THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
and to get a larger experience of the character of the people. Especially did I long to breathe the fresh air of that part of the Union which I imagined to be the “real America,” the great West, where new States were growing up, and where I would have an opportunity for observing the formative process of new political communities working themselves out of the raw. I had some relatives and some German friends living in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, and I started out to visit them in the autumn of 1854.
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