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Epilogue The Later Years In t h e late summer of 1866, Joseph Osterhaus left Amalie and the children at her parents’ home in Kreuznach, Germany, until the twin boys’ birth in September. By the time his wife and now eight children had joined him in Lyon later that fall, Joseph had found them a spacious apartment. Now began the process of introducing their five very American children to the differences of European life. They must have been content with their new environment: four of the five remained in Europe for the rest of their lives. Only Alexander returned to the United States after the turn of the century, living in Redondo Beach, California, where he worked for the municipal transit company. Growing up, the three youngest children, the twin boys and Mathilde, born in 1868, never knew any other life but Europe. Even so, one of the twins, Ludwig (Louis), also decided later in life to live in the United States. After studying law in Europe, he became a prominent lawyer and justice of the peace in Belleville, Illinois, his father’s American hometown. There, much to his father’s delight, he married the daughter of Casimir Andel, his Civil War aide-de-camp and Belleville crony. The other twin, Josef, died as a young man in South Africa in 1897.1 Osterhaus served as U.S. consul to Lyon for eleven years, reappointed in 1868 by incoming president U. S. Grant and resigning after Rutherford B. Hayes was inaugurated in 1877. Osterhaus was one of nine U.S. consuls posted to economic centers throughout France. Giving them direction from Paris was Chief Consul John Meredith Read Jr. The consulates dealt primarily with trade and business concerns, in contrast to the U.S. minister to France in Paris, Elihu B. Washburne, whose role was much more involved with analysis, policy, and negotiations and who took an active role in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.2 In Lyon, one of France’s largest cities and the center of its silk industry, the duties of the consul were not terribly onerous. Osterhaus’s deputy and clerical staff handled the passport and visa traffic and assisted American travelers and the 201 202 Yankee Warhorse expatriate colony as needed. As head of the consulate, Osterhaus’s most important functions were to encourage trade between the two nations and to use public diplomacy to represent the United States in a favorable light to the citizens of France. As part of his duties he gathered data on labor and living conditions in Lyon and filed detailed quarterly reports to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish on commercial shipments from Lyon to the United States. During his sojourn in France Osterhaus shunned publicity, only reluctantly attending local official functions and the occasional ball given in Paris by the emperor. He much preferred discussing politics and world events with friends at his home, and his continuing poor health made this simple life imperative.3 Then, after four peaceful years, for the third time in his life Osterhaus found himself living in a country at war. From the sidelines he followed with consuming interest the rapid military and diplomatic developments of the summer of 1870, observing the French troop buildup in Lyon and studying the competence and organization of the armies of both sides. He was no longer in a position in which his government valued his military intelligence, at least on the record; there is no evidence in his official dispatches of the period that he sent any military information to the State Department, confining his reports to the economic impact of the war. That is not surprising, since President Grant had Phil Sheridan observing the German army and Ambrose Burnside going back and forth to Paris attempting to broker an armistice between the belligerents.4 The war began in July 1870, when Napoléon III, who had been emperor since the days of the German revolution of 1848, declared war on Prussia and the Northern German Confederation, ostensibly over a diplomatic slight. Historians suggest that then premier of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, skillfully used the French aggression to finally spur the reluctant southern German duchies to join the confederation, thereby creating a German empire controlled by Prussia. Having anticipated this war since 1866, the Prussians, who had had universal conscription since before Osterhaus was born, quickly mobilized to meet Napoléon’s attack. By contrast, Osterhaus observed that the French were hampered by...

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