  Americans Not An English People.—Careful computation made by Prof. Albert B.Faust, of Cornell University, shows that while the English, Scotch and Welsh together constituted 30.2per cent. of the white population of the United States of the whole of 81,731,957, according to the census of1910, the German element, including Hollanders, made up 26.4per cent. of the total, and constituted a close second, the Irish coming next with a percentage of18.6.
According to this table, more than twenty-six Americans out of every hundred are of German origin and about thirty out of every hundred only are either of English, Scotch or Welsh descent. Recent writers, like Dr.William Griffis, and Douglas Campbell (“The Puritan in Holland, England and America”) have vigorously disputed the theory that the Americans are an English people. As Prof. Faust shows, only 30.2per cent. of the mixed races of the United States are of English origin, while nearly 70per cent. are of other racial descent. “She (England) has a conviction that whatever good there is in us is wholly English, when the truth is that we are worth nothing except as far as we have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism.” James Russell Lowell in “Study Windows.” “Most American authors and all Englishmen who have written on the subject, set out with the theory that the people in the United States are an English race, and that their institutions, when not original, are derived from England. These assumptions underlie all American histories, and they have come to be so generally accepted that to question them seems almost to savor of temerity.... Certainly no intelligent American can study the English people as he does those of the Continent, and then believe that we are of the same race, except as members of the Aryan division of the human family, with the same human nature.”—Douglas Campbell. “The Puritan in Holland, England and America,” ChapterI. “The Germans were among the earliest and the most numerous of American settlers. The Anglo-Saxons are the acknowledged masters of the earth. The bulk of the early immigrants were of these two stocks. Examine the matter from any angle, and it is apparent that the American people are the direct, immediate descendants of world empire builders. “The American colonies were all settled by British, French, Germans, Spanish and other inhabitants of the north and west of Europe. The central and western Europeans played no part in the early history of the colonies. Colonial ancestry means the ancestry of the world’s conquering peoples. “Immigration during most of the nineteenth century was from the same portion of Europe. The immigration records (kept only since 1820) show that between that year and 1840 the immigrants from Europe numbered 594,504, among whom there were 358,994 from the British Isles [including, of course, the Irish—Editor] and 159,215 from Germany, making a total from the two countries of 518,209, or 87 per cent. of the immigrants arriving in the 20-year period. During the next 20years (1840-1860) the total of immigrants from Europe was 4,050,159, of whom the British Isles furnished 2,385,846, and Germany 1,386,392, making for these two countries 95 per cent. of the whole. Even during the 20 years from 1860 to 1880, 82per cent. of the immigrants to the United States from Europe hailed from the British Isles and from Germany. During the most of the nineteenth century European immigration was overwhelmingly British and German. “Nearly nine-tenths of the early immigrants to the United States came from these countries. They and the countries immediately adjoining (See “The German Element in American Life,” elsewhere.) Whatever racial prejudice and political bias may attempt to do, philosophers and thinkers know that from the German race emanated the ideals of freedom and personal liberty which is the heritage of the whole world. To that great French thinkers, Montesquieu, Guizot and others have candidly testified, as have Englishmen, such as Hume and Carlyle. In describing the battle of Chalons in his standard work, “The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,” Prof. E.S. Creasy says: In order to estimate the full importance of the battle of Chalons we must keep steadily in mind who and what the Germans were and the important distinction between them and the numerous other races that assailed the Roman Empire; and it is to be understood that the Gothic and Scandinavian nations are included in the German race. It affects more or less the whole west of Europe, from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of Sicily, from the Oder and the Adriatic to the Hebrides and to Lisbon. It is true that the language spoken over a large portion of this space is not predominantly German; but even in France and Italy and Spain the influence of the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Lombards, while it has colored even the language, has in blood and institutions left its mark legibly and indelibly. Germany, the low countries, Switzerland for the most part, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and our own islands, are all in language, in blood and institutions, German most decidedly. But all South America is peopled with Spaniards and Portuguese; all North America and Australia with Englishmen. I say nothing of the prospects It has been extravagantly modish to distort ethnological facts and set up new gods, but the assailants of the German race have not been able successfully to deny that tremendous influence which has given birth to the free institutions of the world, and there are not wanting among Americans of authority those who have been openly outspoken for the truth. President Garfield in his article on “My Experiences as a Lawyer” in the “North American Review” for June, 1887, p.569, observed, alluding to a speech made by him on the death of his friend, Representative Gustav Schleicher of Texas in1879: “We are accustomed to call England our fatherland. It is a mistake; one of the greatest of modern historians writing the history of the English people has said that England is not the fatherland of the English-speaking people, but Germany. I go into that and say, ‘The real fatherland of the people of this country is Germany, and our friend who has fallen came to us direct from our fatherland, and, not, like the rest of us, around by the way of England.’ Then I give a little sketch of German character, and what Carlyle and Montesquieu said, that the British constitution came out of the woods of Germany.” In a like manner Charles E. Hughes, while governor of New York State, in a speech at Mount Vernon in1908, said: Did you ever think that a very large portion of our people, despite their present distinction of home and birthplace, and even nationality, are descended from those common ancestors who a few years ago lived their life in the German forests? There were nourished the institutions of freedom; and if any one were to point to any place in the world to which, above all, we trace our free institutions, we would point, above all, to the forests of Germany. |
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