GERMANS IN AMERICA. By ERNEST BRUNCKEN. There has been considerable activity within the last few years in exploring the sources of information regarding the part played by immigrants of German tongue and their descendants during the colonial and revolutionary periods. But almost nothing has been done hitherto by historical students writing in English to elucidate the history of the German element since the war of the Revolution. Even systematic attempts at collecting materials regarding this phase of American history are few and far between. Aside from the more or less desultory attempts of occasional individuals, and of late a few German societies and clubs, the student finds no assistance in his search for sources. What little has been written in English regarding the subject is of an economic rather than historical character; very few scholars seem to be aware that Germanimmigration has had, during the last hundred years, an interesting course of historical development, and that it is quite impossible to understand the social and political history of those portions of our country where German settlers have been numerous and influential without acquainting one's self with the successive stages of that development. Perhaps the temptation is great to consider the immigrants from German-speaking countries as merely a part of the great waves of westward migration to which we owe the conquest of a continent. If this view were correct, there could be no question of a separate history of German-Americans as a part of the general history of our people. This view would probably be correct if the German immigrants, during these hundred years, had consisted exclusively of people who came here simply to better their material condition. But the truth is that a very large portion of Germans, especially during the period from 1815 to 1860, came here for far different reasons. They came here because they hoped to realize in the Western Hemisphere certain political and social ideals. To this class belong not only the political exiles proper-i. e., persons who were compelled to leave their native land in order to escape punishment for political offenses-but also the much larger class of persons who had never come into conflict with the laws, but sympathized with the revolutionary movements in the old country to such an extent that they could not rest satisfied at home. Not a few of these people were in comfortable circumstances, while others had held places of trust and influ ence in their native land. The effect of their activity in their adopted country on the political and social life of large por tions of the United States has been very great and is plainly perceptible to the present day. It follows that the nature of their influence and the manner in which they exercised it become highly important subjects of historical investigation. Another impulse, apart from that of seeking for material improvement, which brought many thousands of Germans to this country, was of a religious nature. The pietistic movement which was such an important factor in the earlier German immigration still survived during the earlier years of the nineteenth century, but it had little influence on the general fate of the German element. It expended itself in the organi zation of communistic settlements, as it has done so frequently from the days of the "Woman in the Desert" to those of Zoar and New Harmony. But of quite a different nature was the movement of the Old Lutherans into this country. The ideas of the leaders of that movement, skillfully availing themselves of the hunger of the North German peasantry for land which the West offered them in abundance, is still powerful among the adherents of the Lutheran Church in America, and one of the strongest conservative forces in existence. There is no appreciable number of Catholics who came to the United States principally for religious reasons. But the German element within the Roman Church holds, in some respects, so distinct a position, that its history must be thor oughly understood by the student who would analyze the influence of that powerful ecclesiastical organization upon American life. The history of German immigration during the nineteenth century may be roughly divided into two periods. The decade |