- description
- # German Emigrant Ships
## Overview
This is a section titled "German Emigrant Ships" extracted from the text file [redburn.txt](arke:01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF). It appears within [Chapter XXXIII](arke:01KG8AJRKNFPGM1AKGB393MHFG) of an unknown novel. The section discusses the narrator's observations of German emigrants boarding ships bound for New York. It is part of the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection.
## Context
The section is part of a larger chapter that also includes a section titled [The Salt-Droghers](arke:01KG8AKJ86MMH6FKESBK9CQMY3), which precedes this section. The text was extracted from the file [redburn.txt](arke:01KG89J1GP71YDJ60P8SRH97MF) by a structure-extraction-lambda function.
## Contents
The section describes the narrator's observations of German emigrants preparing to depart for New York. It depicts the emigrants as families with members of all ages, gathering on the forecastle to sing and pray every evening. The narrator praises the German emigrants as orderly and valuable additions to the American population, highlighting their contributions to the Northwestern States by transferring their agricultural practices from Europe to the American Midwest. The text also reflects on America's identity as a nation settled by people of all nations, advocating for the extinction of national prejudices and envisioning a future of unity and restoration.
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- description_title
- German Emigrant Ships
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- 6671
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:08.273Z
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- text
- departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the
large New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every
thing comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
one ship.
Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their
fine ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
would think you were in a cathedral.
They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch,
sing the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious
custom of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before
them, as they hie to the land of the stranger.
And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and
valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.
There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America
has been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish
the prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all
nations, all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a
drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.
Be he Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who
scoffs at an American, calls his own brother _Raca,_ and stands in
danger of the judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a
bigoted Hebrew nationality—whose blood has been debased in the attempt
to ennoble it, by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves.
No: our blood is as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand
noble currents all pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a
world; for unless we may claim all the world for our sire, like
Melchisedec, we are without father or mother.
For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus
and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal
paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and
Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world’s
as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we
divide our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and
people are forming into one federated whole; and there is a future
which shall see the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old
hearthstone in Eden.
The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
Columbus’ time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth’s Paradise. Not a
Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God’s good pleasure, and
in the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the
harvest must come; and our children’s children, on the world’s jubilee
morning, shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the
curse of Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they
shall speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and
Scots; and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the
regions round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall
appear unto them cloven tongues as of fire.
- title
- German Emigrant Ships