DECEMBER 1925 VOLUME IX NUMBER 2 PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BYTHE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN is a i state-aided corporation whose function is the cultivation | and encouragement of the historical interests of the State. To this end it invites your cooperation; membership is open to all, whether residents of Wisconsin or elsewhere. The dues of annual members are two dollars, payable in advance; of life members, twenty dollars, payable once | only. Subject to certain exceptions, members receive the publications of the Society, the cost of producing which far exceeds the membership fee. This is rendered possible by reason of the aid accorded the Society by the State. | § Of the work and ideals of the Society this magazine affords, it is believed, a fair example. With limited means, much | has already been accomplished; with ampler funds more , | might be achieved. So far as is known, not a penny en- | trusted to the Society has ever been lost or misapplied. = Property may be willed to the Society in entire confidence i that any trust it assumes will be scrupulously executed. i 1 The WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published quarterly by the Society, at 1903-1923 Woodland Ave., Cleveland, Ohio, in September, December, March, and June, and is distributed to its members and exchanges; others who so desire may receive it for the annual subscription of two dollars, payable in advance; single numbers may be had for fifty cents. All correspondence concern- ing the magazine should be addressed to the office of the State Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin. Entered as second-class matter, December 17, 1917, at the post office at Menasha, Wisconsin, under the act of March 5, 1879. Application for transfer of entry to Cleveland, Ohio, pending. EVANGELICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE CLEVELAND, OHIO FATHER JAHK Friedrich Ludwig Jalm VOL. IX, No. 2 December, 1925 THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY PUBLICATIONS OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCON- SIN. JOSEPH SCHAFER, Superintendent and Editor CONTENTS CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE TURNERS .Robert Wild 123 THE EPIC OF A PLAIN YANKEE FAMILY. .. Joseph Schafer 140 WILLIAM PENN LYON Clara Lyon Hayes 157 SOME OF OUR PIONEERS Ellis B. Usher 172 MORE NAPOLEONIC SOLDIERS BURIED IN WISCONSIN . Albert O. Barton 180 DOCUMENTS : Journal of Salmon Stebbins 1837-1838 188 EDITORIAL COMMENT: The Social Value of Historical Memorials. 213 COMMUNICATIONS: A Correction . , . 218 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE .Louise Phelps Kellogg 219 BOOK REVIEWS , 241 The Society as a body is not responsible for statements or opinions advanced in the following pages by contributors. COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN Paid for out of the Maria L. and Simeon Mills Editorial Fund Income. CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE TURNERS ROBERT WILD It is not possible to understand the history of the turner organizations in our state without a brief reference to their historical backgrounds. Turnerism had its root in implacable hatred of oppres- sion, in flaming patriotism and love of liberty. Napoleon I, a modern divus Caesar,, imposed a cate- chism which required children to be taught that he was created on earth in the image of God, that to honor and serve him was to honor and serve God himself, and that failure to do so led to eternal damnation. After the battle of Jena in 1806, Germany was practically a vassal state. In Napoleon's army, in the Moscow campaign, were in- cluded one hundred and ninety-seven thousand Germans. To Metternich Napoleon said: "I lost three hundred thou- sand men; hardly thirty thousand of them were French- men." To a Russian he remarked: "Si vous perdez cinq Russes, je ne perds qu'un Fran9ais et quatre cochons." When the war of liberation broke out and the nation's manhood entered the ranks as volunteers, Theodor Koerner expressed the emotion and exaltation of his people: Father, I honor thee. 'Tis not a fight for the world's golden hoards Holy is what we protect with the sword. Hence, falling or vanquishing, praise be to thee. God, I submit to thee. The proclamation of 1813 at Kalish, calling the people to arms, promised them liberty and a new national unity. The "Bundesakte" (articles of federation) in 1815 promised the establishment, in all countries of the confederation, of a 124 Robert Wild constitution with representation. The cabinet order of 1815, signed by Frederick William III, promised a gen- eral representation and the appointment of a commission to draw up a constitution. But after Waterloo these promises were forgotten and ignored. Those who styled themselves "plenipotentiaries of Providence" established their system of inaction and reaction, under which "mark- time" became the word of command in every government office. It was the era which did not come to an end until 1848, and of which at least one state minister said: "I sum up all the infamy of the last decades in the name Metter- nich." The literary mouthpiece of that prince of diplomacy was Gentz. Significant not only for the period in question but also for the purposes of this essay are Gentz's words, writ- ten in 1818: "Things can not stay as they are. In the first place the gymnastic movement ('das Turnen') must be gotten out of the world. I regard it as a suppurating boil, which must be entirely removed before one can proceed to a radical cure." Within a year, Frederick William III obligingly issued his second famous cabinet order, which absolutely prohibited turning, and not long afterward all apparatus for gymnastic exercises was dismantled and re- moved. The interdict was primarily aimed at Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the founder of what that remarkable man intended and hoped would develop into a great national system of physical training. Jahn was not exempted from police sur- veillance until the accession of Frederick William IV. Twenty years elapsed between the interdict of the royal father and the amnesty of the royal son. Those twenty years were a time of forgotten obligations and broken promises, of rulers without faith and courtiers without honor, a time of repression and tyranny, of stupidity and persecution, of brutality and cowardice. Jahn, the leader and trainer of flaming patriotic German youth, himself, as was Theodor Koerner, a member of Luetzow's famous corps Chapters in the History of the Turners 125 in the campaign against the Corsican, was confined in fortresses for more than five years. Arndt was deprived of his professorship at Bonn, and Grimm and the rest of the "Seven" were driven from their chairs at Goettingen. Students of German literary history will remember that Fritz Reuter's imprisonment ruined his health and HaufTs imprisonment cut short his life. Those twenty years, how- ever, were also the time of the ripening of political ideas and the growth of political principles, the time in which were born the men who rocked governments and swayed thrones, and which culminated in the stirring events of 1848, which have been so vividly portrayed by the pen of the greatest of our Americans of German birth, Carl Schurz. Jahn had in 1811 established his "Turnplatz" on the Hasenheide near Berlin. His plan was to encourage bodily exercise and to foster patriotic ideals in his pupils, so that with sound minds in sound bodies, inspired with love of country and passion for freedom, they might help in the liberation of their country from foreign oppression. That was five years after the battle of Jena, five years after the execution of Palm for distributing the pamphlet, "Germany in the Depths of her Humiliation," three years after Fichte had uttered his "Addresses to the German Nation," and two years before Scharnhorst led his weeping and reluctant king to the window in the Breslau palace, to point out the troops of volunteers pouring in and to ask him whether he was now convinced that the enthusiasm and self-sacrifice of his people were real. Why was Jahn and his system of turning suppressed after 1815? Because he publicly, on the platform and in his books, reiterated the demand of the people for the con- stitution which had been solemnly promised them. His ideas and ideals, whose quintessence was "liberty and union," lived on in the universities and in the hearts of the peoples of distracted and discordant Germany. We see them reflected in Lieber and Schurz, in Koerner and Stallo, who in our land typify the pre-1848 strivings of a great 126 Robert Wild people aspiring to a national unity based upon constitution- al freedom. Into the struggles of 1848-1849 the German turners en- tered everywhere with devotion and enthusiasm, and when the disappointment and the disillusionment came at last, they went into exile. Thousands came to the United States. Naturally they brought with them the ideals and visions of their lost cause—liberty in its broadest meaning, hatred of oppression, plain living and high thinking, love of music and poetry and culture, patriotism, civic duty, and loyalty. Before long, turner organizations sprang up in the cities of the North. The followers of Jahn and the Sons of '48 were their leaders and founders. Let a few names, se- lected at random, suffice: Sigel and Dr. Jacobi in New York, Rapp in Philadelphia, Hecker in Cincinnati, Pfaen- der and Nix in New Ulm, Osterhaus and Hilgard in Belle- ville, Willich in Milwaukee. They and their fellows were a typical cross-section of their generation, representing every walk of life—soldiers, poets, mechanics, business men, editors, physicians, lawyers, and skilled artisans. They are but a generation removed from the present.