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THE HYPHEN IN 
 AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 An Address Delivered at Johnstown, Pa., 
 August 31, 1 9 1 6, on German Day 
 
 By George Seibel 
 
 (Reprinted from the "New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung" of 
 September 4, 1916.) 
 
 This pamphlet can be secured in any quantity at five cents 
 a copy, fifty cents a dozen, or three dollars a hundred, from 
 
 NEEB-HIRSCH PUBLISHING CO., 
 Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 

 GERMANY AND AMERICA 
 
 By George Seibel 
 
 In German forests Liberty was born — 
 
 There Armin overthrew the boast of Eomc; 
 
 There Truth and Beauty found another home, 
 When from the holy soil of Hellas torn; 
 There was the badge of Courage humbly worn, 
 
 There Faith hath reared aloft her proudest dome; 
 
 While Song rose radiant from her fountains' foam, 
 Hypocrisy fell blasted by her scorn. 
 
 America, thou art the heir of all 
 
 The toil and dream, the glory and the song! 
 
 Her sons have died for thee in many wars — 
 And canst thou like a stranger see her fall. 
 Or 'lend a hand in that eternal wrong 
 
 -. To blot this blazing splendor from the stars! 
 
 m6 
 
THE HYPHEN 
 IN AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 By GEORGE SEIBEL 
 
 Editor Pittsburgh "Volksblatt & Freiheits Freund." 
 
 -^^URING the past two years a new disease has 
 ^M^ made its appearance in the United States, a 
 malignant malady which no one had ever suspected 
 before. It originated in something that seems to be 
 harmless enough — a mere mark of punctuation. Of 
 course, those who are familiar with the history of 
 medicine have heard of the dangerous comma 
 bacillus, discovered by Doctor Koch. He had some 
 idea of the perils which lurked in the printer's case, 
 yet even he couldn't have realized what a dire 
 menace was hid in the seemingly innocuous hyphen. 
 It remained for a famous Doctor from Princeton to 
 discover this, and his horrifying discovery was veri- 
 fied by the researches of another wise man — the peer- 
 less navigator of the River of Doubt, the eminent 
 founder of the Ananias Club, the mighty hunter of 
 the Whiskered Bird, the discoverer of the Ten Com- 
 mandments, the modern Diogenes, who is rushing up 
 and down the land, searching for an honest man, not 
 with a lantern but a looking-glass. 
 
 The hyphen, however, is dangerous only in certain 
 combinations. You may be an Anglo-Saxon, or a 
 British-American, or Scotch-Irish, or a score of othef 
 things with hyphens, and the hyphen will be a mark 
 of distinction and a badge of honor. But if you are 
 
a German-American — that is, during the past two 
 years — the hyphen is as dreadful as the brand of 
 Cain, Formerly, when a careless workman smoked 
 a pipe in a powder-factory and was blown up, people 
 said it served him right. Nowadays, when hundreds 
 of careless and unskilled workmen all over the coun- 
 try, raked up from everywhere to manufacture 
 munitions, blow up themselves and the factories 
 where they work eighteen hours a day, the cry is at 
 once raised, "Hunt the Hyphen!" 
 
 If somebody with a German name, having heard 
 that an American nurse in Germany died of blood- 
 I')oisoning because she had no antiseptic rubber 
 gloves, attempts to smuggle some sheet rubber into 
 Germany, he is at once haled before a tribunal for 
 the violation of American neutrality. He or she is 
 bitterly attacked in scurrilous articles on the front 
 page of papers which circulate especially in the 
 circles that year after year swindle the United States 
 Government by smuggling silks and furs from 
 Europe, though they could well afford to pay the 
 duties. But it makes a great deal of difference 
 whether a British-American hyphenate smuggles furs 
 and silks into America, or whether a German-Amer 
 ican hyphenate tries to smuggle rubber into Ger- 
 many. The one is only cheating the American people, 
 but the other is disobeying the British foreign office. 
 
 It would take a day to tell you all the horrors 
 and crimes committed by these wicked Hyphens. 
 
 Why, do you know that some even had the 
 audacity to say they would not vote for the re-elec- 
 tion of President Wilson. They did not care, it 
 seems, how bad the "London Times" might feel if 
 King George's American Maharajah should be de- 
 posed. These wicked Hyphens are utterly devoid 
 
 i 
 
of human sympathy. Some of them even had the 
 temerity to criticise this same President Wilson 
 M'hen he declined to attend the unveiling of a monu- 
 ment to General Nathanael Greene. Who vfas 
 General Greene? Second in command to George 
 Washington. Who was George Washington? He 
 was a hyphenate of 1776, 
 
 Do you know that if you printed extracts today 
 from the writings of Washington, Jefferson, Frank- 
 lin, Paine, and their associates, and attempted to 
 smuggle them into Canada or Ireland or India, you 
 would probably be arrested? Why, there is even a 
 little pamphlet written by William Jennings Bryan, 
 to bring which into India would subject a man to 
 being cast into prison. 
 
 Sometimes I wish that old Johann Peter Zenger 
 could come back to us. Zenger, a German hyphen- 
 ate of the year 1733, was the first apostle and 
 martyr of the American free press. He founded the 
 first newspaper in America that tried to tell the 
 truth. The truth, then as now, was unpalatable to 
 the English authorities, so Zenger 's paper was or- 
 dered to be burned by the hangman, and Zenger was 
 thrown into jail. A trifling inconvenience like that 
 did not scare a man like Zenger. He kept on editing 
 his paper from his cell, giving instructions to the 
 printers through a crack of the door. After years 
 of persecution he established in America the prin- 
 ciple of the free press, free until it was again fettered 
 by chains of British gold. 
 
 Remember that it was a German-American 
 hyphenate who first secured for America the liberty 
 of the press. The hyphenates have been first in a 
 great many things, their connection with which in 
 our day has almost been forgotten. Above all, they 
 
have always been first in every fight for liberty, in 
 every battle against oppression, in every war for 
 human rights. 
 
 Do you know that the first protest against negro 
 slavery voiced on this continent came from German- 
 town in the year 1688, and the arguments were such 
 that it w^as impossible to refute them? It took nearly 
 150 years for the Puritans of New England to catch 
 up with the humane idealism of Franz Daniel 
 Pastorius and his comrades, whom the poet Whittier 
 has called: 
 
 "The German-born pilgrims who first dared to brave 
 The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave." 
 
 Do you know that the first rebel against British 
 tyranny on this continent was a hyphenate, Jacob 
 Leisler? Just as, two centuries later, the first men 
 on this continent to preach the new economic gospel 
 of Socialism were hyphenated Germans. 
 
 Do you know that it was a German newspaper, 
 the "Staatsbote," which first told the people of the 
 Colonies that the Declaration of Independence had 
 been adopted? 
 
 Do you know that the first Bible printed in 
 America was printed by the hyphenated Christoph 
 S'aur in 1743, forty years before any other Bible was 
 printed in America? 
 
 Do you know that fully two hundred years earlier 
 a German hyphenate, Johann Cromberger, had es- 
 tablished the first printing office in the new world, 
 in the City of Mexico? 
 
 Do you know that the first book on education 
 produced in America was written by Christoph Dock 
 in 1754, and that the first kindergarten was brought 
 over in 1826 by Friedrich Eapp? 
 
 Do you know that the first American Encyclo- 
 
pedia was compiled by Francis Lieber in 1828? 
 
 Today our greatest Sanscrit scholar is Maurice 
 Bloomfield, our foremost Semitic master is Paul 
 Haupt, our most eminent authority on Chinese is 
 Friedrich Hirth, 'our best-known Oriental archaeolo- 
 gist is Hermann V. Hilprecht. 
 
 The things of the mind and the spirit were 
 always their first concern, but the German Pilgrims 
 have been no less conspicuous as pioneers in the 
 fields of industry and commerce. 
 
 Do you know that Wilhelm Rittenhaus in 1690 
 erected the first paper mill in America? 
 
 Do you know that Thomas Ruetter in 1716 
 founded the first iron-works in Pennsylvania? 
 
 Do you know that another German, Kaspar 
 Wuester, in 1738, founded the first glass-factory in 
 America ? 
 
 Do you know that a hyphenated Pennsylvania 
 Dutchman, Thomas Leiper, in 1806, constructed the 
 first railroad in America? 
 
 Do you know that a German built the first steam- 
 boat that plowed our western waters, and another 
 German as her captain made the first trip from Pitts- 
 burgh to New Orleans? 
 
 Do you know that the first suspension bridge was 
 flung, a hyphen of steel, across an American river by 
 the hyphenated Johann August Roebling, as if he 
 wished to impress upon the world the fact that the 
 hyphen unites, it does not separate? 
 
 Do you know that a hyphenated German- 
 American is "the foremost electrical engineer of the 
 United States, and therefore of the world"? I am 
 quoting the words of the President of Harvard 
 University in conferring a degree upon Karl P. Stein- 
 metz. 
 
How many of our giant enterprises were founded 
 by these despised hyphenates! I shall name only 
 four. The great United States Steel Corporation 
 sprang from the furnaces of Andreas and Anton 
 Kloman, started about 1850 ; the family of the man 
 who may be regarded as the father of the modern 
 Department Store, John Wanamaker, was originally 
 known as Wannemacher ; the ancestors of the founder 
 of the Standard Oil business were called Roggen- 
 felder; and all over the world, in 57 languages, you 
 will see the praise of the 57 varieties associated with 
 the hyphenated name of Heinz. 
 
 Even so in the contiguous realms of beauty and 
 of truth, in the radiant creations of art and the 
 stupendous achievements of science, the Germans in 
 America have done their share and need not be 
 ashamed. 
 
 Do you know that the Capitol at Washington, the 
 most majestic structure in the new world, is the work 
 of a German hyphenate ? Do you know that the most 
 beautiful building in the new world, the Library of 
 Congress, is also the work of two hyphenated 
 Germans ? 
 
 Do you know that the two largest telescopes and 
 the two most important observatories in the United 
 States were the gift of two hyphenates, Lick and 
 Yerkes? A German-American, Heinrich Schliemann, 
 dug up the buried grandeur of Greece and raised 
 the mighty men of Homer from the world of shades. 
 
 Do you know that Johann Behrent, in 1775, built 
 the first American piano? Do you know that you 
 can't buy an unhyphenated piano worth playing? 
 
 The Germans have given us the singing society 
 and the symphony orchestra, two great agencies to 
 uplift and civilize the human family. But in more 
 
utilitarian fields of humanitarian endeavor we also 
 owe to them some of our most admirable institutions. 
 It was a German Barbarian, Henry Bergh, who 
 founded the societies for the prevention of cruelty 
 to animals and children. It was a German Hun, 
 Arthur von Briesen, who started the first Legal Aid 
 Society, the precursor of hundreds, in the new world 
 and the old, that have helped to bring justice to the 
 poor man. 
 
 But there is another field in which the Germans 
 of America have not been so prominent — the field 
 of politics. They have a constitutional incapacity 
 which they will have to overcome, for the sake of 
 democracy. Politics in a democracy is the art of 
 asking for something and getting your neighbors to 
 think they are making you take it. The average 
 German prefers to earn what he gets and to owe no 
 man anything, and this has kept him away from the 
 political grab-bag. But so far as he has gone into 
 politics, he has always been the idealist, the states- 
 man of pure purpose and lofty courage. 
 
 Do you know that the original Lincoln man was 
 Gustav Koerner, a bold bad hyphenate — what our 
 whipped curs would call a "professional German"? 
 Do you know that Christian Roselius, a hyphenate 
 of Louisiana, was one man who had the patriotic 
 courage to refuse to sign the Confederate constitu- 
 tion? 
 
 Do you know that the first treasurer of the United 
 States was a hyphenated German-American, Hillegas? 
 He served for fourteen years, and helped pull Uncle 
 Sam out of many a hole. Look at his picture on the 
 next ten-dollar bill you hand over to the German 
 Red Cross Fund. 
 
 Do you know that the first speaker of the Amer- 
 ican Congress was a hj^phenated German- American, 
 
Muehlenberg? And in our generation the father of 
 Civil Service Reform was that great champion of 
 liberty in two worlds, the dauntless fighter of 1848 
 and 1861, the sage and statesman, Carl Schurz. 
 
 If they have not held so many of the offices, the 
 German- Americans have fought more of the battles 
 of America. In every great conflict they have poured 
 their blood, blood from the Rhine and the Oder, from 
 the Elbe and the Danube, upon the altar of patriotic 
 devotion. 
 
 The War of American Independence was largely 
 fought by German soldiers. When Washington 
 called for volunteers, the first to arrive w^ere German 
 sharp-shooters from Berks county. Squads of Ger- 
 man-American riflemen tramped six hundred miles 
 from Virginia to Massachusetts to help throw the 
 British out of the American colonies. It seems that 
 they did not succeed in throwing all of them out, 
 and a few more squads should go up to Boston and 
 finish the job. 
 
 When a conspiracy against Washington's life was 
 discovered, it became necessary to provide him with 
 a body-guard that could be trusted absolutely. 
 Where was such a body-guard to be found? Where 
 but among the Germans of Berks and Lancaster 
 counties, Pennsylvania? Their captain was Major 
 Bartholomaeus von Heer, a Prussian. If any one 
 had come to George Washington, the friend of Heer 
 and Steuben, and told him it was necessary to crush 
 the Prussians, George Washington would have had 
 the Tory scoundrel locked in the guard-house. 
 
 It was not only the hundred and fifty stalwart 
 men of Washington's body-guard that showed how 
 the Germans stood during the War of the Rebellion. 
 When Congress ordered Pennsylvania to furnish six 
 companies, our hyphenated state furnished nine, four 
 
 10 
 
of them entirely German. A German manufacturer 
 furnished most of the cannon and rifles for Wash- 
 ington's army, and when the soldiers were starving 
 nine Germans donated $100,000 to buy provisions. 
 When Congress was at the point of refusing more 
 money for the purchase of arms, one man got up 
 and said: "I am only a poor ginger-bread baker, 
 but write my name down for two hundred pounds." 
 His name was Christoph Ludwig, and he was a 
 hyphenate. I have often wondered whether he was^ 
 related to the heroine, Molly Pitcher, who was also 
 a hyphenated American. Molly's maiden name was 
 Marie Ludwig, lest we forget! 
 
 The German bakers played a considerable role 
 at that time. Frau Margareta Greider for several 
 months provided the American soldiers with bread, 
 refusing to accept payment, and in addition she sub- 
 scribed 1500 guineas for the American cause. 
 
 To tell of Johann von Kalb, who died at Camden, 
 would require an epic. His death was no less heroic 
 than that of Nathan Hale. "This is nothing," were 
 his last words; "I am dying the death I have longed 
 for. I am dying for a country fighting for justice 
 and liberty." Yet he was only a Barbarian, only a 
 Hun, like Baron von Steuben, who came from the 
 armies of Frederick the Great to drill the armies of 
 Washington. Steuben found at Valley Forge an un- 
 trained mob, ready to disband in desperation. Some 
 officers were in gowns made of bedspreads. It took 
 $400 to buy a pair of boots. Steuben changed all 
 this. From the time when he came upon the scene, 
 there was an American army. At Yorktown the 
 last British army on American soil surrendered to 
 this Prussian. So the Germans drove the British 
 from America. Alas, they have come back and taken 
 Washington! Ah, would that Muehlenberg and 
 
 11 
 
Herkimer, Kalb and Steuben could come back today! 
 No names in American history shine more radi- 
 antl}^ than those of Muehlenberg and Herkimer. See 
 Muehlenberg in his pulpit, preaching his last sermon! 
 "There is a time for praying. But there is also a 
 time for fighting. That time has now come!" He 
 throws off his clerical cassock and beneath it is the 
 uniform of Washington's Continentals. Several 
 hundred members of his congregation enlisted in his 
 regiment. 
 
 That other hero, Herkimer, paid with his life for 
 the victory of Oriskany, which sealed the fate of 
 Burgoyne's army. Smoking his pipe and reading the 
 38th Psalm, his spirit passed into the realm of 
 shadows, to walk beside Leonidas and Winkelried, to 
 sit with Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, and all the 
 dauntless dead who died that Liberty might live. 
 
 Do you know that Armistead, who defended Fort 
 McHenry against the British, was a hyphenated Hes- 
 sian? But for him it would have been sad mockery 
 to ask with Francis Scott Key, 
 
 "Oh, say, does that Star-Spangled Banner still wave 
 O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" 
 
 During the Civil War, also, the despised and 
 maligned Hyphenates played a prominent part in the 
 preservation of the Union. As compared with other 
 nationalities, the Germans furnished fifty per cent 
 more than their quota of men to the armies of the 
 North. One German family, the Pennypackers, fur- 
 nished 88 men, from common soldiers to a major- 
 general. The first volunteers to enlist were the Ger- 
 man Turners of Washington. Three days after Lin- 
 coln's call, twelve hundred Germans in Cincinnati 
 were ready to march. That was real preparedness! 
 Today preparedness consists in being ready to sell 
 ammunition to the government at a fat profit. 
 
 12 
 
No less than forty-eight Germans rose to the rank 
 of General in the Union armies. Their names are not 
 as familiar as some others, because they did not think 
 that their service entitled them to be kept on the 
 public payroll the remainder of their lives. But there 
 are no more distinguished names than those on this 
 roster : 
 
 Gen. Carl Schurz 
 
 Gen. Franz Sigel 
 
 Gen, Adolph von Steinwehr 
 
 Gen. Alexander von Schimmelpfennig 
 
 Gen. Louis Blenker 
 
 Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus 
 
 Gen. George von bcuack 
 
 Gen. Konrad Krez 
 
 Gen. Alban Schoepf 
 
 Gen. Julius Stand 
 
 Gen. Samuel Peter Heintzelmann 
 
 Gen, J. H, Heintzelmann 
 
 Gen, G. D". Wagner 
 
 Gen. August V. Kautz 
 
 Gen. Hugo Wangelin 
 
 Gen. Galusha Pennypacker 
 
 Gen. Friedrich Hecker 
 
 Gen. Max Weber 
 
 Gen, August Willich 
 
 Gen. Friedrich Salomon 
 
 Gen. Karl Salomon 
 
 Gen. Edward S. Salomon 
 
 Gen. Isaak Wister 
 
 Gen. Heinrich von Bohlen 
 
 Gen. Franz Hassendeubel 
 
 Gen, Louis Zahm 
 
 Gen, Gottfried Weitzel 
 
 Gen, Theodor Schwan 
 
 Gen, Adolph Buschbeck 
 
 Gen, Wilhelm Heine 
 
 Gen. Gustav Kaemmerling 
 
 Gen. Louis von Blessing 
 
 Gen. August Mohr 
 
 Gen. Julius Eaith 
 Gen, F, C. Winkler Gen, G, E, Paul 
 
 Gen, Johann A, Koltes Gen. Karl Leopold Mathies 
 
 Gen. Hermann Lieb Gen. Edward S. Meyer 
 
 Gen. Alexander von Schrader Gen. George A. Custer 
 
 Gen, William C, Kueffner Gen. Adolph A. Engelmana 
 
 Gen, George W, Mindel Gen. Joseph Gerhardt 
 
 Gen. Felix Salm-Salm Gen. Hermann Haupt 
 
 13 
 
Forty-eight names — and there are others! 
 
 If it had not been for the Germans, both Missouri 
 and Maryland would have been lost to the Union. 
 One-third of the Union armies was of German blood. 
 One man out of every ten was bom in Germany. 
 General Robert Lee said, and Mrs. Jeff Davis repeated 
 the sentiment: "Take the Dutch out of the Union 
 ■army, and we could lick the Yankees easily." 
 
 Yet this man Wilson in Washington dares to ques- 
 tion the loyalty of the German- Americans ! Where 
 were the Wilsons in the great crisis of the Rebellion? 
 Some were too proud to fight. Others were shoulder- 
 ing guns for the Confederacy, shooting down Union 
 soldiers with British bullets! Is it any wonder that 
 Wilson insists we must furnish ammunition to Eng- 
 land? He is paying off a family debt. 
 
 Let me tell you that if some Gibbon of the future 
 will have to write the Decline and Fall of the United 
 States, there will be no German names in his roll- 
 call of infamy. Germans have cemented with their 
 sweat and their blood the battlements of Liberty's 
 •citadel. It was not they that admitted the treacher- 
 ous island pirates to our gates. Aside from one man, 
 who made the name of Bethlehem a mockery of peace, 
 they were not Germans who sold to our worst enemy 
 the bombs and bayonets to murder our best friend. 
 It was not the Germans in America who stood by 
 smiling while Russia immolated the Jews and Japan 
 strangled China. It was not the Germans in America 
 that sold their birthright for a Carnegie pension or 
 a Rhodes scholarship. It was not the Germans in 
 America who betrayed the plans of the Irish Republic 
 to Britain and sullied their souls with the blood of 
 Dublin's hero band. It was not the Germans in 
 America who spat upon the Declaration of Independ- 
 
 14 
 
ence and cringed before the blood-stained bullies that 
 called Abraham Lincoln an ape ! 
 
 The German-Americans believe in the hyphen, but 
 they know that the hyphen is a mark of union, not 
 of separation. 
 
 Firm as a wall of iron they have ever stood in 
 defense of true Americanism. Still as a rock of 
 granite will they stand, amid the storm of calumny 
 and defamation, to save our country from a new 
 British conquest. Morgan may give John Bull our 
 banks, and he may buy our newspapers, but Justice 
 is mightier than Gold, and Truth defies the slander- 
 ous darts of Malice. "We can cry with Brutus, that 
 ' * We are armed so strong in honesty 
 
 That your words pass by us as the idle wind, 
 
 Which we respect not!" 
 
 And like Armistead at Fort McHenry, like Kich- 
 lein at Long Island, like Herkimer at Oriskany, like 
 Quitman at Chapultepec, like Osterhaus on Lookout 
 Mountain, like Schurz and Steinwehr on Cemetery 
 Ridge, like Custer on the Little Big Horn, like Schley 
 at Santiago, like Barbara Frietchie waving her flag 
 before the eyes of traitors, the Germans will be on 
 the firing line in any crisis — not watchfully waiting, 
 but striking hard blows for the honor and glory of 
 our flag and our country, the priceless heritage of 
 liberty, the radiant hope of humanity — that govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people, and for the people 
 may not perish from the face of the earth! 
 
 15 
 
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