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.”