Volume I Part 2 (1/2)

(Jacobs, 235.) Also in the cause of liberty and humanity the German immigrants in America stood in the front ranks.

34. First Anti-Slavery Declaration in America.--The importation of negro slaves to America was practised by the English and Dutch since the sixteenth century, without disapproval on the part of the Puritans and Quakers, who boasted of being the fathers of liberty and the defenders of human rights. The inhabitants of Germantown, led by Pastorius, were the first to draw up, on February 18, 1688, a protest against this trade in human flesh and blood. The remarkable doc.u.ment, addressed to the meeting of the Quakers in Pennsylvania, reads as follows: ”This is to ye Monthly Meeting held at Richard Warrel's. These are the reasons why we are against the traffick of men Body, as followeth: Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner? to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life? How fearful and fainthearted are many on sea when they see a strange vessel, being afraid it should be a Turk, and they should be taken and sold for slaves into Turckey. Now what is this better done as Turcks doe? Yea rather is it worse for them, which say they are Christians; for we hear that ye most part of such Negers are brought hither against their will and consent; and that many of them are stollen. Now, tho' they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men, like as we will be done our selves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience, which is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body, except of evildoers which is another case. But to bring men hither, or to robb and sell them against their will, we stand against. In Europe there are many oppressed for conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed which are of a black colour. And we, who know that men must not commit adultery, some doe commit adultery in others, separating wifes from their husbands and giving them to others; and some sell the children of those poor creatures to other men. Oh! doe consider well this things, you who doe it; if you would be done at this manner? and if it is done according to Christianity? You surpa.s.s Holland and Germany in this thing. This makes an ill report in all those countries of Europe, where they hear off, that ye Quackers doe here handel men like they handel there ye cattel. And for that reason some have no mind or inclination to come hither, and who shall maintaine this your cause or plaid for it? Truly we can not do so, except you shall inform us better hereoff, that Christians have liberty to practise this things. Pray!

What thing on the world can be done worse towards us, then if men should robb or steal us away, and sell us for slaves to strange countries, separating housbands from their wifes and children. Being now this is not done at that manner, we will be done at, therefore we contradict and are against this traffick of menbody. And we who profess that it is not lawful to steal, must likewise avoid to purchase such are stollen but rather help to stop this robbing and stealing if possible; and such men ought to be delivered out of ye hands of ye Robbers and sett free as well as in Europe. Then is Pennsylvania to have a good report, instead it hath now a bad one for this sacke in other countries. Especially whereas ye Europeans are desirous to know in what manner ye Quackers doe rule in their Province; and most of them doe look upon us with an envious eye. But if this is done well, what shall we say is done evill?

If once these slaves (which they say are so wicked and stubborn men) should joint themselves, fight for their freedom and handel their masters and mastrisses as they did handel them before, will these masters and mastrisses tacke the sword at hand and warr against these poor slaves, like we are able to believe, some will not refuse to doe?

Or have these Negers not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep them slaves? Now consider well this thing, if it is good or bad? and in case you find it to be good to handel these blacks at that manner, we desire and require you hereby lovingly, that you may inform us here in, which at this time never was done, that Christians have such a liberty to do so, to the end we shall be satisfied in this point, and satisfie lickewise our good friends and acquaintances in our natif country, to whose it is a terrour or fairfull thing that men should be handeld so in Pennsylvania. This is from our Meeting at Germantown held ye 18. of the 2. month 1688, to be delivered to the monthly meeting at Richard Warrel's. gerret hendericks derick op de graeff Francis Daniell Pastorius Abraham op Den graeff.” (Cronau, _German Achievements_, 20.) This protest was submitted at several meetings of the Quakers. But it was not before 1711 that the Quakers introduced ”an act to prevent the importation of Negroes and Indians into the province,” and still later that they declared against slave-trading. Also the Salzburgers in Georgia were opposed to slavery, though Bolzius himself was compelled to buy slaves on account of the lack of white laborers. The Germans also were first and most emphatic in condemning the cruelties connected with the ”white slavery” of the so-called Redemptioners.

SLAVERY OF REDEMPTIONERS.

35. Cruelly Deceived by the Newlanders.--Toward the middle of the eighteenth century there were some 80,000 Germans in Pennsylvania, almost one-half of the entire inhabitants. In 1749 about 12,000 arrived.

Benjamin Franklin and others expressed the fear: ”They come in such numbers that they will soon be able to enforce their laws and language upon us, and, uniting with the French, drive all Englishmen out.” Many of the Germans were so-called Redemptioners, who, in payment of their freight, were sold and treated as slaves for a stipulated number of years. Most of them had been shamefully deceived and decoyed into the horrors of this ”white slavery” by Dutch and English merchants and conscienceless agents whom Muhlenberg called Newlanders (Neulaender).

In Holland they were called ”soul-traders.” By means of stories of the fabulous wealth acquired in America they enticed Germans and other emigrants into the signing of papers in the English language which not only committed them and their children to slavery, but sometimes separated husband and wife, parents and children. The following is an instance of the revolting horrors connected with this trade: In 1793, when the yellow fever prevailed in Chester, a cargo of Redemptioners was sent thither, and a market for nurses opened. (Jacobs, 236.) In Pennsylvania this kind of slavery continued from about 1740 to the second decade of the nineteenth century. Quakers and other ”friends of liberty and humanity” exploited the system. Foremost among those who exposed and condemned it were Germans, notably Muhlenberg, who described the abominable business of the Newlanders as follows: ”These Newlanders first make themselves acquainted with the merchants in the Netherlands.

From them they receive, in addition to free freight, a certain gratification (_douceur_) for each family or each unmarried person which they enlist in Germany and bring to the traders in Holland. In order to attain their object, they resort to all manner of tricks. As long as the comedy requires it, they make a great show in dress, frequently look at their watches, and make a pretense of great wealth, in order to excite a desire within the hearts of people to emigrate to so happy and rich a country. They give such descriptions of America as make one believe it to contain nothing but Elysian fields, bearing seed of themselves, without toil and labor, mountains full of solid gold and silver, and wells pouring forth nothing but milk and honey, etc. Who goes as a servant, becomes a lord; who goes as a maid, becomes a milady; a peasant becomes a n.o.bleman; a citizen and artisan, a baron!” Deceived and allured by such stories, Muhlenberg continues, ”The families break up, sell what little they have, pay their debts, turn over what may be left to the Newlanders for safe-keeping, and finally start on their journey.

Already the trip on the Rhine is put to their account. In Holland they are not always able to depart immediately, and frequently they get a small amount of money, advanced by the traders, on their account. The expensive freight from Holland to America is added, also the head-money.

Before they leave Holland, they must sign a contract in the English language. The Newlanders persuade and rea.s.sure the people [who, not understanding the English, knew not what they were signing] that they, as impartial friends, would see to it that, in the contract, no wrong was done their countrymen. The more freight in persons a merchant and captain can bring in a s.h.i.+p, the more profitable it is, provided that they do not die _en route_, for then it may be disadvantageous. For this reason the s.h.i.+ps are kept clean, and every means is employed to deliver healthy ware to the market. For a year or so they may not have been as careful, suffering to die what could not live. When parents die on the s.h.i.+ps and leave children, the captains and the most intelligent of the Newlanders, acting as guardians and orphan-fathers, take the chests and inheritance in their safe-keeping, and the orphans, arriving on the land, are sold for their own freight and the freight of their deceased parents; the real little ones are given away, and the inheritance of their parents just about pays for the manifold troubles caused to the guardians. This crying deceit moved some well-disposed German inhabitants of Pennsylvania, especially in and about Philadelphia, to organize a society, which, as much as possible, would see to it that, at the arrival of the poor emigrants, they were dealt with according to justice and equity.” When a s.h.i.+p of emigrants has arrived in the harbor of Philadelphia, Muhlenberg proceeds, ”the newcomers are led in procession to the court-house, in order to take the oath of allegiance to the King of Great Britain; then they are led back to the s.h.i.+p.

Hereupon the papers announce that so and so many German people are to be sold for their freight. Whoever is able to pay his own freight receives his freedom. Those having wealthy friends endeavor to obtain a loan from them to pay the freight; but these are few. The s.h.i.+p is the market. The buyers pick out some and bargain with them as to the years and days of service, whereupon they make them bind themselves before the magistrate by a written instrument for a certain period as their property. The young, unmarried people of both s.e.xes sell first, their lot being a good or a bad one, for better or worse, according to the character of the buyer and G.o.d's providence or permission. We have frequently noted that children who were disobedient to their parents, and left them stubbornly and against their will, here found masters from whom they received their reward. Old and married people, widows and the frail, n.o.body wants to buy, because there is here already an abundance of poor and useless people who become a burden to the state. But if they have healthy children, then the freight of the old people is added to that of the children, and the children must serve so much longer, are sold so much dearer, and scattered far and wide from each other, among all manner of nations, languages, and tongues, so that they rarely see their old parents or brothers and sisters again in this life; many also forget their mother-tongue. In this way the old people leave the s.h.i.+p free, but poor, naked, and weak, looking as though they were coming from the graves, and go begging in the city at the doors of the German inhabitants; for, as a rule, the English, afraid of infection, close the doors on them. Such being the conditions, one's heart might bleed seeing and hearing how these poor human beings, who came from Christian lands into the New World, partly moan, cry, lament, and throw up their arms because of the misery and separation which they had never imagined would befall them, partly call upon and adjure all elements and sacraments, yea, all thunderbolts and the terrible inhabitants of h.e.l.l to smash into numberless fragments and torment the Newlanders and the Dutch merchants, who deceived them! Those who are far away hear nothing of it, and the properly so-called Newlanders only laugh about it, and give them no other consolation beyond that given to Judas Iscariot by the Pharisees, Matt. 27, 4: 'What is that to us? See thou to that!' Even the children, when they are cruelly kept and learn that they must remain in bondage all the longer on account of their parents, conceive a hatred and bitterness toward them.” (G., 474 ff.)

36. Mittelberger on Redemptioners.--Mittelberger, who, in 1750, brought to America the organ built at Heilbronn for the Lutheran church in Philadelphia, and served Muhlenberg also as schoolteacher in Providence, describes, in substance, the sad lot of the Redemptioners as follows: ”Healthy and strong young people were bound to serve from three to six years, young people from their tenth to their twenty-first year.

Many parents, in order to obtain their freedom, must themselves bargain about and sell their own children like cattle. A wife must bear the freight of her husband if he arrives sick; in like manner the husband is held for his sick wife; thus he must serve not only for himself, but, in addition, five or six years for his sick spouse. When both are sick, they are brought into the hospital, but only when no buyer is found. As soon as they are well, they must serve in payment of their freight, or pay, if they have property. It frequently happens that a whole family, husband, wife, and children, being sold to different buyers, are separated, especially if they are unable to pay anything on their freight themselves. When a spouse dies on the ocean after one-half of the voyage is completed, the remaining spouse must not only pay or serve for himself, but also for the freight of the deceased one. When both parents die on the ocean, their children must serve for their own and their parents' freight till their twenty-first year. If anybody escapes a cruel master, he cannot get very far, since good provisions are made for the certain and speedy recapture of escaped Redemptioners. A liberal reward is paid to him who holds or returns a deserter. If a deserter was absent for a day, he must serve a week for it; for a week, a month; and for a month, half a year. Men of rank, skill, or learning, unable to pay their freight, or to give any surety, must serve their masters by doing manual labor like ordinary servants. While learning to perform the unaccustomed hard labor, they are treated with lashes like cattle. Many a suicide was the consequence of the abominable deceit of the Newlanders. Others sank into utter despair, or deserted, only to suffer more afterwards than before. Sometimes the merchants in Holland make a secret agreement to deliver their cargo of human beings not in Philadelphia, where they wanted to go, but at some other place, where they expect a better market, thus robbing many of the a.s.sistance of their friends and relatives in Pennsylvania. Many entrust their money to the Newlanders, who remain in Holland, and on their arrival in this country they must either serve themselves, or sell their children to serve for them.” (477 ff.) Like the negroes, the Redemptioners could be resold. The newspapers carried advertis.e.m.e.nts like the following from the _Staatsbote_ of Philadelphia: ”The time of service of a bond-maid is for sale. She is tall and strong enough to do any kind of work, and is able to perform work in the city as well as in the country. She is not sold on account of a physical defect, but only because her master has many women folks about. She has yet to serve for four and a half years.

The name of her owner may be learned from the publisher of this paper.”

(481.) As with the negro slaves the lot of a Redemptioner was not in every case physically a sad and cruel one. In Maryland the laws protected them by limiting the days of work in summer to five and a half a week, and demanding for them three hours of rest in the middle of the day during the months of greatest heat. In 1773 Pastor Kunze wrote: ”If I should ever obtain 20 pounds, I would buy the first German student landing at our coast and owing freight, put him in my upper room, begin a small Latin school, teach during the morning hours myself, and then let my servant teach and make my investment pay by charging a small fee.” (481.) Some of the honored names in American history are those of Redemptioners, among them Charles Thomson, the Secretary of Congress during the Revolution, Matthew Thornton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the parents of Major-General Sullivan. (Jacobs, 235.)

LUTHERANS IN PENNSYLVANIA.

37. Roaming About without Altar and Ministry.--Justus Falckner, in a letter to Dr. H. Muhlen, [tr. note: sic!] dated August 1, 1701, describes the ”spiritual wilderness” in and about Germantown as follows: ”As much, then, as I was able to observe the conditions of the churches in these parts and in particular in this province, they are still pretty bad. Because of the lack of any good preparations the aborigines, or Indians, remain in their blindness and barbarism. In addition to this they are scandalized by the wicked life of the Christians, and especially by the trade carried on with them, and merely acquire vices which were unknown to them before, such as drunkenness, theft, etc. The few Christians here are divided in almost in numerable sects, which kat'

exochen [tr. note: two words in Greek] may be called sects and rabbles, such as Quakers, Anabaptists, Naturalists, Libertinists, Independentists, Sabbatarians, and many others, especially secretly spreading sects, regarding whom we are at a loss what to make of them.

However, all of them agree in their beautiful principles (si Dis placet): Abolish all good order, and live for yourself as you see fit.

The Quakers are the most numerous because the Governor [William Penn]

belongs to them, so that one might call this land an anatomical laboratory of Quakers. For much as our theologians have labored to dissect this cadaver and discover its entrails, they, nevertheless, have not been able to do it as well as the Quakers are now doing it themselves in this country. It would fill a whole tract if, as could be done easily, I were to describe how they, by transgressing their own principles, make it apparent what kind of a spirit is moving them, while they, by virtue of the foundation of such principles, are scoffers and Ishmaels of all well-ordered church-life. _Hic Rhodus, hie saltant_ (Here is Rhodes, here they dance).” ”Also here” (as in Europe), Falckner proceeds, ”the Protestant Church is divided in three nations; for there is here an English Protestant Church, a Swedish Protestant Lutheran Church, and people of the German nation belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran and the Reformed Churches. The Swedes have two congregations.... But not without reason have I spoken of the Germans merely as some Evangelical Lutheran Germans and not the German Evangelical Lutheran Church, inasmuch as they are roaming about in this desert without altar and the ministry (scilicet qui ara sacerdotuque dest.i.tuti vagantur hoc in deserto), a miserable condition, indeed.

Otherwise there is a great number of Germans here. But a part of them have joined the other sects, who use the English language, which is learned first by all who come here, and some of them are Quakers and Anabaptists. Another part of them are freethinkers, uniting with n.o.body and letting their children grow up in the same way. In brief, there are Germans here, and probably the most of them, who despise G.o.d's Word and all good outward order, blaspheme and frightfully and publicly desecrate the Sacraments. Spiritus enim errorum et sectarum asylum sibi hic const.i.tuit (For the spirit of errors and sects has here established his asylum). And the chief fault and cause of this is the lack of provision for an external visible church-communion. For since, as it were, the first thesis of natural theology, inborn in all men, is 'Religiosum quendam cultum observandum, A certain religious cult must be observed,'

it happens that these people, when they come here and find no better external service, elect any one rather than none. For though they are Libertinists, nevertheless also Libertinism is not without its outward form, by which it makes itself a specific religion in none of them.”

Falckner proceeds: ”I and my brother [Daniel] attend the Swedish church, although, as yet, we understand little of the language. And by our example we have induced several Germans to come to their meetings occasionally, even though they did not understand the language, and for the purpose only of gradually drawing them out of barbarism and accustoming them to outward order, especially as one of the Swedish pastors, Mr. M. Rudman, for the sake of love and the glory of G.o.d, offered to go to the trouble of learning the German language and occasionally to deliver a German address in the Swedish church, until the Germans could have a church of their own.” In the following Falckner dwells on the great help it would afford in attracting the Indians and the children of the Quakers and drawing the young Swedes to the services if an organ could be installed in the Swedish church. (G. Fritschel, _Geschichte_, 35 ff.) The miserable condition spiritually of the Lutherans in Pennsylvania appears from a letter of their representatives to Dr. Ziegenhagen in London, dated October, 1739, in which they state: ”There is not one German Lutheran preacher in the whole land, except Caspar Stoever, now sixty miles distant from Philadelphia.” (Jacobs, 191.)

38. New Hanover, Philadelphia, Providence.--It was a motley crowd of Germans that gathered in the land of the Quakers. Indeed, Pastorius, the first mayor of Germantown, was a rather moderate pietist from the circles of Spener, but, as stated above, with him and after him came Mennonites, Tunkers, Moravians, Gichtelians, Schwenkfeldians, disciples of the cobbler of Goerlitz, Jacob Boehme, and enthusiasts who as yet had no name. (G., 242.) Before long, however, the Lutherans outnumbered all other German denominations (Moravians and German Reformed) and sects in the Quaker State, to which they came in increasingly large numbers, especially after the sad experiences of the Palatinates in New York. By 1750 the number of Germans in Pennsylvania was estimated at 60,000, of whom about two-thirds were Lutherans by birth. Though imbued with apocalyptical and mystical ideas, H. B. Koester, who arrived in 1694 with forty families, is said to have conducted the first German Lutheran services in Germantown. Before long he united with the Episcopalians and founded Christ Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, but returned to Germany in 1700. Daniel Falckner, who had emigrated with Koester, opposed the Quakers in Germantown. In Falckner's Swamp (New Hanover), he organized the first German Lutheran congregation in Pennsylvania, and is said to have erected a log church as early as 1704. In his struggle against the mismanagement of Pastorius, Falckner, in 1708, fell a prey to intrigues.

A disappointed man he went to New Jersey, where he served the congregations at Raritan, Muehlstein, Rockaway, and other points, and from 1724 to 1725 also the settlements which Kocherthal had served along the Hudson. Owing to his increasing mental weakness, Daniel Falckner, in 1731, resigned his field in favor of J. A. Wolff. He died at Raritan ten years later. In New Hanover Gerhard Henkel, the first Lutheran pastor in Virginia, continued the work from 1717 to 1728. In Philadelphia J. C.

Schulz, of Wuerttemberg, was the first Lutheran pastor of whom we have any knowledge. Educated in Stra.s.sburg, Schulz arrived in Philadelphia on September 25, 1732. He also served New Hanover and New Providence. At the latter place the first entries in the parish register date back to 1729, and the congregation numbered about one hundred communicant members when Muhlenberg took charge. In 1732 Pastor Schulz, accompanied by two lay delegates, left for Europe to collect money, and, above all, to secure laborers from Halle, for the mission-work in Pennsylvania.

These efforts terminated when Schulz was arrested in Germany for disorderly conduct. Before leaving Pennsylvania, Schulz had ordained John Caspar Stoever, a relative of Pastor J. C. Stoever, Sr., in Spottsylvania, Va., and placed him in charge of his congregations.

Stoever, Jr., had studied theology in Germany, and after his arrival in America, 1728, had been active in mission-work among the Lutherans in Pennsylvania, a labor which he zealously continued till his sudden death in 1779, while confirming a cla.s.s at Lebanon. Stoever's aversion to Pietism at first kept him from uniting with Muhlenberg. It was 1763, fifteen years after its organization, before he became a member of the Pennsylvania Ministerium. Concerning Stoever and the Agenda of 1748, Muhlenberg relates the following: ”We were minded to employ the very words of our Lord Jesus: Take and eat; this is the body of Jesus Christ, etc. Take and drink, this cup is the New Testament in the blood of Christ, etc. At the baptism of children it was our intention to ask the sponsors, or G.o.dparents: Do you renounce in the name of this child, etc.? To this the opponents [Stoever, Wagner, and their adherents]

objected strenuously before we had finished. We therefore made a change immediately and used the words which their terrified consciences desired, _viz_.: This is the _true body_, etc.; this is the _true blood_, etc., and in the formula of baptism: Peter, Paul, or Maria, dost thou renounce, etc.?” Graebner comments as follows: ”If the Wagners and Stoevers [whom Muhlenberg severely censured in 1748] had committed no other crimes but that of compelling the 'united preachers' [from Halle]

to take a decided Lutheran position, one might wish that their influence had extended still farther.” In the following year, 1749, however, the Pennsylvania Synod changed the formula of baptism so that the sponsors were asked, ”Do you renounce (believe) in the name of this child, etc.?”

(Graebner, 327.)