tells me so, and I only make them laugh when I try to assure them that my end is drawing near.
You ask me about the political situation in the United States. I gave you some details in my last letter. Since then the elections have taken place, and despite the formidable opposition of a pronounced majority, the radical minority has won a signal victory. Nobody wonders at it; the radicals hold the power and make use of it per fas et ne f as without the least scruple, and risk and dare everything regardless of the consequences to the country to perpetuate their odious power.
The thing that is especially agitating the Union at this moment is the tendency of the radicals to try at any cost to crush the South entirely. The Southerners risked everything in their efforts to separate from the Union while preserving their honor intact, and to-day, conquered and yielding, they have returned heart and soul to the Union, attached to the Government and desiring only peace; and the radicals seek to impose conditions upon their return so humiliating and impracticable that the South looks on them with horror and will never accept them.
Should the radicals succeed in their schemes, it is evident that the land is making rapid progress toward anarchy and all the inevitable miseries that it brings with it. As far as religious persecution is concerned, what I think is this: The radicals will not find it easy to bring it about in a land where the spirit of liberty of conscience established by Washington is still held in great honor. Every one fears, and with reason, that after the Catholics his own turn would come. At the last Missouri elections the radicals must have seen that the impious test-oath which the priests refuse to take, is in very bad odor even among the greater part of our Protestant sectarians. But for the unjust and iniquitous disfranchisement of 25,000 conservative voters, the new