to renounce, so far at least as his will may go, all allegiance. When, therefore, on his return, for some temporary purpose, to his former home, unaware of danger, he is seized as a delinquent, his whole offense relates back to the omission to ask originally for leave to emigrate. That is the substance of the charge against him. If this permission had been obtained, which, in every one of the cases I have referred to, would have been had for the asking, the party would never have been summoned as a soldier; not having been obtained, the summons issues and the legal consequences follow.

And the whole of these consequences, the military service as well as the fine, so far at least as the individual is affected by them, are, as I have characterized them, in the nature of a punishment.

The Prussian government itself looks upon the matter in this light. In the letter which your excellency addressed to this legation in regard to the case of B. Meyer, dated the 22d of October last, it was remarked that "in such cases it was less a question of seizing a person to incorporate him in the army, than to maintain the respect due to the law and to insure its execution." It must necessarily be so. I suppose the cases are comparatively rare of emigration without permission, and it must be still more rare that persons who have thus emigrated venture back within the limits of Prussia; hardly ever, perhaps, where the legal regulations on the subject have been intentionally violated. A single soldier thus added once in a year or two, or perhaps only once in three or four years, to the large army of Prussia, could hardly be accounted as of much importance in itself, and especially when that soldier is performing a forced service, with his home and his heart in another and a distant country. When such a service is exacted, with the avowed purpose of maintaining the respect due to the law, it is plain that the service is a punishment, which is inflicted on the individual mainly with a view to its moral effect, in order that others may be deterred from the like offense of leaving the country without permission. And I am free to confess that a certain moral effect of this sort would hardly fail to follow, though unhappily, in such cases as I have named, it must necessarily be attended with another and a very different moral effect, if not in his original country, certainly in that of his adoption, among his family, and friends, and fellow-citizens, to whom the sad intelligence of his sufferings is sure to become known. There, at least, the punishment will be regarded as one of great and unmerited severity, whatever may be the political necessities to justify it in the estimation of Prussia.

His home is in another country; there he has his habitation, his family, his property, his business, and his friends; there center all his affections and all his interests; and he has no sentiment of loyalty in his heart to any sovereign or any government on earth out of his new country; nor is it possible for him to feel any sense of obligation to serve any other country or any other sovereign; and all that he possesses, and all that he holds dear, all that he has and almost all that he hopes for in life, are sacrificed, at least for the time, in the forced service to which he is subjected. It is impossible that he and those who take an interest in him should not regard his punishment as one of awful severity and terribly disproportioned-I speak of cases of

involuntary omission to procure a permit of emigration-to any fault or blame which could be justly imputed to him.

Now what I have desired to say, and to show your excellency, in the observations I have made at such considerable length, is that the cases about which I have been speaking are such as call for the just and necessary sympathy of my government, and of the people of the United States, and that the expression of that sympathy on proper occasions, and in proper and courteous language, and of the sentiments and wishes to which it must give rise, is due from the United States to his Majesty's government. If the Prussian government shall still be of opinion, after all has been heard and considered, that it is a point so vital to the monarchy that the laws which regulate the emigration of the subject (which, for a military country like Prussia, are not regarded as harsh or severe in themselves) demand that their execution should be enforced by rigid and inexorable exaction in cases of alleged delinquency, such as this letter refers to, in such an alternative, I have already informed your excellency that the United States do not deny the legal rights of Prussia in the premises, and that-strong as is the interest which both government and people feel, and will always feel, in behalf of the sufferers, citizens of that country still, in spite of the remnant of authority which Prussia is entitled, and accidentally enabled, to exercise over them-my government disclaims any power or competency on its part to interfere to protect those unhappy persons from the operation of the Prussian laws. But for this very reason, the necessity is all the stronger, and the propriety the more apparent and urgent, why the government of the United States should urge on the attention of his Majesty's government such considerations in behalf of these persons as may seem to it calculated to induce some relaxation of the rigorous policy now pursued towards them. And in doing this, considering the relation in which it stands to these persons, no apprehension is entertained that any just ground can be found for imputing to it a proceeding which "the sense of its own dignity"-I quote from your excellency's letter already referred to of the 22d of October-. should have hindered it from adopting.

I am not without hope, notwithstanding the ill success which has attended my previous efforts on this subject, that his Majesty's government may be led to consider whether it is not possible that the strict and rigorous enforcement of its laws in this regard may be dispensed with, or at least modified and relaxed in behalf of persons in the condition of those whose cases I have had occasion to bring to its notice, without impairing the proper and necessary authority of those laws, or the efficiency of the military system of the monarchy. If this should be so, I can only assure your excellency that the result would be received by the government and people of the United States with the highest satisfaction.

I beg leave to remind your excellency, in concluding this letter, that it is now four months since the case of Kracke was brought by me to the notice of his Majesty's government. He continues in the same lamentable state of mental distress, into which he was originally plunged by his arrest and forced service in the Prussian army, and, though he feels the silence of the government in regard to him to be

ominous, he does not yield the hope that, by his Majesty's clemency, or otherwise, he may be set free, and allowed to depart to the United States. Since I have seen the Prussian law of 1842, regulating the emigration of the king's subjects, I have thought it quite probable that the investigations of the Prussian authorities into Kracke's case would relieve his Majesty's government from all embarrassment in regard to him, by showing that he had been continuously absent from Prussia for ten years, and was therefore, by the terms of the Prussian law, no longer to be regarded as in any respect a Prussian subject. But if this fact be so, certainly no time should be lost in setting this man at liberty.

I seize this occasion to assure your excellency of my very high and distinguished consideration.

His Excellency BARON VON MANTEUFFEL,

Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Barnard to Mr. Marcy.

D. D. BARNARD.

[Extract.]

No. 119.]

SIR:

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,
Berlin, March 22, 1853.

I inclose, also, copies of two letters from the Prussian minister of foreign affairs, in reference to the case of John Joseph Kracke, the one of later date being in reply to my letter to the minister, of the 15th of February, 1853, (vide my No. 108 to the department,) on the general subject of the forced service of German-American citizens in the Prussian army. With these, I send also a copy of anothor letter, which I have addressed to Baron Manteuffel, in regard to the case of Kracke, again urging his release from the Prussian army.

I am not without hope of eventual success in this case.

I have the honor to be, with the highest respect, your obedient servant,

The Hon. SECRETARY OF STATE.

D. D. BARNARD.

Baron Manteuffel to Mr. Barnard.

[Translation.]

BERLIN, February 22, 1853.

The letter which you were pleased to address to me, the 9th October, last year, on the affair of one named John Joseph Kracke, a Prussian subject, who caused himself to be naturalized in the United States before he had discharged his military obligations in his native country, has given place to a correspondence with the ministers of war and interior, as well as with the competent provincial authorities.

The circumstances under which the said Kracke left the King's territory have been maturely considered; they have, however, been found to be such, that the government does not find itself in condition to exempt him from military service, to which he was subjected after his reëntry into Prussia.

I will permit myself, sir, to present to you the facts, such as they are, stated in the report of the provincial councilor, of the circle of Tecklenburg.

The individual in question was born the 9th February, 1828, at Recke, in Westphalia. It was his duty, then, to have placed himself under the banners in 1845; but that very year he passed over secretly to the United States, after having worked during several years in Holland as a blacksmith. It was only two years afterwards, in 1847, that his parents followed him there, without having asked for either passport or permit of emigration, which, for that matter, would not have been granted, after the evasion of their son. He, not having answered the summons when, in 1845, he was cited before the proper military authority, was necessarily to be regarded as refractory. Nothing, then, more natural than that, upon his return to the province, in the autumn of 1852, he was arrested and incorporated in the army.

You will be convinced by this exposition, sir, that the said Kracke has no right to demand the severence of the ties which bind him to his native country, before he fulfills the obligations which are imposed upon him as a Prussian subject. Moreover, there exists no motive of equity or humanity which can be invoked in his favor. Kracke, having emigrated to America in the very year when he was about to be summoned to the standard, it is evident he only acted so in the sole intention to withdraw himself from the military service in Prussia. Without doubt, this person sets forth in the petition he has addressed to you, that he was risking the loss of his real estate in America, if he should be obliged to serve during three years in the army. But this assertion deserves no credence. It follows, from an interrogation to which the said Krache was subjected at Wesel, on the 7th December last, that his sole property in America consisted in a house, slightly mortgaged, in Cincinnati; and that, on setting out for Germany, he had directed his brother to let such house. It seems, then, the real estate of Krache could well be turned to account, until his return, by his brothers and sisters, almost all of them living in Cincinnati, who are under much obligation to him, and certainly would neglect nothing for the security of his property. In these circumstances, the royal government believes it to be a duty to hesitate the more from releasing this individual from the military service, as it behooves it to give an example to hinder (especially at a moment when emigration to America is on the increase) young people from breaking arbitrarily, and without discharging duties imposed by their condition as Prussian subjects, the ties which bind them to their country.

Accept on this occasion, sir, the assurance of my high consideration. MANTEUFFEL.

His Excellency Mr. BARNARD, &c., &c., &c.

Baron Manteuffel to Mr. Barnard.

[Translation.]

BERLIN, February 28, 1853. SIR: I have seen with lively satisfaction, by your letter of the 15th of this month, that as regards right, the government of the United States fully participates in the opinion announced in my note of 22d October last, in accordance with which his Majesty's government believes itself fully authorized, where a Prussian subject has caused himself to be naturalized in the United States before having satisfied his military obligations to Prussia, and without having obtained an emigration permit, to enrol him under her standard, if he returns to his former country. If then such a case should again present itself in which the Prussian government would be obliged to exercise this right, there is no longer room for apprehension that its application would foment any misunderstanding.

I understand perfectly that, when a citizen of the United States who has not dissolved the ties which bind him to Prussia, is subjected at a later day to military service in his native country, the American government will not be indifferent to the fact; that it is rather a reason for it to embrace the interests of its citizens, and to avail itself of the effect of its good officers to induce the Prussian government to Be indulgent in regard to him. On my part, I can give you assurance, sir, that the King will never close his ear to such intervention; on the contrary, he will take care to submit to scrupulous examination all that can be alleged in favor of the person so commended to him. however, the government of the United States considers that it is not for its interest to make the admission of an emigrant as citizen dependent on the exhibition of a document proving that he had dissolved the ties by which he was attached to his old country, it is much to be feared that the government of his Majesty will still often find itself under the necessity of executing its own laws, as well as the decrees of its tribunals against Prussian subjects who have been naturalized in the United States.

As,

Rarely will the Prussian government refuse the subsidiary issue of an emigration permit to individuals who in their infancy were taken from his Majesty's territory by their father or mother, for then the fault would be with the parents, if their children were wanting to the law. The application for such subsidiary emigration permit would only be essentially inadmissible in those cases in which Prussian tribunals had already given judgment against the emigrant; and that was the position of Christian Hormann referred to, who was the subject of my letter of the 27th of August last year.

The case is quite different as to individuals, who, when they emigrated to America, had already attained the age of seventeen, at which time their military duties commence. Generally speaking, it can never be admitted that such an one neglected to apply for an emigration permit because he was ignorant of the laws of his country.

Every Prussian subject is obliged to bear arms. This law, of forty