Roman classics in the midst of the material activities of this Western life. This is due less to the fact that I do not wish to forget my Latin than that I believe one can learn from such authors much that has a bearing on American politics. . . .
TO FRIEDRICH ALTHAUS
Watertown, February 6, 1857.[1]
If I did not know what an obstinate and incorrigible European you are, your last letter would have destroyed my doubts. When did you Europeans rise so high that you can superciliously regard a fight with brutality? When have you fought anything else? To be sure, you tell me: “The deeds of certain individuals in Kansas are, if possible, more barbarous than any atrocities of European despotism.” How can you think so? The murders that have been perpetrated aside from skirmishes, are terrible enough, but they are very few in number. In view of the political principles of the Union, they were the most shocking things that demoralization could be capable of. But who that is familiar with the latest history of the two continents would compare them with the long list of legally sanctioned murders committed in Baden, Hungary, Lombardy, France, Naples etc., quite apart from the horrors that were perpetrated privately and praised publicly? It is true that the hated penal code of the slaveholding legislature of Kansas, is barbarous; but although these laws were systematically sinned against, where could the autocrat have been found that would have dared to brave public opinion in the United States to the extent of en-
- ↑ Translated from the German.
