where must feel a deep interest in the fate of the Great Republic and of African slavery.
Your devoted uncle, PETER JOHN.
St. Louis University, Sept. 23, 1865.
My Very Dear GUSTAVE 8
I have received your good letter of the 22d of June last. I think I have answered it in part. If I can trust my memory, I believe I have sent you photographs of Lincoln and Johnson. You ask for details concerning political affairs in America. I am not in the habit of mingling in matters of this sort; still I am glad to give you a little account of the course of the Government in emerging from a most terrible and disastrous crisis, as it appears to my mind.
I will begin with my arrival in this country last June. On the 19th of the month we were in sight of Sandy Hook. The American pilot had come on board the night before with his bundle of newspapers. As soon as he set foot on deck he was besieged by the curious multitude eager to learn the recent great events. The papers were devoured and discussed with avidity, for we had many politicians on board, of both hemispheres, and a great number of interested merchants.
I learned then, with consolation, and later events confirmed me in the thought, that calm and reflection were beginning gradually to take hold of the masses, after the saddest and most unfortunate of wars, and that law and order, with the total extinction of slavery, were being re-established by degrees in the States where secession had caused so much destruction and so many misfortunes. The spontaneity of the Southern people, which had precipitated so great a number of States into rebellion, has produced like-
8 From the French.