The German-American Press

prominent Republicans. In a letter to John Potter, a Republican
candidate for Congress, Schurz suggested the importance of the Atlas
in particular, and the other German papers in general, to the political
process: "At all events we cannot afford to let the paper go down.
Where should we get another one? A failure of this kind would
hurt us considerably. . . . Our chances next fall are anyhow not
of the most brilliant kind; at all events we cannot afford to disarm
ourselves."38 In 1859 Schurz signed a $750 note to help keep the
Atlas afloat for the 1859 state political campaign during which Schurz
was seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination.39 After Schurz
failed to get the nomination, other Republicans raised money for the
German Republican papers to show their continued support of Schurz
and to continue to voice the opinions of the German element of the
population.0
By 1860 Schurz began to focus his efforts on the Lincoln
presidential campaign. Schurz, Domschke, and Carl Roeser of
the Republican Manitowoc Wisconsin's Demokrat were influential
in developing a German plank for the national party platform.41
Schurz spent much of his time in 1860 campaigning out of state for
Lincoln, but he continued to be associated with the Wisconsin papers
through the 1860 election.42 Palm bought the Madison Demokrat
in the fall of 1860 and converted it into a Republican paper. After
the election, he merged it with the Wisconsin Staats-Zeitung. The
German Republicans, led in part by Schurz through his network of
newspapers, were credited with winning Wisconsin for Lincoln.43
As a consequence, Schurz, Lindemann, Palm, and Roeser all won
political appointments through the Lincoln administration.44 Despite
Schurz's extraordinary efforts, the Milwaukee Atlas failed in 1861,
and the Watertown and Madison papers were suspended.
Wittke's observation on political support of the German press in
1856 applies to the Wisconsin German press in this entire antebellum
period: "The Republican leadership used every possible device to
woo the German vote, including subsidies for German papers, old
and new. The Democratic party did the same."45 Such political
patronage helped to maintain a system of competing party papers that
served to integrate the German immigrants into American political
life. Whether by accident or design, the system provided competing
German-language newspapers in Wisconsin that probably could not
otherwise have survived.

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