lincoln epic. For example, there was Peter Joseph Osterhaus, who was born January 4, 1823 in Koblenz, Westphalia, into an upper-class family. Upon graduating from the university, he did his obligatory military service in the Prussian infantry, serving in an elite Jaeger rifle company and eventually rising to an officer's commission in the army reserves. His father, a wealthy architect, helped Osterhaus establish a mercantile business in Mannheim. He married and was settled into domestic life when the revolution of 1848 caught up to him at age twenty-five. Throwing everything away, Osterhaus joined the revolution in Mannheim, and was appointed to a leadership role. After the collapse, he fled through France to America, and on May 1, 1850, he opened up a general store at 150 Main Street, Belleville, Illinois. Shortly afterwards he was successful enough to sell this business and buy property in Lebanon near Hecker.²¹

There was also Franz Sigel, born November 18, 1824, in Sinsheim, in the state of Baden, where he eventually graduated from Karlsruhe Military Academy, and in 1843 was commissioned a lieutenant in Baden's army. He left the military to begin law studies in Heidelberg, where he met Hecker and Gustav Struve, and fought a duel to prove his honor and courage. A natural leader, during the revolution he recruited a force of some four-thousand men who he led in a siege against the city of Freiburg. On April 23, 1848, his army was broken and dispersed by Prussian troops. After hiding in Switzerland, he returned during the 1849 uprising in Baden and played another leading role, but again saw defeat at Prussian hands. He fled through Switzerland and England to America, and in 1857, he was in Missouri, where he took a professorship at the German-American Institute of St. Louis. By 1860, he was a District Superintendent of the city's public schools. Highly revered by Germans, Lincoln would show his political acumen in promoting Sigel to a Major-Generalship and by treating him with great patience during the Civil War.²²

Another fortunate arrival in the region was Carl Schurz who moved to Wisconsin. He had been born in Westphalia on March 2, 1829, the son of a schoolteacher. At the University of Bonn, he also became a member of the Burschenschaft and fell under the influence of Gottfried Kinkel, professor of history and literature. When the revolution broke out, Schurz took part in the fighting in Rastatt, but was captured and imprisoned in the fortress. He had escaped and was safely in Switzerland. In 1849, his former professor and friend took part in the renewed fighting for the Constitution of the Frankfurt Parliament. Kinkel had joined the Liberal Army in Baden, was wounded by the Prussians, court-martialed, and given a sentence of imprisonment for life. The King of Prussia, angry that Kinkel was not sentenced to death, changed the penalty to life imprisonment at hard labor.

The story of Carl Schurz and his rescue of Kinkel from Spandau prison in November of 1850 is well-known in the German community.²³ The popularity of this act among the Germans of America became clear when Kinkel arrived in the United States in October 1851, for a revolutionary fund-raising tour. In New York, he was given a great ovation and procession by the German population, and was received by the mayor and city council at city hall. The same thing happened to him in Philadelphia and Baltimore, and in Washington, he was introduced to President Fillmore and Members of Congress, and then serenaded by the capitol's Germans. He had enthusiastic receptions in Albany, Buffalo, and Davenport, Iowa, and on December 4, 1851 was met by Chicago Mayor Walter S. Gurnee and other "leading citizens." The next night, with "torch lights blazing he addressed a whirl of humanity, gathered under the balcony of the Tremont House, whose cheers approvingly punctuated his remarks."²⁴ The Germans included everyone from Masons and Odd Fellows to the Sons of Temperance, and the fire department and members of the German Song Union augmented the event.

Kinkel then did a revealing thing. After speaking in St. Louis, he headed to Belleville, to visit Gustav Körner and Friedrich Hecker on December 17, 1851. He was met by a committee of citizens, a band, and a German rifle company, and declining his carriage, marched at the head of the soldiers to the Belleville House. The people came late in the evening to stand in the cold and serenade him. He heard them from the balcony and gave a speech, which made Körner call him "really one of the most eloquent speakers I had ever heard."²⁵

That Kinkel would come to Belleville after a tour like this shows how important the little town was, and how much it mattered in German-American politics. That Lincoln was paying attention to these revolutionaries becomes evident less than a month later, in January of 1852, when he joined a meeting in Springfield and signed a public call for a gathering of citizens to discuss Lajos Kossuth and the Hungarian revolution. On January 9 Lincoln reported the citizen's resolution expressing sympathy with Hungarian, Irish, and German revolutionists.²⁶ In this act Lincoln was just ahead of Chicago, because it was January 21, 1852 before the Common Council invited Kossuth to the city in an official resolution.²⁷ It is my contention that Lincoln, by now, had seen how crucial the German vote could be and was, therefore, gathering up very important credentials, and making a name for himself among the Germans where it really mattered—with the revolutionaries. Since these men were the revered leadership cadre for the North's German population, his actions significantly adds to the scope of his "political genius."

Kansas-Nebraska and the Great German Turn

Lincoln was in political semi-retirement when he claimed the "repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been before."²⁸ It seems helpful to at least consider how Lincoln's rise to power in Illinois was intertwined with the simultaneous advent of political, economic, and socio-cultural assertiveness which the Germans began displaying throughout the North, especially after the 1848 revolutionaries arrived. It is suggestive to note that in January 1854 the German Democratic leadership of Chicago reacted violently to the mere introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. It was at this point that a very important German of Chicago began to be noticed by Abraham Lincoln, and that would have lasting consequences for them both.

Among all the 1848 revolutionaries in Chicago, George Schneider is the least appreciated, and one of the most pivotal (Figure 6). Born December 13, 1823 in Pirmasens, Rheinpfalz, he attended Latin school, and early on decided upon a journalistic life. He worked through various newspapers in the region and became noted for his writing. He was twenty-five when the 1848 revolution came and was instrumental in setting up the Volksverein, or people's union in Pirmasens, being elected as a delegate to the Kaiserslautern assembly, and arranging the Volksbewaffnung, or arming of the people in his district. With the defeat of the revolution, he fled Germany in the face of Prussian troops and a death sentence, and landed in New York in July of 1849. Going first to Cleveland, where he found journalistic work, he soon drifted down the Ohio to German St. Louis, where with his brother, he started a newspaper named the Neue Zeit. Historian A.E. Zucker wrote that this was "a paper of liberal, antislavery tendency in a slave state," so it was not surprising that it was destroyed. Schneider turn to college teaching for a time, but by 1851 he was in Chicago's German newspaper world, "interfering and attacking everywhere it seemed necessary or useful," through the Illinois Staats-Zeitung.

Figure 6. George Schneider, photograph from Rudolph Cronau, Chicago und sein Deutschtum (Cleveland, German-American Biographical Pub. Co., 1901–1902), p. 109.

On January 23, 1854, he presided over a protest meeting that he had called together, using his credentials as a militant democratic-liberal, and his power as an editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung. Schneider selected Warner's Hall, an important early German center on Clark Street, just south of Randolph Street, and situated directly across from City Hall. That night the Germans heard "feurige Beschlüsse" (incendiary resolutions) from 1848ers George Hillgärtner, Daniel Hertle, Francis A. Hoffman, and Frederick Baumann.²⁹

Two months later, on March 16, 1854 Germans held another meeting en masse, this time at South Market Hall. Recently elected city Alderman Francis A. Hoffman of the 8th Ward, George Schneider, and Eduard Schläger were the primary speakers, but the gathering attracted what historian Bruce C. Levine has called a diverse German-American political "coalition."³⁰ Like many others in the North, these men agreed with Lincoln that the Nebraska Bill was just one more attempt of the slaveholding interests to increase their power and permanence in the Union. Their main concern, however, was the Clayton Amendment to the Nebraska bill, which prevented foreigners from participating in structuring government in the new territories. Therein they saw something even more threatening than slavery, namely "a spirit particularly inimical to us Germans, pioneers of the West as we are." Since the Clayton Amendment had the effect of "reducing the free foreigner to the position now occupied by the slave," they resolved that it was "high time to make war, not only against the Nebraska Bill, but in general to stand upon the offensive, rather than upon the defensive in reducing the slaveholding interest from its present position of a leading power to what it really is, a local institution existing by sufferance."

Going on to call their former hero, Stephen A. Douglas, an "ambitious and dangerous demagogue ... a blemish upon the honor of the State of Illinois," they thought it their duty to "do our best to rid ourselves of him as quick as possible." He had become "deprived of public confidence and was subjected to general indignation," and they did not "deem him worthy any longer to represent the State of Illinois in Congress." Somewhat naively, they "expected him to resign his seat in the Senate immediately."³¹ Then in a piece of American street-theatre at least as old as colonial times, a large group of these men paraded an effigy of Douglas to symbolic Dearborn Park, where amid cheering and shouts of joy, they set it on fire.

It is at this point that we suddenly see Lincoln making another ethno-political maneuver. A little over five months later, on September 12, 1854, Lincoln addressed a German anti-Nebraska meeting at Bloomington, Illinois.³² Two days after that, on September 14, 1854, he asked Friedrich Hecker to come speak at a mass meeting in Springfield.³³

The first indication of Lincoln's political savvy was managing to be the only uninvited outsider at the editor's convention which came together in Decatur on February 22, 1856 at a German establishment called the Cassell House. Some fifteen editors of anti-Nebraska newspapers made it through a fierce snowstorm to plan and issue a call for a state convention of all the political forces against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Sitting on the resolutions committee, Dr. Charles H. Ray of the Chicago Tribune and George Schneider of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung "were influential factors in shaping the declaration of principles," especially the "anti-Know-Nothing plank" of the platform.³⁴ Lincoln had not fought his way through a blizzard for nothing. He saw how influential Schneider was and in 1860 would name him one of his personal delegates-at-large to the Republican National Convention in Chicago's Wigwam. Out of his personal tally of seven, two were now important Germans.

Second indication was of his political acumen was his masterful use of Americans of Germanic descent, however remote. It was on September 23, 1858, during his Senate campaign against Stephen Douglas, that he wrote an important letter to Chicago lawyer Norman B. Judd. Although he had Körner, Hecker, and Schneider at his disposal, Lincoln asked Judd to find, and dispatch, a German-speaking Republican to address "our friends" in Danville, Illinois.³⁵ Judd was also named one of Lincoln's personal delegates to the Wigwam, and after his election would be rewarded with the position of Consul to Prussia, in the city of Berlin. It was a post he would hold until recalled by President Andrew Johnson. That Judd chose Berlin, of all places, suggests that he had more than a little connection to things German.

Lastly, we must consider what Lincoln did after he beat Douglas in the popular vote, but lost the election in the Democratically controlled Illinois legislature. One source noted him "steeped in gloom," and believing that "everyone would desert me now except Billy Herndon."³⁶ In light of his defeat, Lincoln's renewed public relations efforts among the Germans take on a special significance.

Dr. Theodore Canisius was a German physician in Springfield who sometime in early 1859 began a newspaper in Alton called the Illinois Staats Anzeiger (Illinois State Advertiser). In his capacity as editor and owner, he had written a leading question for Lincoln about the proposed constitutional provision in Massachusetts, which would have curtailed the rights of naturalized immigrants for two years. Sponsored by Republicans in Massa-chusetts it put Lincoln into a difficult situation with the German Republicans of Illinois. Lincoln responded masterfully when he wrote back that:

... as I understand the Massachusetts provision, I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other place, where I have a right to oppose it. Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them. I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro; and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different languages from myself.³⁷

The doctor was both a faithful Republican reporter, and a very good friend, because he published this reply in his newspaper, and sent it along to the Illinois State Journal, where it was also printed. As Körner noted, "amongst all the friends and admirers of Lincoln, none were more ardent and eager than German Republicans," where Körner thought the very "name of Lincoln seemed to have a charm in it."³⁸ Less than two weeks later, Lincoln made a deal with Theodore Canisius.

Although all the details are still unclear, Canisius must have told Lincoln that John M. Burkhardt, an early German settler in Springfield, had repossessed his German printing press and types, and now everything was for sale. In an interesting and un-verified twist, Lincoln may have given the Germans of Springfield the original five-hundred dollars to buy that exact press.³⁹ If so, then Lincoln saw another opportunity for his charity emerge, only this time he was not going to waste it. He secretly dispatched a German-American, his close family friend and Springfield banker Jacob Bunn, to buy the whole thing from Burkhardt for four-hundred dollars. On May 30, 1859, he gave Canisius re-possession of it. Under the conditions set by Lincoln, we see the importance he attached to reaching the German voter.

The owner of the former Illinois Staats-Anzeiger was charged to publish a new, Republican paper in Springfield, "to be chiefly in the German language, with occasional translations into English at his option." It was to be a weekly, or "oftener" hoped Lincoln. While Canisius was to bear all expenses, and take all profits, the paper was not to depart from the political sentiments of the Philadelphia and Illinois Republican platforms, nor must it fail to come out at least weekly. Furthermore, the press and all its type had to remain in Springfield, and violation of any one of these conditions gave Lincoln the option to repossess the whole affair.

Lincoln, however, did write that "if said Canissius shall issue a newspaper, in all things conformable hereto, until after the Presidential election of 1860, then said press, types &c are to be his property absolutely, not, however, to be used against the Republican party; nor to be removed from Springfield without the consent of said Lincoln." The former postmaster of New Salem sent copies of his newspaper to at least two German Republicans, and undoubtedly many more.

On December 6, 1860, less than a month after his election as President, Lincoln made a notation on the bottom of the single blue sheet of paper on which he had made his bargain. He wrote, "Dr. Theodore Canisius having faithfully published a newspaper according to the within, I now relinquish to him the press, types, etc., within mentioned, without any further claim of ownership on my part. A. Lincoln."⁴⁰ Lincoln felt either that he owed Canisius something more, or like almost everyone else, the doctor had a personal request, or Lincoln actually needed him. In any event, Lincoln named him Consul to Vienna. Further, after the Union disaster at Bull Run on July 21, 1861, Canisius was assigned the delicate task of secretly enlisting Garibaldi's aid in the Union cause. Diplomatically sacrificed by Lincoln when the affair was discovered in Turin, Canisius nevertheless remained Consul in Vienna until 1866 at the request of the Italian government, since by then Garibaldi was in prison with a wounded foot.

Unfortunately, no copies of Lincoln's German newspaper have yet surfaced.⁴¹ As to their influence and extent, we can only guess, but Lincoln's desire to reach a broader German Democratic audience was wise. As Gustav Körner wrote:

I may as well remark here again, that, in this all-important campaign of 1860, the heaviest and most important work was done by those who had belonged to the Democratic Party, at least in the West. Trumbull, Judd, Palmer, I.N. Arnold, Cook, Fuller of Boone, Frederick Hecker, Francis A. Hoffmann, John Wentworth, Hermann Kreismann, Caspar Butz of Illinois, Senator Dolittle, Carl Schurz of Wisconsin, Frank Blair and some of his Democratic friends from St. Louis, did magnificent work on the stump. And [Joseph] Medill and [Charles H.] Ray of the Chicago Tribune and George Schneider of the [Illinois] Staats-Zeitung, the leading Republican papers of the Northwest, all recruited from the Democratic Party, contributed largely to the victory of the Republicans.⁴²

In other words, Lincoln knew exactly whom he was trying to reach, and why. The fact that he barely won the election for president in 1860 simply underscores his penetrating analysis of the situation. One vote in twenty would have changed the outcome.

Ever since that election, there has been an on-going debate as to exactly how it happened. On December 30, 1910 William E. Dodd read a paper at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Indianapolis which has held American historical attention ever since. Dodd confirmed the traditional view that immigrants in general and the Northwest's Germans in particular gave Lincoln the crucial votes he needed to win, and attributed a decisive influence over the German vote to leaders like Gustav Körner and Carl Schurz.⁴³ Since that time, scholars have affirmed or challenged Dodd's findings using a variety of historical, social, and political science research methodologies.⁴⁴ Nevertheless, one thing about Dodd's argument that has not been revised is the way Lincoln and the Germans of the Northwest perceived their interactions. By reading the story forward through the eyes of these participants, instead of backwards, we can begin to understand how and why Lincoln also left behind a powerful German legacy in Illinois.

Lincoln's Ethnic Legacy in Chicago

Lincoln's German legacy in Chicago, like all of his legacies, begins on the terrible morning when America learned he had been murdered. As Chicagoans followed the news from Washington, they discovered that Mary Lincoln was bringing Abe's body back home to Illinois. His funeral cortege was to duplicate his inaugural journey across the North. Although Lincoln had not stopped in Chicago on his way to Washington, powerful people in that city made sure that he would stop there on his way to Oak Ridge. Filled with sorrow, the great prairie city began making preparations for this momentous event (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Lincoln's catafalque in Chicago, May 1, 1865. Harper's Weekly.

Gustav Körner wrote, "Such a funeral procession through cities draped in black, through crowds of thousands who sobbed and wept, receiving all imaginable civil and military honors, was never seen in the world's history before and will never be seen again."⁴⁵ Now it seems that Germans were better prepared than any other ethnic or national group to provide something critical to a funeral observance of this magnitude. The Germans in America had long been organized into musical and choral societies and thus Lincoln's shocking and untimely death placed them on the American civic stage in an important way. Germans would be asked to provide music and to sing dirges for his funeral.

Carl Sandburg wrote that it was in Washington that the "German glee clubs" first sang for the funeral. In Newark, New Jersey, "a German chorus of seventy male voices sang Integer Vitae." In New York, the body was met at the wharf on the Hudson by an official city delegation and then "the German choral society gave a funeral ode from the first book of Horace." At the New York City Hall hundreds of members of the Liederkranz welcomed the casket, and during the long viewing "singing societies in changing shifts gave classic chorals of grief and color."⁴⁶ In Chicago German musical artists kept up a continuous performance as the crowds surged by⁴⁷ "At intervals during the evening," wrote the Chicago Tribune, "several dirges were sung, and at midnight the Germans, numbering several hundred, chanted a beautiful and impressive dirge, with thrilling effect."⁴⁸ Lincoln's wake in Chicago provided the catalyst for something far more lasting. In Chicago, the Germans who sang at Lincoln's bier went on to become the recognized leadership cadre of the German community for 121 years as the Germania Manner Chor(Figure 8).⁴⁹

Figure 8. Symbolic painting of 48 members of the Germania Maenner Chor. Taken from Germania Club Centennial Book, 1965, UIC Special Collections.

The early history of the Germania Manner Chor extends from 1865 until 1889, and was characterized by their climb to prominence among all the other singing clubs of the city, of which there were many. The fact that they prevailed over all the other groups speaks to the legitimizing cultural power of Lincoln for Germans in America. This is not to say that they were not a talented and dynamic body of men. Americans attended and enjoyed their concerts and affairs very much in the entertainment-starved city. The famous music critic George Putnam Upton was a regular at Germanian events and filled his Peregrine Pickle columns with highly favorable reports of their affairs.

The second and most important phase of their history takes place between 1889 and 1914. By 1888, the wealthiest and most influential Germans in Chicago belonged to the Germania Manner Chor. It was at this point that they were able to fulfill their dream of building their own clubhouse (Figure 9). In April 1889, the Germanians unveiled their opulent new home on Clark Street and Grant Place, in the very heart of Chicago's Gold Coast. Hundreds of Chicago's wealthiest Germans came to be lavishly entertained and to socialize in German Chicago's first truly exclusive clubhouse.

Figure 9. Germania Club, c. 1900.

Although the Germanians had always enjoyed unofficial diplomatic recognition from Germany because their first real president was a Consul, now, with an elegant footprint in the cityscape, diplomatic recognition became official. From this point on, all major German-American events in Chicago would have something to do with the club, which gloried in the fact that it had been "founded at Lincoln's bier." This included all of the important hochkultur, such as concerts, balls, memorials, and communal celebrations, as well as all-important socio-political and socio-cultural events, such as German participation in the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the official visit of Prince Henry of Prussia in 1902.

The club also served as the official repository of German cultural artifacts in Chicago. Everything from portraits, rare books, manuscripts, and sculpture ended up there. Its crowning cultural achievement lay in the purchase of a massive porcelain painting known as the Glory of Germania (Figure 10). Far from being something old, this was actually the nineteenth-century equivalent of the present-day High Definition Television. By purchasing this centerpiece from the German exhibit at the World's Fair, the Germanians established their supremacy over all other German groups in the city. By the time German royalty came to visit the club in 1902, it was impossible to be a "high-class" German in Chicago without being a member of this club. For Germans of the middle and upper classes, Lincoln's legacy had ironically become "high-brow."

Figure 10. The Glory of Germania, c. 1975.

Alongside the official diplomatic and cultural recognition of the Germania Club came Chicago's political recognition. Even to the very end, Chicago politicians and Illinois legislators continuously used Germania as a place from which to keep close contacts with the German-American community. It is a little-known fact that one of Chicago's mayors, Fred Busse, was a member of the Germania, and that Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen was a regular guest of honor there (Figure 11).

Figure 11. Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen at the 95th Anniversary of the Club.

The last phase of Germania's history spans from 1914 until 1986, and is generally characterized by a long, slow decline due to numerous factors. Foremost, are the two American wars involving Germany. The cultural damage the club suffered during World War I can be seen in the fact that it was renamed the Lincoln Club in 1918. Nevertheless, it is possible to overstate the case of wartime damage to German-American ethnicity, as I believe many scholars of the subject have done. The club was quickly renamed Germania, and although it is true that the club was almost lost during the Great Depression, it was actually during World War II that the Germania's membership quota of one thousand men was three quarters filled. In fact, right after the war the club was able to finally burn its mortgage in an elaborate ceremony.

With the onset of the Cold War, the Germania experienced a resurgence, which marks the final flowering of the club. The chief event of this renaissance was the official state visit of Konrad Adenauer. From this point on the club witnessed its worst period of decline. The phenomenon of white flight to the suburbs heavily affected the club, as did the intense Americanization of two World Wars. Further, the northward spread of the Black Belt of Chicago meant that the club now stood only a few blocks away from the notorious Cabrini-Green Housing Projects, a problem that became critical when the Germanians lost their only parking lot to the Carl Sandburg development (Figure 12).

Figure 12. Germania Club News, August 1962.

With the passing of Senator Dirksen in 1969 and Richard J. Daley in 1976, the club went into its death throes. The final act of destruction ironically came from the very body that had breathed life into the club, the Chicago City Council. In 1976, the Germania sought landmark status from the city. Without Mayor Daley to defend it, Germania's request was denied because of a false reading of an incident when the Nazi Bund had used the club. With this act, the club finally began to die, even though its later president's desperately strove to save it by reminding everyone of its attachment to Lincoln (Figures 13 and 14).

Figure 13. Germania president John Meiszner breaks tradition in 1968 by having the official portrait with the German Ambassador taken in the Lincoln Room of the club, instead of in front of the Glory of Germania.

Figure 14. President John Mieszner made sure Lincoln was prominent on the front page of the Germania Club News in 1968.

By 1986, the club tried in vain to give away the Glory of Germania. It ended up dismantled and put into boxes. In a quiet ceremony, the remaining artifacts of this amazing monument to Lincoln's Germans were sold to a few members at a miserable little auction and the club was sold to a developer who turned it into a wedding chapel and banquet hall (Figure 12).

After some twenty-two years in this function, the Germania building was recently sold to Kimco Realty for 9.3 million dollars. Kimco specializes in creating shopping centers (Figures 13) so it is reasonable to assume that the Germania Building will be torn down. This would mark the end of the cultural legacy of Lincoln's Germans in Chicago.

Notes

¹� Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2005), xvi.

²� Hildegard Binder Johnson, "The Location of German Immigrants in the Middle West," in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 41(1) (March 1951), 1–41.

³� James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998), 350.

⁴� Patterson, "Early Society in Southern Illinois," in Fergus Historical Series, No. 14:104.

⁵� Ferdinand Ernst, "Travels in Illinois in 1819," in Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society, VIII (1903), 155–9; Paul E. Stroble, Jr., "Ferdinand Ernst and the German Colony at Vandalia," in Illinois Historical Journal, (Summer 1987), 108; Linda Schelbitzki Pickle, Contended Among Strangers: Rural German-Speaking Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1996); James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998), 246. See also Robert P. Sutton, ed., The Prairie State: A Documentary History of Illinois: Colonial Years to 1860 (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1976), 198–213.

⁶� Paul Simon, Lincoln's Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1971). See also William E. Baringer, Lincoln's Vandalia (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1949). A negative proof of the developing Germanic component is the fact that in the 1830s and 1840s the Lutheran missionary Daniel Scherer found enough Germans in Illinois to start a long church controversy about using only German clergymen and liturgy. This would not have been necessary for any other reason than increasing numbers of German-speakers. See E. Duane Elbert, "The American Roots of German Lutheranism in Illinois," Illinois Historical Journal, (Summer 1985), and James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998), 307–8.

⁷�Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, 705.

⁸� See Veit Valetin, Geschichte der deutschen Revolution 2 Vols. (Berlin, 1930–31); Carl Wittke, "The German Forty-Eighters in America: A Centennial Appraisal," in The American Historical Review, 53 (4) (July 1948), 711–25; Friedrich Meinecke, "The Year 1848 in German History: Reflections on a Centenary," in The Review of Politics, 10 (4) (October 1948), 475–92; and Donald J. Mattheisen , "History as Current Events: Recent Works on the German Revolution of 1848," in The American Historical Review, Vol. 88, No. 5 (December 1983), 1219–37.

⁹�Ninth U.S. Census, 1870, I, "Population," 386–91.

¹⁰� In August 1847 the Methodists laid the cornerstone of a mission church on Indiana Street on the North Side, designed for proselytizing among non-Lutheran Germans. On Catholic Chicago see Edward R. Kantowicz, Catholic Chicago (2006), and Edward R. Kantowicz, Polish-American Politics in Chicago 1888–1940 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1975). See also Elizabeth E. Johnson, Chicago Churches: A Photographic Essay (Chicago, Uppercase Books, 1999).

¹¹� The best new work on the Jewish element of Chicago is by Tobias Brinkmann, Von der Gemeinde zur "Community": Jüdische Einwanderer in Chicago 1840–1900 (Osnabrück, Univeritätsverlag Rasch, 2002). Thanks to Richard S. Levy is due here for first bringing Dr. Brinkmann to my attention. See also Hyman L. Meites, ed., History of the Jews of Chicago (1924) Reprinted (Chicago, Chicago Jewish Historical Society, 1990). On the ethno-cultural exclusivity of KAM see Bessie Louis Pierce, A History of Chicago Vol. II: From Town to City 1848–1871 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), p. 24; Herman Eliassof, "German-American Jews," Deutsch-Amerikanische Geschichtsblätter, XIV (1914), 366; Irving Cutler, "The Jews of Chicago," in Melvin G. Holli and Peter d' A. Jones, eds., Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1977), 122–72. See also "Our Germans: The Chief Element of Our Foreign-Born Population," in Chicago Tribune, 2 December 1872.

¹²� See Frederick C. Luebke, Germans in the New World: Essays in the History of Immigration (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990).

¹³� John R. Edison, "German Club Life as a Local Cultural System," in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32 (1) (March 1955), 357–82.

¹⁴� See Glenn C. Altschuler & Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Press, 2000).

¹⁵� Moses Rischin, "Envoi" in Elliot Shore, Ken Fones-Wolf, and James P. Danky, The German-American Radical Press: The Shaping of a Left Political Culture, 1850–1940 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1992), 202. See also Gabor S. Boritt, Mark E. Neely, Jr., and Harold Holzer, "The European Image of Abraham Lincoln" in Winterthur Portfolio. A Journal of American Material Culture, Vol. 21 Numbers 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 1986), 169; Ray Ginger, Altgeld's America: The Lincoln Ideal Versus Changing Realities (New York, Harper & Row, 1958); Werner H. Steger, "German Immigrants, the Revolution of 1848, and the Politics of Liberalism in Antebellum Richmond" in Yearbook of German-American Studies Vol 34 (1999), 19–34; and Christian B. Keller, "The Reaction of Eastern Pennsylvania's German Press to the Secession Crisis: Compromise or Conflict?" in Yearbook of German-American Studies, 34 (1999), 35–61.

¹⁶� Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany 1840–1945 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 26.

¹⁷� On the Latin settlements see Oswald Garrison Villard, "The Latin Peasants of Belleville, Illinois," in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. XXXV, No. 1 (March 1942), 7–20; Alvin Louis Nebelsick, A History of Belleville (Belleville, 1978); Mark Wyman, Immigrants in the Valley: Irish, Germans, and Americans in the Upper Mississippi Country, 1830–1860 (Chicago, Nelson-Hall, 1984), and Walter D. Kamphoefner's review of Wyman in The Journal of American History, 71(3) (December 1984), 627–8.

¹⁸� Gustav Körner in Thomas J. McCormack, ed., The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1809–1896: Life-sketches Written at the Suggestion of His Children, 2 Vols. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Torch Press, 1909), 444.

¹⁹� Hecker has assumed German cultic status today, as in the work of Peter Assion, "Der Heckerkult. Ein Volksheld von 1848 in Wandel seiner geschichtlichen Präsenz," in Zeitschrift für Volkskunde Jg. 87 (1991), 53–76 and Alfred George Frei, ed., Friedrich Hecker in den USA. Eine deutsch-amerikanische Spurensicherung (Singen, Stadtler, 1992). See also Franz X. Vollmer, "Der Hecker-Nachlas von St. Louis/USA, in Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Oberrheins (Stuttgart, 1988), 349–415;"Friedrich Hecker: Der Liebling des Volkes," in Berühmte DeutscheVorkämpfer für Fortschritt, Freiheit und Friede in Nord-Amerika. Von 1626 bis 1901. Einhundert und fünfzig Biographien mit Portraits (Cleveland, 1904), 338–42; Heinrich Sharp, Friedrich Hecker, ein deutscher Demokrat (1811–1881), (Ph.D. diss, Frankfurt A.M. 1923); Alice Hecker Reynolds, "Friedrich Hecker," in German-American Review (April 1946), 4–7; Eitel Wolf Dobert, Deutsche Demokraten in Amerika: Die Achtundvierziger und ihre Schriften (Göttingen, 1958), 97–101; Andreas Lück, "Friedrich Hecker. Rolle, Programm und politische Möglichkeiten eines Führers der radikal-demokratischen Bewegung von 1847/48 in Baden"(Ph.D diss, Berlin, 1979); Sabine Freitag, Friedrich Hecker: Biographie eines Republikaners (Stuttgart, Steiner, 1998); and George S. Hecker, "Biographical Sketch of Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker and Family Tree" (manuscript, St. Louis, 1991). The Friedrich Hecker Papers (sl 451), at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri-St. Louis, are ably described and cataloged by Dr. Steven Rowan, University of Missouri-St. Louis. Although his first name is spelled Friedrich in German, in his letters to the Chicago Tribune Hecker answered his American critics as Frederick, and even just Fred.

²⁰� Gustave Körner, The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, Vol. I, 529.

²¹� See Susannah U. Bruce, "Peter J. Osterhaus," in David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, Eds., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, (Santa Barbara, CA., ABC-CLIO, 2000).

²²� See Stephen D. Engle, Yankee Dutchman. The Life of Franz Sigel (Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 1992); John H. and David J. Eicher, Civil War High Commands (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001), and Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1964).

²³� See Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 1829–1869 3Vol. (New York, 1907); Joseph Schafer, Carl Schurz, Militant Liberal (Wisconsin State Historical Society, Publications, Wisconsin Biography Series, I. Evansville, Wisconsin, 1930); Claude Moore Fuess, Carl Schurz: Reformer, 1829–1906 (New York, 1932); ChesterV. Easum, Carl Schurz: Vom deutschen Einwanderer zum Amerikanischen Staatsman (Weimar, Verlag Hermann Böhlaus, 1937); Oswald Garrison Villard, "Carl Schurz," Dictionary of American Biography, XVI, 466–70.

²⁴� Bessie Louis Pierce, A History of Chicago Vol. II: From Town to City 1848–1871 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1940), 27–8.

²⁵� Gustav Körner, The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, Vol. I, 577.

²⁶� See "Resolutions in Behalf of Hungarian Freedom," 9 January 1854, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 Vols. (New Brunswick, N. J., Rutgers University Press, 1953), Volume II, 115–6. Lincoln joined Chicago attorney Ebenezer Peck, Lyman Trumbull, William Herndon, Thomas L. Harris, R.S. Blackwell, G. Edmunds, Jr., and W.I. Ferguson at this meeting.

²⁷� See "Resolution of the Common Council," 21 January 1852, Common Council Documents, no. 1657, Council Year 1851. On Kossuth's fund-raising see Sabine Freitag, "The Begging Bowl of Revolution": the Fund-raising Tours of German and Hungarian Exiles to North America, 1851–1852," in Sabine Freitag, ed., Exiles from European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England (New York, Berghahn Books, 2003). While noting Kinkel's visit to Chicago in a footnote itinerary, Freitag assigns no importance to it. See also Bessie Louis Pierce, A History of Chicago Vol. II: From Town to City 1848–1871 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1940), 27–8.

²⁸� See Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. IV, 67.

²⁹� See "A Day of Glory for Chicago's Germanity," in the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, 29 January 1901, an editorial based on Rudolph Cronau's Chicago und sein Deutschtum (Cleveland, German-American Biographical Pub. Co., 1901–1902), 109–12, which is currently the primary source for Schneider's biographical information, since it is likely Cronau actually interviewed Schneider shortly before his death. Furthermore, in his own discussion of George Schneider, A. E. Zucker used this exact source See A.E. Zucker, The Forty-Eighters: Political Refugees of the German Revolution of 1848 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1950), 339. The fire has apparently never been researched, as it is passed over in the sources. See also Illinois Staats-Zeitung, 1 February 1872, in the Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey, PN-6, Roll #19 (hereafter CFLPS) at UIC, Richard J. Daley Library, Microfilm Department. See also Abendpost, 13 August 1896. Francis Arnold Hoffmann (5 June 1822- 23 January 1903) was born in Herford, Westphalia, Prussia. He left home at age 18 in 1840, and arrived in New York City, reportedly penniless. He reached Illinois in the early 1840s and became a living embodiment of the "urge to rise" which became the Lincoln Ideal. Alternately a Lutheran minister, real estate man, banker, and journalist before becoming a politician, Hoffmann began his journalistic career as an editor for Robert B. Hoeffgen's Chicago Volksfreund in 1845. The Volksfreund (Friend of the People), would eventually become the Illinois Staats-Zeitung (Illinois State Newspaper) in 1849, and Hoffmann would rise to become a co-founder of the Republican Party and Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois, 1861–1865. See also D.I. Nelke, "Francis A. Hoffmann," in Don Heinrich Tolzmann, ed., Illinois' German Heritage (Milford, Ohio, Little Miami Publishing Co., 2005), 117–26. George Hillgärtner, a lawyer from Heidelberg, was also sentenced to death for his part in the 1848 revolution, and came to America with Gottfried Kinkel to raise funds. Hillgärtner also worked with Schneider at the Illinois Staats-Zeitung. 1848 revolutionary Daniel Hertle studied law and was an ardent Turner. See Roland Paul, "Daniel Hertle: Ein Achtundvierziger aus der Südfalz," in 300 Jahre Pfälzer in Amerika (Landau, 1983); Fredrick Baumann was an 1848 revolutionary, and would become famous for his architectural pioneering in Chicago. Baumann worked for Chicago's first architect, John Mills Van Odsel, and authored "Die Baukunst im Staate Illinois" for the first issue of Deutsch-Amerikanische Geschichtsblätter, January 1901, 25–32. See also Eugen Seeger and Eduard Schlaeger, Chicago. Entwickelung, Zerstörung und Wiederaufbau der Wunderstadt (Chicago, np, 1872).

³⁰� Levine writes: "Chicago's first mass protest against the Nebraska bill occurred on 16 March 1854, at North Market Hall in the heart of the immigrant Eighth Ward. Its resolutions, roster of officers, and speaker list reflected the political diversity of the coalition that the gathering represented." See Bruce C. Levine, The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 204–5. The North Market Hall location is contradicted by the Chicago Tribune, "Another Voice Against the Repeal. German Mass Meeting." 15 March 1854, which says South Market Hall was where the meeting was held.

³¹� See Chicago Tribune, "German Mass Meeting. The German Voice Against the Nebraska Outrage," 20 March 1854. See also Chicago Tribune, "The Late German Demonstration," 25 March 1854, and Chicago Tribune, "Burning Douglas in Effigy," 29 March 1854. Bruce C. Levine writes that George Schneider was himself burned in effigy by pro-Nebraska Germans, an illuminative indicator of his power as opinion-maker in German Chicago. See Bruce Carlan Levine, "Free Soil, Free Labor, and Freimänner," in Harmut Keil and John B. Jentz, ed., German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850–1910: A Comparative Perspective (DeKalb, Illinois, Northern Illinois Press, 1983), 174.

³²� See "Speech at Bloomington, Illinois," 12 September 1854, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume II, 230–3.

³³� See "Abraham Lincoln to Friedrich K.F. Hecker," 14 September 1854, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, 376.

³⁴� Otto R. Kyle, Abraham Lincoln in Decatur (New York, Vantage Press, 1957), 72.

³⁵� See "Letter to Norman B. Judd, 23 September 1858," in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. III, 202.

³⁶� Emanuel Hertz, ed., The Hidden Lincoln (New York, Viking Press, 1938), 38.

³⁷� See Chicago Tribune, "Mr. Lincoln on Naturalization and Fusion," 26 May 1860. See also "To Theodore Canissius, May 17, 1859," in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume III, 380.

³⁸� Gustave Körner, The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, Vol. II, 101.

³⁹� Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, Vol. II (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1926), Vol. II, 37, 259–60.

⁴⁰� See "Contract with Theodore Canisius, 30 May 1859," in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume III, 380, 383. The Chicago Tribune reported that the Illinois Staats-Zeitung had announced publication of a cheap campaign biography of Lincoln in the German language. See "A German Edition of the Life of Lincoln," in Chicago Tribune, 8 August 1860. On the preponderance of German daily newspapers in the North see "The German Press in America," in Chicago Tribune, 16 January 1854.

⁴¹� See Percy Wood, "State Library Document Links Abe Lincoln to Ownership of German Newspaper," Chicago Tribune, 10 February 1963. The article is an interview of Clyde C. Walton, Illinois State Historian, who believed Lincoln used the newspaper to spur his drive for the Republican nomination in the Wigwam of Chicago. Wood was not the first to discover Canisius. On 15 May 1941, the Chicago Tribune reported on Lincoln's deal with Canisius, calling it "A Bit of Staggering Information." See Chicago Tribune, 15 May 1941.

⁴²� Gustave Körner, The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, Vol. II., 84.

⁴³� See William E. Dodd, "The Fight for the Northwest, 1860," American Historical Review, XVI (1911), 774–88. Accepting Dodd's thesis were Donnal V. Smith, "The Influence of the Foreign-Born of the Northwest in the Election of 1860," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XIX (1932), 192–204; Andreas Dorpalen, "The German Element and the Issues of the Civil War," in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29 (1) (June 1942), 55–76; and Jay Monaghan, "Did Abraham Lincoln Receive the Illinois German Vote?" Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, XXXV (1942), 133–9. Monaghan wrote in 1945 that "Lincoln knew that Horace Greeley's readers, together with the immigrant Germans, were the warp and woof that had elected him." See Jay Monaghan, Abraham Lincoln Deals With Foreign Affairs: A Diplomat in Carpet Slippers (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 17. Theodore Karamanski says that "Chicago Republicans played a critical role in securing Lincoln the nomination," arguing that it "is doubtful Lincoln would have been president had the convention been held in another city." See Theodore Karamanski, Rally' Round the Flag: Chicago and the Civil War (Chicago, Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1993), xiv. This assertion was also made in 1889–1895 by Gustav Körner in Thomas J. McCormack, ed., The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1809–1896: Life-sketches Written at the Suggestion of His Children, 2 Vols. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Torch Press, 1909), Vol. II, 80–4. Dissenting views were given by Joseph Schafer, "Who Elected Lincoln? American Historical Review, XLVII (1941), 51–63; Hildegard Binder Johnson, "The Election of 1860 and the Germans in Minnesota," Minnesota History, XXVIII (1947), 20–36; George H. Daniels, "Immigrant Vote in the 1860 Election: The Case of Iowa," Mid-America, XLIV (1962), 146–62; Paul J. Kleppner, "Lincoln and the Immigrant Vote: A Case of Religious Polarization," Mid-America, XLVIII (1966), 176–95; Michael F. Holt, Forging A Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848–1860 (New Haven, 1969); and Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827–1861 (Princeton, 1971). For an analysis of Cleveland's vote see Thomas W. Kremm, "Cleveland and the First Lincoln Election: The Ethnic Response to Nativism," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8 (1) (Summer 1977), 69–86, which argues that Lincoln's victory in Cleveland must be seen in terms of the religious composition of the city. For a collection of articles see also William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party 1852–1856 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1987), David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995), Osborn H. Oldroyd, Lincoln's Campaign, or The Political Revolution of 1860 (Chicago, Laird & Lee, 1896), Octavia Roberts, Lincoln in Illinois (Boston, Houghton Mifllin, 1918), and William E. Doster, Lincoln and Episodes of the Civil War (New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1915).

⁴⁴� See a complete set of historiographical articles in Frederick Luebke, Ethnic Voters and the Election of Lincoln (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1971).

⁴⁵� See Gustave Körner in Thomas J. McCormack, ed., The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1809–1896: Life-sketches Written at the Suggestion of His Children, 2 Vols. (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Torch Press, 1909), Vol. II, 443.

⁴⁶� See Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years Vol. IV (New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1926), 391–7.

⁴⁷� See Proceedings of the Chicago City Council, 4 May 1865. Paul M. Angle wrote that "solemn vocal and instrumental music was performed during the entire night." Paul M. Angle, Germania Club Centennial Book, 1865–1965, 6. Author's archive and UIC Special Collections.

⁴⁸� See Chicago Tribune, 2 May 1865.

⁴⁹� For a much more detailed discussion of this funeral and its German consequences see Raymond Lohne, Founded at the Bier of Lincoln: A History of the Germania Club of Chicago 1865–1986 (Ph.D. Diss., Proquest Publishing, 2007).

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