Previous to 1848, the European emigration to Texas was largely composed of the least intelligent and poorest class of the German and Germanic-French population. Many were paupers, and some were petty criminals, whom lenient magistrates handed over unpunished to the Emigration Company, satisfied to rid their country of them. There were among them, however, many [276] bold and enterprising young men, some of whom were induced, by special offers, to strengthen and encourage the emigration. There were also a few who accepted the offers of the company merely from love of liberty and discontent with the political and social evils of their native land.

In 1847 the Emigration Company failed. In 1848 the German people burst from the grasp of their masters, but, caught with fair words and perjury, were again held to the ground.

Since then the emigration to Texas has included a remarkable number of high-minded, intellectual and cultivated people. I should judge a considerably larger portion of these than the emigration to the North. A few of them are voluntary emigrants; many have fled to save their lives, having been condemned to death as traitors; many more have been driven to seek a new country from the destruction of their property, or from having all means of obtaining an honest and honorable livelihood obstructed, on account of their acknowledged political opinions, by the management of the police.

Few of this class have been able to bring with them any considerable amount of property, and it is wonderful how they are generally able to sustain their intellectual life and retain their refined taste, and more than all—with their antecedents—to be seemingly content and happy, while the necessity of supporting life in the most frugal manner by hard manual labor is imposed upon them.

One evening, at a log house, after the most difficult and beautiful music of the noblest of German operas, and the dearest and most patriotic hymns of the fatherland had been sung, there were gentlemen, some of whom had had the rank of noblemen, waltzing to gay music with two ladies, each of distinguished beauty, grace and accomplishments. One of the company observed to me, “I think if some of our German tyrants could look upon us now, they would be a good deal chagrined to see how we are enjoying ourselves, for there is hardly a gentleman in this company whom they have not condemned to death or to imprisonment for life.”

I have visited one gentleman, the taxes on whose estate, previous to 1848, were not less than $10,000. He had enjoyed unusual advantages of education, even for a wealthy German, and had resided several years in England, in France and in Italy. He had been led to adopt and to publicly express Democratic political views, and, on the breaking out of the Revolution he was called upon by the people to head the first movement in that part of Germany in which he lived. He obeyed the call, tearing himself from his weeping wife on the very day of a deep family bereavement, separating himself from nearly all his relations and former friends, vainly striving to lose a private grief in the enthusiasm of a momentous public struggle. Three months’ fighting, and a popular constitution was yielded by their Duke. But soon came Prussian bayonet and reaction, and he was forced to flee. With the moiety of his fortune which he was able to take with him, he purchased a farm in Texas. He has now [277] a comfortable house, a small library, and an excellent musical instrument, and his wife and children are all with him.

He employs no hired laborers on his farm. His two sons work with him till 11 o’clock in the forenoon in Summer, and till 12 in Winter. In the afternoon they are engaged in study. During the last year they have cultivated sixty acres of land, raising 2,500 bushels of corn, besides some wheat, tobacco and cotton. His sons are as fine pictures of youthful yeomen as can be imagined, tall, erect, well-knit, with intelligent countenances, spirited, ingenuous and gentlemanly. In speaking of his circumstances, he simply regretted that he could not give them all the advantages of education that he had himself had, but he added that he would much rather educate them to be independent and self-reliant, able and willing to live by their own labor, than to have them ever feel themselves dependent on the favor of others. If he could secure them here, minds free from prejudice, which would entirely disregard the conclusions of others in their own study of right and truth, and spirits which would sustain their individual conclusions without a thought of consequences, he should be only thankful to the circumstances which exiled him.

One morning in the mountains, we met two herdsmen, riding in on fiery mustangs, at a dangerous gallop among the rocks, searching for cattle. We halted, and were presented to them. One was a doctor of Philosophy from Berlin, the other a baron of ancient and honored name. The latter invited us to call at his “castle,” which was appropriately placed on a prominent rocky elevation in the vicinity. We were there received with the most cheerful hospitality and refined courtesy by his lady, who served us lunch, consisting of jerked beef, corn-bread and tin goblets of hot bouillon. The baronial residence

[278] was made of logs, and had been built entirely by the hands of its owner. The larger part of it he was obliged yet to use as a barn, and the “family apartments” were separated from this by a partition composed partly of deer-skins and partly of calico. The logs were plastered with mud however, the outside door fitted tightly, and, though all the furniture and upholstery was of household manufacture and of the most rude and rustic description, the only essential comfort wanting was—room. This was now the more noticeable from the presence of a late addition to the family, a fine healthy baby, which the Baroness assured us weighed nearly twice as much as children at its age usually did in Germany. There was not the slightest indication of a repining spirit.

It is a strange thing, the like of which, I think will occur to one hardly anywhere else than in Texas, to hear teamsters with their cattle staked around them on the prairie, humming airs from “Don Giovanni,” or repeating passages from Dante and Schiller as they lay on the ground looking up into the infinite heaven of night, or to engage in discussions of the deepest and most metaphysical subjects of human thought, with men who quote with equal familiarity, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Paul and Aristotle, and who live in holes in the rock, in ledges of the Guadalupe, and earn their daily bread by splitting shingles.

A gentleman, much beloved by the people of his native district for his benevolence and generosity, who has been President of an important institution for the elevation of the working classes, for several years a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and in 1848, of the National Assembly of Prussia, arrived here a short time ago. I saw him to-day with a spade working on the road-side, a common laborer, earning a dollar a day. This occupation will be but temporary, nor is he under the absolute necessity of engaging in it. He simply prefers it to idly waiting for more satisfactory duties to be offered him.

Another gentleman I have seen to-day, highly accomplished as a scholar, able to converse in six languages, an author; in 1848 the President of one of the Provincial Assemblies of Germany; since then, two years in prison, and finally escaping in the night and coming safely to Texas, where he supports by his labor a large family. I never saw a man more cheerful, strong in faith, and full of boundless hopes and aspirations for the elevation of all mankind, (including Africans.) I have had the no small blessing of being in his company most of the time for several days; not the slightest evidence of disappointment, dejection, or anything of bitterness have I seen in him.

I have never before so highly appreciated the value of a well-educated mind, as in observing how these men were lifted above the mere accident of life. Laboring like slaves (I have seen them working side by side, in adjoining fields), their wealth gone; deprived of the enjoyment of art, and in a great degree of literature; removed from their friends, and their great hopeful designs so sadly prostrated, “their mind to them a kingdom is,” in which they find exhaustless resources of enjoyment. I have been assured, I doubt not with sincerity, by several of them, that never in Europe had they had so much satisfaction—so much intellectual enjoyment of life as here. With the opportunity [279] permitted them, and the ability to use it, of living independently by their own labor—with that social and political freedom for themselves which they wished to gain for all their countrymen, they have within themselves means of happiness that wealth and princely power alone can never purchase or command.

But how much of their cheerfulness, I have thought, may arise from having gained during this otherwise losing struggle to themselves, the certain consciousness of being courageously loyal to their intellectual determinations-their private convictions of right, justice, and truth.

Truly, it has seemed to me, there may be a higher virtue than mere resignation, and our times may breed men as worthy of reverence as the martyrs of past ages.

What have not these men lost—voluntarily resigned—that mean and depraved and wicked souls are most devout to gain. And for what? For the good of their fellow men—they had nothing else to gain by it. For their convictions of truth and justice. Under orders of their conscience. In faithfulness to their intellect. And they have failed in every earthly purpose, but are not cast down—are not unhappy. What shall we think of those from whom life was also taken—who as cheerfully and bravely gave their life also?

I was looking at some portraits of gentlemen and ladies—the gentlemen decorated—in a room here, the other day. “Those are some of my relatives that remain in Germany.” “And who are these?” I asked, pointing to a collection on the opposite wall, of lithograph and crayon-sketched heads. “These are some of my friends. That one-and that one—and that one—have been shot; that one—and that one—are in prison for life; that one—poor fellow—is in Siberia, and that one—he has been made to suffer more than all the others, I am afraid.”

I once, when in Germany, met an American clergyman, who, I have since seen it said in the papers, has been sent to Asia, to teach the Hindoos Christianity; and he was good enough to inform me that all the German Republicans were mischievous, cut-throat infidels; who well deserved to be shot, hung, and imprisoned for life; and that I very much wronged those who were doing this for them, in my feelings about it. He had dined, only the day before, with several of the higher classes, with a number of Prussian and Austrian officers, and he never met with more gentlemanly and kind-hearted men. When I mentioned the fact that one of these officers had, a few days before, knocked down upon the pavements, with a blow of his fist, an aged laboring man, for coming, guiltlessly, into the street with red stockings on, he presumed that he had thought it his duty to do so; harsh measures had to be used to support the laws when the people were so exceedingly depraved. I believe he did not alter my feelings about it, very much; but I confess that these refugees in Texas have taught me something.

“Hate?”—said one of them—”hate? we do not hate. It was with injustice, imposture, oppression, degradation and falsehood, we struggled. We did and do not hate our enemies; they are the growth and the natural fruit of the [280] system which they sustain, and we are only sorry for them. We have no personal enemies. It is an insane enmity that B_____ has, because the police killed his wife, and he has never recovered from it; so he still talks of revenge. A healthy mind can have no hatreds. We fought with men because they stood for ideas; but it was the ideas we fought against, not the men.”

The Nebraska excitement scarcely reaches Texas. The intelligent large planters are generally gratified and grateful to Senator Douglas for his unexpected and gratuitous offer, but consider it of doubtful value to themselves in particular, because the opening of Nebraska to slave-settlers would bring its lands in competition before immigrants with those in Texas, and most wealthy Texans are extensive land-owners and speculators as well as slave-owners. For this reason they are reconciled to the vote of Houston against the measure, and the absence of Rusk from the Senate when the vote was taken.

The poorer class of Americans know little about the matter, and are indifferent. The Germans alone are led to think and reflect. To assist them, you will be surprised to learn that a translation of Mr. Seward’s speech in the Senate has been extensively circulated under the frank of Gen. Houston.

”Der alte Fuchs!” (the old fox!) I heard one of them exclaim, as he observed this significant circumstance.

There is a difference in the political sentiment of the people of the [282] North and the South, with which, during all my extended tour, I have been more and more painfully impressed.

Patriotism at the North is much more generous and national in its application than it is at the South. There are evident indications of this in the action and speeches of public men, particularly on any subject in which the most jealous and sensitive inquisitiveness can suspect a danger of overlooking all the possible rights of the States in their individuality. But in the general conversation of the people in public affairs, it is much more manifest. When it is a question of internal policy, you never hear it discussed, except as to how the interests of the South are to be affected. The North is looked upon with a constant jealousy. Her prosperity is considered to have been in some way obtained at the expense of the South, and there is constant reference made to the supposed efforts of Northern people to overreach the South. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred at the South talk of Northern statesmen and politicians, as only our extreme Anti-Slavery agitators represent those of the South, as cunning Yankee tricksters in politics.

Southerners are patriotic, intensely patriotic, but the South is not patriotic. The patriotism of Southerners, in proportion to its intensity, is concentrated. It centres between a man’s heels. The patriotism of the Northern people is broad and generous; it is national, and centres at Washington. I speak of patriotism as a sentiment—an interior spring of the mind, influencing its determinations independently of assignable reasons. The North feels towards the South as if it were a part of itself—honors it and glories in it, and sorrows for it and with it, as bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. The South loves the North as its business partner, and cares for its glory and success only so far as it is reflected upon itself, and accrues to the honor, safety, and wealth of itself.

The dissolution of the Union, as an economical measure, has never been conceived of by a Northern mind. The extremists of the North have urged that union with the South, under certain circumstances, made the North responsible for the iniquity of the laws of the South, growing out of its determination to sustain and perpetuate the institution of Slavery; they have, therefore, attacked the Constitution of the Union as morally wrong. They have gone further; they have declared that because it was wrong it was not binding, and they have acted consistently in this, that while they repudiate for themselves a share in the wrong, they decline to use the privileges which it confers upon them. They refuse to vote. They are politically disarmed. As a power of the North, opposed even upon moral grounds to the purposes of the South, they are practically non-combatants.

But the men of the South, who, when the North has been suspected of a disposition to restrict them in the employment of certain means of improving their property—means of doubtful constitutional integrity, of doubtful morality, and of evident national inexpediency—have advocated, and labored to effect, a secession of the Slave States. Such men suffer themselves, and are [283] suffered by others, not merely to act politically, but to occupy positions of great honor and influence.

Examine the proceedings of the Conventions of these factionists, and you will find that they are as impracticable, as fanatical, and as unfit for meddling with public affairs, as the most insane Abolitionist. They are certainly the counterparts of the extreme Anti-Slavery men of the North, except that the latter profess to be influenced by moral arguments, and they only by rage and selfishness—partriotic selfishness.

Suppose that instead of the heroic General Pierce, of New-Hampshire, the equally heroic General Pillow, of Tennessee, or General Quattlebum, of South Carolina, had been our President, would his own party in the North itself have been gratified—would anyone have thanked him for his generosity, and considered it as a peculiar expression of his love for the Union, had he chosen for his Secretary of War that very brave and talented citizen of Massachusetts, Theodore Parker? Theodore Parker has not expressed hostility to the Union more strongly than Jefferson Davis.

If a Southern President had turned out a Virginian, at a time when his severe labors were nearly approaching an honorable conclusion, and had put in his place a citizen of Ohio, who should immediately destroy a great part of the results obtained by the labor of his predecessor, the subserviency to party power in our country might let it pass without indignation ; but if the new appointee to the directorship of the Census of the United States had been the editor of the Emancipator, or even the gentlemanly, cautious and moderate Anti-Slavery editor of the National Era, no one will believe that it would have been hailed anywhere at the North as a most appropriate, suitable, and broadly patriotic appointment.

The reputation of Mr. DeBow, the present Commissioner of the Census, as an extremist of the Slavery school of politics, is not less notorious than that of Mr. Garrison or Dr. Bailey among the Anti-Slavery agitators, and his private sentiment of enmity towards the North and devotion to the peculiar interests of the South, are so strong that I have heard him spoken of by one of his friends as in a condition approaching insanity on the subject.

President Pierce, on his acquisition of office, almost immediately removed certain of the Territorial Judges in whose Courts the legality of holding slaves is expected to be tried. I think there were three such removals of Judges on what were supposed to be, of course, merely party grounds; an action of the Executive power unprecedented, with but two excusable exceptions, in the history of our Government. Suppose that the remaining Judges were all Northern men, and that the President should have proposed to fill the vacancies he had thus created with Northern men—men having a private pecuniary interest, if it were possible, in the contraction of the market for slaves, as all slaveholders have in its extension—would it have met with general approval at the North; would it have been considered at the South as a wise, suitable and [284] just proceeding? But the counterpart of this was the action of our President; and it passed entirely unnoticed at the North, and the patriotism of the South was in no way ashamed to accept it as proper and common-place.

I do not wish to dampen the patriotism of the North. I hope that love for our whole country, and a spirit of justice and severe good faith, may, if possible, be strengthened as a ruling influence in our politics, by the present excitement. But I trust that the conviction will not be lost, after the excitement occasioned by this Nebraska plot shall have subsided, that it is not safe to carry the spirit of conciliation so far as to give the ultraists of the South all those offices and opportunities for effecting their purposes which they most desire, while those of correspondingly extreme Northern views are excluded from the slightest direct political power.

Congress and the General Government will always “bear watching” in their action upon questions into which Slavery enters as an important element of consideration, for another reason, the value of which is scarcely at all appreciated at the North. No strong opposition to the designs and wishes of the South can ever have been made by individuals at the North from pecuniary considerations. Anti-Slavery principles improve no man’s property. But there is not probably a single Southern member of Congress or Cabinet Secretary or departmental functionary, who has not a direct pecuniary interest in strengthening, enlarging and perpetuating the institution of Slavery. Any vote to weaken, restrict or decrease the permanence of Slavery, given by a Southerner, must be given solely from considerations of the general good—from patriotism and in good faith, in opposition to his immediate private pecuniary interests. For example, the introduction of Slavery into Nebraska will so much enlarge the field of slave labor, as to probably increase the demand for slaves sufficiently to add 5 per cent to the value of each—in the same way that when the field of commerce was enlarged by the discovery of gold and the consequent immigration in California, the general value of ships was increased some twenty per cent. The owner of a ship of the value of $50,000 thus became $10,000 richer in a few months. The arch rowdy of our country, to gain the confidence of the South, some years since boasted in the Senate that he was the owner of a considerable number of slaves, having acquired them by his marriage. Suppose them to be one hundred in number—at the late current prices they may be considered to be of the value of $800, on an average, each. He gains then $4,000 directly, by the passage of his Nebraska bill. Indirectly, by gaining power for the general slave property interest, for future operations, his private pecuniary advantage is much greater.

I know a gentleman in Kentucky who owns nearly one hundred slaves, which pay him a very small interest on their value. He told me he would have sold them this Winter to go South, but he believed if a Slave State could be obtained on the Pacific coast, as he had reason to hope there might be in two years from this time, slave property would be increased in value nearly one hundred per cent., and he should continue his investment in that anticipation. [285] It will be evident that this gentleman could well afford to give $50,000 to effect the passage of the Nebraska bill, the ratification of the Gadsden Treaty, the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and the annexation of the Walker Republic as slave territory to the United States. I know of one other Southern gentleman who makes no secret that he has spent $40,000 during the last year, in furtherance of these schemes, and considers it a good investment.

Consider the immense power which these speculators have when the patronage of the Federal Government is placed in their hands. Honorable and honest speculators and officers though they be, are they to be expected to know “no North, no South,” in the disposition of this patronage?

It is true that but a small proportion of the people of the South have this personal interest in wresting power from the North, but this small proportion have the money power, and the ignorance and stupidity of the poorer class at the South is so great that it possesses the means of almost absolute control of public opinion. It has been generally noticed by editors at the North how falsely and incompletely the newspapers with which they exchange at the South represent the public sentiment of the North on the Nebraska business. Hon. John M. Botts, of Virginia, also justly complains of this, in his letter on the subject in the National Intelligencer. It has come within my knowledge that the promise of a considerable job of work, which had been given to a poor but worthy young printer, has been lately retracted, because there was issued from his office a newspaper of small local circulation, into which articles of the Daily Times and other Northern papers, indicative of the general sentiment of the North, had been copied, though without editorial endorsement; and another printer is to have the work, because he publishes a paper in which only the views of Arnold Douglas and others of that sort have been placed before the people. Censorship of the press is a tyranny of European despotism from which we are happily exempt. “Non nobis,” etc.