A WISCONSIN GROUP OF GERMAN POETS. 
WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
HENRY E. EEGELER. 
In th© making! of the social and political life of the United 
States as found at this day, two notable tides of immigration 
from Europe have had a part greater than all others. Spanish 
and French influences were as waves upon the sand; the ideas 
and customs of the Puritan and Pilgrim forefathers in the early 
years of the Seventeenth century, and those of the German immi¬ 
grants two centuries later have been graven deep, and in the 
modifications due to constant contact may be traced the growth 
of the institutional conditions' existing at the dawn of this new 
century. 
Hew England’s radiating influences have been employed as a 
topic by many able historians, but the importance of German 
influence as permanently a,fleeting American life has up to this 
time received but scant mention. That importance must be 
ascribed primarily to the remarkable contingent termed the 
Forty-Eighters. Unlike the simple pastoral people who followed 
Johannes Heckewelder, David Zeisberger, George Heinrich Las^- 
kiel, Franz Daniel Pastorius and other religious shepherds of 
the Seventeenth century to* a Hew Canaan, the Forty-Eighters 
of the Nineteenth century were men of rank and education. 1 
Among them! were many college professors, journalists, men of 
high literary attainments, university students of noble families, 
who sacrificed home, fortune, position, brilliant prospects—all 
iThe Germans in Wisconsin Politics, by Ernest Bruncken, Park- 
man Club Publications , 2Vo. 9, gives an excellent brief sketch of the 
aims, purposes and characteristics of the Forty-Eighters, p. 225-227. 
