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.

In a previous letter I have described to you the exceedingly honorable character supported by those German people of Texas who, in Europe, enjoyed the luxuries and advantages of education and wealth, and who have been driven [289] to emigrate hither by persecutions of the police, and other misfortunes arising from their political views. These form a remarkably large number of the recent emigrants. The great mass, however, consists of young men of the middle and lower orders of society, who, if they had remained in Germany, would have been liable to be reduced, by the various restrictions and taxes on business and by the oppressive guild-laws of the handicraftsmen, to live almost hopelessly in the condition of laborers struggling against starvation. Many of these have been educated with care and in the midst of considerable comfort, but are wholly unprovided with capital.

This class of immigrants find immediate employment on the farms here, at such a rate of wages that, in from two to four years’ time, they can always themselves become landholders, and be wholly independent of others—at least, for a mere personal livelihood. I have often found such young men clubbing together, either for the purchase or rent of land; and a picture of the condition of a family of this class, with a single man in partnership, established on a farm of their own, four years after immigration, I have given in a previous letter. The small number of women that immigrate occasions many bachelors to be their own housekeepers. Frequently, however, as soon as they have obtained the necessary means, they send to Germany for the betrothed, whom they have been obliged to leave there, to come and join them.

I am writing from a camp in the mountains. Near us there are several of these young Germans, who have either bought or rented or squatted upon land, which they cultivate and live upon, in small cabins or huts, alone, or in partnership with one another. There are four living together in one cabin. Two of them are mechanics, and earn a dollar and a quarter a day in the employment of the wealthier farmers; the others rent and work together a piece of land-the capital of the four being combined in the purchase of horses, cattle and swine, which, with their increase, are cared for and employed in their labor by the agriculturists.

Many of these young men, either with a little capital that they have been able to bring with them, or which they have earned by labor here, or with borrowed capital, become tradesmen, and I have not been in a single town in Texas in which I have not found at least one of these German shop-keepers established. Owing to their frugal manner of living and their habitual exactness of calculation and close attention to their business, the German tradesmen almost invariably make money rapidly. As soon, however, as they have acquired sufficient capital, instead of extending their business, they commonly sell out to new comers, and purchase land and stock and settle as farmers and graziers. I know one who six years ago commenced keeping a store in a small country town, with a capital of only three hundred dollars, who now owns several thousand acres of land, besides town houses which he rents, and other property, which altogether must be worth considerably more than twenty thousand dollars. He lives on a farm with a wife he had left in Germany from want of ability to bring her with him when he emigrated, and I have lately seen him [290] among his hired laborers, guiding a plow with his own hands, no less industrious than when seven years ago he solicited employment as a laborer for himself.

It is the same with mechanics; as soon as they have earned sufficient capital—often in two years after their arrival—they become farmers, laboring on their own land. Those who remain long in the towns, seldom do so in the station of journeymen, but rent or build themselves shops or take contracts for work themselves, and rapidly accumulate property. I know a house-painter—a trade for which there is very little employment in this country—who arrived here only two years since. In a little more than a year he paid out of his earnings for a very comfortable house, half of which he occupies himself and the other half rents for over 10 per cent. interest on the capital invested in the whole, and he has just completed building a very handsome stone house, also, I presume, paid for out of his earnings at his trade, which he has rented at $35 a month.

There is another important class of immigrants who come here from Germany—small farmers and tradesmen—who, though they have hitherto been able to live comfortably and happily, have not in the old country been able to increase their fortune materially, and who are unable to leave their families in comfortable circumstances, or to find honorable and lucrative employment for their children. This class usually bring with them a small capital, with which they immediately purchase land and stock for farming.

I lately spent a night with a family of this class of the immigrants who arrived in the country last Fall, and who had been settled only about two months.

Their house, although built merely for temporary occupancy, until

[291] they could spare time and money for one more comfortable, was a very convenient, long, narrow log cabin with two rooms, each having a sleeping loft over it, two halls, or rooms open at the ends, and a corn-crib. The cooking was done outside by a camp—fire, but with utensils brought from Germany, and peculiarly adapted for it. A considerable stock of furniture was stored in the halls, yet in the boxes in which it had been imported. The walls of the two rooms had been made tight with clay, and they were furnished with doors on hinges. (No man who has traveled much on the frontier will look upon these indications as trivial.) Our supper was cooked and served to us on china, on a clean tablecloth, in one of these rooms, skillfully and nicely. A sofa occupying one side of the room had evidently been made by the women of the family after the building of the cabin. On the walls there were hung a very excellent old line engraving of a painting in the Dresden Gallery, two lithographs and a pencil sketch, all glazed and framed with oak.

The family consisted of several middle-aged and elderly people, a young man, a young lady, and four very sweet, flaxen-haired children. They were all very neatly dressed, the head-dresses of the females being especially becoming and tidy. They were courteous and affable, and the tones of their voices were amiable and musical. One of my traveling companions was a German, and our conversation with them was left entirely to him. He went away however after supper, to call on one of the neighbors. An hour or two later, as I returned to the house, after looking to our horses, one of the elder women spoke to me in German; I could not understand, and she called to the young lady, who came before me, and bowing in a very formal manner, addressed me in these words: “Sire, will you to bed now go, or will you for rest, wait?” I replied that I would at once go to bed, if she pleased. She bowed and walked before me till opposite the open door of the second tight room, in which a candle had been placed, and pointing to it, said: “There, Sire.” There were three Single beds in our sleeping-room, all extremely clean, and we were provided with washing apparatus and other bed-chamber luxuries very unusually found, even in the “best hotels,” in the Southwest. The walls of the room, too, were adorned with some good engravings and some paintings of religious subjects, of ordinary merit.

The head of this family had been a tradesman in a small town in Bavaria, where also he had owned a little farm. He had evidently been able to live there with considerable comfort. He could not, however, see any way in which he might provide for his family, so that he could leave them without great anxiety at his death. But now, if this farm should be divided among his children, all of them could, by honest labor, be sure of obtaining, come the worst, sufficient food and raiment and shelter, and in no case would they be dependent on the favor or kindness of public functionaries for the privilege of laboring for their living.

“Only one thing,” said the mother, “we regret. It is that our children, who have so well commenced their education in Germany, cannot here continue it.”

[292]

In Prussia every child is legally obliged to attend school. This forced education is, without doubt, often felt by the poor man as a tyranny, preventing him from enjoying for a time that assistance in his labor for the support of his Family which his children are capable of giving him. It has also been speciously urged that the child, being forced against its will to go to school, would resist his education, proceed with it as slowly as possible, and gain comparatively slight advantage from it, that the children altogether would be less well educated than if education were made, as in our Northern States, cheap but optional. The argument is fallacious, because, under all systems, the child is equally forced “unwillingly to school.” It is only the peculiarity of the Prussian, that the State claims the right and exercises it (not as a duty to the child but to itself), of preventing the parent from withholding, from selfish motives, an education from his child.

I am glad to say that the Prussians, and all Protestant Germans here, seem by no means to undervalue the advantages of Education, as a security for the continued safety and welfare of the State. There is a general desire that a law similar to that of Prussia should be enacted by the Legislature of Texas;—that well-prepared teachers should be employed, and adequate school-houses and apparatus for teaching be supplied, and that all the children in the State should be compelled to prepare themselves for the future exercise of citizenship, either by the use of these free means or such other as their parents may be able and willing to provide for them.

Everyone sees the danger, under a democratic system of government, of allowing the mass of the people to grow up in ignorance and unenlightenment of mind. In countries cursed with aristocratic institutions, like the Southern States and Prussia, the danger to be apprehended by the privileged classes from the education of the oppressed classes is greater than that which arises from their ignorance. In Prussia it is attempted to steer between both dangers, and by making the teachers functionaries, dependent for their living on the goodwill of the aristocracy, to compel them, while they educate the minds of the people in a low but useful degree, to misinstruct them, by habituating their minds to the idea of the rightfulness and the necessity of their submission to tyranny. The attempt has failed.

At the South, instead of providing means and compelling the education of the degraded class, to that degree which shall make them most useful as laborers and artisans—finished tools of their masters—the plan is adopted of wholly denying the means of education, and preventing the child of the degraded from even educating himself so far as he is disposed to; barring, restricting, and interrupting the natural development of his mind. This, undoubtedly, has its effect on making the relation of the masters and their people less dangerous.

It has, however, this great difficulty, even immediately. The large majority of the aristocratic class is itself poor and ignorant, and this part, having equal political rights, nominally, with those who reap the advantage of [293] the degradation of the lower class, danger arises from their ignorance and unenlightenment. See the difficulty manifest now in Mississippi, where the poor and ignorant people, unwilling to submit to a tax, refuse to allow the debts of the State to be paid; in consequence of which the credit of the State has fallen so low, that works essential to its future prosperity cannot be carried on for want of means.

The education of the children of this ignorant aristocracy, is therefore, as everyone perceives at the South, a matter of vital necessity. The degraded laboring class (slaves) however, constitute so large a proportion of the whole population, and so large a part of the land is reserved by their owners for the application of their labor, that the poor and ignorant moiety of the population is so scattered, and forced into such a vagabond method of life, that it is entirely impracticable to provide adequate means for educating them. The degree of this difficulty experienced is evident in the results exhibited by statistics, showing the proportion in which the smallest measure of education is possessed by the aristocratic class of the Southern States, and the whole people of the Free States, respectively. While there is but one in several hundred of the people of the North that are not able to sign their names to legal documents, in most of the Southern States the proportion is one in from seven to twenty.

A merchant in Western Texas tells me that a majority of his customers are Germans. Among these, in seven years’ dealings with them, he has never found a man unable to write his name; a very common thing to find among the Americans with whom he has occasion to do business.

As the eastern part of Texas is to have, for an unlimited time, a planting aristocratic state of society, with slave labor, and the west—under the effect of the German immigration—will be a farming, democratic and free labor community, here will eventually arise a difficulty in adapting a school system suited to both sections, which can only be solved by a division of the State.

There is throughout the State, a much stronger disposition to give the means of some education to all its white children, than I have seen manifested anywhere else at the South. The present Executive, a native of that old pedagogue State, Connecticut, has done much by his personal and official influence to encourage this disposition, and the late Legislature constructed a fund for general educational purposes, of the sum of two million dollars.