18 



ALSACE AM) LORRAINE. 



at the expense of the Federal Government un- 

 til the Freedmen's Bureau was discontinued. 

 On that occasion the State assumed the charge 

 of the hospital, and a law was passed forbid- 

 ding the reception of new patients. A few 

 helpless colored people still remain as its 

 inmates. 



On Deceinher 7, 1870, Mr. Lindsay com- 

 menced a suit against Mr. Smith to recover 

 the books, papers, and other property, belong- 

 ing to the Governor's office, but the difficulty 

 was finally adjusted harmoniously. 



The following is the Federal census of Ala- 

 bama, by counties, for the years 1860 and 1S70 : 



ALSACE AND LORRAINE. The Gov- 

 ernments of Germany, in union with nearly 



the whole people of Germany, declared that 

 one of the principal conditions of the conclu- 

 sion of peace between Germany and France 

 (see GEEMAN-FEENCH WAS), would be the an- 

 nexation of the province of' Alsace, and at 

 least part of the province of Lorraine, to Ger- 

 many. Thus the history and the ethnograph- 

 ical condition of these two provinces attracted 

 general attention, and their ultimate fate was 

 awaited with considerable interest. In sup- 

 port of their claims, the German people stated 

 that the province of Alsace and a considerable 

 portion of Lorraine had always been inhabited 

 by a German-speaking people, that they had 

 been torn from Germany by fraud and vio- 

 lence, and that, in spite of all the efforts made 

 by the French Government to denationalize 

 them, they had preserved their native lan- 

 guage up to this day. A German work, es- 

 pecially devoted to the investigation of the 

 numerical strength of the German national- 

 ity in all the countries of Europe (Bockh, Der 

 DeutscTien Volkzahl und SpracJigeMet in den 

 europaiscJien Staaten, Berlin, 1870), gives the 

 following facts with regard to the gradual con- 

 quest and annexation of these two provinces 

 by France: Up to the year 1648 France had, 

 in consequence of former encroachments of 

 German territory, annexed a German popula- 

 tion of about 54,000. By the Peace of West- 

 phalia, France, which in the religious war of 

 thirty years supported the same Protestants 

 who were so cruelly persecuted at home, 

 against the Catholic Government of Austria 

 and its Catholic allies, obtained a number of 

 Austrian possessions, with a population of 

 227,000 inhabitants. At the close of the sev- 

 enteenth century Louis XIV. instituted so- 

 called Chambers of Eeunion, which were to 

 examine which districts within the bounds of 

 the German Empire had at any previous period 

 been under French jurisdiction ; and the dis- 

 tricts thus singled out, together with 226,000 

 inhabitants, were at once seized and incorpo- 

 rated with France, while at about the same 

 time the Republic of Strasburg and the Bishop 

 of Strasburg placed another tract of land with 

 about 260,000 inhabitants under the protection 

 of France. In the course of the eighteenth 

 century France annexed the duchy of Lor- 

 raine, with about 178,000 inhabitants, and sev- 

 eral dominions of German princes in Alsace 

 and Lorraine. Finally the Republic of Miihl- 

 hausen and a number of districts belonging to 

 several German princes, with a territory now 

 numbering 290,000 inhabitants, were united 

 with France in and after the year 1790. Until 

 the Revolution of 1789, but little effort had 

 been made to substitute the use of the French 

 for that of the German language. The present 

 idea of compact nationalities, coextensive with 

 the boundaries of the several countries, was 

 then almost unknown. Germans remained un- 

 molested in the use of their language, as the 

 French subjects of several German princes in 

 Alsace and Lorraine had always enjoyed full 



