Part 9
=France’s Friendship for the United States.=--The “French and Indian wars” with which the American settlers had to contend in the early history of the colonies long antedated the Revolution, and massacres were instigated by French policy of conquest and retaliation. In the Revolution a number of patriotic Frenchmen, nursing a long grievance against France’s ancient enemy, England, saw opportunity to enfeeble their country’s hated rival. Encouraged by Frederick the Great, who had a score to settle with England for the treachery which Bute had practiced against him in paying secret subsidies to Frederick’s enemy, Austria, while England was allied with him, by heroic efforts they succeeded in sending succor to the colonies in the form of troops (many of them Germans) under Lafayette. This is so well understood that the American historian, Benson J. Lossing, specifically points out in his writings what he calls the “superstition” that we owe our “being as a nation to the generosity of the French monarch and the gallantry of French warriors.” Revealing the motives that governed France, he writes:
In the Seven Years War, which ended with the treaty of 1763, France had been thoroughly humbled by England. Her pride had been wounded. She had been shorn of vast possessions in America and Asia. She had been compelled, by the terms of the treaty, to cast down the fortifications of Dunkirk and to submit forever to the presence of an English commissioner, without whose consent not a single paving stone might be moved on the quay or in the harbor of a French maritime city. This was an insult too grievous to be borne with equanimity. Its keenness was maintained by the tone of English diplomacy, which was that of a conqueror--harsh, arrogant, and often uncivil. A desire for relief from the shame became a vital principle of French policy, =and the most sleepless vigilance was maintained for the discovery of an opportunity to avenge the injury and efface the mortification=.
The quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies, which rapidly assumed the phase of contest after the port of Boston was closed, early in the summer of 1774, attracted the notice and stimulated the hope of the French government. But it seemed hardly possible for a few colonists to hold a successful or even effective contest with powerful England--“the mistress of the seas;” and it was not until the proceedings of the First Continental Congress had been read in Europe, the skirmish at Lexington and the capture of Ticonderoga had occurred, and the Second Congress had met, thrown down the gauntlet of defiance at the feet of the British ministry and been proclaimed to be “rebels” that the French cabinet saw gleams of sure promise that England’s present trouble would be sufficiently serious to give France the coveted opportunity to strike her a damaging blow.
Lossing sums up our debt to France in the following words:
That all assistance was afforded, primarily, as a part of a State policy for the benefit of France;
That the French people as such never assisted the Americans; for the French democracy did not comprehend the nature of the struggle, and had no opportunity for expression, and the aristocracy, like the government, had no sympathy with their cause;
That the first and most needed assistance was from a French citizen (Beaumarchais), favored by his government for State purposes, who hoped to help himself and his government;
That, with the exception of the services of Lafayette and a few other Frenchmen, at all times, and those of the army under Rochambeau, and the navy under De Grasse, for a few weeks in the seventh year of the struggle, the Americans derived no material aid from the French;
That the moral support offered by the alliance was injurious because it was more than counterpoised by the relaxation of effort and vigilance which a reliance upon others is calculated to inspire, and the creation of hopes which were followed by disappointment;
That the advantages gained by the French over the English, because of their co-operation with the Americans, were equivalent to any which the Americans acquired by the alliance;
That neither party then rendered assistance to the other because of any good will mutually existing, but as a means of securing mutual benefits; and
That the Americans would doubtless have secured their independence and peace sooner without their entanglements with the French than with it.
A candid consideration of these facts, in the light of present knowledge on the subject, compels us to conclude that there is no debt of gratitude due from Americans to France for services in securing their independence of Great Britain which is not cancelled by the services done by the Americans at the same time in securing for France important advantages over Great Britain. And when we consider these facts and the conduct of the French toward us during a large portion of the final decade of the last century, and of the decade of this just closed--=the hostile attitude, in our national infancy, of the inflated Directory, sustained by the French people, and the equally hostile attitude, in the hour of our greatest national distress, of the imperial cabinet, also sustained by the French people, Americans cannot be expected to endure with absolute complacency the egotism which untruthfully asserts that they owe their existence as a nation to the generosity and valor of the French=.
Though President Wilson brought back from Paris a treaty of alliance between the United States, England and France, which he asked the Senate, on July 29, 1919, to ratify, and declared that “we are bound to France by ties of friendship which we have always regarded and shall always regard as peculiarly sacred,” he stated in a much earlier work, “The State,” that though the Congress at Philadelphia had explicitly commanded Franklin, Adams and Jay, the American commissioners, to be guided by the wishes of the French court in the peace negotiations, “it proved impracticable, nevertheless, to act with France; for she conducted herself, not as the ingenuous friend of the United States, but only as the enemy of England, and, as first and always, a subtle strategist for her own interests and advantage. The American commissioners were not tricked, and came to terms separately with the English.”
Having accomplished the object of giving aid in humbling England through the loss of her colonies, the French, far from remaining our friends, became our enemies, and from 1797 to 1835 we find the messages of the Presidents abounding in complaints of the treatment France was according our young merchant marine on the high seas. In 1798 we found ourselves in a state of war with France. “Such an outburst had not been known,” says the historian, Elson, “since the Battle of Lexington.” Patriotic songs were written, and one of these, “Hail, Columbia,” still lives in our literature. Washington was again called to the command of the American army, but beyond some engagements at sea, no blows were actually struck.
But ere long France was again at her old tricks. In 1851 we were on the eve of war over the Hawaiian Islands, which France had seized, though knowing that she could never hold them save as the result of a successful war. On June 18, 1851, Secretary of State Webster instructed the American minister in Paris to say that the further enforcement of the French demands against Hawaii “would tend seriously to disturb our friendly relations with the French government.”
The third conspicuous instance of France’s persistent enmity to us was at a time when President Lincoln was harrassed by the distressing events of the most critical hours of the rebellion and the possibility of England and France together undertaking the cause of the Confederacy. England had been approached by the Emperor, Napoleon III, with a proposal for an alliance, and in both countries the Union cause was at its lowest ebb.
Justin McCarthy in his “History of Our Own Times” (II, p. 231) says: “The Southern scheme found support only in England and in France. In all other European countries the sympathy of the people and government alike went with the North.... Assurances of friendship came from all civilized countries to the Northern States except from England and France alone.”
While the Northern and Southern States were engaged in a death grapple, Napoleon III was defying the Monroe Doctrine by invading Mexico, and in 1862 was sending instructions to the French general, Forey, as follows:
People will ask you why we sacrifice men and money to establish a government in Mexico. In the present state of civilization the development of America can no longer be a matter of indifference to Europe.... =It is not at all to our interest that they should come in possession of the entire Gulf of Mexico, to rule from there the destinies of the Antilles and South America, and control the products of the New World.=
After Lee’s surrender General Slaughter of the Confederate army opened negotiations with the French Marshal Bazaine for the transfer of 25,000 Confederate soldiers to Mexico, and many distinguished Confederate officers cast their lot with the French to establish Maximilian on the throne. General Price was commissioned to recruit an imperial army in the Confederate States. Governor Harris of Tennessee and other Americans naturalized as Mexicans and now took the lead in a colonization scheme of vast proportions. The North became thoroughly alarmed. A French army co-operating with Confederate expatriates could not be tolerated on the Mexican border.
The government at Washington lodged an emphatic protest with the French government, and an army of observation of 50,000 men under General Sheridan was dispatched to the Rio Grande, ready to cross into Mexico and attack Bazaine at a moment’s notice. =The American minister in Paris was instructed by Seward to insist on a withdrawal of the French forces from Mexico, and as the French government was in no position to engage in a war in a distant country against a veteran army of a million men it was forced to yield.=
“The Emperor of the French,” writes McCarthy (p. 231), “fully believed that the Southern cause was sure to triumph, and that the Union would be broken up; he was even willing to hasten what he assumed to be the unavoidable end. He was anxious that England should join with him in some measures to facilitate the success of the South by recognizing the Government of the Southern Confederation. He got up the Mexican intervention, which assuredly he would never have attempted if he had not been persuaded that the Union was on the eve of disruption.”
The French populace was enthusiastically on the side of Napoleon in the Mexican adventure, as attested by the proceedings in the French legislature, especially by the scenes in the Senate, February 24, 1862, and in the Corps Legislatif, June 26 of the same year, when Billault, Minister of Foreign Affairs, spoke on French aims in Mexico. On March 23, 1865, Druyn de Lluys, the French Premier, notified Mr. Seward, our Secretary of State, that American intervention in favor of Juarez, the Mexican patriot, =would lead to a declaration of war on the part of France=. The necessary military preparations had been made by Marshal Bazaine, who, as related by Paul Garlot in “L’Empire de Maximilian” (Paris, 1890), had erected “fortified supports” at the United States frontier and made certain “arrangements” with Confederate leaders.
=“In our dark hours and the great convulsions of our war,” said Charles Sumner, then chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Senate, in New York, September 11, 1863, “France is forgetting her traditions.”=
=Benjamin Franklin.=--In his pointed comments on the disfavor with which practical politicians regard the independent voter in politics, Prof. A. B. Faust, of Cornell University, in his valuable work, “The German Element in the United States,” says of conditions in Pennsylvania preceding the Revolution: “The Germans, with few exceptions, could not be relied upon either by demagogues or by astute party men to vote consistently with their party organization. The politician catering to the German vote often found himself strangely deceived. He never expected that the German might think for himself and vote as seemed right to him. The politician in his wrath would declare the Germans politically incapable. From his point of view they were un-American. They did not cling to one party. The fact of the matter is, they were independent voters, and they appeared as such at a very early period. Benjamin Franklin made the discovery before the Revolutionary War, and he was provoked to an extent surprising in that suave diplomatist.” In a letter to Peter Collinson, dated Philadelphia, May 9, 1753, Franklin says:
I am perfectly of your mind that measures of great temper are necessary with the Germans, and am not without apprehension that through their indiscretion, or ours, or both, great disorders may one day among us.
Then he speaks of the ignorance of the Germans, their incapability of using the English language, the impossibility of removing their prejudices--“not being used to liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it,” etc.
They are under no restraint from any ecclesiastical government; they behave, however, submissively enough to the civil government, which I wish they may continue to do, for I remember when they modestly declined to meddle in our elections, but now they come in droves and carry all before them except in one or two counties.
The last sentence, comments Faust, betrays the learned writer of the letter; the uncertainty of their votes is the cause for his accusations of ignorance and prejudice.
On the point of ignorance we get contradictory evidence in the same letter. “Few of their children in the country know English. They import many books from Germany and of the six printing houses in the province, two are entirely German, two are half-German, half English, and but two entirely English. (This large use and production of books disproves want of education. Their lack of familiarity with the English language was popularly looked upon as ignorance.--Faust.) They have one German newspaper and one half German. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch (German) and English. The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places, only German. They begin of late to make all their bonds and other legal instruments in their own language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our courts, where the German business so increases that there is continued need of interpreters; and I suppose within a few years they will also be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our legislators what the other half say. In short, unless the stream of importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so outnumber us that the advantages we have will, in my opinion, be not able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”
Illustration: GERMAN PIONEERS Group of the Monument Erected to the Memory of the Settlers of Germantown, Pa., by Albert Jaegers.
It is obvious from many indications that Benjamin Franklin did not adhere to his point of view and learned to regard the Germans in a far more favorable light than in 1753, twenty-three years before the Declaration of Independence. The Revolution, as Bancroft relates, found no Tories among the German settlers of Pennsylvania, but a unanimous sentiment for independence, and their full quota of fighting men in the American ranks.
When queried before the English Parliament concerning the dissatisfaction of the Americans with the Stamp Act, he was asked how many Germans were in Pennsylvania. His answer was, “About one-third of the whole population, but I cannot tell with certainty.” Again the question was put whether any part of them had seen service in Europe. He answered, “Many, as well in Europe as America.”
When asked whether they were as dissatisfied with the Stamp Act as the native population, he said, “Yes, even more, as they are justified, because in many cases they must pay double for their stamp paper and parchments.”
If the German element felt the injustice of the Stamp Act more keenly than their neighbors, the conclusion is patent that they could not have been ignorant, as the illiterate and ignorant were least affected by its harshness. Even the honor of being the first printer of German books belongs to Franklin, for he furnished three volumes of mystical songs in German for Conrad Beissel, 1730-36. When the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia (1743) agitated for the foundation of the “Public Academy of the City of Philadelphia,” the institution that later developed into the University of Pennsylvania, Franklin designed its curriculum and recommended the study of German and French, besides English. In 1766 he attended a meeting of the Royal Society of Science in Göttingen while on a trip through Germany and visited Dr. Hartmann in Hanover to see his apparatus for electrical experiments. He was made a member of the Göttingen learned society.
Conclusive proof of Franklin’s change of view is furnished by his testimony before a committee of the British House of Commons in 1766. Referring to the Germans, who, he said, constituted about one-third of the population of 160,000 whites in Pennsylvania, he described them as “a people who brought with them the greatest of wealth--industry and integrity, and characters that had been superpoised and developed by years of suffering and persecution.” (Penn. Hist. Magazine, iv, 3.)
=Frederick the Great and the American Colonies.=--Because Frederick the Great was a Hohenzollern and a Prussian, it became the fashion early in the course of the war to frown upon all mention of his connection with the revolutionary struggle of our American forefathers, and his statue before the military college, which was unveiled with so much ceremony during President Roosevelt’s term, was discreetly taken from its pediment and consigned to the obscurity of a cellar as soon as we entered the war. Yet Frederick was the sincere friend of the Colonies and contributed largely if not vitally to the success of the struggle for American independence. The evidence rests upon something better than tradition. A more just opinion of his interest in the success of the Colonies than has been expressed of late by his detractors is contained in the works of English and American writers of history having access to the facts, who were not under the spell of active belligerency and the influence of a propaganda that has magically transformed George III into a “German king.”
Had Russia in 1778 formed an alliance with England, Russian troops would have swelled the forces arrayed against the American patriots to such proportions that the result of the struggle presumably would have been different. The influence of Prussia in that relation is a chapter of history practically closed to most students. But for immense bribes to Count Panin, Catherine the Great’s premier, paid by Frederick the Great, as testified by British authorities, Russia would have extended aid to England in her struggle with the Colonies which might have proved decisive.
It was England’s interest to secure, if possible, the alliance of Russia, and, as in the Seven Years War, to involve France in continental complications. In 1778 there seemed every reason to expect the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. The continuance of the war gave an increased importance to an alliance with Russia, and while the Dutch appealed to Catherine on the ground that Great Britain had broken with Holland solely on account of the armed neutrality, the English government offered to hand over Minorca as the price of a convention.
In 1778 Catherine was approached by the English government through Sir James Harris and invited to make a defensive and offensive alliance. But the opposition of the Premier, Nikolai Ivanovich, Count Panin, influenced by Frederick the Great, prevented any rapprochement between England and Russia, and Catherine declared her inability to join England against France unless the English government bound itself to support her against the Turks.
“The Prussian party, headed by Panin at St. Petersburg,” writes Arthur Hassall, M. A., in “The Balance of Power, 1715-1789,” p. 338; (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), “had won its last triumph, and all chance for an Anglo-Russian alliance had for the moment disappeared.... Since 1764 Count Panin had been the head of the Prussian party at the Russian capital, and the Prussian alliance had been the keystone of Catherine’s policy.... =Frederick the Great, partly by immense bribes to Panin, had kept Catherine true to the existing political system, and had contributed to prevent Russian assistance from being given to England during the American struggle.=” (P. 361.)
Writing to his minister in Paris, Goltz, in August and September, 1777, Frederick said: “You can assure M. de Maurepas that I have no connection whatever with England, nor do I grudge France any advantage she may gain in the war with the Colonies.... Her first interest requires the enfeeblement of Great Britain, and the way to do this is to make it lose its colonies in America.... The present opportunity is more favorable than ever before existed, and more favorable than is likely to occur in three centuries.... The independence of the colonies will be worth to France all which the war will cost.”
Bancroft writes: “While Frederick was encouraging France to strike a decisive blow in favor of the United States, their cause found an efficient advocate in Marie Antoinette.” On April 7, 1777, Frederick wrote: “France knows perfectly well that it has absolutely nothing to apprehend from me in case of war with England.... =If it= (the English crown) =would give me all the millions possible I would not furnish it two small files of my troops to serve against the colonies.= Neither can it expect from me a guaranty of its electorate of Hanover.”
Bancroft comments: “The people of England cherished the fame of the Prussian king as in some measure their own. Not aware how basely Bute had betrayed him, they unanimously desired the renewal of his alliance; and the ministry sought to open the way for it through his envoy in France.” Frederick replied, “No man is further removed than myself from having connections with England. We will remain on the same footing on which we are with her.” Bancroft says: “Frederick expressed more freely his sympathy with the United States.”
The port of Emden could not receive their cruisers for want of a fleet or a fort to defend them from insult; =but he offered them an asylum in the Baltic at Danzig=. He attempted, though in vain, to dissuade the Prince of Anspach from furnishing troops to England, and he forbade the subsidiary troops both of Anspach and Hesse to pass through his domains. The prohibition which was made as public as possible, and just as the news arrived of the surrender of Burgoyne, resounded through Europe; and he announced to the Americans that it was given him “to testify his good will to them.”
Every facility was afforded to the American commissioners to purchase and ship arms from Prussia. Before the end of 1777 he promised not to be the last to recognize the independence of the United States, and in January, 1778, his minister, Schulenburg, wrote officially to one of the commissioners in Paris: “The king desires that your generous efforts may be crowned with complete success. He will not hesitate to recognize your independency when France, which is more directly interested in the event of the contest, shall have given the example.”