Page:The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin.djvu/94

 in New York, was married to C—, twenty-three, native of Bavaria. Joseph Stadter, thirty-three, physician, rated at $2000, who was born in Bavaria, was married to Sarah Ann, nineteen, born in New York (but a female who was a member of the family, and may have been this woman's mother, bore a German name). Finally, William Stamm, thirty-two, painter, native of Bremen, was married to Lucy, twenty-eight, a native of Massachusetts.

It is not possible to determine how many of the American born persons represented in the six cases may have belonged to German families, but doubtless some did. At all events, we can assert that in Milwaukee at that time, with its nearly 6000 Germans and nearly 4000 Yankees, not more than six cases can be found of marriages between them. No commentary is needed to establish the fact of the virtual segregation of the two great population groups. If Chevalier, the French philosopher, was right in his conviction that "the Yankee is not a man of promiscuous society," it is equally true that the German at that time was excessively clannish. His clannishness was due, no doubt, to natural and inevitable causes, but the fact needs to be recognized by the student of history.

This disposition on the part of Germans to "hang together" was promptly discovered by American politicians and exploited for partisan and personal ends. The outstanding fact of the political history of the period under review is the attachment of the immigrant Germans to the Democratic party. That relation was all but absolute and universal during the 1840's, though a gradual change took place in the last half of the next decade. There was nothing mysterious about it. Germans found the country,