Preface. Americans have been ever ready to grant that Germany has contributed in the past some of the most refined ore that has been cast into the great "melting-pot." We have known that German artisans were always in demand in America on account of their excellent training, their high ideals and their capacity to assimilate with the dominant race which they found here. Most of these German immigrants have prospered and found their happi ness among us. On the other hand, Americans should not forget that Germany has also given us men of high intellectual attainments, men who have contributed their talents to America's fame as statesmen, military leaders, professors, lawyers and ministers of the Gospel. In the course of a conversation with the late Professor Marion Dexter Learned, University of Pennsylvania, the name of Francis Lieber was mentioned as one who had contributed his best efforts to America as a professor and publicist. As his youth was passed in Germany, the problem of how much America owes Germany through Lieber immediately presented itself. The following study is an attempt to solve this problem. While I was still gathering material for this monograph an untimely death overtook Professor Learned. The mature advice in the field of German-American cultural relations to which Professor Learned had devoted so much time and effort was thus denied me. To Professor Daniel B. Shumway, University of Pennsylvania, I am deeply indebted for unstinted encouragement and many helpful suggestions, for it was under his guiding hand that the study was continued and brought to print. I also wish to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Gottlieb Betz, University of Pennsylvania, for several important suggestions in respect to the arrangement of material. (7) Had my ability equaled my wish, this modest study would have been not only the last written under Professor Learned's inspiration, but also one of the finest stones in the monument of German-American cultural relations erected to the memory of this great scholar. Philadelphia, 1918. CHESTER S. PHINNEY. Introduction. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century two men of German origin had won a place of enviable affection in the hearts of our fathers. These two men were Carl Schurz and Francis Lieber. The former's name and reputation is familiar to every schoolboy of the present day, while the latter's reputation has been on the wane except in certain professional and academic circles. The reason for this is not far to seek. Introduction. The career of Carl Schurz in America was much more spectacular than that of the more studious and philosophic Lieber. The one, Schurz, is distinguished for his activity in journalism and law; for his cleverness as a politician and lecturer, but more particularly for his active service in the American Civil War, where he held the rank of a major-general of volunteers. It is for his services in the latter capacity that we know him best; the other, Lieber, while not actually bearing arms during that dreadful period of our history, did as much for his adopted country as his more famous contemporary, but in a different way. Lieber might have been of great value to the Union cause if he had entered the military service of his adopted country, because he had, as a young man, passed through a most rigorous campaign against Napoleon. From the point of view of service to his adopted country it would be futile for us to say which of the two was the greater man. They were both ardent patriots, devoted to those principles of government upon which our nation rests, active in the affairs of state, and probably more American than a large majority of native-born Americans themselves. Koerner 1 expresses the feeling of all Americans who are acquainted with the activities of Francis Lieber when he says: "America is deeply indebted to 1 'Das deutsche Element in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika, p. 174. |