From The Missouri Democrat, Thursday, November 5, 1863.
THE GERMANS OF MISSOURI.
The history of the war will accord to that portion of our population above-named a high position. Beyond all question they saved Missouri to the Union in the first stages of the rebellion. They were the first to detect the indications of the approaching storm, and the first to prepare for it. When treason raised its head in our midst, it found the Germans arms to receive it, and from that day to this they have stood as a wall between it and the object of its machinations. It has neither been able to intimidate them by force, to deceive them by fraud, nor to seduce them by fair words. When the enemies of the Union changed their mode of warfare, from the open attack in the field to the covert attack through the ballot-box, they found the Germans just as ready to meet and thwart them as they had proved themselves before.
Yet another evidence has just been furnished of the integrity and sagacity of the Germans of Missouri, in the vote they have given at the last election. With but rare exceptions they have supported the Radical ticket, and as a body they constitute an influential element in the Radical party. They are Radicals now from the same causes which made them on swerving Unionists at the beginning of the war, and which has continued them such ever since. They recognize in the principles of the Radical party the sure basis upon which the Government must stand to make the Union and during. Regarding, as our fathers did, freedom as the corner stone upon which the structure was to lie reared, they clearly perceive the him policy of laying the treacherous block of slavery in the wall, and so far as their power enables them to go, labor for its expulsion. This is no mean evidence of both their wisdom and their patriotism. The fact is that the German mind has exhibited a marked facility for grasping the ideas which are at the foundation of our Government. This is doubtless the result of those habits of investigation to which it has ever been enured, but the fact is none the less complimentary nor important.
We do not wonder that with the semi-disloyal politicians of our State – those whose conservatism has kept them in close sympathy with the authors and objects of the rebellion, the Germans have been and are especial object of antipathy and abuse. By such men they are denounced as Jacobins, Red Republicans, Revolutionists, Anarchists, &c., &c. We are not surprised that the animosity of these men towards the Germans. They have to remember them as the implacable enemies of their unholy schemes from the first. They know them as the inveterate and uncorruptible opposers of whatever savors of treason now. The standard of the Germans’ loyalty is so much higher than theirs, but being unable to reach it, they have no motive dealing with it except to carp at it, and seek to traduce its upholders. It is the old jealousy which has ever made virtue of by-word in the mouth of vice. But vain is their rage. A principle which is just sustains those who, from an honest purpose, sustain it.
