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John Brown

This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.

Someone once remarked that there is no zeal like a convert's—an apt description of the Germans from Schleswig-Holstein who came to America following the failure of the 1848 Revolution in Europe.

In 1848, 250 of these Forty-Eighters arrived at Davenport. They were financially stable, cultured, well-educated, and eager to be good citizens. Above all, they were politically liberal, with a burning passion for freedom.

Even as they were settling in, therefore, these new immigrants became champions of the anti-slavery movement. The slave's cause became their cause. Among their new heroes were John Brown and his sons. Many of the Germans longed to go to Kansas and fight by his side.

As the dark specter of war grew during the 1850s, Illinoisans living in Rock Island continued to debate the pros and cons of slavery. The First Congregational Church next door in Moline preached thunderous abolitionist sermons, while the Davenport Germans organized military preparedness groups such as the Davenport City Artillery, the Davenport Rifles, and the Sarsfield Guards.

"There is no city in the West," boasted a Davenporter, "that can equal Davenport in her display of military." 

That is why the Germans cheered John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, on October 16, 1859, and bemoaned his capture. There is some evidence that they helped hide and provision some of his men.

And that is why on December 2nd, the day John Brown was hanged, a small community way out west along the Upper Mississippi, lowered the flag to half-mast over Germans' Lahrman Hall, and why all the German storekeepers closed their stores and draped them in black, and wore black armbands. And that is why, with Fort Sumter still echoing, the new German American citizens became the first to answer Lincoln’s call for volunteers—so many, that an entire company had to wait in reserve. They had learned in Germany that citizenship involves responsibilities as well as rewards.

Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

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Beginning 1995, historian and folklorist Dr. Roald Tweet spun his stories of the Mississippi Valley to a devoted audience on WVIK. Dr. Tweet published three books as well as numerous literary articles and recorded segments of "Rock Island Lines." His inspiration was that "kidney-shaped limestone island plunked down in the middle of the Mississippi River," a logical site for a storyteller like Dr. Tweet.