A Sea of Love : The Atlantic Correspondence of Francis and Mathilde Lieber, 1839-1845 [1 ed.] 9789004344259, 9789004344242

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A Sea of Love

Brill’s Specials in Modern History volume 3

A Sea of Love The Atlantic Correspondence of Francis and Mathilde Lieber, 1839–1845 Edited by

Claudia Schnurmann

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Sketch of Francis Lieber in his letter from Columbia/sc to his niece Clara Lomnitz in Hamburg, ca. spring 1847, usc flc Box 4, folder 126, by courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library, ­University of South Carolina, Columbia/sc. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018022198

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2468-578X isbn 978-90-04-34424-2 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34425-9 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To Hermann, a true lettersman

⸪

Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Figures xi Abbreviations/Symbols xii CV Franz/Francis Lieber (1798–1872) and Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer (1805–1890) xiv List of the Selected 95 Letters in Chronological Order of the Date of Their Beginning Time Frame and Place of Writing, Author, Receiver, and Final Destination XVIII Tokens of Love 1 Letters 57 Sources 771 Bibliography 772 Index 808

Acknowledgements It was a pleasure to do Lieber Part 2: whereas Part 1, my monograph Brücken aus Papier, puts special emphasis on the interpretation of the Atlantic correspondence of Francis and Mathilde Lieber, Part 2 A Sea of Love concentrates on the edition of their Hamburg letters. Love is a crucial term in their letters, life, and in their relationship. Love is also a crucial term in the relation of the editor to the volume’s scenes of actions, especially Hamburg, and the person to whom A Sea of Love is dedicated. Although Francis Lieber never felt shy to show feelings, he refrained from an editor’s opportunity to express emotions: “I do not like much these family love epistles in dedications” he commented his rare dislike for sentimentality. So here I stop and just pay tribute to those for whose help, advice, and support I am deeply grateful. As always I have to thank my sister Angela Oechler for many things reaching from transatlantic informations about delightful soccer results to the supply with a digital advent calendar in 2016. My former student assistants Sarah Lentz and Anna Wellner did a great job; they moved many obstacles out of the way leading from some original letters in kryptical handwriting to transcripts readable to 21st century people. I want to thank my staff at the History Department of the University Hamburg Marianne Weis-Elsner, Philipp Wendler, and Fenja Heisig, for enabling me to make good use of my sabbatical in 2016/17. I have been to many places where Francis and/or Mathilde Lieber lived. Besides following in their footprints across Hamburg my pilgrimage included sites in Berlin, Rome, Leominster/ England, Washington/DC, Ogdensburg/NY, Göttingen, Boston, Wedendorf, Philadelphia and Columbia/SC. A visit to Züllichau/Sulechów, Poland, is yet to come. My extended visits on the Horseshoe, the campus of the University of South Carolina in Columbia/SC were a very special experience, a kind of time tunnel: to sit in the reading room of the South Caroliniana Library Lieber used in his times facing the so-called Lieber House where he wrote letters to be sent to Hamburg or received letters from Mathilde in Hamburg I tried to dechiffre – awesome! The staff of the South Caroliniana Library was wonderful; many thanks to Lorrey Stewart, Nathan Saunders, and the director Henry Fulmer. They made it possible to rediscover the charming painting of Francis Lieber sending sketched kisses across the Atlantic and gave their permission to use it in print. The same generosity I met in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington/DC, and the McKissick Museum, Columbia/SC. My greatest gratitude goes to my husband Hermann Wellenreuther: he not only listened patiently to my endless Lieber-talk at the dinner table, on the phone, or via facetime across the Atlantic, he also improved the introductory

x

Acknowledgements

essay Tokens of Love when he translated my draft written in German. Thanks for that. Now, after many years of being a kind of peeping attendant I will leave “my” fascinating Lieber family finally alone – my thanks to Francis and Mathilde Lieber for the possibility to take a look into their life by letter; it was a great experience, moving, sad, funny, exciting, sometimes enraging and always enlightening. Claudia Schnurmann, Hamburg Barmbek, February 2017

List of Figures 1

F rancis Lieber by Auguste Edouart, lithograph and cut paper on paper, ca. 1841 Washington/DC, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Robert L. McNeil, Jr. 3 2 Mathilde Oppenheimer as fiancée of Francis Lieber, London ca. 1827, artist unknown, oil on canvas, McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, courtesy of McKissick Museum 4 3 Portrait of Jacob Oppenheimer, lithograph by Otto Speckter, Hamburg ca. 1840 (private collection) 7 4 Map of Hamburg, Altona and villages in the neighborhood ca. 1838 (private collection) 38 5 The Esplanade, Hamburg-Neustadt, lithograph by Otto Speckter, Hamburg ca. 1838 (private collection) 40 6 Colored Lithograph of Hamburg’s Binnenalster, Druck u. Verlag v. C. Burckardt’s Nachf. in Weissenburg (Elsass), ca. 1850 (private collection) 42 7 Map of the Campus of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, ca. 1840, courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 44 8 Photo of the Lieber-House on the Campus of the University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, 2016 (Copyright CS) 45 9 Photo of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, 2016 (Copyright CS) 45 10 Sketch of Francis Lieber in his letter from Columbia/SC to his niece Clara Lomnitz in Hamburg, ca. spring 1847, USC FLC Box 4, folder 126, by courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 49

Abbreviations/Symbols ∆ damages in the paper; for examples holes, ink spots, faded ink, paper spoiled, cuts, splices […] [2] [cross-writing] symbol to indicate editing like explanations by the editor to sketches within the text, elisions, paging, cross-writing of letters F, #, x, *, = symbols used at random by the letter writer to indicate breaks and/or continuations during the process of letter writing or hints to connecting text ( ) symbol used by the letter writer and crossing out by the letter writer or with regard to addresses added during the transport process and underlining by the letter writer Paul Anton underlining of a Christian name by the editor in footnotes/ index indicates the person’s first name/Rufname used by the letter writer ALS Autograph Letter Signed, letter written out by hand by the author and signed by the author FLC Francis Lieber Collection, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC GStaPK Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, BerlinDalhem Ham Hamburg or Ham = Hamm, village east of Hamburg Hamb. Hamburg LI  Francis Lieber Papers in The Huntington Library, San ­Marino, California M.S. Manuscript Mass. Massachusetts MB, Mbo Mark banco, Hamburg currency NB; Nb Nota bene NJ New Jersey No. Number NY New York state NYC, N.Y. New York City NYPL New York Public Library, New York City p. page PA Pennsylvania Pr. Per

Abbreviations/Symbols

xiii

PS Post scriptum R.R., R.r. Railroad SC South Carolina StaHH Staatsarchiv der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg SUB Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg Th Thaler, German currency THL The Huntington Library, San Marino, California TNA The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, UK URL Uniform Resource Locator USC University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC

CV Franz/Francis Lieber (1798–1872) and Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer (1805–1890) 8.4.1798 Birth of Franz Lieber, Breite Strasse, Alt Cölln (Berlin) 15.4.1798 Baptism of Franz Lieber in the parish of St. Petri, Alt Cölln (Berlin) 21.7.1805 Birth of Mathilde Oppenheimer, Valentinskamp, Hamburg 27.10.1806 Franz Lieber witnessed the entry of the victorious French army in Berlin 1810/1811  Mathilde Oppenheimer’s family moved from Hamburg to London 1811 Franz Lieber joined the turn movement of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in Berlin 1815 Franz Lieber joined the Prussian army as private in the Regiment Colberg 20.6.1815 He received severe injuries in the Battle of Namur, afterwards he was recovering in a military hospital in the Netherlands/todays Belgium 1816/1818  Franz Lieber High School years in the Graues Kloster, Klosterstrasse Alt Cölln (Berlin) 1817/1819 Political activities, first unpleasant encounters between Franz Lieber and Prussian authorities 13.7.-11.11.1819 pretrial detention of Franz Lieber in Spandau prison (Berlin) 20.11.1819 graduation of Franz Lieber in Berlin 21.4.1820 after traveling across Germany with stops in Tübingen and Heidelberg, conspicious meetings with supporters of a German nation state, and inconclusive efforts to get access to universities, Franz Lieber enrolled at the University of Jena/Thuringia 1820–1822 Mathilde Oppenheimer stayed in a girls’ boarding school in Hamburg 10.7.1820 Franz Lieber took his PhD at the University of Jena/Thuringia winter term 1820/21 Franz Lieber enrolled at the University Halle/Saxony-Anhalt summer term 1821/ winter term 1821/22 Franz Lieber enrolled at the University Dresden/Saxony autumn 1821 Franz Lieber left Dresden, travelled via Bavaria and Switzerland to Marseilles January 1822 Mathilde Oppenheimer returned to London

CV Franz/Francis Lieber (1798–1872)

xv

January–April 1822 Franz Lieber travelled to Greece to take part in the Greek fight for liberation April 1822–1823 a belied Franz Lieber left Greece for Italy, was employed as tutor of Marcus Niebuhr, son of the Prussian ambassador in Rome, Barthold Georg Niebuhr Autumn 1822 Franz Lieber published his diary of his experiences in Greece Summer 1823 Franz Lieber returned to Berlin Summer term 1824  Franz Lieber enrolled anew at the University Halle/ Saxony-Anhalt August 1824 Arrest and transfer of Franz Lieber to Köpenick jail August 1824–April 1825 pretrial detention of Franz Lieber in Köpenick jail Summer 1825 Lieber was employed as home tutor to the children of Ernst Graf von Bernstorff and Amerika Gräfin von Bernstorff née Riedesel; besides he worked as language teacher in his parent’s house Breite Strasse, Alt Cölln (Berlin) April/May 1826 collissions of Franz Lieber with Prussian authorities 17.5.1826 Franz Lieber left Berlin 19.5.-22.5.1826 Franz Lieber stayed on his way to England in Hamburg 27.5.1826 Franz Lieber arrived in London November 1826 Boy meets Girl: first encounter of Francis Lieber and his student of Italian language and German literature Mathilde Oppenheimer, London, secret engagement between this young daughter of the well-to-do Hamburg merchant-­ banker Georg Oppenheimer and the exiled scholar who by luck and with the help of the German colony in London got hold of an employment as teacher of sports in Boston/Mass. 16.5.-22.6.1827 On board of the Britannia Francis Lieber travelled from Liverpool to New York 1827–1829 Francis Lieber in Boston/Mass., instructor for swimming and gymnastics, editor of the Encyclopaedia Americana and journalist employed by the newspapers and book publisher Johann Friedrich von Cotta, Stuttgart 8.8.-16.9.1829 On board of the Caledonia, accompanied by her brother Wilhelm Gustav Mathilde Oppenheimer travelled from Liverpool to New York 20.9.1829 Wedding of Francis Lieber and Mathilde Oppenheimer in New York City 1829–1832 The newly wed couple took residence in Boston/Mass. 8.9.1830 Birth of Joseph Oscar Montgomery Lieber in Boston/Mass.

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CV Franz/Francis Lieber (1798–1872)

20.1.1832 Birth of Laura Lieber in Boston/Mass. 1832–1833 Removal to Manhattanville/NY, Francis Lieber worked as freelanced editor of the Encyclopaedia Americana, author, translator, journalist, and lecturer at the NYU, New York City 30.8.1833 Death of Laura Lieber, she was buried in Bloomingdale Episcopal Church, Manhattanville/NY 1833–1835 Removal to Philadelphia, Francis Lieber drafted the so-called Girard Report, authored and edited several texts; he planned to establish a private boarding school for boys 7.6.1835 Birth of Alfred Hamilton Lieber in Philadelphia 1835 Francis Lieber got tenure as professor of history and political economy at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 1835–1856 The Lieber family lived as guests of the McCord family and since 1837 in an university owned terrace house on the Horseshoe, the campus of the College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC 21.5.1837 Birth of Guido Norman Lieber in Columbia/SC July 1839–July 1840  Mathilde Lieber took her three sons Oscar, Hamilton, and ­Norman to Hamburg to live for a year with her sisters Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer in Esplanade 8, Hamburg, and returned to USA with Hamilton and Norman Lieber while Oscar stayed on in Hamburg August 1839–1845 Oscar Lieber attended a day-school (Dr. Werner), then boarding schools in Hamburg-Eppendorf (Dr. Palm/Busse), and ­Hamburg-Hamm (Dr. Schleiden) 1844–1845 Mathilde Lieber returned to Hamburg to stay with her sisters Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, and her two younger sons in Esplanade 13, Hamburg 1844–1845 Francis Lieber spent his sabbatical travelling across Europe and joined wife, sons and relatives in Hamburg, Berlin, and Züllichau to meet colleagues and celebrities 1847–1850 Oscar Lieber studied Geology, physics, and chemistry at universities in Berlin, Göttingen, and Freiberg/Harz Mountains 1848 Francis Lieber in Germany, visits to Hamburg, Berlin, and Göttingen, attended the Parliament in the Paulskirche Frankfurt/ Main 1851 Francis Lieber at the Great Exhibition, the first world exposition that took place in London Hyde Park in the Crystal Palace January 1857 Francis and Mathilde Lieber with their sons Hamilton and Norman moved to New York City, while their son Oscar Lieber stayed in the South to work as geological surveyor of South Carolina (1856–1860)

CV Franz/Francis Lieber (1798–1872)

xvii

1857ff Francis Lieber got tenure at Columbia College/NYC 1857–1872 Francis Lieber professor for history and political economy, he changed the faculty to take a professorship of political sciences at Columbia College/ Columbia University/NYC 27.6.1862 Death of Oscar Lieber in Richmond/VA, buried on Hollywood Cemetery, as soldier of the Confederate Army while his younger brothers Hamilton and Norman Lieber had joined the Union forces 1862/63 Francis Lieber created the Code 100, the so-called Lieber Code 2.10.1872  Death of Francis Lieber in New York City, burial place Woodlawn ­Cemetery, Bronx/NY 18.10.1876 Death of lieutenant colonel/Captain Hamilton Lieber in Baden-Baden, Germany 1877/78 Together with Hamilton Lieber’s widow Harriet née Wood Mathilde ­Lieber moved to Newport/RI where she owned two houses 67 and 69 in Rhode Island Avenue (architect Dudley Newton) 26.2.1890 Death of Matilda Lieber in Newport/RI 25.4.1923 Death of brigadier general Guido Norman Lieber in Washington/DC, burial place Arlington National Cemetery with his wife Bettie Alexander (1846–1916) and their children

List of the Selected 95 Letters in Chronological Order of the Date of Their Beginning Time Frame and Place of Writing, Author, Receiver, and Final Destination FL = Francis Lieber, ML = Mathilde Lieber, NYC = New York City/NY, HH = Hamburg, Phil = Philadelphia, NY = New York State, SC = South Carolina, COL= Columbia/SC No. Dates

Place

Author Receiver Place

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

16.07.1839 22.07.1839 30.07.-06.08.1839 09.08.-18.08.1839 11.08.1839 22.08.1839 22.08.1839 23.08.-03.09.1839 24.08.1839 30.08.-19.09.1839

FL FL FL FL FL FL FL FL FL FL

ML ML ML ML ML ML ML ML ML ML

HH HH HH HH HH HH HH HH HH HH

11

03.09.-10.09.1839

FL

ML

HH

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

10.09.-21.09.1839 18.09.1839 22.09.1839 25.09.-07.10.1839 25.09.-29.09.1839 26.09.1839 11.10.1839 13.10.-20.10.1839 15.10.1839 20.10.-27.10.1839 27.10.-11.11.1839 28.10.-05.11.1839 01.11.-02.11.1839 13.11.-22.11.1839

NYC Boston Boston Boston Boston NYC NYC NYC/Montreal NYC Whitehall/NY Montreal Montreal/ Ogdensburg/NY Ogdensburg/NY HH NYC HH NYC/Phil NYC COL COL HH COL COL HH HH HH

FL ML FL ML FL FL FL FL ML FL FL ML ML ML

ML FL ML FL ML ML ML ML FL ML ML FL FL FL

HH NYC HH COL HH HH HH HH COL HH HH COL COL COL

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List of the Selected 95 Letters

No. Dates

Place

Author Receiver Place

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

COL HH HH COL HH COL COL HH COL HH COL COL HH COL HH COL COL COL HH COL HH COL COL HH COL HH HH COL HH COL COL COL COL COL COL COL COL COL+NYC

FL ML ML FL ML FL FL ML FL ML FL FL ML FL ML FL FL FL ML FL ML FL FL ML FL ML ML FL ML FL FL FL FL FL FL FL FL FL

16.11.-03.12.1839 25.11.1839 02.12.-03.12.1839 04.12.-08.12.1839 06.12.-20.12.1839 10.12.-16.12.1839 17.12.-22.12.1839 18.12.1839 24.12.-28.12.1839 31.12.39-02.01.40 31.12.39-09.01.40 12.01.-26.01.1840 15.01.-21.01.1840 26.01.-01.02.1840 30.01.-07.02.1840 02.02.-05.02.1840 05.02.-09.02.1840 18.02.-22.02.1840 19.02.-28.02.1840 23.02.-04.03.1840 05.03.-17.03.1840 05.03.-07.03.1840 08.03.-19.03.1840 18.03.-22.03.1840 20.03.-03.04.1840 25.03.-02.04.1840 03.04.1840 05.04.-14.04.1840 06.04.-17.04.1840 17.04.-25.04.1840 28.04.-10.05.1840 12.05.-19.05.1840 19.05.-25.05.1840 26.05.-01.06.1840 02.06.-07.06.1840 08.06.-21.06.1840 21.02.-29.02.1844 01.03.-17.03.1844

ML FL FL ML FL ML ML FL ML FL ML ML FL ML FL ML ML ML FL ML FL ML ML FL ML FL FL ML FL ML ML ML ML ML ML ML ML ML

HH COL COL HH COL HH HH COL HH COL HH HH COL HH COL HH HH HH COL HH COL HH HH COL HH COL COL HH COL HH HH HH HH HH HH HH HH HH

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List of the Selected 95 Letters

No. Dates

Place

Author Receiver Place

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

on sea/HH on sea/ Manchester HH London London HH HH London HH HH HH Wittenberge HH Berlin Berlin Berlin HH Züllichau HH Heidelberg Travemünde HH HH Dresden HH Berlin HH HH Bremen HH HH NYC

ML FL ML FL FL ML ML FL ML ML ML FL ML FL FL FL ML FL ML FL ML ML ML FL ML FL ML ML FL ML ML FL

22.03.-09.04.1844 02.04.-08.04.1844 14.04.-16.04.1844 19.04.1844 19.04.-23.04.1844 22.04.1844 03.05.1844 09.05.-13.05.1844 15.05.-17.05.1844 26.05.1844 04.06.1844 17.07.1844 20.07.1844 22.07.-23.07.1844 27.07.1844 31.07.-02.08.1844 01.08.1844 07.08.1844 12.08.1844 19.08.-20.08.1844 30.08.1844 16.09.1844 02.10.1844 07.10.1844 09.10.1844 15.10.1844 15.10.1844 19.10.-22.10.1844 08.01.1845 14.02.1845 21.02.-22.02.1845 25.02.1845

FL ML FL ML ML FL FL ML FL FL FL ML FL ML ML ML FL ML FL ML FL FL FL ML FL ML FL FL ML FL FL ML

London HH London HH HH London London HH Paris Paris Brussels HH Berlin HH HH HH Berlin HH Berlin HH Munich Vienna Dresden HH Berlin HH Berlin Berlin HH COL COL HH

Tokens of Love What makes the 19th century Atlantic exchange of letters between the ­German-US-American spouses Francis and Mathilde Lieber special for 21st century readers? This simple question can be answered in more than one way. 1) If one stays within traditional gender roles, the first remarkable feature of this correspondence is the written speech of an illustrious man, the scholar Francis Lieber (Berlin 1798-New York City 1872). This German immigrant to the usa was in the 19th century well known as an industrious member of the Atlantic community of scholars. His most important contribution to Atlantic knowledge was the Encyclopaedia Americana (1830–1833),1 an English translation of a German encyclopedia published by F.A. Brockhaus in Leipzig only recently.2 Its title Encyclopaedia Americana reveals its origins as well as its Americanization of common knowledge in Germany. Lieber, furthermore translated texts of European legal scholars for American readers. He authored monographs on judicial and philosophical issues in three countries (usa, Great Britain, and Germany). He created in 1863 the code 100, the so-called Lieber Code on behalf of us-American President Abraham Lincoln.3 He published articles and political treatises. He launched book reviews, wrote letters to editors and editorials for important journals, and contributed freely to the Atlantic literary and scientific discourse of his peers. In the production of knowledge in public and private spheres the scholar Lieber functioned on the level of his impressive circle of friends and correspondents. Among those he counted Alexander von Humboldt, Alexis de Tocqueville, Joseph Story, Charles Sumner, Washington Irving or Alexis de Chateauneuf. 1 Encyclopaedia Americana. A Popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, ­Politics and Biography, Brought Down to the Present Time; Including a Copious Collection of Original Articles in American Biography; on the Basis of the Seventh Edition of the German C ­ onversations-Lexicon, edited by Francis Lieber, assisted by E. Wigglesworth, 13 vols., Philadelphia Carey & Lea 1830–1833. 2 The original title of Lieber’s model was Allgemeine deutsche Real=Encyklopädie für die g­ ebildeten Stände. (Conversations=Lexikon), 12 vols., 7. Auflage Brockhaus-Verlag Leipzig 1827–1830/1834. 3 General Orders No. 100: The Lieber Code = Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, prepared by Francis Lieber, promulgated as General Orders No. 100 by President Lincoln, 24 April 1863. url avalon.law.yale.edu (16.1.12017). Titles of Francis ­Lieber’s extensive oeuvre are given in the footnotes only on these occasions the author himself referred to them in his letters.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_002

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Tokens of Love

The exception within his male-dominated correspondence was represented by his exchange of letters with his wife Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer (Hamburg 1805-Newport/ri 1890); she was his partner in life and his equal in an extensive production of letters covering decades and long distances. Their private correspondence represented an important part as well as a vehicle he used for his public transfer of knowledge across the Atlantic. Their letters offer hints about carriers, practical organization, as well as of contents of this multifaceted exchange of knowledge. Mathilde Lieber, daughter of a wealthy bourgeois Hamburg couple was firmly convinced of a conservative concept of gender roles, marriage, and womanhood that was in perfect harmony with her husband’s attitude. When she took care of tedious tasks of a secretary like copying letters or her husband’s manuscripts she served her husband. In their correspondence Mathilde Lieber nevertheless adopted an active creative role. In her letters she exercised a strong impact on her husband’s management and transfer of knowledge by offering critique, and ideas. She not only influenced his way of thoughts, she also had an impact on his network of contacts when via letter writing she coordinated his academic activities. 2) The 95 letters selected from a correspondence of ca. 140 letters written by Mathilde and Francis Lieber during the chosen time frame offer immediate insights into their emotional and social settings. Much was written only for the named recipient. Yet large passages of the letters were composed by the author to be read by and to relatives, friends or guests that should be convinced by the author’s qualities. Francis and Mathilde Lieber are remarkable for their ability to reveal in their long distance correspondence innermost thoughts and emotions as well as perceptions of their enviroment (see figures 1 and 2). Up to now only a few editions of letters and correspondences authored by scholars, migrants, or merchants in the 18th or 19th century Atlantic world have been published and analysed.4 We do not know of any scholarly edition of an Atlantic correspondence of a married couple that belonged to the international set of 19th century sophisticated citizenry. The Liebers as a couple displayed little restraint in their letters sharing their own feelings and wishes in remarkable frankness. Both tried to bridge the huge spatial distance with written words whose perceptions often were described not as an act of reading but of listening. With descriptions of their daily life, repetition of conversations, reports about their situation in which they wrote letters and experienced

4 See Wolfgang Helbich and Walter D. Kamphoefner, eds., Deutsche im Amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg, Briefe von Front und Farm 1861–1865, Paderborn 2002; Sarah M.S. Pearsall, Atlantic ­Families. Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century, Oxford 2008.

Tokens of Love

Figure 1

3

Francis Lieber by Auguste Edouart, lithograph and cut paper on paper, Washington/dc 1841. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Robert L. McNeil, Jr.

sensory perceptions they hoped to transcend time and space. By those methods they tried to achieve and maintain emotional closeness. In their paper ­dialogues the Ego was presented to the You, the other.5 5 Winfried Schulze, ed., Ego-Dokumente. Annäherung an den Menschen in der Geschichte, ­Berlin 1996.

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Tokens of Love

Figure 2

Portrait of Mathilde Oppenheimer as fiancée of Francis Lieber, London ca. 1827, artist unknown, oil on canvas. McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, Columbia/sc, courtesy of McKissick Museum

3) Besides individual phenomena and details of privacy the letters reveal behavioral patterns and specific values of their authors’ socio-cultural background. They offer intimate glimpses onto an Atlantic world that was closely connected by fashions, customs, and rules. Both writers devoted much attention in their correspondence to social and cultural phenomena, which beyond individual, local and national importance represented values of educated citizens of the Atlantic republic: Facets of these are: 1. 2. 3.

Religion, faith and denominations; Science, academic market, publications and issues related to the scholarly Atlantic community; Theatre, music, painting, applied art, and literature;

Tokens of Love

5

4.

Pedagogy and education in schools as well as theories and concepts related to childhood; 5. Gender roles, concepts of marriage, womanhood and manly behavior; 6. Technique, inventions, and fashions; 7. Features related to social status, family and friends (illnesses, births, ­bereavements, marriage); 8. Civic society and bourgeois sociability in the usa, Europe, Hamburg, and Berlin 9. Communication and networks, traffic systems, infrastructure, mail services, and weather; 10. Politics, trade, and economy; 11. The art of letter writing, possibilities and limits in communicating by letter issues of love, family, friendship as well as transmitting pedagogical letters or letters of recommendation. 4) The selected 95 letters date from two periods in the life of Francis and Mathilde Lieber when they were separated by the Atlantic Ocean they considered their sea of love: those two periods were the years 1839 to 1840 and 1844 to 1845. Their common local denominator is the city-state Hamburg in northern Germany: either the letters were written or received in the city on the river Elbe. There the letters were written by Mathilde Lieber and addressed to her husband in the usa (1839–1840) or on his tour through Europe (1844–1845). Francis Lieber composed his epistles at home in Columbia/sc or while on tour through the usa, Canada or Europe and dispatched them to his wife in Hamburg (1839–1840, 1844–1845). Thus the German metropolis functioned as the point of reference, frame, and as a veritable theatre of life for the corresponding partners. At the same time Hamburg competed constantly with other cities Lieber and his wife had visited or had lived for longer periods. Both felt much attachment to cities in the northeastern states of the usa. Their hopes finally were fulfilled in 1857 when they moved to New York City. But from the point of view of their Hamburg correspondence published here this was still a long time off. In their letters Francis Lieber, born in Berlin, and Mathilde Lieber, born in Hamburg, revealed their life within the framework of their own entertaining ‘tale of two cities’, Hamburg and Columbia/sc.6 While their earlier places of residence London (he lived there in 1826–1827 while she had lived there since 6 Title of a novel by Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, Chapman & Hall London 1859.

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her c­ hildhood in 1811 till her departure for New York City in 1829), Boston (1829–1832), Manhattanville/ny (1832–1833), and Philadelphia (1833–1835) enjoyed their unmitigated approval, their judgements about their native ­places or about Columbia/sc, where they resided between 1835 and 1856, were ambivalent. With evident pleasure Lieber cursed about Berlin. Disgusted with her state of affairs he had left the Prussian capital in 1826. 18 years later, in 1844, the now respectable us-American citizen returned to Berlin: Lieber bitterly lamented the arrogance and sauciness of the local people as well as the low standards of living. Berlin stinks, was his rather unflattering judgment. Columbia/sc did not fare much better. His tirades included the town’s people, black and white alike, and his working place, the local College of South Carolina. In 1835 Francis Lieber had been appointed to a well-endowed professorship at the flourishing state college. Notwithstanding the fact that Lieber finally had found financial security, he felt no satisfaction but excluded from the vivid scholarly discourse in the North. His personal frustrations influenced his perceptions of his long time place of residence Columbia/sc. In 1839 his wife Mathilde returned for the first time to Europe since her migration to the usa in 1829. On the one hand she felt comfortable in returning to her birthplace, Hamburg; on the other hand with her move to England in 1811 and finally to usa she had become a stranger to her native city. The intelligent woman now looked at Hamburg with some ambivalence. She was welcomed by Hamburg’s upper classes but she did not try to integrate and put emphasis on her position as an us-American. She preferred not to be part of Hamburg’s society but rather to comment and act as an observer from the fringe. She was happy to be able to secure for their oldest son Oscar (Boston 1830-Richmond/ Va. 1862) a solid education in Hamburg’s private schools. For a year, 1839/40 she stayed with Oscar in order to ease his first steps in unfamiliar surroundings. When she returned to the usa and her husband, she left Oscar in the care of his headmaster Dr. phil. Carl Schleiden and her relatives, especially her sisters Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer. Both her sisters lived in comfortable circumstances, well cared for by their uncle Jacob Oppenheimer. The experienced merchant-banker served as their economic adviser. See Figure 3. From 1838 onwards the two women resided in the so-called Neustadt of ­Hamburg, Hamburg’s new quarter, the classicistic elegant Esplanade No. 8. In 1840 they moved to an even nicer and more spectacular town house in the neighborhood, Esplanade No. 13. Like her parents, the rich widow Caroline

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Figure 3

7

Portrait of Jacob Oppenheimer. Lithograph by Otto Speckter, Hamburg ca. 1840 (private collection)

Lomnitz relocated her household during the summertime from the muggy City to the breezy countryside in Hamburg’s neighborhood. From 1840 onwards Caroline Lomnitz and all persons in her care, sister, children, servants and visitors, spent summers out-of-town in a farmhouse in rural Lokstedt, north of the City. Mathilde Lieber was delighted to be reunited with her sisters in 1839; both of whom, Caroline Lomnitz as well as Henriette Oppenheimer, she had last seen in 1829. Mathilde Lieber enjoyed meeting her relatives and friends in Hamburg, who belonged to the urban elite. Yet, at the same time the migrant and proud us-American was certainly not blind to the problems, odd morals, and curious contradictions of Hamburg society.

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The Lieber-correspondence is filled with perceptions of Hamburg on the one hand, of Columbia/sc on the other hand. The letters’ comments oscillitate between notions from the inside as well as from the outside. They offer profound insights into the societies and internal structures of both river cities. Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes subliminally these comments provide close looks at Hamburg on the Elbe in the Biedermeier period as well as on social structures of Columbia/sc on the river Congaree in Antebellum usa. But the letters offer too reflections of their writers’ attitudes and feelings for these cities. Mathilde Lieber liked her native town. She felt amused by Hamburg’s little quirks, but disdained Columbia/sc. She praised the high standards of Hamburg bourgeois lifestyle, reacted with amusement to her cousins’ patriotism, urban petty-fogginess and bemoaned the poor condition of Hamburg’s streets. She loved the luscious parks, the topography, and the maritime atmosphere of ‘Hammonia’, so the pet name of Hamburg. In Columbia/sc, however, she could only appreciate the large house on the campus of the College of South Carolina the Lieber family lived in. She liked the moderate winters of the South, its bright sunshine, the mocking birds on the campus’ trees and a few friends she had made. Francis Lieber despised Columbia/sc and Berlin, whereas Hamburg occasionally got his approval. If he had have to pick in Germany a town for a living he surely would have opted for Hamburg because of the cities’ solid financial set up as a center of commerce and public media. Lieber always liked the company of merchants, their access to communication and financial means especially when they let him participate in their joyful ways of living. Lieber loved good cigars, splendid wines, and excellent food. He would have opted for Heidelberg if the famous university in the beautiful romantic town had offered him a professorship. For everything was better than Columbia/sc or Berlin where friends since 1844 used their networks to bring Lieber back to Prussia. The couple’s opinions and expectations were of course shaped by personal experiences and perceptions. Where to live under which conditions were aspects important for Francis and Mathilde Lieber.

The Principal Characters

In late summer of 1839 Mathilde Lieber took her son, nine year old Oscar ­Lieber from Columbia/sc via New York City to Hamburg, where he was to receive a sound education in some of the City’s private schools. Since the early modern period it was customary for well-to-do North Americans to have their male offspring educated in private schools and universities on the other side of the Atlantic. From the late seventeenth century onwards West Indian

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­planters and merchants from British North America had sent their sons to English schools and universities. In the early 19th century us American, English as well as S­ panish men of rank dispatched their sons to Germany to be educated for instance at the universities of Göttingen, Berlin, or Heidelberg. After his schooling in Hamburg as a young adult, in the years 1847–1850 Oscar Lieber enrolled at the renowed universities of Göttingen, Berlin, and Freiberg in the Harz Mountains. In doing so the career-orientated parents willingly accepted long periods of separation from their offspring and traumatic experiences of their children. In the case of Oscar Lieber various reasons determined the decision to have him educated at Hamburg while still a young boy. Those causes were linked to the biographies and personal experiences of his parents, Mathilde and Francis Lieber. Mathilde Lieber was born in Hamburg July 21, 1805 as fourth daughter and fifth child of the Hamburg merchant Georg Oppenheimer and his wife Clara Recha née Gottschalck-Düsseldorf. The Oppenheimer family was wealthy, cultivated and close to the Lutheran confession. Their members were related by kin, marriage, and friendship to liberal Jews and Jewish converts to Lutheranism both in Hamburg and nearby Altona, that untill 1866 belonged to the Danish monarchy. Professional success resulted in a high standard of living. The family of Georg Oppenheimer resided in a big house Auf dem Kamp 276 (todays’ Valentinskamp) in the new sector of the city of Hamburg, in Hamburg-Neustadt. The townhouse was well equipped with salons, classy furniture, books, and luxury items. Members of the family often visited operas, theatres as well as concerts and puppet shows. For the summer Recha Oppenheimer moved with her children and servants (cook, nanny, maids, bellboy, coachman) to a house on the banks of the Außenalster out of the city’s bounds. Her husband stayed in his town office or went on business trips to Denmark, Norway, Mecklenburg, Prussia, or England. The Oppenheimer children were educated by a succession of governesses, animated to learn, read for fun, sing, play games and taught to play instruments. They were exposed to contemporary literature. Some governesses beat up the children, while others recited poems for them. Their governess from 1807–1810 was Rosa Maria Varnhagen, sister of Karl August Varnhagen and sister-in-law to the famous Berlin salonière Rachel Varnhagen née Levin. To Rosa Maria Varnhagen’s circle of platonically loved friends belonged such cultural giants of German literature as the French poet in Berlin Adelbert von Chamisso, Justinus Kerner, Heinrich Heine or Rosa Maria’s bosom friend Amalie Schoppe. Schoppe’s step father, the merchant Johann Heinrich Burmester from Wandsbeck was a long-standing business partner of Georg Oppenheimer, in Germany as well as in England.

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In 1811 Georg and Recha Oppenheimer moved with their children to London. The economic restrictions imposed on Hamburg during the French occupation (1806–1814) coupled with Napoleon’s Continental System since 1806 had prompted Georg Oppenheimer to settle in the capital of the British empire. In their new abode, London, the newcomers quickly became part of the resident colony of German especially Hamburg merchants. Georg and his brother Morris became partners of influential bankers like the Rothschilds from Frankfurt/ Main, the merchant-bankers Warburg, Levin, and Goldschmidt from Hamburg, or the bankers Fould from Paris. Close relations to various cultural elites in Oppenheimer’s new surroundings were established and former contacts were cultivated. Acquaintances of Franz Lieber from Berlin like the well-known theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher or one of the first professors of German literature Ludwig von Mühlenfels who visited London in 1828 paid their respects to Georg Oppenheimer. The merchant was befriended by the Austrian diplomat and musician Sigismund von Neukomm who in 1829 composed his ‘Gebet für Mathilde’, in honor of Mathilde Oppenheimer.7 In ­London charitable foundations, patronized by the Royal court and high nobility, r­eceived generous donations from well-to-do Hamburg merchants like Georg and Morris Oppenheimer, as behoved their status and self perception. Neither their bankruptcy in 1819 nor the severe international financial crisis of 1826, that pushed their friend and merchant banker Lion Abraham Goldschmidt in London into suicide, impaired the good image of the merchant house of Georg and Morris Oppenheimer. Despite or maybe because of these economic problems and many other discriminations experienced in the anti-Jewish climate of English High Society, Georg Oppenheimer carefully maintained and cultivated his contacts to his homeland. His children visited his brother Jacob Oppenheimer, their grandmother Hannah Oppenheimer as well as his sisters Wilhelmine Ahrens and Emilie Hesse both in Hamburg and ­Altona. From 1820 to 1822 Mathilde Oppenheimer attended a private school in Hamburg, while her younger brother Theodore visited Hamburg’s well reputed gymnasium Johanneum. During those years Mathilde intensified her friendship with her cousins of equal age, Adele Oppenheimer, Ludwig ­Oppenheimer and ­Ferdinand Haller. Mathilde Oppenheimer and her siblings retained their close emotional bonds even when they lived apart in far removed countries. The older sister of Mathilde, Clara Oppenheimer, married in 1817 the ­English nobleman and ­lawyer James Thomas Woodhouse whom she had met on h ­ olidays in Wales. 7 See Rudolph Angermüller, Sigismund Neukomm. Werkverzeichnis-Autobiographie. Beziehung zu seinen Zeitgenossen, Munich-Salzburg 1977, p. 99.

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They ­resided on the landed estate of her husband in Leominster/ Herefordshire. In the pastoral countryside of the West Midlands the prosperous couple raised 15 children for whom they provided an enjoyable childhood and fine education. The second sister, Caroline Oppenheimer, an excellent piano ­player, married in 1825 a ­former employee of her father, merchant Eduard August Lomnitz from Wandsbeck, in those days still outside of Hamburg. One year later Lomnitz started his own trading firm in Manchester. Mathilde’s ­brothers Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer, both trained merchants, after employments in the Caribbean island of St. Thomas and in Venezuela invested in 1829–1830 their own capital as well as financial assets from their Hamburg ­relatives (Jacob ­Oppenheimer, Salomon Heine, and Hartwig Hesse) in ­sugarcane-, ­coffee-, and tobacco-plantations in Ponce on the Spanish island of Puerto Rico. In 1835 Gustavus Oppenheimer married Isabella Bettini, daughter of a wealthy Caribbean planter; some years earlier his brother Theodore Oppenheimer had chosen the daughter of a plantation owner on Danish St. Thomas, Dolores Medina. She evoked little sympathies with her Oppenheimer relatives. Henriette Oppenheimer who suffered from bodily handicaps remained single and spent her life in the wake of her widowed sister Caroline Lomnitz. Mathilde Oppenheimer since November 1826 received private tutoring by Francis Lieber in her parents’ London house. She fell madly in love with her good looking blue-eyed teacher, a hotblooded refugee who cherished highflying ideas but had no money in his pocket. Only after long discussions did her father accept the infatuation of his daughter and allowed her in August 1829 accompanied by her brother Gustavus, to join Francis Lieber in the usa. The husband-to-be had struggled hard to get a professional career. Two days after her arrival in New York she married Francis Lieber on September 20, 1829 in Manhattan, New York City. After a brief honeymoon the young couple moved to Boston, where Francis Lieber without any fixed employment continued his work as freelance journalist and editor of the Encyclopaedia Americana. One year later, on September 8, 1830, the couple’s first son, Oscar, was born. This child was the cherished darling of his father, the object of his ambitions, who should not repeat the father’s ­mistakes and failings. About that time Georg Oppenheimer and his wife together with their daughter Henriette and their youngest child James left London for Heidelberg. They had picked this picturesque city as the proper residence of wealthy rentiers for the last years of their life. In Heidelberg they continued their charitable e­ ndeavors. Georg Oppenheimer contributed to the charitable funds for ­Polish refugees and corresponded with Freiherr von Fahnenberg in F­ reiburg/­Breisgau, who

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­managed this charity fund in 1831/1832.8 Even tightfisted Francis Lieber contributed his penny to this charity.9 In general Lieber enamored with genteel ­behaviour and hospitality of his in-laws sent several American friends like Washington Irving, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Charles Sumner equipped with his letters of introduction to their house in Heidelberg. He liked to take advantage of the economic expertise of his father-in-law. In his dealings with the publisher Johann Friedrich von Cotta in Stuttgart he used Georg Oppenheimer as his legal adviser and mediator. In short, the much desired quiet life in their retirement was not to be for the Oppenheimer parents in Heidelberg. The husband of Caroline Lomnitz suffered from either depression or mental disease. Eduard August Lomnitz died in 1835 under circumstances that were not discussed in those letters that were passed on. The young widow moved with her five young children (Edward, Felix, George, Emil, and Clara) to her parents, who in the meantime had fallen ill. Her mother Recha Oppenheimer died in February 1836. Her funeral was attended by the recently widowed Harvard scholar and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1838, Mathilde Lieber’s father Georg Oppenheimer died, sincerely bemoaned in Heidelberg, Hamburg, Leominster, Ponce/Puerto Rico, and Columbia/sc. There Mathilde Lieber slowly recovered from a miscarriage and the death of her only daughter Laura. The close bonds between the family members that had existed between the Oppenheimer’s for many generations, prompted Caroline Lomnitz, her sister Henriette, and her brother James in 1838 to move to Hamburg where she enjoyed the patronage of her uncle, and executor of her father’s will, Jacob Oppenheimer. Family and Hamburg represented two constant pillars in the unsteady life of Mathilde Lieber and her siblings, although occasionally, some of them had problems in dealing with Hamburg. As a young man Theodore Oppenheimer did not like to visit Hamburg, although when in the 1840s he suffered from hepatitis he considered returning to Hamburg with his family for good. Clara Woodhouse refused to visit Hamburg although her beloved sister Mathilde stayed there in 1839–1840. Caroline, Gustavus, James, and Henriette on the ­other hand mostly loved being in Hamburg. They liked the urban social life and 8 Stadtarchiv Freiburg/Breisgau, L 4 Archiv der Freiherren Mayer von Fahnenberg, Archiv iii Kasten 18. Gabriela Brudzyńska-Němec, Polenvereine in Baden. Hilfeleistung süddeutscher Liberaler für die polnischen Freiheitskämpfer 1831–1832, Heidelberg 2006, pp. 199–201. 9 See letter books by Johann Heinrich Gossler in StaHH 622–1/9 Familie Berenberg Conv. 64 + 38 Heft 2, Heft 4 1829–1830, passim; StaHH 622–1/9 Familie Berenberg Conv. 51 Bilanzen von Johann Heinrich Gossler, 1823–1878, passim.

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participated in charity affairs by raising money or donating coffee from their own plantations in Puerto Rico. Except for the chronically ill Henriette, especially the men used many of the institutions Hamburg had to offer: schools and institutions for vocational training. They all relied on the support of a well-todo large family with numerous children, cousins, nieces, and nephews, aunts and uncles, who were mostly busy as successful merchants, lawyers or senators with friends among artists, politicians and the printing media. Together they formed a close knitted security net that provided loyalty, capital, and contacts. Such a strong network Francis Lieber missed in Columbia/sc badly. As professor at the College of South Carolina he enjoyed a good reputation. He had become well connected both in the usa and in Europe and highly respected, despite his somewhat rough and informal way of behaviour. Passages in his correspondence, letters of recommendation and academic honors received document the positive reactions Lieber evoked among his contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic. In many instances Lieber’s problems resulted from his character and his experiences of being a German immigrant. Despite his admiration for the usa, its political system and effective constitutions, Lieber rejected many aspects of the usa, especially in the southern states. He was disgusted by slavery and the seeming lack of southern culture. At the same time he invested capital in the Caribbean plantations of his brothers-in-law which were managed with enforced labor. Undisturbed by his paradox behaviour Lieber despised the South. He missed the intimate friendships, especially the strong support of his wife’s family. His own economically successful family in Berlin and Züllichau tried to maintain contacts with the unhappy professor at Columbia, but these efforts lacked a certain intimacy. Only a few letters of his parents and sisters have survived. If at all Lieber communicated with his brothers. Among them he preferred the economically successful merchant and industrialist in Züllichau, Eduard Lieber. He likewise frequently recalled Dr. Gustav Lieber, a medical practitioner in Berlin, albeit with a critical eye. His other brother, the theologian and teacher in Züllichau, Dr. Julius Lieber, received his brotherly and professional appreciation. Carl and Hermann Lieber were rarely mentioned. The illness and death of his brother Adolf Lieber, an officer in the Prussian army and an economist, in the year 1838 was barely mentioned. However, Francis Lieber paid his share to meet the costs of nursing care of his terminally ill brother. His sisters and sisters-in-law obviously did not meet the high intellectual requirements Lieber expected from writers of letters. They were barely mentioned. If letters arrived from their hands they were often received with disinterest and disdain. All in all Lieber preferred the family of his wife, their possibilities, their loyalty,

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their networks, and their affection – especially their tokens. Most likely this attitude was the result of observing the close relationship of his loving and accommodating wife with her brothers and sisters, a relationship that became even closer after the death of Mathilde’s parents. Probably the generous and world-wise brothers and sisters-in-law were more sympathetic to him than his own more provincial siblings in disliked Berlin and rural Silesia. For his employer, the College of South Carolina in Columbia/sc, he developed no sympathies. The town as well as the campus were hateful objects to him, full of dust, dirt and boredum. Lieber liked to look down on Irish migrants, Catholics, on emancipated women, Methodists, Quakers, Potsdam, and Prussia as well as on black people, yet he hated intolerance, lack of freedom, and any kind of restrictions as well as slavery. At the same time he bought, sold, and leased enslaved human beings, mocked their seeming weaknesses and wanted desperately to protect Oscar from having to live in a slave state like South Carolina. It is at this point where his actual antipathies, highflying expectations, and bad experiences with Prussia’s educational institutions merged with the promising possibilities of Hamburg. This family of immigrants distrusted at least in the case of their us American first born son the us American educational system. With a heavy heart Francis and Mathilde Lieber decided to entrust Oscar’s education not to German teachers in New England but to teachers and relatives in Hamburg. In this rites de passage in July 1839 Mathilde Lieber as well as Oscar’s younger brothers, Hamilton (Philadelphia 1835-Baden-Baden 1876) and Guido Norman (Columbia/sc 1837-Washington/dc 1923) accompanied Oscar to Hamburg. This rites de passage of their young son repeated and at same time reversed the fate of Oscar’s parents: in 1829 Mathilde Oppenheimer had followed her fiancé from England to the usa, because her beloved Francis had put all his hopes for a satisfying career into the possibilities of the New World. Mistakes in his own behaviour as well as the hysteria of state officials during the so-called persecution of demagogues between 1819 and 1826 had ruined his chances for a career in Prussia’s establishment. Now in 1839 their son was expected to establish in the homeland of the parents a basis for a successful professional career in the usa.

Biographies, Migrations, and Networks

Young Franz Lieber had suffered in the politically agitated atmosphere of Berlin in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and the Restoration 1815–1826.

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Deep frustrations and mental injuries had prompted his emigration (1826) and shaped for a long time his negative attitude toward his homeland. When he returned in 1844 he let no one in doubt about his aversion to Prussia, Prussian politics and oppression. Yet earlier on, during his childhood and youth Lieber’s attitude towards his home country was marked by enthusiastic patriotism. For generations his family had been loyal subjects of Prussia, who had served the Hohenzollern dynasty with fidelity. When eight-year-old Franz had observed the French occupation forces march into Berlin under Marshall ­Louis-Nicolas Davout he had wept bitterly. Prussian military heroes like ­Ferdinand Baptist von Schill young Franz had idolized. Enemies of the Prussian state like ­Napoleon he had intended to murder. Self-appointed saviors of Prussian ­military discipline like Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Ernst von Pfuel adolescent Lieber had adored. Barely 17 years old Franz Lieber, agitated by the continuous propaganda of teachers, parents, friends, and siblings in 1815 enrolled into the Prussian army. Together with friends from his Berlin neighborhood he joined the Pomeranian Regiment Colberg and with joyous songs marched into the battle against Napoleon. Bloody engagements did not cool his enthusiasm. When he became badly wounded in the battle of Namur (June 16, 1815) he interpreted his experience as a rite of initiation. Repeatedly he declared that on the blood drenched fields of Flanders fighting Napoleon he had become a man. Later in life he repressed the memory of the battle of Namur and instead transferred his sufferings to the battle of Belle Alliance, better known as the Battle of ­Waterloo (June 18, 1815). This battle had become more famous and gave the brave wounded soldier Lieber much more manly glamour. After his return to Berlin he joined his old circle of friends around Friedrich Schleiermacher, Julius Eduard Hitzig, Georg Andreas Reimer, Ernst von Pfuel, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Karl Beck, Albert Baur, Wilhelm and Stephan Benecke. In his understanding Jahn became the new Savior. Confronted with the domineering attitudes of Jahn and his followers the Prussian authorities under an imbecile monarch deteriorated into persecution hysteria. After the murderous attack on August von Kotzebue by Karl Ludwig Sand, a devoted follower of Jahn, Prussia’s civil servants and secret police sensed treason, ­riots, and conspiracies everywhere. The so-called Karlsbader Beschlüsse of ­August/­September 1819 represented the helpless attempts of the Deutsche Bund to sooth the a­ nxieties of conservative and restorative forces. There is no doubt that in some ­German territories secret groups existed who demanded the creation of a German ­nation-state. In times of restoration of princely ­power and territorial ­fragmentation, however, restless disturbers of peace in Prussia, i.e. members of student fraternities, military officers, and scholars at

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the University of Berlin were ­unable to generate broadly based support for their goals. The good c­ itizens of the Biedermeier period were unable to fathom their ­demands: a  combination of the progressive French Revolution (1789– 1799) with the conservative principles of the Glorious Revolution (1688–1689) in a German national liberal state with a constitutional monarchy. From July 1819 onwards, many sympathizers of such ideas were abhorred by the monarch of the Hohenzollern, arrested and subjected to interrogation in the dungeons of Spandau prison. Lieber belonged to these prisoners, as did Jahn, his admired model, and Jahn’s trusted followers Georg Andreas Reimer, Ludwig von Mühlenfels, Gustav Asverus, and Hans Ferdinand Maßmann. The examining magistrate, E.T.A. Hoffmann, lawyer, well-known writer and poet, recognized the overdrawn fanaticism of young Franz Lieber and belittled it as a curable mental deviation and outgrowth of juvenile enthusiasm. Hoffmann attracted the dislike of the Prussian king because he doubted the wisdom of sentencing someone for terrorist deeds on mere suspicion.10 In November 1819 the would-be revolutionary Lieber was discharged from the citadel at Spandau. Within a few days, on November 19, 1819, Lieber graduated in Berlin, albeit with little glamour. The examination board acknowledged his talents and good knowledge of his mother tongue, but criticized his poor Latin. When the young man tried to enroll as a student of theology at the University of Berlin, the mistrusting authorities forbade his registration. Lieber was deeply hurt. He sent petitions. He thought of alternatives which however violated the stipulations he had agreed to at the time of his discharge from Spandau. He attempted to enroll at universities outside a relentlessly prosecuting Prussia.11 In his attempts he unsuccessfully courted the support of well-known public figures. The university at Jena, a fairly liberal academic institution in Thuringia, finally accepted his application. Within a record three months in June 1820 he received his doctorate in mathematics. Yet at the behest of the Prussian minister he was forced to leave Jena. Stubborn Lieber moved on to the ­universities 10

With regard to the Prussian judge and author E.T.A. Hoffmann and his position during the prosecution of demagogues in Prussia since 1819 see his novel: Meister Floh. Ein Märchen in sieben Abenteuern zweier Freunde, Friedrich Willmans, Frankfurt/Main 1822; Wolfram Siemann, Deutschlands Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung. Die Anfänge der politischen Polizei 1806–1866, Tübingen 1985, pp. 174–188; the biographies of the main acteurs Francis and Mathilde Lieber are described in detail in Claudia Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier. Atlantischer Wissenstransfer in dem Briefnetzwerk des deutsch-amerikanischen Ehepaars Francis und Mathilde Lieber, 1827–1872 (= Atlantic Cultural Studies vol. 11) Berlin 2014, pp. 37–154. 11 Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, p. 70f.

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of Halle and Dresden. During a short period Lieber’s relationship with the state of Prussia improved. It allowed him to enjoy a Prussian fellowship for the years 1820–1821 in Halle. New collisions were to follow soon. Faced with the danger to be imprisoned again, the young doctor finally decided to leave Prussia. In autumn 1821 with the help of Adolf and Karl Fellau (i.e. Charles Follen) he fled via Switzerland to Marseilles. There he joined a volunteer regiment that intended to liberate revolutionary Greece from Osmanian rule. In early 1822 Lieber travelled to Greece enthusiastically envisaging the chance of killing Antichrist. Again he failed. In April 1822 without military laurels, dressed in rags and famished he sailed on board of a shabby seller of souls to Italy. There his chutzpah as well as luck secured him admission to the residence of the Prussian minister at the Holy Seat in Rome. That honorous position was held by the famous scholar Barthold Georg Niebuhr. This scholar and diplomat was so impressed by the young man, that he hired him as tutor for his son Marcus. For a year, 1822–1823, Lieber resided with the Niebuhr family in the impressive Palazzo Caffarelli on top of Rome’s Capitoline Hill overlooking the eternal city with her stunning skyline of spires and domes. In his Roman year Lieber formed friendships and social contacts which were destined to play an important role in his later life. He met artists like Bertel Thorvaldsen and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, politicians like Christian von Bunsen, who in earlier times had been the chaperon of William Backhouse Astor, son of John Jacob Astor; he became acquainted with Jean-François Champollion, Wilhelm and Caroline von Humboldt, the shining lights of Berlin’s haute volée, and finally with Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm iii. Lieber learned Italian. He learned to adjust to and cope with political conditions. Former friends from the national liberal camp became irritated by Lieber’s publication of his Greece diary in 1822; they considered the booklet a humiliating kowtow to his earlier prosecutor Baron von Kamptz and the Prussian King.12 In the winter of 1822/23 Lieber’s relation to the sensible Prussian diplomat Niebuhr deteriorated. Niebuhr wanted to get rid of the demanding and badtempered tutor. Lieber was dismissed in early summer of 1823. Lieber returned to Berlin. He was fiercely determined with royal patronage to start a civil service career in Prussia. He began as a private tutor teaching Italian, produced 12

Franz Lieber, Tagebuch meines Aufenthalts in Griechenland während der Monate Januar, Februar und März im Jahre 1822, F.A. Brockhaus Leipzig 1823 [1822]; Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, p. 81; sub hh Nachlass Wurm 50:70, Albert Baur, Berlin, to Christian Friedrich Wurm, Epsom/England 17.05.1826.

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literary pieces, poems, dramas, and songs,13 in order to keep himself above water and feed his hungry stomach. He joined private reading circles of esoteric friends who were still fighting juvenile confusions. He visited the salon of Henriette Herz. He got on the nerves of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense. He bored to death Adelbert de Chamisso and bewitched his friends Carl Knoblauch, Wilhelm Keibel and Julius Eduard Hitzig. He felt attracted to Mathilde Benecke, the young, beautiful, and enchanting wife of his friend from old gymnastics times, the wealthy Berlin banker Wilhelm Benecke. Yet the dashing admirer never was able to triumph over female chastity. Over time he became desperate. None of his plans succeeded. His hopes to be appointed to a civil service position began to vanish. His former teachers had criticized his lack of stamina and steadiness, faults he later was to criticize in his son Oscar; yet in the years 1823 and 1824 these faults were particularly obvious. Despite Royal promises and his kowtows Prussian authorities retained their suspicions of Franz Lieber. Desperate for advancement, Lieber returned to the University of Halle where in August 1824 he was again arrested, transferred to Köpenick close to Berlin and kept in close confinement until April 1825, when he was released after intercession from his former mentor Niebuhr. Yet the conditions for the release he had signed were stringent. Once again he resumed his efforts to become part of Berlin’s cultural life. He tried to ensnare the publisher Hitzig whose children had inspired E.T.A. Hoffmann to compose his Märchen vom Nußknacker und Mausekönig.14 In his applications for jobs he enjoyed the active support of Niebuhr. The summer of 1825 saw him as private tutor of the sons of Ernst Count of Bernstorff in Prussia, Hanover, and W ­ edendorf/ Mecklenburg. The following winter 1825/1826 he again pushed his luck as poet, writer, and producer of theatre plays, yet again without success. Hitzig, although he liked Lieber, ignored him in his authoritative list of Berlin authors; Chamisso curtly remarked about the poetic talents of Lieber: “Zum Dichter taugt er nicht”.15 In the face of a new wave of arrests in spring 1826 f­ ailing ­Lieber decided 13

14 15

They were published a few years later. Franz Lieber, Adelbert, unpublished ms 1826; ­ rnold Franz=Franz Lieber, Vierzehn Wein- und Wonnelieder T.H. Riemann Berlin 1826, 6 A Groschen. E.T.A. Hoffmann, Märchen vom Nußknacker und Mausekönig, in: Die Serapionsbrüder, Berlin 1816. See quotation in Richard Knoblauch, 175 Jahre Knoblauchsches Haus, in: Zeitschrift des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins 53, 1936, pp. 122–130, p. 124; Julius Eduard Hitzig, ed., Verzeichnis im Jahre 1825 in Berlin lebender Schriftsteller und ihrer Werke. Aus den von ihnen selbst entworfenen oder revidirten Artikeln zusammengestellt und zu einem milden Zwecke herausgegeben, Berlin bei Ferdinand Dümmler und Duncker und Humblot 1826.

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to migrate to England. More: Armed with letters of recommendation from Henriette Herz for the Boston politician Edward Everett, Lieber considered plans to move to the usa as his final destination. After he had received the letter of recommendation of his cousin Albert Baur for his friend from old student days, Dr. Christian Wurm in Epsom/England, a sad and dejected yet infuriated Franz Lieber left Berlin on May 17, 1826. Later in his efforts to construct his biography, Lieber claimed that he had left Berlin spontaneously and secretly. It is evident that many of his friends and acquaintances, among them Henriette Herz, cousin Albert Baur or his former sports instructor Ernst von Pfuel were familiar with his intentions to emigrate. This knowledge enabled them to supply Lieber with letters of recommendation to persons in England and the United States shortly before or just on the day of his departure from his native city. Lieber travelled via Hamburg where he stayed for a couple of days (May 19–22, 1826) in expectation of a ship that was to take him to England. On this sorrowful travel from Berlin to London the City of Hamburg acquired special importance within Lieber’s network that outreached her significance as a simple stopover. In his diary, which has come down to us only in fragments, his stint in Hamburg is described as nothing but ordinary. Yet in the metropolis on the Elbe Lieber in those sunny days in May formed contacts that were to shape his life. His integration into the network of converted Jews from Berlin proved to be especially valuable: They introduced him to their relatives and friends in Hamburg and London. A second line of social contacts was based on his close relations to his former turner friends and their contacts to Hamburg merchants and intellectuals like the Benecke,16 Krutisch, and Sieveking families. A third line of contacts grew out of his year in Rome. In May 1826 Franz Lieber and his brother Eduard lived in the country house of the official printer of the city of Hamburg Johann Meissner in Nienstedten, a village west of Hamburg. Meissner was the stepfather of the architect Alexis de Chateauneuf.17 Chateauneuf and Lieber had become acquainted in Rome in 16

17

Many thanks to the editors of the Ferdinand Beneke diaries Frank Hatje and Ariane Smith for the permission to quote from these unpublished parts of the diaries of Ferdinand Beneke, Die Tagebücher, Abteilung iv, May 22, 1826: “Besuch von dem Berlinschen Dr ­Lieber, der noch heute nach London abgeht (vermuthlich neue [gestrichen: polit.] Kompromittirungen wegen der alten demagog. Geschichten, – wie manches wackern Jünglings Schiksal haben jene Professoren u. Consorten dereinst zu verantworten durch ihr jacobinisches Lehren, u. Schreiben p! Gott wende ihm Schicksal, u. Gesinnung, u. erleuchte sein Herz!”. Thomas Sergeant Perry, ed., The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, Boston 1882, p. 64, May 19, 1826 “slept in the country house of Chateauneuf’s parents”. Lilli Martius, Der

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1822/1823. Jointly they had travelled and explored the South of Italy and had remained in contact when Lieber was imprisoned in Köpenick in 1824/1825.18 The friendship between Chateauneuf and Lieber survived for a long time. In 1840 Chateauneuf visited Mathilde Lieber in her sisters’ house in Hamburg’s Esplanade. The lonely man played with the children of the family. Although in his letter to Francis Lieber that Mathilde Lieber copied, Chateauneuf addressed his friend with the formal German “Sie”, he entrusted Lieber with confidential informations about his difficult position in Hamburg after the death of his friend and patron Erwin Speckter.19 The two men met again in Hamburg in June 1844. They chatted about Rome and acquaintances. Chateauneuf showed Lieber his plans for rebuilding Hamburg after the Great Fire of 1842.20 In 1826 Lieber had been introduced into Hamburg’s social circles, which supported him, too, in London. Since May 27, 1826 he gained access to London’s German colony of intellectuals, enthusiastic practitioners of gymnastics, merchants from Hamburg, and newly converted Christians who had assimilated as well as orthodox Jews. Most likely Julius Eduard Hitzig, the Berlin lawyer and publisher, as well as Henriette Herz, had recommended Lieber to their longtime friend, the writer, translator, and patroness of the arts Lucy Domeier née Esther Gad. Lucy Domeier, a friend of Rosa Maria Assing, of Rachel Varnhagen and of Adelheid, the wife of the Hamburg merchant Lion Abraham Goldschmidt, took Lieber under her wings. In his later life Lieber liked to describe himself as the poor lonely refugee in the hostile Moloch on the Thames in order to impress commiserating American souls. It is true that in London he was an immigrant, yet he was neither lonely nor without the energetic support by friends and acquaintances. Lucy Domeier arranged for Lieber to stay at 2 Thanet Place, Temple Bar, had him invited to the opera, and purchased for him soap, tea, sugar, and candles. Together with the partners of the ­ ünstlerkreis um das Sievekingsche Haus in Hamburg, in: Zeitschrift des Vereins für HamK burgische Geschichte 38, 1939, pp. 211–252. Chateauneuf was in close contact to many persons of the circles Lieber moved in, too: in Hamburg, Berlin as well as in Lübeck. See David Klemm and Hartmut Frank, eds., Alexis de Chateauneuf 1799–1853. Architekt in Hamburg, London und Oslo, Hamburg-Munich 2000, p. 12. Charles Mack and Ilona Mack, eds., Like a Sponge thrown into water. Francis Lieber’s European Travel Journal of 1844–1845, Columbia/sc 2002, passim. 18 GStaPK i ha Rep 77 21 Spez. L, Nr.1, Bd. 2, passim. 19 See thl Box 54 li 5070, copy of a letter of Alexis de Chateauneuf, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/sc, 12.03.1840. 20 usc Journal Francis Lieber, 1844–1845, 29.06.1844; see Mack/Mack, eds., Like a Sponge, p. 42.

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­ amburg ­merchant house Sillem & Benecke, or the Hamburg merchant EduH ard H ­ einrich Sieveking, whom Lieber had visited immediately after his arrival in London, Lucy Domeier secured Lieber access to influential families in London like the Rothschilds, Fould, Goldschmidt, and Levy as well as the family of the Hamburg merchant Georg Oppenheimer – contacts that were to further Lieber’s career. Georg Oppenheimer, faithful mentor of politically prosecuted people, engaged the refugee in November 1826 as tutor to his younger children. Of course at that point he was not aware that his decision would deeply impact his family: tutor and one of his pupils, Mathilde Oppenheimer, soon became madly in love. Thanks to his networking and convincing personality Lieber, former student of Jahn, so deeply impressed a headhunter from Massachusetts, whom he had met in London, that in March 1827 he received a job offer: master of a swimming and gymnastics institution in Boston. Lieber immediately accepted. On May 16, 1827 he departed on the Britannia from Liverpool to New York where he arrived June 22, 1827. This first Atlantic crossing turned out to be his rites de passage. For Lieber used his time on the Atlantic between Europe where he had failed, and America full of promises and hopes, to write a letter to his fiancée. He gave an account of his life, took stock of his failures and achievements, and sketched his plans for a bright future.21 For the young man from Berlin New York City was a revelation. Enthusiastically he praised her vibrant atmosphere, exciting bustle, and urban flair. Yet his job, teaching gymnastics and swimming took him to Boston, where with the help of his superiors and due to the exciting new features of his job he received access to the luminaries of Boston as well as to Harvard University in nearby Cambridge/Mass. Both connections fired his hopes as well as desire for a splendid career. The position as sports instructor in the long term did not measure up to such ambitious hopes. His aim was to gain access to the public as a scholar. Prestige, fame, and financial acknowledgement were his aims. He tried his hands as a free-lance foreign correspondent for various newspapers of the publisher Cotta in Stuttgart. He delivered public lectures. At banquets and public events he pronounced toasts. He wrote letters to editors and drafted plans for publications that he thought were important.

21

thl Box 33 li 4694, copy of a letter by Francis Lieber, on Sea, to Mathilde Oppenheimer, London, in a letter by Mathilde Oppenheimer, London, to his parents Friedrich Wilhelm and Charlotte Lieber, Berlin, 23.07.1827.

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Within a short time he achieved his aim to become a publicly appreciated figure with his Encyclopaedia Americana, the adaptation and translation of the 7th edition of a German Konversationslexikon published by F.A. Brockhaus in Leipzig. Lieber translated this German work and supplemented it with substantial articles about American subjects, for which he secured highly competent us-American authors. Between 1830 and 1833 13 volumes of his Encyclopaedia Americana were printed by the highly respected Philadelphian publishers Carey and Lea. With this publication Lieber established his reputation as a scholar and public figure in his chosen country. While working on the Encyclopaedia Americana Lieber added many new important contacts to his Atlantic network of friends and acquaintances; he received the respect of scholars in Europe as well as America. Manly bonding that he had learned in Berlin while socializing with students of Jahn and during his campaigns in the Napoleonic Wars now became handy again: Smoking cigars, enjoying oysters, bonding with buddies, singing with friends and frolicking during long walks. He dallied with wives, sisters and daughters of his peers; occasionally in doing so he tested the borders of decency and the patience of his lovely wife. Mathilde Lieber he adored because of her seemingly even temper and calmness with which she observed his boisterous womanizing. These social contacts were supplemented by his wife’s family excellent network of persons of international commerce, arts, and politics. After the birth of his first child Oscar in 1830 Lieber increased his desperate search for a lucrative employment. Yet his aspirations for a chair at Harvard University, which had been fulfilled for Charles Beck and Charles Follen, cofrères in earlier fight days in Germany, as well as his hopes for a position in the newly founded New York University or for the presidency in the planned Girard College in Philadelphia, vanished. At last the desired offer of a chair materialized. Yet the professorship at the College of South Carolina in Columbia/sc, for which besides his own remarkable achievements he had to thank his new relatives as well as his wealthy new friends in New York City and Philadelphia, evoked ambiguous feelings in Lieber. When in late summer 1835 he took up his new position in Columbia/sc he could look forward to a stately fixed yearly income of about $ 2500, a large house and academic honors. Nevertheless, Lieber, a proud and conscious European, was from his start at loggerheads with Columbia and the Old South. In nauseating details he spread out his prejudices and cultural arrogance he had adopted back home in Prussia and from his peers in New England: I cannot help it. To have a sense for the higher life of the arts, of the sciences, of an elevated social intercourse, and then to be in this exile

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[Columbia/sc] I feel greatly tempted to study the insects here. They abounds and are exceedingly curious and little known […] Some thing I must have to divert my mind.22 In such an environment a good education for his son Oscar seemed impossible. When homeschooling by Mathilde Lieber and softhearted woman teachers had been exhausted, a fundamental decision on how to proceed seemed inevitable. Sending him to schools in South Carolina Lieber categorically rejected. Schooling him in Massachusetts, that he later thought adequate for his younger sons Hamilton and Guido Norman, was likewise ruled out. Schools in England were too expensive besides that he did not like the idea. Schools in Prussia, for example the Pietistic Paedagogium in Züllichau, where his brotherin-law and his brother were teachers, were no options. Recalling his own experiences Francis Lieber rejected Prussian teachers, although at least in principle he approved of the Prussian school system. Yet all these considerations were irrelevant as long as Lieber was denied access to Prussia. Lieber was considered by Prussian authorities a fugitive criminal until 1842 when the Prussian King granted him pardon for his supposed crimes of the 1820s. These disturbing considerations did not block his vision of Hamburg. That city was outside Prussia’s influence and radiated a cosmopolitan atmosphere. These qualities as well as his own experciences and his wife’s well-connected family on site recommended Hamburg as safe residence for the pride of the Lieber family, young Oscar. In July 1839 Mathilde Lieber left New York with their sons on board the ­Sophia. The mother travelled to Hamburg in hope of securing a good future for their three sons. Their father was left behind; he believed that he was doing the right thing for his offspring. The husband wanted the best for his physically shaken wife he already began to miss when he saw the Sophia sailing down the Hudson for Europe.

Letters: Reflections of the Ego and Copies of Life

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, a German literary giant and philosopher, in 1742 initiated a revolution in letter writing.23 He proposed a natural style 22 23

thl li 130 Journal January 1835- November 11, 1836, fol. 16, 20.05.1835. Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Gedanken von einem guten deutschen Briefe, an den Herrn F.H. v. W, 1742; Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Briefe, nebst einer praktischen Abhandlung von dem guten Geschmack in Briefen, 1751 and Leipzig 1769; Rafael Arto-Haumacher, Gellerts Briefpraxis und Brieflehre: der Anfang einer neuen Briefkultur, Wiesbaden 1994;

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and ­recommended that a letter should imitate a conversation with its casual mental leaps, and free flow of thoughts. True to his ideas the bourgeois letter experienced a radical transformation. Although nearly a century had passed and some of Gellert’s texts were considered outdated, his rejection of artificial style and his shackling stylistic conventions were still accepted. His idea that the letter carrying written words was a substitute for a dialogue of spoken and sounding words was widely shared. Both Liebers accepted those established conventions. For example the formula that one was happy to ‘hear’ from the other, when one actually read the letter, demonstrates the amalgamation of the audible part of a conversation with the visual perception of the written text. The concept that a letter should be a substitute for a personal tête-à-tête or a conversation in a larger circle, imitating or adequately representing the same, had become public knowledge. Natural spontaneity, freely associating, and the possibility to jot down ideas in seemingly jumbled order pushed aside devotions to rules and logical structures of the written word. Faced with the importance of conversations in letters as part of social discourse Lieber’s correspondents accepted. They took clear positions about functions, contents, structures, effects and principles of letter writing. Even the otherwise rather rude Friedrich Ludwig Jahn discovered subtle features in letters: “Es giebt allerdings vielerlei Briefe und ein Linnee wird noch immer erwartet, sie nach Ordnungen, Gattungen und Geschlechtern, Arten und Spielarten einzuteilen“; “Briefe haben also eine urkundliche Wichtigkeit und gelten sogar wie Beschenkungen” or “Auch ein Geschlecht haben die Briefe, es gibt männliche und weibliche”.24 Both the Hamburg surgeon Dr. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, well known as a penologist25 as well as Mathilde Lieber’s delicate cousin Adele

24

25

­Reinhard M.G. Nickisch, Die Stilprinzipien in den deutschen Briefstellern des 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Mit einer Bibliographie zur Briefschreiblehre, 1474–1800, Göttingen 1969; Tanja Reinlein, Der Brief als Medium der Empfindsamkeit. Erschriebene Identitäten und Inszenierungspotentiale, Würzburg 2003. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, “Über Briefschreiben”, in: Der Freimütige oder Berlinisches Unterhaltungsblatt für gebildete, unbefangene Leser, 1809, in: Friedrich Quehl, Briefe von Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. Mitgeteilt und erläutert von seinem Urenkel Friedrich Quehl, vol. 1, Leipzig-Hamburg 1918, passim. “Es darf daher bei den amerikanischen Besserungssystemen, sowohl dem auburnschen als dem pennsylvanischen, nicht nur kein mündlicher, sondern auch kein schriftlicher Verkehr der Sträflinge mit der übrigen Welt stattfinden. Er darf niemals erfahren, was in ihr vorgeht, wenn ihm auch zuweilen einmal gestattet wird, dass er sie schriftlich von sich und seinem Zustande in Kenntniß setzt. Die Anwendung hiervon ist, dass der Sträfling, soll er bessernd gestraft werden, keine Besuche und keine Briefe empfangen darf,

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Haller née Oppenheimer had an opinion of the value of letters. The literary ambitioned wife of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller stated in 1835: Einen Brief, der nur Neuigkeiten bringt, lesen wir wie eine Zeitung, einen der gar keine enthält, wie ein Buch. Zeitungen werden nicht zweimal; Bücher nicht eilig gelesen. Es giebt eine Mittelstrasse, den wahren Brief – Spiegel genug damit wir begreifen, warum und daß er gerade jetzt ­geschrieben werden mußte; universell genug, um uns zu allen Zeiten ­interessieren zu können.26 Women and men alike considered the adequate and true nature of letter ­ riting with passionate intensity and serious vivacity. The production of a w truthful letter, a piece of paper filled with a multiplicity of signs, that would function as communication between two people not in direct face to face contact, deserved recognition. Features discussed were the external as well as internal criteria for writing letters. Did the quality of paper, ink and especially the form of handwriting affect the quality, nature, and role of the letter and its veracity? Lieber’s employer in Rome, ambassador and scholar Barthold Georg Niebuhr discussed with Franz Lieber the effects of a carefully crafted handwriting. According to Lieber Niebuhr criticized a poor handwriting as an indication of deplorable laxness, unpardonable flaw, and lack of consideration, for it demands from the recipient unnecessary efforts. Lieber shared this opinion without however himself always minding it in his own letters. In his internationally published memoirs of his mentor Niebuhr, Lieber, the scholar, displayed general prejudices as well as national stereotypes: Die Engländer schreiben von allen Nationen am besten, indem sie sich dieses Alphabeths [Latin] bedienen; nächst ihnen die A ­ merikaner. Die Franzosen schreiben im Allgemeinen schlecht, namentlich die Frauen; die Italiener, ganz erbärmlich; und die Spanier, kaum leserlich, zum großen Leidwesen ihrer fremden Handelscorrespondenten. Es ist der Mühe werth, zu bemerken, daß die zwei lezt-genannten Nationen durch

26

­ ogegen es ihm belohnungsweise zu erlauben ist, sorgfältig ausgewählte Abschnitte der w heil. Schrift, oder belehrende und nützliche Bücher zu lesen, und Briefe an seine Angehörigen zu schreiben, welche natürlich vor ihrer Absendung der Prüfung des Vorstehers unterliegen”. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, Nordamerikas sittliche Zustände: nach eigenen Anschauungen in den Jahren 1834, 1835 und 1836, 2 vols. Leipzig 1839, vol. 2, p. 383. StaHH 622–1/33 Familie Martin Haller 27d Erinnerungen, tagebuchartige Aufzeichnungen von Adele Haller [18.5.1835] p. 69.

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ihre Handschrift zeigen, daß sie hinter der allgemeinen ­Europäischen ­Civilisation zurückgeblieben sind.27 As he grew older Lieber adopted a somewhat relaxed style of handwriting. His English texts were easy to read since they were written in the English style (Kursivschrift) that was customary in the Anglo-American world. The English script was nicely tuned to the newly invented highclass steel pens that became customary in England since the early 1830s. Letters written in the German running-hand (Deutsche Kurrentschrift), a forerunner of the so-called Sütterlin, however, represent a challenge to readers both in the 19th as  well as the 21st century. But letters that were cross-written were and are the ultimate challenge for readers. In order to cross-write and thus use each available space of ­paper, the page was first filled in regular fashion. Then the sheet of paper was turned mostly to the right at an angle of 45 or 90 degrees and again filled with text. If the cross-writing was executed in a German runninghand (Deutsche ­Kurrentschrift) with a weak black, blackish, brownish, or red ink, even c­ ontemporary well-seasoned recipients of such letters displayed a somewhat restrained enthusiasm when reading the scrawl. Mathilde Lieber ­practiced a rather cultivated handwriting but like her cousin Adele or her friend Mathilde Benecke flirted about her ‘scribble’. Both Francis and Mathilde Lieber stuck to their accustomed forms of letter writing: single German words within an English text as well as longer German passages were always written in the German running hand. English passages and individual English words were rendered in the ­English writing style.

27

Franz Lieber, Erinnerungen aus meinem Zusammenleben mit Georg Berthold Niebuhr, dem Geschichtschreiber Roms, von Franz Lieber, Professor der Geschichte und politischen Oekonomie in Columbia (Süd=Carolina), Verfasser des Stranger in America u.a. aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Dr. Karl Thibaut, Heidelberg in der Universitäts=Buchhandlung von C.J. Winter 1837, p. 101f. This text translated by Karl Thibaut, the unsuccessful suitor of Bertha Oppenheimer, frivolous cousin of Mathilde Lieber, first had been published for the Anglo-American market: Francis Lieber, Reminiscences of an intercourse with George Berthold Niebuhr the historian of Rome. By Francis Lieber, Professor of History and Political Economy in South Carolina College, author of ‘The Stranger in America’, London Richard Bentley 1835; Francis Lieber, Reminiscences of an Intercourse with Mr. Niebuhr, the Historian, during a residence with him in Rome, in the years 1822 and 1823, by Francis Lieber, professor of history and political economy in South Carolina College, Carey, Lea & Blanchard, Philadelphia 1835. With this multiplaced publication Lieber paid tribute to the Atlantic celebrity Niebuhr as well as advertising himself as equal to Niebuhr’s intellect, prestige, and literary output. By referring to Liebers own publications the books’ titles served as a kind of portfolio addressed to potential employers and boards of trustees.

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All contemporaries pondered the true, the adequate, and acceptable form as well as formula. What does one write how? Who was allowed to read it? What did letters beyond their contents reveal about the writer, the recipient, or their relationship? What was the adequate way to deal with those delicate structures made from paper and ink that were substitutes for missed conversations with beloved persons or for acerbic controversies with rivals out of personal reach? How was one to avoid misunderstandings? How was one to react if a letter had hurt, offended or grieved the recipient? How could one describe oneself and what were the adequate ways to transport one’s message? What were the criteria the recipient had to observe in dealing with such a sensitive instrument? How did one read, recite, or listen to a letter read aloud, in order to get as close as possible to the intentions and emotions of the writer? These were issues both Francis and Mathilde Lieber had to grapple with. As ­befitted his status as a scholar Lieber voiced his opinion on these issues in his publications. In his Encyclopeadia Americana he refrained from including a special article on letters. His wife in honouring Gellert’s conventions in the privacy of her letters to her husband discussed frequently advantages and disadvantages of letters and the different modes of their transportation. She preferred the official ways of sending letters. She mistrusted private mail messengers. She considered the danger of loss or unprofessional handling of her private communication far too great. Both partners were firmly convinced, that in their numerous periods of separation without letters their life as a married couple was totally unthinkable. When separated letters represented their only opportunity to stay in contact and to bond. They called letters their lifeline, their better self, expressions of their souls or copies of life. In the true sense of Gellert their letters were substitutes for conversations. Letters enabled them to mirror their egos, achieve self assertiveness through the other, confirmation of emotional attachment, and affirmation of knowledge about each other. Letters were essentiels of life, love and social existence. Lieber handled letters pragmatically. The end justified the means. In other words, a letter that had came from the most intimate relationship of lovers could be used without scruple for advertising his achievements to outsiders. In 1827, when engaged in a silent fight with his future father-in-law Georg ­Oppenheimer he used this technique. In this context, the wife of the business partner of Oppenheimer, Adelheid Goldschmidt, was the right addressee. This ­sophisticated lady, one of the secret swayers in the London circle of ­Hamburg jews, was to be overwhelmed with proofs of confidentiality in the form of Lieber’s love letter to Mathilde which she was to share with her friend Adelheid:

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gieb dir Mühe ihr [Adelheid Goldschmidt] die Art unserer Liebe recht zu verdeutlichen und schicke ihr die Abschrift einer meiner Briefe, den du am tauglichsten dazu hällst, denn das wird lebendiger […] sei in deiner wahl nicht öth, wähle den in den ich nach deiner Meinung am besten und wärmsten über unsere Liebe geschrieben, he instructed his fiancée who surely obeyed his commands.28 In his letters to his wife in Hamburg during the years 1839–1840 and 1844–1845, he more than once tried to manipulate his sisters-in-law as well as their beloved uncle Jacob Oppenheimer. Often a whining Lieber from Columbia/sc lamented his urgings for delicatessen, or for a fancy morning gown. He could feel assured, that his loving wife would read these passages to her intensely fascinated relatives who eagerly would try to satisfy his cravings. In the public sphere of his theoretical writings Lieber elevated the genre letter to lofty heights. Recalling his painful experiences with snooping Prussian authorities in the 1810s-1820s Lieber stigmatized the unjustified opening of letters as “a most immoral act”. To him letters possessed a moral and ethical quality. Violating the legally sanctioned integrity of letters represented to him an intrusion into a sacrosanct private sphere: “It is breaking into one of the most sacred sanctuaries of humanity”.29 This analogy signified something very important. 28

29

thl Box 33 li 4694, Francis Lieber, New York, to Mathilde Oppenheimer, London, 18.06.1827. See Rachel Varnhagen von Ense, Berlin, to Lucy Domeier in London, Berlin 9.4.1821, and Rachel Varnhagen von Ense, Baden-Baden, to Eduard Gans in Paris, 10.8.1825 in: Deutsches Textarchiv – Karl Varnhagen von Ense, Rahel. Ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde, vol. 3, p. 39, p. 213: “Gehen Sie [Eduard Gans] in London zu meiner Freundin Adelheid ­Goldschmidt [...] Die beste, originalste, wahrhaft liebenswürdige Frau. Der Verstand, der spontanée, ist hier wie obenein. Herrliche Töchter! Die ganze Familie zusammengehörig. Mad. Goldschmidt wird Ihnen sagen können, wo Mad. Domeier wohnt. Meine Jugendfreundin; viele Bekanntschaften; voller Güte;” Lieber, too, was delighted by Adelheid Goldschmidt, her elegance and savoir vivre. The suicide of her husband Lion Abraham Goldschmidt caused by the global financial crisis in 1826 destroyed her carefree attitude; she died “alt, mager, ganz häßlich, unruhig und heftig”. See Thomas Lackmann, Der Sohn meines Vaters: Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy und die Wege der Mendelssohns, Göttingen 2008, p. 173. Francis Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics, or, Principles of Interpretation and Construction in Law and Politics with Remarks on Precedents and Authorities, C.C. Little and J. Brown Boston 1839, pp. 150–154, p. 150. Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, ­Designed Chiefly for the Use of Colleges and Students at Law, C.C. Little and J. Brown Boston 1838 vol. 1, p. 83.

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For in Lieber’s intellectual world the letter was embedded in an imagined space that was protected by rules. At the same time a letter provided a space in which human beings could meet in safety without fear for sanctions. In 1827 he briefly had collided with his future sister-in-law Caroline Lomnitz, who out of sisterly concern and worry for Mathilde’s future had secretly read Mathilde’s correspondence with Francis Lieber. Lieber was furious. For him this act implied that Caroline Lomnitz had violated the protected space of the letter. In more than one way Lieber rejected this intrusion. First, it meant to him that Caroline Lomnitz had questioned the honesty of his feelings for Mathilde by trespassing into the medium of the young lovers’ relationship, their letters. Secondly, Caroline Lomnitz had violated the sacred quality of a letter as a safety zone. And lastly: His harsh reaction was the result of his bitter experiences with the Prussian censorship of his correspondence. The violation of the privacy of letters to Lieber equalled a despotic ruler violating his subject’s personal freedom. Moreover: Since 1827 at the latest Lieber was convinced that a letter remained the property of its writer; inspection by third parties required the consent of the writer, while the recipient only acted as temporary holder of a letter. While it is true that he occasionally himself ignored these principles if he felt it justified, yet in 1827 in his letter to Caroline Lomnitz as well as in his treaties of 1839 he defended these principles. In 1827 he had clothed these civic ideals of liberty in a German letter to a German in Britain in these very personal terms: In meinem letzten Briefe an Ihre Schwester Mathilde habe ich mich vielleicht scharf über das Durchsuchen fremder Briefe geäußert. Erklären Sie sich das so: ich habe die bittersten und kränkendsten Dinge von Briefdurchforsten in meinen politischen Verfolgungen erfahren, so daß ich, ich verheimliche es nicht, einen wahren Haß gegen unbefugtes Brieflesen hege [...] bei jener Nachricht regte sich doch in mir das unangenehme Gefühl, was sich jedesmal bei mir einstellt, wenn ich höre, daß irgendwer eines anderen Briefs ohne offene Erlaubnis liest.30 In 1839 he expressed his conviction in the form of a legal principle that was to have consequences for dealing with letters and their contents: Letters do not become absolutely ours, that is, we are not absolutely free to dispose of their contents, although the letters be directed to us. The American law acknowledges this; it has been decided, that these clear statements about who had the right to possess or own letters, in which 30

usc flc Box 4, folder 124, Francis Lieber, Boston, to Caroline Lomnitz, Manchester, 1827.

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he assigned the originator of the letter as property, the recipient of the letter but the right of possession. The law, that no person has the right of publishing any thing of another without a written order or permission of writer, is applicable to letters; the property of them remains in the letter-writer.31 After he had defined the right of ownership of a letter Lieber turned to the problem of people who had no right to read a letter – either because it was not desired or because the person had no connection to the letter, its contents or the writer. For Lieber the letter’s language distinguished an outsider from the justified person, the author wanted as reader of the letters. According to Francis Lieber the writer as well as the recipient practice an exclusive “usus loquendi”, a kind of sociolect: The only safe and just rule, for the interpretation and construction of private letters, is, that we discard every thing which is not a bare statement of fact, or carries along with it irresistible evidence of truth. Even the statement of facts ought to be given, so as not to require any completion on the side of the receiver of the letter, and which the letter-writer knew would be added by the person addressed during the perusal. As to every thing else, the language of a private letter is so entirely founded upon the relation between its writer and the receiver, their acquaintance with each other’s character, use of words, nay, sometimes with the very accent with which the writer is in the habit of pronouncing certain sentiments or words, and upon a knowledge of so many details, which, though unmentioned, serve to give the right meaning to the words, that a letter, destined to remain private, frequently changes its whole character as soon as it is made public, and a third person attempts to interpret whatever can be doubtful or ambiguous. The relation between two persons forms a key to their correspondence, for which nothing else can be substituted. There is a private usus loquendi between friends, husband and wife, members of a family, &c., which cannot be known by others.32 If one was to take Lieber by his words one would have to examine in some detail whether letter writer and recipient knew each other personally through physical encounters or if they had met only in the abstract closeness of a letter. According to Lieber this would have considerable influence on the i­ nterpretation 31 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics, p. 150f. 32 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics, p. 152.

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of letters which were shaped by intangible emotions and a sense for hidden messages. Either consciously or unconsciously Lieber adopted thoughts as well as formulas of his wife’s Hamburg cousin Adele who had formulated fundamental insights about the nature of correspondence between strangers. In 1829 the still single Adele Oppenheimer responded to a rather patronizing letter from Lieber with a friendly yet nevertheless unmistakable reprimand. Often plagued by self-doubts Adele refused to accept Lieber’s definition of gender roles. Her reaction suggests that Lieber had accused her of shyness of academic people. This repeated a joke Lieber played often on his wife. In 1829 Adele Oppenheimer, secretly engaged to her cousin Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, responded from Hamburg to Dr. Francis Lieber’s insinuation with wit, charm, and mockery: Wie kommen Sie nur auf die Idee, daß ich mich darum vor Ihnen fürchte, weil Sie ein Doctor sind? Das fällt mir gar nicht ein. Wie ein Doctor aus­ sieht, weiß ich; man hat sie hier [Hamburg] auch, und die hiesigen wenigstens sind ganz zahm: kein Mädchen läuft vor ihnen weg.33 Surely these words dumbfounded the man who was so proud of his academic title. After she had presented herself as the young girl who was not beyond ­jesting with words, Adele continued her subtle critique: Aber ich meinte, man schreibe immer in Chiffren, und nur die, durch den vorhergegangen persönlichen Umgang, gewonnene Kenntniß des Charakters und der ganzen Eigenthümlichkeit, diene dem Briefempfänger als Schlüssel – freilich kann man die Briefe auch ohne Schlüssel lesen, aber dann muß man die Dechiffrirkunst besser geübt haben und Mühe kostet es doch. Sie hatten für meine Briefe keinen Schlüssel, denn wir haben einander nie gesehen. Ich wußte auch nicht, ob Sie mit dem Entziffern vertraut, oder seiner Mühsamkeit nicht feind wären, darum empfand ich eine begreifliche Scheu mißverstanden zu werden; nicht weil in meinen Briefen etwas besonders Tiefes oder Vieldeutiges zu finden wäre, sondern weil sie doch immer Briefe ohne vorgängige persönliche Bekanntschaft bleiben.34

33 34

usc flc Box 1, folder 7, Adele Oppenheimer, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Boston, 01.04.1829. usc flc Box 1, folder 7, Adele Oppenheimer, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Boston, 01.04.1829.

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For a long time so-called family letters were a popular subject of literary scholars. For them they were texts where rhetorical masters were to experiment or demonstrate their literary abilities. It is only in the last decades that historians discovered the genre ‘family letters’ as suitable sources for unraveling complex personal relationships, problems of daily life as well as mentalities, and the written transformation of perceptions. There is a consensus developing that the label ‘family letters’ define these epistles that are exchanged in a variety of contexts between married partners, parents, grandparents, siblings, relatives, and friends. The genre boundaries between love letters, family letters, and letters between friends can be fluent. This applies, too, to the Hamburg ­correspondence presented here. The time necessary to produce and transport a letter as well as the methods of calculating the mailing costs (which the recipient had to pay, envelops had not yet become standard) especially in the Atlantic world implied that a letter’s postage could be expensive. Therefore a letter was a kind of logistic enterprise that fulfilled many functions. That is the reason why the available paper had to be used in an optimal way without wasting any dear space, why more than one writer could be involved and more than one recipient could be addressed. Whenever the letter was read by the original recipient to carefully selected other people this transformed a letter exchanged between two people to a social event.

Columbia/sc and Hamburg: Letters between Two Cities

Mathilde Lieber, the girl from Hamburg, was rarely plagued by attacks of home sickness although such attacks had become somewhat fashionable especially for migrants. If she felt homesick in the presence of her overpowering husband, then she longed for her siblings of whom two lived in Hamburg. In the rare cases she mentioned homesickness she meant what the word implied: she did not yearn for the home in the sense of the place of her childhood, and the family she had been born into, but that she yearned for her actual home in Columbia/sc and its personification, her sensible, giddy, witty, passionate, loving and erotically attractive husband. Home and patria in her understanding were the places where her husband lived. Writing from Hamburg in 1840 the flattering daughter of Eve could ensnare her husband thus: My Frank, I have been very homesick lately, indeed I want to be with you again. Nothing I enjoy – and I am, not ungrateful for the blessings – can replace to me, a smile, a laugh, a kiss from a cosy chat with my own ­dearest husband. And I will return cheerfully to Columbia for another

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year or two, if it must be, looking forward to a pleasant change in our prospects.35 In his letters to Hamburg her husband on the other hand extended his homesickness to new and somewhat abstract phenomena that fitted his concept of letters as imagined space: he felt even homesick for the letters of his wife. For these to the yearning husband in his far distant place offered a home.36 Although her husband used the term homesickness in a different sense, both usages agreed well with the definition of homesickness in that period and their emotional setting. Homesickness in general, homesickness for Hamburg especially by people born in Hamburg, but too by people who had chosen to live in Hamburg, was considered fashionable. Relatives and acquaintances in Hamburg of the migrants Francis and Mathilde Lieber went d’accord with this emotion, indulged in it and were receptive to its sentimentality. The sentiments expressed in letters of the Liebers offer glimpses into their relations and sentiments for each other as well as for the city in which they felt at home. People who belonged to the financially comfortable as well as educated Biedermeier citizenry in Hamburg considered nostalgic longing for their hometown comme il faut. It was political correct, accepted, and befitted good decent citizens. Many a respectable merchant, artist or scholar from Hamburg, while living in foreign countries or just across the Elbe, bathed in deeply felt sensitivity and fidelity to his much missed home town, his home and trusted friends and acquaintances. This manly sensitivity and sensitive manliness was sometimes reinforced by irony and wit. One of those typical representatives of this ironic eviscerated sentimental world was Heinrich Heine. This migrant, who had formerly lived in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, and Göttingen, nephew of Salomon Heine and related to the Oppenheimer family,37 from his Parisian sick 35 36 37

thl Box 54 li 5066, Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/sc, 15.01.-21.01.1840. usc flc Box 1, folder 5, Francis Lieber, Montreal + Ogdensburg/ny, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 03.09.-10.09.1839. The famous poet Heinrich Heine was a nephew of Salomon Heine, relative, friend, and former business partner of Georg, Morris and Jacob Oppenheimer. Heinrich Heine had published poems where he had made fun of his uncles Salomon Heine and Morris ­Oppenheimer while he had admired Jacob Oppenheimer. See comments by Jacob Oppenheimer’s grandson Martin Haller about the perception of Heinrich Heine’s poem Erlauschtes in his family. StaHH 622–1/33 Familie Martin Haller 49 Lebenserinnerungen

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chamber grumbled about hick town (Krähwinkel)38 while at the same time bemoaning his nicely orchestrated homesickness for Hamburg (Hammonia)39 and his mother who lived close to the Dammtor.40 In the understanding of the late 18th as well as 19th century homesickness was not considered a despicable passion which had to be fought in order to dominate or exterminate it. Homesickness was the fashionable expression of a highly respectable yet understandable pain that overcame intelligent yet sensitive men.41 Probably these manly sentiments echoed the supposedly first early modern victims of this disease, brave Swiss mercenaries, who paid for their decision to fight for foreign masters and thus earn money to feed their families, with violent attacks of homesickness for their Swiss mountains.42 Strong and valiant men with soft hearts corresponded rather nicely with the concept of

38

39

40 41

42

Martin Haller, Bd.1, fol. 47f: “Dieses Heinesche Gedicht [...] habe ich meiner Schwester Adele und meiner Cousine Adele Oppenheimer gezeigt. Es hat bei beiden gleiches Mißfallen erregt, trotzdem darin die Klugheit ihres Großvaters [Jacob Oppenheimer] verherrlicht ist”. Hamburg historian Claus Gossler prepares an edition of the memoires of Martin Haller. The fictive town’s name Krähwinkel used by Jean Paul and August von Kotzebue was the usual satirical term for a town inhabitated by narrow-minded, arrogant, and stupid people. Heine used it to cover his satire on Hamburg where he had suffered several individual failures like lovesickness and professional defeat. Hammonia= Allegory = personification of Hamburg and title of the cities’ anthem, lyrics by Georg Nikolaus Bärmann, music by Albert Methfessel, first performance Hamburg 1828. Heinrich Heine, Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, caput XxiV, url http://gutenberg .spiegel.de/buch/deutschland-ein-wintermarchen-383/25 (30.7.2016). Karl Gutzkow in 1835 coined the expression “deutsche Heimwehnatur” and Jacob Grimm authored in 1830 a text titled “De desiderio patriae”; it lasted, however, till 1850 that the term found its way into the fifth edition of the fairy tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, see Heinz Rölleke, ‘Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz’: Clemens Brentanos Kreation eines Wunderhorn-Liedes, in: Konrad Feilchenfeld and Kristina Hasenpflug e.a. eds., G ­ oethezeit-Zeit für Goethe: auf den Spuren deutscher Lyriküberlieferung, Berlin 2003, p. 168. See “Homesickness”, in: Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 6, Philadelphia 1831, p. 407. Women most times accepted that perception of homesickness being an exclusive virtue of men, suppressed their longing and considered it selfish. See the attitude of Hamburg born Caroline Bertheau in 1831 in Siri Fuhrmann, Soziale Rollen von Frauen in Religionsgemeinschaften: ein Forschungsbericht, Münster 2003, p. 92. Amalia Schoppe however, allowed herself those emotions, see her letter with a report on her experience during her crossing the Atlantic in 1851 in: Hargen Thomsen, ed., Amalia Schoppe “...das wunderbarste Wesen, so ich je sah”. Eine Schriftstellerin des Biedermeier (1791–1858) in Briefen und Schriften, Bielefeld 2008, pp. 644–651.

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manliness of cosmopolitan men from Hamburg as well as of Francis Lieber. They were not ashamed of their tears which they shed with pleasure, nor were they sparing with their confessions of love for friends, relatives, and business partners.43 Previous to the German Revolution of 1848 bourgeois men from Hamburg were still far removed from the Hanseatic ideal of aloofness that copied the much envied English ideal of stiff reservation. Lieber, who through his wife was related to successful and wealthy Hamburg families (Oppenheimer, Haller, Heckscher, Goldschmidt, Heine, Hesse, Ahrens, Herzfeld, von Axen, and Amsinck), stressed this enthusiasm for illness, depth of sentiment, and sensibility which resulted in homesickness. For him, the embodiment of a macho, homesickness and longing for a home, ‘Heimat’ in all its manifestations, was a sign of masculinity and manliness. Women knew, so he thought, only “love, jealousy, and maternal affection”, for these represented “the deepest springs of emotion in the female heart”.44 In his brainchild Encyclopaedia Americana he honored homesickness as a pain, a sentiment of sadness, and a passion of “grief” that overcame “men of great sensibility” “at a separation from the paternal home and native soil” and which could develop into a real disease.45 At the same time homesickness for him expressed decency and high morality. He knew what he was talking about: as the migrant he had longed for his nuclear family in Europe, then he yearned for his wife and his children. Although he loved them frustrated by his situation in the South he felt homesick for the slave-free North of the United States. His longing for New England he described as a feeling of homesickness.46 In writing about his homesickness he shed ardent tears, ‘brünstige Tränen’ he called them in the pompous German he used sometimes. In 1828 together with the Hamburg merchant Johann Heinrich Gossler he fought in vain homesickness with coffee they had brewed themselves in his rented Boston room. During New York pub crawls he, Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer bemoaned the cruel fate of being migrants. Theodore Oppenheimer however suffered less from 43

44 45 46

Hans-Jürgen Schings, Empfindsamkeit: Gefühlskultur des 18. Jahrhunderts url http://universal_lexikon.deacademic.com/233717/Empfindsamkeit%3A_Gefühlskultur_des_18._ Jahrhunderts (3.8.2016). “Woman”, in: Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 13, Philadelphia 1833, p. 240. “Homesickness”, in: Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 6, Philadelphia 1831, p. 407. Francis Lieber, The Stranger in America: or, letters to a gentleman in Germany, comprising sketches of the manners, society, and national peculiarities of the United States, Philadelphia Carey, Lea & Blanchard 1835; thl Box 38 li 2866, Francis Lieber, Philadelphia, to Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg, June 1835.

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­ omesickness for his hometown Hamburg than for his childhood in London h and his wife Dolores in their new abode in Puerto Rico.47 For many homesick people from Hamburg their city served as the primary focus of their emotions irrespective of realities, urban developments or topography. Their own house, their home, as well as their own family formed ‘Heimat’, the center on which sentiments, emotions, as well as wishes either unfulfilled or unsatisfied were focused. This attitude was typical for Francis Lieber, a stranger to Hamburg, who out of experience and with the help of the relatives of his wife constructed narrowness to this city while his feeling of homesickness was focused exclusively on his loved ones irrespective of their place of residence. This was evident in his yearnings for his wife where ever she stayed. The happiness of personal relationship and his love for his wife was transferred to the city as well as to positive attitudes. Hamburg to him was the stage; the emphasis was put on the acteurs. Thus from Wittenberge on the Elbe Lieber in July 1844 commented his departure from Hamburg and heartbreaking farewell to Mathilde and her sisters: I was so happy in Hamburg! There – I was again obliged to repress a rising lump, which might have ended in a wet eye. What did Carry and Harriet think that I went away without thanking them? I meant to do so, but I was in a state in which I could not trust myself. One touch – and the vessel would have run over. While writing this I am eating one of the fine sandwiches and am drinking a glass of excellent beer […] my dear Matty, suppose my homesickness to Hamb keeps on, would it be fair to trouble poor Carrie & Harry so much longer and to cause the former so much more expense? For, as she treats me, my presence must cause her greater expense?48 The many descriptions of Hamburg, partly sensationalist and partly engaging, that were circulated after the Great Fire of May 1842 in the international press, all took up the many faceted as well as long-lived images of the city as a center of capital and culture; it was a singular combination of topography and

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“I am getting homesick seperated from my Dolores” in thl Box 58 li 5188, Theodore ­ ppenheimer, New York City, to Mathilde Lieber, Columbia/sc, 12.09.1838. Schnurmann, O Brücken aus Papier, passim. thl Box 34 li 4806, Francis Lieber, Wittenberge, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 17.07.1844.

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­prestige.49 In subtly appealing to the established ways of perceptions as well as to the self-image of citizens, homesick exiled Hamburgers were asked to make their contributions to the actual reconstruction of the city of their unfulfilled longing. Mathilde and Francis Lieber in Columbia/sc were deeply touched in May 1842 by their son’s Oscar horror news from Hamburg. They quickly calmed down once the news arrived that none of their loved ones had been immediately affected by the Great Fire that had hit the city. At this point they did not feel connected to Hamburg.50 They had cut their ties to Hamburg for good. They had lived in too many cities to develop almost familiar emotions for one city only; thus it does not surprise that they commended with irony and somewhat lack of understanding the close association of the people of Hamburg with their city. Mathilde Lieber, although born in Hamburg, avoided glorifying the city. She appreciated Hamburg and loved many of her relatives who lived there. After all with the approval of her husband she entrusted their oldest son Oscar for many years to their care and to a city 7106 kilometres away from Columbia/sc. Yet her homesickness to Hamburg remained restrained. More than once she described the realities of Hamburg matter-of-factly and in her comparisons with Columbia/sc she often favored the latter city. In contrast to Amalie Schoppe, intimate friend of her former nanny Rosa Maria Varnhagen, she never described Hamburg as a “Weltstadt”, a global or world city.51 For Mathilde Lieber Hamburg was a big city just like many other big cities. This represented the pragmatic perception of a world-wise traveler. She had an eye for Hamburg’s faults but also for many features that graced Hamburg. When after an absence of ten years Mathilde Lieber in 1839 returned to her hometown Hamburg, she entered a city bustling with optimism. Several economic crises caused by the Napoleonic Wars, the Continental System, 49

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Carl Wilhelm Dannenberg, ed., Synchronistik der Schreckenstage von Hamburg vom 5.-8. Mai 1842 und deren Folgen, H.C. Stern Hamburg 1842; Carl Heinrich Schleiden, Versuch einer Geschichte des grossen Brandes in Hamburg vom 5. bis 8. Mai 1842, Hoffmann und Campe Hamburg 1843, url https://archive.org/details/versucheinerges00schlgoog (30.7.2016). usc flc Box 1, folder 22, Oscar Lieber, Hamburg, to Mathilde and Francis Lieber, Columbia/sc, 17.05.1842 reported that Caroline Lomnitz had left the city at once and escaped to her summer house in Lokstedt; thl Box 41 li 3418, Francis Lieber, Columbia/sc, to Charles Sumner, Boston, 04.07.1842. See Adalbert von Schonen=Amalia Schoppe, Volksbilder aus Hamburg, 1836, in: Thomsen, ed., Amalia Schoppe ‘...das wunderbarste Wesen, so ich je sah’, p. 359.

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­ amburg’s so-called French years of occupation, and the global financial H crashes of 1819 and 1827 were finally overcome. The City grew in space, influence, and population numbers. See Figure 4. The political status of many of quarters in Hamburg, Altona, and the neighborhood mentioned in the Lieber correspondence changed significantly since the 1830–40s: In the 19th century most places mentioned in the letters like Oscar’s schools in Eppendorf and Hamm, Jacob Oppenheimer’s summer residence in Nienstedten, and sites like Wilhelmsburg, Fuhlsbüttel, Langenhorn, Wandsbeck, Lokstedt, and Harvestehude/Herbstehude were literally beyond Hamburg’s City limits and the demolished town-wall. These villages and hamlets were under the rule of princes who had no say in the city-state Hamburg that anxiously strove to maintain its independence. Foreign countries and rivals lurked just across the street and the river Elbe. Although the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover had ended in 1837, Ernst August I King of Hanover as son of George iii stayed in close contact with Britain; Prussia and Denmark were close neighbors, sometimes too close. Today these territories are parts of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg like E ­ imsbüttel, ­Nienstedten,

Figure 4

Map of Hamburg, Altona and villages in the neighborhood ca. 1838 (private collection)

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­ ltona, Wandsbek, Fuhlsbüttel, Lokstedt, Hamm, Harburg, ­Vierlande, Flottbek, A Eppendorf, Winterhude, Horn, Langenhorn, Wilhelmsburg, and Harvestehude. In 1839 industrialization, trade, and production boomed. Besides Hamburg’s harbor and efforts to pioneer modern means of transportation like horsedrawn omnibuses and railroads,52 industrial branches and industrialized trades were of particular importance. Seagoing vessels and barges ­delivered raw sugar to sugar refineries in Hamburg. Whaling-products, tropical ­agricultural goods from the Americas (coffee beans, rice, indigo, cotton, tobacco), European and Asian manufactured goods (silks, tea, furniture, and s­ pices  – for which the merchants of Hamburg were dubbed ‘Pfeffersäcke’) reached the city via the River Elbe. Since the late 18th century Hamburg had developed into one of the major ports for regional, Atlantic and world-wide commerce. The cities’ merchants supplied the retailers of Göttingen and Berlin as well as enterprising merchants of Canton, Boston, New Orleans, Paramaribo, Lima/ Peru and Valparaiso/Chile. Atlantic migration and transports via Hamburg were growing; yet the management of migration from Europe to the Americas and into Pacific areas was still dominated by Bremen’s ship-owners and captains. The hapag and Hamburg’s take off as so-called port of dreams for European migrants would start only in 1847. In 1840, however the Hanseatische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft challenged rivals on the Weser and in England. Mathilde Lieber’s relatives, merchants, merchant-bankers, or lawyers enjoyed their share in this development. They not only prospered. They were eager to use their profits for business investments as well as for improving the quality of their life styles. They supported the fine arts by engaging painters like Ludwig Asher or the Speckter brothers for beautifying their salons with portraits of the Hamburg bourgeoisie, men and women alike. Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller and his wife Adele sustained their friend Asher who after the Great Fire of 1842 did most of the interior decoration in their renovated house. Colleagues, relatives, and friends of the Oppenheimer family like the Parish, Jenisch, or the father-in-law of Adele Haller’s brother engaged architects like Hamburg born Alexis de Chateauneuf or the Frenchman Joseph Ramée to design their town houses, summer residences, parks and interior decorations (china, tapestries, ovens, mirrors, etc.). Champagne was enjoyed, yet in smaller quantities than in fancy New York as Mathilde Lieber remarked with some glee. Fine food was consumed in first-class restaurants like the Louis C. Jacob (founded in 1791) and the Rainville (founded in 1798) close to the banks of the river Elbe on the Elbchaussee/Flottbeker Chaussee. Invitations to private dinners were the rule. 52

1842: Hamburg-Bergedorfer Eisenbahn; 1846: Berlin-Hamburger Bahn.

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It became common to serve food provided by caterers. Jelly was the thing to eat. Seafood, especially oysters, Alsatian foie-gras, turkey, olives, and choice wines pleased the palates of gourmets. Pianos played by men and women alike graced the drawing rooms. Breakfast was taken in posh winter gardens. Housefathers dressed casually in elegant morning gowns received visitors – a habit common in Hamburg as well as in London or Columbia/sc, where Francis Lieber, strolling like a peacock, presented his new morning gown from Hamburg to his student-visitors. In the long run the devastating Great Fire of May 1842 had a positive impact on the layout of Hamburg, its buildings and street design. Architectural fashions were changing anyway. Alexis de Chateauneuf, friend of Franz Lieber, contributed to shape Hamburg’s urban appearance. He not only enriched the architectural fabric of the city but he changed, too, the outward appearance of its streets by changing the color scheme. His project of townhouses in abc-Strasse, Hamburg Neustadt, built from 1826 onwards at the behest of Senator Martin Hieronymus Hudtwalcker, tackled traditional perceptions of style and fashion. He preferred locally produced materials like red bricks for walls of residential houses which he not longer covered with

Figure 5

The Esplanade, Hamburg-Neustadt Lithograph by Otto Speckter, Hamburg ca. 1838 (private collection)

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thick layers of classicistic white or yellow rendering. These more traditional facades distinguished the design of the Esplanade, the boulevard where Caroline Lomnitz lived since 1838. Carl Ludwig Wimmel had planned this new street in the Hamburg Neustadt in 1827–1830 in classicistic style. His outlay copied perceptions of space and representation already realized in capitals like London or Berlin. Wimmel had copied the Berlin boulevard Unter den Linden created in the late 17th century, and designed the Esplanade with lanes of 50 meters width and 250 meters length, separated by a line of limetrees. See Figure 5. The spectacular Esplanade or nearby Neue Jungfernstieg were exceptions to the usual design of Hamburg’s infrastructure. Mathilde Lieber as well as the Irish nanny of her sons, Rebecca McClelland, complained bitterly about the rotten state of Hamburg’s inner streets, lanes, and alleys. Dirt was everywhere and ruined her garments the nanny growled. Slippery cobble stones, reckless coach drivers and careless handling of chamber pots as well as rubbish dumped on the streets made inner-city walking risky as well as downright dangerous for the young Oppenheimer, Lomnitz and Lieber children. In Hamburg’s notorious drizzle the financially comfortable as well as thoughtful Caroline Lomnitz ordered a Four wheeler to transport the children in her care to their schools. The fleets, necessary for transport of freights, the cities’ supply, and disposal of garbage, stank in summertime and during low tide of the Elbe. That too evoked little enthusiasm by those with a sensitive nose like Mathilde Lieber. Without any respect she proclaimed proud Hamburg a city of dirty canals. The picturesque topography of the city on the water between two oceans and tangled creeks, on the other hand, met with Mathilde Lieber’s emphatic approval. May be that these feelings echoed the times when romantically inclined Rosa Maria Varnhagen had taken young Mathilde and her siblings on walks outside the city of Hamburg. In doing so the nanny in company with her poetic friends had indulged in the typical pleasures of well-educated citizens who enjoyed to promenade in the delightful parks and parklike landscapes surrounding Hamburg. With her own children Mathilde Lieber retraced her childhood days, walked along the Elbe, the Binnenalster, the Außenalster, followed the bewildering fleets and currents of the Alster, Bille and Ise, where – without using the term – picknicks were common and kids frolicked in the water. These Hamburg ways of outdoor-leisure, social celebrations, and parties were highly appreciated by nature-minded Mathilde Lieber. Other kinds of more house-bound entertainments were met with ambivalence. In England as well as in the usa she had become accustomed to social gatherings and conversations that were sophisticated compared to the restricting and stiff rules of

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Figure 6

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Colored Lithograph of Hamburg’s Binnenalster, Druck u. Verlag v. C. Burckardt’s Nachf. in Weissenburg (Elsass), ca. 1850 (private collection)

social intercourse in virtuous Hamburg. She liked casual meetings in the nicely furnished home of her cousins Ferdinand and Adele Haller close to the beautiful Binnenalster, which some years later would serve as model for Boston’s Back Bay. See Figure 6. She liked family gatherings in Altona with the French-styled family Hesse and some queer, odd aunts who only spoke French. Since her stay in a Hamburg boarding school in 1820–1822 she enjoyed to visit her uncle Jacob Oppenheimer on his large estate in Nienstedten on the banks of River Elbe where she had dreamt with her cousin about a splendid future while her cousin Adele had composed poems, short stories, and fairy tales to entertain her beloved Mathilde. She liked her uncle’s house, the park and described it and the splendid dinners in all their glories to her husband. In doing so she just showed off a little bit with her families’ life style and good fortune. However, she did not like the custom of her peers to take women out of the lime light, force them to become sociably invisible and deny them access to balls and dances. Neither was she keen on the separation of sexes on social occasions. While men assembled in clubs and after dinner in the smoking salon,

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enjoyed their cigars, drinks, or card games, women, especially ladies over thirty were left on their uncomfortable chairs in the drawing room to boring needle work and small talk about children, church, and obstinate household servants. She preferred casual gatherings with her friends and family, graced with music and dances. There she enjoyed witty chats and bragged about her wonderful husband. Even the posh resort of Hamburg’s bourgeoisie, Travemünde, did not meet her full approval. Travemünde, the little village on the Baltic Sea had started its career in 1803 as a fashionable resort for rich people from Prussia, Russia, Lubeck, and Hamburg. It became a fancy sea resort like the isle of Norderney in the North Sea or Nahant in Massachusetts. Mathilde Lieber was bored stiff by social constraints that came together with fashionableness – dressing up, sitting for hours at the table d’hôte, and wasting precious time in small-talk with rural gentry, and Berlin’s upper class. Her animated description of her holidays in Travemünde in the summer of 1844 reads like a blueprint of Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie (2 vols. Frankfurt/ Main 1901) and the experiences of his heroine young Antonia Buddenbrook set in the 1840s. Mathilde Lieber’s anecdote in her letter to her husband from August 1844 about a young boy adored by all the summer guests that chilled at the seaside, recalls Thomas Mann’s novel Tod in Venedig (Frankfurt/Main 1913) with Gustav von Aschenbach admiring the beautiful young boy Tadzio on Venice’s beach. Actually there exists an internal connection between the German author Thomas Mann and the family of Mathilde Lieber, especially its Lübeck branch. A son of her cousin Anna Emilie Fehling née Oppenheimer, consul Hermann Wilhelm Fehling was Thomas Mann’s model for the figure of the parvenue Hermann Hagenström in the Buddenbrooks. While Mathilde Lieber liked to tattle delightfully in her letters to her husband about the social life in Hamburg, Altona, Berlin, or Travemünde, she equally enjoyed to describe her frequent visits to Hamburg’s vibrant theatre scene. Often she amused her husband with accounts of performances of comedies, tragedies, or operas she had attended in her uncle Jacob Oppenheimer’s box in the Hamburg Stadttheater. Sudden decisions to go to the theatre in the evening were common in the Lomnitz household. The children loved it, yet Oscar Lieber was less happy about going to the opera. This was one of the few occasions when Oscar, the spitting image of his father, did not share his father’s preferences. Lieber junior loved comedy and funny stunts; Lieber senior loved operas and especially ballets because of their scantily clad dancers. When in 1839 his family had safely arrived at Hamburg, Lieber envied them especially for their chances to visit theatre performances and operas. Columbia/sc so he grumbled, had nothing similar on offer and that was in his opinion telling

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Figure 7

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Map of the Campus of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/sc, ca. 1840 Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/sc

proof of the shabby quality and culture of the town, the academic as well as urban society, which nevertheless between 1835 and 1856 came up with the salary of the growling German professor. See Figure 7. Columbia/sc definitely was not the boring dump, the Rattennest at the end of the world that Francis Lieber in his anger and frustrations used to describe it. On the contrary. Columbia was and is the capital of South Carolina. The town attracted merchants, retailers, visitors, and civil servants, especially when the state’s congress was in session. Courts sat in the city. English and German newspapers connected the citizenry of Columbia and Richland County to the

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Figure 8

Photo of the Lieber-House on the Campus of the University of South Carolina, Columbia/sc, 2016 (Copyright cs)

Figure 9

Photo of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/sc, 2016 (Copyright cs)

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rest of the world. Many of the local publishers and editors like David McCord and the bookseller William Cunningham were well known to the Liebers. The city formed the administrative hub of the state of South Carolina as well as a striving center of agriculture and manufacture. It prided a fairly well developed infrastructure. An elaborated network of streets, canals, rivers, and railroads connected Columbia with Charleston, South Carolina’s most important port, and neighboring towns and villages beyond the state-line. In 1824 Robert Mills had completed the Columbia Canal. The rivers Congaree, Santee, Saluda and the Santee canal were used for the transport of cotton, the prime product of the state. Since 1827 a bridge across Congaree River at the foot of Gervais Street facilitated transport. In 1830/1834 the Saluda Factory started to produce textiles with mostly slaves. When in 1840 subsidies for canal-maintenance ended, the concept of the infrastructure was adjusted to the commercial needs independent of nature, climate, and weather. Several times low water of the rivers and in the canals had stopped or hindered transports of goods and people. Therefore after 1835 the construction of railroads offered a much needed alternative. In 1845 the Greenville and Columbia Railroad opened. From 1846 onwards the construction of the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad linked the two Carolinas. See Figures 8 and 9. Lieber’s temporary living place was a center of education. In 1801 the College of South Carolina had been founded. Its homebase is still the so-called Horseshoe campus whose outlay and design imitated Harvard College in Cambridge/Mass, the alma mater of many on the faculty. The numbers of students Lieber and his ca. nine colleagues had to teach looks small compared to today’s numbers of students that attend colleges and universities in the usa; however 150–170 students in those days represented quite respectable numbers. The college was well endowed; it had enough funds to be able to improve the estate by building houses for staff, accommodate classes, erect lecture halls, and even a Steward’s hall. In town a theological seminar headed by James Hentley Thornwell, who was much disliked by Lieber, provided for the spiritual needs of the good people. Private boarding schools like the female seminar of the German migrants Hassell, Hanoverian nobility, attracted students from town and neighboring counties. Their curriculum offered skills and expertise judged proper for well, but not too well educated girls and young women of the upper classes: conversation in modern languages, needle work, playing the harp or the pianoforte, and running a household were the skills taught. Several manufacturers, waterworks, mills-potteries increased the city’s well-being. Wealthy, sophisticated planters like the Hamptons enriched the urban social life by buying town residences where they entertained their peers. Today’s Hampton-Preston mansion

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in Blanding Street lies within Columbia’s city limits; in Lieber’s time is was a horse-ride away and offered sophisticated entertainments: invitations for tea or lavish dinners. This mansion is one of the few 19th century houses that survived the destruction during the us-American Civil War; it opens a window to the daily life at least of the rich people in a southern society. The Lieber house on the Horseshoe built in 1837 and scene of the Lieber family life till 1856 survived wars and fires, too. It now serves academic purposes and is no longer the home of happy families. Hardly anything of its original decorations, furniture, or functions has been preserved. Only its layout gives at least an idea of its former order. Like the elegant plantation mansions the first floor was open to visitors and family alike; the kitchen due to safety reasons was out-housed and as usual the house lacked cellar and basement. Bedrooms were upstairs and reserved to family members. Neither a professor’s house like the Liebers, nor the Hampton Preston mansion had a belle etage as did lordly houses in republican Hamburg. Notwithstanding southern delight in luxury, showing off wealth like rented pineapples, and demonstrative hospitality, the house was one’s castle – closed to strangers’ eyes and in Lieber’s case out off bounds for slaves. Slaves were only allowed to enter the building to serve, to clean and to work. Despite Columbia’s evidently positive sides – a booming economy that attracted migrants from Europe, a budding social life, and efforts to foster education – it also was a center of slavery. Slaves living in Columbia served the urban as well as the rural economy. It seems that most slaves did by no means live in their masters’ houses but within the city in quarters of their own which they left in the morning and returned to in the evening. Some slaves had acquired special skills like cooking, gardening, or mechanics. They were owned but could be hired out or hired their expertise for their own profit. This seemed to apply to a slave named James, partner of Lieber’s slave Betsy the cook and father of Betsy’s enslaved son Henry; that seemed to apply to Betsy who baked and sold apple pies, boiled hams or did the students’ laundry to earn money on her own account. Both cities formed the background of most of the Liebers’ letter-writing in those  years 1839–1845. They seem completely different with regard to their genesis, their outlay, living condition, climate, economy, society, and law. While Hamburg’s origins reach back into the 4th century a.c. and started her career as a privileged port town in the 12th century, the harbor town Columbia in the backcountry of South Carolina was only founded in 1786. Hamburg, named after a fort on the river, the Hammaburg, developed in form and size appropriate to its topography and needs of its population. For several ­centuries the

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s­ ettlement was hemmed in by a wall accessible only through gates. ­Between 1820 and 1837 the city wall was demolished. Due to civil demand in the 19th century urban extension could no longer be stopped. The old gates disappeared. Their names live on in names of streets or squares, like Dammtor, Deichtor, or Millerntor. Their usage survived in the tiresome custom of the so-called Torsperre performed from 1798 till 1860. Contemporary maps of Hamburg show the typical genuine circle form of European urban development from the Middle Ages through to the 19th century. This urban appearance differs completely from the history of Columbia’s origins. Columbia/sc was created by human efforts in artificial rectangles that reflected the political attitude expressed in the grid system. While in the old part of Hamburg till 1842, building followed no master-plan, streets mostly were crooked and rivers, fleets, canals, and lakes formed an useful as well as picturesque ensemble, Columbia/sc was the result of cool calculation created on the drawing board of politicians, lawyers, and land speculators. In the times of the early Republic this urban project instead of adjusting to nature, forced nature into 400 blocks of 2000 square meters each of development obeying only to the natural conditions of the west bank of Congaree River and the fall line. Although Columbia was not the out-of-place town of Lieber’s description, the 7th us-Census of 1840 counted only 4340 inhabitants in the state’s ­capital.53 In the same year the city-state Hamburg housed 136.956 inhabitants.54 They were ruled by a senate and four mayors. Besides being situated on the banks of a river and dominating the surrounding thanks to improved ­infrastructure, commercial strength, and financial power, both cities had not much in common. The letters of Francis and Mathilde Lieber create the atmosphere of an intimately linked Atlantic elite. Although they paid much attention to space, places, and spheres, and disliked Columbia/sc, the Liebers managed to integrate the small capital of South Carolina, the urban scenery of the us-American East coast, Europe, and Hamburg via their letters into an Atlantic entity. To them it was of less importance where someone lived; in their letters everybody was connected to everybody through bridges made of paper. Everybody knew the whereabouts of people of private or public interest. In case somebody had not 53 See United States Census Bureau, Census of Population and Housing, archived from the original on May 11, 2015, quoted from Columbia, South Carolina, wikipedia en.wikipedia. org (8.2.2017). 54 Hamburg Census, quoted from Einwohnerentwicklung von Hamburg, de.wikipedia.org (8.2.2017).

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Figure 10 Sketch of Francis Lieber in his letter from Columbia/sc to his niece Clara Lomnitz in Hamburg, ca. spring 1847, usc flc Box 4, folder 126. By courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/sc

been seen for a long time, correspondents reminded each other about the fate of others. Letters were like glue that connected people over time and space. Letters were the medium of inter- and supranational togetherness molded together by emotions and a sense of belonging. On many occasions letters were like kisses sent across the Atlantic sea of love. See Figure 10.

Selection of Letters and Editorial Technics of Their Form and Presentation

The 95 letters of the Hamburg correspondence were selected from a group of ca. 140 according to the following criteria: 1.

2.

During the period of 1839–1840 and 1844–1845 Hamburg had to be the place of residence of the writer or of the recipient of the letter: only letters written and/or received by Francis or Mathilde Lieber are included in this edition. Letters addressed to or written by Oscar Lieber during his time in Hamburg’s schools between 1840 and 1845 are not included. Such letters would have introduced elements that differ from the family- and partner letters of his parents. Each letter had to have been sent by public mail, diplomat’s service or private messenger directly to or from Hamburg. Copies of letters produced in later years by Mathilde Lieber in her capacity as executrix of her husband or provider of correspondence to biographers of her husband are ignored.

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3.

The selected letters had to contain direct references to Hamburg, to persons living in that city or to conditions of the city. Those letters written by Francis Lieber during his tour in Europe that focused exclusively on his impressions of cities he visited like Paris, Brussels, Vienna, Munich, or Prague were excluded. Equally excluded were some of those short letters Mathilde Lieber wrote to her husband during the latter’s tour through Europe in 1844–1845 which contain or repeat matters already discussed or reported in earlier epistles. The letters had to be unaffected by severe damages like degeneration of the paper, acid corrosion, animal bites, ink blots, holes, cuts, traces of glue, unreadable handwritings as a result of bleached ink or other kind of damages. Transcripts of the few extremely damaged letters written by Francis Lieber to his wife and vice versa that are kept in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Francis Lieber Papers, boxes 34 and 54, are not included in this edition.

4.

The originals of the letters published here are deposited at the Huntington Library in San Marino/California (thl) and in the South Caroliniana Library on the campus of the University of South Carolina in Columbia/sc (usc). The transcripts of the original letters in this edition are chronologically ordered and therefore reflect the sequence of letters and interaction of their authors. In case only one date is given in the chronological order, the letter was begun and finished on the same day. In most cases letters are listed with two dates: the first date marks the date of the beginning of the writing, the second date marks the day of ending the writing. Sometimes stamps give evidence of the dates of dispatching the letter, the ports of departure, arrival, and final destinations. These dates of transports are not included in the chronological order of the letters. The transcriptions were carefully correlated with the originals including all writing mistakes; genuine styles of punctuation, linguistic peculiarities, and errors in the originals were faithfully retained. The doubling of words, the omission of linguistic idiosyncrasies, erroneous writings or orthographic or other kinds of mistakes were retained uncorrected and uncommented without marking them with the customary signifiers [sic] or [!] which would have unnecessarily bloated the already rather voluminous texts. It would have likewise hindered the comfortable reading of the texts. Words stricken out or underlined in the original were retained in the transcription. When the writer of a letter underscored a word or words like “and I can

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afford” or deleted words or letters like “He wishes” these modifications are reproduced in the edition. They suggest ways the writer thought, emphasised or changed meanings. Linguistic indications and proofs that Francis Lieber indeed had composed a particular letter are his often noted ways to spell “cegar” for “cigar”, “thaught/baught/taught” instead of “thought/bought/tought”, “giebt” instead of “gibt”, “procedings” instead of “proceedings”, “he donot” instead of “he does not” or use instead of “he knows” the capital “K” for “he Knows”. Mathilde Lieber who contrary to her husband had learned English in England as a child wrote a relatively correct and elegant English, while that of her husband who in 1826 had only began to learn English was occasionally clumsy. In her letters orthographic errors as well as corrections are rare. Her curious spelling of “phisician” for “physician” drove her husband nuts although in his own letters he committed a multitude of wrong spellings, which his wife never corrected. Occasionally she would spell “procedings” instead of “proceedings” or “recieve” instead of “receive”. When both wrote in German they used the German running-hand. German words were full of orthographic errors and peculiarities that differ from what today is considered correct orthography. Reasons for these may have been the relatively loose orthographic rules and over the course of the 19th century the development of a German standard language with firm orthographic rules. Despite the voluminous dictionary of Johann Christoph Adelung, the spelling of German words varied greatly until the publication of the Deutsches Wörterbuch by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and the dictionary of Konrad Duden.55 The usage of capital and of small initial letters reflects the importance and meaning both Liebers assigned to particular words and expressions. Mathilde Lieber especially, whose familiarity with German had to happen in a much shorter time span than that of her husband, stuck to gradually old-fashioned modes of spelling like “jezt”, “sezt”, instead of “jetzt” or “setzt”, “giebt” statt “gibt”. Even if one wants to ignore her occasional problems with German grammar like the correct usage of cases (dative and accusative), or prepositions her inaccuracies prompted her husband with a surprising lack of charm to

55 Johann Christoph Adelung, Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, 5 vols., Leipzig 1774–1786; Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, 16 vols., Leipzig 1854–1961, see online version url woerterbuchnetz.de; Konrad Duden, Die deutsche Rechtschreibung, B.G. Teubner Leipzig 1872.

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­uncontrollable outbreaks of furor. Mathilde Lieber consistently spelled “Weinachten” for “Weihnachten”. None of these mistakes or mistakes caused by the casual treatment of punctuation were corrected by the editor. For each correction were it ever so small, would have changed the reproduction of the original and thus the intention of the letter writer, which would not have behooved the editor to do. The editor likewise denied herself the pleasure of translating foreign languages or opt for a particular language. It is one of the particular charms of this fascinating Hamburg correspondence that both writers used their expertise in several languages and moved freely between languages and linguistic levels they were familiar with. Using English, German, and French spiced with few dashes of Italian, Spanish, Latin, and a touch of Greek did not happen by accident. For these usages reflect certain situational and emotional exigencies. Francis and Mathilde Lieber could switch languages within one sentence. A letter might begin with a confession of love in English, continue in French social critique and end in German with instructions on how to run a household and control the family budget. Their pleasure in literal transcriptions of pieces of Hamburg dialect, Missingsch, Low Dutch, of impudent phrases in flippant Berlin dialect, bits in southern drawl, of transcriptions of English spoken by German immigrants with a heavy German accent, of Quebecoise by Franco-Canadians and finally of African-American vernacular conveyed puns, particular regional or local moods as well as linguistic peculiarities for which all five Liebers, parents as well as their three sons, had particular sympathies and sense. As long as the sons had a fairly poor command of German and American or Irish servants did not know German at all, the parents charmed each other in German. Strangely enough in the mother language both wrote a much more pathetic as well as convoluted style as compared with the relaxed mode of speech that was common in their newly chosen country whose language both used in a much more relaxed although focused way. Had the editor translated this medley of languages into just one language, for example English, these finely tuned nuances, intended effects as well as ducti would have been lost and the unique character of the letters destroyed. Whenever the paper is so seriously damaged that the meaning of a word, several words, a line or several lines cannot be detected without a doubt the damage is marked with a single triangle ∆. Only in cases where notwithstanding missing words caused by damages the logic of a sentence suggests without a doubt

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a special assertion letters are added in square brackets like “[er]gänzt” instead of “∆ gänzt”. Square brackets, too, can signify comments/hints of the editor like omissions […] or descriptions of tiny graphics sprinkled into the text [sketch of a little man thumbing his nose]. Round brackets (?) always correspond to the original text. Occasionally both Liebers resorted to abbreviations and symbols within their letters like # x F, P.R., steampk., nb, rr, Rt, mbc etc. Their specific meaning can be easily unravelled either from the contexts or by consulting the list of abbreviations. Cross-writing will be signified by square brackets. In general the transcriptions follow the sequence of pages; in a few cases the process of writing was disrupted and passages that belong together appear in widely dispersed places within the letter. Both writers omitted numbering their pieces of papers and the pages. Thus for reconstitution the sequence of pages in the transcripts the sequence of pages of the written leaves are added in square brackets. References to archival locations of the sources are added in italics. The same applies to mail stamps and the occasional traces of sealing-wax.

Footnotes and Index

Footnotes/annotations and index are closely related: Francis as well as Mathilde Lieber were very sociable people who loved to meet, remember, and mention the names of many relatives, friends and foes, colleagues, rivals, opponents, and/or Atlantic celebrities. Their letters are full of name-dropping, hints of people they met, wanted to meet, or by whom they wanted to be ­remembered. To provide detailed explanations about each person every time she/he is mentioned or even just at the first mentioning would have increased the shere number and contents of footnotes beyond a readerfriendly degree. Therefore editorial restraint was necessary. Persons will be mentioned and explained in footnotes only when within the text more than one person carries the same first or family name, and/or belongs to the same kinship like uncle, aunt, cousin, Onkel, Tante, Vetter, Cousine, Sally, Clara, Mathilde, Henry, Gustav, Eduard, Gossler, James, Mathilde, Niebuhr, Benecke and the like of persons that hold the same title. The same rule goes for initials (B., mb, G.), nicknames (Tommy Stout, Cantoor), short versions or

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shortening of names like Mrs B. As there were several women called Clara, Sally, Fanny or Mathilde in the couple’s circle of friends and relatives, they are identified in the footnotes in case the letter’s context does not offer precise clues for identification and therefore prevents assignment to the person’s index. However in the footnotes only full names are given. Further informations to persons like vital data, profession, biographical details like spouse, children, kinship degree, or place of living are to be found in the index. If, however, names appear in the text like uncle Jacob, H. Gossler, H. Benecke or Alfred Graffunder no further explanations are given in the footnotes because these persons are easily to be identified in the index. The term “boys” was used often; it could be used to summarize the three sons of the couple, Oscar, Hamilton, and Guido Norman. It could be lovingly applied to Mathilde Lieber’s brothers Gustavus, Theodore, and James, or any two of them. The same goes with the term “girls” – it was either applied onto Mathilde Lieber’s sisters in Hamburg, Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, or to the daughters of the rich Boston entrepreneur Nathan Appleton, the capricious Mary who in 1839 married the British Diplomat Robert James Mackintosh, and her sister Fanny who in 1843 was betrothed to the American poetus laureatus Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In all cases neither the term boys nor the term girls reflect the age of the people involved – it could grace a child as well as a cigar smoking man or a mother of five children. In case a person is mentioned in a letter whose Christian names, nickname, profession, place of residence or family name signify only one precisely identifiable person, no further explanations are given in the footnotes but the reader may check the index. Many people had several Christian names; the first name used by Francis or either Mathilde Lieber in their letters are underlined in the index and used when additional explanations are necessary. The footnotes are also used to identify, name or explain publications, compositions, performances of operas or theatre plays, events, facts, or hints to personal experiences mentioned in the letters of Francis or Mathilde Lieber. Especially the titles of books, articles, or reviews in journals as well as the numerous informations about ballets, operas, and plays attended are given in the footnotes in great detail. This includes informations about the publishers of printed materials or in case of operas, theatre plays, or ballets the date of their first performances to get an idea of the productions’ fashionability. The variety of topics offer insights into the wide range of intellectual interests of both letter writers as well as in the scope and possibilities of am Atlantic transfer of

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knowledge, culture, and interests. Suggestions for further informations to be found in primary sources and scholarly literature will be offered in the edition’s bibliography but not in the footnotes. The same goes to titles of books, articles, reviews, or performances that are mentioned in the letters: further explanations to these publications are given in connection with their creators/authors in the index. The index therefore reflects the broad range of personal connections, interests, and the many levels of world views of both letter writers. It offers insights into the mental design of the Atlantic correspondence between Francis and Mathilde Lieber.

Letters No.1 Francis Lieber, New York City, to Mathilde and Oscar Lieber, Hamburg, 16.07.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 18, ALS, 2 pages Heckscher’s Counting House1 July 16. 1839 The Havre packet sails in about half an hour; my dearest Matilda and sweet Oscar; besides a husband could not write fully what he felt and feels at such a separation, in an open letter. So you must be content with a line or two. Besides I shall write by the British Queen Steamer, which will be about as fast an opportunity as this. – You recollect the house with the piazza and flag, to our right, when, the day before you sailed, we stopped on the hill near the hospital? It is an hotel, whither I went after I had taken leave of you; a spy-glass afforded me the best sight of you, as you were sailing down the bay. It blew very fresh – favorably for you – so that I had to go down, hot as I was from walking. In the evening I went to Philadelphia; we had most tremendous lightning and thunder claps, so that I felt very wretched for you! At sun-set, when I Knew that Oscar prayed for me and for all of us, and in which you certainly joined him, my blessed Matilda, I prayed again most fervently for you. – Ingersoll recieved me again very Kindly. We went to see Mr Bache, Pres. of Girard College. He was ill; but I was there introd. to Judge Dallas, his Uncle, from Pittsburgh.2 The m ­ oment he heard my name he told me that he had been charged by the common council of Pittsb. to bring several copies of my Pris. Letter;3 that the only copy he had he presented to the Council, and they passed a highly 1 He was sitting in the Manhattan-office of the trading company Heckscher, Coster & Matfield, the company in charge of the Hamburg born merchants Charles August and Edward Heckscher. In the building 45 South, New York City Charles August Heckscher was busy as consul of the east German dukedom Mecklenburgh, see American Almanac, New York Register and City Directory, for the Sixty-fourth Year of American Independence, New York, published by Thomas Longworth, 118 Nassau-Street 1839, p. 323 URL https://archive.org/stream/ longworthsameric00newy#page/n15/mode/2up (15.10.16). 2 Lieber met the president judge of the district Allegheny, Allegheny County/PA, Trevanian/ Trevanion Barlow Dallas, see The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, Boston 1838, p. 160. 3 Francis Lieber, A popular essay on subjects of penal law, and on uninterrupted solitary confinement at labor, as contradistinguished to solitary confinement at night and joint labor by day, in a letter to John Bacon, esquire, Philadelphia published by order of the Society 1838.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_003

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c­ omplementary vote to me. I should visit Pittsb. they would recieve me well &c. Here I found an article in the Berlin Literary Gazette,4 very complementary. But was what pleased me most, was the Eth copy of my Ethics;5 from England: It is a beautiful book, quite as elegant as Prescotts Ferd. & Isabella.6 I shall write to the Engl. publisher to send you a copy. My London publ.7 sent me likewise a number of the Spectator, in which there is a very long and elaborate review of the Ethics,8 which truly delighted me, because the first in which I [2] I found that the writer had thoroughly understood me, and seized upon those points in which I am original and in which I have advanced the science beyond Burke &c. He also complements my Engl. and says it is very strange literary phenomenon to see a foreigner not only write Engl. correctly, but elequently and to see him think and invent in his mind und in truly an English flow. He then says that my work is one of the best essays on Government since ­Aristotle. I write you all this, to the exclusion of expressions of my feelings for you and our dear ones because I Know so well how much you will like it – I cannot lay down in a clean bed, drink milk, or eat good butter, without thinking of my poor ones at sea. I begin already to be impatient; alas! and how long will it last before I hear from you. God bless you. God bless you richly. Kiss all the Kissable ones for me and shake hands all the shakable ones for me. I had a letter here from Gustavus,9 which you shall have by the Cuxhaven, direct for

4 See review by Anonym. “A popular essay on subjects of penal law, and on uninterrupted solitary confinement at labour by day, in a letter to John Bacon, Esq by Francis Lieber, Philadelphia, 1838, in: Literarische Zeitung, in Verbindung mit mehreren Gelehrten, hrsg. von Karl Büchner, Duncker und Humblot Berlin 1839, pp. 243–244. 5 Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, Designed Chiefly for the Use of Colleges and Students at Law, 2 vols., Boston Charles C. Little & James Brown 1838–1839 and London William Smith, 113, Fleet Street, 1839. 6 William Hickling Prescott, The History of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, American Stationery Company Boston 1837, Richard Bentley London 1837–1838. 7 William Smith, 113, Fleet Street, London. 8 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, see review March 23, 1839 by Anonym. “Lieber`s Manual of Political Ethics”, in: The Spectator. A weekly Journal of News, Politics, Literature, and Science, ed. F.C. Westley vol. 12, 1839, London, published by Joseph Clayton, at 9, Wellington Street, Strand, pp. 280–282 or see The Spectator Archive archive.spectator.co.uk (16.11.2016). 9 Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, merchant and plantation owner in Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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Hamburg, together with an Encyclopedia10 for Oscar, and an account of that unique, splendid and most instructive Chinese museum. I Kiss you many thousand times. Kiss the children from their ardently loving father, and remember me to Rebecca. Ever your Frank Fryer Dean & Brinckman Ney York Letters to Brinckman11 Single via Havre Monsieur Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer Hambourg Stamp Le Havre 6 Aout Stamp Hamburg 11. Aug. 39 + red sealing wax 10 Lieber, Encyclopaedia Americana. 11 Wm. H. Fryer, Edw. B. Dean, M. Brinckman, Fryer, Dean & Brinckman, Commission Merchants, 4 Hanover Street, see A.E. Wright’s Boston, New York, Philadelphia & Baltimore Commercial Directory, and General Advertising Medium, New York 1840, p. 79.

No. 2 Francis Lieber, Boston, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 22.07.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 4, ALS, 4 pages P.S. Sally Newton is expected next Thursday. Boston, July 22, 1839 No I I believe, my dearest Matilda, that you will recieve these lines about the same time with your arrival, at least not much later; for they shall go by way of England per steam. I donot Know whether I ought to write to you how I feel, for it is of no use, after all, and yet, I have nothing else to write: When Ashton, the only man in Boston who shows all over, that he truly rejoices’ at seeing me, shaved me the other day he said in Italian: “You have been acted very foolishly in letting your wife go.” Why? said I. “Because you are one of those thinking, thinking man, and you will feel too melancholy.” – I Knew that the first truly dreadful day, when I should feel wretched would be in Boston, when, for the first time I should be at leasure, and so it was, though I Knew it before hand. You Know all are nearly absent, except Mrs Brooks,1 and he is despite his offhand manners a perfect Yankee-Stockfisch. Hillard left Boston the day after my arrival, for three weeks. Judge Story I can see but rarely. I read a good deal, and translate the Prussia Copy right law.2 Last night I was at Gustavus Gossler’s – Westphalia ham, ice, Burgundy and good cegars. He is, you Know, a clever, liberal, off-hand, warm-hearted boy. – Dorr has returned and is again at Lekain’s. I think he has improved much. – I write these lines in Gossler & Knorre’s Counting house3 and yet I hardly can Keep my eyes dry. There has been “The lump” in my throat and the grasp round my heart, ever since you left, but especially since I am here. I cannot make a step without thinking of you and your boys; how the iced water we have here, would delight you! (A propos Tudor sells now as he Tells me himself, American ice, at Calcutta, for 4 cents, yes four cents; and we, you Know pay 12 ½ at Columbia). I have prayed very, very intensely every evening for you all and so every morning, and when the sun sets he seems to bring 1 Fanny Dehon Brooks and her husband Sidney Brooks. 2 Julius Eduard Hitzig, Das königl. Preußische Gesetz vom 11. Juni 1837 zum Schutze des Eigenthums an Werken der Wissenschaft und Kunst gegen Nachdruck und Nachbildung, Berlin 1838. Francis Lieber, On International Copyright: in a Letter to the Hon. William C. Preston, Senator of the United States, Wiley and Putnam, Broadway, New York, and Paternoster Row, London 1840. 3 “Gossler (Gustavus) & Knorre (Charles), 31 India wharf. G’s house 6 Walnut”, Stimpson’s Boston Directory; containing the Names of the Inhabitants, their Occupations, Places of Business, and Dwelling Houses, and the City register, with Lists of Streets, Lanes and Wharves, the City Officers, Public Offices and Banks, and other useful information, Boston Charles Stimpson, Jr. 1839, p. 196.

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me the prayer of my beloved Oscar. I Know he has not forgotten it. Oh God, it will be very, very long before I hear from you. I feel so old! – My Ethics4 have braught me most decidedly firm standing, in that branch. They are universally spoken off with esteem. The Latin Synonyms – you remember your reading Latin to me for 10 days – are not yet out!5 It will take a whole month more. Yet one consolation is there, that it is most correctly and neatly composed. You Know it is stereotyping, and I trust this will be a constant source of revenue. I have now proposed three works to the publishers; still I promise you, I shall not work again as I have done last winter. It is not right. – Parish6 asked me to see him in his villa at Ogdensburg; his Uncle P7 is dead, you Know, and he regulates matters here. I dined with him the other day, and he asked me to dine there every day. He is a curious and certainly most able fellow, not [2] without noble qualities, but selfish where he does not esteem and more satisfies with flattery than a man of his mind ought to allow himself to be. – ­Caningham, the Columbien bookseller,8 has married here; I dine to-morrow with him – Oh, I cannot any longer write these things; my heart is too full; with pain I only picked them together to fill the letter but it will not do. I will conclude for to-day. I print a fervent kiss upon each and every one of the boys and press you to my heart. Kiss the sisters from me. – I thank Caroline not only for her love; I knew, or supposed she loved me, but for so thus speaking it out. I love to be loved so dearly. – Mrs N. Appleton (Sumner, she was) is [sketch of a pregnant female figure shown from the side], est sa mère “s’en glorifie comme d’un évenement le plus heureux. – He9 is well; Mary and Fanny10 at Stockbridge; I found no letter for you in N.Y. –23d. This morning I spent at Cambridge and saw Mr Sparks and his wife, (Miss Silsby) – you remember I suppose a blue, a belle (?), a simpering sort of woman, very good I suppose, of Washington standing, a native of Salem – very rich. It was furiously hot, and not even wine and water was offered. C’est la manière de Boston. I asked finally for it; c’est la 4 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 5 Dictionary of Latin Synonymes, for the Use of schools and private students, with a complete Index. By Lewis Ramshorn, from the German, by Francis Lieber, Boston, C.C. Little and J. Brown 1839. 6 George Parish, son of Richard and Suzette Parish (1807–1881). 7 George Parish, son of John and Henriette Parish (1780–1839). 8 Not Caningham but Cunningham, William Cunningham, Columbia/SC. 9 Nathan Appleton, entrepreneur, Boston. 10 Mary and Fanny Appleton, daughters of Nathan Appleton, Boston.

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manière du docteur. After them I saw Story. He and Ashton the barber, are, so long as Sumner11 is away, the only ones who show that they rejoice seeing one. I had a long talk with him. Monday I shall go to read to him my chapter on Judges, Lawyers and Jurymen in the 2d. vol. of Pol. Ethics.12 You recollect how highly I speak of Lady Russell, in my chapter on Women.13 Judge Story gave me her Letters publ. in 1801.14 If you can get the book pray read it. You will find your own picture, for, I Know, you are as mild, as loving, as pure and as strong as that most noble woman was. – The Gr. Western is in, and brings sad accounts from Engl. We shall have here a great crisis, a very great one. I wonder whether your uncle Jacob, and all whom he represents, are still on the side of old Jackson15 and with inveterate and, in my opinion, rash and injudicious inmity against the U.S. Bank. I had this morning a letter from W.A. Prescott (Ferdinand & Isabella) inviting me to dine any day at Nahant. He congratulates me at the end of this letter upon the noble success of my Ethics.16 – Last year I felt some times pretty lonely; but I had always the expectation of letters from my beloved wife; how different is it this year! No letter! No expectation! and the idea withal that you my dearest wife and children are tossed on the sea. Yet you have their sweet and soft lips to Kiss; I am lonely here. What a day it will be when I hear that you have safely arrived at Hamburg and have been received well. Knorre tells me that Caroline lives right opposite to Henry Gossler.17 I told Gustavus Gossler that his brother was a real camel, not to call on your sisters. Let me Know in your first how he behaves – He cannot but gentlemanly; but should he or she not call, not perhaps after a long time once, or invite the children without having [3] properly reniewed his acquaintance with you, you will Know how to conduct yourself. You donot stand in the need to seek the favors of anyone – within or without the family. – I long with all my soul for a letter. Oh, if it should so 11 Charles Sumner. 12 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 13 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 14 Thomas Sellwood, Letters of Lady Rachel Russell, from the Ms in the Library at Wooburn Abbey, 1801. 15 US-American President Andrew Jackson. 16 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 17 Lieber alluded to the place of residence of his sister in law Caroline Lomnitz in Hamburg; she had rented the large house in the newly built Hamburg boulevard Esplanade No. 8. Johann Heinrich Gossler, merchant, lived in No. 41. See Hamburger Adress-Buch für 1844, p. 297, Hamburger Adressbücher-Dokumentanzeige URL agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de.

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­ appen that you could write at sea to me! It would be so exquisite a surprize! – h My Oscar, have you been good and kind? You have, have you not? Be kind unto all around you, and love your dearest Mother from all your heart, and all your soul. Think what a balm every good news from you will be to the bleeding heart of a father. For it does bleed now. – Kiss Caroline’s eyes and Harriet for me – I mean Matilda again. Monday, July 29, I donot know, my dearest and sweet Matilda, why I cannot well write to you. My mind, my heart, my whole soul is without a single interruption almost, with you; I see you constantly; I see Oscar leaning over the vessel yet sending his hart adieu to me, and weeping bitterly. I see the delicate feet of Norman trippling toward me; and have bluff Hamilton before me; when in bed half asleep I cannot help seeing your vessel dipping and moving, and, ah! how often does a painful thaught of a falling spar, of one of our children gliding on the deck, startle me up again out of beginning sleep. When I eat, drink or read I think of you, of you, my dear ones alone – yet I donot well feel well disposed to write to you. All will be better I suppose when I shall have had the first letter, which God, I pray it in the fervor of my inmost soul, may contain good accounts, and when after that, hope and expectation of a new one will always fill up the interwalls between the letters I receive from you. Had I but the first letter from my noble, calm, and good Matilda. My wife, my own Matilda, forgive me all that is wrong in me, and rash, and love me, for my existence depends upon you all. All else besides is but secondary. – I suppose the best I can do is, that I tell you what and how I am doing. I am well, quite well. Last Saturday I was at Cambridge and read to Judge Story my chapter on the Judge, Juror, Advocate and Witness, and he said that it was by far the best he had ever seen upon these important subjects.18 Did I tell you that until May 6, there were sold nearly 600 copies of my first volume, which is very good.19 Story told me that all they wanted, he and Professor Greenleaf, was that some one should give a sufficient fund to establish a new professorship in the law-school20 (which is now famous all over the Union, and fast increasing in students) to be given to me, for the wanted me there beyond any man in America, and they must have me. By the way the Chancellor of England has decided two a cases upon the authority of Story’s Equity Pleadings21 – which 18 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 19 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 20 The law school of Harvard University, Cambridge/Mass. Harvard Law School was founded in July 1817 as part of the University that had been created in 1636 to educate future pastors for the English colony Massachusetts Bay. 21 Sweet vs Shaw, 1839, see William Wetmore Story, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Circuit Court of the United States, for the First Circuit, C.C. Little and J. Brown Boston, vol. 1 1842, p. 20.

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amounts to a most brilliant national acknowledgement, considering all the circumstances. – Yesterday I dined with Gossler, at his partners,22 where we had some good talk and very excellent wine. – I have ordered a flag for Oscar, which [4] I shall send with a letter to the dear boy for his birth-day, and hope it will arrive in time. Donot tell him of it. But read the letter otherwise to him. To-morrow I may go to Nahant to dine with Prescott. – I have concluded a contract with the publishers for a Manual of History (2 vols) which will be a very excellent melk cow.23 At least they are willing to conclude the contract upon our former terms; but may try perhaps to get better terms. I have sent a trifling sum from here to be clapped upon our capital. Yet I doubt now whether I can bring it up to $ 10000 at the end of 1840, though I still most might and main for it. – I may shall go from N. York to with Astor jr to his country place, 80 miles up the Hudson; thence I may go to spend some days to at Wadsworths in the famous Genesee County; then to Detroit, Cincinnati, Philadelphia – for you I believe that Mr Clay is here in the North, so I will not go to Kentucky. – I trust all will recieve you in love, and if they but Knew how dearly I love you, my soul, they would not think so bad of me. However this may be, I feel too full at present to entertain any thing but good will toward every one. I love you, God grant you health and to our children, and the rest may go as it will. Pray for my sake take will care of yourself during the next winter. I beg you; the Hamb. winters are very severe I suppose. Be very careful with the children, especially against the winds. Consider you have all, all my Treasure in trust. Could I press you to my heart! Could I go down to my the breakfeast table and find you four! – Tell me a great deal and every thing. Good bye! Now that I come the end of the letter I feel as though I should cry like a child. Give my love to all, and kiss the boys a thousand times. Yours ever. Single To Mrs Francis Lieber Care of Jacob Oppenheimer Esq Per Steamboat Hamburg

22 Gossler & Knorre or Gossler, Berenberg & Co., Boston. 23 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

No. 3 Francis Lieber, Boston, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 30.07.-06.08.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 4, ALS, 4 pages No II Boston July 30. Aug 6. I am perfectly well, and satisfied with the beginning of my book1 Yesterday I sent a letter to N.Y. to go by the Gr. Western and to-day I come again for no other reason than that I may say a word to you all. Hillard will now be back in a few days, when I shall begin to print. I wrote yester-day to the Appletons. August 1. Thursday. To-day, my beloved wife and you dearest children, it is three weeks that we separated, and I feel very full in my heart. I trust you are near the channel, perhaps in it. What would I not give could I sit on the deck and point out to Oscar the shores of France, and England, the first European shores he sees and tell him of the fleets which have ploughed in turn that ever navigated water. I would have loved to press my boys to my bosom, when approaching to Europe again. But it makes me too – sad I cannot say, but so overflowingly full. My Matilda I have forgotten in my last to speak of your birthday,2 which gives me much pain, because it may look to you like neglect, and yet, God knows, not an hour passes that I donot think most warmly of you. Pardon then my neglect. You know I forget always these things, though I know it is not right to forget them. Still so much I can say that I did not forget your birthday because I forgot you. Your image and your faithful name – that name – Good God I cannot write more – I unmanned myself – I will man myself again. Matilda, I believe I shall hardly be able to bring up our little fortune to $ 10000 toward the end of 1840. It is not my fault; I live as economically as I ­possibly can; and yet a pleasure it is spoilt, for it was one of my ideas, whilst you were absent with my dear boys, to toil hard, and strain my muscels, that the separation being over – alas! without the return of my dearest boy! – I might say to you and myself, Well here is the beginning of a little independence. However, money shall not make me think much one way or the other. I now begin to count the weeks until I shall have a letter from you. – I have given to-day the first M.S. to the printer, Hillard, who will carefully read the proofs, having been absent. This day to – I deny not – touched my heart; for I hastily read over the first part – a part I have written with much soul and read twice to you. – I dont know how it is;

1 Vol. 2 of Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 2 Mathilde Oppenheimer was borne July 21, 1805 in Hamburg.

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[2] but Columbia lies behind me as if years back. Sally Newton will be back to-day or tomorrow. So I shall have at least one mouth to kiss – stop. – I did not mean to tell you so much. Do you remember that a daughter of Mr Sieurs in Beacon Street – un Richard – married a Mr d’ Hauteville in France. She left him with her family, and he was to follow. She was confined here, and now when young Hauteville arrives she declines seeing him or giving up the child. Some assure her, some him. He has engaged a lawyer to reclaim the child.3 – Lets be poor and love one another rather than such things or Webster’s travelling on subscribed money – a perfect begger buseness. – do you remember my chapter on the necessity of a public man being out of debt? August 3. To-day I had the first proof of my Ethics.4 There is, at the beginning a passage, so warm and full of heart, that when I read it, it braught – touchy as I am now, water into my eyes. That second vol. will be very good, I hope. – Tell Oscar my dear Matilda that I entered yesterday a shop of a bird stuffer, in which I saw the most delicate, beautiful and curious animals. There was a glass-case intended as a parlour ornament, about 6 feet high and 1 ½ wide and deep, with birds from Africa, the East Indies, China South America & the U.S. in it. It costs $ 200 and has been baught by a merchant here. There were other b glas cases for $ 20, 30 and 40 dollars. I thaught all the time of my boys; how they would have been delighted to it in looking at this great and beautiful variety of birds. I baught this moment an English book, 2 vols: The wonders of Geogr Geology, chiefly with a view of that it will be a fine book for my Oscar a year hence. It is very dear but I could not help buying it for him.5 – Soon you will be a month from me. I wish I could hurry the time away whe that the day may arrive when I shall have a letter. It will be a feast day; I’ll bless the day; I’ll kiss the lines, I will thank God so warmly if it brings me news of your safe and final arrival. If it were not that I must wait longer, I could almost wish not to hear of you, until I can hear that you are in 3 Lieber mentioned the so-called D’ Hauteville Case that shook Bostonian society in 1838; involved were Ellen Sears d’ Hauteville, her son Frederick Sears Grand d’ Hauteville, and her ­estranged husband, Paul Daniel Gonsalve Grand d’ Hauteville. See Report of the D’ Hauteville Case; The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, at the suggestion of Paul Daniel Gonsalve Grand D’ Hauteville, versus David Sears, Miriam C. Sears, and Ellen Sears Grand D’ ­Hauteville. ­Habeas Corpus for the custody of an infant child, Philadelphia, printed by ­William S. ­Martien, and for sale by the booksellers generally 1840. 4 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 5 Gideon Algernon Mantell, The Wonders of geology; or, a familiar exposition of geological Phenomena; being the substance of a course of lectures delivered at Brighton. From Notes taken by G.F. Richardson, Curator of the Mantellian Museum, 2 vols. London 1838.

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Hamburg and how you have been received. – Yester-day I saw Mrs Brooks;6 you know she loves [3] us really, but you Know also that love with me must be in some shape active. If a woman never asks me to take a walk with me; if she always declines taking a drive with me, it wont do. Sally7 is quite different. She will be here to-day. Marianne, who seems much “nicer” is engaged to a Mr Brewster in Kaskaska in Illinois, and Olivia you know will marry a Savannah man.8 What distances! But there is one reason, and a powerful one, which keeps the Union together. – I had thaught that this letter should go by steam boat, not supposing that both would sail at the same time; now it must go by Havre, and will cost more postage being so heavy. I shall take care in future. Pray write me how I must direct my letters that your uncle Jacob has not the trouble nor expence of it. Will it be a long letter which will be the first to great me? I have not heard yet from the Appletons. – Old Pickering is, as always, very kind to me. He wishes me so much here, “because he has no one to converse with”. C’est tout comme chez nous. There is an American merchant from Smyrna here, who has taken a particular fancy f to me. To-morrow I dine with Jasege, this is his name, on pilaw; he has always excellent wine and cegars. – I have lately read the Life of Cromwell by Forster, who writes the excellent Lives of the Eminent Brit. Statesmen, in the Cabinet Cyclop.9 – It made me very sad; and it left me oppressed and sad. There was such greatness, such wonderful greatness in Cromwell, and yet so much spoiled by want of Veracity alone. Had he had courage to resolve to be true like Ireton, he would have found the greatest preventive against all those fearful dangers which beset great men in civil wars. I always return to my old loves Pym and Hampden. August 5 Yesterday I had a very delightful day. When at the Armenian’s waiting for dinner, Gossler10 braught me your pilot letter. When I saw your hand and the post mark of Baltimore, I thaught you had returned in distress. I turned very pale, so that all looked with fearful anxiety at me; running hastily over the 6 7 8 9

10

Francis Brooks. Sally Newton. John Elliott Ward. John Forster, Life of Oliver Cromwell, in: Lives of Eminent British statesmen in Dr. Lardner’s Cyclopaedia, see contemporary review in The Spectator 10 November 1838, p. 17. URL archive.spectator.co.uk (3.11.2016). Gustav Gossler, Boston.

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letter however, I found that all was right. Heckscher’s11 had but just recieved the letter, and perhaps it is better the letter was thus delayed by the pilot. It makes a fine interval. After the dinner I went to Sally, who has just returned from Saratoga,12 and so pretty she never was. every one observes that she p ­ ositively looks like a girl. Her waist is very small, &c &c. I kissed her – I actually did. She thought your last words exceedingly noble, that I should hasten to her. When I went home I read – in bed – for the first time the letter properly, calmly, enjoyinly. I kissed your name and Oscar’s words. I feel much better after that letter, and felt for the first time truly happy. It gives me the greatest comfort that the captain is kind, the sailors calm, and that Oscar had thaught of his Latin. [4] Tell him that he has given great joy by this news to a distant lonely father. Thank him for his words and tell him that nothing, absolutely nothing can give me during our separation so much delight and comfort, as any good news of him – his kindness, love and industry. And you my dear Matilda, I thank you for that letter many thousand times, and the endeavor to calm me. If the capt.13 proves as he promised, make him a purse, or something of the sort. He would greatly value it, I know. He would speak of it probably during all his life, and what is all human life, if hours and days are not kitted together by acts of kindness, acts expressing good will beyond Interact? Donot forget it please. And do not forget, my angel, to let Oscar write a long letter to Sally. She fully deserves it even if she were not his godmother. Let him call her his godmother and do not forget in the letter Anny.14 The direction will be to Mrs S. Newton, care of William Sullivan Esq. Boston. Mass. And now I beg Hart and Carry to write me and not to send merely love and all that through you. It will delight me to have letters, telling every thing and still more. Mrs Brooks asked at once: Where is that handsome widow with the five children.15 All send their love to you. Mrs Brooks said “has Matilda still her beautiful lips, of whom my poor brother in 11 12

13 14 15

Charles August Heckscher. The capricious Sally Newton had enjoyed her vacations in Saratoga. Saratoga Springs/NY was the place to be for the High Society from Boston and New York during the 19th ­century. The town in upstate New York features natural springs and had splendid hotels to offer. Johann L. Kuhlke, captain of the Bremen bark Sophie. Sally Newtons sister Marianne. Fanny Brooks was inquiring about Caroline Lomnitz, sister of Mathilde Lieber, who was widowed in 1835 and had lived with her children together with her parents in Heidelberg where the Brooks had met her on their trip through Europe.

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law (who died in N.Y.) used to speak so much. He was altogether the greatest admirer of every thing Matilda said, did or looked.16 I send this letter so soon after the other, because it must go via Havre, and will therefore arrive long after the steamboat letter. I bless you all; I Kiss the children and you and the sisters most tenderly Remember me to Becka. Your Frank [cross-writing] Try to become acquainted with the other brothers of Gossler. Gustavus17 here, an excellent boy you know, speaks of his brother Ernst in the highest terms. From all he says you will like him and his wife, so if you see him at Henry Gossler’s,18 get into conversation with him. This morning I read the chapter on Women to Sally.19 She sows Oscars, Hamilton’s and Norman’s names in the flag which I baught for Oscar. In that bird shop, which I mentioned was a living mocking bird to be sold for $ 120!! How Oscar will think of our little friend on the chiminy, which sung so briskly for no money. Single Via Havre à Madame F. Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg Stamp Outre Mer 28 aout Stamp Paris 29 Aout Stamp Hamburg 3 Sept 39 16

Probably Fanny Brooks late brother in law Henry Brooks, who had died 1833 in New York City. 17 Gustav Gossler, Boston. 18 Dr. iur. Ernst Gossler and his wife Mathilda; Johann Heinrich Gossler, Hamburg. 19 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics; Sally Newton.

No. 4 Francis Lieber, Boston, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 09.08.-18.08.1839 Included: Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 10.08.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 4, ALS, 4 pages No III Boston August 9, 1839 This moment I was reading over, at the printer’s, a sheet before being put to press, and whence the neighboring bell rung, a sensation of joy thrilled for a moment through me heart. What was it? I soon discovered it. Generally I saw you and the children when the 5 o’clock bell rung. Alas my feeling lasted but an instant, and in an instant more I thaught of my dull room where I now write to my Matilda. Tuesday or Wednesday next I shall go to N.Y. unless the Appleton’s write to me, which they have not yet done. – Pray, my sweet wife write me accurately what you put on. Pray, have one gown made, how shall I say? Thus [sketch of a female torso with a dress showing cleavage in V-form], and not all your gowns thus [similar sketch, however showing a dress on a torso with less cleavage]. A propos! Sally1 has her dresses unusually tasteful for her little body, most in the first fashion, and, having, as you know, one of the sweetest bosoms, and wearing the dress so that it meets one quarter of an inch deeper than ­others (and flatter ones) can do, and having that charming, deeper spot again garnished with the merest rim of a peeping chemise, – it is charming what the eyes see, oh and how charming what the imaginations sees. Is it not terrible for a poor semi bachelor like myself? – There are here at Betsy’s four Officers of Col the Cold Stream Guards, in Canada, with whom I have become well acquainted. They are a great acquisition for me; for I can talk at least, and learn a good deal. Write me, so soon as the children are dressed once more, what they were wear, and how they look, and pray, talk frequently to Hamilton and Norman of me and buy things for them, telling them that papa has sent them, so that, if they forget me, as they will do, they remember at least the name Papa with pleasure. Thousand and thousand times I must think, could but your most excellent father have seen them. – I am very curious to Know how you will find the looking of the Germans. There is a little girl here, Sally Otis, daughter to Mrs James Otis, the handsome you remember. This girl I have no doubt would make furore in Germany. – Yesterday, my poor Matilda, you have been at sea four weeks, to-day I imagine you land in Rotterdam, and I have fretted the whole day, although my chapter in Calmness of Soul is just passing through the press;2 I cannot help thinking what trouble you poor forlorn woman will have when you land in so foreign a place, my poor, poor wife! How is my dearest wife how mine own Oscar, and you all? I should have greatly relished it had Caroline 1 Sally Newton. 2 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, vol. 2. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_006

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or Harriet in charity bestowed a letter on me during this interval. – I have no doubt, I cannot doubt, every one will receive you Kindly, and as for myself, I can assure you, I feel nothing but Kindness to every one. There may [2] be misunderstandings, what of that? I care not what any one may imagine of me, so that they love you and Kindly treat my children. I pursue my path, which duty calls me to pursue, and in the end no honest man can radically dislike me, though he may not relish my individuality. I have forgotten all. So be it. Remember me kindly to your Uncle,3 to Adele, to all. August 10th. My dear Oscar, try to read this, and if you cannot do it – for I Know your father writes but a poor hand – beg your dear and ever kind mother to read it to you. Give her a kiss and then listen. This morning I visited the blin institution for the blind; it is situated on a hill near the harbour, so that you can see the sea, the many vessels and the city of Boston.4 When I saw this beautiful view before me and looked again at the poor blind boys and girls, for whom there is for ever night, I felt excedingly sad and thanked God that he has made my three boys healthy and sound in all limbs. The blind children read (from books with elevated letters) cyphered, wrote and recited geography on a map with elevated mountains and depressed rivers most cleverly. There is a little girl now about eight years old, and called Laura,5 who is blind, deaf, dumb and has no sense of smell. When I tell you this, you probably imagine a dull being hardly showing any signs of life, yet she is bright, lively and full of affection for girls, fo whom she delights in caressing, and Kissing, but she will never caress a man, or be carressed by him one. They have taught her the language of the deafmute, which is by signs made with the fingers; but as this poor Laura cannot see them, she puts her hands round the hand of him who speaks with her, so that she feels the signs. They told her my name, which she then wrote, in the fashion of the blind. She immediately asked whether I had come by water, or

3 Jacob Oppenheimer, Hamburg. 4 Samuel Gridley Howe in 1831 had travelled across Europe to collect informations about institution for the education of blind people; in 1832 he founded in Boston the Perkins School for the Blind that Lieber visited. In 1843 Howe married a friend of Lieber, Julia Ward who during the Civil War (1861–1865) acquired fame by authoring in 1861 the much acclaimed poem Battle Hymn of the Republic. It was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1862; as a song it uses the music from ‘John Brown’s Body’, composed by William Steffe in 1856. 5 Laura Bridgman.

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on horseback, or in a gig or on foot. She laughed repeatedly and enjoyed the it very much when she was properly understood. Now I will tell you how [3] they instructed her. She came utterly untaught into the institution. They took a spoon and light tied a paper, on which the word Spoon was printed in elevated letters, to it; they made little Laura repeatedly feel the spoon and the letters on the paper. By She thaught of course the whole was but one thing; but by and bye they took off the paper and made her feel the spoon and the paper separately; than they took two spoons and the same paper, and by and bye poor Laura caught the idea that these elevations of the paper designated the spoon. But mark, she could have no idea of letters; the whole word spoon was for her one sign for her, for the thing spoon. Now they took something else, the name of which began also with an S, and by great patience and Kindness, for which God bless them, they taught her the idea of letters, from that they passed over to teaching her that the sign for S, made with the fingers in the language of the deaf-mute, signified the same with the elevated S in print. Still, you may imagine, how slow her instruction is. Laura’s joy, when she becomes acquainted with a new idea is excedingly great; think my boy how industriously you ought to study to show God that you are grateful for having given you a sound body, sound mind and a most Kind mother, who has taught you all you Know. My letter to you has become much longer than I thaught it would be, and I must conclude, else no room remains for your mother. I love you dearly. Kiss your dear brothers. My dear Matilda, I calculate with certainty to have a letter from you by the steamboat before I return; I Know I should feel happier when entering that lonely place. Your pild pilot letter has given me so much comfort. This letter will probably go by the St.b. Liverpool. Write me how I ought to send the letters in future by steamboat via England. Make Oscar write a letter to his Godmother Sally.6 August 11th It is Sunday. I [4] just took up this letter, to write to you, yet when I thaught, what I should write, I found I had nothing. That I can assure you, my own Matilda that – I will not say I have no other pleasure but I must say, my mind feels no sort of repose except when writing to you. It is that urgency of communion of love. Yet I must break off, for I mean to re-write to-day the chapter on Woman to-day. So for 6 Sally Newton.

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the present good bye to you and to your sisters. August The officers of the Life guards have left Boston, but made me promise to come and stay with them in Montreal, and see the mess of the guards, drilling &c. So I shall go to Detroit by way of Montreal, and Quebec, where Colonel Ashbernham, brother to earl Ashbuernham7 wants me to stay with him. I was with them the day before yesterday at the public School-dinner, where one hundred “medal-boys” and about 5 hundred citizens dined, in the famous Faneuil-hall,8 of revolutionary remembrance. The master of your dear father9 – made a long speech. Then the Prussian School System was toasted, so your husband had to speechify. I was He was recieved with gay applause, spoke freely and openly and – they say they liked the speech very well. I can always speak well in public – and love it amazingly if I can Keep back the crowd of ideas. Governor Everett10 spoke likewise. Yesterday I was in Nahant and dined at Prescott’s – Ferd. & Isabella – with a number of people. It was a very fine dinner, I mean by way of talk. I felt myself gut aufgelegt, which you Know I donot, when the people are dull. Prescott is an excedingly warm-hearted soul; he run after me in the dark, calling, and when I asked what he wanted, he said, to shake hands once more with you, I have not taken properly leave of you.- One might live better here, more humanlike, more as it befits a mind that is not rude and a soul that is not cramped.- My going to Canada is a sort of drowning my anxiety to hear from you. So I shall see Niagara. Once more; had I my boys with me! You can absolutely not imagine how I wish I could kiss them, and toss them about. I love you all – God knows most dearly. – My dear Matilda donot forget to send me a trifle of Berlin iron,11 whatever it be, but neet and tasty and something, here at 7 8

9 10

11

The name is Ashburnham. Faneuil-Hall, Boston, today part of Quincy Market in Boston, built in 1742, Annual Examination of the Public Schools celebrated with a dinner given in Faneuil Hall, toast by Larkin Snow “perpetuated a low attempt at Toast Making by an indecent allusion to the Color’d School”. Dorothy Porter Wesley and Constance Porter Uzelac, eds., William Cooper Nell. Selected Writings 1832–1874, Baltimore 2002, p. 69. Thomas Colley Grattan. On August 14, 1839 Edward Everett gave an After-Dinner speech at Faneuil Hall. Ronald Forrest Reid, Edward Everett: Unionist Orator, Greenwood Publishing Group 1990, p. 210. Richard A. Katula, The Eloquence of Edward Everett: America’s Greatest Orator, New YorkFrankfurt/Main 2010. Niles’ National Register Aug. 31, vol. 57, 1839, p. 8, did not pay attention to Lieber’s performance but mentioned several toasts that had had an impression on the audience. “Berliner iron”, sophisticated artefacts from cast iron during the first decades of industrialization 1797–1840, metall covered with a black substance used for art and objects of daily usage like bowls, chandeliers, coins, jewellery, building materials a.s.o. Especially Karl Friedrich Schinkel became a master in this art that met the taste and kind of fashion favored by the Prussian king and his wish to reduce costs for luxury and life style.

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least, new, for O ­ livia Sullivan who was yesterday married to Mr Ward of Savannah. Would not a tasteful scenter do? Something of that sort would be better I think than broach or earring. But donot forget it. I promissed it to her. She is a very excellent girl; and Hepsy the most voluptuous looking woman you can imagine – budding fullness! August. Sunday morning, August 18, I arrived here, and went to dine with Moller12 ∆ imagined that it was the first Sunday you and my beloved children ∆ [cross-writing, 1] A Luxury it is to have a good and fond wife, and three boys for breakfast! spent in Hamburg. I was all the time with you. Oh my Matilda, how I love you [...] I rejoyced that he13 is better again. Heavens, had you arrived there and found that protector too – I will not pronounce it. May God bless him and grant him many years yet. Labat told me the day before yesterday that several letters had arrived from Hamburg, also one for you, that all were with his wife in Hoboken. I was delighted at the idea of seeing a letter from your sisters, and ported out to Hoboken, but there had never been a letter for you. Now this is just like him, and if I obtain from telling him what he really is, it is wholy from regard for his wife. He is a perfect Flegel. Here something for Oscar and Hamilton. The other day I went into a place where there was formerly a menagerie. I found a man drilling a Bengal tiger, a Bengal Leopard and a North American panther, lately caught in the West here for the theatre. You know the famous Amberg is a American. It was very interesting to me, and the danger and constant intense attention necessary to keep these roaring animals at bay and never to allow an inch too near, added greatly to the thrilling interest. I went to buy a measure and we measured the North American panther. He looks very much like a ­lioness but all [cross-writing, 2] the movements of the wild feline animals, is an inch higher behind that before, has a brownish ash colour, darker on the back. We measured him about twenty 12

13

Nicholas D.E. Möller, friend and partner of Mathilde Lieber’s brothers James, Theodore and Gustavus Oppenheimer in the trading house Möller & Oppenheimer, in business during the years 1833–1839. “he” was Jacob Oppenheimer, Mathilde Lieber’s uncle in Hamburg, who was recovering from a severe illness that had alarmed the family even more so as his brother, Mathilde Lieber’s father Georg Oppenheimer, had died of cancer the year before.

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different ways, which was dangerous, as I am not accustomed to manage wild beasts. I will tell Oscar only that from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail he measured 84 ½ inches or seven feet. His tail is 37 inches. His cheeks are very strong; from cheek to cheek 8 inches. He leaps one hundred inches distance, six feet high – that is very high. When he stands up he reaches with his fore paws 16 inches from the ground I know my dear Oscar would have liked immensely to have seen these animals, though I could not have taken him with me when measuring the panther. Misegaes was with me, but he kept at a greater distance. – Although the steamboat Liverpool will sail only next Saturday, today is Wednesday – I close this letter, for I donot Know when I leave here, and ∆ [cross-writing, 3] these letters […] the blotting of the paper, you will see what weather we have – hot and moist – such as I hate – My publishers write to another publisher that the rate of my Ethics14 had much extended their expectations. On Monday a bookseller called after me in Broad Way Dr, where do you live stay? I looked a little astonished but he continued I want to be able to direct people. I must stop writing for the paper begins to blot too much the oppressive heat is h ­ orrible – Write this in your memorandum book. I beg you my dearest Matilda to show Hillard how much you acknowledge his very great kindness towards your husband in correcting the press therefore could you make something for him? Perhaps a pair of slippers but that ought to be already made about my foot, wide better than too narrow. But they ought to be pretty or anything you think nice. A pair is too little. Whatever it be, you send it fast to 3 P. Cronkhite, 45 Exchange Place, New York and write him a letter that such a vessel has a parcel for Mr. Hillard in Boston, directed to him. At the same time pray write a line or two by the same vessel, but direct to Boston, to George S. Hillard. Boston Mass. thanking him &c. You need not write dear for answering it now. I Kiss you Single p Steamer Liverpool To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Esq Hamburg Care of Herman Sillem Esqr London Stamp London 10 Sep 1839 Stamp Hamburg 15 Sep 39 14 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

No. 5 Francis Lieber, Boston, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 11.08.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages, enclosed in a parcel August 11.th 1839. – Boston Obschon ich eben auf einem anderen Blatte an dich geschrieben habe (Brief No III) so muß ich doch zu diesem Päckchen ein par Worte fügen, damit es nicht ohne Gruß an dich gelanget. Ich sende diese Flagge zu Oskar’s Geburts­ tag. Meine Mathilde, wenn ich an den Knaben denke wird mir das Herz un­ endlich schwer, denn ich denke, daß bis zu deiner Rückkehr keine Veränderung unseres Wohnortes statt finden wird, und Oskar folglich nicht mit dir zurück­ kehren kann. Dies bricht mir fast das Herz, nicht allein daß ich sein liebes Ant­ liz nicht sehen und ihn lehren u bilden kann, sondern daß ich die Fehler die ich bis jezt in seiner Erziehung gemacht, wieder gut machen kann. Ich kann nicht denken daß es unmännlich ist, daß ich so brünstig vom Süden weg will. Was bete ich denn, wenn ich bete daß Gott unsere Hütte nordwärts sein lassen möge? Bete ich etwas andres als daß Gott, der selbst der allmächtige Geist der Wahrheit ist, mich so stelle daß ich den tiefsten Franz Wahrheit zu lehren und den Ge Franze, den er selbst in meine Seele gelegt [2] hat zu genügen, was, du weißt es wohl, ich dort nicht kann; daß es mir vergönnt sei, der ich Vater meines Oskars’ heiße, es auch frei zu sein, u ihn bilden helfe; daß ich von einem Institute entfernt bleibe, von der sich meine Seele jeden Tag mit neuem Ekel wendet, der Sklaverei, u endlich, daß die die mir so treulich gefolgt, doch nicht in einemr zu argen Geistesarmseligkeit lebe u sie, so wie unsere Kinder, in gesunder Luft athmen können. Ich flehe ja nicht um Schäze, ich flehe strebe nicht nach einem eitlen Namen, willkommen wie mir Rhum ist; ich will hart arbeiten, wie du mich kennst; ich will ja nur eine Stelle haben wo ich doch wenigstens fühle daß nicht alles was irgend gut in mir ist, grade von gar keiner Bedeutung ist, und tausend unwissende u Unforschende und Unstrebende eben so viel werth wären als ich. [3] Dies sind wehmüthige Worte; dennoch meine Geliebte, versichre ich dich, daß ich stark u ruhig bin. Ich habe viel Arbeit vor mir, u will mein bestes ruhig u gewissenhaft thun. – Ich sende dir hier die ersten Bogen mein des z­ weiten Theils meiner Ethik.1 Nimm sie als ein offring; es ist doch wenigstens ein 1 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_007

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Zeichen. Lies einmal die ersten Seiten laut; da sind ein paar Stellen die einen feierlichen und guten Rhitmus haben. Ich sende dir auch den Titel der Lat. Synoymen.2 Ich werde dieses Päckchen selbst nach N. York nehmen. Es ist Sonntag; ich werde wieder bei meinem Armenino essen – ­lezten Sonntag hatten wir Pilar mit Tomatos, excellent! Shall be introduced in ­Columbia – u dann gehe ich von meinem Armenino zu meiner Sally.3 Lebwohl u grüße die Schwestern u küsse die Kinder Dein Franz Sie glauben hier nicht daß ich alles was sie hier sehen, lezten Winter geschrieben habe. – [4] An Mathilde + Sealing wax

2 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 3 Sally Newton.

No. 6 Francis Lieber, New York, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 22.08.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 18, ALS, 4 pages  New-York August 22.1839 My dearest girl, I wrote yester-day to you. The letter will go by the steam-boat Lpool. I repeat, the blotting was not my fault; the weather was so hot and moist. – Pray, my Matilda, fold your letter as I have done this; I shall than paste them in a book, and read them over and over in my long winter. – I went with Mr Astor jr. to his father yester-day afternoon. Found Wash. Irving and Cogswell, the editor of the N.Y. Review. Old Astor very friendly. A lady said: “You must come and reside with us”. I: “That does not depend upon me”. Old Astor: “People like you must be called: well well, you will reside with us, and reside that soon” &c. He repeated this, that I must come here, and would come &c &c. You recollect that lady a relation of Mrs Trezvant, who stays with old Astor. How is your ­Oscar she said, and then turning to the company; when I was in Columbia, I said that the boy looked among others like a very prince. “So much had she talked of our boys that old Astor said: How are your three famous boys. – Only think, Mrs – not Charlotte1 – but Mrs M’Cord is dead. She died in confinement.2 Poor children. I pity Charlotte. – When [2] I had lately my hair cut, I saw the enclosed lying right before my nose on the sheet. I thaught I would send it to you, to Oscar, to any one, for if you donot care for it, why it is no harm to the hair to be thrown away in Hamburg, any more than to be thrown away in Boston. This morning I shall probably sign a contract for the publication of my German Grammar,3 which you Know I wrote longago. Kiss, or Kiss all my dearest boys. Matilda – ah I was going to say something, but my heart feels heavy. – Donot [3] forget to fold the paper. 1 Charlotte McCord, daughter of David James McCord, Columbia/SC. 2 Emmeline, wife of David James McCord, mother of Charlotte, had died August 7, 1839, Columbia/SC. 3 Francis Lieber, A Brief and practical German grammar on a new plan with particular reference to the grammatical affinities of the German and English idioms together with a copious collection of extracts from some of the best German writers, Ms. 1835.

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Kiss the girls. Ever FL Fill the letter to Julius4 and send it. [4] Mrs Lieber

4 Probably he meant his brother Dr. phil. Julius Lieber, who lived in Züllichau and worked as teacher at the local Paedagogium.

No. 7 Francis Lieber, New York, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 22.08.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 18, ALS, 2 pages Heckscher’s Counting House1 August 22 1839 This moment I delivered the bundle to you, but my dear wife, I have forgotten to tell you how I mean to proceed. On Saturday I go with young Astor2 to his country seat and stay there on Sunday; than I cross the Hudson and go to up the KatsKill mountain; than to the city of Hudson and thence on Rail road to Stockbridge to see the girls;3 thence to Saratoga,4 where meet Col Eustace of the British Grenadier Guards; with him to Montreal; thence to Quebec, back to Montreal, thence to Ogdenburgh,5 on the St Laurence, stay a day or two with Parish,6 thence to Niagara across Lake Ontario and probably back, [2] not having time to go to Detroit because I consider it duty to stay a week in Philadelphia. So I plan, but man does not excell. By the next Steam boat Great Western I shall have a letter from you I trust. Oh God, what a day it will be! I forgot after all to put something in the bundle, never mind Goodbye my wife, my children, my friends Ever 1 He was sitting in the office of Heckscher, Coster & Matfield, 45 South, New York City, see American Almanac, New York Register and City Directory, for the sixty-fourth Year of American Independence, New York, published by Thomas Longworth, 118 Nassau-Street 1839, p. 323 URL https://archive.org/stream/longworthsameric00newy#page/n15/mode/2up (15.10.16). 2 William Backhouse Astor. 3 Fanny and Mary Appleton. 4 Saratoga Springs/NY, fashionable resort in upstate New York. 5 In Ogdensburg/NY Lieber was guest in the residence of Hamburg born merchant George Parish (1807–1881), who had inheritated the estate from his uncles David Parish (1778–1826) who had started the enterprise in the 1810s and George Parish (1780–1839); the splendid home of the Hamburg based family close to the St. Lawrence River probably was designed by the French architect Joseph Ramée who was in high demand of the Hamburg bourgeoisie. ­Ramée had already worked for members of the Parish family and had come to work in Ogdensburg to plan the house and its interior decoration when David Parish was still in residence. 6 George Parish (1807–1881).

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F The bundle is directed to Henry Gossler,7 so send over to him for it. To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Hamburg p. Howard

+ faded stamps

7 Johann Heinrich Gossler, Hamburg merchant, who lived in the same Hamburg Street, the Esplanade, as Caroline Lomnitz, hostess of her sister Mathilde Lieber.

No. 8 Francis Lieber, New York/Montreal, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 23.08.-03.09.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 6 pages No IVV I am quite well. N.Y. August 23. 1839 Like a true American I am sitting in the bar-room and write; like a still truer American I have a glass of sherry-cobler with pounded ice before me, and like a very amiable husband I am writing to my wife, making use of three quarters of an hour, which will elapse before I go with the Engl Captain to see the steamboat Lpool, which is to sail tomorrow, and by which my wife will have a letter. Is it not remarkable that all these British steamboats have changed their steward’s and head-waiters and waiters, originally English people, for Americans, for say they, the American steward and waiter understands so much better to Keep in true style through rough and tumble. – If you Knew that my room is four stories high, and consider that this paper still blots, that therefore the weather is still very hot and moist, insufferable for me, you will find that I am a good fellow for having gone op upstairs and fetched this paper. Up-stairs I cannot write it is too hot. The other day I looked out of my window – the first story, to count from the chimeney - into a narrow, dirty lane; above me the blue, pure sky; below a cart with a big barrel, from which a man sold water, three cents a pale. I dont Know why just then it touched me deeply; there was something exceedingly painful to me, to see a number of human creatures deprived even of fresh air and gushing water from the bounteous bosoms of the earth, as much as they choose. And then I came to think how all of us are walking in such lanes with the scanty waters of truth, but that we may and must hope to have it in full measure, in wells from above. – To- morrow, Saturday, leaves, I am confident, your letter leaves old England in the Gr. Western, and I for Canada, but I cannot go to Detroit, for I must have your letter. And shall I soon hear from my Oscar. Donot forget to let him write to Sally Newton, care of William Sullivan, Boston.1 To-morrow also goes the Howard dir. for Hambg. You will have a parcel or two, and a number of by-letters, or riders, to use parliamentary language, not numbered. Await the bundle before Oscar writes to Sally. A gentleman asked me yesterday whether I believed that the attention paid by a colonel of the grenadier guards in Montreal, at Saratoga to Sally, would lead to anything. This morning I wrote her, telling her this, adding that is was a fact, that is to say, that I was thus asked; perhaps too that he was in love. As to herself I did not pretend to Know her heart, for before my eyes 1 William Sullivan, father of Sally Newton.

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could penetrate so far they encounter one of the prettiest bosoms that ever heaved, by which my poor eyes were altogether prevented from go proceding farther. – Y ­ esterday I saw the Inglis’. Poor Harriet (Mrs Addison) is entirely, I might say broken up, that luscious looking woman, is thin &c. I dine today at Gosslers,2 and if his wines are exquisite I have supercarbonate of Soda. Tomorrow I go with ­William Astor, and write this letter as I go on. Pray make a break, my dear girl, as I have made in this letter; I have a cover made here, with paper, made so, that can easily paste the letters in; and your and Oscar’s letters shall be my folio in whi for the winter. That the girls3 have not written to me in this my loneliness was wrong, and it was from mere spite that asked a watch chain or cord from Sally,4 after she had worn it on her pretty bosom. So I did; why dont they care for me? – Monday Aug 26. on [2] On Saturday, the 24th, I left N.Y. with Mr. Astor5 at 5 o’clock, my dearest Matilda so soon as night set in, we had the finest moon shine. I had never seen the glorious Hudson, on the grave Basalt rooks of Palisades, and Westpoint, from the river, by moon shine. It was most beautiful! When I passed our house in Manhattanville, and thaught of the dear grave near it,6 I thaught of her,7 of you, of my boys, of your parents, and that we all, oh my wife, the living and the dead, form one, living community. Do we not say we belong to one nation? Yet this nation can never be seen. Do we not speak of a German, an English nation, meaning the present and the past generations? Yet we cannot see them. So do those; whom God united and placed close to one another, that they should love one another, for one family, although the veil of death may hide one or the other for a brief time. If those that speak the same language, or have spoken the same language form one nation, should not those who breathe the same love, form much more the same family? – By 3 o’clock in the morning we landed at Barrytown, about 80 miles from N. York. Astor’s carriage took us to his place, where a wide refined bed-room recieved me.8 Yesterday at 8 we 2 3 4 5 6

Gustav Gossler, Boston. Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. Sally Newton. William Backhouse Astor. 1832 the Lieber family had moved from Boston to rural Manhattanville north of New York City, today within the metropolis. There the couple’s only daughter Laura had died in 1833. 7 Laura Lieber (1832–1833). 8 John Jacob Astor’s manor near Rhinebeck on the Hudson/ny.

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­breakfeasted and, with an exquisite cegar, I stepped out upon the lawn before the house, toward the river. There it flowed, dotted with sails majestically down, and beyond it lay the chain of mountains, of which Catskill, 3000 feet high, is the most elevated point. All was quiet, after the city bustle. There is for me always something very imposing in looking at a mountain range before you. They lie so grand, so quiet, so unconcerned about you, so self-sufficient as it were, and lie forever there, unmarred, untouched. Mrs Astor is a very excellent, quiet, un-noisy (excuse the word, but it is expressive I think, if speaking of an American Lady) woman. Now it is Monday, 10 o’clock. At twelve I leave here to embark at one at the landing places, for the town of Hudson. – Will you have the kindness my sweet wife to beg one of your cousins to ascertain the precise expences of a boy in the institution of Blochmann at Dresden, first in the lower classes or the Progymnasium and than in the higher.9 It is important to me. Not only the money actually paid for the instruction and education, but how much the whole amount to. I kiss you many thousand times. August 30th Like a veritable American I sit here in the bar-room of the Tavern at Whitehall, at the South end of Lake Champlain, and write to you my beloved wife and my children. Twice on my route to this place, did people get out and were recieved by their children, and Kissed them so heartily, and so long, and said: my dear John, and then came a young woman, and she too was kissed all which made my heart very heavy. After I had written the above lines on Monday, we took a delicate luncheon and went, 3 miles, to the Landing place, to embark on board the Albany boati. Having waited a good while, during which I had a long talk with Mrs Donaldson, you remember her? The boat came in sight, but being followed by an opposition boat, it passed by like lightning, so that it may be said in the Albany papers: Such a boat went in 9 hours and ¼ from N.Y. to Albany. So we got into our carriage again, and home, took a fine dinner, and at six we started anew for u another landing to get the even. boat. Mr Astor10 left me for the city at about 9 in the evening; my boat arrived at 11. It was – though excedingly large – damned full! Man; among them [3] myself could not find a seat, though mere numbers of settees, sophas &c, and all berthes below taken. At ½ past 12 we arrived at Hudson, a city far up the river, yet briskly engaged in whaling. The next morning by rail road eastward to West-Stockbridge, and then by stage, through a beautifully mountainous 9 10

Blochmann-Schule Dresden; was founded in 1827. Astor junior

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c­ ountry, which reminded me very much of the Fichtelgebirge or Franconian Forest, to Old Stockbridge, which is situated between high and wooded hills, say 1500 feet high. Fanny Appl. looked excedingly well; I like that girl and Mary,11 after all very much; how much I like the latter, I saw, when Fanny smiling, had a little of of Mary’s smile, and made me quite warm (Mary is yet at Mrs Butler’s). The Appleton’s are the very opposite in everything to Sally Newton; the latter all loveliness, the former all stately highmindedness. They live in the most rural way imaginable. The next morning I went to see Mary. How my heart leaped when I saw her again; but she loses fast her good looks. Fanny looks at times truly grand. You know that May Adburton in the Hyperion12 I sent you is she, and Paul Fleming Prof Longfellow, at least so they say. That Hyperion is unconnected and not very manly thing, that student, who travels and begs is a foolist nonsense, and the account of Hoffmann incorrect; the book must derive its value from the account of history of the inner man, and yet for that it is not deep enough. Yet, despite of all this, there are real beauties of in it, and a few so beautiful that they fastened a tone on my mind, and never will leave it. Preeminently among these is the comparison of the glacier with a glove which King Alp has thrown at the sun, and the sun tries three centuries to take up the glove at the point of his beamy lances, but in vain. This is so true, so noble, so beyond anything I have ever seen of a European writer on the same subject, that – I hope my dear Matilda will as warmly admire the passage as myself. Then that brook “which every now and then puts its shoulders to mill-wheel, to show that it can work as well as laugh” is so true and so good! The same day, after I had seen Mary, I left Stockbridge, being in so great a hurry that I may be back when your letter arrives in N.Y. Oh God, let me not be disappointed. I went to Albany, through very hilly country. Yesterday morning at about 10 I started for Whitehall, and arrived here at 10 in the eving (70 miles from Albany); we have it very cold here, so that I was wrapped up in my cloak the whole day. I asked for tea: You cannot have it, all gone to bed. I said very coolly, if I had not tea in a reasonable time, there should be an article about it somewhere. Whereupon I had tea, went to bed, rose this morning, breakfeasted, and am now writing to my beloved ones. I might write yet much, did I follow my inclination, but I wish to tell you in this of my arrival in Montreal, so I stop, but remember, I make merely a guards excursion. I shall see no prison, make no inquiries &c. I wish so much I could celebrate Oscar’s birthday at the Niagara falls.13 This for Oscar: I went by stage from Albany to Whitehall. The road had nearly the whole way 11 12 13

Mary Appleton. Hyperion: A Romance by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1839. September 8, 1830.

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between the Hudson and the canal,14 which connects Lake Champlain with the Hudson at Albany. Now Oscar, why have they made so long and costly a canal, which runs parallel with the river? Let him guess it. Answer, because the river only becomes navigable at Albany. I kiss you all most Tenderly. – M ­ ontreal, Sept 3. 1839. Here I sit in the room of Cpt Mitchell of the Grenadier Guards and write to my beloved. I have one of the longing hours, when I feel more lonely still than generally. No use in crying! When I had left off the above lines at Whitehall, I found, waiting for the departure of the boat, some paper on the table, and wrote an additional letter to my sweet Matilda, which I continued on board the steam boat, where in minodious arrangement for writing is made in a comfortable cabinet. That letter I shall take to N.Y. and send by direct opportunity, if there are yet any letter vessels for Hamburg. We left Whitehall at one o’ clock. Lake Champlain is very pictoresque at its southern end. rocks, fine foliage, &c. Toward evening we took some Canadian peasants (des habitants) on board. Several could only speak French, which however they pronounced, as I had formerly observed, very badly, and some syllables just as English do, when they speak French. For moi they say: mäh. On both sides of the Lake are fine woodded hills. For Oscar I remark that Vermont was on our right, N.Y. on our left. On Saturday morning by about 5 we arri[4] ved at St. John, the first British town, but both the banks of the Lake were ­British for some miles previous to St John. Of the Canadians I must observe that they, thinking I was a Frenchman, spoke very freely with me, and the poor deluded creatures told me that Papineau, still their greatman, had sent a letter from France, assuring la nation canadienne that France would go to war with England in order to free the Canadians. They will believe anything. What the object of writing such reports can be, I cannot see; for some one here, I should think, must have actually first mointed, it not being one of those reports which can gradually grow and increase. At 9 o’clock we went by rail-road to La Prairie on the right bank of the St. Lawrence. Saw some women at work in the field, which looked very strange. A La Prairie the first English soldiers at least in a large number. The men in the cars and already on board the steamboat showed a much greater variety of all sorts of coats, peajackets clocaks &c than you see in the U.S. You know it is quite English just to have coat or jacket made as you fancy it. There is the greatest indquindance among English gentlemen as to dress – a hundred varieties, and all excellent for their particular purpose. 14

Erie Canal.

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At Laprairie the steamboat took us, diagonally over the St. Lawrence. At eleven at Montreal; a town as different looking from our towns as possible, narrow streets, gray houses. and not in blocks; apparently very little comfort. The lower classes, men and women, in distinguishing dresses of their own, this too gives it quite an un-American look. Wretched vehicles, - one horse, wooden springs - on the quai. Went to hotel, dressed, and left my cards at the Grenadier guards mess house, then took a vehicle, and drove about in town and country. Returned, and hardly had I arrived when Mr Wright, of the Grenadiers, one of my acquaintances came and took me to his quarters. He lives with Mitchell. Here I found English comfort with studentlike and officerlike or camplike simplicity, disorder and dont-care-about-anything-system. At seven I dressed for dinner, and went with my friends to the mess-house. All the officers of the Grenadier guards were in uniform, rich epoulettes &c, but unbuttoned open and easy. Some officers from other regiments, who dined there as guests, had their red shell-jackets – nr roundabouts, which they adopt in the hot climats, the Indies &c for dinner and launching about. No one looked at me, except those I Knew, who recieved me friendly, and I set down as if I had been ever so often there. Rich plate, with the crown on all the covers richly worked; servants in breeches, and regular English servant coats, choice wines, especially the claret; conversation, free easy, simple. Gradually I became acquainted with my neighbors. After dinner into the coffee-room, and thence the smoking room. There I saw a man in a coarse gray pea-jacket, with horn buttons, neckerchief in sailor fashion, no waistcoat. - I was introduced to him; it was Lord Wellesley, the second son of Wellington, colonel of a regiment here. Gay conversation; spoke about flogging in English schools; all had been some time or other terribly flogged. At one home and into my field bedstead. You remember that the L­ ondon papers said the Kid gloves had sank in price, after these guards had embarked for Canada. Well, a less dandyish set of men cannot be possibly imagined than these officers. They are far above it. So is their whole intercourse far easier than for instance among gentlemen in the U.S. Yesterday morning we rose late, and preferred to make tea at home to going to the mess house, where every meal of any sort can be had at any time, except of course the regular dinner. But this I believe is only Guards regulation. At one we went to the parade ground, where the garrison assembled, and was marched to church. Very excellent drumming, with exquisite fifing, and very dull sermon. [5] Then we went to luncheon at the mess house; in the after noon I rode with Wright in the country, at seven to the mess of the Royals, the first regiment

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of the line. A captain of that regiment had invited me. Their mess house, that of the artillery and of a regiment of highlanders adjoin 10 when dinner hour came, the trumpeters of the artillery called to dinner their officers, then the drumour off the Royals, and finally a Scotch piper, in full highland dress played the bag pipe for the Highlanders. How my Oscar would have liked to see it! I thaught of it him. The tone here was somewhat different; more empressment; every officer took wine with me. Again rich plate, and all plates with the decore of the Regiment and the garter. When the cloth was removed a large buffalo horn, beautifully mounted, and containing snuff – the Royals are a Scottish regiment – was placed on the table. The buffalo had been killed in the East Indies, where the regiment was a long time and had hard service. On the silver lid was a beautiful stone and in inscription that Lord Gordon, I believe, had given it in memory of Maheidpoore, where they had a hard battle. This regiment has “the Sphinx” in its colors, which was given to regiments, which distinguished themselves in Egypt, as others have “the Elephant” for service in the East. Besides there are the following names of battles in the colors of the Royals: Egmont-up-Zee, Saint Lucia, Egypt, Corunna, Busaco, Salamanca, Vittoria, St. Sebastian, Nive, Peninsula, Niagara, Waterloo, Nagpore, Maheidpore, Ava. What a history! How Roman-like it sounds! I was fluent; you Know what I mean, and I felt, what I have so often said to you, that it must be the greatest delight to belong to a nation and whose history, rich and grand, you blend with pride and delight, and in which you find the germs of civil blessings, which you actually enjoy - I make this fast remark with reference to my talking at dinner a good deal about the old English revolution and my hero, William III. I Knew a good deal of course by heart, which they did not, and told many things of the memoirs of Hampden and Cromwell &c. Servants here the same. At half past eleven home. Supercarbonate of Soda! This morning at 7 to parade ground, saw the Grenadier guards maneuvre – a most powerfull, potent body of men. Tall, yet less distinguished for hight, then their well proportioned breadth and well-Knitted limbs. How I do love the drum! A drum and a speaech are my greatest delight. I have told you once, several times, that my best ideal - not that for which I strive, I mean the prototype of my compound character – a character which has the same composition with myself, but much higher in degree, and which hads had the greatest good fortune – that of finding its true essential spheres of action – the perfection of my character, if I can call it so, is th a soldier-states man in a free and parliamentary country. I have the precice mixture of elements for it, but than the elements are but poor, very poor, I Know. - Went in a out to take a drive with a very wild horse, which run away with us. I thaught several times we were gone. At last we brought him to a stop and – Matilda, acknowledge it! - I thaught of you and the children and – got

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out. Saw the mounting of the guards, and the music again thrilled through my vains. Good God, why can I not be a soldier for an excellent and glorious cause, where one fights to his hearts content. My hosts are most capital [6] fellows. I go by the name of Mitchell Lieber, and I call them their names. If I go to England I should have some good friends there, to see country nobility. They have already invited me and given me their cards, to find them in England! Alas! – and how will haile ------Columbia? However, you be thanked that I have sufficient versatility to throw myself into book-writing if I cannot fight or publicly speak. And now God’s blessing upon you, and the children, and your sisters and all. I love you most dearly. Tomorrow I go to Quebec. Kiss my dearest boys, whom I love most tenderly. And soon I shall have a letter from you Ever your Frank Double paid  Via New-York and Havre To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Esq Hamburg Stamp Montreal Sep 3 1839 Stamp New York Sept 9 Stamp Paris ∆ Stamp Hamburg 9. Oct.

No. 9 Francis Lieber, New York, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 24.08.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 18, ALS, 4 pages New-York, Aug 24. 1839 Is not this the day of St. Bartholomew’s Night? One more letter, my beloved Matilda Yester-day I recieved the enclosed, and as I thaught it mayight be the last of the Appleton’ letters, which you will recieve A least through me, for from the South I shall not send them I’ll dispatch it. How do you like the letters? It does not touch me agreably. Spirit of Independence! It is indeed one of the most essential attributes of man. Have I not written my whole book upon that very principle? But Devotion, or Humility or Reverence, the bowing down before God and where he reveals himself, in the Good, the Great, the True, the Noble, and as it unfolds itself in the course of history and His Great ones, is equally important. That soul, which never learned to bow, that soul has never learned to love; that soul which never learned to love, that soul has never yet unfolden its wings, has never soared yet on high; so the soul must bend, and revere; and adore, that it may rise and soar and feel its own emanation from God. Here I sit in a Wall-Street Broker’s Office; this afternoon I wrote you, I shall go with Mr Astor.1 Did I ever write you what awful occurence befel me at Nahant? A pendant to my pantaloon story at Niebuhr’s, which has made its way into all languages of Europe.2 Yet though, my dear wife, I donot Know how to word it. I’ll try to do it decently. When I went to Nahant, I had dressed in light summer dress, [2] but found on board the steam boat, that a cold easterly wind had set in, and before we reached Nahant,3 I had fairly caught a cold, which announced itself not in the nose but in the lower, the inner, the darker regions. I heard voices 1 William Backhouse Astor. 2 In his Roman memories in honor of Barthold Georg Niebuhr Lieber had described quite frankly his tattered dress when he first had been invited to a dinner in the elegant Roman manor of the Prussian ambassador. This tribute had been published in English in ­Philadelphia and London in 1835 and two years later in his mother tongue in Heidelberg. It was widely read by the many admirers of Niebuhr. See Lieber, Reminiscences of an Intercourse, or Lieber, ­Erinnerungen, passim. 3 Nahant/Mass., in those days a trendy seaside resort.

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within, but, as Mr Prescott’s cottage is close to the landing place I thaught I would pay my visit before I going up to the Hotel. Yet it was in this case, as it is always, when man disregards the voices within. Having bean been about half an hour at Prescott’s, all attraction of Ferdinand and Isabela, with the treasures of the West, discovered while they shone like stars from their united throne, was insufficient to operate against a more mighty power, which like remorse or revenge worked within me. I left the Spanish historian, but alas! it was far too late to hasten to the Hotel. In this woeful moment I remembered that right behind Prescott’s Cottage is the so called Swallow’s Cave, a narrow arched passage, which leads to the sea and through which you may pass at low water mark. Dont you remember it; we walked once there with the Brooks’. But this place is visited much by rambling ladies! Still, calculation was out of the question. I hurried down, to the outer end and then prayed to the Graces to Keep all visiters away. The cave is in a crescent, so that it is impossible to see from one end to the other. Already did I think the Graces had had pity with me and when – it was, you may smile or not, - a most awful moment in my life, I heard [3] the sweet voice of woman at the other end! Up I jumped, and – with flying colors, for there was no time to dress – I leaped and bounded out upon the rocks, haunted by the absolutely fearful thaught that I might be seen – an exposure which would have stuck to me through life. I clambered and leaped like the youngest gazelle, the making bounds as a bad conscience or a reputation at stake or threatened honor alone can make prompt mortal to make, all the time holding my pants, and my white tail coquetting with the sportive winds, as though I was an inveterate member of the extreme Right, and had hoisted the colors of the elder Bourbons. I positively actually thaught of you, I assure you, for to be exposed in so exquisitely rediculous and at the same so ungraceful a manner, or to fall from the sharp-pointed rocks at least from thirty to forthy feet deep, was no trifle. At last I reached a corner where I was visible only from the the whole Atlantic. I was exhausted, and I thanked God for saving me from fall or exposure. Is it not strange that this is the second time that I play such figure? I donot Know whether I ever told you that just before the battle of Namur,4 when I came up with our troops, I was obliged “to step out”; but hardly had I severed the tie of friendship which unites man’s upper garments with to the lower, 4 June 16, 1815, the battle two days before the fate of Napoleon was decided at Waterloo, Netherlands/todays Belgium.

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[4] when the horn blew the signal for our company to advance rapidly; I grasped my pants and hurraed onward; I continued to botten the front part, but behind there was likewise the Bourbon color flying,5 which I observed to some who laughed at me, expressing my hope that I should not be considered a traitor, for though a French standard it was not the tricolor. And thus I was wounded; thus found, thus saved, and, I donot Know when for the first time I the shirt was placed as it ought to be. Probably never; for, you remember, that those Kindly two girls in Namur God bless them took off my shirt, which stood by my side, so stiff was it of with blood, and put a clean one on. Goodbye. Let Oscar be a very, very good boy. Write me that your uncle6 is quite well again. - Perhaps you were not well able to read the direction, which I gave you in my last, if you wish to send something to George S. Hillard; Boston. It was this J J. P. Cronkhite, 45 Exchange Place, New-York. Good bye you lovely wife. They wear here again spencers, such as you braught one from Engl, which I liked so much, you remember, a Kragentuch, which went round the whole body. Wear one again; dress nicely, and have your gowns made very, very bell, but not too [cross-writing] long behind; I cannot bear trails and – dirt. But all around the waist as full as though you wished to hide my shame of the above story in it – What have I not chatted with you of late. I think I had better call this letter IV, though I thought when I sat down it would be but a line or two. I kiss my three fine, gamesome boys and their beloved mother. With Caroline I am angry. for shame! Your Frank

5 Lieber made fun of his deranged outfit with his white underwear peeping out of his trousers. 6 Jacob Oppenheimer.

No. 10 Francis Lieber, Whitehall/NY + on board of the steamboat Whitehall on Lake Champlain + Montreal, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 30.08.-19.09.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 19, 4 pages, autograph letter without address or signature Whitehall, Aug 30. 1839. I wrote this morning a few lines in letter V, my dear wife; but being obliged to wait here until one o'clock after dinner, and finding this paper on the table, where a few moments ago the adjutant &c of the militia – and such a sight it was, when they marched off! - had performed his scribling, I write again to you. I shall Take This letter, whatever it will be, with me to N.York City, and send it by direct Hamburg vessel, so you must not complain if it does not contain anything, at least nothing more than a proof that I am thinking all the time of you, and wherever there is an opportunity – leasure and paper – out it comes. I donot number the letter, so it will be only a rider or by – letter – water that runs through the holes which are in the canals from distance to distance, when they water rises too high. - If I donot write of my feelings, my impending winter without you and children, it is because I donot want to make your dear heart heavy. Yet I repeat, I could easily bear everything, were there not that one bitter pang, that you may be obliged to return without your Oscar. That is, I own, something which often cramps my very heart. Still, what must be done, must be done, and I have no right to sacrifice that noble boy to my fervent attachment to him. Perhaps God has things in store, which may change matters. And speaking of this, I cannot help thinking of what old Astor said to me, as I wrote you. Still I assure you I donot rely, donot build upon it; my most ardent and well may I add, my most modest desires have so often ben thwarted. If you ask me: What do you think after all of his expressions? I must answer that you are just as able to answer it, as myself. I reported his words nearly verbally to you. That he said; thus I reported his speech, but what it means precisely I donot Know, nor whether there was any real substance in his words. I own, it would be a strange speech if it did not mean anything, and yet could he allude to his death in such a manner? For if it meant anything it must the words “soon should I be called” [2] must relate to his death. Otherwise, if he has made provision for a professorship, and does not mean that it shall be founded after his death, I cannot see, why there should be any waiting at all. I was bound to tell you that conversation, even waiving the constant and natural desire to communicate to you, whatever affects me, but I repeat I donot calculate on it. I am anxious to Know how you

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view it. - Donot forget my dear Matilda to practice Oscar’s memory well. Let him learn at least every fortnight an English or German piece; I mean he must Know a new one every fortnight, and learn it in the mean time. I imagined last Monday that the dear boy went for the first time to school, for I thaught he had been a week in Hamburg, and I felt much for him. He may have felt very unhappy or uneasy, he may so feel yet; but let him carry it through. It is An anxious father’s blessing is upon him. I pray every day morning and evening for him, and for the two others. I love them from all my heart. I cannot think of Norman’s graceful little figure, and nimble legs and trippling feet without feeling sad, nor of the Tom Stout’s Calvin-head1 or old Doctor’s Head and his No! They will have a very, very tender father when they come back. I warrant you. - And how are they dressed? Poor Norry will be obliged to put on pantaloons; the ugly pants will cover his nimble limbs. But if you have it as cold as we heare in the north, you will be obliged to do it. - If you have your gowns made, as they were them here, very low-waisted and [3] the skirt sown on with sowed pleads, it will set off your handsome waist very finely. Has Oscar by this time a good dress? Boys even older than he is, wear here that sort of sailor’s dress, of which I told you last year. I wonder what Stout wears? Some such dress, as we found the children were represented in, in the German pictures, short sleeves &c? Thus I might chatter on ever so long. - It is very strange thing that my Pol Ethics2 is nearly sold – and a large edilian it was too, and I have no idea who my readers are, what sort of people I talk or write to. This is very odd. Before I had finished the above sentence I was called to dinner, and am now writing these lines on board the steamboat White-Hall, on Lake Champlain. I am standing at a spacious desk in a very neat and comfortable cabin, made for people to write. What do you think of this! By and bye, I have no doubt there will be steamboat schoolmasters to teach the children, that they donot loose time. This boat is most magnificent; she is very long, the berths wide, the engine most beautifully worked, and upon my word every thing comme il faut. But the price is high, compared to other Northern boats, because there is here less traveling. It costs from Whitehall to St. John, the head of Lake Champlain, 120 miles, 5$. Here we are seeing Vermont to steerboard, and N.Y. to the lewardboard or, in landmans language Vermont to the right and N.Y. to the left. There is some landing going on, so good bye for a 1 Tom, Tommy Stout or just Stout = nickname for his son Hamilton whom Lieber compared sometimes to Jean Calvin. 2 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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­ oment. – Here I am again, about an hour after I wrote the above. Pray donot m laugh at me; but the ink, the comfortable cabinet, everything is so inviting. The worst of it is, that I am afraid the people believe I am a Traveller-author, who every moment that a luminous idea occurs to him, starts up to put it down lest the Trea[4] be lost. I did not tell you of one great and to me new comfort on board this boat. There are a variety of bells, hang as in houses, in the wall. You want a steward, and you only ring the bell; you want to get some cegars out of your Trunk as I did just now, and you ring the baggage bell, when presently the baggageman appears. What a driving, ever-imposing people they are. How they fill lake & river with swift moving life. - I am very anxious to Know how your uncle is;3 I hope he has quite recovered. The day after to-morrow is Sunday; I shall sip claret with my grenadier-guardmen, when you probably are with many members of the family, for they dine at 7 and sit long. Ah Matilda, those Sundays next winter! Will they not be delightful in Columbia? I think I’ ll teach Elsa to play chess with me, and the harp that she may play to me!4 By the way, let ­Oscar on those Sundays never “hang about”. You Know what I mean. I Know the German family Sundays well. They are good, they are fine, but where there is a large family, the children often fall into launching, toward dusk and evening Let him always, always do something, even rather some mischief than nothing. I am very curious to see some of his improved drawing. Let him always give me an accurate account of what he has done, what he is learning &c. It will be a spur to him. And now Kiss him and say - I beg your pardon Norry and Hammy many times. Oh, pray, donot loose that name Hammy, for the boy stands by it written in my heart. How wide is now his mouth when sets up one of his regular pipings? [cross-writing] I have sent this morning on, Sept 19.; Letter No VII No V went from Montreal via Havre, No VI from Ogdensburg. 3 Jacob Oppenheimer, Hamburg. 4 To be able to play the harp was considered a true female quality; white women of note were taught these musical skills especially in southern society; Maria von Hassell used that notion to earn a living by giving lessons for harp playing to Columbian girls and young women. Black women especially slaves, however, hardly were educated in this art – Lieber’s remark about the musical abilities of his slave Elsa therefore was zynical and void of well minded humor.

No. 11 Francis Lieber, Montreal + Ogdensburg/NY, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 03.09.-10.09.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 10.09.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages No. VI I am well, very well, except my stupid foot, and must look well enough, for people will hardly believe I was at Waterloo. In fact I look much better than at the South, after that hard write. September 3. 1839. Montreal. I have been lying all day on the sopha; my stupid foot – the toe, you Know – became suddenly very much inflamed in N.Y. I did not attend sufficiently, and from walking and riding here a good deal it became so bad, that I must poultice it. It is very inconvenient just now. The physician of the Ger Grenadier Guards lives in our quarters. He tells me that it would be wisest to attend at once well to it. So I am here, at this moment alone, and I felt such longing for my dear Matilda, that I laid aside my book – The life of Pym; an odd book to read in the quarters of British quard guards1 – and took the pen, Knowing that I should feel better after having to conversed a little with my wife, that being whom I Keep wraped in my soul, and every harshness of mine towards whom I bitterly and most sincerely regret, not at this moment particular – the thaught is always before my mind. You send me a safe re-union. I have left room at the top, to write you that I am quite well again, so that you have the news of the recovery sooner than the account of indisposition; for I thaught I could not help writing you of it, because it will affect my plans, and I feel a great comfort in giving you this sort of journal of my Travelling, which I could not have done did I not account to you for the lost time. – I dined yester-day with the grenadier-guards; every officer took wine with me. We then went at nine to hear the music of the regiments. The highlander’s pipes alternated with the bugles. And such a music! Yet there is no highlander; hardly a scotchman who will not swear that it is chearful and animating. Associations are most powerful, and the more peculiar, out of the way, perhaps contrary to common feeling the thing is to which associations attach themselves, the more powerful their effect. Man is essentially a symbolical being; the bag pipe is the Scot’s symbol of his life, his happiness, his sky, his history. They ought never to give it up. That is no exquisite in the Greek people that they were so geistreich symbolisch. Every thing with them was cast into a symbol; every symbol concentrated mind, showed spirituality. – I was interrupted by an ­officer, we 1 John Pym, in: John Forster and Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, Lives of Eminent British Statesmen, Cabinet Cyclopaedia. vol. 3, London 1837.

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talked about a new sort of rifles; if any of your cousins is a sportsman, this is for him: They make rifles with two groves only, and a rim running round the ball, so as to fit in the groves. They say it answers excellently. – I am sorry I am laid up; for there is man tried for murder to-day; I should have liked to see a Canadian double-tongued trial. – From the pipers, where the officers came from the mess-house to call me in, and here the Tattoo from their mess-hous room – it would have done your heart good to hear the major of the Royals, where I dined the other day, coming out, when he heard I was there, and calling out Lieber, Lieber come in; he is a “nice” old Scottch gentleman I say from those pipers we went to our mess house again, took some coffee and curaçao – which by the way I wish you would not forget to put in the box – and honie. The servant is bringing me dinner from the mess, so I must break off. Oscar’s birthday is approaching, and ever so many times have I thaught of it already. I wear a green neckcloth; can you fancy me? It fits my phisycs exactly. I wrote this morning to Mary Appleton. The servant – oh such English servant! such refined cultivated John – Bullism! – wants the table for dinner. Good bye, my soul. – Sept. 4. I spent all day on the sopha, but my foot is better. I must give up Quebec, for I Know I should walk about there; if not I could see nothing. I therefore prefer through the Rideau Canal, one of the most famous works in the world;2 this I may see without fatigue to my foolish and rebellious foot. I shall start to-morrow morning. Last night at about ½ p. 9. the servant came into the room, telling us that the neighbours house was in fire; we went to the window and found the sky blood red to the east, but white streaks converging to a centre over our head showed us that it was an aurora borealis.3 It was the most beautiful I have ever seen. The red would extend to the North and West, and then suddenly pass over into transparent white, which gave light like the brightest moonshine, so that we could see very easily what a clock it was by our watches, then streams of light would discend from our Zenith in a semi-cupola, not in single rays, but as the water cristalises from the sides of a bucket toward the centre, in shooting masses – while the light would move in corruscations side-ward or glantigly, reminding us – to compare the heavenly with the earthly – of the species of lackes ware, which is done with aqua fortis.

2 Rideau-Canal covering 202 km of the Ottawa River to Kingston on Lake Ontario, was built in 1826–1831 for strategic military purposes and to secure the Canadian border against USAmerican attacks. Today the site is inscribed on the List of World Heritage in danger. 3 See Edward C. Herrick, Observations on the Aurora Borealis of September 3, 1839, in: American Journal of Science, vol. 38, J.D. & E.S. Dana, New Haven/Conn. 1840, pp. 260–264.

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[2] I believe, and presents various shades, and light and opaque parts. Then waves of light would sho slowly move along, suddenly a red line would appear, extend, and large, dark, glowing red mans appear. It was very beautiful, it was solemn. The light moved not hurriedly but solemny, without any attributes of distruction about it; it waved gracefully and silently; presently the rays would descend from the centre, and stand for a minute or two as the halo is painted over our Saviour, when he was baptized I observed that the light always obscured the skies, and moved chiefly from east to west through North. Toward North South was nothing. I wish my boys could have seen it; Oscar would have admired it – my dear Oscar – my boy! – I feel sometimes anxious about our house and servants. I often, very often wish I could Know how Betsy &c are.4 I am here near 1200 miles from home. – I wonder how my books are doing. While dining and sipping and riding with British Grenadier Guards, a Dict. of Lat Synonymes is issuing and a work on pol. ethics printing!5 Thats funny! All the guardsmen Know me, and we talk as if I had served with them, when they come and see me. A strange starting point of acquaintances in England this could form for me if I should go there. They often tell me that I am a Tory, that I must be a Tory. I tell them, that they are graciously mistaken. But I must not fill my sheets with such stuff. – Matilda, sometimes my longing for a letter becomes too much, and I Know, I shall require my whole strength, if by some accident – which God forbid – I should have no letter. God grant in that case at least that your vessel be mentioned in Loyd’s list;6 if not I should be very, very sad. Sept 5. I thaught I should be by this time on my way to Niagara, but we found that there is no boat to-day, so you find me still at Montreal. To-morrow I go. My foot is much better. I am so sorry that I shall not be able to be on the 8th at Niagara, for I meant to celebrate my Oscar’s birth-day in presince of the mighty work of nature. That I have learnt here a great deal you may imagine, both with respect to the English side of the Canada question, which I consider in a very bad state as yet, and as to inner organisation of the British army, its spirit. But I cannot give such details in letters to my sweet Matilda. I have studied the courts marshal, which condemned to Canadians who rose last winter at 4 Slaves in the Lieber household at Columbia/SC. 5 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes; Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 6 The proper name is Lloyd’s Register of Shipping founded in the 17th century by London coffeehouse owner Edward Lloyd and lead in 1760 to the Register Society. From 1834 onwards Lloyds Register of British and Foreign Shipping became the standard to shipbuilding, classification of seagoing ships, and insurances.

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Napierville. – I have in my pocket several ecus of the unfortunate and upright Louis XVI, with the three lilies, of 1776, some shillings of William IV, of some coin of the U.S. with the Liberty on it; some Bank tokens of Canadian coinage; some Bank tokens with the harp on one side and O’Connell’s head on the other (pretty harp tunes he plays!) What historical motley! Good bye, my love and soul. Kiss my three chicks most fervently, and tell me very very minutely how they look. God grant their health in the changed climate. Oh that I had the letter at length. Good bye my beloved Matilda. – Ogdensburg, at Parish’s7 house, Sept. 9. Yesterday was the festival day of my beloved boy’s birthday. I was deeply, very deeply affected, and prayed most most fervently when I rose for him, for you, for my sweet boys, and myself. Many many years have passed since my heart swelled over into such a flow of tears, for I thaught of so much, oh my best wife, which agonized my heart. But I will separately of that, if at all. Let me retrace in journal fashion my steps. The above lines were written on Thursday last. I dined again with the officers of the grenadier guards, where we were cordially polite, sipped for the last time of there exquisite claret, and wh went home. On Friday morning I started with a captain of the guards, westward; by stage to Lachine, 9 miles from Montreal. Lachine is the place, whence in May the North-West boats start, with merchandize for the hunting Indians to exchange it for fur. I saw at Lachine one of the long boats, of bark, which you Know are carried by the “voyageurs” over the portages, between lakes, or around unnavigable rapids. (My Oscar Knows what a Rapid is?). From Lachine by steamboat through Lake St. Louis, a widening of the St. Lawrence. On board this boat I learnt that it would take me five days to go to Kingston, on Lake Ontario by the Rideau Canal, which unites the Ontario with the Ottowa, which falls into the St. Lawrence near Montreal – a canoe, which I am told was first projected by Wellington, partly to aid an inland-navigation in case of war with the U.S. as we have made, partly for that reason our canals here along the Ontario. The Rideau canal is one of man’s mighty [3] works with stupendous walls and locks, and the only one I Know of, that is navigated by steam. I had imagined it would do my mind good to see first this noble work of the human mind, and then see nature’s great work at Niagara. Of both I shall be deprived. I am very sorry, for I hold it to be our bounded duty, to see and contemplate where we can, whatever is great and good and noble, and sublime, and true, in whatever sphere it be offered. It does the heart so 7 George Parish (1807–1881).

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good to frankly and wholly to admire, to adore, to rise and to feel humble at the presence. But I cannot. I have been now so long delayed that I feel actually homesick for letters from my dear Matilda – oh, how poor the vocabulary of endearment is! Much, much poorer than my love. Thousand words float in my soul, when I think of you and my boys, but they float as unformed and unfashioned feelings. I understand the endless names of the Hindoo deities very well – they are the proofs of an ardent soul unsatisfied by any definite words, I understand the Catholic litanies Thoroughly, for it is sweet to our soul, to keep, what ever is precious in human language, upon what really dear to us – We went 24 miles by steam than by stage coach (round rapids) 16 miles to Coteau du Lac, and than 41 miles by steam; on Lake St. Francis, another widening of the St. Lawrence. Then again 12 miles by staging, and through the night until 11 o’clock A.M. on the Lawrence, that noble, beautifully colored stream, studded with charming islands. It is a mighty river. At 11 we arrived at Prescott, a Canadian town, where we say saw a steam boat launched, to built expressly to pass the rapid; down it will go easy enough, but up, I doubt. In a skiff I passed from Prescott over to the U. States; it was very windy, and we danced high. If I condence my chief observations and impressions respecting Canada, they might perhaps be stated thus. 1. The state of Canada is far from promising; most British papers insult daily the Canadians, and in fact call them generally by the name of rebels, even when not discussing politics. The lower classes of British emigrants, enlisted in the volunteers, pant for disorder, to have something to do. Officers high in command told me this. These, mostly, seemed to me very fair and even kindly disposed. 2. The villages and towns I have seen, were poor, dirty, slovenly – absolutely the opposite to American villages. Children in rags; vehicles in old style; houses of exceding small demensions. 3. Many Catholic crosses on the road side, with the pierced heart of the Virgin and the instruments of our Saviours martyrdom, as in Bohemia. 4. Steamboat, stage-coaches &c poor. 5. Even during my short stay among the officers I was called by at least 4 or 5, simply Lieber. In the whole U.S. there are but Sumner8 and Hillard who do so! It was refreshing to me. 6. Lord Durham is not very highly spoken off. 7. There were among the officers of the guards high Tories, conservatives, strong whigs and Radicals. Colonel Clive for instance is one. Yet there is no suspicion. This is the strength of Gr. Britain. Most officers of the army however I should think are Tories. – Here Parish9 sent immediately for my trunk. Everything is most substantially and Englishly comfortable. He had at dinner the American

8 Charles Sumner. 9 George Parish (1807–1881).

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Col. Wirth,10 with ladies and officers. Col. Wirth insisted upon letting me Know when I arrive at Albany. Went to-bed late, and rose late on Sunday. I Knelt down and asked the almighty to bless my son Oscar and ye all, and humbly prayed not to sever me from my cherished child, if it could be. – We breakfeasted têtea-tête at about 12, and I had for dinner the British Colonel, who commands at Prescott and two other officers. The Col. a Waterloo man, delighted in finding me; he had seen the late great review at Magdeburg, and could not say enough in favor of Prussian officers and soldiers. We talked the whole evening. I was much pleased with this old East-India-West-India-Waterloo Man.11 My foot the whole day very bad. This morning breakfeasted with these officers, who had slept in the house and now I am writing to my ∆ wife, my jewel: Oh Matilda, do you love me? Will you feel reluctance at returning to your dreary Frank? One day I was lying in my bath, and the thaught shot through my mind. “If she should not like to return!” I donot say, I thaught so, but the thaught came into me mind. It shocked me and passed as quickly as if we dream we fall from a hight, still it did pass and cross the mind. Had I but a better home to offer you, a little more comfort and ease! Matilda I am sometimes sad. God grant that I see you again, to be all to you, I can possibly be, for my soul loves you wholly. Pray write me what you are doing and how you dress yourself and the children, tell me whether you quite frank and loving, you and Adele; tell me about you and your uncle, whether he be quite recovered;12 tell me whether they love and coax my Matilda; tell me whether Caroline and Harriet love our children; tell me how poor Rebecca is, and tell her I have often thaught of her, deprived of speech as he13 is, but she must have patience, and tell here not to prefer Norman unjustly to Hammy. Read the rest to Oscar and love me, and distribute Kisses among the boys.14 Good bye my best wife. Your F.L. Parish15 is very friendly and zuvorkommend to me and sends you his complaits

10 11

12 13 14 15

Worth, not Wirth; William Jenkins Worth, US-Officer, fought in several wars since 1812. High praise of Lieber; reference the colonel’s participation in the battle of Belle-Alliance or Waterloo/Netherlands today Belgium, site of the last battle of Napoleon Bonaparte on June 18, 1815. Jacob Oppenheimer. Hamilton Lieber, who refused to speak for a long time while a young boy. The couple’s children. George Parish (1807–1881).

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[4] My own dear Oscar, yester-day was your birth-day; nine years ago God made us, your beloved mother and myself, happy in sending you to us. We love you, my son, dearly, love us in turn, love your brothers. I had thaught to celebrate your birth-day at the Falls of Niagara, for the birth-day of a good child is always a feast day for loving parents. But I have a lame foot and could not reach those mighty cascades. When I awoke yester-day morning my first thaught was of you, and your brothers and of Mama. I Knelt down and prayed for you. Oh God, said I, bless and protect my boy, whom thou presentedst to us nine years ago. Give him before all a loving soul, that he fear and adore thee, and be Kind unto all men and even to the animals, which are thy creatures. Guide his soul that he love Truth, be ever pure and good and attentive in learning, and that he be never vain. Let him, when vanity rises up in his heart, look upon thee, who art alone perfect, that his vanity vanishes. Let him love with the tenderest regard his dear mother and his younger brothers, and oh God, let me educate him so that he be a good boy in thy sight. Forgive me, I pray fervently, the mistakes I have made in educating him, and guide me, that I bring him up so as thou demandest it. Give Fill our hearts with mutual love to one another, that we may all be good and happy, and Know that we all are thy children. Amen. My sweet boy, I think all the time of you and your brothers, and love you most affectionately. I wished to buy some fine things made by the Indians, at Montreal, to send them to you, and your brothers and cousins for Christmass, but my foot prevented me from doing so. But you will love your father equally. Kiss your brothers from me, and write your loving father. Paid Single Via New-York and Havre To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Esq Hamburg Stamp New York Sept 14 Stamp Le Havre ∆ Stamp Hamburg 15 Oct 1839 + red sealing wax + faded stamps

No. 12 Francis Lieber, Ogdensburg/NY, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 10.09.-21.09.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages, missing piece of paper which was cut off properly No VII Ogdensburg Sept. 10. Savez Vous may mai très-chère, que Vous avez un mari enormément aimable? Je ne le savoit pas moi-même, mais hiere au diner, ­Parish1 me disait: Mrs van Ranselaer u ich stimmten heut überein, daß Sie ein höchst liebenswürdiger Gatte sein müssen, daß Sie, so sanguin wie Sie sind u ich erinnere mich wie Sie Ihre Frau in N.Y. erwarteten, dies Opfer bringen u allein im Süden leben yyyy? A la fois! Parish is very Kind to me. We talk after dinner until one, and two o’ clock, God knows of what all, but we do talk all the time. Last night, or rather this morning, I read until 4 o’clock, and what do you think? Les Liaisons dangereuses!2 For shame? Oh no, I had not read them these many years and found them here. At 11 or noon we breakfeast – a pretty life, that, for your professor! N’importe! I say if a man has worked as I have done last winter, he has a right to live a few months as he chooses and best he lists. – My foot is much better. Oh, what cegar I smoke in writing this! – Matilda, my shirts are in a terrible studentlike condition. – Pray, please write me in the next the exact account with Betsy.3 I’ll release her of much if she is clever, and then tell me, but it is too late, whether you spoke to her, about the way she was to live. You may have seen by the papers that the yellow fever is at Augusta; but no desease, that I can learn is at Columbia. I promise you – and this from sheer love, that I will go by land and avoid Charleston. If you knew how awfully horrid that land journey is, how I shall sip slowly and drop by drop the bitterness of returning, in going taking that rout, especially this time, when an empty house awaits me, and Grenadier Guards dinners and Parish Comforts remain behind me, and how little I care for passing through the yellow fever, if I donot sleep in the place, you will be pleased, Madam, to consider me an attentive husband. – The best would be for me to take Laudanum4 and doze until I arrive at ­Columbia. – I felt it very, very much, that I cannot see Niagara. You know, I have no statue

1 2 3 4

George Parish (1807–1881). Les Liaisons dangereuses, novel by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos, 1782. Slave in the Lieber household in Columbia/SC. Tincture of opium containing up to 10% powdered opium that became quite popular in the 19th century and was used as a cure for ailments from colds to yellow fever.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_014

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to look at, no Raphael no munster5 to gaze at, no Mozart to delight me, no mountain near me, and how intense my delight would be, to see for once again something great, but my foot took so many days. Well – coraggis, filosofia e pazienza, as Ashton the barber justly says. – This morning I dispatched No VI. This will, please God, contain the news of my having received your first letter. I have written this morning to the boys.6 I am sorry I could write them nothing of my Canada stay, I mean details, for I could not repeat things, yet they would have liked the English of it much. – I was very sorry I did not see the governor Sir John Colborne; he was absent else his son, whom I knew had asked me already in the States to dine there. I should have liked to see the thing. Several officers pressed me to let them know the moment I should arrive at London. When will that be. But I fill the innocent paper with very lengthy nothings, so I must stop. Only tell the girls7 that they have treated me like too insignificant an appendix of you, which, the moment you were gone, had lost all value. Depend upon it, I mean to revenge myself, and that atrociously. What shall I, poor housekeeper do, if my things arrive as last time at November or December. Caroline, I kiss your eye, and make you blush in keeping goodness upon your guilty head. – Sept 11. Still at Ogdensburg. If the wind, which has been very high these two days, I shall not be able to leave this pleasant village even to-night. I have just taken a drive with Parish’s two spirited horses, and now feel quite cold. Parish8 said last night: Mein Gott, was muß Ihre Frau für ein excellentes Wesen sein. Wie so, fragte ich. Weil Sie, der Sie gar nicht dazu geneigt sind, so innig von der Ihren, ihr u den Kindern reden. He said more which I confirmed by mouth, and by sincere Amore in my heart! – Did I ever tell you that Prescott is now engaged in a history of the conquest of Mexico, for which the Spanish government has opened the archives to him, for the first time to a stranger and perhaps to any author.9 Prescott has many several copyists at Madrid, and recieves cargoes of M.S.C. As an hist entre-nous he writes the Life of Pizarro.10 What fine subjects he has picked out! May he prosper! I like him much. 5 6 7 8 9

10

Munster from the Greek-Latin word monasterium, early German word to describe large and important churches and cathedrals in towns or monasteries. James, Theodore, and Gustavus Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. George Parish (1807–1881). William Hickling Prescott, The History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a Preliminary View of Ancient Mexican Civilization, and the Life of the Conqueror, Hernando Cortes, 3 vols. Harper and Brothers 1843. William Hickling Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru: With a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas, New York A.L. Burt Company and William Bentley London 1847.

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– My dear Matty write me about money, whether you want any, and how Uncle Jacob wishes me to remit it; and then donot forget to see how it is with your little concern there. Take the names of the stocks in writing and let me know what the conditions of those Prussian lottery shares are, whether they pay any interests, or none until the number be drawn, but before all, tachez vous de gagner le grand prix. Il servit bien joli. – When I read the best and prime writers and orators I cannot help often feeling deep joy – why should I not tell my wife so? – at finding how I have found many things precisely as they have. My Boston publishers issue a new and complete edition of Burke. I read several parts when at Boston, and here I have reperaised some letters of Junius (could I but write English like him!), and I was struck and rejoiced that I stated so many things almost exactly as they did.11 It is the same when I study Aristotle. When I read this most noble writer, I always feel assured, confirmed, raised, shall I not say, proud? When I read Shakespeare I feel smitten to the ground. I have just poetry enough within me to see that he is a towring god of poesy, that he has thousand, thousand things to which I never could have attained. I venerate Aristotle, but I need not crouch before him. – I look forward with intense interest for news of my Oscar’s shool account. I trust he was a man, and – that he always stands up gallantly for his country. – Matilda, yester-day I found in the papers that Mr Sullivan12 died. [2] Sept 13. “Still at Ogdensburg”. The wind has been so high that boats have not been able to pass through the “Thousand Isles” at the junction opening of Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence. Until now, I frankly own that even when I said that I cannot go to Niagara, I had a lingering hope, that I might be enticed, when only a 150 miles near from it, to go. But this is now over. I go, I hasten as fast as I possibly can fo to N.Y. for this moment my dear Matilda, Parish13 braught me the N.Y. papers which advertise the arrival of the Gr. Western. Oh, my wife, is there now a letter for me? I have thaught to-day so much of my boys. I donot Know why, but suddenly Hamy’s: “Yes, Sir” came into my mind, and I was obliged quickly to light a cegar, or might have cried. I have read their to-day the journal kept by Mr George Parish,14 who lately died, on his journey through Norway, Sweden, Russia to Astrachan, Crimea, Austria. He was a very ­intelligent 11 12 13 14

“Letters of Junius”, in: Public Advertiser, London 21.1.1769–12.5.1772. William Sullivan, father of Oscar Lieber’s godmother Sally Newton née Sullivan. George Parish (1807–1881). George Parish (1780–1839).

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man, and sometimes I could not help laughing aloud. Pour le reste, nous m vivons en Schlaraffa,15 comme à l’ordinaire. We always talk and smoke until 2 o’ clock or three, and breakfeast at noon (when do you think your husband rises?) and at 7 or half past 7 we dine. I liked it much, when Parish last night spoké very highly of Haller, though I dont Know him (I mean Adele’s husb.).16 As to your uncle Jacob he spoke with the highest esteem; of course quite of himself. You Know how many Hamburg people I have become acquainted with in this country, and never have I met with one who did not speak in the highest terms of your uncle, without Knowing anything of your relationship to him. To have so substantial a reputation and to enjoy so undivided esteem of all one’s towns-men, is a valuable res proof and reward for a life of industry, strictness, public spirit and talent. – My heart feels pressed; I wish I could kiss my Oscar and my Hamilton. Do you, my Oscar, learn already bravely? Donot forget Keeping up your Geography. Ask your uncle Jacob to explain to you the new postage Law in Engl, or Mama.17 It would take me too much room here. And tell Mama not to forget to make you read parts of the Newspapers, which are fit for you. – My foot gets better and better. Did I write to you that Mr. Sullivan is dead?18 He leaves about 120.000 $, or rather, I believe, this is Mrs Sullivan’s from the old “Swan’s estate”.19 If it was had become his, and is now to be devided I should be sorry; still the portions of the girls20 would be quite sufficient to maintain them comfortably. If I write to you death after death, it may make you sad, but though this is natural you must not forget that, Known we die, but unknown we are born. Good bye, I must dress for dinner – It is cold here; we had it in the parlour yesterday 59 degr and have had fire ever since; this beats, I am afraid, your demi-Siberia, where you now struggle to keep life from escaping into the cold air. Is it not very, very cold in Hamburg? Tell me candidly. If I remember the wretched climate of my native city, and that Hamb is so much more to the North, I really regret sometimes that me children were not born with a fur at once, if it was their destiney to go to Hamburg such barbarous regions. By the 15 16 17

18 19 20

Schlaraffa= Schlaraffenland= Schlauraffen Land or the land of Cockaigne. Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, cousin of Mathilde Lieber and husband of Adele Haller née Oppenheimer. Postage Act 1839 (2 & 3 Vict c. 52, 17th August 1839) An Act for the further Regulation of the Duties on Postage until the Fifth Day of October One thousand eight hundred and forty URL http://www.gbps.org.uk (26.1.2017). William Sullivan, father of Oscar Lieber’s godmother Sally Newton née Sullivan, recently had died. Estates in the Catskill Mountains, Sullivan County/NY, first owned by the Swan family and then by the family of William Sullivan late father of Sally Newton. Sally, Marianne, and Olivia Sullivan, daughters of William Sullivan and Sarah née Webb.

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way. Victoria! You know I always told you that that zo eel soup, of which you and Theodore21 spoke so enthusiastically must be abominable stuff, and to like it proves perversity of taste.22 Well then, Parish,23 though Hamburger – and how did he not stand for the Germans last night, when I faught for the English! – says it is positive abomination. – Sept 14. My patience is well Tried! At length we have information that one of the steam-boats will be here to-day and return to Niagara to-morrow evening att 8. So long, therefore, I must wait. Had I followed my first intention, which was, when I arrived here to-day a week, to have left last Sunday, I might have seen Niagara, and still be in possession of your letter by this time. However, this rest has done my foot much good. I shall go to-morrow to Oswego, thence by Canal to Syracruse, thence by r. road to Albany, thence on the Hudson to N.Y. where and in Phil. I shall be obliged to use dispatch, in order to get through. I have to-day ended finished the life of Pym.24 I venerate him as one of the greatest man of all history; we owe him an immense deal. You may imagine how deeply affected I often was, when I found in his speeches several passages which sounded as if I had copied from them in my Pol. Ethics.25 Oscar, mark Pym in your mind (he lived at the beginning of the English revolution) for the [3] time that you grow up. I have just taken a drive. A bracing autumn day here in the Northern woods is a luxury of rare enjoyment for a wide chest and a sound pair of lungs. I drove through fine cedars, gacks, beeches, ashes and now

21

Theodore Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, was borne in Hamburg and lived as merchant and planter in Ponce/Puerto Rico together with his brothers Gustavus and James Oppenheimer. 22 Lieber was joking about a local speciality, eelsoup, i.e. Hamburger Aalsuppe. There is still a discussion going on if eel is a crucial ingredience of this dish or if its name is caused by an linguistic misunderstanding, taking the local idiom “aal rin” i.e. everything goes into the pot, as an argument to put eel into the soup. A contemporary cooking book gives a recipe that includes eel, see Hamburgisches Koch=Buch für angehende Hausfrauen und Köchinnen in Hamburg und Niedersachsen, von erfahrenen Hausfrauen mit neuen Rezepten versehen. 9. Auflage, Hamburg und Lüneburg,Verlag von Herold und Wahlstab 1839, pp. 20–21 that combines eel, pears, dumplings, and bouillon to a typical northern German mixture of taste, flavour, and textures. 23 George Parish (1807–1881). 24 Forster, Life of Pym. 25 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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and then an ornamenting mountain-ash, with its scarlet berries. Tieck26 would have enjoyed it, and would have warbled. A fine American forest on a plain is a noble thing. Any healthy forest is. There is a fullness of life, a calmness, a dignity in all these plants, each independent and yet so accommodating to one another – a people of trees! There is no jealousy among the citizens of this great commonwealth, yet much emulation, all striving up towards him, who printed the peculiar law of life upon each, which it freely and richly develops in striving upward; no meanness in the lower ones, no stupid insolence in the high ones. – My dear Matilda have the goodness to pay attention to the lines at the end of this letter; you may tear them off and burn them. – Parish27 m’a raconté toute l’histoire, au moins son histoire avec Mad. Pleil, du commencement jusqu’a le fin!28 Sunday Sept. 15 To-day then I shall sail I trust I shall, although the wind is high, it is cold, we have fire! What contrast with our South! I have just written to poor Sally Newton.29 Every night, or morning, when I went to bed, I pressed a kiss upon your lips, as you were sitting by time already at the breakfeasttable, for it must have been eight o’clock with you. I long most heartily for my regular study again. Some-time when I simpliciently think of the letter, a dark cloudy thaught over-shadows my soul. If something had happened to her! But no, no, I will trust that God will not past me down thus, will not smite me into the dust. My wife, mother of my dear boys, my faithful, best Matilda! – Parish insists upon that next summer, or the season after that you must stay with me here a month or so. Ah, I cannot chat; my thaughts are stern. I kiss and bless you all &c. Thursday Sept 19. I have your letter, God be thanked, I have it, and a feastday it was! I recieved it yesterday, heavens! how happy a day! It is the first letter from Hamburg (I have not yet that from Rotterdam), and it was well that I recieved that I recieved the news of your final arrival at once, for to say the truth I felt

26 27 28

29

Ludwig Tieck. George Parish (1807–1881). While gossiping Lieber misspelled the name, instead of Pleil it is Pleyel, Camilla Pleyel née Marie Felicite Denise Moke; a celebrated virtuosus Belgian pianist who after her separation from her husband Joseph Etienne Camille Pleyel in 1835/36 had become the mistress of Lieber’s host, the wealthy Hamburg merchant George Parish (1807–1881). She was kept by her friend in a luxurious house; Clara Schumann née Wiek noted in her diary that Camilla Pleyel had had to promise Parish not to receive male guests without his permission otherwise she had to pay a fee of 3000 marks. See Janina Klassen, Clara Schumann: Musik und Öffentlichkeit, Cologne/Weimar 2009, p. 150. Friend of the Liebers, godmother of Oscar Lieber whose father recently had died.

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very anxious respecting that last part of your journey. I am now cooled down, especially as I sit in the office 7a Wall Street Broker; but yesterday I could not have written: However let me first finish the journal of my journey, for Oscar and you, for if I donot do it forthwith, I shall never do it. On Sunday last, Parish and I dined early, at 5 o’clock. When I was going to drink my champaign, he said stop, let us drink your wife’s health, Sie muß eine außerordentliche Frau, daß sie Sie fessele u so fesseln kann, der Sie sich doch so frei fühlen, or something to that effect. I drank, I quaffed with profound reverence (for the excellent champaign). At the time of Homer people travelled a few paltry miles and made a terrible noise about it, and exchanged presents; now we travel a thousand miles, and when we leave the “kindly host” does not fill the charriot with presents, but the pockets with rare cegars, which you Know I understand to value. Parish30 took me down to the steamboat and at 6 we started up the St. Lawrence, through Thousand Isles. Monday Morning (Sept 16) we landed at Sacket’s Harbor a Naval Port of the U.S. for Lake Ontario. Having left Sacket’s Harbor we fairly entered the great beautous Lake. It is a noble sight this fast and limitless expanse of water, beautifully colored, proud like the sea, and demanding tribute like the ocean, the tribute of admiration and of – puking. I beg your pardon, but our lad women were felt terribly squeemish and more than that. At ½ past two we landed at Oswego, a harbor at the mouth of Oswego river – moles, lighthouse &c. A regular American town; a main-street with high buildings, shops, chairs of chair makers dangling out of the window, offices &c, and besides spacious streets, and seperated houses. Very fine houses here, about 6.000 inh. I went on the top of a house, intended for an hotel, situated on a hill, where I enjoyed a noble view of the noble lake, which at sun-set (not sun-down my Oscar, as you said in your last letter; sun-down is a vulgarism) tinged deeply blue. Near seven we left Oswego by canal-boat for Syracruse, 32 miles South, on the great Erie Canal.31 I send Oscar a map in a parcel direct to Hamb. that he may follow his Papa. But he must take care of the map. We were terribly crowded, and placed 3 high, like as many cheeses swing; in hammocks like slavers the canal runs partly along, partly in river Oswego itself. Horses pull the boats. At 4 in the morning (Sept 17) we arrived at Syracuse, having passed through the salt region. I travelled with a man who is settled in Wis-

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George Parish (1807–1881). Erie Canal, built in 1817–1821, created a direct connection between New York City and the Great Lakes via the Hudson River.

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[4] consin territory. He goes in 8 days from his place to the city of N.Y. Only think, through Lakes Huron, Superior, Michigan, Erie, Ontario, and the whole state of N.Y. It would have taken, but a short time ago, I dont know how many weeks. At Syracuse be ends for the present the rail road from Albany. We started at five o’clock in it, and arrived at Utica (about 64 miles) at 8 o’clock. We stopped an hour for breakfast, and then for Albany (96 miles) where we arrived at 5 o’clock P. M Partly we passed through beautiful country, a valley some miles wide, well formed with fine “flats” as they call here, extensive rich meadows, but travelling by r road is no travelling, call it flying, kiting, but not travelling. It does not allow you to come in contact with Land u Leute. Da lob ich mir meine Fußreisen, wo ich mit jeder alten Botenfrau schwazte. At Albany I experienced, what I had not seen for a long time – the barbarous noise and bustle on the wharf and steamboat, while the escaping steam hurts the nerves and brain by the shrill noise it produces. To me this bustle has ever been a picture of the abodes of the lost – ein liebloses Gewirr, stoßen, drängen, keiner kehrt sich um den anderen, dabei daß scheußliche Menschen das geniessen, daß man auch nicht ein Wort verstehen kann, […] At length, God be thanked, the steam is silent, we go, we repose, we are men once more – within as well, as toward others. At four o’clock yester-day morning, Sept 18. we arrived here (150 from Albany). I immediately took a bath and on my way to Heckscher some one told me the Sophie has arrived at Rotterdam, he had seen it in the papers. I hasted to Heckscher32 and Oh God, with many letters, Yours, Yes Yours my Matilda, your sacred letter. I now only thank you and Oscar. It was throughout a sweet letter, nay in one or two passages even instructive. Oscar’s observations are right, let him by all means continue so, his descript. of the nautilus very good. I kiss him for it. But write me, my dear Matilda, whether he dictated every thing precisely so I wish to know it you do not know how it delighted me that you were doing everything so carefully and attentively. I thank you, for it many, many times – I have not yet your Amsterdam Rotterdam letter, probably it was sent from Engl. by packet not by steam boat. I am curious – but no longer anxious for your next. I wished to sleep yesterday in the day time, for I had not slept in a bed for 3 nights, but I could not, I read, and read again Oscar’s letter. – Before this reaches you, I hope you have recieved the parcel (the 3d) by the Sir Isaac

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Charles August Heckscher, cousin of Mathilde Lieber.

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­ ewton – I found here a letter from Clara33 for you, two from the Ponce boys,34 N and one very friendly one from de Toqueville. He wants a [cross-writing] a list of all my works, for he wishes to propose me as a member of the Institute next January.35 Mignet the famous historian joins him in his endeavor. I had no idea myself, how much I had scribbled and almost had forgotten to mention one work, the Hermeneutics.36 Do not speak of this because you know that the actual election depends upon trifles. Perhaps they do not want to elect just now an American, they neglected other countries, or something of that sort, but de Toqueville is warmly and zealously engaged in it. I found here my Latin Synonyme, a very respectable looking book.37 Hecksher38 sent me exquisitely fine cegars. to-day I dine with Möller39 I am afraid I shall not be able to see Mrs Labat. They are still out of the country and I have very little time and besides would have to walk much, which is not good for my foot. I am sorry, for I assure you I like her besides that you love her mother so much but he behaves so utterly strange that I donot like to go there. Good bye to you all, to Carry, to Harriet, to all, to my children. I expect to hear soon of you. Ever yours, faithful Frank I donot know whether I have written that I have made a great discovery, it is goose; filled with tomatoes, by which you render that vulgar bird most respectable. Fill the goose with entire tomatoes, and rost it. Speaking of geese, pray Caroline in my name to have a roast goose on the 10th of Novemb. according to an ancient German custom; it is St. Martins’ day and Luther’s birthday. Tell Oscar so, and that he remembers the day (and the year of Luther’s birth 1485 I think). The 10th of Nov. was also Schiller’s birthday, and Sharnhorst’s – and my

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Clara Woodhouse, Leominster/England, sister of Mathilde Lieber. Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico, brothers of Mathilde Lieber. Institut de France 1795–1803, 1832 renewed by François Guizot; one branch is the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. 36 Francis Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics, or, Principles of Interpretation and Construction in Law and Politics: With Remarks on Precedents and Authorities, Boston C.C. Little and J. Brown 1839. 37 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 38 Charles August Heckscher, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. 39 Nicholas D.E. Möller, partner of the three brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer.

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poor fathers.40 You may remind Oscar at once of “Remember, remember” &c – the Gunpowder plot.41 Communicate my découvert de cuisine to the Girls.42 Yours Fr. Sept. 21 – Yesterday after-noon arrived the Brit Queen, which braught me the letter from Rotterdam, and the 2d from Hamb. Thousand thanks for both I am satisfied with everything, but pay the greatest and immediate attention to Latin & Drawing. I shall remain here until Monday (to-day is Saturday). H.43 tells me that he has a letter from Uncle,44 and Möll. tells me that he has two for the W.I. which makes me conclude that he is getting on rapidly.45 – No fever in Columbia, altogether it is healthier there then last year. Trapm.46 is here. Letters from Ham in Paris arrived here. Let O47 show me in a picture how he looks with his scholastic accounterments. Let him by all means dictate again – one of the best things for mind and feeling. Letters are like lobsters, which cover their finest parts ∆ shell; so I cannot write as I wish this time, but I ∆ next I’ll write fully. Good bye. F.L. Single By Steamboat Bataux To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Esq Hamburg care of Herman Sillem Esq London 40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47

Martin Luther (10.11.1483–18.2.1546) German theologian and reformator; Friedrich von Schiller (10.11.1759–9.5.1805) famous German poet and author; Gerhard von Scharnhorst (12.11.1756–28.6.1813) Prussian military man; Friedrich Wilhelm Lieber, late father of Francis Lieber. Reference to the notorious “Gunpowder Plot” of November 5, 1605 with the well-known rhyme: “remember, remember the fifth of November” when English Catholics had tried to blow up the House of Lords and King James I during the State Opening of Parliament. The plot failed because it was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter; many of the plotters fled; eight, however, were arrested and sentenced to death like Guy Fawkes who fell from the scaffold before he was to be hanged and broke his neck on January 31, 1606. Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. Charles August Heckscher, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Jacob Oppenheimer, Hamburg. Nicholas D.E. Möller had received letters of his partners Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer from Puerto Rico. Ludwig Trapmann, Charleston/SC. Oscar Lieber started his school career in his mother’s hometown, before he had been homeschooled first by his mother, than by women without a proper education.

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Stamp Heckschers Coster & Matfeld [hand written] 21. September 1839 Stamp H. Sillem Stamp paid 5. Oct 1839 Stamp ship letter London Oct 5 1839 Stamp Hamburg ∆

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No. 13 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, New York, 18.09.1839 Included: dictated letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5056, ALS, 4 pages No. V All well! Hamburg 18ten September 1839 deinen theuren Brief bis zum 21gsten August mit der Liverpool habe ich glücklich erhalten und muß meinen besten Franz dafür herzen. Gott segne dich mein einziger geliebter für deine Liebe, denn was wäre ich wenn ich die nicht hätte, aber ein good for nothing bist du doch bei alledem, wenn du über Sally1 sprichst, schämst du dich nicht “sweet bosom, and that charming deeper spot, peeping chemise, what the imagination sees &c.” I think yours is a very good for nothing imagination to imagine at all and – but never mind I will punish you. I am very glad indeed that you are going to Niagara again and long for your letter from that charming spot, it is also very pleasing to me that you have agreable Canadian acquaintance to visit there, all this will make the time pass pleasantly until you receive my letters, some of which must by the bye be in your hands already. This one alas! my poor Frank will receive in old Columbia, Oh! how hard it will be to tune your mind to go through the examination and all the degredations it has to submit to there. Does it not seem ages to you since we left home? oh you cannot think how I long to make things comfortable for you and to attend to all my boys little wants. I fear the trouble you will have. You say nothing about your horse, do not give it up I beg you. Of course my dear fellow I shall do every thing you asked me, I shall select something pretty for Olivia and make something pretty for Hilliard.2 I think my choice will be a pr of slippers, for there are so few things an American gentleman can make use of and that of course is the object, I could make something more handsome but it would only be to put in his bureau. Oscar shall write to Sally3 very soon. After he has spent his day from 9 to 3 at school, and has an other lesson in the afternoon, also gets up frequently to do some work for school at six OClock, I dislike [2] to compel him to do anything extra, but of course this must be done soon. He will write to you yet to day, I think by dictation as there will not be much time when he comes home and on the whole I should like him to make better 1 Sally Newton. 2 She meant George Stillman Hillard, Boston. 3 Sally Newton.

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progress in writing first that you may be gratified. He says his prayer for you every night and longs to see you again, the little ones too often call for you, and Papa is not forgotten, if they were now to see you how they would all fly to your arms. As yet the Hamburg air seems to agree with them perfectly, they are almost constantly in the open air on some of the very beautiful walks, either on the ramparts, in the botanical garden or before the gates. Every where there are alleen of fine trees, and benches on the prettiest spots invite one to rest and enjoy the arrangements, flowers are also planted every where entirely exposed, but no person ever thinks of plucking or destroying any. The street in which we live is wide,4 on either side are handsome houses and in the middle again an avenue which when the trees grow up will be very beautiful each end of the street leads immediately to the ramparts and round the corner we have the new Jungfernstieg,5 so that we are in fact in the best situation in Hamburg. But delightful as these new parts are, so horridly dirty and miserable is the old town, disgusting to an American eye & nose. Oscar has a pleasant walk to school, but the little ones have to trott through the very dirt. Yesterday Caroline and myself went to Wandsbeck to see Mrs Burmester the wife of Papas former partner,6 though already a grandmother a very handsome woman, she was delighted to see me and we spent some very pleasant hours there. I saw there a darling baby of her very young pretty and happy daughter and longed to have one too. Poor Carry would like an other one as well as I think she would like to marry again, she feels her lonely situation very much and is such an affectionate [3] creature that she could make a husband who loved her very happy, but there is not the slightest prospect for her. Caroline can be very merry and full of fun yet, and if you come I will promise you many a laugh. We women make plenty of nonsense together. What will you pay me for a piece of wit of mine which came out yesterday evening? We were talking with aunt Minna about a servant girl of hers who is to be married soon and who has anticipardo altered her figure. Carry said she has the dropsy, Matty said, not the Dropsy but the drop soon. I will sell you this if you will promise not to scold me for two months after I come home, perhaps you will think it rather greenish, I think myself it want 4 Esplanade, Hamburg-Neustadt. 5 The Jungfernstieg had been planned and built in the 1820s as a fashionable promenade on the banks of the Binnenalster; it was the first boulevard in Germany tarmaced already in 1838. 6 Johann Georg Burmester.

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bear writing down, but you must know my dear chap that I wrote you a long letter yesterday by the Cuxhaven, so that I am rather done for to day. – Clara begs me to give her and James best remembrance to you,7 she has written to their London bookseller for your Polly8 who was expected down in a few days. I liked the attention & so doubtless will you. Harriet was much pleased that you had seen Grattan,9 and I was much pleased that you had speechified so nicely. How I should like to hear you; I am certain that in that you would be excellent for the quickness of your ideas would not be so much kept back as in writing and your knowledge and various reading would make you shine brilliantly My dear Papa. Where are you now? I hope you are well. I go to school now dear Papa and I like it exceedingly for the school master is so kind always, his name is Mr Werner and the Master of the class in which I am, is named Herr Jacobsen. I have every day six hours lesson at school and at home I have a Latin lesson every day. Mein lieber Vater, am Mittwoch habe ich nur fünf Stunden in der Schule u am Sonnabend vier, dies mal kann ich dir keinen Plan von diese Haus geben weil der Brief geht heute weg. Sobald wie deine Hemden fertig sind so schicken wir dir ein Kästchen. Mein lieber Vater alle Jungen in Hamburg tragen Westen und recht hohe Stiefel wie du Vater, Mutter hat sie mir gekauft. I thank you very much indeed my dearest father for the beautiful books which you have sent me. I asked Mr Werner to write on a piece of paper my name in the German & English dictionary for Mama could not have the papers printed so soon and I think it is just as good for he writes so beautifully. I thank you my dear Papa that you wrote to me so soon entirely my own. A few days ago Mamma had an other letter in which also a great part was written to me. How curious it is how that poor girl is taught whom you saw at the institution for the blind.10 Papa I have shown the first Vol. of the Enz. Am.11 to Mr Werner, & he was very much pleased. I will write to you again soon and the next time I will write myself but this time there was not time enough as the letter had to go. My dear Papa the next letter you write pray say something about Timor and the horse Your dear Oscar

7

Clara and James Thomas Woodhouse, Leominster/England, sister and brother-in-law of Mathilde Lieber. 8 Mathilde Lieber’s nickname for her husband’s publication Manual of Political Ethics. 9 Lieber had met Thomas Colley Grattan, friend and partner of Georg Oppenheimer, father of Mathilde Lieber, on August 14, 1839 in Boston, Faneuil Hall at a public dinner. 10 Laura Bridgman. 11 Lieber, Encyclopaedia Americana.

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[cross-writing, 4] I wish I had been with you when you saw the wild beasts, I wish you would tell ∆ Papa did the man hold the panther when you measured him. They have a kind of wagen here made of entire basket work which they call stadtwagen, with from about 4 to 6 seats in it on each of which two people can sit which is excedingly light and therefore only has two horses in it though it is sometimes filled with the fattest and heaviest people. Then they have a kind of carriage quite shut up but yet not like a coach that has one large triangular glass on each side for a window which opens like a window. The peace of glass in the windows are even larger, four hence or larger ones at home. My dear Papa there are some people hats which have I believe only women for I have not seen a man with their curious kind of a hat or yet they come from the other side of the Elbe. Perhaps you cannot see in this picture the perfect way how the hat is [sketch of a woman wearing a hat typical for the garb of peasant women from the Vierlande] therefore I will tell it you where is first of all a crown like another hat and then instead of having a rim like an other hat it goes up again to the top of the crown and then falls stadling down again to the bottom of the crown. It is so all round. Goodbye my dear Papa. I forgot to tell you that Hamilton and Felix and Emil go to school. Hamilton has got his little penal for his pencil. Mr Werner heard at some way or other and asked me whether Mama was going to send Norman too. My dear Papa who know what success may yet be in store for you. I have got forebodings of some future good. Oscar will come home too, a well studied boy. The name Lieber shall be raised still higher by him too and we will settle down to be a downright American family. To this I have made up my mind. We will get a little money, and we will see Europe again but America shall be our home. It is not a bad home, I assure you for even as a woman I can see its many great advantages and the many substantial good qualities of the people. Untaught as the American & English boys come over it is remarked in the schools that they are extremely quick in their progress. Nature has gifted them. [cross-writing, 3] Germany is swarming with English boys sent over to be educated. There are also a great number of Spaniards. As soon as anybody hears that I let Oscar learn Latin, they immediately presume that we are going to let him study. Intended merchants it seems only learn the modern languages. There is not so much time to be lost as in former days. We have got most lovely weather here

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still, occasionally it rains but it is generally quite warm and pleasant yet. There are still raspberries, peas, beans, but also and the latter more plentifully pears, all kinds of plums apricots & apples. Peaches are a shilling a piece. In my next letters I will make you out a list of the prices of such articles as I imagine may interest you. But in Hamburg living is not cheep, articles of clothing are about a quarter less than in America and for dress making I had to pay about two dollars & a quarter which is more than I used to give in Philadelphia where you know I was always handsomely dressed. For a bonnet which cost me four dollars here I would perhaps have to give five in America. The difference is about these in many other articles of clothing. The shirts I am having made for you, cost three dollars a piece; and you know you brought yours for the [cross-writing, 1] same price, only there are alltogether linen – I am glad indeed that you had so pleasant a day at Prescotts and that he was so friendly and good and that you were in good spirits. I will immediately set to work for Hilliard,12 and write to him as you desired. I am glad indeed to hear that the Pol. Eth.13 sell well, how is it with Hermy?14 Does Polly cut him out?15 Mind you always tell me all things which can make me proud of my bonnie lad. The trees are fine in old Germany and the oaks & the birch certainly as tall as with us, Oscar will tell you more about these things as he is more observing, the avenues are chiefly poplers, these I believe you dislike. Have I told you that Uncle Morris16 is in England now. Aunt Malchen Hessens you know are expected home to day they have been journeying through France, I am curious to see them. It will be much pleasanter when all the people return from the country; for it is too expensive to go out often and I want to see more of them. Adela is a little better but she must not ride yet so that she does not come to town to see me. Uncle Jacob who dotes upon Adela still laughing at her peculiarities himself. Nobody in the family ever knows anything of Adelas intended movements.17 She keeps every 12 Still she misspelled the name: it was Hillard, not Hilliard. 13 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 14 Mathilde Lieber invented the nickname ‘Hermy’ for her husband’s publication Legal and Political Hermeneutics. 15 ‘Polly’ she tenderly baptized Lieber’s book, Manual of Political Ethics. 16 Morris Oppenheimer, uncle of Mathilde Lieber, brother of her father and Jacob Oppenheimer, son in law of Salomon Heine and partner in Salomon Heine’s international trading empire. 17 Cousin Adele Haller née Oppenheimer and her father Jacob Oppenheimer, uncle of Mathilde Lieber.

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[4] thing to herself till the time of action arrives. But she has ∆ during her fathers illness18 he would not even in his dilirium suffer any […] but Adele and she alone had then […] controll over him. I wander whether my via Havre letter arrived safely. I am in doubt because I did not direct it to any house in New York; and how my dearest dearest Frank God bless you, Parting even in each letter is always too sorrowful. I believe I envy my letters and would like to go with them. Caroline and Harriet [cross-writing, 4] send their best affectious love and will write soon, the children send kisses. Ever your affectious Matilda We are making some nice pickle & preserve for you Single pr Steamer Liverpool Mr Francis Lieber Columbia SC Care of Messrs Heckscher Coster & Matfeld New York Stamp LONDON 21 SEP 1839 Stamp NEW YORK OCT 31 Stamp forwarded Heckscher Coster & Matfeld [hand-written] Oct 31st 18

Jacob Oppenheimer had been seriously ill shortly before Mathilde Lieber’s arrival in Hamburg.

No. 14 Francis Lieber, New York/NY, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 22.09.1839 Included: letter by Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages Carry and Hart, a thousand, thousand tender thanks for Your love to Matilda and my children No// VIII. Sept. 22nd 1839. New-York. – My loving thanks, my heart felt gratitude to your uncle Jacob, your aunts, to Adele, to “Minchen Arning”,1 and all who have recieved you and my boys with kind feelings and affection. God bless them all. – It is Sunday, I have taken a bath, then my breakfast, am smoking one of Heckscher’s2 cegars, which lie with Parish’s,3 and am, as you see, writing to my dear Matilda. I shall afterwards go to Herlgate,4 where Heckscher5 is staying, and probably dine at old Astor’s.6 My own dear Matilda, and my lovely children! If I could spend this Sunday with you, how I would enjoy myself, rump and roll once more! You know already from the outside postscript of my last, which went by the Gr. Western, that I recieved your Rotterdam letter, and the 2d. from Hamburg, by the British Queen (which by the way is in terrible repute for coarse and rude treatment of the passengers, spinging additional 10 guineas out of them, for state rooms, hurdling the others together almost as bad as on the Western canal boats &c &c). It was the day before yesterday that I heard at noon, that the Br. Qu. was telegraphed; so I prepared myself for letters, and took my oyster dinner at once, for the oyster season having set in, I almost wholly live upon oysters, eating for Theodore and myself. There is at this season, when Nature has just finished to prepare the darlings for intelligent gastronomers, a delicacy, a virgin oyster flavour contained between those two shells, they are so fresh, so glibe, that every thing else sinks into insipid or gross food beside them, except perhaps a struggling woodcock may dare to compete with them every other day or so. After the oysters had been dispatched I went to Heckscher’s count.h. The crowd at the post off. had was too great, the clerk had not yet been able to obtain any letter. At length he came with an enormous number, and all the clerks assisted in looking for mine. Out 1 2 3 4

Wilhelmine Arning, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. Charles August Heckscher, New York City. George Parish (1807–1881). He meant Hellgate, a part of New York City close to the banks of the East River and those estates owned by Steven Halsey and his friend John Jacob Astor whose name was given to parts of the land, Astoria. 5 Charles August Heckscher. 6 John Jacob Astor owned large estates in Manhattan and in the neighborhood of New York City; he had a townhouse at 233 Broadway, NYC, and a country estate in Hellgate, NYC.

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came one, out came the other. It was already ½ p. 5 o’cl. and at 5 I had agreed to meet Whitehouse and his vehicle to at Brooklyne to take a drive. I hastened therefore with your letter to the ferry, and there in a corner unfolded and read them. I was so happy and more than once came water into my eyes. I donot deserve all your unbounded love, my Matilda, I Know it but too well, and say it with grief. At length one of the ferrymen tapped me on the shoulder and said. “Do you want to go back, Sir?” I had not observed that we were at Brooklyne, and had stopped for several minutes. When I came home in the evening I studied the letters regularly, though I had read them at Whitehouse’s likewise, and that too in a room where there are very beautiful Italian copies of some of the finest masterpieces. I thank you many thousand times for those letters; they are all and every thing I could wish for, such a fine mixture of sprightly description, sound remarks and glowing affection and withal such faithful and dear endeavour to do everything as I desired it! Yesterday I read them again, I believe at least ten or 15 times and was felt so boyant, so happy, until Dr Ellet called on me; and my throat, and that which is beneath it on the left side of the breast felt like drawn together with a string. Columbia with all its deadness. I must make this word – fell like lead upon my soul. If a man were sitting by a corpse and paid for making poems on Life, while gazing at it, he would feel like myself, with the stir that God has given to my mind and the love of mental life when I return to that cadaverous – mentally cadaverous place. But, that too was a sweet passage in your letter, where you speak of your hope of better times. Oh, give me always such cheerings; not that you should write so if you do not feel so, but if you feel so, write by all means so. You know how good an effect it has upon me, when you cheer me, wenn du mir Muth zusprichst. Let me now touch upon some points, as they occur to me. First of all, our beloved Oscar. My Oscar, I am happy that you like the school, and have obtained good marks. Mama will always write every one to me and how you study at home, so that your good conduct, cheers me up in my loneliness. Now mark my boy, you are in the lowest class; we have taken much, very much pains with you, and although I know that you may have to learn various things which belong to the regular cursus in that school, yet it must be very easy for you to make up all that, so that you are fit to rise to a higher class. Work, my boy might and main, to rise from that lowest class. It will be a feastday for me, and for mama, and your dear aunts Carry and Hart, and for you indeed, when you come home and say: I Ich bin versezt worden. Your dear mother will assist you in going over at home what you have had in school, and in studying a little before hand the next lessons in school. This preparation is in all instruction one of the very best means of getting on rapidly. Donot forget my boy to look for places and names. Has Mama read to you the description of the tourneament in England? If you

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can obtain a paper which contains a discription, cut it out, and preserve it, for you will like to look at it after some years. My boy continue your sun-set prayer, and think always that the sun is going from you to me, your loving father. If you ar happen to be with other people at the time, and you cannot well retire, think the prayer within your heart. Love God, and obey your mother. My boy, yesterday I saw some of those images made by the sun upon silver; this you recollect you saw paper at Columbia, which the sun made black. Dr Ellet took me yesterday to a chemist. He took a copper plate, plated over with silver; this silver side was placed over iodine, a substance chiefly obtained from sea weed. So soon as it is exposed to the air, dark vapors, or ray of a violet color rise. These colored the silver blackish. The plate was than placed in a camera obscura, which was directed [2] to the object, we desired to take. It was a steeple, and a statue on a cupola. We left it for 9 minutes, and when we took the plate out, there was a minute and most accurate image of these objects, so accurate that everything appeared only the clearer and the more minutely accurate, when looked at through a magnifying Glass. Some acid was then put upon the plate, which makes the image permanent, so that it cannot fade, or be whiped off. Now mark, Oscar, it is not the heat of the sun which produces this picture, for the plate may be placed over coals and it does not change. It is the light, and especially the violet ray in the light, which affects the metal. How wonderful! But what is it, you will say, how can the light scratch in the plate, as it were? Perhaps the light is a substance, inconceibdably fine, but still a substance which chemically affects the plate. Perhaps we m man will discover yet the truth; but whether or no, it will be, as I have often told you, one of the choicest blessings in heaven, when God, who knows all things, will reveal the principles and last laws of his creation to those of his at children who have been attentive here, and strove and longed to Know the truth and find his wisdom in all things. Then will shall the industrious, attentive and good sit on the steps of his throne and he, the Maker and Creator of all things, will shall be himself be the teacher; and they will learn what that subtle fluid – Light – is, which pervades His universe, and they will see how the grass grows, and the chick in the egg, and what there is in the moon, and how the rays of the vernal sun, can call pour life into the tree, and why one blossom is red and another blue, though drawing nourishment from the same earth and the same dew, and they will learn things, they did not even wish to Know, because they Knew them not, and they shall fall down and pray and say: Holy, holy, Great and Holy art thou Father, Maker and

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Preserver. But those that are sluggish, and pass his works, in nature or history, without stopping to understand as much of it as possible, as if the things that are did not come from God, they will stand abashed in the other world, that they neglected so much, and they shall then begin to learn, for they shall see how much they loose in not understanding his what is revealed to the others, and in which they find God and God again. My dear Matilda, though I wish that Oscar would write to me, yet continue by all means his dictations; the writing is yet too troublesome for him, and thus cramps his mind; but by dictation I have the full flow of his active mind. Only let him think first on what he will dictate, say four five points; than what he will say, and then write it down just as he says. Nay, I should like him to dictate some times to Carry or Hart – if – they donot in scold me for bothering them. These dictations are important; they clear and invigorate the mind, and they are most dear to me. I hope you speak English to him and that he learns by heart. Donot forget Latin; let him soon get out of that baby class. Give him plenty of love, exercise and hard study and – let him stand up for America. Is there no Walker in your family? All too indolent? I wish him so much to walk some miles about. It pleased me so much when you wrote that Hamilton is a good boy, and I could not help crying when I read that he expected me when the pilot came on board. You donot Know how I love Tommy Stout.7 I dare say, no one finds old Calvin pretty; no matter, all the better for him. He is a good boy, my own dear Hammy, whom I love very much. How does poor Rebecca fare? I wonder. – I saw last night the Bards.8 Mr Sand the picture of a dying consumptive man. Eliza heard her baby cry, and said to Mrs Bard: Come Mama go up. For shame said I. O replied Mrs Bard, she is the merest girl yet, and will run away for days and leave the children to me, and when I scold her, she will say: I Knew Dr Lieber before he I was married, and liking him much I learned all bad ways from him. – She is still very handsome, yet, yet! I donot believe that she will grow old. – Whenever you speak of your happiness and the sea of affection you float in, I cannot help thinking how most dreadfully you will feel the lifeless torpor of Columbia. Oh God, oh God! can I not lead her to some decent place? Oscar, I saw yesterday nautical almanachs for the year 1842. I asked why they were published thus in advance, and was told that it was for the whalers, who, you Know, stay out two and three years. Is this not fine, that man can thus give the means of safety to a brotherman for years to come, 7 Nickname of Hamilton Lieber. 8 William and Catherine Bard, their daughters were Eliza Delafield Bard, married to Rufus King Delafield, and Susan Sands Bard married to Ferdinand Sands who died December 7, 1839.

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and for regions far, far away? – Mr Brown, one of my publishers was here, and said that the Latin Synonymes9 have already been introduced into Andover.10 This is as important for me as a half-penny rise of cotton to the planter you know, Matilda. The book was undertaken to give me a little revenue, and such places take the lead I wonder whether Beck,11 in [3] Cambridge will not give it a hearty start? He is a German, but dry, very dry. He is the one you may recollect of whom Hillard uses to say, that nature made a mistake in himself and Beck, for while himself was intended for a German and became a yankee, Beck was undoubtedly cut out for a Yankee. Beck is my old Turngenosse.12 Have you provided yourself with large paper? I mean to accept next January the secretaryship – you know it is my turn for much as I hate it and inconvenient as it is, with all my bookwriting, the $ 200 will pay for increased portage postage, and some expences for Oscar &c, and yet the labor will thus be sweetened. At least I have a thought of doing so; and when I come to think well of it, I dislike the Handonotsarbeit very much. – Write me how my Normy is dressed, write me what the little ones do, write me the exact age of Carry’s children, write me, why Osc. does not go with his cousins, or why Carry preferred another school, write me whether Normy has pants, write me what color your dress is, write me whether Carry cares for me and Hart, since they dont write at all, write me what sort of bonnet you have, write me whether the rocking chair was safely braught to Hamb., write me who loves you most, write me when you go to bed; write me whether you have seen your favorite Dr Julius;13 write me whether you love me, write me ten thousand things. Have I ever told you my horrid conversat. with Mrs Eckley at Nahant? She asked me what I would do alone at Columbia. I said I must try and take some friend, some woman, some girl with me. Oh, replied she, you are a bad fellow. I beg your 9 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 10 Amherst College, Andover/Mass. 11 Charles Beck, Cambridge/Mass. 12 Franz Lieber and his brothers had joined the circle of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn already in 1811 becoming his early pupils in the progressive turner movement. Several boys and young men from Berlin’s middle and upper classes followed Jahn convinced of his ideas and political principles. 13 Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, physician and involved in the international reform movement on prisons, commuted between the Prussian Royal court in Berlin and his surgery in Hamburg. He visited Mathilde Lieber and her sisters who could not appreciate their guest.

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pardon said I, a bed-fellow is the very thing I want” and with that I bounced out of the door, she roaring. C’est une dame delicate ça! I have an idea that I shall have a letter from you, by way of Havre, just when I arrive in Columbia. I take $ 200 in 10 cent pieces with me, but was obliged to pay 3 ½ pro cent for them, so I gain $ 23 upon the 200. This two may go for postage so write away, my girl. – I was very much affected by the danger in which you were again. Heavens! can you never go to sea, without such occurrances! – Thank God I have you. I have you? In a fashion! I shall go see Mrs Labat; that Oscar went with his scholastic accouttements to see “Aunt Minna”14 determines me. He loves her, she therefore must have first loved him. But it takes me a much time, and where they are are shoals of children, girls, people, visiters &c and no solitary spot for a talk. it is one of those American places whither people justly fly with their children during the worst summer months. – I am anxious to Know how the Leserne’s are. You Know the yellow fever has been terrible at Mobile.15 Times are here very bad and effect book trade of course much. And still I believe we must go through worse times yet. People will not, depile of all castigation learn to live within their means. Good bye then for to-day. – Tuesday Sept. 24. At ½ p. 10 o’clock closes the Havre bag, it is now ½ past 9 so I must hurry; for by this packet I must write yet; it is the last letter my dear ones recieve from me from the North; the last, yes the last I write from here. I say it with emotion – On Sunday I went to Heckschers who are staying at Gerard Costers at old Primes.16 I was obliged to dine there. I donot love any longer to go to Heckscher. Oh, what a dreadful goose she has become, or the goose has developped itself more.17 And plain, and crooked and angry – she blushed colored up twice at dinner with anger. Oh God, my dear, dear Matilda, my beloved lamb, my sweetest violet! I Kiss you fervently and triumphantly. Such a prize became mine. Not triumphantly, for it was and is not owing to me, but devoutly. Mrs Gerard Coster beats, if anything, Mrs Heckscher18 in Goose-ship. It makes me so melancholy to stay with such people. Thence I went to old Coster; Yesterday morning I found Heckscher’s19 “tribute”, shopped furiously, baught skirts, very good, at a selling off 14 15

16 17 18 19

Minna Arning née Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. In 1839 a severe epidemic of yellow fever hit Mobile/Ala. Especially newcomers to the tropical climate were affected; the illness lasted from August till October 1839, 450 people lost their life. See TIME MAGAZINE MONDAY JUL. 06, 1925 URL genealogytrails.com (18.11.2016). Gerard H. Coster, brother in law and partner of Charles August Heckscher, New York City. Charles August Heckscher and his wife Georgiana née Coster. Matilda Coster née Prime; Georgiana Heckscher née Coster. Charles August Heckscher, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, New York City.

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shop for $ 2. dined at Bards20 – very, very friendly, send love to you, were most delighted with O’s letter. When I went away, Eliza who looked most lovely, and with whom I arranged an elopement for the winter, she to live with me, threw me Kisses from out the window at me.21 Thence over to Hoboken to Mrs Labat, saw from the water the National Theatre and two churches &c &c in fire.22 I had meant to see Kean as Richard III23 there the evening, but here in America you Know theatres add to their weekly performances generally the annual spectacle of burning a conflagration. To-day I dine at old Astor’s, to-morrow at Will. B. Astors, the son of the Nabob.24 My dearest Matilda I feel very strange always now; when the wind blows high and shows me the female figures more than commonly, I feel somewhat as when I saw for the first times battels, when 15 or 16 years old – eine gehoben u hebende Wollust. [4] All this is very well, but how I shall get throw the winter I dont Know. Meine Sinne sind gesund, u Gott segnete mich mit reger Phantasie. There is a beautiful passage in the letters of Lady Sarah Russel, this paragon of highminded, gentle-hearted, loving wives, whom you I Know would be equal, where you called upon by circumstances – I Know you would. She says in one of them; I write this letter from my bed, leaning upon that pillow, where the head of beloved friend will soon rest by my side &c &c.25 – My dear Matilda donot forget, I entreat you, to settle my money matters with your uncle,26 ask him to tell you how much I over-drew, and tell me how much, and how I shall remit money to you. – You have not mentioned the Hesse’s. – Just now I hear that Mr Barnwell, while at the Springs, lost his two youngest children, whom he left at Beaufort. Poor parents. Kiss mine own most fervently and thank God for their life and health. I forgot to tell you, that I found Mrs Labat looking much better I thaught than the last time, and the children greatly improved. She cried at some passages in the letter I read to her. But they return next spring! However, her time 20 21 22

New York family, friends of the Liebers. Eliza Delafield Bard, married to Rufus King Delafield. See the print “Destruction of the National Theatre, New York, September 23, 1839”, 10×13 cm, NYPL The New York Public Library Digital Collections URL digitalcollections.nypl.org (20.12.2016). 23 The tragedy of King Richard III, tragedy by William Shakespeare, 1592, first performance 1633. 24 Astor sen und jun. 25 Sellwood, Letters of Lady Rachel Russell. 26 Jacob Oppenheimer.

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in America must have been a most dreadful one. I am sorry I cannot think now of every thing. I hope my dearest Matilda you talk over, regularly, what Oscar has had at school, so that the school remains a subject of deep interest for his whole inner-man, and does not become a task alone. – Pelham, the tutor took breakfast with me this moment, and said after a pause – Dr, do you Know, I dont like the idea of returning at all. “Well thaught I, if you dont like it; no wonder that I absolutely loathe it.” – How must I direct my letter. I shall buy no flower, no potatoes &c. You Know how late the things come. I hope I find the book when I come home, for, if I were to die, I could not say now where it is. Probably in the drawer. My dearest Matilda, I shall not be able to send you anything to Christmass. You Know in our Rattennest27 we have nothing, and than how to send it? Therefore buy yourself, I pray you, something fine, and the children, both Carry’s and ours, and if there are trifles yet worth accpct, for Carry & Hart, whom I love despite of there indecorous behaviour. Will Carry not write me how she found you all! Donot forget to obtain some plan of Hamburg for Oscar, first one, if possible, with few streets in it, and pray some one in my name to go with him on a church steeple and explain the situation. I was on one I recollect. But make this ascession a reward for a good school week. And, my Oscar, when on the steeple, turn your face Toward me, at Columbia – the map will tell you how that must be, and throw me a kiss. – Good bye my dearest life. Grüße alle herzlich u tausend Mal. Hast du schon Gossler28 gefragt, wann das erste Schiff nach Charleston geht, u ihn gebeten dir regelmäßig Anzeigen zu machen. How are my raisors? That day, when at length the box shall arrive for you Know, the river will make me [cross-writing] wait for it, for weeks, I dare say, it will be a most noble day, and safely may you hang a thousand loves to each, no little article – none I promise you will be lost, for I will Kiss them all off. I Kiss my Norry, my Hammy – whose Yeth Thir (for yes sir) makes me still sometimes cry – for I see the little honest, straightforward chap, who did as well as he could – does he lisp still – Kiss Oscar, your sisters and love me – Kiss me not, or I get passionate. Your loving-in-the-wind Frank You write that your relations respect me. Well, but you recollect that James wrote, that his relation did not always speak with that respect of me wish which is due me, that is which he thaught proper. Now, who are those ­relations. 27 Columbia/SC. 28 Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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I assure – and in fact you Know me sufficiently, that I am not childish. My name depends upon things than respectful or disrespectful talk; all I anxiously wish is that they donot treat me disrespectfully on your account, for I could not bear, not suffer the idea that you are recieved and caressed as the pitied wife of that unfortunate magere Gelehrten. Such insult to you, would terribly pain me, and if it were offered, I would say return at once. But I trust and hope not. Single Via Havre Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Hamburg 3 stamps faded + red sealing wax

No. 15 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 25.09.-07.10.1839 THL Box 54 LI 5057, ALS, 4 pages, letter not completed Brief 6 Hamburg den 25sten Sept. 1839. Mein einziger bester Franz bis zum 7ten Nov1 Welche Freude hast du mir gemacht mit deinen Howard Briefen, meiner kam noch immer zu, und mir war fast als sollte ich dich noch zuletzt empfangen du lieber lieber Junge, am Sonnabend bekam ich den ersten durch Onkel Jakob, der selbst bald noch kam um zu hören was ich für Nachrichten von dir hatte, dann folgte der Brief durch Gossler2 und heute erhielt ich nun das Päckchen, Kuchen, Bücher, Haarlocke, Flagge und wieder Brief enthaltend laß mich dir drücken mein bester Freund. Bei solcher Liebe, und solchen Beweisen wie du mir giebst magst du gern Sallys3 Kopf untersucht haben, doch Liebster mögt’ ich gern wissen wie denn die “Attitüde” war, fassest du ihr an der Seite, vor ihr oder hinter ihr? Haben deine Blicke sich nirgend anders hingewagt? Flattere, flirte immer zu, du kannst es, denn deine teure Liebe ist immer mein. du könnest nichts thun wo bei ich nicht mein “Wohlgethan”, von Herzen aussprechen würde, denn wen du dich freust so freue ich mich. We are one heart and soul. Frank my boy, are we not? Ich wollte du wüßtest wie mich deine Briefe glücklich gemacht haben, daß du dich so viel mit uns beschäftigst ist schön und schön war es auch daß das Schiff mit deinen Liebes-Boten so schnell ankam denn es hatte die Reise in 23 Tagen zurückgelegt. Ich werde später jeden einzelnen Brief zur besonderen Beantwortung vornehmen, zuerst aber von allerlei wie es mir gerade einfällt. Von der Flagge habe ich Oscar noch nichts gesagt; da sie zu spät für den Geburtstag ankam denke ich sie bis zum Weinachten ruhig aufzubewahren, wo sie eine große Rolle über den Tisch aufgestellt spielen wird, u den Amerikanern gleich ihre Stelle am Tisch zeigen wird, der Brief an Oscar wird also mit aufgehoben, doch habe ich ihm einiges daraus vorgelesen was mit der Flagge nicht in Verbindung war, und wobei es wie bei dem Lesen jedes deiner Briefe der Fall ist, Thränen vergoß, und mir fest versprach sich von seinen Fehlern zu bessern. Ich kann dir die Freude machen dir zu erzählen daß Oskar bis jezt jede Woche ein gutes Zeugnis bekommen hat. Er geht auch sehr gerne nach die Schule und bittet mich immer ihn in Pension zu schicken. Auch ich denke an die Zeit wenn ich ihn hier zurück lassen muß mit Angst 1 The dates given do not fit the postal evidence: the letter was finished on October 7, not ­November 7, see the stamp of arrival in New York which bears the date of November 3. 2 Johann Heinrich Gossler. 3 Sally Newton née Sullivan.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_017

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und Bangigkeit; Ein so junges Kind ganz fremden Händen zu übergeben ist keine kleine Sorge, doch müssen wir thun was wir als das Beste anerkennen und nicht durch Ängstlichkeit uns von unserem Plan abziehen lassen; doch ach Franz, wie sehr wie sehr wünsche ich du könntest selbst bestimmen in welcher Schule er kommen sollte. Du könntest selbst seine Lehrer kennen. Hätten sie dein Vertrauen, dann wäre ich beruhigt. Wer weiß wie sich alles noch wendet. Ich glaube an eine Veränderung unseres Wohnorts; sey es Philadelphia oder Neu York. Wenn dir der Muth sinken will so bedenke nur daß die gute Nachricht doch immer etwas Plötzliches sein wird, und daß deine Trösterin nicht verzagt. Frisch auf! Mein theurer Freund, Gott schenkt dir noch glückliche Tage! Froh sollst du dein Leben genießen, dadurch daß dein eigen Werth, die Tüchtigkeit deiner Schriften immer mehr und mehr anerkannt wird, dann in der schönen Ausbildung deiner Söhne, die Gott gebe – die frohe Entwicklung eines oft herrlig Schicksals befriedigt genießen. And then a little cottage of our own my boy, a garden flowers, and a few friends. Perhaps a sweet girl growing up a blessing to our old age. Tell me, would this satisfy you? One boy should be a lawyer and what instruction he would receive from his father? Be comforted, my poor exiled Frank, all will be well with us and by the time our boys are grown up, we shall be a downright American family. I feel a kind of pride in writing this, I am content it should be so, and I shall hoist the American flag over my boys and tell them to honor it. When Europe denied you a home, you were kindly received on the Atlantic shores and whither your wife followed, there she will live and die with you. True, true that we are there deprived of many of the choicest enjoyments of life, which Europe grants in abundance, but there are also many advantages There is a generous air, an absence of all littleness and meanness of spirit [2] in the American atmosphere, which we miss elsewhere. 26th my last letter was dispatched by the Liverpool and sent from here on the 17th. In the evening Caroline and I went to the theatre were we had a delightful entertainment in listening to the beautiful music of Jessonda by Spohr.4 I did not know the subject or I would have taken Oscar with me for I am sure it would have fascinated him. We always go in Uncle Jacobs private box, so that we need not hesitate to go without a gentleman to conduct us. It speaks greatly to the advantage of a town of Hamburgs size and population that this can be done genteely; we are 4 Jessonda, opera by Louis Spohr, lyrics by Eduard Heinrich Gehe, first performance Kassel 1823.

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in the habit also of returning from our evenings at Aunt Minna’s two or three sisters5 together without ever being molested. I believe you will find that I do not write you sufficient of my impressions; but you must remember how little large towns on the whole differ from each other; You must remember the maid servants with their fall tight dresses, and shawl covered market baskets, they form the only pretty class in Hamburg. The peasants are not good looking and I find the dress quite ugly (Matilda is getting sleepy, more tomorrow love) As for the streets of Hamburg you can form no idea of the impression they give to an American eye, these narrow dirty streets, without pavement where one is in constant danger of being run over. Carry & I are obliged to send our three little boys with two nurses to school and poor Rebecca exclaims dreadfully against Hamburg and thinks Columbia quite a paradise in comparison. I long to hear from you after your journey for I hope and think you will enjoy it, it is a nice trip; but alas! now while I write your pleasure is all over, and you are on your return to Columbia. I hope I shall have a letter from you after the receipt of my first, with the Great Western; I am sorry this conveyance is too expensive to make frequent use of it, as it is so delightful to have these quick accounts. I agree with you fully in your opinion of Fanny’s6 letter but do these girls not assume a character in their writings, which in reality they have not. Diese störrische Selbstständigkeit äußern sie wohl weniger im wirklichen Leben als man sich vorstellen sollte; grüße die Mädchen7 sehr von mir, mit allen Fehlern haben sie doch so liebenswürdige Eigenschaften daß man ihnen ihre Fehler vergiebt. – Das war ja eine erschreckliche Geschichte die du mir von Nahant erzählst, armer, armer Franz! ich hatte eine Angst als ich deine Beschreibung las. Die Dokumente an Gustav8 gerichtet habe ich sogleich Gelegenheit gehabt zu besorgen. 2ten October, my poor Frank is now in Columbia, Oh dear! that solitary bed would that I were in my own quarters tonight, Frank, I think we will not thus part again while we live. People always find here that I do not appear happy, I tell them, it is impossible while seperated from you. We live quietly, poor Harriet has been confined to her beds nearly a fortnight with her very bad cough which sometimes makes me quite uneasy and Caroline and I have consequently been much at home. One evening we passed at Warburgs, you will remember them from London, they were little changed and much pleased to see me; there I met the wife of old Dr Wolf, quite a handsome looking woman. (I am writing this in my bed room at 12 O Clock, Oscar is just 5 6 7 8

Caroline Lomnitz, Mathilde Lieber, and Henriette Oppenheimer. Fanny Appleton, Boston. Fanny and Mary Appleton, Boston. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin.

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[3] laughing in his sleep) – Adela has returned to town and I have spent several evenings with her,9 she is hourly expecting her confinement. We are gradually getting on our old footing, she has her faults too, but when you know her you must like her; they are a very happy and nice couple,10 he doates upon her extravagantly. It is all a mistake about any kind of prejudice against you, but she says: I always wanted her to love you, and she could not without personal knowledge love any one. After having spent a few hours very pleasantly there Ferdinand11 took me home in his little boat; You remember the Jungfernstieg and the large bason of the Alster,12 a cross this water; on the opposite shore a new row of houses are built, one of which Hallers inhabit13 and we got in the boat in his garden; it was quite a romantic affair. They always beg me to stay there all night, they are accustomed to keep their friends in that way, for they say the best fun is always at bed time. Fine fun indeed for a poor Strohwitwe! Adela supplies me with books, but I have seen nothing yet that you could read, and that I enjoy. I had almost gone off to Berlin the other day. Adolf Goldschmidt was here and offered to escort me as he was going; I would have taken advantage of the opportunity had it not been for Harriets sickness and a great dislike to take Oscar from his school so soon. This latter will always be a difficulty for a weeks holydays are the utmost the boys have here even at Christmas. A. Goldschmidt14 made me inanswerable questions with regard to Porto Rico; I think he has a great fancy to go there, his poor mother is in a hopeless state, deprived of the use of her limb ∆ family live in Paris,15 he in London, and is not a happy man. Rieke Meyer is gone to Italy with a friend. Ludwig Meyers wife has married again, people say she was engaged before her husbands’ death. Yesterday I dispatched several letters to Boston, letters of recomendation for a young friend of Ludwig Oppenheimer.16 I wrote to Nathan Appleton, 9

Adele Haller lived with her husband and children within the City of Hamburg; weekends and most of the summer vacations were spent in her parents’ spacious manor in Nien­ stedten in close neighborhood with the Parish, and Gossler families. 10 Adele and Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, cousins of Mathilde Lieber. 11 Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, husband of Adele and cousin of Mathilde Lieber. 12 Binnenalster. 13 During Mathilde Lieber’s stay in Hamburg 1839–1840, Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller and his family lived Holzdamm/Ferdinandstrasse and owned a boat to cross the Binnenalster; in the 1850s–1860s they lived in the Neue Jungfernstieg 19. 14 Adolf Goldschmidt. 15 Adelheid Goldschmidt. 16 Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, brother of Adele Haller and cousin of Mathilde Lieber.

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Gossler & Sally,17 a pretty long letter and thanks to her for her kind treatment of my husband, I believe you were on pretty good terms with each other. I also sent Mr Hilliard,18 to whom I did not recommend my protegé, something quite peculiar new & pretty in the way of a purse together with a little note. Julius19 came to see me the other day, more horrid than ever, nasty fellow, he kissed Oscar twice. Matilde Benecke20 will be here this day fortnight, I am very glad indeed to see her again. Horrible cheatings of the old Benecke21 against his wards have been brought to light in the course of the law suit against him, but the result is yet undecided, his lawyer has still to answer the charges. The old man was only saved from Hausarrest by one voice, and that the voice of a generous enemy. Our learned cousin Neander and his remarkable sister with their student follower have all been to see us.22 Harriet who saw much of them in Heidelberg tells the funniest stories about the[m] I have had a delightful letter from Sally Jacobsen, she is so anxious to ha[ve] me in Berlin, makes very particular inquiries after you. Saw Mr Schön who told me he had made your acquaintance at New York last year, enchanté de mon mari! Had a note in answer to one of mine from Mrs Henry Gossler,23 hope

17 18 19 20

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Nathan Appleton, Gustav Gossler, and Sally Newton née Sullivan, all residents in Boston/ Mass. She meant Hillard, not Hilliard, a mistake she performed several times to the annoyance of her husband. Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius. Matilde Benecke née Schweder; in his Berlin youth hotblooded Lieber had adored the young beauty who was happily married to his longtime friend Wilhelm Benecke, a former turner friend and successfull banker in Berlin. However the luck of the couple did not last; because his uncle Wilhelm Christian Benecke von Gröditzberg had cheated on Wilhelm Benecke, the young man and his brother Stephan/Etienne Benecke lost their property and went bankrupt. While Wilhelm died in 1827, his brother Stephan/Etienne fled to New Orleans/LA then to Mexico, became a successfull merchant and stayed in close contact with his sister in law and her children. Wilhelm Christian Benecke von Gröditzberg who had misused his power by betraying his wards, longtime friends of Franz Lieber, Wilhelm and Stephan/Etienne Benecke, Berlin Wilmersdorf. August Neander and his sister Johanna, cousins of Mathilde Lieber. August Neander was borne as David Mendel to the sister of Mathildes’ mother, Esther Gottschalck and Emanuel Mendel in Göttingen; while in Hamburg the friend of Karl August Varnhagen in 1806 converted from Judaisme to Protestantism and became one of the leading theologians of Church- and religion history at the Berlin University in the footsteps of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Elizabeth Bray Gossler, wife of Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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[4] to be on a very friendly footing in winter, such near neighbours &c. Yesterday my dearest Frank I received through Gossler24 the English Edition of Pol Eth.25 How fine it looks. I was very very much pleased with it and thank you warmly for having it sent to me. It is indeed a respectable looking book. I think the beginning of the 2 vol reads uncommonly well I hope the whole will answer your expectations, I mean that you will say yourself that it is good, and mine to have the world commend you. Oh Frank, may your labor be blessed! I thank you too for the Introduction to Synonimes,26 Do not work so very hard but try sometimes to refresh yourself a little. I am grieved for poor McCord27 what will Charlotte do with all those little children, this circumstance will influence your winter too. I shall write to Charlotte28 by the Howard which leaves here on the 24th I shall then also send you a little box, it is no use to wait for Charleston ships, there has not been one going to that port since I am here; I requested Gossler to be on the look out for me should there be any from Bremen but there have been none as yet, it is too early yet to send any nice eatables, I must wait later for sausages herrings &c – Hessens have not yet returned,29 Uncle Morris is just arrived from England he and Uncle Jacob met at our house to day and we had a delightful visit, Caroline always manages to have a great deal of fun with them and one can see how they like to come and chat with the three sisters. Uncle Jacob tried to persuade us to see Robert le diable but we had not amused ourselves the last time we went in Fidelio30 and therefore remained at home to night. Poor little Emma is very much in love with James and does not at all like to wait so long for him; I like her very well.31 – Now of our dear dear Oscar, God grant that I have chosen well for him, I believe it & trust you will be satisfied. Of the necessity of no longer keeping him at home I have spoken to you frequently, he could not be here without being ruined, too many children […] women for a boy like Oscar with his spirit & understanding – therefore – I got Ludwig Oppenheimer to try again at Dr Palms. The result was this. Dr Palm said he could take no more boarders, but Dr Busse, the first man in his institution and whom the parents and boys love as well as himself might if he were 24 Johann Heinrich Gossler. 25 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 26 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 27 David McCord, Columbia/SC. 28 Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC. 29 Family Hesse in Altona. 30 Fidelio, opera by Ludwig van Beethoven, first performance Vienna 1805. 31 Emma Oppenheimer, daughter of Morris Oppenheimer, granddaughter of Salomon Heine was going to marry her cousin James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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willing take some boys who should partake of all the instruction at Dr. Palms school & be boarded with Busse. Palm and Busse are very great friends, they [cross-writing, 3] have made their studies together and afterwards practised their intended occupation in a very renowned establishment as teachers. They then came back again to their native place and established this school. Palm being the wealthy man undertook the whole and is the principal. But it has been their intention gradually to seperate, as Palm does not wish to have more than 12 boys. Therefore until Busse has a sufficient number to have his own seperate school, they have made the arrangement which I have mentioned to you! Busse is a very nice man indeed, with a very nice little wife who has promised to me to do every thing as a mother for our dear boy. They have a very comfortable house and every thing neat and orderly. There is a cheerful spirit amongst these people which I think would please you very much. They make frequent tours with the boys, and want in every way to give the whole the character of a family. Busse is now wrapt up in the idea of having Oscar, he will I feel convinced do much for the boy, it will be for Oscar at present as if he had a first rate private teacher [cross-writing, 2] together with a boarding school – I am satisfied, pleased may you be the same. I have had several long talks with Busse, and find his views on education very excellent, he will himself devote much of his time to Oscar and take him to Dr Palms to partake of the studies there and join with the boys in their play hours. Caroline and I went out together to Dr Busses house, and found every thing as I told you, friendly orderly and pretty. The table was covered with presents which the schoolboys had given him for his birthday, all works of their own, maps drawings or what ever their capacities allowed, the room was decorated with flowers by the boys who all love Dr Busse very much. Oscar will give you the plan of the house, he will write to you by the Howard. At Dr Palms they have all the first masters from Hamburg;32 an excellent drawing master amongst the rest, the plan is to draw from objects themselves so that

32

The Palm’sche Erziehungshaus in Eppendorf founded in 1835 was very much praised by educators across Germany; the Hessian journal Allgemeine Schul-Zeitung was surprised that its founders Dr. Gustav Palm and Dr. Andreas Busse did not advertise the private boarding school; see Allgemeine Schul-Zeitung, Vierzehnter Jahrgang 1837, Erster Band Januar bis Juni, Darmstadt Druck und Verlag von Karl Wilhelm Lesko, p. 1592.

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[cross-writing, 1] their ideas of form may be well developed. It will be his first care to make him perfect in German, as an imperfect knowledge of it will prevent his progress in other studies. You would be surprised to hear him talk now, he has already very much improved. 7th Oct To morrow I take Oscar out he grieved very much to leave Mr Werner for whom he felt great affection. How shall I sleep to morrow night the very first night that the dear boy was ever away from me – No I am mistaken, I remember he once spent a day or two at Mrs Carey’s, dont you remember when you went to Burlington to fetch him home because he was sick there? I have been very busy in equipping him, some thing’s dear Carry and Hart gave me, others our excellent aunt Minna, and others I procured myself. It is rather an expensive concern, besides his clothing he will cost us 300 dollars, these may come to an additional 50 or 60 dollars. But I know you would rather (continuation under Gustavs Letter) Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. By Favor of his Excellency Mr De Rönne Privy Councellor of Elegatur and Minister Resident Of HM the King of Prussia In the U/S of NA Stamp New York Nov 3

No. 16 Francis Lieber, New York/NY + Philadelphia, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 25.09.-29.09.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages No IX Sept 25. 1839. N.Y. This letter then will probably be sent from Columbia! Do you Know Matilda that the account of Hammy’s expecting me when the boat pilot was to come on board, made my tears most foolishly start into my eyes. There was much implicity in the thing; because I went down the letter ladder and away in the last boat, therefore the first must bring me. And then the boy thaught of me. Believe me, I love that boy very much – I meant to have myself painted for you, but the printer is absent, the one I wanted, and altogether there is no time now so you must do without my phiz. on canvas and be satisfied with that on soul, I meant painted on yours. They all tell me that I look remarkably well, and I can see, I look well – for a fortnight longer, and Columbia will soon give me my hum-drum face. – I sent yesterday No VIII by Havre. Donot forget to by bye buy for Osc. that Atlas of which I have written in the book. If you could obtain a globe it would be well. I donot like at all a boy to be without a globe; yet to purchase one of sufficient size is too expensive probably. If you send me ever thick letters by vessels to Charleston, you must send them to Trapmann or Gen. Hayne – the latter is probably by far the best – with a polite request to send it by private opport. Gen Robert Y. Hayne would be indeed the best, for they send always to the boys.1 But in that case Oscar ought to write to his particular friend Mr Hayne. Altogether I think he ought to write to her.2 By the way, how are the turtles? This evening 7 o c’ Today I dine at W.B. Astors, and take an oyster supper at Möllers, after having taken leave of Eliza.3 I have seen her 3 times! She is very amiable to me. To-morrow I start for the South – I might as well have swallowed a doze of caster oil, as have written these seven words, just before breakfast. – Do you know, I think almost that Mr Barnwell will resign. I know Henry4 is a horror to him, nor would Henry make the faculty business easy; in addition the death of his two children and the general dislike he has to the whole situation – it would not surprize me If it should take place, I believe I should not take a single step to obtain the presidentship, for it is a bothersome situation. If it were offered to me, I would consider. Besides Henry would strive might and made to get it. No doubt. I kiss thee and the silent ones, and the children. I wish very much to have a dictated letter from 1 2 3 4

Two sons of General Hayne were students at the College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC. Mrs. General Hayne. Eliza Bard Delafield, New York City. Prof. Robert Henry, College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC.

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Oskar. Pray take longer paper. Not that your letters so far were not fine, full and fat; you have been so dutiful a little wife; but I mean in future, when you will have so much to say with OSC together. Yester-day I saw a ballet here, the Tagliane, wife to the brother of the celebrated Taglione. There is no use in eating oysters and seeing ballets of for a man in my situation. – Since I wrote the above I was out, settled the grocers affairs &c, and learned that poor Mr Blanding, who went you Know to Charleston as president of the railroad bank, died of the yellow fever!5 Poore children.6 I also received a letter from Mrs Labat, which she had sent me to Boston, informing me that you had safely arrived at Helvelsluys.7 How did they in Hamb. Know it? Has Oscar been on the steeple? If so let him give me a discription as well and ∆ and as possible. This morning I said in another store of steel pens (!!!). That I of all men in universe must buy pens by the dozens! Matilde, I baught more sauces than written down, so as to Sauce Town; the dry lonely dinners. I just saw Mrs Branker, and there Mrs Gleim, eine Hamburgerin. Is she really called handsome in Hamb? I heard so, but heavens’ You have no idea Mat. how the American beauty struck me when coming from Canada, and so peculiar is the American beauty – that brown eye, oval delicate but, refined face. I Know an American woman at once. Goodbye & I must dress for dinner. I kiss my Yeth-Thir,8 and let him ride – horse is dead! Heigho! Philad. Sept 27 Friday My leave has been taken. When I left N.Y. I felt and not unjustly so, that I was taking a second leave of you. The intercommunication from port to port is so different. I Know I shall feel another pang, when I fairly enter the South, that is when loghouses, negroes and sugaring begins. Scold me not, no one can help feelings, they start unvoluntarily up, and depend upon associations. Thus a tutor is travelling with me, and Pelham? You remember him? I believe, and when he utters in long, broad Carolina drawling, it is if something repaling were forced down my throat. Yet again and again, I care for nothing has did I but see an end.The aurora borealis which I saw at Montreal, I believe on the 3d of Sept, was also seen in great splendor at N.Y. and the papers report, at Bermudas. It was one of the finest ever observed, so Prof. Renwick tells me. – “When lately Mrs Borell (you remember the handsome Grandchild of Old Astor, of whom I wrote you last year, was confined with a boy, its great grandfather said to Mr Borell: 5 6 7 8

Abram Blanding, Charleston/SC. James Douglas Blanding. He thought of the Dutch port Hellevoetsluis. Allusion to Hamilton Lieber who could not pronounce ‘Yes Sir’ the proper way.

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There take this and carry it to Mr Bard’s Trust Company, and lett Interest be added to interest until the boy is 21 years old”. It was a check of for 30 000 dollars which will be about 70 000 by the time designated. That’s sound and substantial. I am already quite anxious again to have a letter you remember you have not written yet about you passage from Holland. My dear Matilda, go every now and than to Mr Werner, or invite him, and talk very plainly about Oscar; and let all his faults and weak points as well as his prominent good ones be designated to you. Have you already subscribed for the Penny Magazine and so that you obtain [2] the missing numbers from the time we stopped here? My dear Matilda I pray Let not not that box trouble you. I should be sorry indeed if you put your yourself to any anxiety or bustle. Enjoy yourself calmly. As the dove bathes herself with great delight and quiet enjoyment in the limpid brook, so bathe the wings of your soul in the full stream of love now offered you. – The shirt I baught ready made fit me better than any I had. I have baught a keg of herrings in N.Y. I have not baught flannel &c. for the servants; the prices you gave me seemed not to warrant the trouble, when I inquired about it. I met just now old Lions, who like every shopkeeper of Columbia treats me here in the North as a “dear acquantance”. He left Columbia lately and all was well. I was just talking with Mr Zahn and Becket when the old fellow came up. I saw Miss Waln this morning. Mrs Petit, Mrs Reed’s sister is dead; she Mrs Reed has charge of Judge Petits children. To-morrow I shall go out to see Mr Biddle. Mrs Ellet coughs very much. I believe her lungs too are affected. My second vol. will make 650 pages.9 I am very glad it does not make two volumes. I am staying here at the Merchants Hotel, kept by the brother of Mr Sanderson,10 who wrote the American in Paris, which you liked so much (abstract Taglione &c). He is now writing the American in London, and a volume the American in America is to follow.11 What do you think when I tell you that those letters were w ­ ritten by a man of 9 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, vol. 2. 10 Lieber was mistaken: the hotel well known “by the travelling community in general” was owned by N.W. Bridges; the printer Joseph M. Sanderson, however, advertised the hotel in prints; Sheldon & Co.’s Business or advertising Directory: containing the cards, circulars, and advertisements of the Principal Firms of the Cities of New-York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore etc., John F. Trow & Company 1845, p. 2. 11 John Sanderson, The American in Paris, 2 vols. London 1838.

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at least 55 to his own daughter, and not at all intended for publication? I saw him here this morning, he paying me high complements; I could well afford to return the complements. He said he was delighted with my conversation and that I started more ideas in a quarter of an hour, than most books of 2 vols contained. That goes for what it is worth. The Bostonians have attacked our penitentiary system again, and have been answered here; in both publications my second Letter to the Prison Society is considerably spoken of and forms the ground of various discussions.12 – I am perfectly well, my foot is quite in order once more. I have now most comfortable shoes on the English military plan, at least I found the pattern with the British officers. I hope my letter from Montreal has duly come to hand. Do you speak English with Oscar? Do so, I pray you. – I have $ 200 in silver with me. I said to send me 10 and 5 cent pieces, and unfortunately they sent me nearly all only 5 cent pieces, which makes my trunk very heavy. And how shall I get rid of all the little things? Miss Waln and the Bards send their best love. I called on Ingersoll, but did not find him. This evening I mean to call again and on Sergeants. – I love you most ardently my Matilda, and all your boys, “seperately and jointly”. They are my dear boys. Speak to good honest Hammy of me, and tell him his father loves him much. So Norry and Oscar. God bless the beloved boys. Goodbye, it is dinner time. I kiss you very fervently, and I kiss the sisters. I have written twice to the W.Y. boys during my last stay at N.Y. – Oscar uses the word stage for stage coach, which quite confused me when I first read his dear letter. Tell him always to say stage-coach. Stage is theatre, or a halt of a thing proceding. Once more good, goodbye. Old Lyons said I looked uncommonly well. So say all; this for your comfort.  – Sunday 29th of September. Gilpin whom I wished to see in Washington is not there, so I thaught I might as well pass the Sunday here and write to my own – one more letter before I go date from Columbia. It may go by the Havre packet of the 1 of Octob. But my dear Matilda you must not henceforth expect so many letters; nor would they be interesting enough. What shall I have to write? Matilda Willing, who was peculiarly yielding this time, said when I remarked upon it: I lately read an article on you in an English paper, full of the highest praise by one who knew well what he writes, and it flatters me to have such a man attentive to me. Eh, Matilde, c’est à dire Vous Matilda, à Hambourg, prenez garde! I went yesterday morning to see Mr Biddle at his villa. He has the most extensive and noble graperies I have ever seen, and what grapes! And such a beautiful villa, and the beautiful Mrs Craig living in a charming cottage close by. The impro12 Lieber, A Popular Essay on Subjects of Penal Law.

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[3] vements are very extensive. Between his graperies is an enclosed spot on which he means to have all sorts of tropical plants, because it is warm and protected. One idea occupies him now which is very interesting. He said, a flower without scent is, all admit, like a fine woman who does not talk (I dont admit that so entirely; the comparison besides for a Southener unfortunate, for mention the words scent and woman in one sentence, no matter in what connexion, and you have the parfuming and fussing negro belle at once before your mind of infusing scent into beautiful but ordorless flowers, e.g. the Japonica. God speed him! Anything of the sort is beautiful, for it is always a proof of man’s high combinatory powers. But I should think the ancient Romans as well as the Chinese must have tried it. Another good saying of his was this: in walking through the open vineyard are found some fox grapes. You percieve, said he the thick pulp in the aboriginal grape, as nature offers it. This pulp is the original sin, which civilisation alone can do away with. Until that pulpe is not distroyed and transformed into delicate juice the grape is worth nothing. – I like that fact and simile, so the Pol. Ethics, I should have made use of it, not however as my own. You know I am very conscientious in that. I returned by the N.Y. steamboat which passes his house in front, having gone out by railroad, which takes him by the rear. On board the boat I found a man who sold most beautiful and tasteful though gorgeous bouquets of Dhalias, tied on the a thick-ground of cedar branches, It was truly beautiful. I always encourage ∆ selling of bouquets. There is something so gentle and civiliz ∆ is the mere word “Flower-Market”! I mean I encourage ∆ bouquets substantially, as people ought to encourage literature substantially – by buying books. I carried the bouquet to – you think Matilda Willing? She had deserved it indeed, but it was too far. I took it to Miss Ingersoll. – Girard College still in the Zustand des Werdens! Biddle however was very friendly, and wanted me to stay and dine or pass the night. His son (of Liverpool fame) wanted me to dine there to-day. – Donot forget to burn that phrenological nonsense, I sent you by direct vessel, or scratch out, in the printed book my name, and the various numbers, and tear out all that is written, and than you may keep it and bring it back; it may serve not as a printed memorial of humbug. As to phrenology, I think that there is some truth in it no doubt and that the phrenologists have done some good. Wether there are so many minute organs as they say, and wether they show themselves so clearly on the outside of the skull, I donot know. I doubt it most distincly, but that the brain is the peculiar organ of the mind, and that certain parts of it are the peculiar organs of certain mental activities, I have not the slightest doubt. All the world allow a high elevated well-rounded forehead to be indicative of

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high intellectual activities. The phrenologists have done good in analyzing the activities of the mind more minutely. There is no doubt in my mind. Causality for instance is a peculiar activity. You recollect how often I have told you that my mind has a peculiar tendency and delight in and skill in constantly penetrating to and seizing upon the elements and causes of phenomena, and institutions &c. The chief divisions of the mental activities are perhaps these: the more animal ones, or appetites; the more especial mental activities e.g. reasoning, imaginations, and the energyies or impulsory activities, such as will, firmness. That these have their peculiar organs in the brain I have no doubt. As to giving these humbug “characters” I can easily see how they are made up. A well-dressed man, with a well-formed head and intelligent face comes, he is told he likes society, especially that of women, he loves approbation and care, for the opinion of others (his dress already shows it) and so on. – Oh how I long already again for a letter! Pray, donot always wait for a letter of mine, my darling, before you write. Tell me always, when people like you. Is it not my pleasure, my delight to hear so? But, soyez sage! I constitute Caroline and Harriet my authorized-spies, and charge them faithfully to report [4] if you flirt, and altogether to give me accurate and detailed and faithful accounts about my errant wife. – I saw Dr and Mrs Moehring. What a treasure he would be to me in Columbia, by way of talking. They have four children, 3 boys and a girl. Do you ever see Mr Siveking?13 He Knows me and Judge Schütte, at least that I believe is his name. He was Handelsrichter. Has Büsch come to see you – my friend with a long nose? He was one of the “coffees” at Gossler’s14 in Boston. – Boys are playing horse on the corridor before my door. I wish they were my boys. – Let that money buseness with your uncle15 be settled. Ask him I pray you, how much I must pay ∆ him. – Mrs Biddle wished to be remembered to you. – How does Oscar get along with his German in school? And how did he make out at first? I suppose pretty well. If he speaks Engl. to you, donot suffer him to mix German words with it, nor English words with his German. If he does not Know one or the other let him always ask. Does he paint? Take very anxious and solitious care that he be not spoiled on account of looks, and b­ eing 13 14 15

Perhaps Lieber thought of influential Hamburg syndicus Karl Sieveking, friend of August Neander. Gossler could be Johann Heinrich Gossler, his brother Gustav or their uncle Johann Nikolaus Gossler; Lieber had met Hamburg merchant Georg Hinrich Büsch in 1829 in Boston. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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an American, and all that. Let him be and feel manly and gentlemanly. Take care respecting his shoes. Wide, wide across the toes and tight in the instep – et c’est la métaphysique de l’art des cordonniers. I am very curious to hear of the dress of the little ones, especially of Norry. – I have always told the Tutors,16 that whenever they shoot something good, to send it to my house and to come and dine or soup with me.- Old Matthew Carey is dead. You know he was very old. He died easy. Old Duponceau and Vaughn must in the course of nature soon follow. Does Hammy not improve in talking? And does he not begin his letters yet? The lazy rogue? You have had, no doubt, letters from Züllichau. Perhaps some time or other, you write a line to Mrs Keibel. I think your are god-mother to her child. Her direction would be: pr. Adr. des Herrn Stadtrath Keibel, Berlin. The idea how to arrange matters resp. Oscar’s trip to Zuellichau, troubles me much. I donot wish to have his school going disturbed in any way, yet they will want to see him so much. After all you will perhaps be obliged to go without him. And again I wish Oscar so much to see the pictures and statues at Berlin. I Know they would make a deep lasting and active impression upon him. Should you ever go with him, I wish that you would write a line to Hitzig telling him you are there, for I want him to see Oscar. I donot know how you can arrange it, but I should like very much that you could present him to the minister vom Kamptz (c’est entre nous) If , while in Berlin, Count Arthur Bernsdorff should be there – he is now, I understand at Paris in the Prussian legation, you must write him a notee; telling him I begged you to do so, that he might see my boy, and that you would be glad to learn from him, when you [cross-writing, 1] might expect him. I Know he will be kind to Oscar and you, I trust, for he always loved me much. Should you then see his mother, countess America Bernsdorff or her daughter you must tell them that I have often spoken of you them.17 In Berlin – since I speak of I wish Oscar not to see too much, but of those things, he does see & he must carry away deep impressions. Among other things I wish him to see the Monument on the Templeners Berg, the Museum, das Zeughaus 16 17

Tutors at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. In the Danish-German family of Ernst Graf von Bernstorff Lieber had been employed as private tutor to the young sons in 1825. Perhaps Barthold Georg Niebuhr thanks to his Danish-North German background had pulled some strings; certainly he had provided Lieber with letters of introduction to members of the Bernstorff family. In 1820–1822 in the Oppenheimer family had been also a connection to a countess of Bernstorff through Emilie Tieck.

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and to walk through the Library if that is permitted. It will fix itself in his mind as a concentrated picture of the vastness of science, literature. The Charlottenburg Garden he ought to see, and if one of my friends will do it, let him accompany Oscar in ascending some steeple there. And now again, Good bye my own, dearest wife, my best Matilda. Remember me all that love you; such as Minchen Arning, Adele &c although I donot know them. Good bye, you flower of my heart. Kiss the children, until their lips are sore. My love to Harriet and Carry – those undeserving creatures. Not even a line added to yours; not even a message of love, those barbarians! Ever your Frank [4] Look here you naughty girls – what a fine space to say something loving to you, but I shall not; and leave the space blank. F.L. Single Paid Via New-York and Havre To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Esq Hamburg Per Packet Stamp New York 30. Sept. + stamp faded + stamp paid Stamp Paris 25. Oct Stamp Hamburg 30. Oct. 1839

No. 17 Francis Lieber, New York, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 26.09.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages New York, Sept 26, 1839 I met yester-day our friend Mr Trapmann; and he and Mrs Irving had been at Mr Fowler’s, a Phrenologist, who ‘examines’ heads. I concluded to have my old caput examined, and to send it the result to you, that you may know what treasure or lamp of misery you possess. I have been there, my Matilda, and now write down as nearly verbatim some parts of his examination as I can. I told him in the mean time to write down the result likewise. You will percieve that in some respects he gave almost the very words that I often used in describing certain feelings of mine, for instance, what he said of my feelings in danger. Of course this is only for you; for it would be too rediculous for others, except you may let your dear sisters laugh at it. Here then is your poor husband dissected: NB. He did not know who I was. Very fond of society and intercourse, but all your other qualities require that it be refined. Great and ardent attachment to friends. Excessive and probably uncontrollable passion for the other sex, as well for real enjoyment as for admiration of their beauty (Now think of my monkish life in Columbia!) You like food, and if you have had opportunity to cultivate taste, you are an epicure of peculiar taste. You relish most peculiarly a witty, delicate, refined saying, and even broad joke, if it be characteristic delights you much. You inquire invariably into the causes and elements of things, comprehend easily, but if you dont you donot like to find genuine pleasure in so long continued reflexion; but you done reflect much because your will is exceding. Your will is most peculiarly developped. [2] you delight in obstacles, because yo they test your will. Your will is greater than that of any man I have examined; you have it in Napoleon’s fashion. You have done many things from which others would have shrunk, because your will is excessive, and despite of your impatience, for you are very excitable almost nervous. Your enjoyments and griefs are very deep. You are therefor love therefore ardently, but also resent ardently. (The latter I know, and you know is not true; I know it practically the contrary).

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You have an ardent religious veneration, but care not for the dogmas in religion, unless they express something sublime. You love adore God, and adore when you admire him, for instance his Power, Sublimity. You love to adore Nature, and the Grand, Sublime in attracts you greatly. Your will makes you calm in danger, and in emergencies you would always assume a commanding position. You become calmer the greater the danger becomes. [3] your compassion is great. You are conscientious but your will is so great, that frequently you find it difficult to give up a plan because you find it against conscientiousness. You are full of hope; you live frequently hope. (No doubt, when people have nothing in the market as we in Columbia; their needs must live upon hope). Great sense of Color and Form, Immense adaptation to circumstances and especially to people. No traveller better succeeds in all different nations. Great Imitation. Learn Languages pretty easy, catch the sound very soon. You are not very fond of children on their own account, but you like them if they are interesting. (You remember what you have often said). Locality very respectable Great sense of order; you want everything in its place in your mind, and about you. (Matilda! Remember my pants, shirts, papers!) Yet it is true I do love order, and I donot love to keep it myself. Conscientiousness, Imagination, Combination, and compassion [4] very great Very fond of admiration but your self-esteeem is so great, that you donot go out of the way for it.You esteem yourself much, but you are not haughty, on the contrary you are affable and too proud to be vain. You are frank, open, not very cautious; you have great courage in stating your opinion, though differing from that of others, or from the universally adopted opinion. Your memory for facts, ideas and faces is very excellent, but poor for dates and names. You cannot quote the words, you have read, but the ideas which have strack you in an author are ever ready.

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You love the great, sublime and refined in poetry. Your own imagination is very strong. And what all! – I forget. I will now go and see how he has put me down. – P.S. You see from the handwriting and the pancity of expression of his own writing that he is uncultivated. – Burn all these things after having laughed at it especially the book, for it looks as if I had gone to have my fortune told. You see how vague he gives strings in the book. I kiss you and love my boys most ardently despite of all want.

No. 18 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 11.10.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages No X. Columbia, Oct. 11.1839. My dearly beloved Matilda, this is a solemn Moment for me; for the first Time since we parted, do I find myself in my study, a spot already some what sacred to me, on account of the intense labor last winter, and because hence proceeded both my volumes of the Ethics,1 which you know well, good or bad, are the work of my soul. I arrived here a week ago, but was in or on the bed until now. All is over now, and by the time my dear wife recieves these lines, all is forgotten too. I should not even have written about it, but the only, yes the only comfort I have at present is, to pour out to you; to have remained silent about it would have génè mon âme. you shall hear what it was that made me begin Robinson-Crusoeship so handsomely. When I came into this room, Matilda, I felt very solemne, not so wehmüthig as the other day, when for the first time I hobbled about; into the nursery, and the first thing I saw was the straw hat, that W.I. palmleaf hat, which has become with me so identified with my boys Oscar and Hammy.2 Then, and for the first time then since my return, came water into my eyes. This moment is different. I could not help thinking of so much! And at last Matilda, prayed to our heavenly father. I thanked him once more that he had given me health last winter to sustain such labor, not wisely adopted to the laws of health and animal organisation, prescribed by him, I prayed to grant me health during this season, as much for your as mine sake, to keep you and the children in sound health, to lead us happy once more to-gether, and if not against his plans, to not to let my mind perish here and to remove me to regions which are more or alone congenial to my soul and mind, according to the very principles of activity implanted in them by him, and in which alone it is possible for us to bring up ouhr children, without feeling daily, hourly our parental hearts bleeding. – I then took my pen, and now enjoy the luxury of writing to you once more after so long an intermission. I wrote to you last on Sunday, Sept. 29, from Philad. by way of Havre. My foot had shown once more bad symptoms, and Dr Moehring prescribed, told perfect quiet at home would soon heal up everything. On Monday morning I left Phil. The foot seemed so good, all swelling and inflammation had so totally disappeared, that, on board the steam-boat, I put on a shoe againe. B In the rail-road car 1 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 2 In 1836 the couple with Oscar and Hamilton had gone on a visit to the West Indies to see the residence of Mathilde Lieber’s brothers in Ponce, Puerto Rico. On their way back their ship had run ashore off the coast of the Carolinas. Probably the hat had been bought in Ponce.

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between ­Wilmington and Baltimore, I met Joseph Bonaparte. Where there is no separate accommodation car, I generally take the foremost car, where they put a negro or two, if there are any. I speak of those large cars which contain 40 persons. The advantage is that there is room for stretching, one may smoke &c. It seems Joseph Bonaparte and mite (two Frenchmen) had the same prevelection, for sitting on my seat, and stretching myself pretty fully my head turned back, so that my eyes caught these of a person behind me; I at once thaught I knew those eyes, turned round and found it was Count Survilliers. We talked three hours together; he looks, of course, much more like an old man, especially the fleshy part around the eyes, I believe he is now 71 or 72; but he is as lively and spirited as ever; he seemed to me a little more fercious; at least he spoke franker about the revolution, than ever before to me. He talked himself finally up to a degree, that he would catch my waist-coat, pat my thigh with a mon chére. You Know I love him, I feel positively attached to him, that is to the old, amiable man. It would be too long to repeat all the conversation, much of course mere was repetition of what he frequently repeated in his letters to me; some old phra French Republican-Napoleon phraseology; other things were interesting and new. He asked me first how it was in Canada and made all the inquiries which one would expect a sensible man-accustomed to grandes ones – and utterly ignorant of the geography and the statistics of the country to make. He told me, and insisted upon having told me before, which was not the case that when Lafayette was in this country; he first of all came to him, and asked him whether Joseph B. would give him 2 millions of francs, without ever asking for what purpose they had been spent, if he, Lafayette, engaged, that they should be spent in driving [2] away the Bourbons. That there was a large imperial party, in the old army, a republican party and an important individual, the duke of Orleans (Louis Philippe) who might easily form a powerful party. That he, Lafayette, was for a republic, and whether Joseph would go for it. “I answered” said Joseph, le republicanisme n’est plus mon métier: moi je ne pens plus être républicain, ce serait une bétise. Je suis moi, républicain par instinct, par coeur, j’aime la liberté la plus parfaite mais je suis monarchiste constitutionée par reflexion, expérience &c&c. Voilà mon chère, la difference entre Lafayette et moi-même. Lafayette etait rèpublicain par métier, mais il était toujours marquis par coeur. Lafayette agissait toujours en marquis resigné, jamais en republicain de la canaille, de la grande majorité. Pour le rest je lui disait, que, à mon avis, une république pour la France, comme elle ete est à present, ne serait, ne ­pourroit

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être jamais une République. Que le meurs, le charactére &c des Francais n’étoient pas faits fe pour une république. – He would not give him the money, for he had it not. Well then, said Lafayette, I must try and get it from Congress in some shape. – Of course I would not judge from this conversation alone, interesting as it is, but if all is so as there stated, it was very silly in Lafayette; just as the French make revolutions – drive out the Bourbons! And what then? Oh, there we choose between three different things! Pour le reste, you know, I have never seen any reason to consider Lafayette a great man; I do not think much of his judgement and intellect, and as to the Bourbons, I loathe them one and all, as an execrable race in France & Spain and Naples, with the only exceptions of Henry IV whom I admire, and Louis XVI, whom we pity. As for all the others, I verily believe there has never lived a family so covered with infamy, crime and idiocy (in Spain & Naples) as that Bourbon gang. Their reigns are historical ulcers! Joseph Bonap. said that he had been recieved uncommonly well in England, not only by the aristocracy, which was perhaps natural enough, but by the people at large. Soelt he called: un voleur, un charactére déshonorè – &c. He asked how le petit Joseph3 se portait &c. But I believe my dear Matilda is impatient to hear something of her humble Frank rather than of Kings of Spain who, by the way, said, that if next year he is in this country I must arrange matters so as to live some days with him. The second Murat, who married against Joseph’s advice a N.Y. woman, has squandered her fortune, and she is now Keeping school, quite near his villa. His daughter is married to a Virginia planter. – In Baltimore I dined, and on I went to Washington, where an omnibus took us at once to the steam-boat. Down the Potamac to Fredericsburg. Here began the R.road again and here my foot got bad. On Monday morning I left Phil. and Thursday morning I was at Charleston,4 whither I was obliged to go, because I should have been detained too long on the other rout. I went by way of Wilmington. R.roads always affect my nerves, digestion and whole system very much; my blood became heated, my foot inflamed so that every motion of the car gave me excruciating pains. I suffered greatly, and was obliged to have myself carried from one landing place to another. On Thursday I left Charleston, and not before Friday morning daylight5 I reached home, where I found the servants in good order, and having done everything properly. Since then until now I have been obliged to poultice, and the swelling is now happily down; I hope the sore will soon be cured too. I forgot to mention that to increase my misery the foot was jammed between two r. r. cars. I had of 3 Oscar Lieber who had been baptized Joseph Montgomery Oscar Lieber. 4 Monday, September 30, 1839 + Thursday, October 3, 1839. 5 Friday, October 4, 1839.

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course a tedious time of it. Oh how how I have longed and still long for a letter! If you only have not allowed a fortnight to pass between the last which went by steam, and the one I shall now recieve by Havre, for that would make perhaps a month difference in the time of recieving them. I trust you have felt prompted as much to write as I have. Elliots have been kind; Mrs Elliot sent me rice with milk &c. Barnwell came to see me, poor man, he is very grave. Ellet came every day; Stuart twice; students visited me likewise. This initiation is very good, perhaps: It was as if I were told: Look for here, Sir, dont be too melancholy in your loneliness, for if you are well all is well; [3] it would be much worse, if you were unwell. Just to give you a sample I will lay you on your back for a week or so, and afterwards you will think it delighted, to be able to be up, write &c, although alone! Elsa and Betsy6 behaved very well. I sent immediately to Mrs Brown, to make arrangements for butter, but now she says it too late; you recollect in summer she said it was too early. Mr Sill, visited me, he went also for me, but no butter to be had from her, at least not regularly. But why should it be otherwise? Am I not in the land, where b Where the negro fumes, and the butter is rancid, Where the whiteman swaggers; who should ever have fancied That of all I am destined to live in the South Where the soul finds no food, and no more does the mouth Tradediddle, Tradediddle, Tradediddle, diddle dun; I sing a merry rhymlet, but I cannot feel the fun; There is no use in crying, But there is no more in lying; Tradi-diddle, Tra-di-dee, I long, I long for thee. Ah, my best Matilda! the cataloque of the dead, which I have been obliged to send you, is not yet closed. Our valued and excellent friend Rob. Y. Hayne is dead. He went to Ashville in N. Carol. to a r. r. convention, and died of billious fever! His poor wife and children; so in in the midst of a most active, useful career, and so esteemed by his whole state! They are going to erect a monument to him in Charleston. Barnwell’s children died of soar throat and scarlet fever croups. Protect our children’s necks very much, let no nonsense, of living too careful prevail. If they go out in the wind, or winter protect their neck, this is as natural, as people always call it, as eating or anything. Let me be quiet 6 Enslaved Betsy, the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

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upon that point; for the winds are high in Hamb. and all our children incline to croup, as you well know. I would not let them go out in the evening I hate that dragging out of children, letting them fall asleep, and than, when they are heated by sleep, carrying them home in a cold night. It is slovenly nonsense. Children have nothing to do out of the house in the evening. Once more, protect the neck well, the necks. Do you know that despite of all search, I cannot find the book, in which you have written all the minutive of household affaires. Where in the world can you have put it! I cannot find it. As to the keys all went well. Pray tell Oscar that the pride-of-prudia, which grew spontaneously on the rubbish in the yard, and which we trimmed before going away, is a nice little tree far above the campus wall. The asp, in front of the entry window, in the front yard, reaches higher than the first second story. But the crack trees in front of the house seem to be dead, the drought we have here is enormous. People wade with ease through the Saluda river. What will become of my 4 Westphaleas and the grocer store box, if they have to wait 2 months, and more, before coming up? The varnish tree, near the steps, is higher than the iron railing. The pigeons are there, but none have young ones, I am sure James7 has only put them there shortly before I returned. According to your advice in the letter written at sea, I la bought chickens, an immediately, and have lived upon them on during my indisposition. – How much I long for a fine long letter, speaking a little more fully of all and everything around you, and what you are doing &c, you may easily imagine. In a few days I shall begin my literary labors, I mean writing &c. On Monday8 – to-day is Friday9 – I begin College duties. My pol. Ethics are printed still, but slowly the you know I never hear anything about my writings here in this excile from all civilisation.10 McCord is much better, [4] and Trezvant says, that Charlottes11 disease is not an affection of the lungs, but nervous, that he thinks he shall entirely re-establish her. I have nothing more to write – what can a man write from Columbia? Except perhaps that the dust which is generally intolerable, is now quite and absolutely intolerable. I would let my letter lie over a few days, and wait whether I may not receive soon a 7

The partner of Betsy the cook, father of Betsy’s son Henry, James was slave in the Mayrant/Merant household, Columbia/SC. 8 Monday, October 14, 1839. 9 Friday, October 11, 1839. 10 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 11 Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC.

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l­etter, the arrival of which I might at once advertise – the physician has just been here, ça va très bien but you are probably desirous of hearing from me after my arrival at Columbia, so that I will not delay the letter beyond the Havre packet of the 26., for which I hope it will arrive in time I have recieved the drft by you on Brune.12 I really wish you would write me in your next about the money affairs; whether your uninveited money in Hamburg was sufficient to cover the drft upon your Uncle13 or not. Please attend to it, and write me busenesslike about it. Have you been in the theatre; oh how does an opera taste! Langentbehrte Glückseeligkeit, schwärmende Harmonien, süße Weisen und kühne Töne, berauscht durch den Zauber, geschärft durch die Kunst, einzu­ schlürfen, einzutrinken, durstig gierig nach der Götternahrung und doch mit scharfem Geschmack jede Lieblichkeit u Herrlichkeit hebend. Nur der beste Wein schärft die Zunge für den feinsten Weingeschmack. Gott im hohen Himmel, wie wollte ich Europa einst wieder geniessen! Vielleicht wie nie einer vor mir, denn haben andre dieselben Gaben für Form und Farbe, dieselbe heilige Lust am Ton, so sind sie nicht 10 Jahre in Amerika gewesen; sind andre wirklich 10 Jahre in Amerika gewesen, so haben sie nicht vorher ein volles – ja wohl recht ein volles Jahr in Rom mit Niebuhr14 gelebt. Gott wie wollte ich in den Bibliotheken, den Legislatursälen, den Museen, den Theatern, hausen in den Büchern, auf den Märkten, beobachten, zeichnen, hören, genießen, schwelgen! Niemand, stolze Europa, wäre je so beachtet, so geschärft zu deinen Malen gekommen. Mein Herz, wie mein Auge läuft über; es ist ein bittrer Schmerz die Kraft zu [cross-writing, 1] irgend etwas Großem zu fühlen […], ich will, ich muß abbrechen, u bitte meine geliebte Mathilda mich wie immer zu trösten. Mes respects aux silent unes. Kiss my hearty boys, and remember me to Rebecca. She ought to write to her brother.15 Tell her, if you have not done yet so that I will give her 5 pro cent for the money, she was with us my dearest Matilda I think you ought to beg Gossler,16 to informe you also when there are vessels from Bremen to Hamb Charleston. There are more I think than from Hamburg, and I think it would always be 12 13 14 15 16

Frederic Brune, Baltimore. Jacob Oppenheimer. Barthold Georg Niebuhr. John McClelland. Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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[cross-writing, 3] possible to send a thick letter by private hand to Bremen, although I Know they are not as sensible in this respect with you there as with us. In such case the letter must be directed to Trapmann (Louis) begging him to send it by private opportunity, you might suggest Coates to him; the one-eyed school-master. He seems to Know always someone or other who comes up. It will only be possible to obtain letters from Oscar &c and drawings on such thick letters, which per mail would ruin us. Oh how delightful that new English law must be for lovers, loving parents and the like croakers.17 I Kiss you intensely, hugely and amazingly, and I Kiss my boys, and no more – except pretty girls when present. Your Frank [cross-writing, 4] Oscar hat ja sein Federmesser hiergelassen. Und seine Winterhandschuhlinge vor mir. Sie erinnern mich immer an ihn. – Ist wohl schon die Flagge angekommen? Und die Enzyklopedia? Und braucht sie Oscar? Wenn dieser Brief ankommt, so ist bald Weihnachten, wenigstens bereitet sich schon alles in Deutschland darauf. Gott gebe euch ein frohes Fest. Wenn ihr mir genau schreibt, wann u wie ihr feiert so will ich in Gedanken bei Euch sein, u selbst den Unterschied […] preussischer Länge berechnen. Seid nun recht froh, heiter, glücklich F.L. Single Paid Via New-York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York Oct 18 Stamp Le Havre Nov Stamp Hamburg ∆ Stamp Paid Hb 17

Reference to the Postage Act, 2 & 3 Vict c 52, 17th August 1839 An Act for the further Regulation of the Duties on Postage until the fifth day of October one thousand eight hundred and forty URL gbps.org.uk.

No. 19 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 13.10.-20.10.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer USC FLC Box 1, folder 5, ALS, 4 pages No XI It is Sunday, I sent a letter yesterday, and donot mean to write, but merely try the pen in a word or two to you, my dear beloved ones. When I come to my desk, and every thing lies ready for writing I can almost as little refrain from writing a word, as I should be able to be silent where you present. I just read your letters again – I only have as yet 3 or with the pilot letter 4; all carefully put in a port-folio – Who is Dr Heise? You say I Know him I dont remember. Pray donot forget my Matilda to provide Oscar with a decent microscope (perhaps for Christmas) and besides one, which he can put in his pocket and take on his walks, or has he taken mine with him? I forget. Pedantic as it looks, I donot care for la appearance; let him look at blades and insects through the magnifying glass, that he may magnify God the Creator”. To see minutely, and to view vastly are two indispensable elements of a rational and lofty m life; you may apply it to the physical as well as the moral world, it holds in both. What made Niebuhr1 so great? Because he saw so minutely into history and viewed so vastly from on high. Apropos Niebuhr! Legaré’ has written a very excellent article on Roman Law in the October number of the N.Y. Review – a very excellent one, in which there is a beautiful, true and philosophic passage on Niebuhr. I wish you would tell Dr. Wurm – who likes me, and who will be pleased if you write him a line, to come and see you – that he ought to translate that passage perhaps with some such superscription. Amerikanische Ansicht über die großen Verdienste unseres Niebuhr. Tell him that the article – I dare say the New York Review reaches Hamburg – is written by Mr Hugh Legaré, member of Congress, late Chargé d’affaires of the U.S. at Brussels. If he will pay a complement to Legaré’s scholarship and learning he may safely do it. If such an article appears, you ought to send it marked by first direct opportunity to the Rev. Mr Henry, editor of the N. York Review, New-York, with a few lines, saying that the enclosed contains an article on Mr. Legaré’s article in the N.Y. Review, a translation of which might perhaps be acceptable to some N.Y. paper. You need not sign yourself, if you donot wish. – The book is found at last. It was among many papers on the shelf in the dining room. I have studied the lard, the butter, the romp, as ­carefully as I ever studied Aristotle’s Politics.2 Yesterday 1 Barthold Georg Niebuhr. 2 Aristoteles, Die politischen Dinge,. 8 Bücher, 384–322 B.C.

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Madame Betsy3 asked for money for a pair of shoes. I gave it. When she came back I thaught I had better look at the shoes, and Madame had baught herself a pair of morocco shoes!! That’s for winter comfort! Of course I make her return them. Tell Oscar that the ays near the back piazza of our house has sent three bushes straight up to heaven, and they are higher than the upper part of the railing of the piazza, what a vegetation. The heat we have is almost insufferable. Yesterday we had it in our house 88 Fahrenheit or 25 Réaumur. The dust is enormous, and the physicians fear that soar throats &c will soon be common with all who have to go out a good deal. Thornwell has not once visited me. What amiable effect that Calvinistic dogmatism has on the Gemüth of theologic wranglers! How soft, kind and loving it makes its adherents! This moment James4 returned from the post office. “No letters at all”. Oh, how I long already again for a letter from you, a long, calm, setting, chatting letter. So! I have talked on, intending to write nothing. I must break off, lest the sheet be filled ere I am aware of it. Yesterday I had the Nat. Gazette, Philad., for in which there was a long puffing article on my Latin Synonimes.5 Did I tell you that I found here a letter, informing me of my unanimous election of a member of some society at Princeton (New Jersey) College? We sent away last year a student from here, a pretty bad subject, he went to that college and – carried my election there. (C’est drolle ça) – Write me what parcels you have recieved by direct vessels to Hamburg. I eat tomatos with every thing; yesterday a beaf-steak pye with tomatos. Approved! – The Library building is finished outside – 4 high white columns, with a red brick-building – glaring, as every thing in America, as all American herself.6 I must really break off. I do it Knowingly. Clasp my boys in your arms, scold your sisters – but love all, once for you, once for me. And so good bye. They talk a good deal of Elliots being elected bishop of Charleston, the old bishop having died.7 Henry8 will be, they say, elected in the place of Thornwell! I wish I were elected away, and they might elect whomsoever they chose. 3 Betsy the cook, slave in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC. 4 Partner of Betsy the cook and father of Henry, while Betsy and Henry were with the Lieber family, James was slave of Mr. Merant i.e. Mayrant, Columbia/SC. 5 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 6 Library of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC on the Horseshoe, just across the Lieber house, designed by Robert Mills in 1838 and opened in 1839/40. The well equiped library was one of the few things in Columbia Lieber really liked and it is quite fitting that the university library, later to be called South Caroliniana Library houses in the collections a large part of his papers. 7 Nathaniel Bowen, bishop of South Carolina, Episcopal Church in the United States of America. 8 Prof. Robert Henry, College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC.

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This is neither my classe, nor soil, nor atmosphere. Punctum” – Monday, Oct 14. Here I am again, my Matilda, my boys, are you mine? It is a word of deep import, if souls call one another mine, thine – an expression the meaning of which touches the very essence of selves, and extends beyond the limits of this earthly career. Every new discovery in astronomy teaches us that not only our little earth is no solitary world of itself, for which the firmament was made, as the forefathers believed, and which they indicated indeed by the word Firmament, but that our whole planetary system [2] is but a small item in the worlds of the galaxy, to which we probably belong, and that this galaxy again is but an item in the worlds of galaxies a few of them are dimly seen by mortal eyes in the nebulae. And every thing seems to make it more probable that what I have always been inclined to believe, that we are removed by the hand of the Almighty, from one planet, to another, from one world of planets to another, to become purer, better, more aetherial in each. If this be so, there may be another reason, why those who feel the yearning of love for one another, that they should follow out the divinely imprinted love to the utmost of their souls capacity, so that they impart to each other from their inmost soul as best as they can. That they may stand – speaking of the souls – on a par, and that, what disparity might never the less extinct, love may effuse, and that by love they may draw one another to the same level. For alpowerful is the power and energy of love. Lest two souls that dearly, deeply and fervently love each other might be separated in future worlds. That Thus let us love each other, actively from soul to soul, that my Matilda, my Frank, by words of real import, that my Oscar, my Hamilton, my Norman become expressions of real essence of affection and love. I hope I have not written of dreams, what I have said has come at least from the inmost depth of my soul, of my very self. For we then, I implore you whatever I may have done at any time to the contrary of this most expansive life of love, and accept my fervent desire ever to love you, as a soul, aided by the devine spirit, who is Love, can love. I call you once more my Matilda, my love. God protect you. – I just returned from faculty meeting. I found there the last number of the N.Y. North American Review, in which there is an article, by my good friend Pickering, on the Synonymes, not puffing but practically good for the book, the best he could have done.9 I must stop, for as I expect from day to day a letter from you, and there will be, I dare 9 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes; ‘Ramshorn’s Latin Synonymes’, in: The North American Review vol. 49/105, October 1839, pp. 467–478. URL ebooks.library.cornell.edu (18.1.2017).

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say, much to answer, I would loose all chance of room where I to follow my heart’s inclination and not the dictates of judgement. So good bye, again. “Mr Stuart very much obliged to you for the answer sent him the note”, this is the literal message, Elsa just braught me from Mr Stuart, nor could I by any art of interrogation get any sense out of her. You evidently see that she heard and remembered certain words, without attaching any meaning to them, and so that on the short way from Stuarts house to ours they came to be jumbled into that dreadful mess, in her poor negro brain in which I have quoted them. Does the negro not likewise want farther planets to be perfected, for germs of intellect and immortality he evidently has, but, heaven Knows, they require a good deal of gardening yet, in the same way, angels (better and higher spirits may speak of our dullness, of the obscurity of Aristotele’s mind, and the narrow-minded genius of Göthe. – Tuesday. An evening of delight! Last night the lamp went out! Called Elsa, said no more, well why she had not told me earlier? had told me a week ago, that they would go out!! Sent to Mrs Elliott, had none, to Mrs Ellet, she sent two, both did not fit. Went to bed at ½ past 8 in darkness and despair the articles from the North, and with them the wicks have not come yet, and will not be here these 2 months. Betsy cannot make any bread rise, because cannot make yeast, because no patato to be had in all Columbia. This morning I shall actually write a note to Mr Sill to give me something in lieu of “later”. How I love this place! But my Matilda, you must not think me miserable on this account. I have acted like a wise man; a Daniel, a Socrates seeing that infinitely the greatest trouble of thinking of things, and of seeing them badly done after all, would fall on me, I have resolved to reduce everything to the simplest possible elements, and have concluded in my mind – sort of true with the negroes, of this import. Let me alone, and I will let you alone. Besides if a man is alone, he has no pleasure in any thing, which in society may have great yest. You know how much I value a fine dinner. Nature has given me but too fine nerves in taste but I would not care for any finesses here. However I have told some tutors and students, that if they shoot some good and delicate game always to send it to me, and than come and dispatch it with me; that I will furnish good wine. I wonder, whether I may not have a letter to-day. I have not yet heard at all from Oscar since his arrival [3] in Hamb. and his entrance in school. You ought to see in what authority you live here. If I want something this way, forthwith am I told Mrs did it that way “if I ask some thing I am told: Mrs said you must do it so &c. – to all which I can only say “Amen” of course. Yesterday I sent to Mrs Draynard, to buy

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f­lannel &c&c for the negroes, but she came at the very time, I had sent word that I would be in the Faculty Meeting I shall let her insp all my shirts, where is my black velvet cap, I wonder? I have not yet seen it. There is one thing I intended several times already to mention. In writing to me, you will think how lonely I am, and may at times feel checked in telling me how you enjoyed some good, which I am deprived of company, the arts, the theatre, a comp, a countryparty, a fine dinner, fine as to company and substance, or whatever else it may be. But you must not forget that in such case should be the only loser, and considering that your accounts will be my only refreshments in winter, […]. Tell then every thing, consider how barren everything is around me. No letter yet! I must learn patience. I trust most confidently that you have not allowed much time to elapse before you have written again. – Wednesday morning. ∆ I must to the faculty meeting for examine for admission. Matilda each faculty meeting makes me feel very sad. When I am here alone I am at least alone, but there all the incongruity of my whole situation, the fact how I am absolutely out of my element, how I live with beings, men like myself, polite, even friendly, and yet without one spark of sympathy between us how I am declined to live without one solitary soul to commune with – all this is then irresistably forced upon me, Matilda, let me be quite sincere. I complain not of my external situation, if I had other things along with it, I would never desire a better one, nay, did I love an active life in so high a sphere of action, could I not live in poverty? I could, I know it. Give me an armee to conquer, and I will be satisfied with one wooden bowl as Umar was.10 But with equal truth it must be owned, that mentally I live a very very wretched life. There are few in the world, I boldly maintain, who can realize my situation. People who live in intellectual & social communion, donot know how much they owe as to incitement, the starting of ideas and their regulation and modification, to that very communication. The merely seeing one or two persons, who reflect and think – it need not be in the same line – and who are really befriended with us, stirs, animates, vivifies. The mind is sharpened again as the razor on a strap. How, I have not one, not even one, who sympathizes with me, still less one from whom I could derive stirring Knowledge in my sphere. Consider that not one ever has spoken to me about my Pol. Ethics except perhaps once or twice about the good reception of the book!11 Consider, that the whole book as it is before the public has I have been obliged to spin solitarily out of my brain, as the spider spins its cobweb, out of her its self, without one cheering consideration, one friendly advice from a friend after I might have read a chapter to him Story would not believe it when 10 Umar or Omar, grandson of Esau, Old Testament 1. Mo 36, 11. 11 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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I spoke to him about it. The solitude of a monk is nothing to mine. I Know well how they live, they have communion with those who think and feel like them. I love solitude; you know it, but this is no solitude; this is mental isolation, geistige Verarmung. If I consider what all those who like myself study and write have, how they see, hear, talk to one another, and if I consider the facilities God has granted me, how they lie hollow, how, I Know they might be active, and be made or vivified by communion I do not want extraordinary communion, no court, but merely that to which every child of God would almost seem fairly to be entitled – I cannot help sometimes to feel pity with me and feel almost inclined to exclaim, poor, poor Frank! However, even in this situation I will not overlook what is good and be thankful for the leasure which at least is left me. I hope I may say I have faithfully used it, for I have not been idle while I have been here but down, which I could now claim as a reward – if it deserve one – to be pleased again in a situation fit for a human, reflecting being. – I am sorry I have written all this, for you know it all this well without my writing, and feel for me and the letter came to nearly fitted with exdolorations, I am really sorry, but partly you know my positive horror at throwing away letters once written, partly. You are my wife and if my letters are casts of my soul they are perhaps after all the best they can be = Soon it will be a month that I have not heard from you; Meine Seele sehnt sich immer nach einem Briefe, mein Herz fängt an sich wund zu fühlen, so wünscht es Nachrichten. – ich habe schon 2 kleine Billete von Chalotten12 gehabt. das arme Mädchen kann auch nicht ausgehen; aber Trezvant13 sagt ihre Lungen sind nicht afficiös. Das wird dich freuen. Wenn du einmal Zeit hast so schreib ihr; aber Oscar sollte erst an Sally Newton schreiben. Dr. Ellet hat mir die Juniors abgenommen, für den Rest des Jahres. Ich habe also nur 6 Stunden die Woche. Nach In 6 Wochen weißt du hört der Unterricht für die Seniors auf. Ich werde also dann auf 6 Wochen nur 4 Stunden die ganze Woche haben, du siehst überarbeitet bin ich wahrhafftig nicht. Aber wie gern, [4] wie gern wollt ich fort, könnt ich geistig arbeiten! Welche Seeligkeit sollte es mir sein, […] Wirklich ich muß aufhören – doch ists so süß mit dir zu denken. Schelt mich nicht geschwäzig. I ought to mention that Dr Ellet took the juniors on his and Barnwells petition for some reason or other, I forget, and dont care &c. I do not know whether I have mentioned it already that Oscar must have 12 13

Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC. Dr. Trezvant, MD, Columbia/SC.

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an Atlas, or some maps of Ancient Greece & Italy. You must excuse repetitions, but I cannot often remember whether, what occupies most my mind, has been mentioned or not I suppose you enter all such things in the memorandum book otherwise it would be impossible to remember all these various things. I believe I have now all drawers open that were intended to be opened in […]. Alas, this is already Thursday, and not yet a letter! Vessels arrive, I see at the North. Have you really not written? I Know yet nothing of Hamb. Your sisters,14 your life, Oscar &c in their new life, and should you leave me want only so long without news? Do you know that for another reason I wish I had a letter? I find that I cannot fairly get into my study for my mind is all the time wandering off to you. I have read the same passages as many times as three, four, nay five and six times, and was after all no wiser than before I had read it. However, I promise you, that, if I have only one more letter (and if which God may grant it good news) I will plunge into my work, and go hard to work! All this from the tred mill, inclusive, is written on Thursday. Elsa has gone to the post office. She comes – She braught a letter from Theodore. Let’s see. Friday There was no letter of yours, but there is rain, the something, I dare say the letter will soon follow Theodore & Gustavus15 with in good spirits. Their letter is from Sept. 12. Poor Theod had had an attack of the fever, which he call’s slight, but it seems to have Kept him 3 weeks at home. But he is now quite better. When the sun does not shine glaringly the four columns, and the portica altogether, of the library look, from our windows very fine.16 What an arch-noble people the Greeks were! Here, many thousand miles from their country and many thousand years from their epoch, does even a poor and faulty imitation of their columns delight, cheer even inspire the heart of one who loves the beautiful! What a most noble people! – Yesterday, toward evening, I was sitting at the entry window, looking at the sun set. It was one of those which my Oscar used to like so much glowing-purple with green, brilliant yellow and bluish stripes between. I thaught of the boys in the yard and Oscar by me, very, very much. I believe es spukt hier, for you have no idea how often I hear Oscar’s, or Hamilton’s17 voice. Sometimes it is quite startling. – My household affaires go on excellently. Elza behaves à merveille. A number of things she does by herself; she is quick and mirabile dictu! that means: no old nurse would have believed it,” I can send her on 4, yes madame four errants to the town at once. To be sure, 14 15 16 17

Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. Recently completed Library on the Horseshoe, the campus of the College of South ­Carolina, Columbia/SC. Hamilton Lieber.

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she always has to undergo a rigid examination before she goes in which she must recapitulate the whole epic from Mrs Gibbes’ butter, to Mrs Draynard’s pants I passed – But, what have I done? The whole letter filled with absolute nothings, and if, as I devoutly wish, your letter arrives, red crossings only will be all thats left for the repartees of love and retribution of affection! It does my heart so good when you write Hammy has been a very good boy! Speak kindly of me to Oscar, sometimes my heart feels so cramped, and I think I stand much in need of you speaking kindly of me to him. Tell him, I dole upon him. Oh how the children will enjoy Christmass! – Good God, could I but for one day be there. Hamilton18 has returned fr. Europe. my tender girls! Harriet oh write me often I send a letter to Oscar pray keep until Christmass and baue es mit den Geschenken auf, willst du. Do you know Caroline that the mere word Kiss in your letter has disturbed, nee , […]. I am like a vessel with gass at present. The idea of a spark explodes it. And yes, how I love how I have always loved, a woman that can love. Let Matilda tell you. The next times my sisters, you must come closer, tighter. A loving heart like mine stands in need of epistolographic economy. Kiss my children whoever will but fervently! Your own Frank [cross-writing, 1] Elza came again, without letter. Alas! – I have returned this moment from my first visit to Mrs Elliot. I write this by way of proof how famously I get on with my foot in a week. Dr. Trezvant says all will be healed, and then I shall quite congratulate myself having had this spoken, because with proper care – that is with wimstable resolution opposite to those friends of mankind called shoemakers, to make them make boots as I chose and demand, not as they do. I shall be, I have no doubt better off than years before. So this affair was concluded, or will be, so God will. But I fall again awriting and must really stop. I fear me, I fear me, my girl. I have better behaved than you, I mean in an epistolographic way. I had a long letter from George Parish,19 insisting on our visiting him in 1841; he will be in Europe in 1840, when he says he will lay in such stock of comfort that you shall not be altogether dissatisfied with him. What Matilda do you read? How does Germ. Literature strike you? Communicate freely with me. – They had another awful fire in Mobile20 – I pay every thing forth with. When Elza fetches something the merchant writes on a paper what it costs, and the 18 19 20

James Hamilton Jr. George Parish (1807–1881). Between September 29 and October 9, 1839 Mobile/Ala. suffered four large fires.

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next time she goes to town she takes the money. Pray tell me did you not pay Dr Sill? There seems to be an unsettled bill of $ 7. However part of that is to be clapt on my foot? Any marters, marter, with your soup today? said Betsy21 just now. Marters stands tomatos, as Taters for potatos. – There was a scene when I first came here which touched me so deeply that I could not help shedding a tear. C’est entre nous. When my trunk was brought into my room, and I, in the bed, told her, Betsy to open the trunk, she did not Know how to unbuckle a buckle, and pulled the thorne forward instead of backward. Good God thaught I, here we are writing about Political Ethics and the development of the mind and all that, and here is a being that positively does not Know how to unbuckle a buckle, while the buckle plays is a primary contrivance in our household affairs. Whether she be by nature so stupid, or Kept so limited by slavery, it is all the same, there is actually a being who must be called human, not Knowing how to unbuckle a thing. We must very firmly believe in God not to have our bef belief staggered. – Betsy ask me yesterday for the third time, whether you would not return before next fall? I asked why she wanted to know. She said: “Cause it is mighty lonesome without her and the children.” If she finds that! – Henry22 sings the whole day, and Mrs. Elliot has braught a woman who has a little girl of about his age. The young lady pays him frequent visits of half days duration. – I wonder what I shall give Betsy for Henry, for the winter? Mrs Drainard is my secretary of state for the Town and Nigger Department. I own I am ashamed having written again so much and such nothing. Shall I resolve to break off until a letter arrives from you? [cross-writing, 2] My dear Matilda I beg you […] with regard to Oscar. Speak with him repeatedly those parts of the bible with regards to Christ’s birth and read poems and songs when have reference to it, with his German or English or both and if you can look with him at some fine engravings repeating the adoration of the three kings or Christs birth. Perhaps I send a letter to Oscar, to be given him on Christmass. Good bye, dein briefloser Gatte. – If you will and can send a thick letter direct to Charleston, which I begged you to direct to Genl Hayne, you may now direct to William B. Pringle Esq Charleston, begging him politely to forward it to me. I spoke with his son, young Pringle, you remember the fine boy, about it. Mark the name. But I am afraid there will be but few cents. Poor Stuart is much distressed at the ­enormous fall of 21 Betsy, Lieber’s cook. 22 Henry, son of Betsy, slaves in the Lieber household in Columbia/SC.

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the U.S. Bank Stock. He, unwisely has his whole fortune I believe in that stock. Never hanf your all an-one peg! I sold the U.S. Bank stock which I baught last winter, at a proper season. The U.S. Bank stock is now so enormously low, that had I a few dollars, I would certainly buy some should it go to down to 80, for it must rize again, although it may never reach anything like its former height. So soon as I see a real panic, I always hold it to be safe to buy, and although there is but too much reality mixed up with it, still it cannot be denied that there is a good deal of panic likewise connected with this fall. Besides many of the best stocks in the world, for instance N.Y. City stocks, which are as good and sound as anything can be, sunk nevertheless because those who have them are in need of money, it is just as when real estates sinks. The field has not become worse on that account. He therefore who has money does wise to buy such stock. Speaking of that City stock, it is down to 80 and gives 6 procent; which makes therefore 7 ½ procent, this together with its perfect safety and soundness is most excellent investment, and had I two thousand dollars or so, disposable, I should most undoubtedly now buy of stock. – Saturday Oct 19. What a long dream I had this night of you and – of Sally.23 Joke apart – perhaps you get very angry – but you need not for the whole dream nearly was about Matilda. Dont call me a Turk, at least in imagination. Oh what a dream! Have you dreams? Betsy has repeatedly complained to me that she cannot get any washing from the students, that uncle Hardy (one of the servants) will give all washing to other women. Well said I, why does he favour those girls, and not you; Master, she replied, them are Methodists, and cause I am Baptist. he wont favour me. Them Methodist, will always ruin us Baptists [cross-writing, 3] &c. &c. die Weltgeschichte wiederholt sich jeden Tag in jedem Kopfe, jedem Hause. […]. I send Elsa to the post office. God grant me a letter! = God did not grant me a letter! How could he, if there was none? If I were a Greek I would order a sacrifice to Aeolus and all the Winds, to some to be silent, to others to blow, that their lungs should burst. I would order a couple of doves, for our love, a lamb, for the peace of my soul, a deer, for swiftness of carriage (besides that I should have (venison), a ginger cake, for good news of my boys, a pound of french butter, for the loving smoothness of my wife’s temper, and a flack of choice olive oil, for smooth sea, smooth news and the rapid and smoothly gliding away of the next 9 months. Thus I would sacrifice and if the gods would not hear me, I would say, as Ajax (I think it is him) in Homer. Upon my word, Jone, 23

Sally Newton née Sullivan.

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you are the most insufferable of all gods. I dare say, according to the old rule I shall have ever so many letters, some of these days, all at once […] the writing to me every day does not perhaps decieve you, as if and give you a feeling that you commune with me every day; for the having news in at proper intervals is even more important than recieving ample news. I think a letter every fortnight is what I might fairly expect. Gustavus24 writes me he would soon write to you. […] and yet nothing in answer of the letter which must soon arrive. Can I help it? I cannot! Good bye. Saturday, October 20. Well then, my dear girls, if I have no letter from Matilda, I recieved at least, this moment, the joint letter from Caroline and Hart, written on the 18th of August, when the news of Matildas arrival at that little but ever memorable Helvotslies, for thence sailed William III;25 to liberate England and through her, Europe, had just reached Hamburg. I thank you sisterly tender Harriet, and you passionate blackeyed Caroline. Kiss you will me, […] [cross-writing, 4] Thanks to both of you, for your sweetness of love, and your glowing fullness. The letter, though old it be, the love in it, fresh and green, and although I have not later news from my darlings, still this will be a Vorbote, I know, for the winds, which have favoured even so slow einen Kasten as the Washington, must have been propitious to Havre packett likewise. Therefore next week I shall have a letter, and I celebrate my Sunday. happily I again and again thank ye loving sisters. I had imagined you had forgotten me in the fullness of joy at Matilda’s arrival. Not that I grudge her any love – may God bestow the fullest measure of love upon a soul that loves so fully as hers – but I should have been sad to find that I had been remembered by you only so long as Matilda was here. Oh Caroline, you donot wish have as much that I might be able to fetch Matilda – and carry away one of you – as I do, but this is possible only, if in the mean time I recieve a call to some other chair. Pray then for this our fervent prayer. And now I will not carry any longer in sending away this letter. May your eyes not ache. You Caroline and Harriet must write me how you found Matty and the children, for I love to hear of them in any way, from themselves and from 24 25

Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Lieber shew off his knowledge of European history when he referred to the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89. The so-called Anglo-Dutch moment started in November 1688 when Dutch prince Willem van Oranje embarked for England with a fleet of ships financed by Holland and Zealand from Hellevoetsluis/Holland to claim the English throne and challenge his uncle and father in law King James II.

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o­ thers. Before I conclude, my Matilda, one thing. No doubt people will often talk to you about slavery. Speak freely what you think, but avoid carefully doing it in presence of Oscar. It would necessarily throw disharmony into his beloved soul. Hiller came to see me yesterday; he braught me sallad. Little Henry,26 to whom I have given some times biscuits, now always asks: Ma biccki (master, biscuit) good bye my love and dove, good bye my hearty boys good bye. NB. When I make this mark = or perhaps this # It means that I continued to write after an intervall, either on the same day, for instance having broken off in the morning, and continued in the evening, or the next day – Never omit to write (by Havre) for fear of postage. I may safely spend that on me. Is it not the food of my soul, the Labsal of my heart. Single paid Via New-York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne per packet Stamp Hamburg 29 Nov 1839 Paid 4 stamps faded 26

Henry, son of Betsy the cook, Columbia/SC.

No. 20 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 15.10.1839 THL Box 54 LI 5058, ALS, 4 pages N. 7 Being an answer to three most dear darling letters of my darling husband namely V VI & VII & leaving every one of his little flock in good health and spirits My own dear Frank, I wish I were as good as you are and could write such sweet letters and could make you as happy as you make me. You are a very very kind husband to think so much of your own wife and to be so true to her in the midst of Guards, Parishes and liasons dangereuses. I feel very proud of you my boy. I like to see you move in a variety of situations, confident that in each you will play your part gloriously, and never never do I doubt my boy, for I know he would not wrong me, and what ever he does will be as it ought to be. Dearest Frank I am going first of all to tell you what has happened with us since I last wrote which was by the Great Western, at least so I think. Mr Rönne the Prussian minister took charge of it. After I had dispatched that letter, I got ready to take our boy to Eppendorf, It was a complete packing and moving and my heart felt very heavy. During our ride out he fell round my neck repeatedly and promised so affectionately that he would always be a good boy. A half an hour brought us to our journeys end and Dr & Mrs Busse came out to receive us. Our boy with his beautiful confiding disposition immediately showed Dr Busse a pretty writing desk which aunt Minna had given him that morning and which delighted him so much. – He came to me again & again and kissed me tenderly, while he promised with a full heart to be a good boy, if I would only pardon all that he had ever done wrong. Dr Busse spoke most kindly and sensibly and gained my confidence by his manner yet the parting was trying indeed to me & to poor Oscar. I returned home very melancholy and could well imagine what must be your feelings in being so far from that sweet boy. Several visitors came in the afternoon, among others dear Uncle Jacob who is ever wellcome with us, but I was sad in spirit. Tuesday, I regained my cheerfulness for being confident that Oscars situation was in every respect, most desirable, that he would ultimately be far happier than at home, and that I ought to be happy to have succeeded to place him there, I dried my tears & went to my work again. On Tuesday Aunt Amelia Uncle Jacobs wife first saw our Norman. She was perfectly in raptures with him. “Welch ein Engel, So etwas Süßes sah ich nie, so genteel, so fein, wie ein kleiner Engländer!” Norman gewinnt die Herzen durch seine allgemeine Menschenliebe, denn er ist bereit seine Aermchen um jeden Hals zu schlingen der ihm entgegen tritt. Hamilton dagegen ist zurückhaltend über und man lernt ihn nur nach und nach kennen. His own dear Papa hat er nicht vergessen © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_022

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und oft bringt er mir marbles, ein Stück Papier oder was er sonst gerade hat, to send to “my dear Papa”, auch hat er mehreremal nach dir geweint. Er geht zufrieden nach der Schule jeden Morgen mit Felix u Emil die er sehr lieb gewonen hat, und die wirklich prächtige Knaben sind. Mittwoch besuchte ich Adele, die mir wieder sehr lieb geworden ist; daß sie es ist, sehe ich schon daraus welche Freude es mir macht sie zu besuchen, wir haben uns immer viel zu sagen, und ich bin ganz offen gegen sie, wie auch sie gegen mich, die ganz vorzüglichen Eigenschaften, Eigenschaften of intrinsic value die Adele besizt lassen reichen hin ihre Fehler zu decken, die so wie ihre Tugenden of a prominent character sind, für mich hat sie immer noch die alte Freundschaft und da ich nun Ferdinand auch sehr gern habe, so ist es mir angenehm sie zu besuchen. Als ich zu Hause kam fand ich N. 5, deinen lieben Brief auf der Reise nach Montreal, da hatte ich eine große große Freude. Soll ich dir etwas sagen, Franz, was meine größte Freude in Hamburg sind? ein Brief von Franz und gute Nachricht von Oscar. Wenn ich diese habe, dann bin ich glücklich. Ich freue mich sehr daß dein lezter Brief so bald nach dem anderen kam und mich über deinen Fuß beruhigte, einigermaßen wenigstens, doch bin ich nicht ganz unbesorgt wegen der langen Landreise, die dich doch erhizen und deinen Fuß wieder angreifen kann, darum sehne ich mich sehr die Nachricht deiner Ankunft in Columbien zu haben obgleich diese Briefe doch so traurig seyn werden. Take care of my foot, my boy nurse it well. I am so much afraid that you have not bought any horse, as you intended to do, for you had returned to New York and you said nothing about it. Pray, pray look for one in Columbia even, for ride you must, you cannot walk and surely with your sedentary life exercise is necessary. ­Oscar inquires often whether you have bought a horse. From your letters I should judge you had see the Inglises very little. What has brought Harriet1 so low? Has she children? Have you not seen Fanny at all, and has anything changed your feelings towards them?2 – Poor Carry and Hart are quite grieved that you have not yet received their letters, they wrote to you twice while I was floating and do not at all feel that they have neglected you: they are both very fond of you and would spoil you most desperately if you would come. I wander whether you will, every body wanders and asks me, and then [2] we all wander together; but what I want to know is this. If you do not come over my own dearest Frank when shall I leave Hamburg, must I wait till August? 1 Harriet Addison née Inglis. 2 Fanny Inglis now Marquise de Calderón.

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Frank you are my husband and there is nobody like you, and I dont like to live with you so far away, and so, my greatest longing is to press you to my heart again, when when will the time come that I may do so? Can you avoid going to Boston next year? Have you the vacation months entirely at your disposal, and do you ever think of it as a possible chance that you come to Hamburg? – How beautifully my Frank speaks of the union between the living and the dead who loved each other. May there still be individuality in our future state! May I meet again all my beloved ones as separate beings, such as they were! I can fancy the grandieur of the grave majestic Hudson at moonlight and my Frank admiring, and can see him receive and enjoy the comforts of an Astor establishment and the beauty of a Catskill view. Frank has a taste, an eye, an ear for everything. – I have not yet been able to hear anything about Blochmans institution in Dresden but shall keep it in mind. – So the steamboats still run their races, you mention being detained on that account several hours longer at Mr Astors; I thought there was a law passed to prevent thit? I regret this desregard to the loss of human life so presailing in America very much it is also a proof of that want of sentiment which we find in Germany even to affectation and of which we know nothing in our N. States. I have often heard you say how different where like with us, the people themselves guard their rights their property, where there is no need of Gens d’armes to protect the public, & to inforce the law. Do you think that it were possible to have in an American city, gardens as we have in Hamburg for instance in the botanical Garden or on the Wall, full of flowers, plants of uncommon value, trees laden with fruit, swans on the rivers, without their ever being touched or rooted for the sake of gain; which easily could be done; as neither fence nor guard; protect these retreats for public recreation? How can you account for this. Is it a greater good nature, love for the beautiful, or cowardice in the German? – You have not told me enough of Mary & Fanny, the manner of your meeting & all that and whether increased love for Sally did not diminish your admiration for the dear girls.3 Pray give my warmest love to them when you write and tell them that I have not yet found their equals here; so their country may be proud of them. The Hyperion4 I have only just commenced to read, and I must confess the beginning has not attracted me, but certainly those passages which you repeat are full of thought and feeling; I shall go on with it as soon as I can. – And now going through your letter as the subjects follow each other, which I carefully do while I answer lest I might omit something of consequence I find my boy now in Montreal where I shall leave you for the night dearest, for it is 12 OClock, wishing only I were with you 3 Mary and Fanny Appleton, Sally Newton née Sullivan. 4 Hyperion, prose romance by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1839.

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instead of in my lonely bedchamber. – 16th Carry & I have dined with Ludwig5 to day who is still in the country and have just returned home, poor Hart is still too unwell to go out. There we met a young Dr Benecke6 who had seen you when you were in Hamburg and told me of a water excursion you had made with their party and how delighted you were with the scenery. Matilda Benecke is expected in a week, he told me, she has been detained in Berlin, her daughter having taken the scarlet fever, her boy is already here, living at Dr ­Beneckes and going to some counting house here.7 I am very anxious to see Matilda again and have begged Dr Benecke to let me know when she arrives. This young Dr Benecke is a very pleasant man and I understand is very musical. I have also had the pleasure to see Mr & Mrs Oelrichs to day, but found her much changed, not at all affectionate & friendly, Sophia Mason is also here, but I have not yet seen her. Carry & I call there to morrow at the Alte Stadt London where they remain a few days.8 Dr Julius also called upon me to day, Caroline cant bear him so I am always obliged to receive him alone. He told me that when he saw Kampz on his return, from America, his first words to him were an inquiry after you; Also that Rönne had spoken to Kampz in your behalf and that he had said that you might return to Germany, to Prussia I mean at any time in perfect safety. I was quite distressed to hear from Julius that Rönne only leaves England on the 19th for I am afraid the delay of that letter will have caused a long pause in your receits. Before I return to the answering of your letter I must just give you the news of Adelas safe delivery of a little girl which happened [3] last night, she is very well and has now three girls and one boy.9 Dr Julius is going to write to Dresden to ascertain about Blochman,10 but he says the institution is so immense that he knows several who have taken their sons away on that account, and there not being sufficient care taken of them. Everybody is astonished at my confidence in you, not fearing you intimacy with your guard friends and all the temptations to which you were exposed on your summer trip. It is true I have in my mind a long list of dangerous situations, but you have cleared them all like a good & faithful husband as you are, and I like you 5 6 7 8 9 10

Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Dr. iur. Otto Benecke. Anna and Hermann Benecke, children of Mathilde Benecke. First class hotel on Hamburg’s Jungfernstieg. The new born child soon became the godchild of Mathilde Lieber. Blochmann Gymnasium, Dresden.

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all the better for your gentlemanly ease. Oscar was delighted when I read your letter to him to hear how simply Lord Wellesley was clad. ‘What he exclaimed?, the son of the Great Wellington, how strange! Your whole letter was greatly enjoyed by him, the buffalos’ horn with snuff, the many names of victories gained, in the colors of the regiment, and the description of the music, all exited him, and Oh! how he wished to have been with you. What a pity it is that you with such a delightful acquaintance as you might have in Europe now, are deprived from passing one year or two here. How it would refresh you. Even a trip to the North makes you younger again! – On that same day after having perused and reperused your dear letter, we had some pleasant visitor from Berlin, the Jacobsens not Sally herself but her sister, two cousins & the husband of one of the latter. I was really delighted to see these girls again who are well educated and well mannered. They were all invited for the next evening. That next day Thursday 10th Oct, was a very very happy Day to me. In the morning I went to see Adela, walked out with her and spoke a great deal of you, she asking many questions, and taking a lively interest, in every thing. I left her and returned home to find one of the dearest letters that husband ever wrote to a wife, your Great Western letter N. VII a regular comforter, a sweet, affectionate blessed letter, for which Heaven reward you. You were again in New York, you knew that your family were safe, you were all love and gratitude. I was pouring over my happiness when Doctor Busse was announced to me; up I ran to him, to have news of our sweet boy. Oscar was well and happy. Dr Busse said: So weit wie wir Oskar kennen lieben wir ihn schon sehr, er ist so zutraulich. Er ist in seinen Begriffen außerordentlich […] begreift sehr schnell, und ist durchaus vielversprechend, er denkt und fühlt tiefer als seinem Alter angemessen; seine große Lebhaftigkeit verleitet wohl zu manchen ∆ des Betragens, doch sieht er gleich ein wo er ein Unrecht gethan hat und grollt ∆. My mothers heart leaped within me. Busse thought that Oscar was too anxious to see me again and it would not be well to let his anxiety torment him. So he had better come for a few hours on sunday, he would bring him in the morning and fetch him again at 5 OClock. I showed Busse that memorandum you had given me for Oscars education he wanted to study it at leasure & I gave it to him to peruse at home. I shall send you Dr Palms Plan which is followed too in every thing by B. A great deal of attention is paid to the health of the boys, their exercise & manly development. In the evening we had beautiful music, Mrs Jacobsen sings divinely and I felt happier than I should think it possible to be thus seperated from my own downty Frank. I had told Uncle Jacob what a nice letter I had received & show much you had written about him, so the next morning early he came to receive his share, and I read to him that beautiful letter, which enchanted him, Hart observed several tears escape at the affectionate & pathetic parts

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and Carry the smile of satisfaction throughout. You say you know the whole story of Parish11 & Mrs Pleil, so does he & so do we want to know it. Old men & young women like to hear such tales. Uncle Jacob gave me many messages of kind remembrance to you, he will write to you soon, to speak of me and your boys and I think it will not be evil. Busse has given his impression of Oscar to Ludwig12 who went out on sunday morning early to see Oscar and O’s family fame is made. On Saturday we went to the theatre, I saw a little french Opera Le postillon de L’Angelon;13 so french. The poor little postillon is married that evening; the female friends take the lady to bed, and he full of anxiety is going to her, when unfortunately he is called upon to take some great gentleman immediately to the capital. He is in despair, begs the old Gentleman, only to let him stay till the next morning [4] the damsal makes her appearance again, and begs & intreats only to let her postillon stay till 1 OClock. All in vain he has to go. A nice little man from Berlin played the postillon de l’Anjelon, – Adolf Goldschmidt came to see us and stayed several hours playing on the Piano with Caroline. On Sunday my dear Oscar came to spend the day with his old Mama, he brought me a rosegay and never was a boy sweeter than he was that day. He was all love and tenderness, looked healthier again than he had looked while at the school in town, was so devoted to me, kissing me affectionately every now and then, promised Oh so faithfully always to give us pleasure, and to be a good boy, was so kind to the children and so pleased with them, so mild, so lovely. Great part of the day was spent in reading your letters and when he heard your wish to have a little picture of him in his scholastic accontrements, he in a moment sketched the little design you will find in the Howard parcel. He told me that he had often often in bed, grieved that he could not make the past return so that he might not give me so much trouble as he had done. The dear boy is too soft, has too much feeling, it is well that he should be for a time amongst boys, and yet I would rather he should not always be amongst them and in this respect am satisfied with his situation. He repeated to me a beautiful German prayer he had learnt, 11 12 13

George Parish (1807–1881). Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. An opera of this name with a plot described could not be found, however, quite fashionable and often performed during those years in Hamburg was the French opera Der Postillon von Lonjuneau, music by Adolph Adam, lyrics by Adolphe de Leuven, first performance Paris 1836.

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a note he had already written to me during the week. When Dr Busse came for him, my poor boy wept to leave me and my heart too was very soar. I promised to go to see him on sunday, and he begged that I should bring Hamilton & Norman and Rebecca too. When Oscar went away again all the servants cried bitter tears. That letter at sea my dear Frank was honestly dictated by Oscar, word for word. When he comes home again he shall write to you another thro’ my pen, in this way he enjoys it, and his ideas come so fast that I am obliged to stop him frequently, yet I have remarked his exactness; his thoughts are so steadily & clearly marked that he never forgets an intended sentence by being thus delayed, and when I read it over to him if I have changed a single word he is sure to remark & disapprove it. – My dear excellent sisters are very fond of us all, and make me very comfortable [cross-writing, 4] I will not cross. The crossed letters are too hard to read. Goodnight. God bless you. Oh may you be healthy while I am away from you. God grant it. Ever your devoted wife, your true Matilda [cross-writing, 1] The girls send their best love. Hart has written to you Betsy14 was to give about 26 or 30 dollars. I wander how you have found them all at home and how you get on. See if you can not get the butcher to make some nice sausages occasionally. – Adieu best dearest dearest Frank. Single Via Havre Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Messrs Heckschers Coster & Matfeld Franco New York Stamp Hamburg 18 Oct 1839 Stamp Le Havre 22 Oct 39 Stamp New York Nov 28 + stamp faded

14

Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

No. 21 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 20.10.-27.10.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Caroline Lomnitz, 20.10.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages No XII Last date of this letter, October 27. Columbia, October 20.1839 – My dear Caroline, the last words of your dear letter are a request to send you now and then “für deinen eigenen Theil a few words of affection.” Here are a few: I love you, du braunäugiges Weib du. – My dearest Matilda, Oh how I long for you, the boys and Irish potatoes, not having seen or tasted such a thing since my return. There are also lately none in town; all gardens, owing to the drought, are deserts, ours is the only one which produces something, and Betsy carries on a most extensive trade in “marters”1 and “butter-beans”, amounting almost daily to 12 ½ cents, besides the little that I get. Yesterday that woman boiled a ham for the students, and got for the boiling half a dollar! This, she braught, being as she said, the 50 cts you lent her. When she observed that I was going to put the money into my purse she said, I must not do it, and whether I was not going to send it to you, for that it was your money. You will be pleased to hear that my grocer’s articles are already on their way from Charleston, by wagon. I went to Bards’ grocer, who seems to have made out a very fair bill. But how shall I annihilate a whole keg of herrings? Alas, despite of all talking, I found no salt cucumbers; madame blackamoore insisting upon, that the last you said, was she should make none! You remember how often we repeated it to her. Yesterday I found a dead mouse on my toilette dressing table; when I called Elsa, she asked my pardon, she had “just put it there, when cleaning the room”, and taking it out of the trap, and had forgotten it! I was just going to give her box on the her ears, when I could not help laughing and she escaped. These creatures, I mean negros, not dead mice, lose all sense of time, space, relation. Putting a dead mouse on a toilette dressing table? However, I told her, if I should find another dead mouse in some such place that she should carry it down in her mouth, (at least by the tail) and I shall make good my word, even though it were a dead grim rat. I see from the Engl. Papers, that that glorious Aurora Borealis, which I saw at Montreal on Sept. 6 (?) was likewise seen in London, but much more beautiful, as it seems. My dear Matilda, I trust you read some paper, and communicate to Oscar from it. It is absolutely necessary. This is perhaps the last letter, my dear ones, which you will recieve in this year, before the second third zypher in the number of the year is changed. If so – Matilda, my soul is in a different frame 1 Tomatoes.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_023

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at once – grave and deeply moved; as if a man steps from a well-stocked and loud farm-yard, situated on a high mountain, upon the rock, which encloses it on one side, and in an instant looks down upon a vast, silent, dark extent of land and sea. How many years have I not already begun in my journal with reflections similar to those which move my heart at this moment. More fervently has never an ancient, pursued by murderous enemies, thrown himself at the feet of an host and clasped his Knees, imploring protection, as I pray this prayer which you well Know; and yet I add: “not my will but thine”, for who has lived but half as long as I have, and does not Know how often th a prayer, long repeated, is granted at length to a mortal and shortsighted man and brings him misery? Yet with this devout reservation, I pray: God, God remove me to a better region for the sake of her who is faithful to me, of our offspring that their noble hearts may bloom and florish not wither away, and for my sake, that that which by thy word will is the active principle of my very soul may not be poisoned, deadened, crushed. – May you, and your sisters and brothers, and your whole family n enter the new lustres, and remain in both which have the 4 in the third place happy, healthy and whatelse they reasonably desire. Speak to Oscar about it; tell him he was born when first we changed 2 to 3 now he has lived long enough to see another change, and that from now to the time when we change 4 into 5; and he will be a man, he has to prepare himself for life; it is now, in the two next lustres that he must lay the foundation for his whole life; now or never, every day and hour now lost, is lost for ever; now he must sow; th if not, he cannot reap when we are old, and he in vigor, and we shall look upon him, and as he now does upon us. But I have made up my mind not to scribble again a whole letter as that, which I sent yester-day, without having one from you. How can it be? I recieved yesterday Galignianis, so there must be Havre packets in, and yet no letter? I cannot understand it; for you Know well, that with the exception of Oscar’s going to school I positively Know as yet nothing of anything you cannot, I am sure, have allowed weeks to elapse immediately after the letter you wrote by steam-boat! I believe, at least fear, you have not felt the same urgent want to write as I have. – [2] I hope you have at once followed my advice to give to Oscar a bathing tub, in which he can and must wash his lower and middle parts every day without exception. If I say that it is important, very important, I am sure you will not make any objections of the additional trouble of carrying water into his room &c! – It is everything enormously dear here; a the gallon of oil, for which when I arrived I had to pay 1.75 (you only paid 1.50) costs now $2!! But I have oil

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­coming. The negros are provided with a flannel, homespun, thread, and stockings. Homer would say Sprachs, und sandte die Draynard, Schafferin ihm, da die Gattin Weithin entheilte nach weither, zu freundschaft schlagenden Herzen. Mütterchen Draynard schnell nun trippelte schaffich zur Stadt hin, Kaufte genau u beredt, mit vielfachen Worten Worten zum Kaufmann, Wieder u. wieder die Stücke betrachtend u fühlend, wie Weiber Genau es thun, wenn eigens am Tische des Ladens sie ∆; Käufte vom wolligen Zeug roth, herrlich gefärbet u weich, warm, Fries die Unsterblichen nennens, doch Sterbliche heißen es Flannel; dieses zu wärmen den im Winter denie dunklen Äthioper, die frost’gen: Käufte der Ellen denn viel vom starken Gewebe des Bessus, dunkeler Bläue, gestreift, zum Gewand die Aethiopier trefflich; Götter benennen es gar nicht, Menschen, ich meine die Schwarzen heißen es homespun; auch wohl Weiße benennen es also. F Sage mir Mühe, die alles erforscht, ob die Draynard mehr auch käufte den Mägden, den Dunklen? Verkünde es, wie es Apollon edelysscher Begeisterung verheißt! Schon denk weiß ich’s, ihn heilige Mühe; hast es dem Sänger erschlossen, erhört die Gebete des Dichters! Zwirn auch kaufte die Frau, und zwar den englischen StormStockings nennen sie Käufer, doch Hose nur Götter u Krämer. O! Ihr Mühen enthaltet entsagt mich ferner zum Sange zu treiben denn Ihr füllet den Brief mir sonst, doch wollen die Fernen, Prosa, matter of fact, plain stories and real accounts of Ihren entfernten Gemal, u Vater u Bruder u Freunde. I have written this Oct. 22. Tuesday, and now I must go to write my long penologic letter to the Governor.2 I must drag myself to it, for it be it Known to you, I have not been able at all, to plunge into labor – I think too much of you. I read passages over and over again and am not the wiser for it. Before Elsa returns from the post office, I am anxious whether I have a letter; after her return I feel anxious why she I have no letter. Matilda, It is now a Month that I have not heard, which you will acknowledge is for a man who is so lonely as I am, and who does care for his family rather a little too long. # I had again no letter. Fearfully I sometimes think how long we waited for news, when finally the most afflicting came from Heidelberg.3 But I will be calm and patient, and think of 2 He had published a letter to Governor Noble the year before: Francis Lieber, Letter to His Excellency Patrick Noble, Governor of South Carolina, on the Penitentiary System, 1838. 3 Lieber referred to messages from Heidelberg about the death first of Mathilde Lieber’s mother in 1836 and then of her father’s in 1838. Her parents in 1830 had moved from London to tranquil Heidelberg.

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the thousand possibilities which may delay the letter. Only I own that the arrival of Galignanis, unaccompanied by a letter from you, makes me restless a little. I cannot think that after having sent a letter by steam-boat you allowed three weeks to elapse before you sent one by way of Havre, for love must have F käufte sie Calico auch zu Hemden? Die Weiber benennen’s Shihts; doch nur wenn Pallas Athene allein mit des Garn, hoheitsblickender Göttin, so nennt sie es also; vor Göttern männlicher Art wird nur es Chemise bezeichnet, wenn ja sie reden vor Männern vom Zeuche so nah dem ambrosischen Leibe; Kygris jedoch, die liebende spricht viel feiner vom Hemde, Sie die den Paris verführt; so thuns auch parisische Träume. [3] prompted you to make the calculation and caused you to consider that the letters are not only written to give rest to your loving heart, but also that I, in my solitude have news of those I love dearest. God, banish all dark thaughts from my anxious soul! # Wohl sind liebende Herzen erfinderisch, tausend u Wonnen findend, ersinnen sie stäts, aber erfinden auch gerne. Oct. 23. Matilda, there is a passage in Homer, which, with a leetle change applies most admirably to my case. And considering that it is Thetis, a goddess, who gives this advice, to Achilles, her own son, there can be no doubt that it must be some advice. How could a goddess and a mother give any other. Achilles greaves about his Patroclos and Thetis very judiciously says, what I will copy for you from Voss’ translation,4 with a little adaptation to my case as I said before. Lieber Sohn, wie lange, vor Gram wehklagend und seufzend willst du das Herz abzehren, u denkst nicht der enteileten Gattin Zimmer im Schlaf? Gut wär’ es, ein blühendes Weib zu umarmen. To be sure, had Achilles been in my case, he would have answered: M’am, you know, before you dress the hare, the old cookery book says, you must catch it. Still, old Thetis is right: Gut wär’s es ein blühendes Weib zu umwerben, and remember, the mother does not mean a wife, or Achilles had none with him, but he had many, ehrenwürdige Mägdlein about him welche ihm ruhten zur Seite. If I were at the North, Matilda! Matilda! – Do you know that there is another

4 Homer, Odysee, in der Übersetzung von Johann Heinrich Voß, 4 Bde. Altona/Hamburg 1781, 1793 + Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung 1814.

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Matilda5 at the North, somewhere on the banks of the Delaware? – I have written a long letter to Caroline, but I donot Know how to send it; for I am sure it is to her not worth the postage from Havre to Hamb. I am afraid there will be hardly any vessels direct from Hamb. to Charleston, and Labat is so strange a man, and to me – in short I would not send that box to him; for I know he would not take the slightest trouble with its entrance, but just let it take its course, and allow it to be overhauled &c in the eastern vessel so that probably everything would come to me topsyturvy. I wish to ask no favour of Mr Labat you remember what letter he wrote when we inquired about vessels fr. N.Y. for Hamb. But what I might have seen from every newspaper. Heckscher and Möller6 wrote very differently. # ich komme eben von meiner Nachmittags Vorlesung, und das ist der wohl angenehmste Augenblick meines jezigen Lebens, wenn ich Nachmittags nach Hause komme […] Mir ist besonders trüb heut da ich wieder keinen Brief hatte. Oh Gott! # October 24. You must write me, my Matilda, whether the different pryhologic atmosphere, as I would call it, has any effect on Oscar. The more romantic air he breathes in Germany, and the very different family relations in which he lives, surrounded as he now is by several people who lovingly care for him, besides his parents, does all this show some effect on his Gemüth? And how does all this operate upon the little ones? I should think the very fact that others besides their mother and father love, cherish, kiss and coax them, their loving aunts and uncles men and women who show a decided interest in them, their going to see various people; must have an effect upon them and show it by this time. Oh, how much those dear ones have lost here, and will lose when they are obliged to return to this, their heartless life, so I almost would call it. If I think of what they have at Hamburg, and how sweetly it must affect them, I donot a moment regret your going; and easy indeed, I repeat, would be my patiently waiting here for 9 months, if – and there is the old gnaying thought if Oscar could return with them. That he will be severed from us! Say yourself, what have I without you and children? Separated from all family relations, severed, I had almost said from religion, debarred from soothing and invigorating friendship, are you not my country, almost my church? However, God may send, whenever he thinks fit, a change

5 Matilda Willing née Matilda Lee Carter, harpist, socialite in Philadelphia with an ambivalent reputation. Rumour had it that she did not give “a fig for” for her husband. See Eliza Cope Harrison, ed., Best Companions. Letters of Eliza Middleton Fisher and her mother, Mary Hering Middleton, from Charleston, Philadelphia, and Newport, 1839–1846, Columbia/SC 2001, p. 46. 6 Charles August Heckscher, New York City; Nicholas D.E. Möller was a business partner of the Oppenheimer brothers.

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and for the present I will contemplate the poor resulting from your visit, which is very great. Shall I have a letter to-day? # Elsa brought me again Galignian’s, and when I saw them unaccompanied by a letter, I was very much frightened; but I found that they were old papers, so I have at least the consolation that no new Havre packet has arrived without a letter from you, but I have not the consolation of a letter! # just gave the Germ. lesson to Mr Elliot, we translate Iphigenie, and we read: Weh dem der fern von Eltern und Geschwistern [4] Ein einsam Leben führt! (Weh, wer vom Weibe Von seinen süßen ∆ weit getrennt Und dem kein Schiff der Lieben Botschaft bringt Das doch beflügelt tausende verbindet So viel, nur ihn der Lieben Liebe nicht.)7 So könnt ich lange es fortsagen, aber wozu! Ich habe Kopfschmerzen, ich bin unmuthig.- It is one of those sultry hot days, which you remember always affect my head; but my heart is more affected, at the want of news from my beloved ones. Oct. 26 I have fallen into an evil, though for me sweet custom, of writing every morning when I come to my desk a line or so to you. For I fill the letter in this way with nothing and besides puts my mind into a still more unfit frame for work. I donot know why my Matilda but at no previous separation have I suffered so much mich innig an Geiste verlangend. I have slept but little the whole of last night, so exited was I and when I fell asleep it was worse still, for then I dreamed the most voluptuous dreams. I live excedingly frugal, I drink no wine (I have none in the house) but some is coming), eat no suppers, indeed you would be astonished to see how little my meals consist of ever since I had that stupid foot and could not take exercise; my pants show me that I have grown thinner; despite of all that my blood burns, without reading exciting books, seeing sumptuous pictures, beholding several forms, nay even without speaking to womankind at all, except to Betsy,8 who you will allow cannot possibly excite much my imagination, even – where you to change her black into the softest white of Grecian marble. Why then is it so? If you feel half that I do, it is curious thing, I must say, how two beings in sinnlicher Sehnsucht fast verglühen, aber 3000 Meilen getrennt, jedes unter seiner Decke ∆ – Preston visited me the other day, so soon as he heard that I could not leave the campus. – You see this letter again is filled before I am aware of it, and before I have one from 7 Iphigenie auf Tauris, tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first performance Weimar 1779. 8 Betsy, the cook.

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you. My morning gown is refitting for winter expedition – inside delipidated rapidly, have the holes blocked up any how, so that it will do. – My 2d. vol is yet printing.9 It is yet so hot with us that I cannot wear the morning gown, you, I suppose have fires this good while. I fear those nasty stoves for you and the children. How ever Carry and Harry had also been accustomed to Engl. Fires. But what am I doing. I fill the paper most inconsiderately. – Donot omit to let Oscar read and spell English much. Let him read a good English book. I am afraid he looses time in the English lesson in school, or rather worse, he will contract a bad pronunciation. Speak therefore, as I begged you, always English with him. I repeat this request most urgently – no matter, whether people say it sounds affected or not we dont love for people, no, they take care of our interest. Things and letters I had this day, but from you, my beloved Matilda – letters from Mary and Sally10 and [cross-writing, 1] the things from the North. So you can imagine me henceforth with some things in the store-room I baught 75 bottles of claret the bottling here exposes wine too much to become sour. They wont last long, but still so long as they last, and after that I must take again to water, although I have a most philosophical contempt for the pleasures of the pumps. I have not opened yet the boxes. Sally11 writes most sweetly and has sent me a parcel of things is invariably kind to me. I am very sorry to say that Mary’s12 letter is nothing sufficient, and her furious friendship with Mrs Butler does her, I verily believe no good. She says, she will write to you soon I gave her your directions. I hope Oscar has written already to Sally. – Good-bye once more for a letterless day. Pray, tell me, is this sort of writing difficult for you. I would send love, sweet to you, and balm for those beloved eyes, not trouble and trouble and hurt for them. October 27. At length I have a letter, and thousand thanks for it. Never should I have thaught that two brief words could convey such a mass of joy, as those. All well at the top your letter would have made me perfectly happy, were it not for that passage about Oscar. His fretfulness ought to be judged if not too severely, partly in conversation of his wholly domestic education, partly of his fall and we must thank God that it left no greater nervousness. Still, though the considerations ought to protect him against too serious a censure of his faults in his mind, it they are 9 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 10 Mary Appleton and Sally Newton. 11 Sally Newton née Sullivan, Boston. 12 Mary Appleton, Boston.

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no reasons to omit what is necessary respecting his education. And if you find it necessary, after very calm reflection, to send him to that school, he must go. Poor, poor dear Oscar what is it now to him to be my son, to have me for his father? He might almost as well have A, B, C, or anyone for father, would it not be the same? Alas, that I, of all men in the world, can have no hand in his Entwicklung! Before you, however send him to that school I implore you to inquire in the most accurate way about the sleeping of the boys. On no consideration whatsoever will I allow him to sleep with another boy or boys alone. There is a most fearful and shameless vice but too common in German schools, far, far more so than in English or American, because it is in the character of both the latter nations to to foster and develop free manliness far more, than what I would protect my own Oscar, and whereof, at the risk of a limb of mine – at any sacrifice. More so, if you send him to that boarding school I implore you, donot consider yourself absolve either from in educating [cross-writing, 3] or as much as possible even instructing him, by reading, explaining, going over what he has gone through in school. The pleasures you enjoy after so long a dirth – I speak of the purest pleasures that of enjoying love, must not prevent you in any way from the closest attention to this our boy, for he is a chosen plant. I am sorry that nothing as yet has been done or has been possible to do, respecting drawing – one lesson a week is nothing, and you what a great talent he has. How many are there in that boarding-school? If he goes there, see him, oh, see him nevertheless very often and neglect not to, to see frequently Mrs Werner, and talk to her. I insist upon that if he be sent there, that he have his washing tub, for the purpose spoken off, also there. Also that he have daily ­Latin. I must write about other things now, though that boy could make me talk for hours of him. If I imagine his dear head, resting on a pillow far from me and far from you – Oh, may God send his dearest angels to spred their ambrosial wings over my beloved boy – I beg you to write with that care which makes the sense always clear. That anecdote about one must be a fool to like cold soup,” interests me very much as all such things but I cannot well make out whether it was Hammy or Normy who said it. It seems to be in Hammy’s style, and too far advanced to be Norry. - I return from all my heart and with the purest sincerity your uncles message.13 May soon he will be recovered. I pressed your letter to my bosom and said loud: God, God, I thank thee. I received the letter yesterday after-noon at four. I had gone at nine to the court house to hear Preston, and 13

Jacob Oppenheimer, Hamburg.

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others – the first time I left the campus walls – and remained there until four. I read the letter at least seven or 8 times, of which with intermezzos of musings and reflections. Had you been able to hear me you would have laughed. When I came to Emilie Fehling I said loud for utterly unrestricted as I am in my house now, I feel that I frequently talk loud, sometimes even to drawing a smile from Elsa’s lips – “Who is that?” and when some lines farther I read “We were at uncle Hallers”14 I actually exclaimed in great distress: “Good God, who is that!” I was quite frightened to read on. Now however often you may have explained to me the your family ramifications, I am sure you never have told me about Mr Haller being your uncle. If he is, how the deuce did he become sick. Why have you not asked Gossler15 at once what chance there is respecting a vessel direct to Charleston? I am surely pressed for razors […] if you go to Lübeck let the little ones never play with peas or sugar peas, you know put these things so easily into their ears. It is fine thing that Normy kisses my letters – I had almost said a fine rite. It does me good to think the children kiss my letters when they arrive. Does Hammy not advance? Is he not found very backward. When you tell me of Oscar’s telling &c to the children, you dont say a word about his German. Can he pretty freely make himself understood. Pray, my dear Matilda, when you write to me, think always of my reception of the letter as well as your heart in writing it. I think if you can conveniently do it, it will be well enough to go to Lübeck. I have acquaintances there whose name end in mann. You do not write me whether Oscar has an Atlas. Have you not read that blue memorandum book. I hope that the Americana has arrived. I guess Heckscher,16 now in Hamburg sent it and can tell you of los young Rebels17 now and then. Has Dr Julius seen you? Would you believe that in his 2d. vol. which only treats of prison matter, and in which every possible pamphlet is mentioned, even were it but to show that he know it, my name appears not once!18 I can fairly state as a fact I am here considered as one of the best writers or at least most prominent writers 14 15 16 17

18

Martin Joseph Haller, father of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller had married a sister of Mathilde Lieber’s mother. Johann Heinrich Gossler. Eduard Heckscher. The brothers of Mathilde Lieber tried to reorganize business connections that involved several family members like Salomon Heine, Jacob Oppenheimer, and Hartwig Hesse who had invested great means to the enterprise of a plantation in Puerto Rico producing sugarcane/raw sugar, tobacco, and coffee. These products were in high demand by German consumers and important trade goods to these well-established merchants. Lieber was wrong; Julius mentioned him by his name and praised the College of South Carolina in volume 1, Julius, Nordamerikas sittliche Zustände, p. 236.

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on that subject, and of my five or 6 publications on prison affairs he does not even mention one, even were it to refuse it.19 But I see through the whole perfectly well. The impudence in him to send me that book to translate it is really great. I hope you avoid any too often repeated visits of him, aufdringlich as he is. The fool calls Pickering the most philosophical head in America. Now what arrogance to make any such assertion for him who has been here a year and a half only, and this old good Pickering, him you know I love very much, but to call him the most philosophical head in America. Why poor P. will bash over and over. In the same style did Miss Martineau call Follen20 the greatest man in America!! – Kiss Matilda Beneke from me right on the lips, warm and glowing and say it comes from me. That nothing has plucked her name out of my heart. I write more about your letter in my next. Surprize Oscar with the enclosed at Christmas. Kiss your sisters, the angelic kind beings. I thought you would like large papers. Your faithful Frank [cross-writing] This space I unexpectedly gained. My Westphalia hams – You know I baught 4  – were no good speculation; one eaten up by Kippers and the others not peculiar, not half as fine as yours; and many wine bottles broken, and, alas, a bottle of Harvey sauce.21 I do declare of all places in the world this is the 19

20 21

Lieber indeed had published on penology at large: he had started in 1833 with his a­ daptation of Beaumont and Tocqueville, written pamphlets and a contribution in the Encyclopaedia American to name just the most important texts. Francis Lieber, On the penitentiary system in the United States and its application in France, with an appendix on penal colonies, and also Statistical notes by G.D. De Beaumont and A. De Tocqueville, councellors in the Royal Court of Paris, and members of the Historical Society of P­ ennsylvania, translated from the French, with an introduction, notes and addition by Francis Lieber, Philadelphia 1833. Julius had produced the German translation of the French original. Together with Julius Lieber had published, Remarks on the relation between education and crime in a letter to the Right Rev. William White, president of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons by Francis Lieber LL D member of the Society, to which are added some observations by N.H. Julius, MD of Hamburg, a corresponding member of the society, Philadelphia 1835. N.H. Julius, Amerika’s Besserungs-System und dessen Anwendung auf Europa. Mit einem Anhange über Straf-Ansiedelungen und zwei und zwanzig Beilagen. Aus dem Französischen der Herren G. von Beaumont und A. v. Tocqueville, nebst Erweiterungen und Zusätzen von N.H. Julius, Berlin 1833. See Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 354–361. Charles Follen, Cambridge/Mass. A kind of Worcestersauce.

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­ astiest hole. King told me yesterday they asked him & 30 yes thirty dollars for n the basket of champaign, which he wished to buy for com[cross-writing] mencement ball. I had to pay $10.75 for freight by wagon from Charleston. What a nasty place. Pray kiss the girls22 once more. If you were to take large sheets they might now and then add a word, or do large sheets cost too much from H. to Havre. – Have you seen Mrs Chapeaurouge, who I should think must be an affectionate woman.23 Pray have intercourse with various sorts of people. Ever Y. Frank Die Amerikana für Osc ging an Gossler.24 F. L. Double Paid Via New-York and Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hamburg Allemagne Per packet Stamp Hamburg 1 Dec. 9 Stamps faded + red sealing wax

22 23 24

Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. Susanne Gossler was married to Ami de Chapeaurouge, sister of Johann Heinrich, Ernst, Gustav, and Wilhelm Gossler. Johann Heinrich Gossler, Hamburg, Esplanade No. 41.

No. 22 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 27.10.-11.11.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 11.11.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages No XIII Had you yesterday the roast goose? My Matilda, I love you tenderly. My heart is very full! Last date of the Letter: Columbia, S.C. November 11. 1839. I trust my last letter did not show any Traces of the circumstances under which it was closed. When reading over the letter to Oscar aloud, I dont know why, but I began to sob, and because I repressed it long, it broke forth the more violently when I read loud; for when the heart is full, utterance is just like beating out the bung of a beer barrel. Now I looked very naturally about for a Kerchief, but I had not none with me, and what with snuffing and wit wiping tears with a piece of Chinese tea-papers, which is the most ready absorbant, even of parental tears – lovers ought always to have their pockets full of it – I thaught some defacing traces of fatherly affection might have been visible in my letter. If not so much the better. Monday morning, just before the Faculty meeting Oct. 27. If I repeat things, I trust you do not consider me impatient; I cannot always remember ­whether I have spoken of things, which are continually in my mind. It seems to me – I beg your pardon if I am wrong – that you have not yet looked at the ­memorandum book; at least you do not write me about a single thing. How is it with the P ­ enny Magazine? The maps? The globe? – Yesterday arrived through Cuningham my paper, ruled &c from the North for M.S. and my Synonymes, a neat book, which were the ink blacker (the light ink is the ruin of the looks of all American books) wh would be actually beautiful.1 But the book is ­steriotyped, and hence the next set of 500 copies may be better. At least I do all I can to introduce fine French printing ink, and have it, if possible imitated here. There came with it a number of the Jurist,2 in which there is a short notice of the Hermeneutics in high terms.3 Have you sent the copy of the H ­ ermeneutics to Mittermaier, as I told you?4 You see you tell me nothing of all those things; or do you not only not tell me anything about them, but forget them entirely? Matilda, I implore 1 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 2 The American Jurist and Law Magazine, Boston Freeman & Bolles, founded ca. 1826, edited by Lieber’s pals Charles Sumner, and George S. Hillard. 3 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics. 4 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics; leading lawyer and professor of law in southern ­Germany, Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_024

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you by all that is sacred, never forget, that ardent love is the noblest sentiment if superinduced upon the fulfilment of minor duties and common attentions; but if they are wanting, love, and even the most ardent would be like the enthusiasm of an astronomer who neglects dinner, as to blow his nose. Throughout life the rule holds, that, of all those things that must be done, those that are the least important when performed are the most important when omitted to be performed. It is like the multiplication table; a man knows precious little who only knows that 3 times 3 makes 9, but he who does not know is enormously ignorant. The cast of your glowing feelings in your letters cannot be otherwise but grateful to me; God knows, it is. But this does not a absolve you from likewise calmly and attentively considering what you have to write me before you sit down. Else I may ask for ever, and never recieve an answer. I donot know how Oscar takes an airing, with whom and where. I donot know what the children wear; I donot know how and where they sleep – all this you would write me, if you were to reflect upon the different points you have to mention. You have not written me once a few words about Oscar’s instruction. I donot know what he has in history for instance, yet it would interest me indeed, you have not once written me whether you have questioned him at home, whether you allow what he has learned &c, where for instance he is in cyphering; &c. what he declaims. If these trifles donot interest me, believe me nothing interests me. I repeat, I implore you do not consider yourself as now utterly absolved from any aid and superintending ­assistence in Oscar’s instruction. Alas! alas! how soon may the time arrive when a vast ocean rolling between us and that beloved child, he will be almost like a little orphan! – It may be, nay I Know, it is more agreable to you when you write to pour forth feelings of which your breast is full, but the correspondence of a father and a husband must have also more substantial matter. Enough – I have sent yesterday the letter to dear Caroline, of which I spoke in my last, to Charleston; whence it will be sent by way of Havre if there is no vessel direct to Bremen or Hamb. I beg you to tell her not to be angry with me if she thinks the letter is not worth the postage. What can I write from here? One thing at least the letter contains – Love, affection; and if that is not quite valueless to her, the letter, naturally, will have some slight value to her. – You write me all the time how your relations esteem me &c. Its wondrous that esteeming people talk slightingly of him as James5 confessed whom they esteem. Let that matter drop. Before God I tell you there is no being living that wishes more sincerely and fervently the choisest blessings upon the head of your uncle,6 and who has a higher respect for him. I say more, I do 5 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. 6 Jacob Oppenheimer.

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believe that since your arrival and seeing how you love me, he feels differently, perhaps even warmly toward me. But surely you will not tell me that those people who did not even mention me in letters to you can [2] so highly esteem me, as you write me. I donot touch upon this point voluntarily. You necessarily provoke a reply; else believe me, I should never have thaught of speaking of it. Simply because I donot think of it. But you speak of the great esteem, and all that, of course I cannot help seeing what is right before me and pointed at. I donot believe they absolutely dislike me; how could they, they dont know me one bit most assuredly to say the least they care precious little about me take no interest in my success or labors, and, probably – however I have said enough. I neither complain nor exact, only dont tell force my attention to these points or make out your case better, than you have yet succeeded in doing so far. – I beg you sensibly to cultivate Gossler’s acquaintance.7 I never liked absolute family cliquism. – I am afraid you find # Tuesday morning Oct. 28. Thus far I wrote yester-day, when Mr Elliot came to take his German lesson, and now I cannot remember what I was going to say – never mind! Are you not going my dear Matilda, to take the Lord’s supper? I have a great longing for that great, beautiful and wholesome symbolic ceremony. Would to God, I could take the sacrament here without declaring myself one closely tied to a set of dogmas a system of theology I totally and most essentially disown and differ from. – I am very sorry to hear that neither Caroline nor Harriet enjoy perfect health. I fear the very severe winter in Hamburg cannot be good for the latter. I wish affection was a balm for all diseases or if it is such, that it was a radical cure for all bodily afflictions; for, were it so, I know that the many bottles full, which I could afford to send them from my own affection would speedily cure them of all aches, and if you and I were to mix bottles, half and half, why it would be at Swaim’s Panacea8 all hollow. Give them at any rate my love, whether it cure or not, it may serve at least as a little scent bottle to revive the nerves for a moment though it will not effect an entire cure. Change of climate would do them good, therefore I repeat, what I wrote to Caroline, let one of them at least return with you. This reminds me of your urgent request to come and fetch you. I believe I have written about that from Boston, if not, here 7 Johann Heinrich Gossler. 8 Medicine sold by William Swaim of Philadelphia to cure various diseases from syphilis to scrofula, Swaim started to sell his odd mixture of mercuric chloride, oil of wintergreen and sarsaparilla from 1820 onwards.

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are my reasons or rather the obstacles, which will be in the way. 1. I shall have no money for it, the expences, as you perfectly well know, will be large even without the very great addition which a steamboat trip would cost. 2. Even with by steamboat the time of our vacation would be b too short, and I cannot ask the Trustees to let me go earlier, for not to speak of the leave which they gave me only last year to go to Westpoint (and this year Mr Ellet went under similar circumstances) Mr Twiss, ill with the liver complaint at the North has not yet returned. it wont do, therefore, to ask again to let me go. 3. I positively believe so short a trip to Europe after so long an absence, during which my eyes have become opened in so many respects, would horrow my very soul; it would affect me, make me figitty nervous. 4. Suppose that happens for which you and I pray God daily, that is that I am removed from here, I would, by such a trip deprive myself of then making between the two appointments as leasurely trip. When I thus write to you – that I cannot come and fetch you, my heart would righ break, for I think that I then shall not see my Oscar. – That you will come without him. But I must not make myself unhappy, and unfit my mind for what I have laid out as my task to-day. Therefore let me drown all those most bitter reflections, but kiss die holden Lippen meines geliebten Knaben, and those of the others also. – Yo donot write me a word whether Hammy continues to be so backward, whether he is in fact not exceedingly backward for his age. – Last evening when I was sitting reading at the entry window, Charlotte9 passed bye in the coach, and threw me kisses. I had not seen her since my return, not being able to go out. I wrote her word I would dress in woman’s clothes if she would visit me, and having rummaged the rag-bag ever through & through for linen or other stuff for my foot, I stumbled the other day on an old nightcap, I think Rebeccas. I was on the point of writing to Charlotte10 that now she might come, I being able to dress up à la femme, when I found I had nothing also for my foot, so poor Rebecca’s m head cover was degraded into a foot bandage. Behold! How I have written on! And yet I mean to send this only within a fortnight, so I must husband my space and my talk and my affection. I take it for granted you have conversed a little with Oscar on the government under which he now lives, “As he is at the head, what the Senate of H. is, that senators are for life, that there is no house of representatives, no public debating, and what the parish assemblies are, and in what is the main that republic government differs from ours. Has he been on a steeple to see the city? Has he seen some good pictures? Who is his Latin teacher? Strange indeed, all you write about him to the father of the boy is: I have engaged a young man &c. 9 10

Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC. Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC.

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As if I took no more interest in what and who he is, than in the baker’s name from whom Caroline gets her bread. Such are the unavoidable consequences of writing in a hurry and not making previously a brief memorandum, or at any rate reflect well upon the chief points, to be touched in the letter. From the bottom of my heart I wish you would enjoy yourself and drink deeply of those deep enjoyments of the soul from which you are alas! so cruelly shut out, but this does not exclude a degree of considerate reflection, on that life and the performances you have to do. There is not one solitary day in any man’s or woman’s life [3] in which they have not to perform some important duty and this duty requires a degree of collection of mind, of reflection, so that it be performed at the proper time, entirely and fully, and in the best manner. If we are moral beings it is indeed not too much that each day we reflect 2 or 3 minutes on what we have chiefly to do. - # It is half past two, and for the first time have I worked somewhat in the old style, yet heaven! how different I am mentally now, even fatigued, as was when I stopped at ½ past 6 last winter. Partly my mind is too much abroad now, partly my long College arrest has made me less vigorous. Soon all will be in old trim again. You ought to see my store room; full and neat. All goes very well except Betsy11 bothers me more than once a day I thaught I was bound to stop this at once so the other day, I told her not to bother me -, that she must make me a dinner without my opening the store room again; I scolded her greatly and now she knows everything she wants in the course of the day, when she comes in the morning. You will own it would have been insufferable had that old woman troubled me twice and thrice a day. Everything goes now very well. Onions are pickling, turkies in the yard, 87 ½ cents a piece. I could not help laughing this morning when I wrote on a paper: one bar of soap, 10 pence worth of common salt and – I forget, but there was a third thing. Everything goes well if I make up my mind. If Elza comes in the morning, I know it must be done, and all is well, but the moment they bore my again I fly out and feel the bother. Yet I repeat it goes very well. – Nov. 1. Only look a new month! One month worked off! Only 8 more before I set out for the North, which annual travelling I am not heartily sick of, but that trip in 1840 will be different – yet will you come without Oscar? – Are you glad in seeing that November and do you think a month nearer our reunion or, one month already lost of my happy time and nearer to my my dreadful return to sandy, 11

Betsy the cook.

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dreary, dull, dead, lonely, herzlos u geistlos Columbia. Ich sandte Stuart mein Lat. Synonyme,12 er kam dieselben abend, um mich um Gelegenheit Gefälligkeit zu bitten, u sagte auch nicht ein Wort. Elliot nimmt zwei mal die Woche Stunde von mir u wir sind auch nicht einen Zoll einander näher. Thornwell du erinnerst dich hieb den schönsten Baum in seinem Garten nieder weil er nichts nuzte (also auch nichts schadete) Mit solchen Besenstiehlen u Canibalen muss man leben! Yester-day I heard the lovely warbling of a mocking-bird. What do you think of that! Every night I have 4 or 5 musquito bites; they sing most annoyingly around my head when I wish to fall asleep; what do you think of that? I am quoted at considerable length in Crawfords report on Prisons to Parliament;13 but my words are given as Vaux’s, what do you think of that? I long again for a letter, and to-morrow it is only a week that I had your last, what do you think of that? I have stewed chickens, filled with tomato and onions, what do you think of that? – Nov 4. Welch ein unsinniger Brief! Never mind, you know my aversion to throw away any letter, once written, and I kiss you a thousand times, to shut your sweet mouth. I love you from the bottom of my soul. No wonder, if I for once have become brummig. To be pinned up as I have been this long time is no trifle. But since yester-day I have left off all bondage, and possibly, might go out, but I have wisely resolved to resist all temptation, and remain quit until Saturday next (it is Wednesday to-day); Yesterday I ­finished my Letter to the Governor quite,14 but, what a difference between this year and last as to the intensity of my mind’s action! I begin myself to wonder at what I performed last winter. The 20. part of Polly is not yet out; they go on so slowly!15 A cold wind has set in at least – fire-chips – in all that. But I dine without fire; once before we had fire. The day before yester-day was great feastday, several boxes full of beautiful books for our library16 from Engl. How I revelled, and carried home, arms full! I breathed Civilization! I had a sweet note from Charlotte,17 in an envelop with quilt Gothic ornaments, and a flower in the corner of the paper, as the paper that Harriet sent from Heidelberg. Charlotte had it in a box from N.Y. and her first idea was to write on one of the sheets to me. # I went to the faculty, to examine, and when I came home I found your dear, 12 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 13 Report of William Crawford, esq, on penitentiaries of the United States, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary 1839. 14 Lieber, Letter to His Excellency Patrick Noble. 15 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 16 The library of the College of South Carolina that only recently had been finished is situated just across the yard from the Lieber house on the Horseshoe, Columbia/SC. 17 Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC.

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dearest letter of Sept. 18 by the Liverp. steam boat on the table, with Oscar’s dictation in it. God bless you, all my dear ones. Thank, thank you a thousand times! Oh I love you so from the bottom of my soul. But I will be calm for the present and answer your letter first, and then – let the heart plaudern as it may. If you saw Sally’s18 bosom you would not scold me; it is too sweet. The watchchain of which I wrote is on the way. Of the examination “degradations” of which you justly speak I have had a sufficient quantity. But I unhinge my mind for the times Hershel must have done when he fiddled for his bread. I too fiddle for my bread, and the vilest tune of Yankee-doodle that ever fiddler scratched upon his old Spuckheiter, as they call with us an old dirty fiddle. Hillard is the name, not Hilliard, though the latter is a near common name. I beg your pardon, but I cant help it. Let the slippers be wide enough. – Your via Havre letters arrive well, but pray, as I said before, write the direction a little thicker. How nice your last, by the way, is written. Poor dear Oscar I donot wish to trouble him. Let him dictate if he cannot find time to write; and I think myself it will give me great joy if in the first letter he writes I can see improvement. Give him plenty of fresh air. Alas! that Cuxhaven letter, which you mention will arrive – God knows when, perhaps a dear Christmass present! She is one of the slowest creepers that ever doodled dreamingly across the Atlantic. But poor dear little Hammy! So they have sent him to school! Poor little thing! with a Penal as big as he is! He ought to dictate a letter. And when all the two are sent to school I suppose Norry is made the veriest pet and spoiled imp that ever served as plaything for the united huggery of three kissy-kassy women. So you want another baby? Pray give my complements to Mr Herzfeld19 and beg him to accommodate you. For shame? for shame! I mean for me. And Carry wishes one? You fondling creatures! I should be quite content if children could be plucked from the trees say 3 years old. I would willingly dispense with the sour-milk-month period. I am delighted to hear that you make nonsense together. Make as much as you can afford. You must mention me to Clara,20 and tell her that I liked the compliment sending for my book21 very much; but they must not scold me for having found it dry, as no doubt they will have done. What you say about my speaking I Know to be true, for the

18 19 20 21

Sally Newton née Sullivan. Dr. med. Robert Caesar Herzfeld, Hamburg, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Clara Woodhouse, Leominster/England, sister of Mathilde Lieber. Clara Woodhouse, Leominster, had informed Mathilde Lieber that she had ordered Lieber’s newest brainchild, Manual of Political Ethics, from a London bookseller.

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[4] for the very faults of my writing are that I fall into the style of speaking. This is one of those things of which a man boldly says, I know it. I say I know I would make a good speaker; I feel it, know it, whenever I read a great speech ancient or modern. But that is a nipped bud. I was misplaced, when dropped in Germany. But I grumble not. Even although you cannot know anything, still to a poor fellow like myself it is sweet if you write me, that you have good forebodings. I have had onions pickled. Oh how most delightful a box will be from you. If they only could send from Züll. otherwise than by mail I would ask you, to tell them that you are sending me a letter box, and they might send me a parcel of letters. That vixen Charlotte too, who dares to engage herself without telling her Uncle.22 Altogether you, my dearest Matilda must now and then write to them, for I believe I shall hardly find time this winter and you may communicate to them. Did I tell you that the Synonymes are here. a very fine book.23 I keep a copy for my boy. What German and Engl. dictionary is it that Oscar writes about. I sent one I think, but I donot remember. I am glad to see from Oscar’s lines the Americana has arrived. Has it been bound? Do not pray forget to write me whether you sent Hermy as you call the poor book to Mittermaier.24 I have to read now Julius’ book, and positively, I think there is absolute insolence in not mentioning me once.25 Yesterday, I cried. Old fool! And why? I read in the papers that the mother of Napoleon rested for many days on a comp before her death on a couch. At length it was necessary to carry her to bed; she consented, but before leaving the boudoir she walked to Napoleon’s bust, touched the beloved features, for she had been blind for a long time, kissed the cold marble and sank down. Good God! even now my stupid eyes fill with water. There is something so antique, grand, symbolic, something so Niobe-like in the old blind mother of Napoleon, grasping on the emperors feature, her dearest son, kissing the old stone, he long gone, all her sons, if not dead, at least hurled from the throne, dispersed, forgotten – oh it is tragic in the saddest Grecian style – and – not having a soul here, to be conscious that there is not even a

22 Charlotte Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber in Züllichau. 23 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 24 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics; Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg. 25 Julius, Nordamerikas sittliche Zustände. Lieber was mistaken because Julius mentioned him in vol. 1, p. 236.

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[cross-writing, 1] soul here that would feel anything at the great scene, to know that were I to speak of it even in its perfectly proper place, for instance when speaking of Grecian tragic scenes, to one of my classes, not one would feel with me and many secretly laugh and perhaps visibly smile. I have dwelled again and again on this scene. Does it strike you so? How I would beautifully, Shakespearianly, Sophocles like work it out, were I a play writer. But best I think it would do to describe it, very simple. In Homer’s way, - it drives me perhaps yet to write you about it in the next letter. If I have spoken about it to much excuse me and consider that I am alone. I am sure this scene has not so deeply affected me because per chance my heart is sore, but simply because I am alone. – My thaughts fall unattracted by anything else upon a subject. – While I was writing upon Solitary confinement, to the Governor,26 I could not help often thinking: Well, am I not in uninterrupted solitary confinement? – By the bye, observe how little the Liverpool this time gained over the previous Havre packet. Your letter is written a fortnight after the previous one which went by Havre packet, and I recieved it only 4 days less a fortnight after the fr former one. Oh, I beg your pardon, that was stupid. What I said proves nothing. Never mind, I cannot strike it out, because it would deface the whole letter. And yet after all I am right – enough! – Tell me how poor Hammy gets along in the school? I cannot understand it? Can he talk German? Or do Carry’s children talk English? I do not penetrate this marvellous subject – Dinner ready, says Elza, so good bye. I have a stewed chicken, which she Betsy27 makes cleverly now, and a pudding, and – oh toll ye bells! – to-morrow I shall have potatoes – half a dollar a peck – yes Madame – potatoes dearer far dearer than oranges, but then they are also worth far more! Goodbye for to-day. [cross-writing, 2] Novem 7. Donot think my loved wife, that I have not written to you for several days. The fact is I misdated the lines of yesterday. When a Roman child was born they prayed successively to eves so many, in other cases entirely unknown deities, that the child might not stammer, that it might cut teeth easily &c &c. In the same way I have just sacrificed to the goddess Potatina, the deity presiding over potatoes – a daughter of Jove and Hibernia, born on that green island, and of peculiarly Irish mean. I roasted my first poteto in the ashes, and in the 26 Lieber, A Popular Essay on Subjects of Penal Law. 27 Betsy and Elsa, slaves in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

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dearest style of the Greeks kept the entrails only for me, giving all the rest – the peals – to Potatina. – I wish we passed here a toppence-postage act as in England. Every day I would write, every day I would have a letter – would I? – Poor Charlotte continues to be ill she is sometimes four, five days together in bed.28 A propos, to such people, you might write by mail-like vessels which sail from Hamburg, for a few weeks sooner or later makes no difference with such letters. – Last Sunday I had the two Haynes with me for breakfast. I shall do it often. Their mother29 is coming to reside here in the little house formerly occupied by Mr Merant, for the whole time that her sons will remain in College. Poor woman! The sons are to board with her. I shall go of course frequently to see her.30 Carolina and Harriet send me their love. Tell them I love the undeserving creatures from the bottom of my heart, even if they do not care for my love. I cant help it, they are so good souls – in general – not specifically to me; the naughty girls, not yet having written to me once! – I keep this letter until Monday next, when it will be a fortnight I wrote you last. Tell Carolina if she will make up she must write me a very confidential letter. I like women’s confidence. Oscar’s dictated letter gave me again much, very much pleasure. His constant repetition and interjections of my dear papa is so natural and so dear to my heart I read his letters always several times loud, and they do me so good! I suppose I must stop to leave room for several days yet you must write me whether these brimful letters hurt your eyes, however soothing they may be to your heart. – or need not that be soothed. – You run-away. I saw the other day an advertisement to this effect: $50 Reward. Runaway the wife of a professor, calling herself Matilda. She is supposed to have taken her road towards Hamburg where she has relations. Expense will be paid! Free to joke with so nasty a thing. Monday Nov. 11. 1839. […] Last Saturday I recieved the letter you sent by Mode Roma, dated September Nov. 1, of course you meant October 1. ∆ That day, awfully as yester-day I attempted repeatedly to write, but I could not ∆. Since our beloved boy had that dreadful fall in Charleston I have not felt so deeply affected. I have taken ∆ […a] book, to study, to read, but I could not bring my mind to the subject. Always ∆ that loved boy, sometimes alone at table with strangers, sometimes in his bed room, and sometimes playing in the yard and being called by his schoolmaster, bestowing carresses on him, ∆ father cannot recieve. I must not go on this way, or I shall not be able to write,

28 29 30

Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC. Widow of General Robert Young Hayne, Rebecca Mott Alston. Widow and sons of General Robert Young Hayne who had been married twice.

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[cross-writing, 3] ∆ My sweet Oscar! And there is one thaught which, if all the others are affecting, […] you have said sometimes that my speaking to you harshly was the cause he would not […] you. Oh God, am I then the cause now that he was sent to that place! It makes my heart break. I have nothing to offer as an excuse. I only know that were I not placed in a false position, which is grinding to any man of talents, would never have been the case. My God, pardon me, but you, oh Matilda, I entreat you, let never, oh never fall any of my wrong upon that most beloved, blessed child. Let me hope at least that you love him at least, as if never anything had happened. – I could not go on; I am now again calmer. I thank you for that letter dearly, and can of course not answer to day all the points. I believe you have done perfectly right. Oh God, if his master is only a loving and a wise man. Try, I beseach you to inspire his wife with some of your love and mine for that boy. That I was so early doomed to send him from me. – Why did you not send him to that boarding school of Werner’s brother of which you first spoke? Have you written about this in the letter I have not yet recieved – by the Cuxhaven? And why was he sent to another school than that where Carolines children go? Matilda, let him not forget his father, who – I cannot write well, my eyes will get dim. Perhaps it is owing in part to my bodily state. Having been confirmed so long, I have not my usual nerve. Solitude as I have it here, without one conversation alone explains perhaps my excitability. I hope you have at once stipulated about the Latin also about dancing. Remove him not again, and do not think of taking him with you to Berlin, if you should go when he has no vacation. I shall write in your next letter to Dr Busse, I cannot to-day. It is no trifle for a father so far from his beloved child to write to one to whom he is instructed, and whom the father does not know, you must also take particular care that somehow or other, he does not forget his English, on the contrary that he learn it better and better. It is all important. Is there no English family of your acquaintance, where there are children; and whether he might go now and then to refresh his native tongue? Try to bring it about. You must not stay at my brothers in Berlin,31 he is poor, and it would clog you altogether, much rather at your friend Sally’s.32 You might toward the end of your stay at Berlin go a day or two to Gustavus’s,33 but you must not make your stay altogether there. Pray copy the letter to Oscar for him, for I shall be obliged

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Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. Sally Jacobsen, Berlin. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin.

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to write very small to him. I was grieved to hear about your dear sister Harriet, and I trust the next news will be better. Let her go come with you a winter here would do her good. But what shall poor Caroline do? I would not advise anything to hurt her, for all the love she seems to feel for me. I donot deserve it, I am sure. I wonder why you write nothing about the money. How the matters stand. I must beg you to tell your uncle to give you what money you want and to charge me for the present with interest, because exchange is not from the South is not high, but if is actually impossible to get a draft on the North. I have not yet been [4] able to pay Brune’s34 for your Rotterdam money. There is the money in my drawer, but I can not obtain a drft $300 for Oscar is, according to what was paid when I was in Germany and in the part where I used to live, very much, but I dare say fair according to Hamb. standard. I had in consequence already given up the idea of buying a horse, but to-day when I arranged my study anew – cleared it up – I mean, I was about an hour of on my legs and found myself so tired, that I have thaught again I must do it, so soon as I am able to ride, which will be very soon. In my next I tell you all about my foot I almost wish I had not bought me any wine; and yet I will not be ungrateful. Sitting here from early in the morning until late at night unstrings me so that I have often felt the grateful effect of a little claret. It does me good. – Pray send no eadables; it is not necessary. A few preserves &c indeed will be fine. Herrings I have. I wonder to whom you have sent the box in N.Y. I have no proper friend there now for such things. Kiss Matilda Benecke for me, and so your sisters. Thank you for your letters. Your Frank Columbia, S.C. Nov. 11. 1839. My dear, my dearest boy (not that you are dearer to my heart than your loved brothers, you are all my dearest boys) do you like to be called my boy, my sweet boy? To my heart it does good. Mama has written me that you have gone to a boarding school. God bless you my darling! Your father’s thaughts are all the time with you. I see you in my mind when you are at school, when sleep, when you dine, when you pray for your distant father, for I know my Oscar prays often for me. Oh that my real eyes could see my real, my loved Oscar. Tell your Master I shall write to him, and that I beg him to love my Oscar, and as for you you will behave so that he will love you. Now that you are among strangers, my boy, try to remember all your parents have told you, 34

Brune, North German merchants in Baltimore.

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from mere trifles, e.g. not to eat with the knife, nor to change the fork, to the most important things. And God will bless my boy. Be very, very cleanly in all things. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” is an old Engl. saying. And love your dear mother; oh Oscar you can not be sufficiently grateful to God for having given you so kind a mother. Study Latin bravely; I shall be so happy when you write me the first time that you have begun to translate a Lat. author. You must let me know, my boy when your master thinks that you can read the German Homer by Voss, for I wish you to read it so soon as you can.35 I shall send you soon some vols. of the Thousand and one Night.36 They will delight you. I was very much pleased that Mama could write me that you had always braught home a good testimonial from school. That’s a good boy. I wish you my Oscar to dictate a long letter to Mama; but you must first think about what you are going to write; perhaps when you happen to think of something, which you might forget, you put a word or two on a paper, that you may think of it when you dictate. When this letter reaches you, all will be white in Hamb. I suppose. Then you will love snow in plenty; you used to like it hear so much. My boy, you asked me whether the man held the panther while I told measured it; yes; but then, if we had not shown him an undaunted face and boldly scolded him when he began to be furious, all holding would have been of no use. My boy, the Exploring Expedition, which Congress sent to the South pole, and of which I told you, have discovered some Islands, called Aurora islands. They are in the longitude of Rio Janeiro, and Lat. 53° 21’ South Latitude. Now you must look for them. They were first discovered in 1679. – how long ago? – but could not be found again, so that people thaught it had been a mistake, and left them again out, in the charts. Many, many a poor mariner has been lost, no doubt because not expecting islands, he wrecked on them. Now they will be drawn again on the charts.37 My dear Oscar there is a man now in London who exhibits the hatching of eggs. He has little boxes, with cloth, and by a machine makes just such heat as the hen would make by incubation, about 98 degrees you know we had it here as warm sometimes. Now the man begins hatching every hour with a new box, so that he has

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Homer, Odyssee, in der Übersetzung von Johann Heinrich Voß, 4 vols. Altona/Hamburg 1781, 1793. Antoine Galland, Les mille et une nuit, tausend und eine Nacht, in der Übersetzung von Johann Heinrich Voss, 6 vols., 1781–1785. See William J. Mills, Exploring Polar Frontiers: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC Clio 2003, vol.1, p. 705.

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[cross-writing, 4] chicks of all degrees of forwardness, and which is the most interesting, by a mechanical […] thrown so intense a light on the egg that you can see through the shell, so that you can see the first formation, than the brain, than eyes and so on, and at last you can see the little thing moving and picking to get out. You can also hear it chirping in the shell. This you recollect we did likewise in the old house. I hope that man will come to Hamburg. Then you must tell me all about it. I told you that in Egypt they hatch eggs w in ovens; they do the same now in Connecticut. The Penny Magazine will tell you all about it. I know there is an article on it. My boy, I use the book signs, which you made me, they are a great delight to me. I thank you once more. Your Timor loves me very much. When I come from lecture he jumps at me, and I feel so delighted; at dinner, he always sits by me and waits for a bone. So soon as he has it, he goes into the yard and eats it, and then comes back again. Have you not drawn anything. I have seen nothing from my boy since he left America. Draw me something according to your fancy. I cannot write anything more. God bless you and your brothers. My Oscar, you loved Mr Werner, because he was kind to you. Go sometimes to see him, donot forget it; never forget any one again you have ever loved. Have you seen Mrs Beneke.38 Tell her your father loves her. Your loving father. Single Paid Via New-York & Havre à Madame Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Stamp New York 13 Nov Stamp Paris 15 Dec Stamp Hamburg 20 Dec. + stamp faded + red sealing wax

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Mathilde Benecke, a friend from Lieber’s time in Berlin.

No. 23 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 28.10.-05.11.1839 Included: dictated letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: dictated letter of Guido Norman Lieber to Francis Lieber Added: note with greetings by G. u. E. L., i.e. Georgiana and Eduard Labat, New York THL Box 54 LI 5059, ALS, 2 pages Hamburg October 28th 1839 My dear Papa, To day I came home to stay from Saturday till Tuesday morning. Papa I thank you very much for the nice stories you told me, and Mamma will have the Encyclopedia Americana bound as a Christmas present for me. At Christmas we have 10 days holyday. It seems as if now when Christmas comes as if one was going to slip through something very nice; but when it is over all the old stuff will come back, for there will be nothing to wish for so long again. On Christmas eve we shall be out at Dr Busses and Dr Palms to get presents there, and then the next day come home and stay a week as I have told you. There are beautiful swans here. By Dr Palms, the school in which I learn always but not sleep as I told you in my last letter, the boys are digging a large ditch to skait on in the winter when the water is frozen, the ditch is dug very deep, about six or seven feet, which I think is very good work for boys who only have short play hours; but the most they did on the 18th of Oct. when Napoleon fought in Leipzig, then they had from 12 to 3 play hours & of course in the ­afternoon too but then I was not there. Papa I wanted to tell you, you know you called the class in which I am a baby class but to say the truth I can tell you they are not such babies for George is in the same class and also bigger boys of 12 years old. To morrow is Emils birthday but to day it was celebrated because we were at home and he had his presents given him. On Saturday evening I went to the Theatre with Mama, aunt Caroline Edward, George & Clara.1 The plays were, for there were two pieces. “Der Räuberhauptmann oder, ich irre mich nie”2 dann der Pariser Taugenichts,3 and thank God they were none of them Operas, the first was not much, but the second that was a noble thing, that was delicious as Uncle James, always says. The character of this boy was quite funny, but in heart a fine fellow, it was performed by a girl in boys cloth the scene was in Paris. This boy was always teazing his old Grandmother though he loved her dearly and one time when he had just promised her and given his hand 1 Edward, George, Emil and Clara Lomnitz, children of Caroline Lomnitz. 2 Ich irre mich nie oder der Räuberhauptmann, comedy by Carl Lebrun, first performance Weimar 1839. 3 Der Pariser Taugenichts, comedy by Jean-Francois Alfred Bayard, first performance Paris 1836.

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upon it, to be good he went and put on a cap like Napoleon and stood upon a chair and said, “cavaliers, en asant”, with his hand out, and then he sprang down from the chair and while talking to his Grandmother, they all at once heard a noise in the street which some boys were making and the minute he heard it, he forgot his good resolutions and sprang out of the door to join them. He had a sister whom he very dearly loved, and the Grandmother w ­ anted her to marry a man whom she very much hated and soon this man came in and said that Louis which was the Taugenichts name was in prison, but Louis returned almost immediately, and his grandmother was very angry for the man had said he had stolen, but it was not true, and Louis was so enraged at this rascal who was the whole time hiding behind the chair that his grandmother and sister could hardly hold him. Papa I cannot tell you more because there is now a school boy here who is going to spend the evening with us, and it would any how be impossible to tell you the whole scene; but my dear Papa I must tell you something so superb, as this old busy body went out of the room Louis said to his sister “see what a nice ball this is,” taking out a fine india rubber ball, “now see how I can throw it,” and that moment he pitched it at the old fellows nose and made him clear a little faster it made him jump. – So far Oscar, since I wrote the above for him I have dispatched my N. 9 via Havre; to day is the 3d of November, a rainy uncomfortable day, which I suppose will bring a change of wind, and replenish our river with water which for upwards of a week owing to the constant easterly gales has not been able to carry a vessel to Hamburg and all the steamboats are in Cuxhaven. I suppose the Isaac Newton will soon be in with the rest. I left you on Friday evening just before my visit to Adela. Matilda Hesse happening to be with us, I took a comfortable ride in their handsome carriage, and afterwards enjoyed two happy hours with my old friend. I found her looking by far better than before her confinement; her spirits revived and to me as loving and affectionate as she had ever been; we talked a great deal about you, and when I tell you, that our talk cheered me, you will know of what nature it was. Adela has spread her fame through the town by giving up her monthly nurse long before the time to accomodate Mrs Gossler, Henrys’ brothers wife who had just been confined with twins.4 Such things seem to be of rare occurrence in this good important town. Ferdinand amused us with an ­account of communications a young, rich and extremely beautiful widow, whose ‘curator’ he is, made to him: the poor woman is tormented by so many admirers, that she feels compelled to choose one of them in order to get rid of the rest. When at the theatre bouquets are sent into her box from 4 Dr. iur. Ernst Gossler and his wife Mathilde. The twins were Antonie Therese (30.10.1839– 7.4.1847), and Gustav Ludwig (30.10.1839–2.5.1840).

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unknown hands, she receives numerous anonimous letters, a young smitten Portuguese runs after her carriage in order to do the office of footman when she slights, an other has taken lodgings in a garret of her logis for her sake, and poor Ferdinand was in great anxiety concerning her. – Such a lawyer seems not unfrequently to be placed in trying situations I wander whether I should like to be lawyers wife? Adela has a fine child5 and her confinement has been a better one than any of the previous ones; after that I walked under Franzens protection (the unfortunate name of Adelas footman) to Aunt Minna where I found my sisters, Uncle Morris and Emma. Poor Harriet had gone out that evening for the first time, and we had much fun by the way Carry had packed her up, mounting shawl above shawl, and cloak above cloak. Carry is famous in these things. Among other good qualities she is the first tucker up in the universe and she promises to perform the office for you when you come, qu’en dites vous mon ami? – I think its sisterly attention carried too far! Yesterday evening Minchen Arning passed with us, and made […] [2] not to be forgotten is “Bonne Katrin, a woman whose sole occupation is to rub furniture and make them shine, she comes every week to counteract the childrens fingers, and this is Carolines weak side; she is too uneasy about her furniture, & on this point I give you full license to plague her a little. I promised to go to bed at 11 OClock, now it is half past; Good night my boy, Oh may you have sweet dreams to night, dream that I am with you, that I press on your sweet lips a tender kiss that I entwine my arms around you, cling to you, am all, all yours – and then awake and say “yes I will fetch Matilda, for if I do I shall see her sooner than if I remain! Frank, I am going to bed now; that I could say with Lady Russel, “where soon my best friend will be with me”, it is a cold, comfortless, narrow, ugly solitary bed, and all one can do is just to sleep and drown memory, so once more my boy, Good night! – The 5th Nov. We have just despatched our little boys to school, Hamilton6 quite proud at the idea of beginning to write in a book with a pencil. We are in our little breakfast room, which has glass doors leading out to the viranda & from thence into the garden but now everything there looks desolate, the trees are scattering the last of their foliage and the careful gardener has covered all the younger ones with straw. Norman tells me to write to you; he is playing at the table where I am now seated. ‘Dear Papa, and Hammy, dear Papa, Papa do come here. I love my 5 Mathilde Haller, daughter of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller. 6 Hamilton Lieber, son of Francis and Mathilde Lieber.

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Papa, and Mamma ain’t got none Papa, and tell Papa, Felix Papa7 dead, but Felix ain’t dead and Emil ant dead. The little bird laughs, no I mean sings. Hammy is gone to school in a carriage, to learn in school & to read in school, and dear Oscar gone to chool too & I want to see ty. Sky up high & the sun up high and it rains fast away! This is Normans letter to his Papa. Hamilton will write one another time. Poor Rebecca is in very bad spirits. I believe she regrets over and over again that she ever came with me. She dislikes Hamburg far more than Columbia. Remember me kindly to Charlotte,8 and tell her I have not forgotten her and that indeed she shall hear from me soon. I was delighted at the good news you give me respecting the synonimes.9 Pray tell me exactly what you are doing now. I must go one with you. Can you immagine that neither Ferdinand nor Adela knew who Pym was. What book shall I give Oscar at Christmas, some standard work it shall be, no story trash. – All our relations send their best love to you. Caroline and Hart an affectionate one. Do tell me something about Mrs Stuart & little Ellen.10 The children often ask after her. God bless you my dearest Frank. Your loving Matilda [cross-writing, 2] Freundlicher Gruß von G. u E. L.11 mit der Cuxhaven haben wir nichts für Sie erhalten; ich hoffe daß Ihr Fuß wieder ganz gesund ist; bei uns ist Gott sei dank alles wohl, in meinem Brief ist nichts was Sie besonders interessieren würde; ich freue mich zu hören daß es Matilden u den Kindern so gut in Hamburg geht und hoffe daß wird Ihnen ein Trost für die Trennung sein. Leben Sie recht wohl. Single Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S. Carolina Politely favored Stamp New York Dec 8 7

Caroline Lomnitz’ husband, the Wandsbecker merchant Eduard August Lomnitz had died in 1835. 8 Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC. 9 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 10 Ellen Stuart, daughter of Prof. Isaac William Stuart, colleague of Lieber at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. 11 Georgiana and Eduard Labatt, a Hamburg merchant, partner in the trading company Labatt & Warburg who spent some years in New York City while his wife with their young children lived in Hoboken/NJ across the Hudson River.

No. 24 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 01.11.-02.11.1839 Added: note signed by Bodo F. Rothmaler, New York 20.12.1839 THL Box 54 LI 5060, ALS, 4 pages Brief 8 9 at least so I believe ∆ Hamburg den 1sten November 1839. This minute my best of husbands, Herzfeld leaves us after having read a tragic Griselda by Harm to us much to our edification.1 I have been a little highty flighty with the handsome doctor and feel in duty bound to make amends to you before I go to bed notwithstanding the hour struck eleven before he made his exit. Would that I could make amends in the way I should like best, falling round your neck, pressing you to my heart & kissing all the love from your lips, to give you all mine first back again. And then I believe what I take is not as much as what I give, for you are indeed sometimes most gracious and affectionate to other dames, why did you not even confess a kiss, and who can count those which are not confessed while, I, Oh I am very faithful on the whole, I never embrace, save an Uncle or a cousin, with l’ami de la maison I have only once shaken hands and I deserve the praise fully which I know your heart grants. – To have a little light talk and ease and fun I truly enjoy, you know dearest Frank how I have been cut off from this for many many years, I have been too dull for the Americans or the Americans too dull for me, at any rate you know I have never even been treated with attention, and therefore you will hardly be surprised if I express my comfortable feelings to you. It is not gratified vanity which cheers me, but rather a restored confidence. But I wont blame the poor Yankees neither for since I have been in this city of dirty canals I have only met this one with whom I could place myself on so easy a footing, my cousins are too heavy and too plain, strangers I have seen but few, and those not taking, and my favorite is my favorite chiefly from a resemblance I trace with you, a resemblance in manner, love of fun, ingenuity in teasing, not by any means your equal in knowledge, or talent, or depth of mind. You would be very good friends if you met and you would not blame me for liking those very fine eyes. This piece Griseldis is a picture of womans love passing through the heaviest ordeals the author could immagine. A poor culliers daughter is loved & wedded to a rich knight of Arthurs round table, he at court is ridiculed by the queen and her ladies fair. A ruff diamond or rather ruffian as he is, he swears that his Griseldis by her true love so great that it would stand severest trials, surpasses far all the fine ladies of the queens gay court, even the queen herself. This queen of haughtiness and jealous hatred, swears to be avenged 1 Griselda, tragedy by Friedrich Harm, 1835.

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and makes a contract with the savage knight that his Griseldis’ obedience and faithful love should be tried by means which she herself designs and if she fails, the queens should be the prize, the knight should at her feet confess his error, but if Griseldis still proved true, the queen would bow to her in deep submission. The husband returns to his lonely castle & finds his wife all love and tenderness. Their child in the name of the king he demands from her; he pretends the king is enraged that highborn as he is, he should have degraded himself by so lowly a union, that the king would have the child or that he should loose his lands and his honors. Griseldis submits. More is asked of her, she is to leave her husband and her castle and return to her lonely hut, naked and poor as she had been before. – Griseldis goes and far from feeling anger at her husbands most unnatural conduct, she saves his life at the risk of her own. She loves her husband and believes in his truth and his honor, and thus through all misfortunes she still has the memory of happiness. But now the trial is at an end, the queen at her feet confesses her share in the game as she calls it, her husband at her neck confesses too. Griseldis starts, she could bear all, this not, that thus her warmest feelings should be trampled upon, her husband could not love her, or never could he thus have humored his pride at the expense of her misery; her resolution is taken, she cannot remain in his bonnie castle, but returns naked & poor to the cottage of her blind old father. The piece is unnatural enough but very well written. – To be natural is alltogether not what the Germans aim at. All the books of a highter nature which I have looked into since I am here are with regard to facts a combination of impossibilities and in their sentiment a most overstrained production. Of course I have seen but little as yet and ought not to judge hastily. – Do you know Frank dearest that I have an other letter of yours and such dear one too, you are so good to me to write me such sweet letters and then so very good to love me so much, I wander why you love me? Oh! you do not think of my faults now I am gone, and yet I would not have you forget them, lest they surprise you when I come again. Say every night when you go to bed, Matilda you are obstinate, and yet I love you, Matilda you are forgetful, but yet my girl I love you, and thus remember me, not faultless but with all my array of bad and good qualities, and finish the picture by suffering two pressing arms to encircle you as I do every night when I am in bed for every last loving thought art thou my boy. Your letter – it was N. 9 from Philadelphia, it made me a little sad, you were going farther South, farther from me into that barren desert. While you were at the North I could better bear the thought of your desertion, but now your state of utter loneliness dwells so heavy on my mind, that as I think of you in the midst of any enjoyment it is a damper on my spirits. Do you never feel that I ought not to have left you? And then the Girards’ concern has not been comforting. You are right not to wish the

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Presidency in case of Barnwells resigning. The same to be sure is something & something not entirely to be disregarded, but the honor, if honor it be, is dearly earned. First more expences connected with & a vast deal more annoyance. Mañana mas, para’hoi, adios. Goodbye sweet love. I am your own good honest wife. How Carry will scold me tomorrow for remaining up. [2] N.B I am in hopes that the Howard which took my ∆ the box will arrive quickly at New York at least for the wind has been fair ever since she sailed. I directed it to the Gentleman and firm you gave me, I do not remember the name this minute. Gossler2 managed the whole for me, in fact it was only through his interference that I got it off. The vessel was laden so heavily that it only went off by getting room for it in the cabin, for which I am indebted to him. Poor fellow, he has a disagreable wife.3 I never met with any woman so utterly disliked as she is. One might even forgive her bad temper if she had a little more mind but her sleepy drawling manner combined with so much ill nature makes me feel too uncomfortable in her presence to want her society. Him, I like, but then she asks me when he is out. Did I tell you that Elisabeth Mason is engaged to Oehlrichs brother. Sarah Ann4 is very much changed, she has grown very thin. I am glad you saw a good deal of the Bards. I ever shall have an affection for those good people. Poor Barnwells, how very hard must be their loss. Do you remember that very fine little fellow Robert? what caused the childrens death? How mournful always is the return to Columbia, 4 deaths this year in our acquaintance. I too am very anxious to hear how the Lesesnes stood Mobile? Has the yellow fever been very bad in Charleston? This evening I go for the first time to see Adela after her confinement and I look forward to it with pleasure. My friendship is soferid a little it is true, and very natural besides, for a married woman can not devote as much depth to her friendship as an unfettered girl; yet there is sufficient warmth remaining to make our interviews agreable to both, and confidence as much as ever. I am most curious to meet Matilda Benecke I shall be informed as soon as she arrives; and then shall hasten to her. Our acquaintance with each other was in such an overflow of sentiment, we thought we were devotedly loving, embracing each other, while all the time it was only you whom we thus honored, that it will be very strange when we are now again united. Before I forget it I must tell you something which may 2 Johann Heinrich Gossler. 3 Elizabeth Gossler née Bray. 4 Sarah Oehlrichs.

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perhaps interest you. Ferdinand Haller has a footman, who at the same time while performing the offices of a waiter works in his office copying documents and so forth. Immagine a young person with such capacities in America, submitting at the same time to the menial offices, required of a serving man. How valuable would such an assistant be to you. I often think of the difficulties you have to indure compared to so many others. Perhaps later when, we have a teacher with our boys, which there being three may indeed be desirable. Oscar I am convinced is very well placed at present! Busse called on me last Monday and said of him: Er begreift ausserordentlich schnell, und zeigt überall immer denkenden Geist. Bei seinen schriftlichen Arbeiten wäre er noch langsam, und dies wie seine Mühe mit Ortographie wären die einzigen Übungen worin er den anderen Knaben seines Alters noch zurückbleibe. Alas seine Vorzüge sind den Nachtheilen weit überlegen. Übrigens lieben sie sein freies zutrauensvolles Wesen sehr, tadeln aber auch seinen Mangel an unbedingtem Gehorsam. Der liebe Knabe war bei mir von Sonnabend Abend bis Dienstag Morgen und sah blühend und schön aus, Seine Haltung wird besser, in diesen Tagen fangen sie auch mit dem Tanzen an. Ich hab ihn recht warm gekleidet, wie auch die anderen Kinder und so hoffe ich werden sie gut diesen Winter bestehen. Eben kam mein Winterhut zu hause, der mir recht gut kleidet und mir etwas über 7 Thaler kostet, in Neu York würde man mir zehn fordern, die Schneiderinnen u Pelzhändlerinnen etc. kommen jezt alle von Paris zurück, wo sie ihre Wintermode angenommen haben. Gestern hat mir meine liebe Schwester Caroline auch einen sehr hübschen Mantel bestellt und nächste Woche werde ich in meinem neuen Putz erscheinen. Der Mantel ist ein vorläufiges Weinachtsgeschenk. Nur du fehlst mein Franz dann wäre alles hier herlich. Hart and Carry are such dear girls we are on such an exquisite footing together and every thing is so nice that – but its no use talking, you are not here and I fear, I fear you will not come. Poor Oscar he always begs me not to leave him here when I return & yet and yet what shall we do. Busse was gratified with the perusal of your desire respecting Oscar and will follow your request in all he can. He will write to you soon. Mrs Busse is so very kind that she herself attends to Oscars grande lavage & all his personal purifications and learns with him his poetry by heart to facilitate it to him. He knows already several long German poems, little prayers &c, which all he has learnt in these three weeks. In Bible history they are now reading the history of Jesus. In Geography they are in Germany. I have a letter commenced in which he dictated to me for you but it being on a large sheet of paper, I thought I would finish it for the next Steamboat going. I believe on the 20th of Nov. or by the next directed vessel which leaves on the 25th. but that vessel has not yet arrived. It is to bring me something from you, but it can not come in with these strong easterly winds. On Saturday evening

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we took all the boys to the theatre, Edward George and Oscar & little Clara too. They were delighted. Oscar understood every thing, I do not mean every word but the story of the prince, he tells you about it so I will say no more. On Monday evening we all played at Lotto with them for sugar plums. But Oscar became so dreadfully exited that I determined that I would not let him play at it again. His cheeks were red & glowing and he even cried because he did not win, proof sufficient that it is not good. On Monday Morning they all went to Uncle Jacob, who came the next day to tell us that he was pleased with the boys, he found Oscar very much improved. He always makes the boys plenty of questions when they come near him, particularly in arithmetic, at the same time he is so affectionate to them that they do not fear him. From thence they proceded to Aunt Minna, she dear creature made them write down all their wishes for Christmas. Amongst Oscars I was surprised to find, the works of Byron; queer for a boy of nine years old. I do not think it ought to be placed in his hands yet & shall give him some extracts instead. He is now reading the article Africa in the Encyclopedia.5 Dr Busse keeps a journal for Oscar in which they write down what Oscar has done every day. I forget to mention that I could not get any pretty ornaments here, they are so out of date and therefore took that little paper box which I thought you would think neat. Hammy goes to school bravely, he has two very fine companions Felix & Emil are the boys as you would love them and the children agree very well together. They all march to school every morning in their three dark green cloth coats, Hammy with a regular boys cap, fine red cheeks and their little bags over their shoulders containing their books and pencils. They have a long walk to take & the bracing air makes them strong, hearty & hungry. Norry has been confined to the house these last weeks. Though [3] now entirely recovered from very severe cold he had, I do not like to let his first going be during these rough winds. He is a very sweet and a very sensible child. Hamilton when I said prayers with him last night “bless our dear Papa”, burst out in tears. I want to see him, and it was long before I could comfort him. Norman said ‘Papa in Merican, The children will miss their little companions dreadfully and their aunts too who are so very fond of them; Last Sunday we dined at Uncle Jacob, it being his birthday. Hartwig Hesse was there and the Hallers besides his own children, ourselves & Aunt Minna. Hartwig Hesse sent one Maryats America, which I had not yet read. Have you looked into it and is 5 “Africa”, in: Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 1, Philadelphia 1830, pp. 87–92.

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it more just than his foregoers.6 A presumptuous beginning I think. Just now interrupted by Mrs Burmester of London memory; she says I am looking so much better than when I first came, fatter cheeks &c. No wonder, the food on the Bremen vessel was nothing great, a good deal of fresh meat among the salt. All the people find that the Hamburg air agrees famously with us all, but then – oh dear! the good people of Hamburg are so conceited. There was a great deal debated between the gentlemen last sunday on a late determination of the senate, forcing a man to sell his property which was in the way of a public ­improvement.7 Arning8 of the Senate, argued the right of the government. Haller the old gentleman,9 a terrible tedious debater, though a very good man was his antagonist. and your Tilly sat between the two and thought, Oh if Frank were but here, he’d manage them, would’nt he? – To morrow I am to move into Carrys bed chamber, it being unmercifully cold in my room; The room is very large and the three sisters will be together. Yesterday I went with Caroline to the examination of her little girl, the school consists of 12 little girls of Claras10 age, and they stood quite a good examination. I was particularly pleased with their kopfrechnen, which was well conducted, I wish I had received such instruction when I was a child, we received miserable instruction in that branch! A few days ago I had a sweet letter from Sally Jacobsen, I will send it to you some time or other, it is the second one since I am in Hamburg. I have written lately to Züllichau but have nothing new to communicate from that quarter. The king of Prussia11 has prohibited all miniature editions, they have been found to injure the sight so much. The tournament we missed on our passage, nor have I since been able to procure a paper giving an account.12 You know doubtless that poor Theodore had the fever. I wish we had heard again from the dear boys.13 We are longing for a letter. We had a grand dinnee last sunday, how you would have liked the good things, after dinner there were three card tables, whist Boston & some other game, and for those who could not play plenty of ennui. Poor Cary had to pay her drittel to the servant in going, I do not do the thing, for I resolved at the beginning never thus to pay for my ­dinner; 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Frederick Marryat, A Diary in America: With Remarks on Its Institutions, 2 vols. Carey & Hart Philadelphia 1839. Probably the discussion was about the construction of the Hamburg-Berlin railroad which in 1842/43 was decided in favour of public transport, see StaHH 111-1 Senat 6293. Dr. iur. Johann Carl Gottlieb Arning, brother in law of Adele Haller. Martin Joseph Haller, uncle of Mathilde Lieber. Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz. Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. Eglinton Tournament 30.8.1839, Eglinton Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland. Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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it is a disgusting custom. Amongst the curiosities here I might mention the occupation of a lady as Zahnärztin. The one I particularly remarked has a fine house in an eligible situation and is said to be very clever in her business. Fancy what a ladies occupation. This never could be in America, disgusting idea to me. On the whole Frank when I find myself comparing notes, quietly to myself, there is almost always some advantage gained on the American side. Here there exists generally a most unwarranted prejudice against America, against which of course I battle bravely. I am so anxious to hear how that box will arrive, I had a most careful packer to do the thing, but then if the sho ∆ arrange them in New York it would be very provoking. You will know by this time that there are no ships at all to Charleston at this season of the year. – I hope Betsy does her duty and cooks as well as she can. I hope the pigeons have thrived and that they make good little dinners for you, you must live as well as you can in that barren place; do you often see Charlotte,14 give her my best best love it is very bad of me that I have not yet written to her. The Penny Magazine I will look too. I am glad you have comfortable shoes for your poor feet, take good care of them, of yourself. You say not a word about a horse, that is strange. I hope you have not given it up. If any of my letters should be missing, it must be that one which I did not send to any house in New York, but simply wrote your name and residence. I’ll tell you something nice. A beautiful monument for Bethoven was to be built at Vienna, but was given up partly there not being funds enough to carry the plan into effect, when List15 one of the greatest Piano players of the day, and a devotee to Bethovens memory sent a sum of 60000 fr almost the whole of his property that the building might go on and his great Bethoven receive this small tribute of mans admiration. It is a noble trait and deserves to be commenmorated. I am so glad you look so well, Oh dont set for ever & ever in that little poking room though I can fortell there will be your greatest comfort. The letters via Havre come pretty quick too, four weeks is their average journey here. I have neither seen Mr Siehveking16 nor Judge Schutt, in fact I am not in the way of seing many strangers. At the Theatre on me voit, c’est tout, on regard d’etrangère dans la loge des Oppenheimers et on 14 15

16

Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC. Franz Liszt supported a monument in honour of his idol Ludwig van Beethoven. With the help of 19th century celebrities who acted as fundraisers, and illustrious promoters like Robert Schumann, Alexander von Humboldt, and Queen Victoria after ten years in 1845 the statue was built in Bonn. Indeed a large sum was dedicated by Franz Liszt. The name is Sieveking, but it is not certain which bearer of that Hamburg family she meant: Dr. Friedrich Sieveking? Karl Sieveking? The Hamburg merchant Eduard Heinrich Sieveking, Lieber had met on his first day in London in May 1827.

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est content, Good that you told the tutors to bring you something good to eat. You are my good fellow for take care of yourself, every time you do it think of me. Uncle Jacob sends to ask whether I want to go to the theatre to night, no this is to be Adelas evening, and the Opera Romeo & Juliet I will see an other time.17 Did I tell you that Ludwig Meyers widow has married again; Senator Meyer has been six years in Cuxhaven and now returns, he is also in a strange state of mind, hypochondrical. The brothers were no longer on good terms. poor Ludwig M. in bad circumstances before his insanity. You say right about Oscars going to Berlin. It will be bad for him to go out of the school so soon after he has entered and is on such a good way of improvement, at the same time, it is almost evil to keep him there while I go. We must consider the matter well before spring comes, we shall also have time to correspond on the subject but if he goes your regulations of course shall be strictly attended to. You good for nothing never thought of our wedding day.18 Do you know that it was the day the British Queen arrived & brought you the letter from Rotterdam & the 2d from Hamburg, the 20th Sept. That day we drank your health and I rejoiced even yet that you had some comfort. Many happy happier returns. May we be spared each other yet & life have still its blessings, may our boys grow to be what you may hope for them. I think them each in his way fine fellows. Uncle Jacob will write to you soon, so he promised & the money concerns you shall hear of. Matilda Hesse is a nice pretty girl, but I dont know much about her yet; owing to her mothers sickness we have rarely met. On the whole, the people think me but little changed I am considered younger [4] looking than most of my contemporaries, I tell you all this because I know you are a vain husband and love to hear such things. If you should see any of Mrs Addison do give my best love to her, may some bright day go down to see those good people, they would be so delighted, so affectionate and kind. Did I tell you that that I met a young Benecke19 at a wretched leg of mutton diner at Ludwig Oppenheimers, and that he spoke of you and that I liked that young man but that he has the name of being terribly moquant? I suppose I may see more 17

18 19

Romeo et Juliette, opera by Hector Berlioz had its first performance some weeks later, November 24, 1839. Perhaps the Hamburg stage had picked Romeo und Julia, opera by Nicola Vaccai, 1825 or I Capuleti e i Montrecchi, opera by Vincenzo Bellini, 1830. September 20, 1829. Dr. iur. Otto Benecke, son of Ferdinand Benecke and friend of Mathilde Benecke née Schweder.

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of them when Matilde20 comes, she lives very near them, her boy is at their house now.21 Carry sends her best love to you, and would write a line had she not to go out. Hart too loves you and is a good girl, but she has written to you pr Howard. I have received the cover for your letters from the bookbinder and shall paste them to morrow morning then I shall have a nice little volume to pour over. The cold weather has only set in about a week ago, and now it comes with a vengeance, bah! These thrilling winds. Poor Harriet cannot go out at all. – The stoves are after all great comforts and warm a room thoroughly. I told you already Betsy22 has to pay between 26 & thirty dollars, not less than the first not more than the last. The glorious old rocking chair has arrived and is going to be revived by a new coat of paint. They dont yet understand the good thing here altogether they have an entire different notion of comfort. The beds are the funniest looking things you can imagine I let Oscar sleep on a very hard one, which is also the rule of the school to do all the children sleep on hard beds. Hammy coming down crying, what’s the matter Hammy? Felix & Emil are naughty fellows, won’t let me play with them at Pony. Now dearest Frank I have got to beautify myself a little that I may go out to Adela. I kiss you and love you and bless you. Oh my own Frank. God be praised that you are mine, that I am yours, and that we have our three bonnie boys. God be praised for all his blessings, and may we keep them, with grateful hearts Your loving wife Matilda [cross-writing, 4] I have not time to read this long letter over, so you must take it with all its faults. Ein für Sie von Hamburg an die Addresse von Peter Heckscher gekommenes Paket Bücher habe ich nach Vorschrift chs. H. in Empfang genommen und mit der Weisung an J. Hamilton Son & co, Charleston gesandt, solches Ihnen baldigst zugehen zu lassen. Eine etwaige anderweite Verfügung von Ihnen, würde jedoch an H. Hamilton & co in Zeiten ∆ das Paket erst gestern mit dem Schiff Lafayette abgegangen. Die beiden von Boston und Philada angekommenen 20 21

22

Mathilde Benecke. Mathilde Benecke’s son Hermann; he was guest in the house of Ferdinand Beneke who had taken strong feelings for Wilhelm Benecke when the young turner in 1815/1816 had paid him visits. Otto Beneke, Die Hamburgische Turnanstalt von 1816. Erinnerungen aus der Zeit ihres Entstehens und Aufblühens, Hamburg Joh. Aug. Meißner’s Verlags Buchhandlung 1866. Betsy the cook in Columbia/SC.

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­Pakete sind prompt nach Havre, zur Beförderung an H de Tocquevielle verschifft worden. NY. 20 Decbr. 39 Ihr Ergebenster Bodo F Rothmaler Wünschen Sie künftig vielleicht Sachen für Sie auf andere Weise befördert zu haben so lassen Sie es mich gütigst wissen. Single Via Havre Mr Francis Lieber Columbia SC Franco Messrs Heckschers Coster & Matfeld New York Stamp Hamburg 1. Nov 39 Stamp Le Havre 6 Nov 39 Stamp New York DEC 20

No. 25 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 13.11.-22.11.1839 THL Box 54 LI 5061, ALS, 4 pages Letter 10th from Nov. 13 to Nov. 22 – All well!  Hamburg 13th November 1839 My own dearest Frank. I have been a week without writing to you which is a very foolish thing for I am never quite happy if I have not a letter in hand for my dearest boy, besides if I suffer the time to pass, so many little things which I should have liked to communicate escape my memory, which however I will do my best to recall. I have written several other letters since to Züllichau, Porto Rico & Leominster, and you know I am no genius in that way. My last went pr steamer Liverpool an acquaintance of Uncle Morris took charge of it to New York where I hope he will have safely thrown it into the post office. I always feel a kind of anxiety when letters go thus by opportunity in which I write down what ever is in my thoughts to the ownly being who has my unlimitted confidence. Since then I have received from you, your phrenological character which certainly is in many points very striking, so much so that I do not like to destroy it and will not do so until you repeat your request. Your younger little chap is under my care while I am writing this and chatting away at a great rate he says I must write you a letter and say that you are called a good dear Papa, and he begs Papa to bring him a little kitten. On Tuesday 5th Nov. after I had locked up my letter as the children call it, I went with Carry to see dear Uncle Jacob & his wife. He came down to us in his morning gown with your Girard report in his hands.1 He was quite surprised that he had never seen it before, and is extremely interested in it. He thinks you were not half enough paid for it, that it is quite masterly conducted and has been talking about it to all his lawyer sons since. He thinks it quite ashame that your advice in sending someone to Europe to study the different institutions should have been followed and you not be the chosen one. I have not seen him since he finished the book, but the two things which have occupied him lately are the experiments of Biddle with the perfume of flowers, on which subject he is quite anxious to be more fully informed, and has had some funny debates with his wife who laughs at the idea, finding herself upon her botanical experience while he thinks it quite practicable and requests you to inquire into the result of the experiments when you again visit Philadelphia. I am getting more and more fond of Uncle,2 the more 1 Francis Lieber, A Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College for Orphans, with an Introductory Report, laid before the board of Trustees, Carey, Lea and Blanchard Philadelphia 1834. 2 Jacob Oppenheimer.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_027

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I see him, and am delighted that I have had an opportunity of better knowing him and valuing his excellent qualities. It is worth the crossing of an Ocean to me. Caroline and I made some other calls and returned in a drizzling rain to our little charges at home who were all anxiously expecting their mothers and their dinner, for we dine at an early hour for the sake of the little ones and against the Hamburg fashion where 5 & 6 are the dining hours. Caroline however promises when you come to be as fashionable as you please, every thing shall go after your regulations. Is it that a great deal for a widow who prides herself upon her independence? In the evening Augusta Soehle came to us, it being her evening. Poor Caroline had to go to bed suffering from one of her tormenting headaches, which generally with her last three days; but such is her energy and activity that she scarcely ever allows herself to give up the slightest occupation which she has before intended on that account. She makes calls, practices on the Piano, casts accounts and runs about the house, while many others would be in bed and under physicians care. It makes me angry to see it because I think her constitution suffers from it. On Wednesday Caroline and I went to see Adela, had a pleasant visit there. Adela getting on well and in good spirits, spent the evening at Aunt Minna. Ludwig Oppenheimer came to fetch us to his house, but we could not go owing to our previous engagements, found me in curls which I had tried, to please Uncle Jacob; told me it did not look half as well, to be sure and arrange them my old fashion again. Vater versteht nichts davon. Visits from Emma, low spirited, thinking of the West Indian, fond of me because I resemble him,3 tired of the long seperation.4 Caroline full of fun, Hart & I scolding. Thursday. Buß und Bettag für unsere gute Stadt.5 Ich besuchte Mathilde Benecke und blieb einige Stunden bei ihr. Die zehn Jahre sind nicht spurlos an ihr vorbei gegangen, doch sieht sie noch immer gut aus, namentlich ist ihre Gestalt gut, liebevoll war sie wie früher aber sehr ernst. Ihre lezten Schmerzens-Erfahrungen waren ihr noch die herbsten von allen; ich glaube ich schrieb es dir daß ihre Mutter wahnsinnig geworden ist. Bei alle­ dem war ihre Trennung von Berlin doch sehr trübselig. Sie will nun vier Jahre hier bleiben, die Lehrjahre ihres Hermans;6 der wird dann nach Amerika zu

3 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, who lived in Puerto Rico and was in love with his cousin Emma Oppenheimer. 4 Here Mathilde Lieber expressed the longing of her cousin Emma Oppenheimer for Mathilde Lieber’s brother, James Oppenheimer who had joined the business of his brothers in Puerto Rico. 5 Mathilde Lieber was mistaken; Buß und Bettag was Wednesday November 20, 1839. 6 Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke.

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Etienne Benecke ziehen und sie mit Anna7 wieder in die alte Heimath zurückkehren. Denke dir dass die Preußischen Geseze verhindern dass einer in Et. Beneckens Lage8 selbst im Ausland ein eigenes Geschäft beginne. So kann der arme Mann nicht aus der Stelle. Es ist nun Mathildes Wunsch daß Herman einst mit des Onkels Leitung im Geschäft beginne und so diesem seine Sorge und Liebe für die Kinder vergelten werde die seine einzige Lebenshoffnung sind. Sein Aufenthalt in Mexico ist ihm sehr betrübt “Ob ich glücklich sein kann” schreibt er an Mathilde, ‘Magst Du selbst beurtheilen: es giebt hier bunte reiche Blumen, aber sie riechen nicht, und bunt gefiederte Vögel; aber sie singen nicht, und viele emsige Menschen; aber sie fühlen nicht.’ Durch Buck9 hat Herman eine Stelle bekommen, in einer nicht sehr großen Handlung wo er einige Jahre bleiben soll und als dann noch das größere Treiben in einer Weitläuftigeren kennen lernen soll, ehe er nach Amerika zieht. Der Knabe ist jezt sechzehn Jahre alt, ist leidenschaftlich musikalisch; seine bisherige Er­ ziehung war ganz zum gelehrten Stande vorbereitend, denn es war der Mutter Wunsch, daß er studieren sollte, aber vor einem halben Jahre kam er zu ihr und erklärte daß sein Entschluß gefaßt sey Kaufmann zu werden, dies war der Wunsch Wilhelms,10 obgleich sie es dem Sohn verheimlicht hatte, damit seine Wahl frei bliebe. Seitdem er nun weiß daß der Vater es so wollte, arbeitet er mit doppeltem Eifer. Mathilde erwartet dich und ist sehr darauf gespannt dich wiederzusehen. Was mir unendlich leid ist, ist dieses. Vor einem Jahr wurde Mathilde ernstlich krank, und dachte sterben zu müssen, da nahm sie alles, was sie von uns hatte deine Gedichte, Briefe und verbrannte alles, weil sie sie zu ungern in andere Hände übergehen lassen wollte; da jeder Fremde ­schwerlich das Verhältnis hätte verstehen können. Hätte sie nur diese Andenken versiegelt und an dich gerichtet, wie viel lieber wäre dies mir gewesen, denn ich hoffte sehr gerade diese Papiere einmal wieder zu sehen und dadurch noch manches so wohl deines innern als äußern Lebens zu erfahren was mir jezt verschlossen ist. Ich dachte mit Mathilden alles überzulesen und mich mit ihr über das Vergangene und die reiche glühende Geisteskraft meines Freundes zu freuen, die sich in jenem Verhältniß ja sehr entwickelt haben muß. Das Buch 7 8

9 10

Anna Benecke, daughter of Mathilde Benecke. Stephan/Etienne Benecke had left Prussia and created a new career in Mexico. Together with his brother Wilhelm Benecke, husband of Mathilde Benecke, both had been cheated by their uncle and lost their property. Franz Ludwig Buck, merchant, turnerfriend of Francis Lieber and the brothers Wilhelm and Stephan/Etienne Benecke. Wilhelm Benecke, husband of Mathilde Benecke, had been a close friend of Franz Lieber and member of Jahn’s turn circle.

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jener Zeit ist jezt verschlossen denn ich weiß nicht einmal ob Mathilde gern davon spricht; auch mag ich nicht daß irgend etwas von dir ganz verloren gehen sollte! Mathilde hat eine ärmliche Wohnung, doch in einer feinen Gegend, gleich am Wall, so daß ich gar nicht durch die Stadt zu gehen habe wenn ich sie besuche. Auf dem Wege zu Mathilda gehe ich an Adelens Hause vorbei. In dem dichtgelegenen Schlafzimmer war die zwölfjährige Anna beschäftigt mit einer Weinachtsarbeit für die Mutter, die muß dann immer anklopfen ehe sie hierinkommen kann, damit dem Mädchen die Freude nicht gestört wird doch weiß sie schon längst womit sie überrascht werden soll. Deutsche Herzen sind so zart und im gemüthlichen versteht ein jeder gleich den andern. Mathildens Bekannte hier sind hauptsächlich Doctor Benecken.11 [2] Sie wünscht auf keinen erweiterten Umgang, doch hat sie mich schon wieder besucht, und ich hoffe daß sie den Umgang mit unserem Weiberhause gern annehmen wird. Am Abend kam Herzfeld und las uns vor: Laß die Todten ruhen von Raupach ein recht lächerliches Lustspiel, welches uns gut unterhielt.12 Freitag viel Besuch, auch Mathilda Hesse die mich auf den Sontag nach Altona lud, wo ich sehr in Gunst stehe. The good people have taken quite a fancy to me, even my old Uncle13 has spoken of your little wife in high terms; my waist has made a good impression and as they are pleased to say my still youthful appearance. Nov 14. Am Sonnabend fuhr ich dann mit Onkel Hesse hinaus, und fand dort Hartwig Hesse und seine Schwester zu Tische. Gieb mir den Gedanken auf liebster Franz daß uns Hartwig Hesse zu seinen Erben einsezt, ich halte es wenigstens für sehr zweifelhaft denn als ich mit ihm gegen zehn Uhr in einer so schön erleuchteten chaise daß man den kleinsten Druck im fahren darin lesen könnte allein hierinfuhr, hat der gute alte Mann kein Wort mit mir geredet, auch keines Blickes mich gewürdigt denn er schlief sanft und seines Glückes nicht gewärtig. Auch würde ich schverlich sein ganzes Vermögen annehmen da wenn man es genau betrachtet doch manch andere ein größeres Recht dazu haben. Über diesen lezten Punkt erlaube ich mir aber zu keinem augenblicklichen Entschluß zu kommen. Einstweilen rathe ich dir doch den alten Aster14 nicht ganz aus den Augen zu verlieren und wenn er wohlmeinende Absichten hat, ihm bei der Ausführung nicht im Wege zu treten. Am 11 12 13 14

Dr. iur. Otto Benecke, son of Ferdinand Beneke. Ernst Benjamin Raupach, Lasst die Toten ruhen, 1829. Heinrich Levin Hesse, Altona. John Jacob Astor, New York.

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Sontag Morgen ging ich ganz allein in die Kirche und hörte eine Predigt die mir nicht sehr gefiel, ging dann mit Onkel Morris, Emma u Carolinen spazieren, bei wunderschönem Wetter. Unsern lieben Oskar hatte ich am Sontag zu Hause erwartet aber Dr Busse konnte es ihm nicht erlauben weil er mit einer aufgegebenen Arbeit nicht fertig geworden war. Hoffentlich kömmt er nun diesen Sontag. So lange ihn zu entbehren wird mir sehr peinlich. Ach was mußt du Aermster erst dabei empfinden, du der mit solcher Liebe an dem Knaben hängst. Daß diese Reise aber gewiß nicht Erfolg los ist wird dich für deine Entbehrungen entschädigen. Oskars Fortschritte im Deutschen werden jedenfalls belohnend sein. dann sehe ich schon für Hammy sehr wohlthätige Folgen, und der kleine Norman entwickelt sich süß in dem bunten Kreise der Kinder. Dein Weibchen auch hat sich wie man sich versichert merkwürdig erholt, obgleich ich mir eigentlich unbewußt bin daß mir früher etwas fehlte. Wohl bin ich, und gewöhnlich heiter. Am Montag besuchte ich Adelen wieder, in excellent spirits; she is dreadfully anxious you should have some employment in Germany, perhaps even in Hamburg. asked me whether in case of any vacancy in the Professorships at the Juhaneum,15 you would be disposed to consider yourself a candidate; I answered for you, I thought not; but she pressed me to write to you about it, so I promised I would, though it is useless in every way there being not even a prospect at present. And how would you like it, how would the philisters suit you? How you would join the clubs; the good folks have whist clubs, conversation clubs on juristical, theological and other subjects, dinner & supper clubs, while the poor wives in despair club together. It is positively a shame that you cannot even have your game at whist; how it would relieve you if after the labour of the day you could have that relaxation. Well as I have often told you, we shall not always remain in Columbia and once having made our obeysence to the good town and raised the dust, we will fashion our life a little more to our own taste in our new residence be that where it may. To return to my journal, on Tuesday my boy we passed the evening at Soehle very cheerfully indeed, Augusta Soehle though very plain, is such a nice woman, so full of fun and good humour. On Wednesday, great running from Caroline and me after worsted stockings & ditto socks for our boys, I patronizing the latter, Carry the former, through double concentrated mud, raising our lower garments high, up to our garters edge, having to wait a quarter of an hour or more for waggons which met and could not part again, to disentangle themselves before we could wade our way onwards. It is astonishing, how I have seen some of 15

The Johanneum was founded in 1529 as a High School/College to Hamburg’s sons and is still in existence, however, now open to all inhabitants. Later it was rivalled by the Christianeum, a Gymnasium Academicum founded in 1738 in Danish Altona.

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our ladies lift their dresses; it seems to be done in perfect forgetfulness of all else but the robe which is to remain spotless, and will, of some mischievous urchin does not skip by, needless of the anger he excites, or some uncouth waggoner does not cause his heavy wheel to slip in the gutter; which recording to the most novel rule of street architecture is in the very centre, and thus to splash en gros, from head to toe. I dislike stockings for children, they spoil the calf, and there being some good ones in the family the young ones taking after their father, I mean to protect them from garters, and rather ordered the socks to be made than give them up. In Hamburg people have no calves. – In the evening we went to Minchen Arning, where we were all very heavy. That will happen sometimes. To day Thursday. I called at Uncle Jacob but only saw Aunt Emilie, to whose complaints I lent a silent and indifferent ear, for she is one of those who can always accommodate you with cold headaches or any other complaint which you may happen to mention. Elle n’est pas trop aimable, ma tante. (16th Saturday evening) Just returned from the theatre whither I went with the Gosslers, after having dined at their house. Gosslers father and youngest brother being of the party.16 We heard Ernst17 a new light, on the violin, much in the character of Paganini as the people say, but I was not delighted with his performance, it was nothing but a series of Kunststücke and did not go to the heart as did Kiesewetters who with much less execution had so much more soul. Henry Gossler is very friendly and kind and I wish I liked his wife18 better, but she is such a little ill natured person, talking ill of everyone – that I feel at a loss with her, Gosslers brother whom I saw to day,19 is the one who was in the United States last summer and whom you saw there I have not yet become acquainted with any other members of his family, but I dare say I shall in the course of the winter for Gossler20 seems inclined to be attentive to me. Poor fellow! I believe he has a burden to carry. They have very nice children, the little girls well behaved & some of them quite pretty and the boy a fine stout little chap of 9 months old, Gosslers pride.21 Hart & Carry are not yet come home they, too were at the Theatre, Caroline in Uncles22 box and Harriet in Herzfelds, there not being any more room in Uncles, they are probably taking tea there and I have just taken my solitary cup, and thought I would chat with 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

The Gosslers were Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler + Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. and Wilhelm Gossler. Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, violinist and composer. Elizabeth Gossler née Bray. Wilhelm Gossler? Johann Heinrich Gossler. Susanna Katharina, Marianne, and Johann Gossler. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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you a little bit. Oh! Frank why are you not here now, I would love you so nicely! (20th) My dearest, my best Frank. I have just received your first letter from Columbia of the 11th Oct. Oh my boy, it has made me very sad to know that you have suffered and that I was not with you. That comfortless home, and you poor boy sick and no wife with you to nurse you. Are you not angry with me for having left you. My Frank, my own. May God protect you and may we all meet again well and happy in our reunion. It is a very hard fate for you, and you cannot think what pangs I sometimes feel. Still, I will comfort you and my letters shall bring joy in your little exilium, for I will tell you of your three dear boys and that God be praised they are well and in good condition mind and body. We will thank God for this blessing dearest Frank and pray to him fervently that they may be our happiness & comfort – I will return to my journal for in giving an account of myself I am reminded of many things I wish you to know which I otherwise forget. On Friday I went to Adele with the intention of staying with her an ∆ [3] but she pressed me so to stay with her dinner & evening that I could not refuse and enjoyed myself very much. She was nicely dressed again and looking much better than I had seen her before, so affectionate and agreable in every way. Asher an artist Ferdinands best friend was there at dinner, and the ­conversation was most fluent how at such times, I want you to be present my own dearest. Adela has a great deal of vivacity, is not in the smallest degree zip, is cheerful, and would I assure you be an excellent companion for you, I only wish that you might meet and try, what a feast it would be for me, if you two loved each other. There is an easy pleasant tone in the house. Ferdinand is a nice fellow too – His poetical effusions became the subject of conversation, and after some search were fortunately found and produced for our merriment, but being of a very daring nature the greater part were withdrawn from the public eye. After dinner I made the acquaintance of an original, Miss Schaufpié who smokes and conversed with the gentlemen most seriously about cigars. At 9 I returned to Aunt Minnas where I found the two girls23 and we chatted an other hour cheerfully, and working hard at part of a carpet which all the children and some of the nieces are working together for Uncle Jacob and his wife to be finished at christmas. Saturday was a busy day for me. I went pretty early to Uncle Jacobs, to appologize for not having joined him and aunt at the theatre the evening before they having sent to invite me while I was at Adelas. I had a nice long conversation with Uncle; did his old heart good by talking of Adela whom 23

Mathilde Liebers’ sisters Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer.

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he doats upon. Is it not strange that during his delirium in his fever he would take nothing from anyone but her? His wife & other children attended to him, but no one but Adela could manage him, he knew no person besides, calling all by wrong names except her. She is not a little proud of this involuntary testimony of his affection. Uncle also spoke of you, my own boy, of your book which he had finished and was going to carry to Adela & which he so much liked of – the possibility of your ever coming here. This subject is much dwelt upon in our family now. Uncle wishes you very much to come over and look at the people yourself, to ascertain whether you would ever like to live amongst them and whether there could be found a suitable situation. At present their are no vacancies in the professorships at the gymnasium,24 and amongst them I believe there is only one which would suit you, that of History. – Once more in ­Germany – it would be strange! I believe I never told you of Landfermann who Harriet told me was acquainted with you formally at any rate he knows you well by name; he was imprisoned during seven years for the same cause in which you suffered; but was pardoned by the Prussian government & is now president of the gymnasium at Duisburg on the Rhein and is in great esteem, he is the husband of Luise Winter, Hart’s friend and she has spent some days at their house.25 The king of Prussia26 is in a pardoning humour. In honour of the Reformations Fest27 a great many have been pardoned. Ought you not now to come forward? – After ∆ across the Wall a truly pleasant walk, to see Mathilde28 & spent a few hours with her very happily. We read several little poems of yours which had not be destroyed with the rest and all of which were full of glowing sentiment. That was love indeed you felt for her. She has also your Adelbert which we shall look over an other time.29 I am quite delighted that I find some remembrance of you with her. While I was there ­Hermann came in, a fine fresh youth full of life & spirit, with an open countenance and pleasing manners; also Gustav Keibel who brought Mathilde a ­present from his father a fine iron medal in honour of the late festival. M ­ athilde told me she had seen old Klenda 24

25 26 27 28 29

Either she referred to the Johanneum or to the Akademische Gymnasium (1613–1883) being placed in the same building close to Hamburg’s townhall. The Akademische Gymasium prepared young men for their studies at an university: the curriculum ressembled a studium generale in the faculty of arts (Greek, Hebrew, Philosophy, Mathematics, Physics). See Dietrich Wilhelm Landfermann. Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben, Leipzig Verlag von Karl Bädeker 1890. Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. The remembrance of Martin Luther and the reformation was celebrated within Prussian territories either on October 31, 1839 or Sunday, November 3, 1839. Mathilde Benecke. Franz Lieber, Adelbert, MS 1826.

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Clentchen (the father of the Krutischs) The old man is perfectly blind and she said nothing could be more beautiful than the attention and care of his wife, who in her advanced age has the grace and the charms of youth in her conversation and manners. She has to do every thing for him, assists him in his game of whist which he plays every evening and delights in and in which he even excels. The cards he plays with are marked and his companions in the game have only to name their cards as they play which he retains in his memory. His grandsons, the sons of Krutisch you knew, are some of them young men, and the old grandfather is lead by one of them to the Exchange every day where he has his seat and all who have any thing to say to him, find him. He still attends to his business in which he indeed takes a lively and active interest. Mathilde was struck with the picture of this young handsome man leading his old blind grandfather. Buck is also a guardian to the Krutischs and devotes himself to these young people; he has arranged a reading circle for them where all the young men meet after their postday. Mathilde walked with me home and then I had only just time to dress myself and go over to Gosslers, and that evenings amusement I have already mentioned to you. On Sunday my dear boy came home; Dr Busse accompanied him, and gave me good accounts about his dilligence. He was looking well, our dear son, and behaved so sweetly while he was at home, so loving, so fond. Oh Frank he is a darling child. As soon as he had talked to me and coaxed his old mother enough he wished to give me pleasure by repeating to me the poetry he had learnt and indeed you would be surprised to hear the long German pieces he knows by heart and repeats without a fault, he said four to me one after the other, and one English psalm which he had also learnt. Dr Busse praised his quickness in committing to memory. Then our boy played to me a few notes which he had learnt to touch and says he likes it better now than at first. Busse thought his hands were very nimble and that he would make quick progress. He had taken his two first dancing lessons and was perfectly delighted, it was such good fun. Dr Busse had given him a pr of skates, but the weather has been very mild indeed, no idea of ice, so that he is much disappointed. He has made several walks with Busse alone. I asked him whether Busse conversed much with him on such occasions? he said ‘a little but not like Papa used; he does not explain everything to me as my dear Papa used, Oh! I wish I were in Columbia again or Papa were here!’ We went to Altona to see Aunt Hesse Caroline Edward30 & I, but we found my good aunt & her family rather in an exited state, having had a visit from Graf Blucher who had just received the order of the

30

Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg.

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Elephant and of whose attention they were not a little proud.31 This is the weak side of that family, a perfectly ridiculous love for the highborn – We did not like the humour we found them in and soon took our old cloaks about us and our boys by the hand; when we came home Ludwig was sitting with Harriet. Uncle Jacob had also been there ∆ rinted in having missed him. Little Norman had put his head on Ludwigs knee and called him Papa, then looking up in his face he said: no its’ Uncle, it ain’t my Papa. The little chap is quite cunning; this evening Hammy saying something and making use of his old ourn Normy immediately corrected him: Hammy you must say you, you Hammy, & when the goodnatured Hamilton did as he was bid, Norman very patronisingly looked approving upon us, and said: now Hammy says you. This childs animated sparkling eyes would delight you, particularly in the evening when he is excited. When we came home from Hessens Oscar and Hamilton Edward immediately sat down and copied some maps by sight, the two boys worked intently and dilligently untill they went to bed. Those Oscar did I shall send you with the Sir Isaac Newton in a case which will contain some little refreshment for you palate, which I trust will arrive in good condition. I was very much pleased to see Oscars dilligence and perseverence, these maps were not drawn through as he formerly did but properly copied. His drawing master has also remarked his propensity to make every thing smaller for which there must be some cause in his eye, I shall speak to a phigsician about it. Our boy was very anxious to be at school again at the proper time and Edward and he accordingly set off at 8 OClock on monday morning, and quite happy too, for they expect to be with us next sunday again. Oscar I believe is making some drawing for christmas, he was whispering a good deal to Edward about it, and I soon found out there was some secret I must not know. On Monday Uncle Jacob sent us a letter he had received from dear James,32 he proposes to come over next summer on a visit, to leave it at the disposal of the disposing parties whether he might have Emma for his wedded wife whether they would consent to her going for a couple of years yet with him to Mayaguez which time would be required for properly regulating the European business, or whether he should spend those two years alone there and then return to Hamburg. Emma I think would go with him 31

32

Graf Conrad Daniel von Blücher-Altona, Danish Oberpräsident of the town of Altona, on November, 7 1839 awarded by Danish King Friedrich VI with the knighthood of the Danish Elephant order. See C.F.E. Ludwig, Kurze Lebensbeschreibung des jüngst verstorbenen Conrad Daniel Grafen v. Blücher-Altona, Königl. Dän. Oberpräsidenten und Geh. Conferenzrathes, Ritter des Elephanten=Ordens, des Dannebrog=Ordens Großkreuz und Dannebrogs=Mannes, Altona Carl Theodor Schlüter 1845, p. 42. James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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­immediately, but I am not so c­ ertain of the grandfathers and fathers consent.33 Things at Pto Rico were not so very brilliant, but I suppose the boys34 write to you. On the Emma affair you had better be silent as it was a confidential communication to Uncle – Spent the evening at Aunt Minnas and when we came home found a little parcel which had yet been found in the Isaac Newton for me a letter still from New York – one of those little run betweens, Washingtons life35 for Oscar and the Sunday school concern for Hamilton. Oscars I think I will keep for christmas as well as his letter. Hammy’s I gave yesterday and you can have no idea of his happiness. ‘My own good Papa’ he exclaimed, my dear Papa, I love you, and his parcel and his letter he opened and shut out again, showing it to every body in the house, he takes it to bed with him, it is his first thought in the morning and indeed it is a most grateful thing to give something to Hamilton. He told his schoolmistress of it and every body must know: that my Papa sent it to me. The smallest gift makes Hamilton happy, and he is a most affectionate child: Tuesday we had a nice chat with Uncle36 and received tickets for the theatre whither we went and heard Ernst37 again, and were much more pleased than the first time. He certainly is a very great artist. Der zerbrochene Krug von Raupach38 wurde auch gespielt u. zwar sehr gut, ganz witzig u. drollig. Jezt gute Nacht Meine Seele, mein süsser Franz ich drück dich an mein Herz u. Küße-Küße dich 1 Uhr [4] 21st Nov. Nothing happened yesterday my dearest Frank except that I received your letter from Columbia. It was a painful one to me. How could it be otherwise, to know my boy thus suffering and I so far away. I thank you for writing to me so soon after entering your little domain. I believe after all you love your Matilda, don’t you my boy? but she deserves it for she is all all yours, and in the midst of all enjoyment her heart feels that she would rather be alone with you 33 34 35

36 37 38

Emma Oppenheimer; the father was Morris Oppenheimer; the grandfather Salomon Heine, uncle of Heinrich Heine. James, Theodore, and Gustavus Oppenheimer. John Marshall, The Life of George Washington, 1838, or Samuel G. Goodrich, The Life of George Washington, Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co. Philadelphia 1838; each appealed to young readers. Jacob Oppenheimer. Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. Der zerbrochene Krug, comedy by Heinrich von Kleist, first performance Weimar 1808; did Mathilde Lieber mixed up the names and ascribed the play to Raupach or did she attend a performance which followed an adaption by the fancy author?

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even in Columbia, than in the midst of pleasures away from her bonnie boy, and glad will I be to return to you. Only, only to leave our Oscar, there is the pang! That we could but find a teacher! Do you wish me to make inquiries? – I was indeed most painfully shocked to hear of poor General Hayne’s death; he was indeed taken in the prime of his life and in the midst of his active career. Poor Mrs Hayne. In less than a year she has now lost both her parents and her husband. The state must loose much in him; he too is a loss to us, as a kind and worthy friend; but we cannot understand the ways of the Almighty we can only submit. I have also to communicate a painful intelligence. Poor Mrs Goldschmidt is no more. She died after a very lingering illness and in dreadful suffering so that her children could only bless the hour she was relieved; Caroline & I have written to poor Malchen39 and when we hear from her, I will give your her report, at present we know nothing in particular. Probably Malchen will remain with Jeanette whom she loves very much and whose children she doats upon. It is said of Jette Fould that she has become too much a lady of fashion to be much comfort to Malchen.40 – Come to Europe soon or you will no longer enjoy it. One by one all the links will drop which bind you to it. Ask for a month before the vacations begin. I merely mention this I will not press you. – Where can that book be. I hope you have found it, if I mistake not it is in your own room. I am quite disappointed that you did not find a letter from me in Columbia when you arrived. May you not have been waiting long, for it is the only comfort I can give you. – How I feel all your house hold troubles, that Mrs Brown ought to be ashamed of herself – I will write down a few things from memory which I entered in that book for though late better than not at all. Betsy was to wash all your cloths, she was to receive meal and find herself in meal, if as I suppose she has time to work for herself. The carpets in your study 3 in the parlour were to be laid down. I advised you to have a barrel of potatoes in the store room, also onions in the house as for pickles I believe I sent you sufficient. 2 tea spoons of the tea would be enough for you alone. Some bacon must be got so that Betsy can lard the chickens, even the pigeons ought to be larded. The butter for cooking I used to get at about 20 ce 25 cents, a pint of 39 40

Amalia Goldschmidt, a friend in the London childhood of Caroline Lomnitz and ­Mathilde Lieber. Adelheid Goldschmidt had died in Paris after a long, painfull illness; she had been a celebrity in the 1820s London colony of German merchants, much adored by her friend Rahel Varnhagen as well as by the young migrant Francis Lieber. Her daugher Henriette/­ Jeannette/Jette had married the French banker Achille Marcus Fould, while her older daughter Malchen/Amalie had stayed single. Varnhagen described Adelheid Goldschmidt as “die beste, originalste, wahrhaft liebenswürdige Frau”, see Meyer Kayserling, Die jüdischen Frauen in der Geschichte, Literatur und Kunst. Hildesheim 1991, p. 254.

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milk would be enough for you. It is well to send tickets to Mrs Gibbs who gives 10 quarts or 20 pints for a dollar. Meal & corn I got at Mary the washer woman for 75 cents a bushel. I hope Dr Sill or some other kind person will put you in the way of getting something nice sometimes, for eggs this time of the year from 12 cents to 50 pr dozen. With the butcher I always have a book, & also with the grocer which Elsy must always bring home to you again. So that you see nothing wrong is got. I am quite certain I left no account anywhere so you will I hope not to be troubled in that way. Geese, Turkeys, Ducks, Pigeons, Chickings will be the best eating for you. There is sometimes pretty good mutton in the market but a leg would be to large a joint for you alone. I hope Russel will have some nice salad. I hope you will have no difficutly in finding anything you want. Let Mrs Diennard come to you, and let her mend what ever Elsy cannot. If I could only have unpacked your cloth and put every thing in place again. I shall be quite anxious to hear of the safe arrival of the case I sent you from here on the 25th of Oct. containing a variety which I hoped you would have at Xmas. The wind has been fair and if things do not go as tiresome as usual from New York to Columbia, I think it must. By this present vessel I send you two sausages. (Zungenwürste are not yet made nor geräucherte Gänsebrust which I am afraid can not be sent for it would arrive in Columbia during the hot weather) a goose which Carry & I have cooked in Saucen Gathot, a little box of peas and a small Gänseleberpastete a mere taste of one, so eat it alone, & do not mention to any one that you expect it, 6 small bottles of champaign & a few of Harriets best Hock will be added the champaign Caroline sends. – I direct the case to the same house as before. There are no vessels going direct to Charleston either from Bremen or here at present. If there are any in spring I shall asail myself of them. Oscar is writing a letter to you now but has not finished, what I have of his drawings I send you. The map of Africa he did at Busses and brought it to me. The remaining room I will leave open till the letter has to go to give you the last accounts from your little family. Perhaps Oscar will be home in time to dictate to me but that I doubt. It was fine that you met Joseph Bonaparte & had such a nice talk with him. God bless you my boy; keep up your spirits. You must not droop. All will be well. I look cheerfully forward and so must you. Ever your affectionate wife Matilda Rebecca is much obliged to you for your kind remembrance. Nov 22d. My own dearest, most devotedly loved Frank. I have just made up my mind to send this pr steamer & not with Sir Isaac, as I had first intended, so I will first finish it off as this is packet day. Oh my own boy, may Heaven bless you, and make you happy. I am so myself for I have just received a note from Adela requesting me to be Godmother to her child who is to be named Matilda after me. I am very much pleased for Adela is very dear to me and I am glad

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she reciprocates so warmly. On the 1st of December, the child is to be baptised. It is a fine healthy babe. – Be comforted, your childrens necks shall be well protected. I have dressed them all very warmly and they are never exposed in the evening. They go to bed regularly at 7 o clock every evening and as yet have been very well. The weather has so far remained moderate, but Oh, it is so dark; it is but just light enough to take breakfast at 8 OClock and at 5 in the evening it is perfectly dark. Dr Busse has given Oscar a pr of skates so I dare say he is delighted at the increased cold. Hammy who sees me writing sends his love to Papa and I am to tell you he is a good boy which he really is; piping is no longer in fashion. I can assure you. Aunt Minna & Auguste Ahrens are making some cakes for you and send you a great deal of love. Aunt Minna says she will cook nice things for you if you only come. – Well, we will see. Write me whether I am to send you a new work of Raumer. 3. Volumes Beiträge zur Neueren Geschichte. Vom Siebenjährigen bis zum Amerikanischen Kriege, aus den Eng. u. franz. Staatsarchiven.41 Auch ein Werk von Ranke F F von Ranke Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation.42 And now God bless you my dearest fellow. That I could put myself in this ­letter. Since you are at home Frank I want to be with you. My dear sisters are well and send you much love. – To morrow Oscar comes home. I was out today when Mrs Gossler43 called, quite charmed with a little note I had written her husband, in which I had made particular inquiries about the Bremen vessel. He advised me not to send by them. – Dearest Frank God grant you are well are you? Is your foot no longer painful, my sweet boy? – I kiss you many many times and love you; Oh more dearly than words can tell. Heaven protect you. your loving, hugging wife Matilda Your song hadediddle, made me melancholy [cross-writing, 1] I suppose my dear Frank I some times repeat a thing or two in my letters, if so excuse me, you know my own chap, that I often do it in talking as well or have you forgotten my old habits? Love to poor Charlotte.44 41

42 43 44

Friedrich von Raumer, Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte aus dem britischen Museum und Reichsarchive. Europa vom Ende des siebenjährigen bis zum Ende des amerikanischen Kriegs (1763–1783), 3 Bde. Brockhaus Leipzig 1839. Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation, 3 Bde. Duncker und Humblot Berlin 1834–1839. Elizabeth Gossler née Bray. Charlotte McCord, Columbia/SC.

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Single Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S. C. Stamp PAID 26 Nov 1839 Stamp Paid Ship Letter 26 No 26 1839 London Stamp London 26 Nov 1839 Stamp New-York Feb 1 Stamp Forwarded by New York Heckschers, Coster & Matfeld [hand written] 1. Feb.1840

No. 26 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 16.11.-03.12.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 03.12.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages No XIV Mein Fuss ist Geheilt. Nov. 16.1839 Last date Columbia S.C. Nov. Just a line – I trust you send me a nice detailed description of Christmass, think of me – and tell me also what the children said. They will be stupefied. Caroline says Oscar is a noble boy, Norman as perfect bijon, and Hamilton a good little fellow. Poor fellow! Well, I begin to love honest Hamilton most. I know we shall be good friends. Has he not, as you write me, cried for his papa? Who has done that besides honest Stout? I could press him, had I Tom here, that he should cry. Take care I beg you that Norman be not spoiled. Such graceful, sensible, and clever children easily become sorts of Josephs – insinuating rogues. However, I kiss the little gazelle from all my heart. What does Matilda I, i.e. Beneke, say of Oscar? Does she tell him how his father sate by her on the foot stool, covering her hand with kisses? Does she remember the ball, when I fell plump deep in love with her, if – je n’étais pas encore épres. How I was taken with that woman! Does she remember when the others went to play in the bowling alley, and lingered about her? And the wreath of violets she sent me; and the letters she sent to Köpenick,1 and when I came from prison? I should like to have a letter from her. How is her Hermann?2 – I am so anxious about the box. This is a nasty place for getting anything. How sweet it would be, were I in a sea-port town. You would recieve many parcels as that which seems to have given you so much pleasure – I mean that with the flag. – Tell me whether I ought not to cross with read ink. I suppose I shall not be able to go to Charleston at Christmass; we have not vacation, and then the money! I have become a miser. I am afraid that Oscar, with dress, books &c will cost $400 a year, more I ever had when student. Well, God bless him, and I am satisfied. Caroline, Harriet, let me have a very loving letter, a “regular” one. And now good night. I could write on long in this way. You see that I am, much calmer. Do you Know Matilda that I sent word to Mrs Richardson that I had remembrances from Rebecca to her, that she must come and see me – merely to have a chat with 1 While in Köpenick prison from August 1824 till April 1825, Franz Lieber had received several letters; when he was released those letters were returned but not before Prussian bureaucracy had anxiously registered each epistel in an exact inventory, see Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, passim; GStaPK 1 HA Rep 77 21 Spez. L, Nr. 1, vol. 2, passim. 2 Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_028

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some one. Hard driven, eh? # Pray ask Gossler3 whether Mittermaier4 of Heidelberg has drawn upon him for a small account. I wrote Gossler to honor it. And did you send to Perthes & Besser. Pray beg Gossler to ask Perthes & Besser what has become of the 50 copies of my letter on Prison Matters, which I sent them June 1838.5 Pray do not forget that. And send word to Perthes to write you down how much the Life of Savonarola, publ. about 2 years ago costs.6 I wonder whether it is in your family? I only want to look for one point. Do not forget this either. I feel it very much that you have not in your whole family one solitary member whom I could put a question connected with Literature. It is really barbarous. Thus I wish to know which of the Literature Zeitungen I ought to take to remain en courent. I mean not an eloquent but a learned paper. I tried to take the Hallische Lit. Z. but they stopped sending it. I trust to God you have sent the raizors for I am in great distress. Send for some of their catalogues to Perthes when you send again to me. If you say it is for me, it will be alright. I wish you could step into their shop, some day passing it. – As to the pardoning buseness this; so long as my process remains in the state, in which it is now, it is may be some day unpleasant. My process is only stopped, and might be resumed, if they were fools enough. This then must be written. Secondly the Justizcommiss. whose name has been torn out by the seal ought first to go to Hitzig and talk with him. Hitzig loves me, and knows just how matters stand. Thirdly, it will be decent that Kamptz knows of it; indeed in one of my letters I think I have told him that if ever I wished something of the sort, I would apply to him first. This therefore I must be attended to. Fourthly, the advocate can say that I have no special object in view, that unfortunately, I have no hope of soon seeing Europe. Fifthly, that I dont care and – if they wont grant it. This latter should not be inserted in the petition to his majesty.7 On Oct. 2. you wrote: my poor Frank is now in Columbia. Yes, I was, and in my

3 Johann Heinrich Gossler. 4 Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg. 5 Lieber, Letter to His Excellency Patrick Noble, 1838. 6 Nicolaus von Lenau, Savonarola: ein Gedicht, J.G. Cotta Stuttgart 1837? With regard to the reference to Perthes it could have well be the biography by Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach, ­Hieronymus Savonarola und seine Zeit. Aus den Quellen dargestellt, Friedrich Perthes ­Hamburg 1835. 7 Lieber had left Prussia and his king in 1826 while he was on parol without official ­permission – therefore he was sought by warrant. It seems that his brother Dr. med. Gustav Lieber in Berlin as well as Francis Lieber himself petitioned Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. for pardoning which was granted only in 1842 when Friedrich Wilhelm IV. followed his late father on the throne.

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bed too. What do you mean by: “A Goldschm.8 is not a happy man.” Do you mean with his wife? Does she eat capers? By way of capers! You know the old story of the Irish man fighting a duel with a French man because he would not believe that anchovies grow on a tree &c. I heard a good tail-end to the story. When the Frenchman is wounded, and one of the seconds calls out: What capers that fellow cuts, you know the Irish man explains: Oh jeins, I meant capers all the time. He than stepped to the bleeding and dying French man, and asks his pardon for the mistake; the French man raises himself, puts his hand on his heart and says: I die appy! – There is despite of all ludicrousness something beyond that in this, I think exquisite anecdote. – I am so anxious to know what sort of a woman Mrs Busse is. I hope no twiddle-twaddle, patchy loving (you know what I mean) German woman, but something of a lady. Had you not yet seen Gosslers. November 15: To a mocking bird, who just sung, perhaps his last singin this year, before my window. For Oscar. Du süßer Bengel zeige mir noch einmal deine Weise; Vermisst du unsern lieben Freund, Und singst darum so leise? O könntest du zu ihm dich schnell Von deinem Zweige schwingen Und ihm des Vaters Herzensgruß Voll treuer Liebe bringen! Doch zwischen uns wallt auf und ab Ein Meer mit weiten Wogen, Das hat auch unser großer Herr Noch nimmer überflogen. Kann sich der größte Herr auch nicht So weit u fern sie wagen; Kann doch weiter doch der Liebe Herz Als alle Schwingen tragen. Zu dir, zu dir, mein Knabe süß, 8 Adolf Goldschmidt, son of Adelheid Goldschmidt, brother of Jeanette Fould and Amalia Goldschmidt.

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Wär auch das Meer viel breiter, Zu dir fliegt meine Liebe stets, Und verhütest du viel weiter! Zu dir, wo du auch immer seist, Strebt sie mit stetem Triebe. Gott [2] Gott segne dich, geliebtes Kind, Und gieb uns Lieb für Liebe An Matilda Sie sagen wohl, die Liebe bahnt Sich hoch und weit wie Sterne; doch ach! wie schien ja Mantua selbst Vom nah’n Verona ferne! Saturday 16 of November When a man rhymes on his pain and grief he must be someway or other master over it, and thus these insignificant verses will be a proof to you that I am much calmer. Ever since I wrote my last letter to you I felt easier; so great is the power of speaking out. I have now again read over again your letter several times, and what my pains, which were very great, in part I know because my confinement had probably made me mürbe, and in part because I my whole life, with my exile in this deplorable place and with the necessity of separating from my children weighted heavily at that time upon my soul, made me not see at first, all I see now. I think, if the people are as you think, a better place could not be found for Oscar, although very dear. If we must leave him in Germany, I am very sorry that Zuellichau is so dreadfully smallish a place. I have no doubt that Hamb. would be better for Oscar, considering that one day he must live in America; otherwise he would live in Zuellichau with his relations, and you know, a school is there, which prepares for the university.9 I shall write in this letter to Mr Busse; you will be kind enough to copy it; and if you have a mind to do it, copy that poem for Oscar, that he may have it for himself after you or his teacher have explained it to him. And now as to money. I beg you to speak with 9 Paedagogium and Orphanage Züllichau, founded by Siegmund Steinbart 1719 on the concept of the Franckesche Anstalten, Halle/Saale.

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your uncle about it. Namely, it is almost out of the question for me at present to send money to the North; the exchange is 10 pr. cent. Ever since my return I had the money lying in my chest to send it to Brune,10 but could not. A few days ago Brunes sent me a letter in which they inform me that foreign exchange has so much risen, since the Baltimore banks have stopt specie payment, that instead of $162 they must now ask me to send them $172, add to this that I must pay nearly $20 exchange to get a drft for $172 on the North, and you will see that the whole is beyond any man’s means surely beyond a poor professors purse. Oh ∆ have you flown! My request now is this, that you tell your uncle11 all this, and beg him to advance all the money for you and Oscar; that I beg him to take interest upon it; and I can afford to pay interest which for Europe would be very high, because it I should always save by the transaction. So soon as matters change say in February, or spring, I shall send the money. You know my salary comes in with punctuality, and he may rest assured that the money shall be sent the moment I can send it; if he wishes it. I always knew that it was hard to make money; I see the days when it is hard to be obliged to keep it. Here I have money in my drawer lying idle, and I must pay interest elsewhere. It is an abominable stale of things. No use in croking! Speak regularly with your uncle about this matter; if he declines, let me know forthwith, and I must make other arrangements. I wish him not to do anything which he dislikes in any way whatever. I have no sort of claim upon him nor have you. The buseness which I propose seems to me simple, and is, I know safe, for even should I suddenly die I have property enough to make good any advances of his; moreover I wish to pay interest. Still he is the one who has the right to say: Yes or No; I fully acknowledge it, and all I desire is to know what he thinks of it. – Why have you never yet mentioned old Heyne, the great Nabob of Hamburg – Have you never met him?12 – Gladly would I have begun my lines of to-day with words of exultation, but I am so afraid of calling up in your soul feelings and thaughts as if the day of delivery has arrived – I hope I do not expect it as the Jews expect the Messiah – and that the sequel of the letter will disappoint you; that I will tell you then quite tamely that my foot is healed, that today for the first time I have put on a slipper (that soft one made by the sisters)13 having worn so long 10 11 12

13

Frederick W. Brune, Baltimore. Jacob Oppenheimer. The Nabob was Salomon Heine, rich merchant and uncle of Heinrich Heine, friend and business partner of the Oppenheimer family since decades. His daughter had married Morris Oppenheimer; his granddaughter was going to marry Mathilde Lieber’s brother James. In 1841 Heine endowed a hospital to Hamburg, St. Pauli in memory of his late wife. The building opened in 1843. Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg.

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a sandal only. You will remember that sometime ago I thought all was well; Dr Trezvant probed it and probed it, and finally declared it healed. But the foot swelled again; I took a foot bath, and in whiping the foot, I found that a deep sore had remained below! I now took the lure entirely in my own hands. I took two baths every day to keep it from healing above, and at the same time used irritating means to counteract the relaxation produced by the frequent application of hot water, and I have slowly but thorroughly succeeded. If I had not felt it a duty to apply to the physician, for no one knows how much things may end, I know that I could have cured that foot much better and quicker myself. How, such things contribute to endear the place we live in, where the best physician makes such a bungling buseness, you can imagine, may I know you feel it with me. I took yesterday my first walk to M’Cord’s at the Bank. Whatever Dr. T. may say, I am very much afraid that girl’s doom is fixed, unless marrying and having a child change the whole, which is often the case.14 Mrs Ellet I have not the slightest doubt has the consumption. She has the worst imagenable cough. – You must write me the name of the friendly Justizcommissarius, who, since he loves my poetry, shall have an ode in Pindaric15 style by way of bee. You must thank Gustavus16 [3] for his attention and through him the Justizcommisar. As to his having influence &c, that’s all my eye. – We have often spoken about things to be sent me; send me nothing expensive whatever. We are poor “and thats a fact”, and times are miserable. You know very well that the first of all things affected by bad times is the book trade; the sale of my books therefore will be but poor. In addition I fear that sheer duty will compell me to keep a horse, much, very much as I shun the expense, which is very great for us, for taken all in all I cannot keep it for under 75 cents a day. That is very much to be spent for a lump of flesh; which, by the bye, weighed yesterday no more then 147 pounds; once I weighed 165 or 8 I think. How much does Oscar weigh: where and how do the children dine? With you? Or in the nursery? If the latter, it must be a rare feast to see those five brats. I would pay a dollar each time for the spectacle, and think it cheaper then seeing all giraffes. This is Saturday; when I feel always a sort of permission to squander my time with my good for nothing wife. I am 14 15 16

Charlotte McCord. Pindar ( 522/518- ca. 446 B.C.) was a Greek poet famous for his style and sophisticated language. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, Berlin.

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now going to read what is left of the poems, in my perigrinations, once made to Matilda I.17 Kiss her for me, and let her add at least a line to me, or rather liegin a letter – a huge sheet, in her beautiful characters! But I love then, for I love her, whatever she may feel towards me. Is the well of her heart, which once flowed freely for me, dried up, as one of our College wells is? Rain will make this flow again; can a dew of love sent in a poem to her make hers flow again? I just have found a poem, which I made many, many years ago, between Blankenburg and Westerhausen.18 I made it without very definite reference to any one, yet Matilda I was, I dare say in my mind a little. Yet as the first Christians took statues of the old gods to represent to them the new faith, so my Matilda it is the new love, to you, which it now represents. Here is it, and know it speaks truth to thee: Im Walde jauchzen viele Vögel Zumal dem Morgen frisch u kühl; doch einer nur folgt meinen Tritten Aufs kahle Feld am Mittag schwühl. Das ist die immerrege Lerche, drückt auf die schwerer Mittag ∆ So klingt von ihr noch Leben her. So ist dein treugeliebter Mann; An manche denkt mein froher Sinn, x doch wenn mich Noth u Wehmuth suchen, So bleibst du meine Trösterinn. x Flirtability – Sally Newton. When I just wrote that note about Sally the following composed itself for you – fresh and for you alone: Ein jeder Hauch, ein jedes Strömen Macht Wellen nord u südwärts fließen, auch tiefer giebt es große Fluten xx die stätig ihre Kreise ziehen --xx die Meeresströmungen

17 18

Mathilde Benecke née Schweder. Two small towns in the Harz Mountains 7 km apart.

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Ein jeder Scherz, ein jeder Jammer bewegt das Leben hin u her, doch tiefer sind der Liebe Fluten, Und stätig wie das im tiefen Meer. And now I verily think it is time to stop; Have you not thaught so long ago? All these poems remind me that I believe I have not a copy of the W. India poems, which I sent to your dear, dear father. Harriet has perhaps a copy. Will you copy them and bring them with you? But you ought to do it soon, lest you forget. - When do you dine? How is the order of your day? Dec so long indeed, my loved Matilda, have I not written to you. Why? There are many reasons, but merely you dont believe that it was because I did not think of you. Often, indeed, it is my very thinking of you, my beloved ones, when I feel more and more intensely, perhaps sad too, that I do not write. Then there was the examination of 9 long days, so dull, so heavy, so blunting. Then, I waited for another letter, the first after our Oscar has been for some time in his new abode, but I recieved none, although twice I had French papers by the Havre packet. But the chief reason was that I intended to write in this letter to Oscar’s teacher. I ardently long to do it, and yet I could not bring myself to do it. I have felt of heavy, not melancholy; grief can be communicative, especially to a faithful and dear wife, but leaden, heavy, sad (at times at least) yet dullish sad, like exhausted patience. But I will write him most assuredly next time. My foot is quite well, and my appetite returns; I actually must order more for dinner, or the quantity will not last any longer so long as first, all which I know you will like to hear. The Legislature is sitting, but Hayne dead and Hamilton19 absent I have no one here who care for me or I for him. The Trustees sit, and have elected two new professors for Stuart and Thornwell. For the latter Mr Henry20 the concieted and who formerly always spoiled College matters has been elected, for the former a stupid dull parson openly denounced as such by Preston, has been elected, or will be; I take so little interest that I donot even inquire. Big, gross bigotry envellops everything, and my situation becomes worse and worse, at least duller and duller. What can be worse to a man of my feeling. No sympathy, no accent of cheering on. But I must not go on in this way. Yet what shall I write? If I only have soon a letter from you with good news it will cheer me. The one missing, sent by direct vessel has not yet come to hand. So have I heard nothing of the box. Charlotte McC. so I understand is to be 19 20

James Hamilton Jr. Prof. Robert Henry, College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC.

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married on Christmass at St. Mathews.21 Hillard writes me that Mary Appl. is engaged to Mr Mackintosh, attaché to the Brit. ambassy at Washington. He is the son of the celebrated Sir James Mackintosh, whose writings on history and natural law I so vastly like.22 He is about 35 or 40. I saw him at Montreal; a great Radical. Mary23 has not written to me. Yet Hillard speaks as if it is as an event which “has created much surprize” &c. So it seems to be certain. But I would not in your place write yet to her. At least I think this would be best; but as you please. Sometimes I must [4] Dec. 3. 1839. My ever dear and loved boy, Mama has written me that you now are in a boarding school. I cannot tell you all felt when I recieved the news, but love and anxiety for my beloved Oscar were uppermost in my soul, m nay they filled it. May God bless you, my darling child. I hope you love already your teacher and he you. Tell him that I shall write to him in my next letter, and tell Mrs Busse I beg her to love you as her own child, and I will ever pray for her, for the kindness she shows to my boy. My Oscar donot forget your father. Not a day, no, indeed not an hour passes that donot I think of you, and sometimes with a bleeding heart. I never think think of you but in love, and when, in bitterness, I sometimes think, that I scolded you, I press you, in my mind, to my heart and say: my blessed, blessed child! My dear boy, donot forget your English, and read every day some English; always observe well and inquire, and donot forget little things, which your parents told you, even such things not, as not to eat with the knife, already any friends among your school-mates? Kiss your dear brothers when you see them, and say, our papa sends the kisses. I suppose Mama will send for you, to give you a copy of this letter, if dear Mama has time. I am riding now a little bay mare a fine horse, which I shall buy, if I decide to buy a horse at all. She is so gentle and yet sprightly, that I have called her Nausicaa, is which I abbreviate with Nassy, which name she knows already very well. She pricks her ears when I call her and gives that inward halfpressed neighing when I come. About a fortnight ago, when I rode her, a suddenly came into a part of the forest, where oak trees only, mostly those low scab oaks and white oaks were, all of which were so red, as you know the European forests never are in autumn, because the difference of the hot days and cold nights is not so 21 22 23

St. Matthews, Calhoun Co./SC, close to Columbia/SC. James Mackintosh, A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations, 1799; The History of England, 3 vols. 1830–32; History of the Revolution in England in 1688, 1834. Mary Appleton.

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great, that I almost startled. I thaught immediately of you. It was most surprizing, like an enchanted grove; and when the sun went low, and shone through the leaves, the universal purple hue was most glorious, as you would say. I never had seen anything like it; nor are is the autumn foliage generally so red as this year. Then I rode on, and the green pine trees towring above the purple underwood looked again beautiful. I wish indeed, my boy you could have seen some sloping hill from a distance as I met them. the bright green pine, the yellow persimmon, the purple oak, the brown gum-tree, the dark maple, and the dark green holly with the bright red berries, all mixed, yet in distinct layre masses – it was truly magnificent. Now the folige is withered and darker, but first the red leaves were soft, juicy and glossy, although purple and or high red. When I came home, I found a willow-oack planted in the yard. By whom you think! Of course kind Hillar had been there. Is this not truly kind? He always asks after Mama and all of you. You know I like him very much, for he is so good a man. Now he is gone to Charleston. The other day my boy I sent to for silver dollars for to pay postage. Among the dollars-Spanish with pillars of Hercules you remember, and Mexican with the eagl and the Cactus – was one I had never seen. It is a South Peruvian dollar. On the one side is the image of the sun, where with us the face of Liberty is, and on the reverse is a smoking volcano, at the foot of which lies a cornu copia out of which rolls gold. To the left is a castle gate and a wall with battlements, thus [small sketch], above which there is what I take to be the acient head dress of the Incas. In the back ground is the sea with a little ship. Now what does the whole mean, the sun, the volcanoe, the gold &c &c I hope you can decipher it; if not, ask your friend […] to your father, who ran out dimly see the words he writes here. I shall be rejoiced to recieve any proof whatever of your advancement in study or drawing or whatever it be. It will delight your father. Be kind to all men, especially to your mother, oh dear Oscar she is a good mother! and to your dear aunts. Kiss them for me, and to your uncles and cousins and of course to your dear brothers. I press you all three to my heart. God bless these dear children. Your father. [cross-writing] forcibly bring to my mind the fact, that I have some hearts left in this wide world, who care a farthing for me, that I have a wife, have children. The other day when I gave, at dinner something to eat to Timoor and he gulped it down rather hastily I spoke to him about his ungentlemanlike behavior, and percieved that I was talking to a dog at a great rate, only when I saw Elsa laughing. When I come home and that dog, ugly and lazy though he be frills about, and

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leaps up at me, I feel warm and at times catch myself in addressing loud and caring sentences to him in the yard. There is one month more past, and only seven remain when I shall set out for the North. This makes me feel happy; yet who I cannot help thinking likewise; one month again elapsed and no rescue, no deliverance. Here Matilda I donot remain. If I must I will write some sellable school books, say for the next 3 years, and then go. To-day I passed the court house and saw two lines, one of men one of women, you know exposed for what they were uncommonly well dressed, and mostly mulattos. I tell you, the moment I saw them, in coming out of the post office, my heart sunk, and – I cried I could not help it. Good God, why must I, I of all men live here; remove, or remove me! This was what my soul felt, and as intense as ever prayer was offered to the Deity. It will break my heart to live here for ever. Hillard writes me that my book is printed and makes nearly 700 pages for which I am very sorry. The sheets of the chapter on the Representative have been sent me. You remember probably that I considered it my best, and now I must tell you, having read it over again, that I say it is good, it will stand. But there are some ugly, very ugly misprints, of that sort which totally disfigure and yet give sense. It cannot be helped, and I feel to think skinny just now, to care much. Pray with me that God may soon grant a new edition.24 My Synonymes sell well, which is very much for such a book in such a time25 – My letter to the governor on Penitentiarees will be printed by the Legislative as Legislative Document I really, I assure you, care little, except that I now can send it abroad.26 If Harriet and Carry have not forgotten me, kiss them for me, I love them dearly, and, mark, I am sure I love the intensest of all as indeed what else can I possibly do but loving? Good bye, Good bye. Your loving Frank Single paid Via New-York & Havre Madame Fr. Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York Dec 19 Stamp Outre-Mer 12. Jan Stamp Paris 13 Jan 40 Stamp Hamburg ∆ + red sealing wax

24 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 25 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes. 26 Lieber, Letter to His Excellency Patrick Noble.

No. 27 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 25.11.1839 Included: copy of a letter of Adele Haller to Mathilde Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5062, ALS, 4 pages Letter XI Hamburg 25th Nov. 1839.  Monday evening Which I think will not be a proper letter at all, for I have just sent a long one off by the English steamer and nothing at all has happened since. Dearest Frank yet I can tell you how I doat upon you and that there is a constant longing in my heart for my best treasure. I feel it, oh dearest, how I feel it at night when I am alone in my little room and all my thoughts are love. Then I picture to myself the moment of our meeting, the first hours of our enjoyment and I count the months which will pass before we are again united. You and Oscar divide my thoughts. The dear fellow! On saturday we expected the boys home from school but we were disappointed. Dr Busse had told me that they would either come home last or next saturday; & now we have to wait another week for them. However that will bring christmas nearer to them, this being their last coming home before the happy festival. Did I tell you christmas eve the boys are in Eppendorf and receive presents from their masters. On christmas day their is a general union de famille at Uncle Jacobs and therefore we are obliged to postpone the childrens feest until the second christmas day. – We are all very sorry for this but it cannot be helped. How happy the children will be, we shall have a fine tree, and Oscars flag will make a gay show, When I see how the smallest trifle pleases poor Hammy I can have no idea what he will do when he finds himself master of so much I have a severe cold in my head and remained in bed a little longer than usual this morning. Hamilton came in my room and said in the most pitiful manner: dear Mama, please dont die! It is impossible to love me better in his way than that little chap does ‘My Mama’, is a great personage with him. Nor does he forget his own dear Papa whom he cannot bear to think all alone with Timur. To Normy he is most affectionatous, calling him: his little darling! But I am sorry to say that he talks as badly as ever, though I make him repeat I suppose that the sound of the German now also interferes. The latter he begins to understand though [2] not to talk except in seperate words. We think he has a good musical ear and it is certain that he learns quickly, but he is certainly an original particularly in his pedantical inclination. How he has got that I cannot imagine for it is neither in your character nor in mine. He is extremely tidy with his things

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not resting till every toy or book or what ever he has is put in its place for which he finds some small corner in his nursery. And as he is at the same time lazy and his love of order would cause him too many walks upstairs he often institutes poor Felix who is goodnature itself, his ambassador. After having thus been sent upstairs two or three times with perhaps a bit of paper or a pencil or some other piece of valuable property, Felix will say: aber immer kann ich doch wirklich nicht gehen. The two sets of children agree admirably, though there are perhaps not two who resemble each other in point of character except perhaps Emil & Norman. Emil is a very handsome boy fine dark eyes, an impudent mouth and glowing cheeks, the very picture of health and spirit. Norman and Emil would make a sweet picture together as they are both peculiar and yet entirely opposite. Our little fellow is designated, the little Englishman, he is so perfectly graceful and genteel in all his motions – Carry and I have just been working hard to make some little changements de logis. My bed has been carried down to the sisters room, where during the remainder of the winter I take up my quarters. Now that I cannot have my Oscar with me I like the change very well, how we shall chat in the evening. We have had no cold at all to speak of yet, it is by far milder than I have ­experienced it even in Philadelphia at this season. With this opportunity goes a square [3] chest marked F. L. No 1. containing my dearest boy the articles I mentioned to you in my letter X. That letter I had intended sending by the Sir I. Newton, but on receiving your last and finding that you had been so long in Columbia without receiving a letter from me I was determined that should not happen again and therefore I shall write by the steamer once a month and let the other letters fill up the space between. I was invited at Uncle Jacobs yesterday but could not go owing to my most downright German Schnupfen. One of those ungenteel ones which one knows nothing of in America. Adelas letter to me ran as follows. Meine beste Mathilda. In Ferdinands und meinem eigenen Namen, wende ich mich mit einer Bitte an dich von welcher ich hoffe, daß sie dich nicht allzusehr überrascht. Unser altes, neuerdings wieder fester geschlungenes Freundschaftsband, macht mir den Gedanken mein jüngstgeborenes Töchterchen besonders nahe an dein liebes warmes Herz zu legen, sehr reizend und ich denke du wirst dem kleinen Wesen auch nicht ungern die Arme öffnen und als Pathe deinen Namen leihen. Wir haben die Taufe vorläufig auf Sontag den 1sten Dec festgesagt. – usw – Es ist doch ganz angenehm daß ich gerade zu diesem Begebniss hier bin und überhaupt daß ich so schön

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wieder mit meiner Adela mich vereinigt fühle. Tante Hessens Wagen ist in der Strasse, so werde ich bald verhindert werden fort zu schreiben – Sie war da und ist ganz entzückt vom kleinen Norman der auch wirklich so gleich zu Hause mit den Leuten ist und mit seinem feinen süßen kleinen Trippel die Leute so für sich gewinnt daß nur eine Stimme über ihn ist. Er erzählte sogleich Tante daß Papa is in Merica, I come from Son Carolina & I got two [4] little frocks and two little hats. Hamilton lief sogleich hinauf um dein Buch welches du ihm sandtest an Tante zu zeigen. Papa sent me. Tante Hesse würde meinem Manne sehr gut gefallen. Mit aller Weltlichkeit verbindet sie doch viel Angenehmes und Mathilda ist ein hübsches gebildetes Mädchen. Remember that Carry and I together made the Gänsesauer and that it is Carolines present as well as the champaign. Hart sends you the two bottles of Rheinwein & Tilly the rest. And now give me many kisses my dearest best boy and press me to your tender heart. Ich bin zuweilen so aufgeregt verlangend nach dir Franz Junge, sey mir ewig gut, ich bin doch so treu u [cross-writing, 1] brav und bin doch keinem anderen gut als nur dir allein. Franz wir wollen wieder anfangen zu leben zu genießen wenn erst die Zeit unserer Trennung vorbei ist – nicht? Du sollst glücklich werden mein Freund, der Segen Gottes soll auf dich ruhen. Gott gieb ihm wonach er verlangt. Seine Seele hat ja Sinn für das Große und Schöne, laß ihn genießen, laß ihn einen Wirkungskreis finden der ihm mehr genügt, wo er sich nicht von seinen Jungen trennen muss an die sein Herz so innig hängt. Das neue Jahr mag wohl schon begonnen haben wenn du diese Zeilen e­ rhältst. Gott gebe es sey ein glückliches Jahr für dich, daß sich [cross-writing, 2] Hoffnungen darin erfüllen, und daß wir freudig uns wieder haben. Mein Franz Gott tröste dich in deinem ernsten Kummer, denk an Weib und Kinder u. daß sie dich lieben wie Menschen nur lieben können. Du lebtest nicht umsonst Franz lebtest du nur für uns, aber Gott hat anderes durch dich bewirkt und sey getrost und lebe frisch. Du wirst anerkannt, geliebt geachtet und bessere Tage kommen noch! Glück auf zum neuen Jahre. Wir alle umarmen dich, und bitten dich nur sorgsam zu sein für deine Gesundheit, nicht zu viel zu arbeiten, nicht

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zu viel zu sizen – dann und wann lese ein leichtes Buch wenn es dich nur zu fesseln vermag und zügle [cross-writing, 3] dich mein Idereich, ∆ laß es nicht zu toll in dir brausen, und gieb mir ein wenig ab von deinem reichen Geiste. Alles küsst dich und umarmt dich alle wollen dich kennen, und sie wissen nicht was sie sich wünschen, die Arglosen. Manches Herz würdest du necken, du Ueberwinder der Frauenherzen. Lebe wohl sey mir treu, gut, freundlich. Oh liebe mich wie ich dich Deine Mathilda Schnell nach der Post Mädchen sonst kommst du zu spät. .

Single pr Sir Isaac Newton Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Mrssr Heckscher, Coster & Matfeld New York Stamp Schiffs Brief Post Hamburg 27 Nov 1839 + sealing wax Stamp New York Jan 20 Stamp Forwarded by New York Heckschers, Coster & Matfeld [hand written] 20 Jan ‘40

No. 28 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 02.12.-03.12.1839 Included: dictated letter by Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: letter by Caroline Lomnitz to Francis Lieber Included: copy of a letter by Adele Haller to Mathilde Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5063, ALS, 4 pages All well at No 8. & this is Mammas XII letter which I think a great number Hamburg December 2d. 1839. My dearest father, my dear Papa. The day before yesterday I came home. It was very windy indeed and my cheeks were so cold when I came in that afterwards they felt burning from the heat of the stove, and the ears also. Papa Edward always called the birds impudent, because they came so close down to the ground and on the fields, little sparrows, Blaumeisen, is the German name and the English name I do not know. Those birds the boys always shoot in Eppendorf with a kind of popgone. I know this is not a good word dear Papa but I cannot otherwise explain it to you. These popguns or Kußrohr as they are called in German are about five & a half to six feet long and they do not use berries as in America but use a kind of earth which lets itself be made into round balls, a yellow species of lime. E ­ dward wished he had such a popgun so that he might have shot one on our walk. George rode in a carriage being a little unwell and therefore he was sooner at home than we, though we tried to keep the carriage in sight, but we could not, so that he came first. We found at home a biscuit soup cold beef & Pellkartoffel or in English potatoes with their shell on them which is a favorite dish of mine. I wish you could have shared in them, for Papa I know you would have liked them very much even if you had not been in want of them, for Mama told me that you could not get any in Columbia. The children were very happy and Hammy teased me the whole first hour to give him something, so I gave him a seal which one of the boys out there had given me and then, thank God, he was satisfied. Yesterday Edward, George1 and myself went to Uncle Jacobs who gave me a little book with paper slates in it, which I will try to send to you for I think you can use it well to write something down, which you want to think of. Uncle and Aunt Emilie, his wife, are all well. Uncle is always very kind to us, and I love him very much indeed. He has a looking glass out of his window from which you can see the Dammthor street and the Dammthor itself while you are sitting quite quietly on the chair. Just now the taylor came and measured me and he says I am grown two inches fatter for the cloths were 1 Edward and George Lomnitz, sons of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg.

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made a few months ago for 24 inches round the body & now I take 26. Today I saw Mr Gossler2 whom I like very much, he is a good old fellow! At first when he came in the room I was walking about up & down waiting for him, he stood a little while, and then he said: Oh Oscar bist Du es? and that made me laught & I said yes! afterwards we walked a little of the Jungfernstieg together & then I returned home. Yesterday Uncle Morris came in; he is very funny and I like him very much. Mama was at a christening for she was Godmother to aunt Adelas child & when she came home she said: it looked so nice to see Uncle3 sitting on a chair and all of us around him. He took a great liking to Hammy, had Hammy on his knee and sang Yankee Doodle to him. You know Papa Hamilton likes his ease & comfort so much, he sits at table enjoying every thing like an old fellow, & rests his head on the back of his chair, in fact he is as if he had not a care on the earth whole globe. In the morning when he wakes he is as if dumb you cant get a word out of him, he lays quietly in his crib; but he showed great affection to Uncle. Aunt Minna we saw too. The turtles were given to her daughter ­Auguste4 but they are all away now. I am so glad that the asp is so flourishing, and Papa you must really write about old Professor Timor; poor old fellow. Grüss ihn viel mal. – Dec. 3 So weit hatte Oscar gestern geschrieben, als es 11 Uhr wurde und Zeit zu Mathilde Benecke zu gehen wenn wir um 1½ zum Essen wieder zu Hause zu seyn wollten und nicht von der Schwarzäugigen5 ausgescholten seyn wollten bei der es Staatsverbrechen ist zu spät für diese wichtige Speise des Tageslaufes einzutreten. Also nahm ich meinen Burschen an der Hand und ging mit ihm über den schönen Wall; es war kalt und frisch und der Knabe sah blühend aus, kleine Umwege scheuten wir nicht und jeden ausgezeichneten Punkt genoßen wir, er mit seiner gewohnten Lebendigkeit und Aufmerksamkeit. Mathilde herzte und küsste ihn fand ihn dir, aber auch mir ähnlich, fand dich in seinen Augen wieder wenn er aufblickt ganz und gar und hörte nicht auf ihn zu liebkosen: deinen warmen Gruß und Kuß brachte ich ihr dabei den sie mit innigster Liebe erwiedert; Mathilde ist eine treue Seele und bei allen Erfahrungen, hat sie sich doch ihre Heiterkeit erhalten und, du würdest noch eine schöne Zeit mit ihr verleben können und wie wünsche ich Euch daß Ihr einander wieder sehet! – Ich hatte einige Tage vorher Caroline bei Mathilde eingeführt, und habe die Freude daß sich beide sehr zu einander hingezogen fühlen. Mathilde sagte: Sie ist doch ganz eine Frau wie ich sie gern 2 3 4 5

Johann Heinrich Gossler. Morris Oppenheimer. Auguste Arning, daughter of Wilhelmine Arning, niece of Adele Haller. Caroline Lomnitz.

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habe, so etwas sanftes und freundliches, und dabei so gütig daß sie zu mir kam. Morgen Abend ist Mathilde bei uns, da Caroline sie gebeten hat. – Mein theurer Franz, ich habe dir so viel zu sagen, und muß nur meine Sache geschickt einrichten daß ich mit Raum und Zeit nicht zu kurz komme. Am 25ten mein Geliebter, schrieb ich dir zulezt mit dem Isaac Newton, das ist nun heute eine Woche und seitdem ich habe ich zwei liebe liebe Briefe von dir, daß ich aber eine Woche hingehen ließ ohne dir zu schreiben kommt weil ich fünf andere Briefe in die weite Welt sandte, von denen einer an Keibels war. This one is to be in Havre on the 8th pr Steamer from here to Havre. The idea, my own dear boy that you were so long in expectation and did not recieve a letter from me, has haunted me ever since, I have tried to avoid long pauses, but as I write by such various opportunities, I am afraid that this has sometimes been the case, and I sometimes on this account feel inclined to send all my communications by the way of Havre, but then I could not take the long sheets which you desire. My boy I will do my best, indeed I will to please you in this and in every thing, for what would my poor life be worth if I did not for such a dear excellent husband as you are. Am 29sten Nov. erhielt ich dein N. XI dessen leztes Datum 20sten Oct. war und am 1sten Dec. No XII bis zum 27gsten Oct. Dieser lezte kündigte dann Gott sei dank daß du nun endlich einen Brief erhalten hattest, denn das Herz wurde mir sehr schwer als ich von deinem vergeblichen Harren las. – (disturbed after writing the above, dear Uncle Jacob came in sat with us while we were at dinner, came to speak with Caroline about a house she is likely to take, one which is even prettier than her present one, and in this same street, had not time to hear neither the extracts I always give him from your letters nor one we had to day received from Theodore and James,6 but is coming very soon for that purpose, said it was sweet that you wrote to me so often, touching, and the tears stood in the old mans eyes, and Frank, he was still there when your letter to Caroline arrived. Indeed my dear Sir in that letter you beat yourself; such a thorough flirtation I have never before found you guilty of, & what is more Caroline enters into it quite sprightly, kissing, Leidenschaft, glowing and all the vocabulary of that affectionate epistle would make many wives jealous I not, but I kind hearted foolish creature can not even scold you for it. And could you not find out why th[e] very dark eyed sister of mine did not employ those very tender epithels to you while I w ∆ American eye, to know so much and yet pretend ignorance there? my innocent fri ∆

6 Brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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[2] the cunning widow knew well to choose her time; I could not see those glowing words and her pen could flow unrestrained. – But seriously my boy Caroline was delighted with your letter though she says you do wrong to write so to her, such letters do her no good. I shall gather in all her messages before I close this letter. I am sure she will write to you soon again for indeed the girls love you dearly and think a great deal of you. Your letters I almost always communicate and you cannot have better hearers anywhere than they are. Carry says you must say no more about that sharing expences, she is truly angry about it, and wishes you not to mention it again. Thank God she has it in her power to allow herself such extra expenditure if she pleases. Her business is thriving and she is in very comfortable circumstances. Indeed she lives like a widow of substance, her house rent alone at the rate of 22000 Marks for which sum you may suppose her to be well established, and to say the truth dearest Frank, I myself feel no hesitation in accepting from her the comforts she offers me while I am here; what a warm heart gives and can give, a warm heart may also receive, & most gratefully do I so. Matilda Benecke has just now been here with Miss Benecke, she begs us to have her on Friday instead of tomorrow because she is going to dine at Clanders tomorrow and afterwards go to the theatre to hear Ernst.7 Of course we said yes. Oh how Oscar has reminded her of you. In him she sees her old Frank again. Dear dear boy, yes if God spares him to us, he will be a comfort to our old age, he is indeed a charming lovely boy, such tender love, such vivacity and clear headedness; he will be able to conquer hearts! You should see him now again how fine he looks, his red cheeks and fattened again as he now is, with his marked handsome features. I cannot help it, but I feel so proud of him. – Mr Busse sends always a long Zeugniss home with him every month. Oscar has as yet only been 7 weeks there; he praises Oscars love of truth, increased obedience, but blames his restlessness, his attention being so easily taken off by external objects or ideas proceding from his occupation, which cause him to be far too long about his exercises, in music, he seems to satisfy his teacher, and drawing is also praised, dancing amuses him. In Poetry he learns whatever strikes his fancy extremely quick. The multiplication table he has to repeat every day & is not yet perfect in it. About his teacher Oscar says ‘He is not at all like Papa, Papa used to be it is true sometimes much more angry than Dr Busse but then again much more pleased, Dr Busse is always the same and it does not seem to grieve him when he has to punish me. But yet I think the boy is placed well, he is not unterdrückt for he is as jovial as he can be, full of fun & full of 7 Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, violinist, composer.

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love. Last night we took our boys to the Kunstreiter Carry, I, Edward George & Oscar Mr Blondin8 & his crew did their business very wonderfully and our boys often exclaimed with delight, Oscar had not time to give you a description of it this morning or I should have been delighted to have him dictate to me. He was particularly pleased with the satisfactory smiles on the countenance of the debutants when they had accomplished some feat. “Now they say again,” he exclaimed, now isn’t that beautiful, don’t I do it well, an’t I clever?’ We had a whole set of English boys before us from some school out there, and you can have no idea how the little fellows swore. I like to see such horsemanship myself, it really looks beautiful to see the fine horses, and the great agility which can be combined with so much grace & power. One man represented the death of Julius Ceasar and it looked so foolish to see him die and rise up again on his horse and make other sports that Oscar laughed loud, and ridiculed it in a most knowing manner. It was Carolines intention to take all the little children but I disadvised it strongly considering it too much exposed Caroline just now called me down through the speaking trumpet which is arranged from her bedroom up two pr of stairs into the childrens where I was writing my letter. She called on me to partake of a cup of coffee and when I came down I found all the children taking their supper most comfortably. It is really a pretty sight to behold. They generally have their supper in the nursery, but Norman had begged his aunt to let him take his tee downstairs, and nothing is refused to him, the little chap has a great influence. It was Norman dear Frank who said that: ‘Becka you must be a fool to like cold soup, and Norman is indeed very forward in all his ideas, his actions & expressions – 11 OClock, just come home from Auguste Soehle were we spent the evening, it being tuesday & our turn to go there. Augusta Soehle, you most difficult of comprehension in all family matters, is a daughter of Uncle Haller who is father to Adelas husband, and is my Uncle because he married my mothers sister.9 We spent a pleasant evening there laughing & talking at a great rate. This family is altogether original. Among their peculiar comforts is their comodité which is a complete little room with a handsome table, pictures & a stove. Augusta I am very fond of she is full of fun & good nature and extremely well informed. You remember that pretty picture of the old lady on the oval box I have, it was Augusta Soehle who painted it for me. She tried to teach Carry & Hart to play at whist, but 8 StaHH 411-2 II A 2092 Blondin’s Kunstreitergesellschaft, Hamburger Berg St. Pauli 1839. 9 Martin Joseph Haller, father of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, had married Elisabeth GottschalckDüsseldorf, sister of Recha Oppenheimer and Esther Mendel, mother of August Neander. A fourth daughter Amalia had married Ludwig Stieglitz, who became an important banker in St. Petersburg, see Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 87–91.

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they ­neither of them have any genius that way, and we had great fun; for dear ­Caroline too when she is in a humour for it can be extremely amusing. I have coaxed Matilda to allow me just to add two or three lines. Your dear wife is vastly mistaken when she says that such letters as the one I had the felicity of receiving from you ∆ my dearest Frank do me no good; I can assure you I felt so happy when ∆ [re]ceived those dear affectionate brotherly words from you that had you ∆ within my reach I should most certainly have given you a ∆ how miracllously. I understand to bestow warm affectionate kisses [3] although Matilda says I have no business to receive nor dispatch such protestations of love, still I will tell you that I do love you most tenderly and that your dear letters are most gratefully received by me and that by the next oportunity I promise you shall have one in return wherein I will give you a full and minute account of all your dear ones. I dare not abuse Matilda’s generosity therefore umarme ich dich in Gedanken denn Matilda hat’s mir erlaubt und sage dir noch einmal meinen innigsten warmsten Dank für deinen lieben herzlichen Brief. Postage is no consideration for me therefore pray write as often as you can devote half an hour to a sister who loves you as dearly as old nutbrown Caroline. Brotherly words indeed? & I allow her to embrace you! Well at any rate it is all better than your dreams of that Mrs Willing, she is certainly the most in my way of all your she friends, and now I declare it is too bad when I am so far away that she must even interfere in your dreams and not allow you to devote yourself in them at least wholy and solely to the only true Matilda and rightful owner of your heart hand & all that is yours, & that you choose to be bestow. Sweet dear boy, I too am longing for you, sometimes in my dreams, but oftener far when I lay awake and think of you. Oh those, those thoughts of burning kisses and deep enjoyment, could they be realized; could I bury myself in your arms, and be no longer consumed by anxious desire. Still months must pass before we embrace again, my own dearest blessing, I hope you will not suffer from this, & that it will not injure your health, sometimes I feel uneasy on this point. Oh how I pity you so alone in that desolate place. God grant a change I think there will be one ere long. Astors10 expressions have made an impression on me and you know my dear fellow I am never oversanguin. Indeed

10

John Jacob Astor.

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things must draw to a close soon. Whether Philadelphia11 will or will not do her duty must also pretty soon be decided, and any how I feel a very comfortable anticipating disposition, in which you must join me, and then hoping & trusting, we will continue cheerfully whatever time is required of us in the barren sands, ready at any moment to hasten into the arms of civilization and press it warmly to our bosoms. Today too just after that nice cup of coffee I received a letter from your sister Augusta dated 22d Nov. This has been a full day as Normy asks for a full kiss, a full piece of bread &c, bringing two very dear visitors, four letters from our brothers, each two coming with different opportunities and your letter and Augustas. Doctor, House agent, taylor by whom I ordered your summer coat, seamstress, shoemaker, our dear boys going to school, all this & our evening excursion, have amply filled my day, so that this letter again is not a full one and can not pretend to call itself an answer to your most cherished epistles. Last sunday was the christening which passed off very nicely, the baby12 is a little darling and I held it. Present were, Aunt Emilie, Adelas mother, her sister Mrs Arning, Senator Arning was Godfather, all Soehles & Hallers & Ludwig Oppenheimer & his wife, Adele was herself the other Godmother. I had sent a very sweet little cap in the morning which the child had on at the Xening. It is named Caroline Mathilde & will be called Mathilde. After the ceremony which was performed at the house, all sat down to a very handsome cold colation consisting of oysters, turkey tongue several salads, olives, and other small choice dishes, every thing well served and doing honor to the good management of the lady of the house, the footman alias clerk waited at table of wines there were the greatest and finest variety, in fact Ferdinand Haller knows what is good which I am sure will be a recomendation to you, particularly his love for Straßburger Pasteten which he always receives in the same miniature form in which I sent you one, as a christmas box from his sister.13 Uncle Jacob came after the ceremony and was in excellent spirits; the boys we had sent to Aunt Minna in the mean time. When we returned home we found them all as Oscar told you with Uncle Morris who was delighted with them, found O ­ scar extremely bright, coaxed Hammy and thought Norman the sweetest little child he had ever seen. Norman has a little red frock & another plaid one, both of which suit him extremely, they are made with a low neck & short sleeves, just as he used to wear them, he has flannel drawers and white little pantees over. Hammy has also a plaid, & blue merins, the latter peculiarly b­ ecoming to 11 12 13

This was a hint to the decision about the appointment of the president or director of Girard’s college in Philadelphia. Lieber still harbored hopes to be appointed to this position. Caroline Mathilde Haller, daughter of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller. Auguste Soehle, cousin of Mathilde Lieber.

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him, they are both made in the bluise fashion, high and long sleaves, he has a complete boys cap, cloth coat also in the bluise style, warm gloves, comforter round his neck, overshoes and a bag across his shoulder containing his book & pencil, thus you might see him with the other little boys parading to school every morning. Both Norman & Hamilton catch songs and repeat them very quickly. – My dear fellow before I forget it, I beg you not again to use red ink in the crossings, it becomes very indistinct and my eyes ache a little from reading your last letters. I cannot then enjoy them so, and repeat the perusal as I wish to do it nor find out particular parts which I want to communicate. How fine your Draynard Hexameters were. Let your muse work a little again my boy, we all enjoy your poetical efusions so much. Altogether Frank you cant think how delightful your letters are and how finely they bear reading aloud. It is glorious to have such a nice husband as I have and to be able to feel so proud of him, and to thank ones stars that such a being loves one and to look upon our boys & say to them: boys you have a father whom you must beg to liken, he is as noble a chap as the sun ever shone upon and as clever a one too, and I loved by him, am, yes I am, it is true [4] as happy as if I were wiser better & more deserving my happiness. What would you say Frank if your old wife takes part in theatricals, I am invited to do so, shall I? The particulars I do not yet myself know. Your sister informs us for the letter is written jointly to us both that Lottchens14 wedding is to be in April and they wish me to be there then, they request me to bring all the children, but that I think will be expensive. Auguste15 says: es würde uns unendlich schmerzlich seyn sie nicht alle kennen zu lernen. Karsten und alle ausser Dorchen waren wohl, die schon seit längerer Zeit an einem Hautübel litt welches nicht gefährlich aber doch äußerst unangenehm und auch ausgrenzend war. Just write me how much I am to spend for Lottchens wedding present. Poor ­Herman16 has again been disappointed in that expectation which he had when they last wrote, he has now been engaged six years, it is indeed heart rending, poor fellow! They think that they have now better hopes, for the father of that young clergyman who died in Züllichau, and for whom all the family had done everything in their power, is Consistorialrath at Frankfurt and has promised 14 15 16

Charlotte Karsten, daughter of Lieber’s brother-in-law Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten, Züllichau. Auguste Lieber, spinster sister of Francis Lieber, Züllichau. Hermann Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Crossen.

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and feels himself bound to do everything in his power to promote Hermann. I shall send you the letter when I forward the coat, to which parcel I shall also add Raumers & Rankes last works.17 Adele wrote to me before the christening: Liebste Mathilde, deine herzliche Aufnahme meiner Bitte hat uns sehr wohl gethan; ich werde dich künftig in meiner kleinen Mathilde mit lieben und der Klang des Namens der meinem Ohr von Jugend auf so süß war, wird mich täglich stündlich an dich erinnern, usw. The answering of your sweet letters I can not get at to night for I want to take them regularly through and this is written too badly to bear cross writing, besides your old Matty is very sleepy Frank and wants to go to bed. – Have you heard of Theodore Ahrens engagement with a lady called Nicholine van Flieren? I expect the boys18 have written you all about it. I fear the grocers, might eaten in their books what you have sent for and then not strike it out again when you send the money the next day. One has to be careful with them. I have not yet told Oscar of poor Gen. Haynes death, he would feel it much for you know how he liked him & how kind he always was to Oscar. I dislike to fill his young heart with sorrow. – he said to me one night, Mamma in my prayers, I have now added, great aunts & great Uncles for I felt such a void since I could no longer pray for my dear grand parents. God bless him, God bless you, keep [cross-writing, 4] up your spirits, think proudly of your offspring & love your wife. Oh my own cherished dearest Frank may you be happy. May the new year have joys in store for you and may we not have to seperate from our boy. Auguste Soehle sends her love and thinks it a great shame you did not know who she was. Uncle Jacob sends his best love too, Adele Mathilda, Tante Minna, and dear Harriet too. And Hammy and Oscar kiss your letter. Hammy sat up as soon as Oscar came to show him your book. I have received Oscars christmas letter, I also have saved the one you sent for him before with Life of Columbus19 to give him at christmas & the flag – Fare well dearest best, my heart is full when I think of you. May you be supported through this winter my darling boy. Your affectionate wife Mathilda 17 Raumer, Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte; Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. 18 Theodore and Gustavus Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 19 Washington Irving, The Life and voyages of Christopher Columbus, 3rd edition New York 1829?

252 Your foot I trust is quite well, but I see you have forgotten the horse Adieu Single Pr Steamer to Havre Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Care of Messrs Heckschers Coster & Matfeld New York Franco to New York Stamp Hamburg 5 Dec 1839 Stamp Hamburg 6 Dec 39 Stamp Bureau Maritime Havre 12 DEC 1839 + sealing wax

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No. 29 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 04.12.-08.12.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Dr. phil. Andreas Busse Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages No XV Columbia S.C. Dec 8. 1839. All well – that is to say nothing is well except the body – the carcass as they would have said two hundred years ago. Dec. 4 No letter! Oh! I fear you have trusted to those slow, doverly directed vessels and I may sit here longing in vain for letters, and when they finally arrive, their interest half gone, because one, later then all, arrived in the mean time via Havre. I beg you my dear Matilda to make your calculations as they will probably turn out here, and should I be obliged to add, not to let me remain long without news? I am really lonely here – more so than ever before in my life, the prison only excepted, and that perhaps hardly. For the loneliness of mind, affection and sympathy while yet we walk and talk with animated bodies of others, is loneliness indeed, but in prison I never felt much more than solitude. Solitude may be invigorating; loneliness as that deadens, ruins. Ah! and then that insufferable arrogance and spiritual “I am the pat of the Lord” of these ignoramuses, and Bravo-braying of the fools: what a mind, what talent, what a clever man; bray, bray, bi-ah-a-a-a-ah! – The Lord knows while I write this I neither feel jocosely nor pr vain; I feel like a man who has been harrassed to his very soul and exclaims: For God’s sake, do what you like, but let me off. I have nothing to do with you, you not with me. We live on different planets; speak different languages, feel different feelings; pray different prayers; taste different sweets & bitters, believe in different gods. I am none of yours, you none of mine. What a torment to be thus mentally chained, fettered, lashed. Good bye, a tear of bitterness, which not one here would understand trickles down my cheeks; let thy tender hand dry it. - Good bye, Good bye. Dec 7. No letter! I am very, very long without it; although I have now the last instance before my eyes, when I became so anxious, and all was in vain, still I cannot help thinking often: if only the next letter does not contain bad news. Perhaps Oscar with the scarlet fever. - I must not think of it. Matilda, despite of our greatly increased expenses, and the unyielding capital in Mobile, I have at last made up my mind and baught a horse. I could not, I assure you do without it; mind and body will feel all the better for it. The rides, which I have taken in this delicious, I had almost said refined weather, have done me always good. A man who sits for ever and ever in his rocking chair, becomes old-womanish. The rides I take are very long, always from 12 to 18 miles, and, in my old style,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_031

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hard, pretty hard. I trot nearly the whole time; the seating out my own roads and paths, the crossing of forests without path, the getting into bogs, all that gives me much pleasure and is really delightful, but you miss here always life, life. You meet no one to talk to; perhaps an old negro; life does not present itself in forms and shaps; the self-same houses of the whites, and the negros; no various classes; I miss especially villages, fine European taverns, &c to mark the distances &c. However as solitary rides I enjoy them much, I think and muse very freely upon my Nausicaa, which is a sprightly fine thing; I like her very much; she trots most famously, which you know is very rare here. She is exceedingly sure footed, and I can climb up and down without her ever tripping. Good bye – a letter! I forgot to mention that in buying the horse I was much guided by the thaught that you would feel easier. I know that you will like it. But I must now swallow the pill of the secretariship, which is very nasty, and not at all according to my grain. I ride also when it rains, which perhaps you donot know, I have always liked very much. # What a day that day of ­yester-day was! God, I thank Thee thousand times for it. While I was writing the preceding lines Elsa went to the post office with a dollar, she braught me 4 letters, and word that another 2 cents postage, was there. Twenty seven cents you know is a European letter; so I was sure of having one from you. But, said I to myself, if you read Matilda’s letter before the others, these stand no chance of being perused for some days. This was exceedingly wise, and so followed my own counsel. The first I opened was one from Mary, in which she begins: My dear Franz, and the whole so affectionate, telling me that she is engaged to Sir James Mackintosh’s son, and asking my liking him before hand, that she would be grieved if I one of her best friends should not. She speaks with great affection of you, and begs me to tell you of it, for no one, she knows, will take more sincere interest in it. But she will write to you soon. She will be married in Dec. and then go to Washington. Mackintosh’s belongs to the British ambassy. At a future period she will probably go to Scotland. I felt rejoiced and sad, a little jealous too. You shall have the letter, for there is an opport. from here to the North; and Labat may send it direct. When you will receive it, thats another question. The second letter was from Prescott. I copy the beginning: I have recieved the second vol. of your Political Eth.,1 for which I heartily thank you, I have read several chapters in it, which show me that it is conducted with the same liberal spirit and sound views, which distinguish the other part. It is remarkable that you should have braught together such a variety of pertinent illustration from all sources, familiar as well as recondite, by which you have given life and popular interest to your 1 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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[2] philosophy. It is a book so full of suggestion that the reader has done only half his work when he has read a chapter, for it puts him on a train of thinking for himself which he must carry on after he has closed the volume. I think you have every reason to be satisfied with the attention it has awakened; which considering the sober character of the topics, and the patient study they demand was not to have been counted upon so soon.” You recollect my dear Matilda that these are almost the identical words in many letters of judge Story. Indeed he wrote me once that my books put him more into a new train of reflexion than any other’s. Did I tell you already that I had a letter from Mr Burge, one of the most distinguished law-writers in England, dated Lincoln’s Inn Oct 18? If so you must pardon the repetition for I have so little to give you joy with, that I dont wish to withhold this piece of news from my beloved wife, who I know rejoices in such things. He writes: I have read your Hermeneutics2 with great delight. It is full of profound reflexions. It has the merit too of making readers think. This is the estimation of Montesquieu was a very great merit and that which he claimed for his “Esprit de Loix”.3 He than speaks of equally kindly of Polly.4 Chancellor Kent has often, and in his particular way expressed the same. Hand it, he would say, I dont like your books, they put my old brain on entirely new tracks, or in some such way. So, I am no downright fool; that matter was settled. The third letter was from Parish,5 Ogdensburgh. The fourth not worth mentioning. Thus my heart well prepared, I went to get your letter; it was past one o’clock; the post office closed; I had to loiter about until 2 o’clock. How the various stamps and writings on the letter looked like the sweetest drawing, when I saw it at a distance, oh, and how delicious always the first words are, that all are well. It is your letter 7, of Octob. 15th. Thank, thank you many times. I run over the letter hastily, when I came to that passage, where you describe your parting with the boy, and then his first visit, he bringing you a nosegay, and behaving so good, so gentle, so loving, I felt it heaving in my breast, rising in my throat, pressing in my eye-balls, and at last I said to myself: Good God, have I not repressed tears of sadness a hundred times, shall a poor solitary prisoner grudge himself the pleasure of crying for joy and emotion? Flow my tears! I opened the sluices, and such a sobbing! All the repressed tears took it out with 2 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics. 3 Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Bede de Montesquieu, Defense de l’Esprit de Loix; a laquelle on a joint quelque Eclaircissemens, 1748. 4 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 5 George Parish (1807–1881).

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a vengeance. I cried, not like a child, a child cannot weep thus. To speak American, I had a “regular time!” of it. Yes, I love that boy, and what an enjoyment to my heart it is to love him! He is not in my heart, he is a part and a parcel of my heart. I beg you my Matilda, keep his poor distant father in his remembrance. I implore you to do me one act of kindness. Matilda, with repentance I confess it I have been harsh to him at times. Oh God, should remember those minutes more kindly, than the hours of love? One thaught, one image haunts me frequently, again and again. He had studied Latin with me, and not done it well. I was severe. You told me afterwards that his knees had trembled when he came to you. What would I not give, could I erase that one image from my mind, from his. It haunts me in my solitude. Did he see now in this moment my moist eyes, the beloved boy would forget it. God, grant me that one favor, the opportunity of whiping it from his memory. Does he love me? Does he think in affection of me? I donot Know, sometimes I cannot help thinking that he will not long back into my arms. Never yet since he has been in Hamburg has he given me a sign of love. Does he – I tremble in writing it – already begin to forget me? I beg you, when the tender loving boy is so contrite in avowing his wrongs, and wishing he could live over the past again, oh I entreat you, comfort him, tell him he is a dear boy, that he has been a good boy far more often than otherwise, and that from all my heart I wish, I could embrace him, mine own beloved son. I could not go on; I felt my loneliness, my exile, my situation here in the South too much, I have tried to become calmer, but quite calm I shall only be when you write me that he verily loves me, and give me proof of it. Should I of all be excluded from his beloved soul? I believe I shall never, so long as I live, forget that Hamilton, as you write, now and then brings you marbles &c fr to send me, and that he has cried for me. I know, I shall remember it in my oldest days. I love you Hamilton, and it agrees well with the character I always thaught you would show a Sterling worth and affection; no vanity, good and kind – a man, a true man, through and through. Go on my boy, and prosper. Take care that Norman does not become verhätschelt. What in the world does Hammy do in the school? Does he talk German? How are the children dressed? What are there favorite toys and plays? I will answer your letter. - I have, as I told you a horse, and it does me good, I think. It will not do so, indeed our purse. Tell Oscar, it is a fine little mare. You ask again whether I come to fetch you. I might manage not to be obliged to go to Boston, but I cannot pay for the steam-boat, especially to and fro; for I should be obliged to return with you by steamboat to be here in time. It is out of the question; besides you know that I positively fear to go to Europe for so short a time; and then see my boy but for so short a time and seperate again? If God does not grant our removal from here, I shall not come, because I cannot; and as to that removal, day after day elapses, month after

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month flies and no message of joy com arrives. It makes me sometimes very sad. - My foot is entirely better, and no danger of recurrence, I [3] believe exists, because I wear entirely different boots, and take care besides. I dont know what to say respecting your letters; if you donot cross they seem so short, yet crossing makes it so difficult for me to read. Try red ink, is there no thin folio paper. Since Oscar is so well placed there is not much immediate necessity for inquiry respecting the Dresden school.6 I should not like the boy to move continually. You are quite right, there is little, very little sentiment in America. But good heavens, the distances are so great, the moving so continually, the shifting and mixture, North, South, England, France, Germany, so continually that sentiment cannot grow; tender plants cannot be observed and admired when you fly in a rail road car. Whatever appartains to feeling by way of dilicate sentiment, is deeper rooted in Germany, whatever appartains to right, here. Look at the gross brutal prejudice in Hamburg to this day against Jews. How dishonorable! It could not be here so. A vulgar mob might be exited against anything anywhere, but the well educated could not by possibility countenance such outrage here. They would be downright ashamed; they are not in Hamburg. The Hamburg people, all without exception feel gross and brutal toward Jews. I donot remember Dr. Beneke.7 I am very sorry Caroline feels thus towards Dr Julius, for I had made up a match between them in the my mind. What has she against him? He is ugly? Handsome is, who handsome does. He is dirty? Why, soap is not so dear an article, to remedy it. He wears no stockings? Then she has to darn none. He borrows pantaloons to go parties? Then the holes he wears in them are not in his own. Profit an claire! He is a Schmarozer? Then he gets good dinners without pay. Everything in his favor. Caroline, consider. - Give my joy to Mrs Haller (I mean Adele, if the name is wrong). How interested in our child your aunt Emilia must be, that she saw Norman only lately for the first time. But to your aunt Minna my warmest regards. Thanks for her writing desk to Oscar; every one who gives a violet to my boy, is credited with a rosebush in my garden. God bless her. - What was that “dear, dear letter” about? It must have been I, VI or VII, for those you mention. Letter to Busse:

6 Blochmann school, Dresden. 7 Dr. iur. Otto Benecke; Lieber had met him when Benecke was still a boy while Lieber had visited Hamburg in 1825 or 1826.

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Geehrter Freund, So nenne ich Sie, obschon ich Sie nicht kenne, denn traurig wäre könnte ich dies nicht, dem mein threustes Kind anvertraut ist, meinen Freund nennen. Nie ist mir ein Brief schwerer geworden, denn ich muß aus meiner Schaar von Gedanken, einem Meer von Gefühlen, einige zur Mittheilung wählen. Dabei ist mein Herz tief, bis ins Innerste bewegt, der bloße Gedanke daß ich einem Fremden über die Erziehung meines geliebten Kindes, fern, fern von mir, schr­ eibe, nimmt mir fast jeden ruhigen Gedanken. Glauben Sie mir ich schreibe nicht ein Wort um vorzuschreiben. Ich schreibe als Vater, der sein Kind innig liebt u der einige Erfahrung hat, u dessen Worte also der Berücksichtigung u Reflexion würdig sind. Könnte ich nur ein par Unterredungen haben; wie viel leichter ließe sich alles besprechen. Ich hoffe, Sie schreiben mir, wenn Sie einen dünnen Foliobogen nehmen, klein schreiben, u den so angefangenen Brief meiner Frau senden, so wird sie ihn fortsezen u mir senden. Es giebt in allen, selbst in den heiligsten Dingen eine Gewöhnung, u. es ist Gewöhnung auf die man mehr im Leben rechnen muß, als auf Raisonnement; denn daß dieses uns leite bedarf selbst der Gewöhnung dazu. Lassen Sie also Oscars Seele sich an Gott gewöhnen, sich gewöhnen im Gebet Freude, Trost, Reinigung u Liebe zu finden, und sich gewöhnen Gott in allem das ihn umgiebt zu finden. Nichts spreche ich so unumwunden u bestimmt aus, als daß mein Oscar durchaus nicht das ganz alte Testament in die Hände bekomme. Aber Jesu Worte lese er vielfach, Deutsch und Englisch. Custom, sagt Bacon,8 is the best magistrate in life. Für die wichtigsten Gewohnheiten oder Gewöhnung im hies. Leben, außer der religiösen gelte ich diese: Gewöhnung der Reinlichkeit u Thätigkeit. Ich halte Reinlichkeit, durch und durch, häufiges Wechseln der Wäsche, kurz Reinlichkeit bis ins Kleinste, von größter moralischer Wichtigkeit. Es schüzt gewöhnlich gegen Gemeinheit, selbst der Gefühle. Ich habe ganz Braminische Iedeen über diesen Gegenstand. Ein Knabe kann sich nicht häufig genug waschen u baden. In allem was physische Behandlung der Kinder betrifft ziehe ich England’s Weise der deutschen weit vor. Lassen Sie Oskar immer thätig sein, was es auch sei; nur nicht still sizen, träumen. Gewöhnung, Aufmerksamkeit u Beobachtung; alles mit scharfen Sinnen sehen, nicht mit halben Eindrücken zufrieden sein, u stets nach dem Zusammenhang forschen, u sich früh daran gewöhnen entweder das was wir beobachten 8 Francis Bacon, English scholar, philosopher, and politician in the 16th and early 17th century.

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zu kennen u erfassen, oder nur bestimmt zu sagen, wir kennens noch nicht, oder ein wissen u warum. Ich habe Aufmerksamkeit von Niebühr9 gelernt. Gewöhnung zur Ausdauer; nie etwas aufgeben, ausgenommen aus bestimmten Gründen. Weisen Sie ihn immer auf Columbus u Demosthenes hin; u möge er oft meines Freundes Prescott gedenken, der bald nachdem er seine Geschichte Ferdinands u Isabellas unternommen hatte, so gut wie blind wurde. Zehn Jahre hat er so fortstudiert; ein Mann der kein Spanisch wußte, las ihm die leserlichen Spanischen Manuscipte vor, u doch hat Prescott sein schönes Werk vollbracht, u mit wie vieler Forschung, wie vielen Citaten. Wir haben blinde Sänger gehabt, aber blinde Geschichtsforscher wohl noch nie. [cross-writing] Gewöhnung der Reverenz u des Gehorsams; das er das was ist zunächst mit Achtung behandle, bis er überzeugt ist, daß er sie nicht verdient, u daß er denen die ihn leiten und die Gott über ihn gestellt u ihren Gesezen gehorsam. Gewöhnung der Unabhängigkeit u der Gerechtigkeit; daß er frei u dreist handle, u für sich selbst, nirgends schlechte Anforderung folge und Gerechtigkeit über alles liebe. Das Leben thatenreicher Männer u die Geschichten großer Perioden sind mehr werth als alle moralischen Reflexionsbücher für Kinder berechnet. Machen Sie ihn früh mit Plutarch bekannt u dann mit tüchtigen lebhaften Geschichtsbüchern. Ich wünsche sehr daß er […] Latein treibe, früh schreibe u plaudre. Es ist so leicht. Oskars Hauptschwäche ist Englisch; er wird hier leben. Er muß also immer Englisch lesen, u bald auch schreiben. Da Oskar einst hier leben wird, u hier alles öffentlich verhandelt wird, so sollte er seine Stimme früh üben, daß sie stark, klar u moduliert sei. Es ist wichtig. Um eine Sache bitte ich Sie besonders. Sie wird fast immer versäumt. Man läßt Kinder viel schreiben u Aufsäze machen. Weit wichtiger ist hier dictieren zu lassen. Schreiben hält Knaben zu lange auf u stört, wenn sie dictieren so lernen sie Ideen sodenn u passnde Worte finden. Ich habe den größten Nuzen für Oscar davon gefunden. Viele haben hier seinen Reichthum der Wörter bewundert; es ist größentheils durch dies dictieren hervorgebracht. Nur muß er

9 Barthold Georg Niebuhr.

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immer erst bedenken was die Hauptpunkte sind die er sagen will. Ich weiß daß dies nicht ohne Ihnen Mühe zu machen geschehen kann, aber so wichtig scheint mir der Punkt daß ich dennoch innig darum bitte. Ich halte die Art Kenntnisse mitzutheilen welche vom nächsten zum nahen u fernen sich in ezcentrischen Kreisen ausdehnt von der größten Wichtigkeit. Sie bringt Leben und lebendige Anschauung in alles. Eine kleine Sanderhöhung die zwei kleine Bäche theilt, welche rechts und links nach anderen Seen oder Flüssen fliessen giebt ein lebendigeres Bild der großen Wasserscheiden, die Rhein u Ruh Rone trennen, als tausend Erklärungn auf der Karte. Die Regierung Hamburgs sei ihm klar u er vergleiche sie mit dem Cönigreich. Lassen Sie ihn ja dann u wann auf Kirchtürme steigen […]. Ich habe dies auf allen meinen Reisen befolgt u den größten Nuzen davon gehabt. Ich habe nie einen Ort verlassen dessen höchste Höhe, ob Thurm oder Berg, ich nicht erstiegen, wenn es irgend thunlich war. Ich muß aufhören. Lassen Sie mich nur zufügen, daß ich meinen Oskar zu gut kenne, nicht Ihre Gemahlin versichern zu können daß keine Liebe u Herzlichkeit, die Sie meinem Knaben erweist, verloren ist. Er hat ein treues Herz, u wird, wo ihn auch künftig sein Schicksal hintreiben mag, die segnen die ihn geliebt u seine Seele liebend gepflegt haben. Oskar ist ein wohlgebildeter u interessiert aussehender Knabe. Schüzen Sie ihn gegen platte Eitelkeit; aber er sollte immer aufmerksam, auf seine Kleidung sein. Gott segne Ihre Arbeit u lieben Sie unseren Knaben. Ergebendst der Ihrige, Franz Lieber [4] My dear boy, I have just returned from my ride, during which I thaught much of you, first because always on my rides I think nearly the whole time of Mama and you three, secondly because the sky and sun were so delicious, so balmy, so lovely, and thirdly because I found some percimmon trees, with the fruits just ripe. We have had some very cold nights, which you know, are necessary to make this fruit agreeable for man. & they are now, juicy and sweet, they are very fine and my boys would like them I know. While Nausicaa was drinking of a very clear brook, for she never drinks of a “branch” (as you know they call here a brook) unless it is perfectly liquid, a number of those horrid turkey-buzzards started up, and made made a terrible chattering with their heavy wings between pines and oaks. So, thaught I, there must be a carcass near here, and sure enough I found a dead horse, the inside almost entirely eaten out, and the buzzards so ugly besmeared and disgusting. I believe they are the filthiest bird

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in existence. I rode away very quick. Do you know Oscar that since I ride much I am much more reconciled to the pines then I used to be, and do you know why? Riding quick as I almost always do, through woods and over fields, it is a variety to pass through a pine forest, which hard ground, the sound of the hoofs reverberating from the tall trunks. It is the variety, the enlarged view which reconciles me partly to that shaggy ugly tree; it passes well as part of a great whole. And mark this my dear boy for all your life – you will much better understand it the older you grow, that the wider we look and the higher we view down, the mo juster judgement do we form. Even thatose filthy buzzards, even that offensive, shocking carrion, is, viewed by ângels, a fine part of God’s beautiful vast household. That very process of putrefaction is the effect of Gods glorious, mighty and delicate laws; the very fact way in which that putrifying substance offends our senses is according to laws, the pr to find the principles of which rejoices men and angels. Mama will explain what you do not understand. - The other day, my dear boy, we recieved again a large box with books from London, and in among them there was a very costly and beautiful work on the remaining sculptures of ancient Mexico, their paintings &c. I thaught immediately of you, and how it would delight me to look over these books as I looked with you at those splendid volumes on ancient Egypt by Rosseline.10 Do you remember? What is the most remarkable, is the closest possible resemblence of many of these Mexican sculpture and pictures, to those of Egypt and the East Indies, and no doubt can be entertained that our the people of America, who were found when she was discovered, came from Asia, which ever way, probably by travelling West eastward across Baringsstrait; some may have sailed westward across the Atlantic. - Since these lines were written I had a letter from your dear Mama, the first after you had gone to Dr Busse; you had come home on Sunday, and Mama tells me that you were so loving, so kind and good. God bless you my boy; I could not help crying when I read it; for I wanted to press you to my arms. There is no one on earth my dear boy that loves you so tenderly as we do, for you are a good boy. God bless you, I say, God bless you. I now want to know what you learn; so please dictate to Mama, and tell me for instance what you have learned in history. And now, I must say yet a few words to Mama, so good bye, and never cease to love me, for it would break my heart. Your loving father. Good bye Matilda; it is Sunday late; good bye. Preston and King of Charleston were here to-day, to confer with me on the international copy-right

10

Ippolito Rossellini, I Monumenti dell’ Egitto e della Nubia, disegnati dalla spedizione scientifico-letteraria Toscana in Egitto,1832ff.

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[cross-writing] law, which, you know, we want to pass, but Carey11 and such pirates are dead against it. Good bye. My love to the naughty girls.12 Oh; dear heaven, why can I not see a single soul I love, and must see so many I donot love? Your Frank Single Paid Via New-York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York Dec 16 Stamp 22. Jan. 40

11 12

Publishing house in Philadelphia. Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg.

No. 30 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 06.12.-20.12.1839 Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Mathilde Lieber, 08.12.1839 Included: letter of Caroline Lomnitz to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5064, ALS, 4 pages Letter XIII. Finished Dec 20th All well! Hamburg Friday December 6th My own dear husband. On Wednesday the 4th I despatched my last letter to you and already it seems an age since I have written. I had already planed an other parcel I wished to send you but I fear the cold weather is setting in now and before the ship goes off our good Elbe will be no longer navigable. Our boys bear the cold extremely well, Norman however I do not expose to it, as he is so little yet; but Hamilton goes to school every morning regularly and does not complain at all, he is well guarded however and when the weather is too bad Caroline employs a Droschke for all the little folks which for 8 shillings goes any distance in town. Dec 7th As for Oscar, I saw Dr Busse yesterday and he told me how remarkably well Oscar bears the cold, how he enjoys running out in all weather & partakes in all the boys sports. Dr Busse himself teaches him to slide and will commence skaiting with him as soon as the ice is firmer. It is a great comfort to me and I am sure it will be the same to you, to know that the boys in these sports are under constant superintendance, and as they skate on a field which is merely a little underwater there can be only those dangers proceding from a fall on the ice which by proper direction will I hope be also avoided. Altogether the bodily developement, their strengthening themselves by proper exercise, taking long walks &c. is much attended to in that school. Dr Busse makes Oscar wash himself his neck, breast, armes &c with a rough piece of cloth and cold water, rubbing himself hard which Oscar now likes and which certainly is very good for him. You know he used sometimes at home to be in bed before he could go to sleep. It is true he now only goes to bed at 9 OClock but he sleeps as soon as he is in bed, and undisturbed during the whole night which was not at all the case while he went to school in town when he used frequently to speak to me in the middle of the night and several times suffered from that restlessness connected with a disturbed digestion. I am very much pleased that he is in the country, and I have every reason to believe, under good care. Dr Busse had been so well satisfied with Oscar this week that he wished as a reward to bring him to see me on Sunday but I was obliged to decline as we after having avoided it as long as we could, are obliged to dine with Uncle Julius on that day and I will not take Oscar there on any account, he is by far better in Eppendorf. Uncle Julius is the one so unfortunate with his son, and yet himself so little aware of the extent of

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_032

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his misfortune that he is most painfully sensible of every slight towards himself or his family. He is very good natured but in every other respect so different from all the other brothers and sisters that even without the most distressing companionship of his son, associating with them would become irksome; but my dear sisters and myself are of opinion that we must sacrifice one evening there, and therefore we had better do it at once. Oscar will then if he deserves it come home the following sunday. In speaking of the dear boy Dr Busse said. “Eins habe ich bei Oskar bemerkt, sobald eine Sache anfängt ihm Vergnügen zu machen, dann sind die Schwierigkeiten überwunden aber so lange ihm etwas uninteressant bleibt ist es unmöglich ihn weiter zu bringen und durch Fleiß das zu erlangen wozu die Neigung fehlt. Das wäre bei seiner immer noch bestehenden Schwierigkeit in der Ortographie zu bemerken. Das Rechnen scheint nun hingegen ihm seit einigen Tagen wirklich Freude zu machen, und so hat er [d]arin auch leicht begriffen und Fortschritte gemacht. So hat eine Anzahl Exemple auf die er bis zum Weinachten fertig liefern soll. (der 8te) Sehr lobt er sein aufrichtiges freies Wesen und seine Empfänglichkeit, seine große Liebe zu uns. Ein Lied von Uhland welches er las: könnt’ ich mich zu Liebchen schwingen hat er verändert: könnt’ ich mich zum Vater schwingen, und sehr fleht er daß wir ihn nicht zurück lassen.1 Es ist eine schwere Aufgabe und doch müssen wir das thun was für den Knaben das Beste ist ohne auf unsere eigenen Gefühle zu achten, doch wie wird unser frohes Wiedersehen gestört seyn, mein Franz wenn ich den Knaben nicht mitbringen darf. – Wir haben es jezt ziemlich kalt hier, im ungeheizten Zimmer hatten wir 5° Reamur. Die Bäume sehen wunderschön aus mit Schnee bedeckt, der obgleich er noch nicht tief ist sich doch auf der Erde erhält, Oskar wird dir gewiss eine genauere Beschreibung geben. Norman still thought the little wight birds were flying down. My exploits during last week were few: one morning visit at Hessens with Carry and Norman, who is quite a favorite with our Aunt, a day spent at Adelas when Ferdinand communicated a poem he had made for me, and Adela gave me proofs of her entire confidence in telling me many circumstances of her conjugal life. There I heard that those theatricals which I mentioned to you in my last, in which Minchen Arning requested me to take part are not as I supposed a family concern with the intention of surprising and amusing Uncle and Aunt, but that half Hamburg will be present. Senator Arning will invite all his acquaintance, a large party for the occasion, and therefore I have declined acting with them, not having confidence enough for this. Of course I should not like performing with Mr Merck and others I have never seen before, and I think you 1 “wollt mich zu Liebchen schwingen” in: Ludwig Uhland, König Karls Meerfahrt, Ballade, in: Justinus Kerner u.a., eds., Deutscher Dichterwald, Tübingen 1813.

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will not blame me for it. So I have been to Minchen Arning to give my refusal which very much disappointed her, but Uncle Jacob also thinks I am in the right not to do it. On Friday evening Matilda Benecke was with us with her two children, we asked Mrs von Axen, Herzfelds sister, whom she knows to meet her and Herzfeld joined us later. Carry played two Symphonies of Bethoven with Herman Benecke and Matilda was quite delighted with her performance, indeed the music affected her so that she had tears in her eyes and was dejected afterwards though she had began the evening in good spirits. Matilda is fond of you my dearest boy and loves to speak of you, she wears her hair exactly as she used to wear it, her figure is remarkably good, her eyes sparkle when she talks, and she has something in her appearance distingué allthough no longer in the flower of youth. She has taken a great fancy to Caroline, and both Caroline and Harriet like her very much of which I am very glad. On ­Saturday evening Emma was with us and played most delightfully with ­Caroline. Emma is quite a nice girl, of small stature, very little taller than ­Charlotte, fair complexion and light hair, she is rather pretty and very fond of James.2 Her musical talents are great, and without much vivacity is a well informed and affectionate girl. James will be here next autumn and see what can be done. The matters stand thus. James cannot leave the house in Pro Rico without sufficient funds to conduct the European business which it is supposed Mr Heine3 would not be so very willing to grant at once. All James wants is Emmas jointure if he is to remain in Hamburg as he must in this way compensate to his house for withdrawing his personal services: he writes that if Emma would live with him at Ponce all this would not be needed, but though Emma would consent her father and Grandfather4 would not, and nothing farther will be settled until he is here himself to arrange matters. He however takes every thing as proudly as if he were granting not requiring a favor and means to be independent conte qui conte. On Sunday morning Rebecca went to Church and I took care of our dear little boys, they are indeed very fine fellows. Hammy has an open generous heart, full of affection, and Normy is as bright and forward little chap as you could wish to have it is quite ridiculous to hear him correcting Hamiltons English. “Hammy you must say ch-air not tair.” &c. Both the little ones are still very touchy but Hamilton has quite given up his screaming and cries but very little. Since he commenced he has not yet omitted a day going to school all the children go cheerfully and Hamilton is a great 2 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. 3 Salomon Heine. 4 Emma Oppenheimer, daughter of Morris Oppenheimer, uncle of Mathilde Lieber, and son in law as well as business partner of Salomon Heine her grandfather.

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favorite with his schoolmistress and he always has a great many things to be done, pencils to be cut &c and if one is not able to attend to him the minute, he thinks his “Chool Missus says so” must compel one to devote oneself to his wishes. Sunday dinner at Uncle Julius, in the evening played at Lotto, better than nothing in that house. Monday we commenced our shopping expeditions for christmas, then I walked in the snow across the Wale5 to Matilda Benecke to carry Herman6 a ticket for the concert that evening which Carry sent [2] sent him. Came home and had to dress in a great hurry to go to Gosslers7 who had long before invited me to go with them to the concert. A beautiful oratoris of Mendelsohn was performed Paulus, delightful music which enters the very soul, I was charmed with it.8 The solos might all have been executed much better, but the choruses were excellent. The whole was performed by amateurs. Gossler who also belongs to this: Sing-Verein sang with the rest Mrs August Gosslers sister dined and afterwards went with us, a very nice girl as far as I can judge from so short an acquaintance. Gossler gave us ladies – for no one else was of the party a bottle of champaign, & here I must remark that this wine is used by far less here than in the United States. Gossler spoke much of Oscar, whom he found very much improved since he is in Hamburg. The little girls too said to me: ‘Ich mag Oscar ganz schrecklich gern, willst du ihn nicht wieder zu uns kommen lassen? I believe I told you that Gossler has very fine children uncommonly friendly & zutraulich.9 – I am very sorry I shall not be able to send you the books which I have for you with some other trifles, as soon as I wished for there is no navigation on the Elbe and I fear that by the time a vessel goes from here again the season will be too far advanced to allow me to send you Gänsebrust which has just arrived from Pomerania and other little comforts for the palate, for by the time they might arrive in Columbia it might be already warm weather and thus they would perhaps not come in an acceptable condition. These things trouble me a little for it would give me such pleasure could I assist my poor house keeper with the like contributions; poor dear good Frank, do not think it is my fault, or if you can, take the will for the deed. 5 6 7 8 9

Wale= Wall, i.e. Neuer Wall, street in Hamburg close to the banks of the Binnenalster. Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke. Johann Heinrich Gossler and his American born wife Elizabeth. Paulus Oratorium by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, first performance Düsseldorf 1836. At that time there had been born to the couple Marianne, Frances Eliot, Mary Elizabeth, Susanne Catherine, and Johann.

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­ uesday again, shopping, late dinner, Auguste Soehle, who by the bye is quite T offended that you Un-familienrich knew nothing about her – Aunt Minna & daughter, Ludwig Oppenheimer & wife, & Uncle Haller all came in by chance and took tea with us, quite a pleasant evening. I am writing this on Wednesday 11th Dec. and love you as warmly and proudly as ever did wife an own dear husband, thanking God for the blessing – he has granted and pressing you to my arms. Oh my boy. I feel my happiness and would not change my fate with any living being, for you are mine and so are my sweet brats. Dearest Frank, could you but say with me ‘they are sufficient, & with them to love & to be loved by, I will enjoy life & be contended’. In your heart, I have my home let me but rest there, it is a sweet home, full of tenderness and kindness, I ask for nothing better under Heaven. The more I see of the world and other people, though there are so many who I like quite well, yet ever I must feel convinced that there is not one whom I could have loved with the fervour with which I love my own Frank. I believe when we were born it was decreed that you should be my guardian angel, and are you not, does not your sweet spirit guide me, elevate and give me nobler thoughts? God be praised, I have you! – Uncle Jacob has just been here, I read to him, part of your letter. The good man takes the kindest interest in us, and wants to see you happy, he is indeed kind to me as a father, & in heart & soul one of Gods own nobleman. He is always charmed with your letters which of course I should not continue to read to him if he were not and when he comes and has time to stay with us, he always says: “Hole mir doch nur einen Brief liebe Mathilda and then he takes his pinch of snuff and enjoys it. Your affection to me warms his own heart and many are the kisses I receive while thus employed. He thinks it so sweet of you that you write so often, and all he grieves for is that you are not and can not be satisfied with your lot. He thinks I might charm away much of that discontent, kiss it from your brow and make our life more cheerful. I think myself I can, and resolve to exert myself. Dear Frank I will be more a companion to you. That mind to which you are bound by sacred ties shall exert and raise itself to be more worthy of you more able to understand you in all your high born thoughts and noble feelings. I will be something yet, and it shall be a comfort to you that I am, for I will talk with you and read and a new life shall be within me. That was so beautiful in one of your last letters where you speak to me of the power of love, which by its intensity might efface all disparity which yet exists, and that the loving soul might raise the beloved one to its own level though it were far beneath in all attributes of mind. I like that, Frank, and I will cling to you in all eternity. Oh we will love each other ever, and be kind good to one an other. – From our dearest boy I had a little note yesterday, I copy it for you, as I can not send it so until a parcel goes again. Dec. 8. 1839. My dear Mama. To day I skated for the first time. I

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could not get a long at all, the skates slipped from under my feet; it was a bad thing, I can tell you. Dearest Mother, I thank you very much for my coat; it fits excellently. Mama I will be a good boy and get a good testimony at Christmas, for you are so kind to me and give me so much clothing. Dear Mama I do not want any more blankets, I am quite warm. Mr & Mrs Busse send their compliments to you and aunt Caroline and aunt Jette. Kiss all at home for me. God bless you dear Mama. Your affectionate son Oscar. – In a day or two I shall receive a letter he is writing to you, he has kept a kind of a journal. Did I tell you that when he was last at home he suddenly fell round Carolines neck and begged her pardon for every thing naughty he had done before he went to Dr Busse. There is something so sweet in that boy. Uncle Jacob said: Mathilda sieht auch jedes mal jünger aus daß ich sie sehe! alltogether my jung aussehen makes great sensation here, all my contemporaries being already regularly installed capists. They think me quite girlish, even down to the very footman aunt Malchen having said: Das ist ja ganz unmöglich daß Frau Doktorin Kinders hat mit solche Taille. My native air agrees with me, after having gone through a thorough Schnupfen, I feel strong and well, and this my boy is an other great happiness we have for which we cannot be enough grateful, we and our bairns are thank God strong and hearty, our children really have fine constitutions, and so have we – By the bye Frank, have you not been able to find a horse to suit you, do you remember your promise dearest, You know you were to ride every day and now though Oscar and I have often mentioned it you say nothing about a horse, could you meet with none? At least hire one often, do so, for our sake. – General Haynes death has made me very sad, he was so active a man, so full of plans and resolution, ‘tis a hard lot for his poor wife and boys! – Your summer coat has come home to day but I must keep it for the next ­vessel, when we are clear of ice again. How shall I manage with Perthes & ­Besser, shall I pay them here? Give me sometimes a little poetry my true one, it is so sweet. Your Draynard Hexameters I and we all liked very much, give us some more, will you? I am glad that Elza & Betsy10 do there duty, I hope they continue so that you are not too much plagued. So far my sympathy goes with you that since I know you without the comfort of a patatoe, I do not like to enjoy them myself, poor fellow! Uncle Jacob had almost scolded me that I did not take care of that before I went, if I had not explained to him. Only think what I heard the other day. There is a Miss Sieveking11 here belonging to the 10 11

Slaves in the Columbian household of the Liebers. Amalie Sieveking, pioneer in nursing and social welfare work. In 1831 when a epidemic of cholera had hit Hamburg she had organized nursing and taken care of children of their inflicted mothers. She was a close friend of Adele Haller, Johann Heinrich Wichern, and

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prison society and a very active member; this lady at a meeting held a few days ago, proposed that every prisoner should after the expiration of the time of his confinement, be placed for a fortnight longer in a dark cell without any occupation that he may have time to consider upon his vices and resolve upon a better life. This most humane and just proposal was, it is true not carried, but why do you think, merely and only because the gentlemen found there was not a suitable locality for the purpose existing. I think this truly horrid, and so surely [3] will you. Ludwig was also disgusted, who told us of it. – I am having the Encyclopaedia bound for your christmas box to Oscar, also the Army Magazine.12 Mr Busse is going to give Oscar some nice presents too he came to me to tell me that he might not hit upon the same. I am sorry indeed that Mary’s letter did not please you; but remember what she is when you see her and talk to her & judge her not too much by these letters of hers in which she no doubt goes beyond her own feelings independent and self sufficient as they may be. Let these girls remain our dear friends. When you write again to Sally, thank her in my name for all her kindness to you, tell her, lovely as she is and as you describe her to me, still I am not jealous of her, and you might kiss her, and yet I would say all is right. I love you but I can not feel so sellfish in my love as to fear and grumble at every kind word you might speak to an other, if that one be after my own mind as well as yours, and thus it is with Sally, not with a Willing or a Irving.13 – Pray my dear fellow let not the thought ever disturb you or cause you a moments anxiety that there are the slightest remains of our dear Oscars fall effecting his character his temper in any way. He has his full faculties, is as sprightly and clear headed a boy as he can be and that occasional irratability which I mentioned in some of my early letters from Hamburg and of which I have seen nothing since, is, pardonnez moi, his birthright, dearest Frank, and can be worked against. he has your most affectionate heart and is as sensitive as you are; in fact he is so like you in everything. Normy is extremely admired by Adela, she thinks him a perfect beauty. I am so sorry that you can not now witness his engaging manner, for when he is older, it will not be so a­ musing. – No

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Emma Poel who published a biography of the late Amalie Sieveking. Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben von Amalie Sieveking in deren Auftrage von einer Freundin derselben verfaßt. Mit einem Vorwort von Dr. Wichern, Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, Hamburg 1860. The Army and Navy Chronicle, and Scientific Repository, Washington City, 1832ff. Sally Newton, Mathilde Willing, and a Mrs. Irving.

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Frank it is not the same whether an other were Oscars and the little ones f­ ather, even if you are to be seperated from the boy: There is your soul in him, and believe me it will work its way with the boy. There is that within him, which stamps him your son and leave him under good care, he will return and you will rejoice at his development which still will be on your foundation and therefore good. That attention to all outward objects, that constant observation well remain his, and properly instructed, I am sure he will be your joy; perhaps more so than if he were to remain under our constant charge and necessarily would in many things receive less good instruction. In my consideration, his bodily developement is greatly to be regarded and I am very glad to have it well attended to, for the mind can work better when the body is sound and active. I would not, if you had the time wish you to teach Oscar yourself, it is not good, I think. – I do not mean that teaching of which you have given him so much, expanding his mind, by conversation, but the drudgery of it. In his developement Oscar is beyond his years, not in mechanical information, the one he has from you, the other from poor me. – God bless you. 13th Dearest Frank good morning, we are all quite well. Oh that I knew how you are; it seems a long while to me since I received your last letter and yet it is not a full ­fortnight, but the truth is that you have spoilt me; indeed I have no right to complain; you are always so very kind. My sweet boy. I awoke very early this morning and thought in bed and then I was sorry that I had mentioned in my letter one of your little faibles. You might suppose that I do not remember you with all that devotion which you have a right to expect from your wife. My own boy, indeed it was only to retrieve you from a care which I thought was still on your mind regarding Oscar that I said it. Oh, I never think of you but as the being I most love on earth, all kindness and affection as you are. I should not have you faultless for then how should I stand before you? There is disparity enough already. Dont you think it is better that you should sometimes repeat to yourself all your Matildas faults that when we meet again they do not gratingly surprise and disturb you, but I say with Oscar, dear Frank. I will be good. I will try to work against all my bad qualities – you ask if Hamilton is considered very backward, not so very, only in his talking, not pronouncing well. But he is not the least bashful and fights his way well. Oscar speaks German now with the greatest facility and as rapidly as possible, but he does not yet read it with ease. I believe I have told you long ago that Oscar has a good Atlas, but he has it at school not at home. I can not help sometimes repeating things which I have mentioned before, you must excuse that. Buck14 called the other day but I was unluckily not at home, but yesterday Gustav Keibel came to bring me a letter 14

Franz Ludwig Buck.

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from his mother and I begged him to tell Buck that I hoped he would come again as I wished very much to see him. He seems an excellent man this Buck. He is a father to the young Krutischs and for their sake and the other young men about him arranges all kind of amusements such as theatricals, reading clubs, billiards &c. Yesterday Matilda Hesse came to fetch me to dine in Altona I was received con amore the little dinners there would just suit you, quite a french cuisine; several gentlemen were there, a Mr Fisher who was extremely happy to make my acquaintance having read with the greatest interest your Reminiscences of Niebuhr;15 otherwise rather a dry companion, spoke up high for Dr Julius, who was terribly abused by my Uncle,16 as a bragger, story teller, both gentlemen grew rather warm on the subject. Mr Schütt was also there, of my journey to Berlin memory he travelled with Gustavus and myself and we made the poor fellow always go outside for which I am sure he must owe me a grudge.17 Our Altona relations are all in deep mourning for their King18 and the order is they should remain so for six months. – I heard there of a pretty new invention. Ein Wecker der zur bezeichneten Zeit eine kleine Melodie spielt wonach dann ein Licht sich von selbst anzündet; Es soll ganz allerliebst seyn, wie allerliebst und brauchbar für dich aber leider ist es zu kostspielig ungefähr hundert a füfzig Mark sollen sie kosten, circa 40 dollars – I returned home all alone in Hessens elegant carriage & had to pay Th 8 for Sperre, the empty coach, the same in returning which made almost a dollar, my good aunts expense however, I only mention it to show you how great that revenue must be to the town. The Trinkgelder which are given here are also a real tax, you can have no idea of it, every servant expects his drittel about 62 cents where ever you may dine every person from a shop or elsewhere who brings any thing to your house receives his 4 shillings. I consider it a perfect nuisance, and do not conform to the custom, but poor Carry, living here has to be its slave. (14th). Yesterday I went uninvited to Adela and dined with her. Adela is fond of me again and I love her very much Ferdinand too is a nice fellow although in many things a terrible egoist, I am very fond of being there. I read to Adela your last letter, and she was much pleased with it, some parts I could not read aloud but I let her look in they were too glowing, but she could well understand them, 15 Lieber, Reminiscences. 16 Jacob Oppenheimer. 17 Mathilde Lieber recalled her first visit in the family of her fiancé at Berlin/Züllichau in autumn 1828 together with her brother Gustavus Oppenheimer as chaperon and Schütt, a mutual friend. 18 Altona in the neighborhood of Hamburg belonged to Denmark whose King Frederick VI had died December 3, 1839.

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though she could not avoid say it regret or rather some fear that we were both too easily exited. (18th) Yesterday I received an intimation at 12 OClock that I must have my box for the Franklin ready at 1. So in the greatest hurry I packed your coat & sent it off. I am quite vexed for the old ship is still there and probably will not be off for the river is freezing rapidly, at any rate I might have put some trifles more in the box, had I not been so huried, 19th This is a terrible busy time for us. Caroline has no less than 24 persons whom she has to remember in her christmas gifts, for each of whom she has to look for several appropriate gifts, and this of course takes up much time, particularly as you know it is the sexes privilage not to resolve too hastily. Thus we have been much out of doors latterly, and we are all tired out & I could only find short intervals to write to you. Alas! I have been long without any tidings from you dearest, and am longing for them most devoutly. Your last I received on the first of December, which is a long pause. I think I shall soon have one again, & then, how I will enjoy it. My dearest Frank, last night I dreamt of you & Mrs Butler, I thought she was trying to gain your attentions & make you forget me, and she succeded well, so that she enjoyed the most intimate intercourse with you and mocked me disdainfully. I awoke and felt the most passionate desire to follow her example, to throw myself at your bosom and prove myself your lawful wedded wife who honorably may receive the blessing [4] you may be ready to grant. Best and dearest Frank, shall we not be happy when we can embrace each other again? – I must tell you something Adela told me. Matilda has just now offended me bitterly because she will not allow me to read a word of her letter; and you know my dear Frank that is a great crêve coeur for a daughter of Eves as I am, however I will revenge myself and while she has left the room or rather turned her back, I will take french leave and say a few sweet affectionate words to her beloved husband and my best and dearest brother in law. Why have I not yet replied to your dear letter which gave me such indescribable pleasure it is not because I do not acknowledge your kindness, nor I feel touched to the Heart by it, but my dear Frank, we have within the last 8 or 10 days not been able to find any peace within our walls, from morning till night your dear wife and I have been running about, blown about by the cold easterly winds, seeking for articles to convey pleasure to our respective young ones and the approaching festivities of the season. Could you but be eyewitness to the gay pretty scene which awaits them! To me this season of the year with all its quietnes always conveys most melancholy recollections of happy days gone by! Ich fühle mit erneutem Schmerz wie unendlich viel woran

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mein Herz mit inniger Liebe hing nun entrissen ist! Aber der Geist unserer Lieben lebt mit uns fort und wird uns auch in dem schönen bevorstehenden Abend umschweben! Unsere Kinder sind glücklich und zählen die Stunden bis der langersehnte Moment herannaht der da manchen ihrer kleinen kindlichen Herzenswünsche in Erfüllung bringen wird. Deine Kinder mein bester Franz sind herrlich und entwickeln sich schön. Oscar ist ein zärtlicher aufgeweckter Knabe und sein Schul-Aufenthalt wirkt sehr wohlthulich auf ihn; we are very good friends and I love the dear boy with warm affection. Hammy is a wild little chap; but he improves daily and is getting on nicely in german; Emil and he are great chronies. My darling pet Norman is the Ne plus Ultra of amiability; he is a lovely boy, and so every body decides who sees him. Do not be uneasy my dear Frank we do not spoil him, aunt South Carolina as he invariably calls me, loves him too tenderly for that Matilda grows younger every day and looks remarkably well. Have you thought seriously of your coming to join us my dearest Frank! Pray do not lose any time to arrange matters accordingly; […] Du mußt kommen mein theurer Franz we shall be so happy and we try together and we shall make Matty so jealous, and that will be such fun, and you shall see my new abode and I will make you so comfortable, Oh if there were but the possibility of your putting up your quarters in Europe! Oh for that painful seperation from those we love so dearly! Matilda will not let me write any more. I embrace you most sisterly tenderly and make my exit – ever yours Caroline. 20th Dec Adela told me, as I was going to relate to you last night that Dr Sieveking had told her you had studied together with him.19 F He spoke of you in the highest terms. “Er war ein liebenswürdiger ausgezeichneter Mensch.” were his words pretty dearest Frank, do not think that I am as sanguin as Caroline with regard to your coming. Oh no, I think it will be impossible and will teaze you no more for you can not alter the decrees of Yale. But write to me in time how you wish me to manage every thing, where I am and to what port I had better return, what I am to do about Clara,20 and all matters which I should not like to decide upon myself. It is blowing a terrible gale to day, the ground is perfectly white & hard and one thinks of the poor mariner on the boisterous seas. Perhaps the sun is shining gay & warm with you, I would it were and that it brings some comfort to your lonely heart. We all bear the cold famously and I think we were created for a colder clime. During the christmas holidays which only last a week, Oscar & I will write famously to you, the boy shall dictate to me, but there is an end now with large sheets, you know the new post regulation in 19 20

Dr. iur. Friedrich Sieveking. Clara Woodhouse in Leominster/England, elder sister of Mathilde Lieber.

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England requires all letters to be weighed like in France. I therefore send this via France, for the weather is such that [cross-writing, 4] one can not know when a letter might get to England. I have read a novel called Matilda which I liked very m[uch] I will write more about it in my next letter. God bless you my dearest best Frank may Heaven protect you in give my boy a happy year before it closes again the fulfillment of long cherished prospects. Do not be low spirited, you know there is no use in crying. God will mend all! May he consent to do it soon I wander whether I told you that there are not the American reviews in the Börsenhalle21 so that I could not communicate your wish to Dr Wurm who is now Professor of History at the Juhaneum.22 The letters from Züllichau & Berlin I put in the last box. Lottchen23 is to be married at Easter & they want me to come then which I [cross-writing, 3] F shall try to do? Pray tell me how much I may spend for a wedding present, and what you think I had better get. Keibels wish me to stay with them while at Berlin, I shall do so a few days, but part of the time I must remain with Gustav.24 I had already promised it before Keibels invited me. I expect Sally Jacobsen will also want me. I have besides a cousin in the neighborhood of Berlin Uncle Morris daughter married to a Gutsbesitzer.25 How long do you think I had better stay at Berlin and how long in Züllichau. Vacations there are none in Oscars school but he must work again with me of course. I shall not be able to deduct any thing at his school while he is absent. Please direct me in all these matters and God bless you. Everybody sends love to you, even those

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23 24 25

Börsenhalle; reading hall in the Hamburg Exchange; meeting place of merchants and called Versammlung eines ehrbahren Kaufmanns. Dr. Christian Wurm was the editor of its journal. Johanneum; the so-called Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, famous college in Hamburg founded in 1529 by Johannes Bugenhagen, follower of Martin Luther. Probably Mathilde Lieber took the Johanneum for the Akademische Gymnasium which resided in the same building. Charlotte Karsten, daughter of Lieber’s brother in law Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten, Züllichau. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Münzstrasse 14, Berlin. Mathilde Oppenheimer, third daughter of Morris Oppenheimer.

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hapless ones whom you will not acknowledge as part of the family. We are all proud of you & love you tenderly but none more than your affect. wife Matilda I feel quite ashamed of my scrawl, excuse it please Dear Frank Single Via Havre Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. care of Messrs Heckschers Coster & Matfeld New York Stamp Hamburg 20. Dec 39 Stamp Le Havre 25 Dec Stamp Bureau Maritime Havre 26 DEC 1839 Stamp New York Ship MAR 1 + sealing wax

No. 31 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 10.12.-16.12.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 16.12.1839 USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages No XIVI Last date Dec. 16. 1839. - I have No 8, and the Howard Letters but not the Howard things! No 9 yet missing – but will be soon here. Four letters I had in quick succession. Dec. 10. To you my Matilda, I fly for comfort to you to unbossom myself. ­Yester-day when I had the new Freshmen for the first time, I was obliged to spell Greece and Abraham, because some of them did not Know it, and all of them did not Know similar words. Pray donot tell your relations of this, for I feel so humbled, so ashamed. When I tell such things here, they laugh, I should say grin, but my heart bleeds, my very soul weeps. Gifted or not gifted, I am made for better things than that. If the Magnolia could reason, would it not mourn to see branch after branch copped off, to make boot-jacks? I confide it to you, my faithful companion, that twice I have seriously considered, whether I donot act wrong, mean in selling myself thus for $2500; and did not thaught that I do not do it for myself but for my children, support me, I could not endure it, nor should I believe to follow God’s commands in enduring it I might as well hire myself out as a jester or a rich man’s fool. Matilda, give me some comfort, I stand in need of it. My heart is sore. I have come to that point that I can no longer read with ease the lives of great men, without putting it the book out of my hand, now and then, when the pain becomes too accute. It happened but yester-day so with Holliday’s Life of Lord Mansfield.1 In what different relations of internal life did they live. If ever my sons shall think in gratitude of me, I claim it upon no ground, except this that in this soul’s loneliness I still had energy enough to write my books still, how different would they be, L were I linked to the common chain of electricity; did had the vernal sun of of intellectual animation a ray for poor me! But if I go on with the letter at all, at this moment, it I would continue only my Jeremiad; so I had better break off at once. But only consider such moments, as my yesterday’s return from the Freshmen, into my room, than pity, than comfort me. This moment Mr Elliot – whose door you Know is not 4 steps from mine – returned several books and pamphlets, I had lent him, to make a report upon Education to the Governor, thanking for the decided service they had been to him and signing himself, in a sealed note, “very sincerely and respectfully your faithful friend.” This is a life of feeling, of communion, of intercourse, of soul to soul! Goodbye, my s­ weetest, 1 John Holliday, The Life of William the Late Earl of Mansfield, T. Payne, W. Clarke and Son, J. Cooke at Oxford, and J. Deighton at Cambridge, 4 vols. 1797.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_033

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my best wife. I wish I could see into your eyes, could hear your: “My dear Frank, you must consider &c, all will brighten up yet &c.” Somehow or other, if I say it to myself, it has no force. Many envy me for my place; few, few indeed, Know my mental suffering. I will take a ride. Dec. 11. It is too much trouble for you if you copy the letters to Oscar, in a form that they may be pasted to-gether, or into a blank book? When they are all together, there must be some little picking of Knowledge and a good deal of affection in it, and should the loved boy remain behind in Germany, it will do him good to have this first vol of our correspondence, aye! and on many a late day in his life will it touch his heart to read in it. You may write on the first page that you copied them from the postscripts &c of my letters. That letter which you sent by direct Hamb vessel has not yet come to hand. For God’s sake dont make use of those slovers, except for parcels. Alas! how often have we talked about the bundle; that I might have one by Oct. or Nov.; I shall not even have anything by Christmass. Had it been for the Hamb. morning gown so much talked off I would by this time sit frozen in my study as the coachmen in New Engl. are sometimes found on the box. - I donot Know whether I am greedier for communion, or whether your letters are really unsatisfactory when you speak of the people, but certainly they appear to me so. You speak of people’s prominent virtues and equally marked faults, and dont mention a single one. You tell me Hamilton goes to school, and never yet breathed what he does there. - I trust you communicate regularly, and not only now and then, those things I wrote now and then f regarding Oscar not Knowing that he was in a boarding school, to Dr Busse; for instance that I wish him to go on the top of the highest steeple. Have you spoken with Mrs Busse very particularly about washing, the teeth? Tell her to give Oscar so soon as it gets the least warm, every day a new shirt, and for heaven’s sake let her not imitate that dirty German fashion of having no night shirt, but keeping the same shirt night and day and only putting on a rag of a cotton collar in the day time. It is dirty, mean, shabby. Pray tell my little friend that my 2d. Part of the Ethics is out, and that it has become a big book.2 - Do you recollect Carey’s3 letter to me on my Ethics,4 in which he said, there are some errors in it, what we thaught of him very bold? I now find out what he, no doubt means. Master Carey living at present chiefly by skimming the cream of British wit, is might and main opposed to th an international Copy right law, on which you may remember I speak in very strong terms in my book. Mr Clay wrote me that it was Carey, among others who opposed it strongly. Oh, the great writer on free 2 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, vol 2. 3 Henry C. Carey, Philadelphia. 4 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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trade! - Sunday, Dec. 15. Oh dear me, dear me! This moment I set down to write and my most beloved study gown rent into pieces – it will not Keep any longer, my old and trusty friend is exhausted, he faithfully struggles to remain with me in my solitude, the last, the only companion in my solitude; the last, the only solace & comfort! But old age has set the stamp of decay upon him, he does what he can, but Death is indedhorable and Total dissolution is at hand. Poor, generous friend! With thee have I travelled many thousands of miles over pleasing and uneven ground of literature; thee alone I found in the solitary house on my return. One more winter, thou struggledst to warm and cheer me, but thy strengh leaves thee; in vain doest thou look around whether not one of thy tribe has come [2] to take thy place; whether the rising generation does send a youth, full of vigor to be a substitute for thee; thou wouldst tarry longer but thou canot not! Like a pious friend thou givest up everything, to serve me! Born and bred in imperial Russia thou wast willing to serve a poor republican; destined to serve an officer thou grumbledst not in comforting a destitute author; made to be used only in the morning, thou willingly servedst the whole day, and many a late hour of the night. And no now I shall part with thee? What shall become of me, lonely as I am in the cold winter? Thou weepest, noble being, but thy rent says: what can I do for thee in this state? My fibres are worn out, and if though I was most willing to change the Russian velvet for American calico, and to have my stately outride pride, turned and hidden inside, it will no longer do; let me depart in peace. Go my friend, go! Heaven alone Knows besides thee with what feelings, what anguish I leave thee; but thou hast been bashful, far beyond what others are, and I charge thee not with any fault. Let me consecrate a sincere tear of regret to thy memory; and did I not Know thy genuine modesty I would proclaim thy excellence in an ode; but true grief is silent. Go in peace. - Ah, my Matilda, there is but too much truth in this episode Katastrophe, too much! Yesterday Elsa brought me your huge folio-letter with Oscar’s dictation. It is not numbered but you speak of No 8 & 9 in it; my last was of No 7 only. This letter came by the Lpool, though we had news by her, two days ago here. Before I go on, this: you always say zu Hause, where nach Hause ought to stand. In this letter again, the same in the last. If there is motion to the house, it is nach e.g. nach Hause kommen, gehen; where there is rest, you must say zu, e.g. ich bin zu Hause; ich war den ganzen Tag zu Haus. How do you come to blunder even in German?! I must likewise beg you to pay attention to Oscar’s grammar. He begins his letter “To-day I am home”. That will not do. It is at home. Not that

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I wish you to change one particle when in his dictations; by no means, but I beg you to read English with him, and to let him dictate to you, and go it over grammatically! It is necessary. The traits of Germanic people, contained in your last are admirable, I mean as characteristics, but Good God! what namby pamby souls! Oscar refers to a letter I have not yet recieved; I have no doubt it will warm his father’s soul a little more than the last. This is not for him; let him be quite entirely himself when he writes. Sometimes I really ask myself: Does the boy warmly love me? Does he begin to forget me, or at least cease to feel affectionately for me? I will not dwell upon this thaught. You want to Know what I precisely do. I am very sorry to say, meine Arbeit geht nicht gut von Statten. There are, probably, various reasons for it: My soul is not engaged, whatever the mind otherwise might be, as in my Ethics.5 I donot boldly go my own path; I do not discover, invent, build, create. Secondly, my mind is so much abroad! When I recieve a letter, it Keeps me always three days occupied. Silly as it may seem, but I have once read a letter of yours from ½ 8 to 1 o’clock, over and over again. When the three days are past, I begin to long already for another. Thirdly, the desire to get away here, especially after the last election of professors, one of whom is avowedly a dull blockhead, but than he is a parson! The unfittest of all for science, I mean American Calvinistic wranglers of parsons – This I say adds likewise to my general unfitness. Still I work on. - Do you read? what, my Matilda? - So it not strange that long ago, when imagening myself fetching you – as mortals dwell on that which n’or can be - I thaught of that very tucking up of Caroline’s, and thaught I would ask perhaps take her hand – and perhaps draw her to my face; and perhaps kiss her in gratitude; and perhaps put my arm round her neck; and perhaps, - perhaps – why Matilda you forget that I am tightly tucked up. Besides, would I have my bedroom alone? - I am delighted, positively delighted that you look so well, and always write me if people say so, for instance should Matilda Benecke have said so. I suppose you will tell me about her a good deal in your next. I fear your next, because it will the one in answer to my first from here. About my leg I have seized giving any bulletins, because his majesty is entirely recovered. I thank your uncle6 for allowing the money to stand until next June, because it will be easier then - I devoutly trust – to remit. My publishers write me that the general distress and difficulty affects, as was supposed, the booktrade very seriously. You see then, on all sides, our means are diminished; this duller sale, the expence for Oscar, your return – it is impossible for me to go by steam boat, but though it were, I should go with decided reluctance, because, as I often have said, it would fret 5 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 6 Jacob Oppenheimer.

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me. But can none of the sisters come with you? Why not make our house a girl boarding school [3] for your family? Taking Hamburg and the W. Indies together, they are as thick as the snow which probably falls at this very moment before your window. Oh! and if Caroline comes she might take the caster-oiling and all that. Really, the plan grows while I write. Why not turn so respectable a passion as that of Carolines to accait Babies she wants? She may have as many as she choses here, and of different colors too; she may raise little neggers in the lower story and tend white brats up stairs. Double profit! Tell me, what are in Hamburg conversations about? I should like to Know. They donot seem to read in your family; the Germans have not the Quarterlies which throw so much reading among the general readers in Engl & here; they have not politics, they – God be thanked – donot whine and blabber about dogmatics – what then do they do. - Have you no hopes of seeing Clara?7 I should be sorry if you did not. - Ah my best Matilda, the very moment I think of your return, I also think of lonely Oscar, left behind. If that thorn could but be plucked out of my heart! - But there is yet some time. If Oscar writes me again, he ought always say something about his studies, though but a few words. Keep him very warm this first winter; I fear your winds there so much - I had the other day Sanderson8 – whose book you liked – and Dr Ellet, with whom he is staying for dinner – it went off admirably. The soup – just seven days old, daily re-cooked and now and then new meat to it, was the subject of unbounded admiration, though I told said not a word at first. Smile or not, I Know I would make a good cook, both because I see the principles and love the things. - Stuart9 prepares for going away. By heaven, how it makes me feel! Not that I should wish to return to such a wife; I rather stay in all Columbias of the world, except she were so rich that we could have two ménages, and for this reason as for some others I think it an eternal pity that we have abolished polygamy. What, I ask you, could I do better than marry in addition to you, an old Lady of 55, 60 or so, with $300000 – and then, perhaps, since the house must be increased, little round Sally,10 and some ­Odalina with a heavenly voice – oh, I promise faithfully, give me the picking, and assortment should not be unworthy of you – my seraglio should be choice – 7 8 9 10

Clara Woodhouse, Leominster/England, sister of Mathilde Lieber. John Sanderson, An American in Paris, Philadelphia Carey & Hart 1838. Prof. Isaac William Stuart, College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. Sally Newton née Sullivan.

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mind disposition, acquirement, and body – everything should be there in the choicest variety. Caroline I Kiss your eye, and so I say goodbye. Goodbye ­Matilda; goodbye Harriet. Write me the most detailed account of Christmas. Dec. 16. Heavens, what a glorious day! I had this morning the double letter, with dear Oscar’s own letter, and Caroline’s bumper of love, brim full, and likewise the unnumbered letter of Sept 13, in which you speak of your anxieties regarding the choice of another school for Oscar. Well can I understand your trying feelings, but you have chosen and done well and right; I thank you for it, and may God’s blessing rest upon your maternal care. Only I miss Latin in the plan which Oscar sends. I hope this is mended by this time. I am sorry Oscar seems to have no feeling whatever for music, but there is no use in forcing things. The English say, you cannot make a purse out of a sow’s ear. I beg your and beloved Oscar’s pardon. Still you are right in not hastily giving it up. The tree must haven been seriously and thoroughly made before so important a branch be given up. If however his ear should really prove an earthen pot-plack plack-plock – when you knock against it, it is no use in losing time. I am sorry, as I said, for music is a balm of souls, still things must be taken as they are, and there is the silver metal of love and delicate tenderness in his soul, the heavenly harmony of purity, kindliness and deep affection. I donot Know how to answer all these dispatches of love and fervent affection, considering how little room is left. Oh how you have spoilt my labor for tomorrow, which I had laid out to be one of my old regular Tuesdays, you remember. How well it was, you went to Europe; what a stock of affection – better than all the stocks in the market – what a capital of love, what an investment of renewed, re-enlived attachment you will bring back! It will last you for all your life, and some will remain over for me, although we should not have more around us, than a bear reduced to the comfort of his own paws. You say “You would love dearly my uncle”11 – would? Is grateful affection so material a thing that it must see with bodily eyes, ere it can discern, dart or be kindled? No, no! Trust, if I tell you, that if I had always the greatest, profoundest respect for him – I use these terms in the real meaning of a true soul’s terminology – I now feel sincere affection for him, for, blessed be his brow with unfading wreaths of contentment and the love of all who know him – he has become a father to her, who is dearest to me, and whose unceasing well of angelic love, too good even to be forgiving, for she remembereth not. I say from the fullness of my soul: God bless him. And may He bless all that love you. What can they do better to me! Caroline, your letter made my heart throb. Oh, you are not a good steward, you give too much. The wine your letter 11

Jacob Oppenheimer.

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pours out to me, at would have comforted, strengthened me an hundred separate times. So much almost intoxicates. Oh my sister you speak of my coming. It makes me sad. All you can do is pray for your brother; shall I write you down a prayer? “God, thou eternal being of love, who gavest him a heart that rejoices on the delight of loving and being loved, as the flower rejoiceth in the light and ray of thy spring, give, if in thy wisdom it be possible, give him the means of returning once more to the land of his birth, which whither his heart has never ceased steadily to point, that we may comfort us hearty with our hearts, his he that is thirsty for love with our love.” And God bless you too my dear Caroline, and Harriet, I pray for your health my dear Harriet. Take well care of yourself. You did not do it always in London, I remember well. – You wrote me Matilda, that you would go to Gosslers12 in the country although you had called upon them in town. I trust you entirely and know you have much tact, and hope they have not been intentionally so sparing in politeness, especially not from that very brutish Hamburg feeling to-ward Jews. If so, I would rather you cut them twenty times. I thank you Caroline for mentioning the color of Matty’s bonnet. There is now a much clearer picture in my mind. Does straw-color suit her? It delights me to hear that she gets stouter; poor girl, she was worn down here, yes, one of you ought to come out with her. I thank you, I donot know how cordially, for the study-gown; if I had it but soon. Matilda unfortunately forgot to write me to whom she sent the box in N.Y. But I shall write to-morrow to three or four persons there. I leave more ample acknowledgements of all the fine, goodly things until spread out fo before me. Would to God they co would arrive yet for Christmass, which, however is not at all likely, on the contrary, it is almost certain that I shall not have it them [4] My beloved boy, Columbia Dec 16. 1839 You sleep soundly, or – let me see, perhaps my dear Oscar is just getting up, it is nearly one o’clock – but before I go to bed I will send add for you a line. I recieved to-day your letter written by yourself, for which I thank you. Do you know that you dated it 1838? I think my dear boy that you would do well to make your letters higher from below up, else you will fall into what spoils any hand, the drawing letters horizontally. Next you must tell me, my little student, what you have learnt, what you are studying. I trust you study Latin; I miss it 12

Family of Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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in your description. I was much pleased that you dig a fosse for skating and are in the same school with your cousins. So you dont like beer-soup? I neither. The other night I dreamt that you entered my room; you flew round my neck, and oh! how I pressed you: I dreamt that I cried, or really did so, which awoke me, and thaten I felt very lonely, for there is no living being in the house at night besides me, except a few mice and cockroaches. But they dont pass for companions you know. My boy, I never knew I loved you so tenderly with all my soul, as now, and feel it daily more. When I ride along on little Nausicaa I almost always think of your Mama and you three boys; and sometimes I hold long conversations with you in my mind. So yesterday I passed an “old field” as they call it here; the old furrows yet visible; the fence (you know the worm or Virginian fence) half mouldered and here and there in the field yet dead, barkless tree, rearing still its leafless branches up in the air perhaps a little solitary crow – which differs you know from the German – on one of them. Now said I to you in my mind, the trees which originally stood here are not yet entirely mouldered away, and yet this field is abandoned, and it is strange that “old fields” should be found in young countries only in Germany you donot see old fields, nor old abandoned loghouses. How is this? You see, our population here is but very sparse, and land unbounded, while in old country like Germany, which has been settled these two thousand years, population is dense but land very limited. Here if the land is exhausted, and if you donot manure land it will be soon exhausted, people frequently will not or cannot manure it – labor is too dear, because population is sparse; while in the west there is unbounded most fertile noble land; so the people move off and rather till the fertile than the unfertile land. But you may ask, has the country not been peopled long ago? It is true we the white people have come here only a few centuries ago, but how many, many centuries have not the Indians lived here. Why then did theire population not increase? Because for some reasons or others they never rose above the hunting state, and while people live by hunting alone, very few can only live upon a certain extent of land. The game, however plentiful, furnishes but a scanty means of living; but when men come to till the ground and clear away plants which give no fruits, to make space for those which do, then many can live, and when men begin agricultural life commerce likewise begins. Now you know we chiefly cultivate cotton here, which is but for clothing and not for food, but we cultivate far more cotton, than we ourselves could consume. The greater part of our cotton we send to countries which can give us grain, woollen cloth, iron ware and all other commodities we want for it. Thus commerce enables still more people to live and live happy on Gods earth. My paper is at an end. God bless you all. Your father

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I cannot allow any blank space to go to you. What shall I write? Love, love, love feels every space in my heart, which would be blank and empty indeed without it, and so be this paper likewise filled with love, love, love. Have you too much of it? [cross-writing, 1] by that time I scratch my poor face with two dull, scraping raizors. That you sent cordials is delicious – a drop of comfort is a good thing, especially for a lonely anchorite, and then, not making fire for dinner up-stairs – for even if I have fire lit before dinner it begins to warm after an hour only – it is sometimes coolish. However I have soup nearly every day. I dont know how it is, but I found the other day that a soup of meat for 25 cent and a turkey had given me five or six dinners. By the letters I recieved to-day all my lamentation nearly, at the beginning of this letter are sent to naught. Your love provides for all and every thing – except sometimes a shirt botton. Oh my Matilda, if you Knew how warmly I kissed you just now for this unkind jest, you would not grumble. Matilda, I feel your absence from bed sometimes most audaciously – You love and praise me so much that I feel often very much ashamed; but although your angelic kindness forgets faults and very serious ones of mine, still that you will see that some of them donot belong to my nature but are the Knotty growth of a tree in an ungenial soil. In my letters you see my better nature; of course, I am not half as good as I appear in them, for how could the bad sides turn up in a letter? Still I say that I am much better, or rather intended for something much better thus what I turn out in a false position. You describe Oscar’s emotion, when he recieved my Americana,13 he addressed [cross-writing, 2] me in the overflow of his feelings. God be thanked, it is the first direct sign of affection I have of him for whom my heart almost ceases to beat. – I must tell you what I know will please you. Do you remember that I said that the Book on the Representative and especially on political instruction of the Represent from his constituenty was the best part, the more successfull in the whole book.14 They have sent me the sheets of this part. I have read it I believe three times and with that delight with which I follow the steady, bold, yet clear and

13 Encyclopaedia Americana. 14 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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cogent reasoning of another writer, there is shrewd distinction, comprehensive history philosophy and clinching history in it, and that part must stand the trial – I know it. – Charlotte is to be married on Christmass in St. Mathews. All left the house yesterday for that place except Charlotte. Only think, as lonely as myself, when that poor girl was taken alarmingly ill, and Dr Trezvant is was actually fearful for consequences. A high degree of inflammation in the bowels. Mrs Ellet is all the time with her. Ellen15 left yester-day for Mobile. Priestley looks horrid – not in the least like a gentleman. He is candidate [cross-writing, 3] for the place of superintendant of public works – of 3000 a year – but there are eight candidates! I fear he will not get it. His behaviour when on a rail road I believe has lost him many friends. You ask whether you ought to cross your letters. Not in black. But I wish by no means that you should strain your eyes. Mine can do more work. Can you not perhaps try red ink? You have never told me how you can read mine; easy? If you, devotedly loving woman read my letters in your bed, I fear, this way of writing is not good. You ought to tell me frankly. I am very, very sorry Hammy does not talk any better English. But pray dear Caroline to cultivate the dear fellows musical ear. I hope it is as good as his ear of flesh is mis-shapen. Poor fellow what a couple of hearers they have stuck on him! – I am quite anxious to see and prove my new study-shell. How I shall parade about in it, proud like pea-cock, though alone. – I was very much pleased I assure you that Rebecca remembers me thus. Kind remembrance is wellcome from any quarter. Tell if, poor girl, she feels lonely, to think of me – has she not the boys, you? Does she two fatten up – I wrote by mistake two, instead of too – I might have said “her two”, for you know how her fine bust was parched away of Carolina’s sun. Now is that talk for a husband to his wife? I Know it is not judicious for me in my situation to talk of anything whatever between a woman’s chin and shin – it is sheer alcohol – in my veins. There are some that would but cannot; some that could but will not, and some that would and might, yet cannot, and among the last, Madame, am I. Your loving and desiring Frank. A propos! I have not made any arrangements for thick letters, you must be cautious – all are paid, in specie too. But I love most dearly to pay for them if judiciously made up. Always write single on those folio letters, because they work double, and feels so. 15

Ellen Stuart, daughter of Prof. Isaac William Stuart.

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Single Via Havre & p Utica à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp Forwarded New York Heckscher Coster Matfield Stamp Outre Mer 30 Janv 40 Stamp Paris 31 Janv 40 Stamp Hamburg 5 Februar

No. 32 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 17.12.-22.12.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Dr. phil. Andreas Busse Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages No XVII My foot is not only well, but as I hoped, better than for many years. Your brothers treat me rather mean. I write more frequently to them than they to me. Last date Dec. 22. 1839, Sunday – Rainy – Cold – Oh my morning gown, oh my bowels! I hope that box – the box of boxes – will soon arrive. Dec. 17. When I dispatched my letter yesterday, and wrote the lines to-day to our beloved son, I forgot two things or rather had not room for them which I will at once write here. First I have unfortunately not said a word to dear Oscar that my father’s heart was over-joyed in reading the good accounts which you give me of him. Tell him this, tell him that no news whatsoever, which you, dear Matilda can give me, are more consoling and comforting, some indeed more so, than when you speak with satisfaction of him. And your last letters did so in high terms. Tell him this, nay add it to the copy you may make of the lines on the last page to him. I bless him, I thank God in the fulness of my heart for his gentle soul and the loving kindness to you and his brothers. Only let his poor father now and then come in for a share. Secondly I wished to add these lines to what I have written to Dr Busse, which you perhaps may will copy: Geehrtester Herr, als ich zulezt an Sie schrieb vergas ich zwei Dinge, wie wenn ich mich recht erinnere, eins, was sich von selbst versteht. Ich glaube daß ich unter den Gewöhnungen, die stäte Gewöhnung zur Wahrheit, nicht blos zum sagen der Wahrheit, sondern zur inneren völligen Wahrheit des Lebens, Thuns, Denkens u Gefühls, nicht mit aufzählte. Sie schließt fast alle rechte Tüchtigkeit des Lebens ein. Das zweite was ich vergaß ist daß Sie mich sehr verpflichten würden, sobald Oscar nur irgend reif dazu ist, ihn mit Stellen des Plutarch, in neuer guter Übersezung bekannt zu machen, oder mit dem ganzen Leben einiger Männer in diesem Werke. Mein entschiedener u wohlüberlegter Wunsch ist, daß Oscar mit Plutarch sobald als möglich bekannt werde, und mit dem Buche aufwachse wie mit seiner Fibel. Es giebt kein Buch in der ganzen Literatur der Menschheit das so den Namen eines Buches der Handlung und des Characters verdient. Es ist das beste Buch für Kinder, Jünglinge und Männer. In allen Ländern der Welt, wo man nicht absichtlich individuellen Character und eigenthümliche Spannkraft zurücktreiben muß um die Individuen in den großen Regierungsplan einfallen zu machen, wie in China u Rußland, muß dieses unvergleichliche Werk seinen großen Werth haben; ganz besonders ist © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_034

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dies aber der Fall wo Bürgerthum das größte Element des nationalen Lebens ist, wie in England und den Ver. Staaten. Der große Chatham sagte im Parlament, daß ihn Plutarch mehr gebildet habe als irgendein anderes Werk. Welch ein Urtheil! Er, des von dem die moralische Größe Englands neuer Zeit, das ist die Größe britannischen Bürgerthums datiert, der diesem großen Reiche neue, hohe, moralische Energie verlieh und dessen Regierung mit dem Nerv des Bürgerthums durchdrang – Chatham der Große sagt am höchsten Ort wo Str Bürger reden können daß dies Buch den größten Einfluss auf seinen edlen u erhabenen Character gehabt habe! Dazu kömmt die große Mannigfaltigkeit des Plutarch, der symbolische Character, wenn ich es so nennen darf, Alterthums, wo uns alles in so bestimmter sittlicher Form erscheint, die erschreckende u einfache Größe der edlen Charactere u die ausgezeichnete Schlechtigkeit der Schlechten, welche dies Buch ganz besonders zu einem Kinderbuche eignen. Lassen Sie Oscar’s Character und Seelenentschiedenheit sich um Plutarchs Bürgersinn wie Weinranken um die einfachen u herrlichen Säulen eines edlen Tempels emporwinden. Ich se kenne Plutarch wohl. Er hat mich als Knabe entzückt; ich habe ihn beängstiged im Gefängnis lieben gelernt; zu ihm wie zu Shakespeare kehre ich immer wieder just im reifen Alter, u beide lerne ich mit jeder neuen Lebenserfahrung u jedem tieferen Blick in die Geschichte der Menschen oder ihre individuelle Seele besser verstehen. Wenn ein Knabe den Plutarch zuerst liest wie ein Kind lesen sollte, ohne alle Kritik, hinnehmend was u wie es gegeben wird, schlecht als solches so ist es ein recht eigentliches Kinderbuch – das wahre Buch für Knaben die tüchtige, freie, handelnde Bürger werden sollen. Ich habe weit mehr geschrieben als ich wollte. Entschuldigen Sie und – lieben Sie meinen theuren Knaben, er hat eine Seele treuer Liebe Werth. Ihr ergebener Franz Lieber Ich sollte vielleicht hinzufügen daß ich schon hier Oscar aus Plutarch, sowie aus Herodot, vorgelesen habe, zB die Stelle vom Tode des Timophanus u seines edlen Bruders Timoleon.1 1 Timoleon was “a celebrated Corinthian, son of Timodemus and Demariste. He was such an enemy to Tyranny, that he did not hesitate to murder his own brother Timophanes, when he attempted, against his representations, to make himself absolute in Corinth”. Quoted from A Classical Dictionary; containing a copious Account of all the Proper Names Mentioned in ancient authors; with the value of coins, weights, and measures, used among the Greeks and Romans; and a chronological Table. By J. Lempriere, DD, 16th edition corrected, London printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand 1831, p. 781. See a modern edition by Kai Brodersen and Christine Ley-Hutton, eds., Herodot. Historien, Griechisch-Deutsch, Stuttgart 2002ff; Egbert J. Bakker, Irene J. F. de Jong, Hans van Wees, eds., Brill’s Companion to Herodotus, Leiden 2002.

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I cannot break off my Matty without returning to you, and as every page of a testament is, in some countries signed with the words: This is my will, with the the name of the testator, so might each page of my letters end as this does, with the words: This is my love to you and your children, and those that affectionately love you. Fr Lieber [2] Pray Caroline, find a tune for the following and teach it Tom Stout:2 I love Mama, I love Papa I love my brothers dear; I love my Aunts & Uncles too And all my cousins here. My dear Papa is far away; I cannot see him now; But when I am a clever boy He loves me still, I know. And so do all the people do If I am good and kind; And Beccan too, she loves me much If what she says I mind. Must I add a distish for insinuating Joseph too? Here then, and, after that pray, let me alone; for I have really more important things to do than stich nursery rhymes together. That wont do: Little bird fly to Papa Far away to ‘Merica; Little bird tell my papa That I love him and Mama. -So good bye; you and Caroline’s letter and all the barrels full of love of your X X last letters have posivitely unfitted me to do anything sensible to-day. It is too bad! First, wife and children want clothing and food, and then when the poor 2 Paternal nickname for Hamilton Lieber, son of Francis Lieber.

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father is willing to work hard for them, they will love him and disturb him. And not enough with that; they will bring along with them a whole posse comitatus of loving aunts, that there is no end of it. Pray, dear people, sit down, take it easy. Let us talk the matter over at dinner. I promise not to start down-stairs as I sometimes did to the great displeasure of Matty; but for heaven’s sake let me alone now; I really cannot at this rate fulfill my contract with the publisher. You must not love me in this manner. Do you think my heart is made of pasteboard? Good people you kill me! Here is the publisher pulling my coat: Sir your Manuscr., here comes love in shape of a nighting gale – or is it a mockingbird? sits down alights right before me on my desk, and warbles – very sweetly, it is all very well; but, mercy, mercy, I can do nothing. By George, it is half past eleven o’clock, and done nothing yet. You must consider, there is a time for everything. There, now let that really be the last kiss, Matilda – Good heavens, I must kiss you Caroline and Heart too! Oh my conscience! I thaught this should be the end, and it is only the beginning. Instead of getting rid of the children I find Hammy & Norry on my knees, and Oscar round my neck. Take care. You upset the inkstand. Love will positively ruin me – a bankrupt in purse - in reputation – in everything. I must insist on your leaving my room; go out – stop, dont be in such a hurry all at once - I did not give you the parting kiss. Norry, blow your nose, you had a cold; Goodbye, goodbye. Dec. 17 (I repeat this date, for believing that you like all women donot pay much attention to this useless appendage of letters, I thaught you might pass it over and think I wrote this on another day, and I need not be ashamed of coming again this self same day) The letters, my dear Matilda need not be directed to any one in N.Y. on the contrary, they cost always 6 cents more, if you do. But if direct to me, you must not forget “Aux Etâts Unis” for the Havre port people would not know that where our fat-famed Columbia is, and the letter might go to the Republic of Columbia, S. America, albeit that Repl. has been abolished these 6 years. Do you know, that the image of your uncle3 is a choice one in my gallery, whereof my heart is Mr Keeper, and my soul sole Trustee. I have some excellent Raphaels in it e.g. Niebuhr;4 my boys; my wife; some sweet Correggios, e.g. - eh who? some Tenniers too, and Rembrandts, I could mention many. My Claude Lorain is Mary5 - a little bit just a little bit too much architecture in it, yet how lovely and dear. The scenes or rather circumstances you mention,

3 Jacob Oppenheimer. 4 Barthold Georg Niebuhr. 5 Mary Appleton, Barthold Georg Niebuhr.

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which depict how you 3 love your uncle,6 e.g. when he comes to the door and kisses you – a gunea, for each unauthorized kiss upon the lips what is my bona fide property! - are delighteful touches. You now, I know your uncle too through your brothers7 – helping here, aiding there, lifting one, pushing another. Then Heckscher8 besides his great respect for his character, always speaks in the highest tunes of mercantile intellect; and now to give the finale, he shows such warm love for you – knows so well to warm your heart – and to put a cap on the down – he seems not indifferent to Oscar, which – soit dit entre nous – might ribe me into any sin almost. I wish I was half as respectable and – half as rich! Come, come dont scold, I did not feel this, I only said it to tease you, whereunto I have an undoubted right & privilege. - What a dear and endearing letter that of Caroline’s. And Hearts will be so too. Where not the campus, the college – huh! right before me - I should almost forget it that there is any such a thing like snow in the moral world. # My dear Matilda you ought not to lose that fine rocking chair; why dont you write to Bremen? I should be very sorry if it should not reach the house of your sisters. - Did you mean in one of your former letters that Mrs Oehlrichs had been cold towards you, or that in general she had “alterered”? - I must soon have your letter 9, the one written before the folio steamboat letter. I should think it a very doubtful matter whether Nabob Heyne9 would ever be induced to give shell out Emma’s10 inheritance – the whole inheritance of a grandchild! Who would? Not I. I dislike excedingly seeing rich people giving [3] Their sons and daughters pittances, and make them almost wait for the death of their father, while it must be a fine feeling for a fine heart to see his one’s children comfortable and managing well; but I dislike also this premature giving out of inheritances - I always disliked it very much, unless there be very 6 7 8 9

10

The three sisters Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette Oppenheimer, and Mathilde Lieber who felt close to their uncle, Jacob Oppenheimer, brother of their late father Georg Oppenheimer. Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer. Charles August Heckscher. Salomon Heine, in his life time one of the richest merchants in Hamburg/Altona, close friend of the families Oppenheimer and Haller, former partner, and kin to the Oppenheimer. Morris Oppenheimer, brother of Jacob and Georg Oppenheimer, was his son in law and business partner. Emma Oppenheimer, daughter of Morris Oppenheimer and granddaughter of Salomon Heine, was going to marry her cousin James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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peculiar circumstances. I know nothing of Heyne,11 except that he is very rich, but I should be much mistaken in the nature of man in general, and of an old rich man in particular if he were ever to consent to such a proposal. No, no, let James12 not calculate on that. I assure you, I believe I should not do it. Give her something truly handsome, and deduct it afterwards from her share, is quite something very different. But there must be other circumstances connected with it; for according to your letter, it must seem at least, to some, not so entirely improbable, while so far as I Know the subject it seem appears to me next to impossible. However, it is no matter of mine, and thank God I have not to make such proposal to anyone. Courage, people often have told me, I have, but this requires brazenness, which I have not at all. I wonder what Uncle Jacob thinks of the matter. He must, I should think view matters with me. - You donot write me my dear Matilda, whether you sent to Perthes & Besser, the booksellers, before dispatching the dear box.13 Perhaps you did. If you had only written me to whom you have sent it. I know not the least where it is at present. And now it is very late; I will read again your letters, and then go to bed – cold, still, lonely bed! A propos, the other day, having gone to bed I slept till ½ p. 9. No one woke me, and had not some noise awoke me I should have slept till noon I suppose. Adieu, ye three Graces – three big, large, huge lamps of the finest blubber of love and spermaceti of affection. This is whaling rhetoric. - How do you wear your hair? By all means very deep behind - I trust – but now the front? How shall I understand Caroline’s: Er (that is uncle)14 hat sie frisiert”? Ah, your lovely raven hair, your glossy, silky beauteous hair! Good night. You keep me up to long. Dec 19 Reading over that passage of kissing you, I think that considering I am professor of political Economy, it is wrong to leave so fine property of mine, as your lips are unemployed for so long a time. I therefore am willing that it should bring interest. I repeat, I shall charge your uncle only a guinea a kiss, as to Dr Julius, considering his youth good looks, your inclination for him and his slender means, I’ll charge him only a Hamburg shilling a piece. Doctors of law have to pay a mark banco if unmarried, currant if married. I cannot afford for less. Sisters have a free ticket. God bless your sweetest of all lips! Indeed, will they not, with all the kisses of tender affection pressed upon them, during my your absence, bring me back a large store and stock of love? Is not all the 11 12 13

14

Salomon Heine. James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. The correct version of the Hamburg based companies’ name was Perthes, Besser & Mauke although Friedrich Perthes had left the house in 1836 that henceforth was headed by Wilhelm Mauke and his brother in law Rudolf Besser. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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affection which imprints the sacred symbol of love upon your smiling roses, in part also mine? - Matilda, tell me why your relations thaught me vain. I have written so rarely to them that there must have been very strong appearance of this fault in them. In truth I believe I am proud, too proud to be vain. Still I may err, and want you to tell me, either to reform the fault if it really exists, as its appearance if it be but appearance. - Caroline says I have shown a “little degree of anger” at their not writing. No, indeed not; pain, yes; but not anger, I never can show anger towards those I fervently love (unless I am in a passion!); but the thaught pained me that the moment you were seperated from me they should feel toward me as but they ought, which with your unit makes 10, but seperate is nothing. - I really do not Know what to do; my inmost desire urges me to talk & talk with you; it does me good; and yet, see how my letter fills. Before I send it away. I shall have your No 9, and of course shall desire to answer it; what room then is left? Pray add also this to the Letter of to Mr Busse: Viele die mich u Oskar kennen haben eine große Ähnlichkeit zwischen uns beiden bemerkt, ich selbst gehöre zu diesen. Der Knabe hat unter anderem eine lebendige Einbildungskraft u ziemlich scharfe Beobachtungsgabe in, daher ein gutes Gedächtnis für Eindrücke, Thatsachen u Dinge, aber auch ein schlechtes Gedächtnis für Namen u Zahlen mit mir gemein. Ich habe gegen diesen Mangel sehr thätig arbeiten müssen. Das mechanische Gedächtnis, wie es zuweilen genannt wird, ist aber von äußerster Wichtigkeit. Ich gebe zu, es ist nichts als ein Instrument, aber es ist von allen Instrumenten das allerwichtigste, welchen Lebensberuf wir auch ergreifen mögen, und von unvergleichlicher Wichtigkeit in allen Ländern, wo die kleinsten u größten Dinge öffentlich u mündlich verhandelt werden. Ich bitte Sie daher recht dringend, immerwährend die Stärkung seines Gedächtnisses für Namen, Zahlen u Worte – so daß er ganze Sentenzen in Prosa wiederholen kann u angeben kann wo u wann sie ∆ Gedächtnis hätte nie etwas in einem Parlament oder Congress oder auch nur in einem bedeutenden Town meeting, ausrichten können. Der erste Theil von Dr Tomlin’s Life of Pitt ist in dieser Hinsicht sehr wichtig.15 Wie tüchtig, ämsig, gründlich studirte dieser große Sohn des größeren Chatham!16 Ich bin überzeugt daß Sie diese Ergänzungen einem Vater verzeihen, der seinen Sohn brünstig liebt. - There, now see, what is left for No 9! This moment Stuart17 took leave. He starts to-morrow morning. Heigho! If I could leave Columbia, with a good berth before me, and a journey to you. O God! This moment, my Matty, 15 16 17

George Pretyman Tomlin, Memoir of the Life of the Right Honorable William Pitt, 2 vols. John Murray London 1821. Pitt the Younger. Prof. Isaac William Stuart, colleague at Columbia College, Columbia/SC.

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I have recieved a letter from N.Y. to Charleston, from Charleston to Branchville, and hence to Columbia will cost at the least $5, the whole $17.27. This is the very least. I donot mention this grumblingly, God forbid! I shall hug the box; I only mention this that you may fairly calculate it when you send it another box, which if you send one at all, I would strongly advice to send, if at all possible, direct to Charleston. The collector there, father to a student, has written me, that all shall pass in fairness, so the if he only Knows the contents. But I would decidedly not send sausages and the like. Brinkmann18 writes: wir haben so eben das Kästchen erhalten, welches übrigens kein Kästchen ist sondern eine große Kiste. What then are the contents? All was overhawled at the N.Y. Custom house. Oh my little drawings! Oh my conscience! I wish, my Matilda – donot scold at the waste of room by writing so often your beloved name, for I assure you it does my heart good to write: my dear, my beloved Matilda. You would write to me how much you have in that Polish stock, and also – how often have I not beg you to inquire, how it is with your Prussian stock which your dear father assigned to you as inheritance from your dear mother.19 I donot know even where it is, and we never have heard word of it since that time. Pray donot forget trifles, they become of importance if forgotten. I just sending $500 to N.Y. and made calculation of our enormous fortune. I pulled and stretched, as the shoe-maker pulls and drags his leather, but the last is too large, the scantly leather will not cover it. I repeat then write me in your next how much you have in the Polish loan, and how it is with Prussian Lottery stock [4] When I finished my last lines, to my Dec 18. 1839 ∆, I had no more place left to say more. I erase going to say, that riding from that old field I met with some very large herds or droves of hogs. You remember, the people lay in their winter stock. I was very much surprised to find these hogs so fat and round, although they had travelled so far: so I began a conversation with one of the drovers. I asked how they kept the animals so fat. “Keep them so? said he, why we make them so, we buy them lean in Kentucky and Tennesee and feed them high on the road, and make only from 5 to 7 miles (English miles you recollect) a day and before we arrive here the an creatures are fattened up, and good sterling flesh too. He then told me that he had been 32 days on the road from Kentucky; only think you see here is another instance. Why do our people here buy hogs; 18 19

Partner of the trading house Fryer, Dean? & Brinckmann, NYC. TNA PROB 11/1899/408 George Oppenheimer, last will of George Oppenheimer 1835.

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could we not raise them? can we not plant Indian corn to feed them? Why then give our money away? Because it is cheaper for us. If we plant cotton, sell it, and buy hogs for it, we get more from afield then what we would have if we were to plant corn; and the Kentucky farmer cannot plant cotton, or, even if he could, the his climate is not suited for this plant, but admirably suited for hogs. The longer you live my Oscar, and the more you will become acquainted with history you will find that this one of the great ord laws of God, by with he rules and perfects mankind. The saws He has given different produce soil, different climate, different produce to the various countries, created different metals in the bowels of the different countries, and yet has given to all men pretty much the same desires to possess and enjoy all these things, hence they must exchange with one another. The German wants pepper and cinnamom and sugar, and loves the indigo color, and coffee as much as the people where all these grow, how can he get them? He must send them his own goods. But suppose the West India people where the sugar grows donot want any German goods. Then the German must send his goods first where they are wanted, and than take the money or goods that are wanted in the W. Indies; or send them in vessels under other flags. But suppose the people can raise nothing worth exchanging, as the people of the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts? Then, if they are clever, they must go in search of something. The Nantucket people build Whalers, sail to the Pacific, to the coasts of Japan, catch whales and then take the oil to Bremen. The Germans want the oil, so they buy it, and the Nantucket people at last get what they want. Thus God makes one family of many nations of different tongues, teaches them that they want one another, that they ought to live in peace and good will, and not rob one another; they learn from one another their inventions and laws and learn to esteem their property even on the high seas. If however a people are entirely excluded, have nothing to give offer for exchange, they remain poor and ignorant as for instance the poor Esquimeaus.20 And yet, one of these days they may perhaps be induced to make oil of their seals, which are so plentiful with them and then the Americans or Europeans can exchange with them; than they will become better clothed and housed and fed, will not die so rapidly and may live hap more comfortably then now. And when I came and taught men that there is one living God for all men, and not different Gods for each tribe, commerce 20

Term for inuits; Immanuel Kant used it in lectures on North American geography, see Immanuel Kant’s physische Geographie. Auf Verlangen des Verfassers, aus seiner Handschrift herausgegeben und zum Theil bearbeitet von D. Friedrich Theodor Rink, zweyter Band, Königsberg bey Göbbels und Unzer 1802, p. 238.

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and exchange and good will among the nations was much easier, because they did no longer consider each foreign nation an ennemy and thus the Christian religion has done much toward making people mor comforted [cross-writing, 4] If you now go to the Elb and see the many vessels, some with flags of the United States which bring cotton and rice, and fur, others with the French flag which bring claret, and some with the English flag which bring tea from China, and some with the Russian flag which bring tallow and hemp, and some with Italian flags which bring oil and bonnetts you will Know what they come and for. All, all come and go to exchange, all, all there following a great commitment of God, who ordained that people should want want one another. But it is not only that nations shall want one another according to their different soil and clime and different angle in which the rays of his glorious sun falls upon the sand; in each nation again each man wants the other according to the the different dispositions and talents which God in infinite diversity has bestowen upon his children. Your teacher teaches you and other boys; but when he does this he cannot till the ground, yet he wants bread as much as the ∆ man, so he buys his bread from the latter who has bought the grain from the husband in ∆. But the peasant wants clothing so he buys it from the tailor ∆ and the tailor wants shoes, which he buys of the shoe-maker. Now your teacher and the husband man can follow the persuit alone, because they let other bake and now for the ∆ thus each does what he does better. And my boy that science teaches all about this great exchange is called Political Economy. Here my paper is again at an end. So ∆. [cross-writing, 2] There has been no scolding the negros I am sure this whole last month at least. This will please you. Everything goes on excellently. To be sure, I donot Know what a clever housewife might perhaps discover in the corners, but then I take good care not to look into them. Betsy21 carries on an enormous trade in apple tarts and while all the commerce is more than flor paying, and the rate of exchange between N.Y. and Philadelphia 8 pro cent, this woman excells Biddle, for her speculations thrive, while his have met with bad success. The reason is this: her speculations are founded upon the immediate want of the stomach, always the safest. Does she not far, far exceed her master? What do I make by a 21

Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

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years labor and the embodiment of life’s experience in a book? A few hundred dollars if the times are good, but she makes, I am sure, a hundred procent at the very least, and looses no interest upon the capital. Tell the following ­anecdote to your uncle, he will relish it. Our German butcher22 here, a wealthy man, went to the bank some years ago and said: What the Banks want to make 6 and seven purshent for nothing, when we laporing people are satisfied with von purshent? If I pay a sheep und sell the meat I am always satisfied if for one tollar I have paid I can get, in selling the meat two tollars sometimes I manage to ket two and at the highest 3 tollars, put to expect 6 and seven percent without doing anything is too pat. - Sunday Dec 22 Next Wednesday, my loved ones, is Christmass, and I shall be with you all day, I shall even calculate the adherement of time having already asked the professor of Mathematics how much ∆ the difference of time is, so that poor affection shall not be like a bomb fire in the time. I have but wait any longer for No 9. ∆ It is Sunday ∆ good passage in it I find; the first sentence of the second paragraph. If Oscar were ∆ I would ask him to remember it. The two other copies you will dispose of this one to Geheimen Rath Mittermaier of Heidelberg;23 the other to Herrn Adolf Goeschen [cross-writing, 3] zu Zell, Hanover; beide durch Perthes & Besser.24 Donot forget this, I beg you very much. I had a few lines from an old friend25 which warmed me through and through. I shall write you more about it in my next. My family now consists of Nausicaa, the horse; Timour, the terrier; Ever tick, the clock (the old woman is in my room) and the negroes. It always bothers me greatly that I could not give myself quietly up to study before lecturing for fear to miss the time. I dont hear the college bell. Now I always set the alarm of ever-tick for the precise recitation time, and than follow quietly my study, or your letters. And what a rattling the old woman makes! I consider this a very capital idea. And then when tiresome people remain too long, I throw a glance at Ever-tick, and she looks back as to say: “I understand you, they are 22 23 24 25

John Neuffer, German butcher in Columbia/SC. Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg. Zell= Celle. Alfred Graffunder had sent a letter to Lieber that reached him via three German shoemakers in Columbia/SC. Perhaps those shoemakers were H. Bruns, G. Eilhardt, and John Stork who owned a shop in Main Street between Plain and Taylor, see Julian Selby, Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscenes of Columbia, S.C., and Incidents Connected Therewith, Columbia, S.C. The R.L. Company 1905, p. 136, p. 196.

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rather long”, and sometimes the people do understand the exchange of our looks. Have I told you with what pleasure I have read my Book 6 of part II on the Representative, Political Instruction and Parliamentary Pledges?26 It is my best, as you remember perhaps having heard from me before. I entered into the whole chance of Representative Government. The feelings with which I read it 3 times, were delightful, that peculiar and great satisfaction which I feel in my inmost soul when I follow a good discriminate sharp yet lofty writer who boldly yet cautiously and successfully unravells some really intricate knot, was more when I read this, and hightened by the consciousness that I have done it. I would not say so to others, nor even to you without adding that the feeling is far, far from vanity. Oh, it is far deeper, far loftier, far truer – it is a feeling of inmost gratitude to God […] [cross-writing, 4] […] Observe what a blunder I made respecting this place of writing. I Kiss you all 9 times 9. FL Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Stamp faded + sealing wax Stamp Paris 31 Janv 40 Stamp Hamburg 5. Febr. 40 26 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

No. 33 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 18.12.1839 Included: copy of a letter of Wilhelm Keibel to Francis Lieber, Berlin 10.12.1839 THL Box 54 LI 5065, ALS, 4 pages All perfect in health! 18th Dec Although well aware, my dearest blessing that this will be but a poor apology for a letter, I mean nevertheless to let it go off today and to save my longer one which I now have in hand for the steamer going on the 1st of ­January and which you may yet receive earlier than these lines. Yesterday I sent your summer coat & some books on board the Franklin, nothing else with it for I was desired to send my parcel in an hour from the time I received notice. I believe it is of little account for the frost has set in again and I doubt very much whether the old box will get down the river at all. A long dear letter which Oscar has written to you from school I did not send in the box for I wish it to come quicker to you, although it is a double one, if I can only get it free to New York you will not mind the 50 cents. Oscarito was at home on sunday because he had been a good boy and his teacher wanted to reward him. I have put letters from Züllichau & Berlin in the box which is the same in which you sent the Encyclopedia. the box is marked F.L. # 1. - We are in great preparation for christmas running about all day long. It will be a delightful pleasure for our sweet children, but I cannot enjoy it for alas I feel your solitary situation too painfully. My own dear Frank forgive me for having left you; sometimes I feel as if I ought not to have been persuaded to do it, and yet was it not necessary for Oscar? If we are only once more united, and then if God grants us another situation and we can have our noble boy with us again, shall we not be happy then, and glad too that Oscar has thus had the means of acquiring German easily. It will be so, my dearest Frank, I can not believe it will be [2] otherwise, cheer up then my own dearest best friend, all will be well with us. There is no reason to suppose we should remain long at Columbia. We have waited long it is true, but every thing has an end and so must that Girard building,1 and your prospects if they were good before can not have decreased. Indeed your literary labours must have made you a still more valuable 1 Only in 1848, much later than expected Girard College, a boarding school in Philadelphia for orphans, boys from white poor families was opened. In his will Stephen Girard who had died in 1831 had donated $2 Mill. of his ca. $7,5 Mill. for the endowment of the future Girard College; the construction of the college began in 1833.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_035

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a­ cquisition in the opinion of the trustees than you even were when first you offered yourself. Deferred hope sickens one, and thus we have lost our sanguin temper, yet I can see no actual reason for not depending as much on that prospect as at first. We will live so comfortably yet on the banks of the Delaware,2 and we will keep our dear boys about us for to seperate from them one after the other that is more than I think we can cheerfully bear. For it is not an unutterable delight to have sweet children, and to watch them as their minds expand and to foster that tender affection which they cannot feel towards strangers as for their own parents? – (Afternoon) I have just returned from an other shopping with sister Caroline, Harriet took a Droschke this morning to went about by herself, for she prefers that no one should know what she has for any of us. All the toys are now purchased and we shall soon chuck of the tree which will be decorated magnificently. I will let Oscar give you a description for I am sure it will be a very striking event in his life, and what will the little ones say? Mrs Busse has just now been to see me, and speaks of Oscar very kindly, he is well and cheerful, they are going to bring him to town in the course of the week to see the Dom.3 She said he behaved so sweetly last sunday when they had promised he could come to see me if they could find some one to go with him. He was of course very anxious yet he said to Mrs Busse “Ich wünsche nun sehr zu Mutter zu gehen denn ich mag doch lieber bei ihr seyn als bei dir, doch wenn nichts daraus wird, will ich doch ein guter Junge seyn und nicht weinen. However one of the tutors brought him to me and he then staid till Monday morning. God bless him, he is a fine fellow, an image of his noble father. – The little ones have all been riding on Uncle Jacobs foot, he could not well lift Hamilton, he being so stout, but when he saw how the poor fellow took it to heart he made an extra exertion for his sake and Hammy had the longest ride after all! Du siehst wie ein kleiner Prinz aus sagt Uncle4 von Norman, das Äußere macht doch einen gar zu großen Eindruck auf mich. Ja leider Gottes, sagt Ludwig5 der auch grade hier war das ist dein größter Fehler! Übrigens möchte ich doch das Herz sehen welches Normans kleine Galloyade widerstehen kann wenn er so fliegend und lächelnd wie ein kleiner Geon länger ins Zimmer und den Gruß freundlich lächelnd in die Arme kömmt. Er lag halb schlafend auf meinem Schoß und horchte einem Kanarienvögelchen zu welches wir

2 Philadelphia on the Delaware was one of the large cities esteemed by Francis and Mathilde Lieber; for many years they hoped to move back to the City of brotherly love. 3 Traditional Christmas fair in Hamburg/St. Pauli. 4 Jacob Oppenheimer. 5 Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, son of Jacob Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber.

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[3] im Zimmer haben. Mama how sweet the little bird sings, I cant sing so. The bird dont wear a pinnafore like me, that would look too funny. So plappert er in einem fort. Caroline nennt er South Carolina. Adela findet ihn wunderschön. Weinachtsabend wirst du gewiß an unsere Freude denken aber wir haben unser Fest erst am 2ten Weinachtstag weil die Jungen am Weinachtsabend in Eppendorf sind und dort beschenkt werden – Hamilton ist dick u boons, hat Norman so lieb, daß er immer mit weint wenn man Norman bestraft und ist diese Strafe* *auch für irgend eine Unart die Norman gegen ihn selbst gethan hat, Hammy hat ein sehr weiches liebevolles Herz und wie er mich liebt das ist wirklich merkwürdig. Wenn alle andern Kinder ausgehen zu irgend einem Freunde so bleibt er lieber bei [4] mir zu Hause. There is nothing like his own Mama. Er hat nun eine Menge deutscher Benennungen der Sachen die ihn umgeben die er so benuzt, give me my penal, Buch Tafel, dont go so near the Ofen, u.s.w. Ich muß das wohl als Anfang betrachten. Dont be angry my dearest Frank at this short letter; I have almost finished a long sheet which goes by the way of England, but alas for the new regulation they mean to way my long sheets in England too. We all love you most dearly my own Frank, so dearly that I might feel jealous of Carry. You have heard I suppose of Theodore Ahrens engagement, what say the boys6 to it. Oh I my Frank dearest x [cross-writing, 1] x best. God support you, bless you make you happy. There is a loving heart which beats for you, loving arms which would press your lips that would drew the breath from yours. All your own and you shall have them again. I am so glad people think me looking young for your sake. Adela sends her particular love to you. So does Uncle Jacob. Matilde I have not seen this week. Her daughter7 is very ugly. Ever your Matilda 6 The brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Theodore, Gustavus, and James were partners of their Hamburg cousin Theodore Ahrens in Ponce/Puerto Rico. 7 Mathilde Benecke and her daughter Anna.

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[3] Lieber Franz. Berlin den 10 Dec. 1839 Dein lieber Brief vom 8/21 März t. liegt noch unbeantwortet vor mir, das kommt daher, weil ich vermuthete, du würdest deine Mathilda diesen Sommer nach Europa begleiten, und ich ihn dir ja mündlich hätte beantworten können. Wir dürfen dich doch im nächsten Jahr erwarten? Wie würde deine Ankunft überall für eine Freude machen! Deine Mathilda mit den Kindern ist nun in Hbg Esplanadestr 8. Was sehnen wir uns sie wiederzusehen und deine Kleinen kennen zu lernen! Dein Oskar ist in einem Alter mit meinem Louis,8 der aber sehr an Skropheln gelitten hat, und noch leidet, er wird an Körper und Geist deinem Oskar sehr nachstehn! Wir haben deiner Mathilda angetragen wenn sie im Frühjahr nach Berlin kömmt, bei uns zu wohnen wie glücklich würde es uns machen wenn sie es annähme! Wird doch leider ihr Aufenthalt nur kurze Zeit lang hier sein, und sie wohl größtentheils in Züllichau bleiben! Mein Gustav, der sich in Hbg befindet hat deine liebe Frau mehrmals besucht; in Mathilde Beneke die sich nach Hbg übergesiedelt hat, wird sie eine herzliche Freundin besitzen. Du fragst nach Eugenia Hitzig. Ich sehe sie fast nicht doch bin ich ihr neulich mit 2 Kindern begegnet; sie geht fast nie aus, ohne einige ihrer Kleinen davon sie 5 oder 6 hat mitzunehmen Ich redete sie an wir erkanten uns auch wieder, freilich hat sie sich sehr verändert, u die früher so blühende Jugend ist längst von ihr geschieden! Denn, sagt Shakespeare: Mädchen sind wie Rosen, kaum entfaltet ist ihre schönste Blüthe schon veraltet! Sie wird aber als eine sehr liebenswürdige Gattin u Mutter geschildert. Meine Frau, meine Kinder, befinden sich wohl, mein Vater hat der Tod im vor. Jahr leider abgefordert meine Mutter ist rüstig u munter.9 Mein ältester Sohn Wilhelm, ist Student und wird nächsten Sommer nach Heidelberg gehn.10 Gustav11 kömt zu Ostern von Hbg zurück, soll dann mit seinem Bruder die Schweiz u einen Theil von Italien12 sehen & dann in mein Geschäft eintreten. Tausendmal erwidert meine Frau13 deinen herzlichen Gruß, sie würde selbst schreiben wenn sie nicht an den Augen litte, wodurch ihr das Schreiben beschwerlich wird. Unser 8 9 10 11 12 13

Louis/Ludwig Keibel. Carl Gottlieb Keibel and his wife Henriette Sophie née Knoblauch. Martin Heinrich Wilhelm Keibel. Gustav Keibel. Wilhelm und Gustav Keibel. Auguste Luise Keibel née Caplick.

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[4] König14 ist in diesem Jahr 69 Jahr alt geworden, der König von Schweden15 aber ist der Nestor der Könige und wird im Jan. 1840 76 Jahr. Friedrich ­Wilhelm III wird körperlich schon recht verfallen und geht voraus gebeugt. Vor etwa 4 Monat verlor er den Kämmerer Timm, 80 Jahr alt, was ihn schmerzlich berührte, da er sich sehr an ihn gewöhnt hatte. Timm hinterläßt ein Vermögen von nahe einer halben Million.16 Der älteste Herr, der jetzt in Berlin lebt ist der Ex Präsedes des Oberappellationssenats, Hr Grottmann, ein Greis von 107 Jahren! Minister haben wir jetzt v. Rochow, v. Alvensleben, u. Mühler, rüstige, u besonders die beiden letzten tüchtige Männer; Mühler verdankt man das neue Gesetz über den Wegezoll u hannoverschen Process, welches dem Lande zu ungemeiner Wohlthat gereicht.17 Die Stadt feierte vor Kurzem den 2 Nov, ein schönes Fest, das der Einführung der Reformation in der Mark Brandenburg,18 sie hat darauf eine Medaille schlagen lassen, die ist der Sache würdig wie sich Knoblauch19 nicht vorbehalten hätte, dies zu thun. Vom König20 erhielt sie als Andenken einen Kristallpokal, dessen dunkler Griff aus einem silbernen Modell der Ankunft Gustav Adolphs bei Lützen21 besteht, auf dem Pokal selbst befindet sich ein Gemälde der Landung Gustav Adolfs22 in Pommern. Wir haben nun auch hier Eisenbahnen, u nach Potsdam fährt man nicht mehr anders. Der König hat seinen eigenen Wagen u benutzt die Bahn fast 2 mal

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22

King Friedrich Wilhelm III. of Prussia. Swedish King Karl XIV. Johann, born as Jean Baptiste Bernadotte. Geheimer Kämmerer C. Timm. Gustav von Rochow; Albrecht Graf von Alvensleben; Heinrich Gottlob von Mühler. 300. Anniversary of the Reformation November 2/3, 1839 in the Mark Brandenburg; several coins were minted to celebrate the occasion. Carl Knoblauch, Berlin. King Friedrich Wilhelm III. of Prussia. Battle of Lützen near Leipsic/Saxony, one of the crucial battles of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), November 6/16, 1632 between the Protestant troups of Swedish King Gustav II. Adolf and the Catholic troups of the German Emperor lead by Albrecht von Wallenstein. During the fight charismatic Gustav II. Adolf was killed. Gustav II. Adolf, King of Sweden 1611–1632, Wasa dynasty, important participant in international politics during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648); Keibel related to Gustav Adolf’s embarkment with an army of 13.000 men at Peenemünde, Pomerania July 6, 1630 that started the Swedish involvement in the German war on the side of German Protestants versus the Catholic troups of the imperial general Albrecht Wenzel von Wallenstein.

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wöchentlich.23 Bahnen nach Leipzig u Stettin sind theils begonnen, theils im Werke. Für die Potsdam Bahn sind 2 Locomotiven von Norris in Philadelphia erschrieben worden, die sich vortrefflich bewähren.24 Die religiösen Wirren währen noch fort, und haben durch die Abführung des Erzbischofs Dunin25 nach Colberg nur noch zugenommen. Görres Athanasius26 besteht aus nichts als Redemeteden ohne Werth und voller Unsinn! Von deinen hiesigen Bekannten vegetirt Eifler immer noch so fort trotz seines verfallenen Körpers. Prediger Baur27 in Belzig leidet leider an schwerem Gehör, was ihn recht verstimmt und unglücklich macht. Ulrich ist Land u. Stadtgerichtsdirector in Calbe a d Saale.28 Lebe wohl, lieber Franz wenn du wieder schreibst so schreibe nicht grad über mit Roth durch Schwarz, oder per Schwarz durch Schwarz, die Briefe wurden dadurch fast völlig unlesbar. Dein dich liebender Freund Keibel29 Ueber Niebuhr ist ein interessantes Werk erschienen Lebensberichte über B G Niebuhr aus Briefen desselben u aus Erinerungen einer seiner engsten Freunde. Mit Niebuhrs Bildnis Hamburg bei Perthes 183830

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October 10, 1838 opening of the railroad Potsdam-Berlin attended by the Prussian crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm; his father, King Friedrich Wilhelm III. first travelled on the Berlin-Potsdam railroad May 8, 1839. Norris Locomotive Works, Philadelphia/PA, founded by William Norris and Stephen H. Long, dominant locomotive producer between 1832–1866 selling engines to Europe and South America. These comments relate to the so-called Kölner Wirren, when archbishop of Gnesen and Posen Martin von Dunin because of his loyalty to pope Pius VIII. was put to prison in Colberg by Prussian authorities in 1839. Athanasius, by Joseph Görres, Regensburg Verlag von G. Joseph Manz 1838, in 1837/38 Johann Joseph Görres as stout Catholic teacher and journalist had attacked the Prussian politics against Catholic faith and institutions; while he was heavily critised in Berlin, Bavarian King Ludwig I. awarded him a title of nobility. Albert Baur, cousin and childhood friend of Franz Lieber. Turner friend of Franz Lieber. Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin. Dora Hensler, ed. Lebensnachrichten über Barthold Georg Niebuhr aus Briefen desselben und aus Erinnerungen einiger seiner nächsten Freunde, 3 vols., Verlag von Friedrich Perthes Hamburg 1838–39. In 1854 the English translation was published: Dora Hensler, ed., Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr, 3 vols. New York 1854. Dora Hensler was an aunt of Barthold Georg Niebuhrs second wife and his lifelong confidante.

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Single Via Havre Mr Francis Lieber Doctor Francis Lieber Columbia S. Carolina Columbia South Caroline Messrs Heckscher, Costers & Matfeld New York Stamp Hamburg 17 Dez Stamp New York MAR 19

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No. 34 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 24.12.-28.12.1839 Included: copy of a letter of Alfred Graffunder to Francis Lieber, Erfurt Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Alfred Graffunder USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages No XVIII. Christmass eve. My aine Lassie, Now is the time, this is the hour when the cheeks of my lads glow, and a mother’s heart beats. Now do the boys stand and stare half stupified. God bless ‘em; God bless Ye all! I went pedantically to work, as beseeming a grave professor. The goodly city of Hamburg is situate, longitude east 9° 58' 37“ and our excellent town 87° West of Greenwich, which makes a difference of 97°; each degree making a difference of 4 minutes, the sun, you see peeps into my window about 6 hours 28 minutes after it has shed its beams upon your bonnie face. My clock says: “Frank its one o’clock.” Upon my soul, said I, why did you not tell me sooner; it’s nearly eight o’clock in ­Hamburg. I am afraid the children are rushing in already; God heavens, and I here yet with my book in the hand. Let me hurry, or I miss that gladsome sight, comfortable to “any-body”, but right cordiallike to a man stabbled alone like a horse! And here I am, I hope yet in time. Good God, what a sight! What happiness and overflowing hearts! Go on! Go on! I donot disturb ye - I only stand modestly, looking on from afar. Oh my bairns, oh my wife, oh my sisters, oh my friends, oh my country – Do not scold me for this tear; I did not mean you to see it; only, sometimes the stoutest heart cannot help letting out a drop or two; but I sha’nt cry; I’ve dried it already, though some how or other, I was obliged to blow the nose a good deal; dont talk to me just now, for I know I can keep my tears when silent, but when I begin to talk they’ll flow like a mill-pond. My boy, my first-born, did do you think of your father? My Hammy, my Norry, never forget him, for he loves you. Oh, my Matilda! Ah - # Its half past 4 o’clock. I just come from dinner. ‘Tis 11 o’clock with you; the children sleep; my Oscar I suppose in your room; could I kiss his blessed face. But you are up yet; you talk with your sisters; you mention me; you think of me. I dont Know Matilda, but I cant go on to-day. Before I broke off because the hand could not hold the pen and the kerchief at the same time, and now again I cannot see the letters very clear. Thus when writing the above I was obliged to break off. So I went to the stable to have a talk with Nausicaa. She has an endearing way of laying her head on my shoulder, and seeing with her large black eye into mine, while I pat her neck. “You look sad” said she. “I am” said I. “You might take a ride” said she; “So I will” said I. “It will do you

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_036

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good” said she; “I think so myself” said I. And I rode – and glorious were the heavens; a bracing air, yet not keen; waring, but not cutting, on the contrary, cheering, tightening one’ nerves. The sun shone fine; now and then a fleeting cloud covered it just long enough to make one feel the better and more gratefully the gentle ray and balmy air. I rode nearly 3 hours; Nausicaa tripping and frisking and neighing, and I thinking of you. I suppose Nassy became jealous; at any rate she lead me against a branch which gave me a fine slap in the face, so did I dream of you. I came home; I dined, and I am here again, but I cannot work – I’ve tried it; I cannot, the lads are in my brains and have completely taken possession of it. - the rogues. - I hope you have enjoyed Christmass, and your dear sisters too. - I mean to have a grand dinner to-morrow; I had turkey fattening for the occasion, because I know it would give me pleasure to write it, because it would give you pleasure to hear it, It shall be “a most sumptuous” dinner, as the newspaper writers say when cold pig was served up. - Christmass day I was in hopes dear No 9 would arrive to-day as a little Chrismass present; for though I have a later letter, that folio one by steam packet, it should have been greeted with full affection. But Elsa came emptyhanded from the post office. Perhaps it will arrive as a new-year’s gift. Come when it may, it is always dearly welcome. I went to bed last night, or rather this morning, at 2 o’clock, So I wished you good morning before I went to bed; for you were then sitting at the breakfast table. Had you a brezel? I have been born and bread with the idea of an orthodox large brezel inseparable from Christs Advent. How I used to pick the big raisons. I had made yesterday the plan for a great dinner – a Turkey, my broccoli-soup (for our winter cabbage is a broccoli, and a very fine one too), with sundry other dishes. I sent Fuller to bring me Haskil Rhett, the student you Know I like best, and meant to ask him to share Christmass dinner with me, and finish a bottle of Hock. But Rhett was out of town, and this morning I received, in bed, a note fro the Rev. neighbor to dine with him. I dislike it much, for, after all, there is no use in shaking oil and water, they will not unite, nor is there any use in a dinner or contact, once a year. Still I thaught it unkind not to accept it, and must go. I’d rather stayed at home and dreamt and mused and thaught of ye, my own, and of the kind sisters, and how yo they will have bustled and managed to make Christmass as Christmasslike as possible. What did Oscar say of the flag? Of course, he will take it out to Mr Busse, and hang it over his bed. A propos, you have never told me whether the dear boy has gotten over his nervousness. Let Mr. Busse not press that point over much, for we ought to consider his fall and excitability – altogether. I sent my last through Congress. Have the bairns learnt

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[2] learnt my songs? Has Rebecca now learnt how much she is attached to Oscar, or whether she is attached to that boy at all, since he is separated from home. I wish I had a plan of Hamb. to see where Einbüttel lies. One of the German shoe makers recieved a cargo of kid and kin, with wife and all that furniture hout tout I Kiss you – by a vessel from Bremen. I wish the box had come by it. In that case I should have it now. I suppose the shirts will best come with you. These things cost 50 per cent duty if sent as the last. I hope Hart is better. Let her pass next winter with us; it will do her good; and she shall have in me, I promise, all three brothers and a brother in law at once. That you get stouter again has been a charming news to me; at the same time however, I think with sadness, that care, clime and husband will make you thin again, except that the latter may perhaps make you stouter somewhere. But ne, if ever kind husband existed that one shall Frank be to Matilda, his own, his best, his Lady Russel, his Jeannie Deans, his Juliet Capulet. Try it but once more; this winter loneliness has wraught deeply deeply in my soul; believe it, if ever you believed your husband – he has taken a frequent, wide and comprehensive view of his life from the pinacle of his solitude – a solemn Alp from which he viewed a vast extent of land and where he prayed to his God above, lonely, fervent, frequent. Forgive me, my forgiving Jeannie. “If you can make easier your mind by thinking sae hardly of me, I would not ask you to think otherwise,” she said to Reuben Butler. Good, gracious God I said, when I lately read it again, can angel speak to angel more angelic language! Yet is it more than Matilda could say a thousand times? It is no more. Sacred then by thy name to my riotous soul. Good bye, you calm, discret and loving Jeannie. I must taste God’s own blessed air before I go to the parsons dinner. He has given us a lovely blue sky and warm sun for Christmass. Good bye my boys, my sisters, my wife, good bye. I wish I could talk a bit of you with Nausicaa; she is gentle and sprightly and of the kindest temper possible, no resentment in her, and she would like, the good creature, to here of her mistress, in whome there is neither guilt, nor resentment, nor selfishness nor unkindness. Good, Good you are – so good! # I wear this whole winter th Caroline’s waist-coat. Good old thing! - I mean the waist-coat. - Zweiter Feiertag, wie es in deutsch heißt. My Matilda I beg you to let Oscar learn by heart Jeannie Dean’s address to queen Caroline, beginning “If it like you Madam”, after having briefly explained the outrage of the Porteus mob and the hardship of Effie’s sentence. That speech of Jeannie’s is one of those passages in the whole man’s literature, which are like virgin ore, clear, pure gold in a lump. It is a passage worth to be laid up in Youth that it may be often and readily remembered in advanced age. It is one of Scott’s passages fit

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to stand in our minds as a monument of his, that when the thaughts happen to pass by, they remember him with gratitude. I have held it to be a very good thing – at least it is an excellent thing for my mind, and Oscar ought to remember it for his future life – to remember an author, a great character, a friend, a residence in some place with a distinct passage, deed, trait or peculiarity, in which their individuality concentrates, or which calls them up in our mind distinctly, definitely, individually. Indeed, my mind does always this word unbidden, and often it tacks something unpleasant of the kind to a name, and I have to struggle might and main, to sever it. Now this passage, upon the whole, well worth to serve as a little square stone with the name Walter Scott upon it. For not only is the sense beautiful, the pathos high and grand, Oscar, in advancing in criticism will find that this passage is be of high merit as a piece of art. Jeannie might have spoken very differently, but for the sober, most Scottish Scotsh girl, calm, sedate, yet full of love, it is just what it ought to be, and cuts the deeper. I make no doubt that hundreds of other authors would, in a similar case, have shown their skill in making in this instance Jeannie rise above her own Scotticism, above her soberness, and would have given either a far more empassioned speech or at least scene, supporting it by various demonstrations of more violent agitation. I dare say, it might have been worked up very well, in this way; still, thus as Scott gave it, it is truer, better and superior and, withal, more like Scott, for of all that have witted their lips at the Heliconian fountain,1 the calmest, aye the sobrest is, I believe Scott. - Oh I wish I could send you letters on the “endless” sheets they make now in the paper mills. Here I have filled my two sides already with nothing. I am ashamed! - I did dine yesterday at Elliotts. He has the engraving of Lord Russell’s trial with Lady Rachel, lately printed in England.2 She is indeed not concieved as I shall should wish her – she is not in character in my opinion, yet this is an engraving I shall one of these days have in our parlour. I will. [3] Dec. 27. Mrs Elliot sent me yester-day mince pye, and I had Pelham to dinner with me. We drank your and the boy’s health in Champ.3 Last night - I know not why - I dreamt for several times of you all, and four times I awoke. The first 1 Fountains of Ascra in Mount Helicon, Greece, i.e. the Heliconian fountains, seat of the Muses that inspired the authors of Greek mythology and Hesiod. 2 The Trial of William, Lord Russell 1683, engraved by John Bromley, in: The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Science, etc. London 1828, p. 236. 3 Champagne.

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dream was very ugly. We were living in a large hotel; I in a room far from yours. I was ill with my foot, and for 3 days I heard nothing from you; at last I hobbled out, and could not get nearer to you all than a corridor which remained between us; at each end were glass doors, through which I looked. I saw Oscar at the gla glass door of your room, in most pitiously crying for me, and when I called, whether I might not come and see you, he beckoned with his head a hundred times. I have not yet forgotten that dear, pitous face. Norr Hammy was standing on a chair, with his white trousers, being dressed by Rebecca, who, when called after me, cried no, no! She was dressed à la Colombie mode de l’êté. Norry at last got out and came to kiss me, but the passes of the door next to me remained between us. I felt the hardship of not being able to get a warm kiss. The worst figure, I am sorry to say, you, my darky, played. You were all the time standing near your washing table brushing your nails, your back towards me, and when I asked why you had not come to see me, you said, without turning, Oh that negro girl braught so stupid and confused a message. I cried with Oscar, and when I awoke, I recovered my recollection but gradually; first I found I was in Columbia, and called for you, to tell you the dream, at length I found all reality, my bedroom “as it is”. - But in another dream I kissed you, I embraced you, I enjoyed you. I passed a great part of the night awake partly owing to the immense wind we had and the old window shutter of Elliot’s, you recollect – clap – tap – clap – tap. If one must dream, one might as well dream more agreably as the first one. That toren shift of Rebecca’s was actually seen in the dream. - Your dear Number 9 or Neinkin, as Matilda Benecke would say, I warrant, has not yet arrived. We have had most desastrous storms in ­Charleston, and New-England. Many, many bodies have been drifted on shore; a great many vessels in the harbors were lost, even with their crew. That you may understand the following letter to Graffunder, I must tell you here, that one of the German shoe-makers lately gave me the following slip. “An Franz Lieber, ich grüße von ganzem Herzen. Von Zeit zu Zeit erscheinst du literarischer Weise in unseren Zeitungen, u das lese ich dann immer meiner Frau vor. Ich habe einen großen Jubel davon daß deutsche Wissenschaft sich durch dich verpflanzt. Erhalte ich auf diesen Zettel Nachricht von deiner Hand zum Zeichen daß kein Irrthum in der Person, was kaum möglich, so schreibe ich mehr u beantworte deine Fragen. G. Graffunder. Erfurt 2/4 39. I beg you my Matilda, to copy the following, and to direct it to Herrn GhRegierung = u. Schulrath A. Graffunder, Erfurt.4 Ich denke mir nehmlich daß dir der Brief 4 Alfred Graffunder.

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nicht ohne Interesse sein wird. “Mein lieber Freund, tausend dank daß ich dich noch so nennen kann. In diesem Orte sind drei deutsche Schuster,5 treffliche Arbeiter und gute Sänger. Oft gehe ich zu ihnen hinein u laß mir etwas vorsingen, u ziehe dann manchmal heiter, oft traurig gestimmt wieder ab. Neulich, als ich mir einen Sang zu holen zu diesem Jüngern des Orpheus u Erispie ging, holte der eine aus dem Laden des niedrigen Schustertisches deinen Zettel. Ich traute meinen Augen kaum. Der Zettel erfreute mich durch und durch. Ich lief nach Hause, suchte nahm mein Tagebuch von Berlin 1826 hervor; es endet mit dem Sonett, das du mir sandtest, in Antwort auf eins von mir, beide beziehen sich auf ein Gespräch über die Trauer deutscher Poesie; daß der Grichische, Englische Dichter durch ihre Geschichte erfreut werden konnten, daß deutsche vaterländische Poesie melancholisch sei, u leider guten Grund hat es zu sein. Erinnerst du dich noch? Dein Sonett ist viel besser als meins. Nie hatte ich wieder von dir gehört; nun auf einmal finde ich daß du mich nicht vergessen dann erinnern sich ja auch vielleicht andre noch meiner! Mein lieber Graffunder, ich habe zuweilen an dich innig gedacht, aber dein Bild wie das so mancher war in einem verlassen Garten, mit die schönsten Weinranken sind untergepflügt, es sieht wüst, verlassen, zerrüttet aus. Viel das schön hätte emporwachsen können ist abgefroren. Denke dir denn wie mich dieser plözliche Gruß ergriff. Ich hatte am Nachmittag über Römische Geschichte zu lesen, aber ich konnte nicht; ich sprach, Gott weiß worüber, aber warm u fliessend. Die Stunde war abgelaufen ehe ich mich versah. der Ausdruck daß du Jubel an der Erwähnung meines Namens hast, oder daran daß ich deutsche Wissenschaft verpflanzen helfe, ist recht wie du. Ich danke dir. Da du nun Theil an meinen Arbeiten nimmst so will ich dir etwas von meiner lezten erzählen – meine Politische Ethik, dem Werke das ich mit meiner Seele geschrieben.6 Du erinnerst dich wohl noch daß Italien einen tiefen Eindruck auf mich gemacht hat. Nicht blos seine Herrlichkeit, seine Kunst, sein Himmel, sein Rom; Italien mit Rom u Niebuhr,7 u dem werkthätigen Leben seines Mittelalters goß mir lebendige Anschauung mancher u hoher Art in die Seele; es belebte Samenkörner in mir; es ließ Spuren. Sonderbar genug, wenn ich das jezige Italien bedenke, aber so ists, daß Bürgerthum, jetzt eins der lebendigen Flammen meines Geistes, durch meine Seele amalgamiert hatten – Dante u Macchiavelli. Nicht 5 H. Bruns, G. Eilhardt, and John Stork who owned a shop in Columbias Main Street between Plain and Taylor, see Julian Selby, Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscenes of Columbia, S.C., and Incidents Connected Therewith, Columbia, S.C. The R.L. Company 1905, p. 136, p. 196. 6 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 7 Barthold Georg Niebuhr.

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lange nach meiner Ankunft in Amerika, nachdem ich durch England vorbereitet, das überaus lebendige, zuweilen fieberhaft gereizte Bürgerleben hier zu durchdringen anfing, schwebte mir ein Gedanke vor “den Bürger” wie Macchiavelli seinen Fürsten zu schreiben. Ich finde die Spuren noch in meinem Tagebuche. Der Gedanke aber war nicht klar. Klarer stieg es auf in meiner Seele als ich über Absolutismus und Rechtsfreiheit nachdachte. Mir wurden demokratischer und monarchischer Absolutismus klar. Story, einer der Oberbundesrichter u ein warmer Freund von mir verlangte meine Gedanken auf Papier. Ich dachte weiter. Ich fand die moralische Haltlosigkeit im ganzen Bereich der Politik, unter u innerhalb des Gesezes. Der Gedanke das Bürgerthum der Freiheit, die Moral der Freiheit zu schreiben zeigte sich. Immer noch aber war es nichts ganz bestimmtes Klares. Ich dachte es würde etwa 80 Seiten messen. Zulezt entfaltete sich der helle Gedanke der Politischen Ethik in mir, nicht der Ethik die den Grund zur Politik legt, sondern der Ethik die absolut nothwendig ist um dem, was die Politik als Wissenschaft feststellt, Leben zu geben. Ich faßte Muth Landmarken u bujen in der immer hin u her wallenden Fluth aufzufinden. Ich schnitt ein neues Segment aus dem Kreise des Wissens aus. Es entfaltete sich weiter u weiter. Ich dachte einen kleinen Band zu geben. Bald aber fand ich, daß ich nothwendigerweise, um klar zu sein, manches über den Staat als Einleitung sagen mußte; dann zeigte sich daß zur Einleitung, zu diesem, ich manche Bemerkung über das ethische Wesen des Menschen machen mußte; kurz, die Einleitung, die etwa 40 Seiten stark sein sollte, wurde mein erster Band, fast gänzlich mit “dem Staat” beschäftigt. Die Politische Ethik selbst bildet den 2ten Band, 700 Seiten stark, so eben erschienen.8 Wenn ich nun dies Buch betrachte so belebt mich trotz seiner Mangel, davon ich selbst manche sehe, eine große u heilige Freude, denn ich sage es leise ich habe durch dieses Buch meine Individualität als ein Glied an die große Kette der Entwicklung der weißen Rasse gereiht. Mancher hätte ein besseres Buch schreiben können; niemand als ich konnte grade dieses schr­eiben; niemand der nicht mit seiner Muttermilch den deutschen Drang eingesogen Organisches unter dem Gegebenen u Bemerkten zu finden, niemand der nicht das erhaben brittische Bürgerthum mit eignen Augen gesehen u theilnehmend am ∆ in seiner wunderbaren Bethätigung in America mit durchlebt hat, niemand der nicht die Monarchie u Republik aus dem wirklichen Leben u durch dieses aus der Geschichte kennt, hätte grade dieses Werk hervorbringen können. In ihm muß Deutschland u Amerika, u Griechenland 8 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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[4] und Italien mit Rom u Niebuhr9 sein, muß England sein, muß 1815 u Recht ∆ u Liebe, muß mein Weib u meine Knaben sein, Gefängniß u Kunstgenuß, muß Kant u Macchiavelli u Dante u Shakespeare u wohl auch Göthe sein, mein Traum u mein Wachen, muß Frankreich u selbst Westindien sein. Ich fir weiß sehr wohl, mein lieber Graffunder, daß tausende mit Schönhebenen Geiste hätten schreiben können; nie aber hat ein Schriftsteller gewaltsam von seiner Seele gedrängt werden können sein Buch zu gebären, […] selten, ich darf es wohl zufügen, hat ein Autor beständiger Gott u heilige Sache, in der nur ein Priester schreibt, vor Augen gehabt. So daß du die Genesis meines Werkes, du bist der Erste dem ich sie gegeben u bleibst vielleicht der lezte. – Während ich dieses schrieb erhielt ich zwei Briefe, einen von Detroit in Michigan, in dem ich aufgefordert wurde meine Bemerkungen u Vorschläge zu einem College, welches dieser junge Staat in 1840 errichten will, mitzutheilen;10 im andren Briefe erhielt ich Nachricht über die Ankunft einer Kiste Bücher von Hamburg in Charleston. So siehst besteht wenigstens ein kleiner Zusammenhang durch mich zwischen 2 großen u entfernten Enden. Du sagst du willst alle Fragen beantworten. Du bist doch noch ein tüchtiger Kerl, so deinen Briefwechsel zu beginnen. O ja, antworte alle! Welche? fragst du. Ich erwiedere alle die du dir nur denken kannst, u noch weit mehr! Was machen Blancs. Erinnerst du dich noch wie die kleine Paulina11 mir schrieb: Sie sind ein gutter Mensch”? Das hat mir so oft noch wohlgethan und mich angewärmt. Meine Frau – ich wünsche du, gerade du, kenntest sie – ist mit meinen 3 Knaben – Jungen die sich gewaschen haben, auf einem Besuch in Hamburg. Sonderbar, Mathilde Benecke, von der du dich vielleicht noch erinnerst daß ich fürchterlich in sie verliebt war als ich dich in Berlin kannte – ist auch da. Meine Mathilda, das ist meine Frau, u sie lieben sich sehr. Hast du Kinder? Obschon ich deine Frau nicht kenne, so grüße ich sie herzlich; du sprachst fast nie von ihr, aber warst sehr glühend verliebt! Ich möchte wohl zu meiner eignen Bestätigung von einem lebendigen Philologen, könnte ich von Böckh!, eine Antwort auf diese wenigen 9 10 11

Barthold Georg Niebuhr. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor/Mich. Paulina Blanc had lived in Berlin’s Breite Strasse, the home of the Lieber family where Graffunder as well as Lieber had met her. She was a member of the Huguenot family Blanc whose members earned their living by producing and selling silk. In 1829 Pauline Blanc had married the theologian Karl Friedrich August Schirmer a friend of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

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haben: Kennst du das ganze Alterthum, die preparatory meeting, caucus, party meeting, kurz diese extra constitutionable, nicht ∆ eine da allerrüstigsten flammte neuer, repräsentative Freiheit, durchaus nicht. Ich kenne kein Beispiel, u kanns mir nicht denken, weil alle antiken formierten Staaten Städte=Staten waren, oder diesem Typus nothwendig folgten. ­Zweitens: Waren die eigentliche Eommisten den alten unbekannt? Ich sage ja; aber ich möchte doch einen Philologen hören. Die πgóßouvo der Ionier waren keine Eommisten ∆ mehr disputierte, wenn wie mir (Herod. VI, 7) scheint. Wenn ich so treffliche Worte wie Böckh’s Staatshaushalt der Ath.12 oder Zittmann’s Staatsref. der Griechen lese, so muß ich immer denken wie treffende Fragen ich, mit activem politischen Volkswesen bekannt, ihnen machen könnte, u sie könnten gewiß manche beantworten. Da, kannte ich Böckh besser so würde ich ihm gewiß einige Fragen senden, u ich bin überzeugt es müsste ihn freuen seine Aufmerksamkeit auf neue Punkte gerichtet zu sehen. Ich schickte dies etwas eines Briefes meiner Frau, die es abschreiben wird – meines Weib! Wenn du mir schreibst so schreibe an Francis Lieber Esq, care of Messrs Heckscher, Coster & Matfeld, New York, darunter Aux Etats Unis. Der Brief geht über Havre, du musst aber bis Havre bezahlen. Laß den Brief einfach sein. Willst du mir etwas deiner Sachen senden so laß es durch die Herrn Perthes & Besser, Buchhändler in Hamburg gehen und nun lebe wohl. Wie geht’s Eugenia u Clara?13 Lebt die Herz noch? Willst du recht bereit sein, so sende mir ein par Laute deiner lieben Poesie. Leb recht, recht wohl, u schreib mir bald. Dein kleiner Zettel hat mich ganz hungrig nach einem Brief von dir gemacht. (gez.) dein Franz Lieber My puir Lassie! puir copyist! Pray, sweet Matty, write it very neetly and correctly, but not stiffly. You may add what you chose! I must ask your pardon, for my having thus filled the whole letter. Poor Oscar, I thought of dedicating again this last page to him. While I wrote the above Elza braught me your No 9. Thank you. I have a great fear at recieving your next, because they will be about my stupid. I could almost wish I had never written about it; yet, God Knows, I felt as if I were cheating you, were I not to write it. My dear wife [cross-writing, 1] I have received information from Trapmann that the box has arrived at Charleston, but there are no wagons, but says he Ich habe Arrangements für 12 13

August Boeckh, Die Staatshaushalt der Athener, 2 Bde. Realschulbuchhandlung Berlin 1817/18. Eugenie Baeyer and her sister Clara Kugler, daughters of Julius Eduard Hitzig, Berlin.

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meinen ungedultigen Freund gemacht, u Sie sollen die Kiste in 14 Tagen haben. So, sweet sisters,14 when you receive this, you may imagine me in your robe for which God bless you. I trust to his kind providence - I wont speak in jest, that the pickles have not been disturbed. Oh, if the sky study gown were ruined. I will not think of it. Pray Oscar in my name, that he will truly oblige me, if he will not cry – except it be emotion – and the first time he can write me that he has not cried in 3 months I send him a fine book. I write this on consequence of your telling me that he cried at not winning at lotto. You must judge whether it be better to accustom him rather to such trifling excitements and manly to conquer them or to let him obtain from it at present, considering his physical excitability. At all events you must confer with Mr Busse about it, for he too will have to work to repress it. Thank Mrs. Busse for learning by heart with Oscar. Now that is sweet and I love her for it. [cross-writing, 2] A forthnight hence I shall be in a flatter and bustle. First your box I say again, and again, God bless your bonnie faces for it, you three good creatures15 – ­Secondly the box from Boston with my ethics16 and a bundle from Sally,17 aha! with a little watch chain, which she wore according to my demand upon her pretty breast, before she sent it to me. She has so sweet a bosom. Lastly I shall have books from Hamburg. Great doings Hamilton,18 on his return from Texas, will pass through here, going to Orland Greenville. I know you will like to hear that since young Préteaix has entered College I have told him to consider openly and frankly his friend in all things &c &c.- Have you – oh how often do you make me ask – sent the copy of the Hermeneutics to Mittermaier.19 Oh God! What a woman Mrs Gossler20 must be. Oh God! Of Griselde I had read two years ago I think a review in the Hall Literat Yearly. Carry and Hart add now and then a line, but one, it does me good to be called Frank by you. you must excuse my impertinening you, and if I di-

14 15

Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg. The three sisters Mathilde Lieber, Caroline Lomnitz, and Henriette Oppenheimer in Hamburg. 16 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 17 Sally Newton née Sullivan. 18 James Hamilton Jr. 19 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics. 20 Wife of Johann Heinrich Gossler, Elizabeth Gossler née Bray, Hamburg.

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[cross-writing, 3] rectly say, why then adress the subject, if however not, this consider that your affection is real enjoyment to me. - As to Marryat his book is very poor I think.21 It is right too for you to fight for America – Thousand things you might find to attack there, e.g. these titles &c. However, love, love, love – then you are you. How long it lasts before you tell me something about my first Matilda!22 Tell her the handkerchief she made me while I was in prison is gone, all gone! Does Oscar love me? I love him at any rate – and that dear Hammy, who cries for me. Good bye. FL Single p Louis Philippe Via Havre Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer Hambourg en Allemagne p. packet Stamp Forwarded by New York Heckscher Coster Matfield [hand written] 16 Janr ‘40 Stamp Paris 5 Fevr Stamp Hamburg 10. Februar

21 Marryat, Diary in America. 22 Mathilde Benecke, née Schweder.

No. 35 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 31.12.1839-02.01.1840 Included: dictated letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber, 02.01.1840 Included: copy of a letter of Mrs. Busse to Oscar Lieber Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Mathilde Lieber Included: dictated letter of Guido Norman Lieber to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5055, ALS, 4 pages My dear Papa, Hamburg 31ß Dezember 1839 This evening is new years eve and you will perhaps be alone and smoking a cegar, sitting on that good rocking chair, the dear old chair, or in your study writing. While we have got holidays I will dictate Mama a letter. We had a beautiful Christmas. Mama had the Encyclopedia bound, but not in leather, for it was too dear, but in paper and backs of leather, they are beautifully bound, and also the Penny Magazine, of which I have six volumes all alike for Mama had the Two old ones done over again.1 My zoological garden has also been very nicely bound.2 Aunt Hesse gave me a fine edition of Gellerts fables,3 Aunt Adela gave ma a German translation of La Fontaines fables with beautiful pictures which Gellert fables have also, very fine and funny ones.4 Aunt Adela gave me also two other little books, one of which is called the Ostereier. From Aunt Minna I got a game called Schaf u Wolf. It is a very nice game. There are seventeen sheep & one wolf. The sheep must always try to shut the wolf up so that he cant move, and the wolf must try to take all the sheep, if there is one in his way & a space is on the other side of the sheep, all he has to do, is to take it away, after he has jumped over it, Aunt Yette gave me a beautiful little trunk with nine pins and a cup and ball & another ball in it & also a pretty pocket book. Aunt Caroline gave me a waistcoat, a battery & tower with soldiers and canons, a small flagilette & a paint box. Uncle James gave me a box with building blocks. Uncle Jacob and his wife gave me a beautiful microscope, this and your books I like best of all my things! Mama gave me also paper, pictures to paint & a pretty little edition of the lady of the lake. Auguste Ahrens knit me a purse and put some bright shillings in it which belonged to my Urgroßmutter, they were from the year 1832. Uncle Morris gave me a ring game, hoops and sticks and another pocketbook, the game is some what like shuttlecock and 1 Penny Magazine. 2 See the options in Joyce Irene Whalley, Cobwebs to Catch Flies: Illustrated Books for the Nursery and Schoolroom, 1700–1900, London 1974. 3 Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Fabeln, 2 Bde. Leipzig Wendler 1746–48. 4 Jean de la Fontaine, Fables choisies, Orleans 1668.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_037

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battledore. The life of Washington5 and the flag I had from you my dear Papa. Christmas eve we were yet at school, it was very nice, all the boys were over at Dr Busse, we had cake and coffee and one of the teachers read a story to us all, when all at once the door was opened – the other boys did not have their Christmas at Dr Busse, they had it at Uncle Palm, but they were all at Uncle Busse at the time when I got my christmas – and it was beautiful, the tree was lighted up magnificently and on the table stood written with little sugar plums put together OL. At first I would not believe at all that the things were mine. There was a board for drawing in German called Reisbrett, then a beautiful portfolio with a key to it, and Papa only think, I got a little book called the Mask of Peter Parley, think Papa that his books should come so far over the Atlantic, it was published in London, and I dare say they have not found out yet what lies he can tell.6 Uncle – so I always call Dr Busse – also gave me a book with prayers, stories & songs, there were also a quantity of pictures for me to paint and splendid drawing paper, a little inkstand. Papa I must tell you how this is, for it is very pretty indeed. The inkstand and sandstand are of tin I believe, bronzed over, there are twelve steel pens fastened inside of the cover. Between the ink & sandstand is a little place full of wafers and the other room which is left over is divided into three partitions of which two have sealing wax and the other a handle for the steel pens. When I return to school Uncle will give me a case with mathematical instruments, Reiszeug it is called in German, and a seal of pure silver with my name on it and edged with mother of pearl which both he was not able to get in time for Christmas. 1st. January 1840. Mein lieber Vater ich danke dir sehr für die schöne Flagge welche du uns gegeben hast. ich wünsche dir ein schönes Neujahr daß du glücklich seyn wirst. Mein lieber Vater ich will ein guter Junge seyn und dir Freude machen, denn du bist da so ganz allein. Mein lieber Vater ich bin freitag vor 8 Tagen nach dem Dom7 gegangen. Vater vielleicht weißt du nicht was das ist, so will ichs dir erzählen, es ist wo alle Weinachtssachen verkauft werden, den Abend und alles ist ausgeleuchtet. Ich ging mit meinen Lehrer und seiner Frau. Papa there were tumblers and monkeys, some were beautifully dressed up, they were trench, to jump over ∆ you ∆ bought Hammy for a quarter of a dollar. There were also Harlequins of all kinds with their moveable legs, large kitarms, Nußknackers or nutcrackers as I will call them in English, men with terrible mouths to crack nuts, behind them is a bigger which forms the coattail when it is put down. When it is put up, the fellow opens his mouth and then you can put the nut in 5 The Life of Washington, there were several versions on sale for a clientele of young readers. 6 The Mask, in: Peter Parley’s Juvenile Tales, by Samuel Goodrich, Boston 1836. 7 Traditional Christmas fair in Hamburg.

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and when it is shut it cracks the nut. One of these nutcrackers was as large as I am. Papa I forgot to tell you something more about christmas eve. After I received my presents at Uncle Busse, I and all the Boys went over to Dr Palm. There were the present for the other boys, there was a whole large table and also a christmas tree & in another room adjoining there was a smaller tree for the poor children in the village, at least for a few families and presents for them too, consisting of books, pencils, and a variety of things, the children were very happy. A poor man whose name is Plerancourt had received for his son from Dr Palm a nutcracker. Papa this is a curious story, you will laugh at this I think, he was terribly foolish. He wanted to crack a marble with it so he put it in the poor crackers mouth and rammed upon it so hard, that he broke it not the marble but the nutcracker. Now one of the boys who was present called Karl Schmidt said: Eine Merle kannst du damit nicht knacken, wohl aber eine Nuß. When the man saw that it was broken he said. Pfui, das Dings ist schlecht gemacht – Nu, ich mein doch es kann noch wierder zusammen geleimt werden, dann ist es alles gut. We then drank a little punch, which tasted superb and ate bread and butter with cold meet on it and ham, I staid up till eleven OClock. Then I went home with Uncle, looked at my things a little and then went quick to bed. Next morning I had another look at my things & saw a little gown which Mama had sent to Mrs Busses little girl who is about a half year old and a big inkstand which aunt Caroline, aunt South Carolina as Normy calls her had sent to Uncle Busse, then as every sunday and festival Dr Busse read to us out of the bible, when all at once Edward8 came to ask if I were ready to go home, Busse said yes, and then we went off in a Droschke. We did not get our Christmas till the second Christmas day as Mama & aunt had to dine at Uncle Jacobs. We were all so happy when we saw the beautiful things. Normy had a little table to himself & he sat so sweetly enjoying himself. Dr Herzfeld was there, he is just such a Mr Cheor’s man, a jack at all trades for he fixed the flag which was put on wrong, showed me how to put my magnifying glass together and read me some fables. Aunt Minna was there also and Augusta.9 We kept the things on the table three days, then we put them away. Oh Papa, if you were only there to see my things. I can tell you I shall want plenty of room at home to put them away. I went to Uncle Jacob the next day who had looked over my christmas works and was very well satisfied. Uncle Jacob is very kind to me always. I love him very much indeed. You wanted to know my dear Papa what lessons I am in, but as I have not the Stundenplan entirely in my head I will only tell you what I think of. Sometime I will try and write you all about it & tell you exactly how my time is 8 Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. 9 Wilhelmine Arning and her daughter Auguste.

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occupied. We are in Geography now in Germany, we have gone through the mountains & rivers. In Biblische Geschichte we have done the early history of Jesus which I have written down as one of my christmas works. In cyphering I am in division. What we lately have drawn is from pictures laid before us, also for christmas we used to draw from pieces of wood triangle & blocks as I have told you. Busse lets me every day write German letters on the slate. My dear Papa I thank you very much for the nice letters you wrote me. Send Dr Sill, Mr Hiller, Betsy,10 Elsy and the old honorable professor Timur, and them all my love. I thank you very much for taking so much care of his professorship. My dear Papa I have got a knife for you. I should have liked very much to have sent you one before, but I had not money enough. I saved up my pocket money and at last I had enough to buy a fine one. It has a mother of pearl handle and two blaids, one for pens and the other is a little round so that you can cut wood with it. It is an English one. The man from whom I bought it spoke English & said it was first rate. My dear Papa I thank you very much for the life of Washington and the map of New York. Papa I will be a good boy. Papa in the Dom I saw also a beautiful watch made in Paris I believe, with two beautiful vases made of Porcelain or china. I do not know which & a turk on a beautiful horse with a great deal of gold about him which cost 2000 Marks. This evening we are going to the theatre to see Preciosa,11 I will tell you all about it another time, tomorrow I cant because I am going to school. Dear Papa I hope you will have a fine new year, so quite alone as you are. I will try always to be a very good boy so that you may be happy. When I return to school I shall find my table & my tree with all the presents. Nothing will be touched till I come back. [2] All well! Brief XIV Mein geliebter Franz. Es ist zehn Uhr. Neujahrsabend. Eduard und Oscar haben eben domino gespielt und sind zu Bette gegangen, ich ging noch zu unserm Oskar hinauf, wie ich jeden Abend thue wenn der liebe Junge zu Hause ist. Er sagte mir seine Gebete warf seine Arme um mich und versprach mir aus vollem Herzen treu und innig, ein guter Junge zu seyn. Und das ist er ein herzlicher Knabe dessen körperliche Anmuth und rege Geisteskraft einen jeden für sich einnimmt und dessen liebevolles Gemüth ihn zu thätiger Anstrengung uns zu beglücken treibt. Wir werden gewiß viel Freude an den 10 11

Slave Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC. Preciosa, opera by Carl Maria von Weber, lyrics by Pius Alexander Wolf, first performance Berlin 1821.

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­ naben erleben wenn Gott ihn uns erhält. Stark ist der Junge geworden und K sieht gesund und kräftig aus so daß ein jeder sein gutes Aussehen bemerkt. Er hat blühende Farbe und seine Augen glänzen, doch gleicht nichts seinem wunderschönen Munde, den ich oft bewundernd anstaune. Wie würdest du jezt sagen: comme il est beau! In seinem Betragen hat er sich auch sehr verbessert, und bleiben ihm auch noch etwas Empfindlichkeit, kleine Rücklosigkeiten, und eine leichte Reizbarkeit zu überwinden, so sieht er seine Fehler fast augenblicklich ein, und bereut aus tiefster Seele, und man sieht ihm den festen Vorsatz an sich wahrhaft zu bessern. Außerordentlich erfreut mich die immer wachsende Innigkeit gegen uns! Busse bemerkt auch diese rührende Liebe und dieses vollkommene Vertrauen als etwas Ungewöhnliches bei einem Knaben seines Alters. Es ist mir eine Beruhigung die wirkliche Emfänglichkeit und Theilnahme die Bussens zeigen, zu bemerken. Beide besuchten mich seit dem Oskar jezt zu Hause ist und sprachen mit großer Liebe von Oskar und ihrer Freude an seinen guten Anlagen. Ich sprach mit Busse sehr ernstlich über seine Erziehung und alle deine besonderen Wünsche. Über Einiges worin er nicht mit dir übereinstimmt will er sich dir schriftlich mittheilen, und dir auch einen Bericht über Oskar und seine jezigen Beschäftigungen geben die ich wohl noch in diesen Brief einschließen werde. Was du dann nachdem du seine Gründe gehört hast durchaus anderes zu haben wünschst, wird er sicher berücksichtigen. Busse meint daß man sich bei Oskar in Acht nehmen müsse nicht zu viel auf einmal zu treiben, daß es seine Kräfte nicht so sehr zerstückele wozu er neigt durch sein, seine Jahre weit überlegenes allgemeines Interesse an der ganzen In – und Außenwelt. In seinen Begriffen wäre Oskar schon seinem Alter weit voraus, doch habe dies sonst so wünschenswerthe auf sein eigentliches Lernen keinen guten Einfluß, weil ihm alles ungemein schwer wird was ihm nicht interessant scheint, Oskars musikalisches Gehör ist ungewöhnlich schlecht, einer der Lehrer giebt sich viel Mühe es zu erwecken, und Busse giebt gern die Zeit dazu weil er meint daß das Gehör doch zu sehr in Verbindung mit der übrigen geistigen Entwicklung wäre um nicht wenigstens den Versuch zu machen es zu erweiten, auch glaubt er daß die große Schwierigkeit die Oskar habe sich in der Ortographie zurecht zu finden auch mit diesem Mangel in Verbindung stehen könne. Mañana mas. Caroline hat arge Zahnschmerzen und auch Jette ist nicht wohl und ginge ich erst nach Mitternacht zu Bette, was ich so sehr wünsche, ich würde sie stören da wir ja in demselben Zimmer schlafen. Also zu Bette. Schlafe du süß, bester geliebter Freund, wache ∆ ins neue Jahr, sey glücklich, dankbar, liebend wie du es immer bist, Franz, my own dear fellow. Gott segne dich. Gott erfülle deine Wünsche, gebe dir Freude und Frieden. Glück auf zum neuen Jahr! Wir empfangen dich ­freundlich du erste Vierzig, sey du nun auch gut und mach daß man mit dir

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zufrieden ist. 2ten Januar. Dearest best Frank, my heart is so full why can I not press you to it & be relieved. Let me coax you and love you a little, afterwards I will tell you all you wish to know but the anxious longing that I feel is so great, that I have no peace untill I have given a little expression to it. Alas! It is but in words, for my dearest love, the being who is my every thought, my every prayer, is far far from that breast which would rest on his, from those arms which would encircle him, from those lips which would breath from his lips the balm which sooths and animates, the essence of his tenderness. How dearly do I love my boy, how will I bless the hour we meet again. Facto, facts! I hear you say and you shall have them for indeed my space is too small for much sentiment and I have a quantity in the way of events to relate and it seems to me ages since I have had a comfortable chat with you. On christmas eve December 24th I dispatched Oscars dear letters pr British Queen. Then I took a Droschke, the weather being terrible and rode to Matilda Benecke with a dress which I had purchased to put on Annas12 christmas table. I found neither mother nor daughter at home, so I left my parcel with Herman13 whom I found at the piano. Returned towards home, first calling on Adela whom I wished to see once more before the festival. We enjoyed but a moment together, but that was all love and affection, she then gave me a beautiful book for Oscar. Refreshed as I always feel after having seen my dear Adela I came home again to receive a box containing some books and Honigkuchen from your brother Eduard, accompanied by letters from his wife, Julius’ ditto and Ernst to you in English.14 When the postman brought this package, or rather, when he brought another one by mistake, my good sister Carry whom you know of old and who I believe would have been as likely to taste of the forbidden fruit as Eve herself, hastily undid it, when lord behold, several packages with strange names met our anxious eyes. Great was our consternation when a moment after the postman returned and made us aware of his and our mistake! Then I proceded to the examination of my own parcel. I can not copy the letters but their chief contents were the ­following: They request me in Züllichau to divide my time between them while there, Eduards15 wollen mich auch haben. Ernst16 wrote from Frankfurth

12 13 14 15 16

Anna Benecke, daughter of Mathilde Benecke. Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke. Eduard Lieber and Dr. phil. Julius Lieber, brothers of Francis Lieber in Züllichau, his nephew Ernst Lieber in Frankfurt/Main. Eduard Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, and his family in Züllichau. Ernst Lieber, nephew of Francis Lieber who was as a commercial trainee in Frankfurt/ Main.

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requesting his mother17 to send Oscar those books which he had enjoyed as a child. In an other year Ernst will have been four years in Frankfurth and completed his mercantile apprenticeship, then his greatest h is to spend some time in America. His mother says that his expences in Frankfurth exceed far their family expences at home without any allowance for his amusements which old Mrs Keibel and Knoblauch kindly supplied.18 His letter to you is already a year old. I shall send it by some opportunity. Lottchens19 intended is upwards of 30 year old, of a serious character and much respected in his profession, he lives at a days journey from Züllichau in a small town. Herman Knoblauchs20 health is much improving. Dorchen has been unwell but is better again.21 Karstens health is also regaining strength but last summer his lungs were so much effected that he was in the greatest danger, but a fine summer and living much among the vine hills has entirely restored him.22 They are all most anxious for our arrival; how like a dream it will be to them for I shall have to hasten away. If Oscar goes with me I shall not be able to stay more than a fortnight in Züllichau and perhaps as much in Berlin, or what do you think. Pray give me the exact statement of your wishes immediately for the answer to this will perhaps but had just reach me in time. Christmas eve Carry Hart & I spent at Augusta Soehle who had invited us to eat carps with them in real Hamburg fashion.23 Uncle Haller24 on seeing us, distressed himself that he had forgotten to buy any christmas presents, so he hastily ordered a vehicle and set off in pursuit of some articles suited to his purpose, and most ridiculous was the assortment of knick knacks which he brought home and which were then drawn for by lottery amongst much laughing and funning. Bishop25 went round and we returned home satisfied with our evenings entertainment. The next morning at 11 OClock the dear boys came home. Oscar and I are almost always inseperable 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Charlotte Lieber née Baur, sister in law of Francis Lieber, Züllichau. The two private financiers were Henriette Sophie Keibel, mother of Wilhelm Keibel, and Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch, the partner of Eduard Lieber, Züllichau. Charlotte Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber, Züllichau; the name of her fiancé and future husband could not be identified. Karl Hermann Knoblauch, son of Eduard Lieber’s partner in Züllichau, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch, lived in the house of Eduard Lieber. Dorothea Karsten née Lieber, sister of Francis Lieber, Züllichau. Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten, brother in law of Francis Lieber, Züllichau. Hamburg tradition to enjoy carp as a Christmas or New Years special treat which promises future wealth and happiness. Martin Joseph Haller, father of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, Hamburg. Drink, kind of punch made from red wine flavoured with bitter oranges, sugar, nugmeat, and cinnamon.

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on such occasions, but this day we were obliged to part, for it is Uncle Jacobs standing day and his family is too large to allow all the children to be invited. The boys had another invitation at a school fellow and were allowed to go. At Uncle Jacob, there was a large family union, the Heckschers were also there and I was very much delighted with Mrs Heckschers singing, and her manner and person alltogether.26 Her son Peter Heckscher was also there, but he seems a very uncomattable person and all my attempts failed. He is now in a counting house in Kiel, what a pity that he should have given up his uncle & New York. His mother sang one song so lovely that every person present wept. I will send you the words of the song in my next letter, they are very fine and will touch your heart even without the music and the lovely eye of the songstress. There are some women who retain their fascinating powers, long after youth has past, such is Mrs Heckscher such was dear Mrs Goldschmidt,27 such I suppose you have met with in one or two instances in your earlier life, but oh! how [3] next to impossible to meet with such beings in America. Even our Mary28 will not attract when her youth is past, Sally29 is more likely, but yet she has not that combination of essentials. Of course I know too little of Mrs Heckscher to judge of her decidedly, but the impression she made assisted by her feeling musical talent was indeed most agreable. You know she was formerly an actress and a beautiful girl. Her husband is a morose and unpleasant man.30 The eldest of the brothers Leo Heckscher has become Gemüthskrank, and lives in the same house with them.31 Otherwise I think I should have called upon her. I took such a fancy. Dear Frank. I have had your little earrings mended, do you remember the first present you gave me and I now always wear them I love them so well. Normy just now says: I feel so happy for I send my things to Papa! I must tell you that all the children gave me the sweets which they received at christmas and which are made in various forms such as cegars, sausages, hams & different fruits, as you must remember them from former times, that I 26 27 28 29 30

31

Antonie Heckscher née Bräutigam, married to Dr. iur. Moritz Heckscher. Adelheid Goldschmidt née Herz, wife of London banker Lion Abraham Goldschmidt. She who once had been adored by Francis Lieber had recently died in Paris. Mary Appleton, Boston. Sally Newton née Sullivan. Dr. iur. Moritz Heckscher, brother of Charles August Heckscher, lawyer and jurist Francis Lieber in 1848 was going to meet at the Frankfurt Paulskirche as leading politician in the failed German Revolution of 1848/49. Leo Heckscher.

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might send them to their dear Papa and it would have delighted you to have observed how gladly they all parted from these things which they are so fond of. Hamilton was very anxious that the ship should come directly and then he would have been glad to go with it himself. Before I forget it Dr Julius32 has just been here, he made the enquires for me respecting the Blochmansche Anstalt in Dresden. The result is this. Diese Anstalt die Dresdens beste Lehrer vereinigt und ein prachtvolles Haus mit einem sehr großen Garten in der Vorstadt einnimmt beträgt die jährliche Pension 350 Thaler sächsisch (250 Dollar) der Zögling muß im Sett Serviette und Eßbesteck mit bringen oder für deren Anschaffung zahlen, so wie Weinachtsgeschenke an Dienerschafft u. so. w. Bücher zum Unterricht, Kleidung und sonstige Bedürfnisse liefert die Anstalt für jährliche 50 Thaler. Die Pension wird vierteljährig voraus bezahlt. We three ­sisters33 do not like the dirty man but he paid us a long visit and remains my constant admirer. He has the name for being most terribly stingy though he is said to have quite a nice little fortune. The second Christmas day was sheerfully wellcomed by us all. How happy were the children. To make the time pass quicker I took the boys for a walk, it was a fine tracing day and the wall looked beautifully. They raced & had plenty of fun and exercise Hart & Carry were at work arranging the room. At four OClock we dressed the children who were all impatience. Mary Hesse a girl of 14 years came to see them enjoy themselves. Norman had a beautiful sky blue dress on which suited his fair complexion exactly and his brilliant eyes. At 5 OClock all the children were assembled in a dark room. Aunt Minna & Herzfeld & his young niece34 were also there. The bell was rung, the door opened and all ran into the fairy palace which was light and beautiful, a long dinning table which would seat thirty people was litterally covered with choicest toys and books, in the centre the splendid tree filled with guilt apples nuts and pretty things of every description and full of little wax lights, Carolines chandelier was also lit up and you can fancy the charming effect when the 8 children ran in after the first moment of surprise had passed each one was led to his own division Hamilton was perfectly stunned with the idea that all those things were to be his own, but as soon as he had convinced himself of the fact, without saying a word he commenced carrying them off into his own nursery and it was with difficulty I could persuade him to leave them. His disposition for putting every thing away is very strange. I wonder from whom he has it? Norman remained quietly seated at his own little table, Oscar and all the bigger children fell round our necks and thanked us, all were 32 33 34

Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius. Mathilde Lieber, Caroline Lomnitz, and Henriette Oppenheimer. Miss von Axen, daughter of Dr. med. Herzfeld’s sister Theodore von Axen.

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delighted with our choice. James35 had also desired we should purchase something for his account. The flag I had placed very conspicuously & Oscar was delighted with it; but he and Dr Herzfeld immediately placed it differently, I had put the stars below which he thought a very great mistake. I saw him silently take up that map of New York which he had so often seen in your hands and kiss it also your letters of which their were three on the table, the one arrived with the flag – the one with the life of Washington, and the last which you had sent via Havre to be delivered on Christmas eve. His books pleased him very much. All the children, Carry’s and our two little ones I had given Steckenpferd & Peitsche in your name, and they were delighted. Mary Hesse & the other young girl were standing all the time admiring Oscar. Miss von Axen ­Herzfelds niece came to me and said. Wie wunderschön ist Oscar, solche köstlichen vielsagenden Augen, und solch einen festen Mund sah ich nie. These girls were devoted to Norman too, who is the most admired little person you can imagine. Felix and Emil with their black eyes and glowing cheeks looked charming also, and there were in that room several subjects for beautiful pictures. After having enjoyed the childrens pleasure we each went to our own tables. I had one to myself, Carry & Hart another. Aunt Minna & Augusta had one, Rebecca and all the other servants. Rebecca wishes me to tell you that she never saw anything so splendid and that she had a great many very fine presents. I must just tell you what I had. From Caroline a silk dress, a colar, Handkerchiefs and my cloak, from Harty a most beautiful broche, a mouseline de laine dress, a splendid blue and handsome apron to suit it, a colar & manchetten. Aunt Minna, pretty workbox, inkstand & c. Aunt Emilie & Uncle Jacob, 2 silk dresses, a boa, a shawl, two capes, manchetten, 6 pr of gloves. Aunt Hesse, silk dress and gauze shawl. - How I wished my boy present, how you would have enjoyed it. You and Herzfeld would be on such good footing together, he is really a very delightful young man, so much kindness to the children, he devoted himself to them that evening, so that Oscar said to him Dr Herzfeld was würde ich gethan haben wenn du nicht da wärst mir mit mein microscope und mein Flagge zu helfen. At a late hour we all went to bed and early in the morning the children were at their post again. Oscar had done some christmas works, a map 3 drawings one for me, Hart & Caroline, & schriftliche Arbeiten besides. That morning the boys went to thank Uncle Jacob and carry their works to him, he kept them so that he could do it properly and the next day they went again. Oscar received a very satisfactory praise from Uncle who is alltogether much pleased with him. There was not any fault in his work. Of course I shall send you these things with the first direct opportunity, I know 35

James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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not when that will be. Sunday Oscar went over to Gosslers and staid there two hours. I was a little surprised that Henry Gossler did not give him the smallest trifle, he had wished to see him at christmas time and of course I had sent him, though Oscar does not very much like to go alone anywhere, he seems a little bashful in that respect. Everybody remarks to me upon Oscars improvement, he has grown quite a stout. I too am said to be much stouter than I was. The three little school boys Felix, Emil & Hamilton also got some Mappen such as Oscar had to carry books, in which they now go merrily to school every morning. I have paid Hamiltons first quartal 30 Marks, about 8 dollars. Hamilton & Emil form one class. You would enjoy it to see how Norman enjoys playing for hours alone. He talks softly to himself and his imagination seems always at work. New Years day we girls went with Edward36 & Oscar to Uncle Jacob to wish them all joy there we found his children assembled and a very fine lunch. In the evening we went to the theatre. Fehlings have arrived again from Lübeck, with a beautiful daughter – One day during the holidays we took all our eight children to see Uncle Jacob and afterwards Hessens; you should have seen how delighted Uncle was with Norman, he has won his heart by his friendliness, he ran up to Uncle, put both his arms round his neck and hugged him without being told to do so. Caroline & Harriet my they will not know what to do without that dear child. Er hat sehr viel Verstand und du wirst große Freude an ihm haben. Am 2ten Jan gingen die Knaben wieder getroßt nach der Schule, ganz glücklich, früh morgens hatten sie schon im Garten Schlittschuh gelaufen. Solches Glatteis hatten wir. Bei solchem Wetter wird hier in den Straßen allet­ halben Sand gestreut, die Stadt besorgt das und zuweilen geschieht es zwei drei mal am Tage. - Ich denke daß der einliegende Brief von Busse dir gewiss befriedigend sein wird. Was du verändert wünschst wirst du ihm dann mittheilen. Ich werde ihn auch ersuchen dir viertel nicht halbjährig zu schreiben. 7Ten. Mein bester Freund, sehr lange bin ich jezt ohne Brief von dir, dein lezter kam am 20sten Dec. an. Wie verlangt mich von dir zu hören, ob dein Fuß wieder wohl ist, wie es dir geht, geliebte Seele. Wir leben diese Tage stille, es ist eine traurige Zeit die Henriette und Caroline sehr fühlen, Heute vor zwei Jahren starb unser geliebter Vater. Gott hätte ich ihn noch gesehen, und meine süßen Knaben zeigen können, wie hätte er sie geliebt. - Mathilda Benecke sah ich vor einigen Tagen, sie ist wohl. Jeder ist erstaunt über Annes ­Häßlichkeit.37 Of course I have told you that Carolines children all talk English, Norman does not learn German at all. Hamilton also always talks English, though he ­understands German a little. Norman says when he is a big boy like Oscar, then 36 37

Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. Anna Benecke, daughter of Mathilde Benecke.

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he will do a great many things, and he will buy Papa some money – I took Oscar & Hamilton to the dentist but he found nothing to be done. He says children must on no account have a tooth pulled out, if it is ever so decayed until the other one is coming, for afterwards the place draws together and the new one has no room. Oscars teeth which were taken out have now been replaced but owing to their having been taken out too soon they are growing a little over the other one. On Saturday this large party at Minchens38 takes place, 200 people will be there two pieces are to be performed, Adela will not play, the phisician has prevented it. There has been a great deal of plackerei and I am very glad I refused to play from the beginning. - So you allow me to make advances to Herzfeld – take care what you are about. You do not know how I like him, but alas, Il est trop jeune. - I wander how you recieved the things. The last small box pr Franklin went with the usual address, I sent you no letter by the same opportunity for it dilly dallied such an immense time in the Port here after weeks before I had been hurried to send my box on board that I was quite put out. In the box there was nothing but summer coat pockethands, books & letters. Oscars letter which I sent you via England was an expensive one but Caroline and Hart went partners in payment with me. Of course Hermy39 has been sent to Mittermaier.40 We have had good letters from the boys. I suppose you will see James.41 [4] ‘o bless you sweet dear Papa. Your most affectionate son Oscar. - 2d. January. My dear Papa, yesterday evening we were at the theatre. The piece was called Preciosa.42 It was most beautiful. Preciosa is a beautiful Spanish girl stolen by the gipseys when she was only three years old. She is now a woman and on her travels with the gipseys comes to Madrid, where a young nobleman falls in love with her and after trying in vein to make her leave her party, joins the gipseys himself for her sake. Coming by chance to her native place she remembers all the old scenes like some dream long past; at last she is found out by her parents, cries & the story is ended. The scenery was beautiful. The gipsey chief 38 Probably Wilhelmine Arning. 39 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics. 40 Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier. 41 Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 42 Preciosa, opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performance Berlin 1821.

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was a dreadful rough man. There was one man Pedro a very funny fellow who said to the gipsey: Schert euch zum Deifel! Once he came in with some country chaps whom he had drilled, saying rechts, links & they always put the right when he said links & left when he said right. Eins, zwei, eins zwei, they all the time going in a contrary direction from their leader and when he looked round they were quite far away from him. His constant expression was: Donnerwetter! with a long rolling on the r &: Seit der lezten Retirade sah ich solche Esel nicht; for he had been a soldier, but I believe one who liked to run away that’s why he always speaks of his lezte Retirade. At the end there were fireworks, most beautiful, then the scene went down and finished, and now my scene in school is going to begin. Goodbye dearest dearest Papa. Indeed I will be a good boy. Your loving son Oscar. (Note from Mrs Busse to Oscar during the holidays) ‘Mein lieber kleiner Windsack. Da ich dich nicht gern in der Furcht lassen mögte als hättest du dein Taschentuch und den Schlüssel deiner Mappe verloren, so sende ich dir beides: Ich hoffe dass du recht vergnügt und wohl bei deiner lieben Mutter angekommen bist, und du ein frohes Fest verleben werdest. Onkel u die liebe kleine Marie grüssen dich, lieber Junge recht herzlich und wir bitten dich uns deiner lieben Mutter und Tanten bestens zu empfehlen. Von ganzem Herzen deine Tante. L. Busse Dec 25 (Abschrift eines Briefes von Oscar) Eppendorf 2ter Jan. Abends! Meine liebe Mutter. Wir sind glücklich und vergnügt hier her gekommen. Das Petschaft und Reiszeug fand ich auf meinem Weinachtstisch; der Griff des Pettschafts ist von Perlmutter und die Platte ist von Silber wie ich dir sagte; Meinen Namen wirst du auf diesen Brief sehen. Mein Reiszeug ist auch sehr schön. Liebe Mutter schicke mir meine Stahlfedern bitte! Gott sey mit dir. Lebwohl beste Mutter, dein dich liebender Sohn Oscar. Dear Papa. Dear Papa. I will be a good boy come Papa and take us away. When Papa comes then I can speak to him, now I cant sagte Norman als ich ihm sagte mir mehr zu diktieren – I suppose you will see James43 in New York & I too which is Hammys constant words. But probaby you know all the news from that quarter long before I do. Hart has a little cold, Caroline is quite well, so am I. Both the girls send their affectionate kissing love to you, you are very dear to them. How beautiful my Frank, is that account off Napoleons mother. Dont you remember that you gave me decided directions to send parcels &c to Brinkman, you also told me to let Gossler & Perthes44 know. - They however will send you no books without my knowledge. When I go I shall let them know 43 44

James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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without you inform me to the contrary. - Your questions about Oscars school have now I believe been entirely answered. You will know why I did not like the school of Werners brother. & why he does not live at Palms but Busse. With this latter arrangement I am very much pleased I feel confident that Oscar is very well placed. And his being a little alone, away from the other boys sometimes, is good also. - Oscar wrote & sent me his Stundenzettel for you but it would make the letter too heavy – Dress maker has just been here to try our three dresses on for Saturday. Nothing worn but changeable silks, so I am obliged to be changeable too – I am going to have a very long waiste indeed, a little tucker at the top which [cross-writing, 4] you like so much. An’t it puty as Normy says. Goodbye my sweet love. God bless you. May my letter speed to you and satisfy your loving heart. Please God, and I trust in him and my forebodings this will be a happy year. Give my love to those whom you wish should have it, and be my good true husband as I am your loving wife Tilly. Montag Dienstag Mittwoch Donnerstag Freitag Sonnabend 8-9  Rechnen  Rechnen  Rechnen  Rechnen  Deutsch 9-10 Eng. Lesen Deutsch Les.  Eng. Lesen  Deutsch Les.  Eng. Les.  Declam. 11-11 Schreiben Schreiben Schreiben Schreiben Schreiben  Zeichnen 11-12   -  - Freistunde  -   -    12-1 Bib. Geschichte Geographie Bib. Gesch. Geographie Bib. G. Rechnen 1-2  Zeichnen   Musik Zeichnen Musik  Musik  Zeichnen 2-3  Deutsch   Deutsch  Deutsch  Deutsch Deutsch   Zeichnen 3-4 - -    Mittagessen  -    4-5 Freistunde      4-6 Tanzen  Freistunde -  ∆ 8 -   Arbeitsstunden   8-9 Singen

Oscars Stundenplan für den Winter 1839-40 An other story of Oscars. The other day he was at Aunt Minna, a very silly lady was there who talked a great deal and amongst others mentioned that she was just cutting her wisdom teeth. Oscar was just going off but before he went he said: Ich muß dir erst was im Geheim sagen Tante! And whispered to her ear. Man kann Weisheitszähne haben und doch nicht weise seyn. Now may I soon have a letter from my dearest you.

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Via Havre PP Mr Francis Lieber Columbia South Carolina Messrs Heckschers Costers & Matfeld New York Franco Stamp Bureau maritime faded Stamp New York Mar 19 + stamps faded

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No. 36 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 31.12.1839-09.01.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 09.01.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 6, ALS, 4 pages plus a paper slip attached to page 3 No XIX. January 9. 1840. - I am well, quite well, as well as a man without morning gown can be, and when he knows his friend is so near, as in Charleston and yet cannot get it. Kiss to Mat. Benecke. MDCCCXL There stands the hieroglyphic sign of the newborn year. I am no pen-man, or I should have written in the big stroke of M, Matilda mia amatissima, in D I should have written Delightful be the year to you and the three C, which stand for the 3 children. The X stands for the little admixture of cross, such as colds, burnt apple-pies, which will not be missing, and L stands for your Frank’s love by way of bringing up the rear. Or is the whole prophetic, and does it mean, Matilda Despite of Diapers (the Deuce, the Crying Child that’s Coming X times will Love? Trystam Shandy says somewhere on the right was situated the intended mill. So are here to the right and left painted the intended angels, which who may carry to you this sign on which my eyes have long been fixed, while the heart swelled bigger and bigger, with a thousand feelings of love and longing, a Thousand prayers that it might bring you and me the fufilment of our modest wishes, a thousand reflexions, how banished you will feel again, a thousand, thousand blessings for ye all, your loving sisters closely included. # So far I wrote last evening my wife, and now, January 1, 1840 I continue. Once more then: Luck to you, blessing upon all, a little “siller” in my purse, and ­Removed. Health for our most dearly beloved bairns, and all the blessed inmates of that house which is a port of love and affection to you.1 May God grant happiness to all yours and mine, to Hamburg, the W. Indies, Züllichau, Berlin and a little bit to Out-of-the-way-Columbia: I mean out of the way of men; I trust it is not out of the way of God’s stream of blessing. Indeed, have we not received it? He has given you, the children and me good health, and I am grateful for it. - How I ushered new-year in? I’ll tell you. Yester-day was a haily, sleety, rainy day, still the fancy took me, and I could not resist taking a bottle of hock2

1 The house Esplanade, No. 8, Hamburg, where Mathilde Lieber was living for the time being with her sisters Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer. 2 Hock i.e. Hockamor from Hochheim, originally white wine from vinyards in the neighborhood of Hochheim, Germany; common label of Riesling out of the Rhine area.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_038

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under my cloak and carrying it to the shoe-makers,3 as a reward to for the letter of Graffunder and that they might sing for me the more cheerily. But had I fallen, with that bottle! Good gracious, what would have become of the professor’s reputation! The shoemakers were very grateful. In the evening I put the alarm on 12 o’clock, for I cannot see tht clock when I have the lamp. This done, I read Lord Chathams Letters.4 You Know Chatham is one of my historical loves and venerations – he, William I of Orange, Epaminondas and a few others – these I donot only respect for their greatness, but not only venerate, for their excellence, but their is that in their soul which makes me warmly love them. Chatham – and may our Oscar early learn to love and revere him, and Keep him before his eye throughout his life – is was not only so great a statesman, and penetrating politician, he had not only so elevated a mind, but also so broad a soul: I donot know another expression. He is so warm, so elevated above all poor faction, all meanness of the or paltriness of the court or popular shuffling, flattery or trickery. Broad, vast, warm British patriotism is ever with him the sole substratum of all his politics; the citizen within his heart is ever the firm ground for the politician in his head. And in the Disdaining intrigue, he first infused warmth again into the British politics, he rescued a country, and infused new, moral, lasting life into Englands civic existance; he laied her armies and navy to victories and gave a new impulse to polities at home; he made parliament a new thing. And while thus engaged upon as large a scale as citizen ever was, harrassed by a poor narrow Court, or courted by the great Frederic even, he never lost one single spark of genuine humantity, and remains as Kind and true a friend, as wise and generous an uncle, and as tenderly loving and minutely guiding a father as ever private men did. And then the noble view he takes of ambition! Not foolishly pretending to nip it in his son and nephew; on the contrary, inciting it, but how nobly! And his warm religion that religion which all honest men revere and is a luxury to good souls. Oh I do love him! Good God, how I would have enjoyed the living near such a man! Oscar shall read Chathams letter to his nephew & son, when they were at Cambridge. Thus reading and musing, and reflecting now you were already soundly asleep. - I had faithfully said to you: thank you, thank you, when my clock was half past five, for then it was midnight with you – Evertick rattled the

3 Perhaps those shoemakers were H. Bruns, G. Eilhardt, and John Stork with their workshop in Columbias’ Main Street between Plain and Taylor, see Julian Selby, Memorabilia and Anecdotal Reminiscenes of Columbia, S.C., p. 136, p. 196. 4 Letters written by the late Earl of Chatham to his nephew Thomas Pitt, afterwards Lord Camelford, London 1804.

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alarm – Hallo! How she rattled in the new-born year! Exit 39, enters 40. What will it bring! What will it? I had suffered from head-ache during the day, and therefore eaten but little, and 1840 began with a hungry stomach. So I fetched me from the store-room too two apples, and seeing the claret, thaught I: let’s have a glass. While I was sitting before the fire and watching the apples – the only man (and woman too, an Irishman would say) in the whole house) the idea struck me that if I made a whole in the apples, put sugar in, and should gradually infuse claret, it would greatly improve said apples. Nothing like trying – and I fed the apples with claret like two little babies, and – les pommes, lorcequ’ elles ent étoient cuites, etoient à perfection. I call this dish: pommes nourites à Bordelais or you may call them plainer New years apples. Try them; they are excellent; and although it is reversing the good old order of things if Adam induces Eve to eat apples, I must tell you that I wish you and Clara Caroline and Hart to make some, and think of me if you like them. Buyt half paitone - so it was seven eight with you, I went to bed, after having said to you and your breakfast conclave [2] Dec. 29. 1839. Sunday. This will form the tail piece of the old year; I have left the first page for New-Year. I will answer your No 9. About Listz’s5 generosity I had read in Galigniani, but also a subsequent contradiction, at least respecting the large amount I suppose as matter of course that you Know the story of Griselda is one of those ancient stories, met with in almost all languages. No doubt, some truth gave occasion to the story. Boccaccio has it, and old Sprengel, of whom I told you several times, that half crazy botanist, uncle to the famous last Sprengel in Halle, tormented me sorely with a poem on her, I disputing that she was wrong, he mainta[ined] ∆ almost to wrath that she was just a true wife;6 You know I like anything coined out, ausgeprägt, and as such Griselda stands as the patient loving wife but I owne it must be difficult to love positively a woman after she has her shown herself so absolutely yielding up all idea of moral individuality. - You ought to send Mr a handsomely bound copy of that tragedy to Mrs Gossler,7 for you Know every one feels delight in seeing 5 Franz Liszt. 6 The “famous last Sprengel” was Matthias Sprengel, who had had professorships in Göttingen and Halle. He was one of the very first German scholars who was interested in US-American history; the Sprengel Lieber called “that half crazy botanist” was quiet influential in his own way: Kurt Sprengel had been one of the leading botanists in Europe. 7 Elizabeth Gossler née Bray, wife of Johann Heinrich Gossler, Hamburg.

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himself reflected. [sketch of a pointing finger] Donot forget to inquire whether such a Law in Prussia against miniature editions, as you mention, has really been issued, and when, or anything you can learn about it. I want to Know. Do you know that I could not stand such a government. I have often said the Prussian government is the China, only refined, humanized and Europeized, but the very paternal intermeddling busybody principle, as if government had to shape the very noses of the subject is precisely the Chinese principle, and is likewise the Prussian offic hierarchy of officers and the Chinese mandarines, the honor bestowing, little-rewarding, nay even the scientific examinations of the officers – every thing is similar. No, I could not live there - I donot Know whether you have observed that the Hon. John McNeill, husband of your Persian friend, has returned to Edinburgh.8 I saw it some time ago, and just a letter of his in the Engl. papers. Good morning, Kissing you all, and then I slept until Elza came and said: Master, half past eight. I rose, I made my coffee, I came down, and – am writing to you, my own, my best wife. Considering the lines above, I think I can donothing better than finish answering your No 9. First, I donot Know whether I have thanked your uncle already for his Kindness respecting money matters. If I have do not done so, than here are my thanks; if I have, than I thank him a second time. No loss, for his kindness to you, deserves “mony a Thank”. But pray donot forget, I distinctly beg you, to inquire who has your Prussian Lottery shares, and write me how much it is, and how it stands altogether with that Lottery. - I hope my Matilda you have begun a separate Memorandum book, in which you write all things you may like to purchase for us when you leave Hamb. Begin it now, by all means, if you have not already, and write in it everything you may possibly wish to purchase, for there is ultimately no necessity of doing it. Upon the whole I would certainly buy very little which is falls in any way in the sphere of refinement. For all that is lost here; and so long as we are in Egypt, we can do nothing better, than scrape as much ‘siller’ together as possible. You Know I like a sweet, refined home, a tasty Umgebung as much as any body, but it is out of Keeping here, and would be lost money only. Yet what we want, and you can buy cheeper there than here, it would be wise to purchase. E.g. Do we want a few more silver table & tea spoons? - If you go to Berlin I would buy a few iron things,9 of exquisite taste, though nothing large or costly. - I entreat you not to beg your uncle10 to write me; I should be very 8 9 10

Eliza McNeill, the wife of the Scottish diplomat Sir John McNeill was a childhood friend of Mathilde Lieber and supplied Francis Lieber in 1844 with letters of introduction. Handicrafts made from cast iron, fashionable items in Biedermeier Prussia. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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sorry if you did. I shall be very glad to hear from him if he felt prompted by his own heart; but you would misunderstand me very much if you were to ask him. - Our Legislature has liberally given us $ 5000 for this year for the library. This is very noble; never in my life have I enjoyed the happiness of being repeatedly asked (by Mr Elliot) of ordering more and more books - I revel. - What has, I wonder, Adele to say for herself, respecting her former letters, which were certainly frigid to a considerable degree. My dearest Matilda, you make again two dreadful blunders in your last. I assure you, you might as well throw pinestraw into my bed, or mix sand with my spinnage or sallad. It wont do, Matilda. You say in your letter 9: “Eben kam mein Winterhut zu Hause, der mir (this is a perfect box on the ear!) recht gut kleidet, u mir (Gracious, my bowels!) etwas über 7 Thaler kostet. The last I Know some say is right, and it would not, perhaps, have deranged my bowels, had they not already been put into agonizing gripes by the hat der mir gut kleidet. Wenn du mir liebst, mir achtest, mich gut sein willst, then spare me these convulsions. I Know full well, that whilst you wrote the above the sentence in your head was: Der mir recht gut steht, but whatever there was in your head, this and this awful Berlinism is on the paper, and thus will go to the Champollion11 of 3840, who will hence conclude that: However learned the education of the Egyptians was, it appears they paid little attention to their daughters which I prove from the following extract of an interesting letter, &c &c. “So gross grammatical errors, it is evident &c &c.” Now, I earnestly entreat you that you take a small German grammar and run it over; you will not refuse this to your husband. I know that constant English, obliterates in us the sharp distinction between Dative & Accusative, as it is a difficult thing to pound it into an English or American head, if not previously cultivated by Latin, because to say the truth they have no Dative or Accusative - it is all juxtaposition of words. But this does not confer upon you the enviable perevelege of Miring and Diring at random. ‘Pon my word, the idea that you have made similar blunders in letters to Berlin or Zuellichau makes me feel quite uneasy. Do not call me pedantical. If any man writes unpedantical, and even bold it is myself; but such things offend like soiled linen, or a dirty ear children. Fie, Frank are you not ashamed? - Well, it is the truth. Or if, by way of simile, you like a well-garnished children’s nose, Thermometre 10 below zeoro, better so be it. Pray, give me peace by assuring me that before your answer arrives

11

Jean-François Champollion was a celebrated scholar who acquired fame by decoding the hieroglyphes; Lieber had met him in Rome 1822/23 and befriended him.

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[3] upon this you have already carefully read a German Grammar. - Besides, consider your son! Grammar, I repeat, is a garment – it ought to flow easy, but above all, be clean, especially the garment of women. You will say: Well, Frank began 1840 in real style; admiring Chatham, loving me and ending by a sound scold. - Mr Sill, the other day, had laid by 2 papers in which Polly II12 was very highly spoken off, and in a way which I liked, because not puffing, but talking of details. An other article in the N.Y. Courier & Enqu. had been sent me before. It speaks but in general terms but very highly of myself.13 The legislative Library here has bought all my books. I am greatly afraid, I shall not hear from you this long while, because the roads at the North are dreadfully cut up and blocked up by one of the severest snow-storms. - I have not heard again from Mary; but I thaught last night - when my great apple invention was going on – a good deal of this dear girl, whom, after all, my Matilda, I love very much. I beg you to ask a physician to give you a description of the lu human heart. You will then find that the heart has two chambers – one I dare say for the common partor parlor or “sitting room” of thaughts, and the other for the rarer and more decent company – and besides two little ears, or auricles, likewise hollow and which you may image to your mind like attics. These I have no doubt were given to men to put additional company in, when the two parlors are too full, and as my heart somehow or other is made for love, I would politely beg you to allow Mary14 one of those auricles, for I do love her – A propos! Did you see a late account of a trial for bigamy in England? The man and his two wives lived together; he married his second wife with the consent and even by the desire of the first; they lived most happily together, and all three most indignantly protested in court, that if they loved one another and lived happy they thaught it excessively saucy and unjust for others to meddle with their peace and contentment! And now, I will, I must break off; for otherwise the sheet is filled long ere I mean to send the letter. Jim Blue came this moment wishing me &c &c, as he I had intimated to him he ought to do. When the old negro came in his well starched speech to the word Honor he stopped and said: However, that you have already. What do you mean said I? Oh, answered he I can see and hear more than I can read. - The whole was settled by a quarter of a dollar, the which I dare say will be unsettled again by whiskey. - [cross in a circle] January 4. I had 12 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 13 New York Courier and Enquirer, i.e. Morning Courier and New York Enquirer, daily newspaper published by James Watson Webb, New York City, 1829-1861, promoting the Whigs. 14 Mary Appleton Mackintosh.

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yesterday a delightful letter from the boys,15 and last night a most distressing dream. It was about sweet Norry, so shocking that I cannot repeat it. The worst of all of a father’s agony, but I had to go through recapitulations and remarks of people talking to me about it afterwards. My happiness – for it was true happiness, when I awoke from this torment fr was really great. Let me, my love and life, copy for you a letter from the great Chatham to his wife, which I just found, reading in his Correspondence, amid state dispatches and official letters. You must remember that he wrote this letter when he was not only wielding Great Britain’s destiny by way of bei ∆ the primier, but when he rescued her, and carried on a glorious war in Europe, America and Asia, when he received the finest letters from Frederic the Great of Prussia, who considered him one of the very greatest men. Pitt (he was not then earl yet) writes Nov 19, 1759 to his wife: “My sweetest Love, After much court and more House of Commons, with Jemmy Rivers (one of the under secretaries) since a hasty repast, what refreshment and delight to sit down to address these lines to the dearest object of my every thaught! I will begin with telling you I am well; for that it is my happiness to Know my adored first wishes to hear; and I will next tell myself (and trust in heaven that my hopes don’t decieve me) that this letter f will find yon and all our little angels in perfect health; them in joyful, and you in serene and happy spirits The bitter wind has forbid all garden occupations, and little William (this little William is the sprout that afterwards became the mighty oak-tree William Pitt) will naturally have called your attentions more towards that springing human plant, than to objects out of doors. - I wait with longing impatience for the groom’s return, with ample details of you and yours. Send me, my sweetest wife, a thousand particulars of all those little great things which, to those who are blessed as we, so far surpass in excellence and exceed in attraction all the great little things of the busy, restless world. That laborious world forbids my wished-for journey to on Wednesday, and protracts till the evening our happy meeting.” (Then he adds a few lines and concludes) “your ever loving husband.”16 - The letter from the boys17 was delightful because Theod. writes me what profit the last year has yielded them, enormous for the horizon of a professor, whose purse is generally as empty as his heart is full. What I write now is in strict secrecy, for they will write to uncle Jacob in due time about it; therefore you will be, as you are ever wont to be, discreet. Theod. 15 16

17

The Oppenheimer brothers in Ponce/Puerto Rico. Lieber quoted the letter of William Pitt, earl of Chatham to his wife, November 19, 1759, from: Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. by the executors of his son, John, Earl of Chatham, vol. 1, London John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1838, pp. 457–458. The Oppenheimer brothers in Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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has made up his mind to come to the U.S. in 1841, and Gustav will soon follow. They will settle anywhere in the North, where we are (!!!). Theodore very kindly asks whether, in case I will still be in Columbia, I could not leave you and family in the winter of 1841/42 with him. All I answered was this [sketch of a little man thumbing his nose] It is hard indeed, I think, that the one half of our castles, which we thaught the least likely, seems to be on the point of being realized, while the other half, once considered not so far off, is, perhaps farther off then ever. James18 will be in the States in June, to go to Europe. He does not write; once a few lines telling me the important news that there was no room left for him, and that he would soon write, He may take it quite at his leasure. Isabela had behaved very foolishly. When at N.Y. the hotel keeper of the Globe told me one evening that a Frenchman had published a Directory of all distinguished Filles de joie of N.Y. with a proper brief description. This seemed so extraordinary & outrageous to me, that, writing the next day to the boys, I told them of it, and addid I would send it to Theodore, for better accomodating himself on his next trip to N.Y. Gustavus (who as Theodore writes “has the foolish fashion of telling every nonsense to Isabela, who does not understand things”) translates the whole letter to her, and she always jealous, has made a terrible bluster about it. She is the veriest child, and ought to be treated as such: kindly, if she behaves sensibly; and with a considerable degree of Noneof-your-Nonsense-Madam, when she chooses to be foolish. What a treasure I possess in you, also in this respect. My love and wife, I adore you for it. You understand the great and difficult secret of loving, even unto death, and yet without fettering. Your love is liberty, it is sunshine in which the birds love to gambel and warble. But here I am again where I donot want to be as the near the end of the sheet. I long ardently for a letter, and right good would it do me to drive away the frightful phantoms of the dream; in which I donot believe, yet they are like pictures, I cannot help seeing them. Kiss the dear things, who give so much uneasiness to their father. A propos, Caroline, I am angry with you. the boys write me, that they had just your first letter after Matty’s arrival; and from what Gustavus writes, I can see that you infinitely prefer Norry to Oscar, indeed it seems he made not the best impression first, on account of wildness, thought Gust. does not write anything of the kid; but I conjecture. Now my dear Carry, if you love me - and you say you do – love that boy. Believe me he is a fine boy, and a noble one too. I am jealous about him; he is part and parcel of my heart – and so are all three. Alas, if that poor boy is destined to remain behind, and no one there to dott upon him! What prospects, these to an ardently loving father! - Sunday. I thaught I might have had a letter to-day; but had none. You say Aunt 18

James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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Minna made the boys write down their wishes. Shall I write down mine? I mean of worldly affairs? Somewhere at the North in a law school (not in a College) a chair (no rocking chair either) of constitutional and international Law, with an income with which my books would give me $ 4000 a year; health to all of you and me, a fine little house near the city, belonging to myself with garden, near water, two handsome horses to ride and drive, the W.I. boys near us. Or Old Astor19 making appropriation for a large city Library; appointing me Librarian and charging [4] Columbia S.C. January 9. 1840. I will not send this letter, the first I have written in the new year, without adding a few lines to my sweet boys, who with his brothers is ever present to my mind. I wish you health and happiness, my beloved Oscar. Make the best of your time. You are far more fortunate than thousands of other children. You have a loving and most kind mother, and an opportunity for learning, as few have. When I was of your age, I had not opportunity of like yours. Be then thankful to God for all these blessings, that is make the best possible use of it; you must become a good man; try to become a great man. Strive to become something really clever, that the name of Lieber may go down to posterity with honor. I have a present for you. So soon as you can write me that you can translate Cornelius Nepos, which ought to be at no distant period, I will give you my inkstand; you recollect the large black one, made of anthracite coal. I bought it in Philadelphia; ever since it has served me, and among other things I have written of out of it my whole work y on Political Ethics and one Essay on Penal Law.20 I Know, my dear Oscar will value it. It will remind him, when it stands before him, of his loving father. Now, exert yourself; learn Latin; and a happy day it shall be for me, when you write: My dear papa my master has allowed me to write to you, that I can translate Cornelius Nepos. I was much rejoiced at the news your dear mother gives me about you; you are a good boy; God bless you. There is but one complaint your teacher seems to make, and that is, that you have a habit of not instantly obeying. You always obeyed me; why would you not others? Because I would punish disobediance? I am sure, that is not the case, for than you would have obeyed from mere fear; in this sense even ­animals obey, for the fear of punishment. Show then that like a man, a true gentleman, you obey, not from fear, but because yourself choose to do it, 19 John Jacob Astor. 20 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics; Lieber, Essay on Subjects of Penal Law.

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because you Know and judge that a child to be good and be blessed by God, ought to obey those who must educate it. Is not this the proper way of thinking? Reflect upon it, and I Know you will say: Yes, my dear Papa is right. My dear boy, the day before new-year’s eve was a rainy day, but the ground and air below was so cold, that the rain froze, the moment it fell; so the umbrella wa became covered with a coating of ice. You remember perhaps that this state of weather covers the beautiful elm-trees in campus w all-round with ice, and make the poor brittle orange trees break. When I went that day to town, I could not help thinking of you, in seeing a poor horse standing exposed to the rain. It was so characteristic; you would have drawn it at one; the feet pretty close together, for cold makes man and beast contract; the head drooping, the ears slack, and the tail, belly, main and nose garnished with long ice-cickles. It was a pitty-ful sight. On new-year’s day I went out in the woods, with Mr Rhett, to enjoy the glorious sight of crystalled nature, but it was not so beautiful as the day after, when the sun shone, yet the air was so cold that no water dropped from the trees, and the magnificent sight of this day I must describe to my boy. The sky was cloudless; the sun shone fine, and when I crossed the yard to pay my visit to Nausicaa, I found every blade, even the finest, thin like hair incrusted all round with the purest ice, not frost, which is whitests, but pure ice, without bubles in it! It was a beautiful sight; the elm-trees were equally encased in crystal, and what was extraordinary, every where the ice was all round, and equally thick and pure; the trunk as well as the finest twig, with its already swelled beds, were thus en-crystalled, and as the slander branches gently moved in the bright sun, it was as if the most graceful silver-rods moves to and fro. Even the stalks of that not very beautiful hog-weed, in the field close to the college, had been transformed into lovely transparent rods, and the two or three nobs at of old seed at the top of each, were looked like as many large precious stones, so that I could not help comparing them to the wands of rich fairies. Every blade of last year, wh with which our fields remain covered, was cast in this transparent silver, so that you could not see before you anything of the ground, but it seemed as if an enchanter had bid the ground to shoot forth spronting silver. Even old cornfield, with the stiff stalks of of Indian corn, were now graceful and lovely. The pine trees, especially those, they call here, the long-leaved, and the beautiful tufts of which I often compared to g the ostrich plumes of in eastern turbans, were beautiful beyond my power of description; each single leaf, or pin, as it is called in German, was formed the delicate green thread or nerve in the pure and even ice, which in the thickness and evenness of a thin pipe-stem surrounded it; the tufts looked liked F brilliant agraffs of diamonds, and as the united weight of the crystal burden bent the branches and many whole trees, a gracefulness was les thus suddenly lent

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to the pine and the forest, not p ­ eculiar to this inhabitant of the forest. The regular and multitudinous branches of the crapapple tree looked marry and sweet, while the oacktrees had a stately, magnificent character. There were no where ice-cickles, except at the points of the lobes, into which the leaf of the white point is devided. The leaf itself was covered w on both sides with pure ice to thickness of a quarter of an inch; I measured it; and as the weight of the ice bent those trees to the ground, the ice-cickles originally pending, now stood up; but as the trees seemed to have been bent when the last part of the ice-cickles was not yet quite hard, the bent, so that indeed each leaf looked, like claws streched out, as we might imagine the deomond claws of a griffin, which guards a fairy treasure. The akorns, covered like sugar-plums, were no less more beautiful; in short I never have seen any thing more dazzling, more splendid, more delicate and graceful. I was overwhelmed with admiration, and thousand times did I think: Could but Matilda and the boys,21 could Oscar see it! Winter in Germany, as you will have seen by this time, is, though sometimes beautiful, grave, severe, stern, but ne∆ is was lovely as spring ever was, like a pretty lady who looks all the better for a tasty handsome winter dress, and the blooming blowing roses which bracing yet genial winters-day paints benear bids to bloom beneath a pair of dark and lovely eyes. The sun was so warm that not only had I no extra coat additional coat on, but I did not even button up my frock. It was very difficult for me to ride on by the by-paths, which I always prefer, on account of the many bent trees, not a few of which have snapped amunder under their brilliant burden; and poor Nausicaa was much startled at the shower of crystal which fell upon as rattling and clattring when I boldly pressed through the diamond grove and silver forest. Great as the minute beauty was of every twig and leaflet, it was no less so, when, from the top of a hill I viewed the forest; millions of sparkling diamonds, of naving crystal rods, of heavy graceful tufts, all shaded and reflecting at the same time the azure of the sky and its darting beam. This was on the 2d of January. Yesterday, it was a mellow lovely day, I followed a brook, and found the elder already in blossom, the sassafrass buds thickly swelled, promising to burst in a week or so, and the moss light green and with its new seed stems. in short spring in its first pulsations; the first symptoms of nature’s returning life. But I must close. The box, which contains your drawings has not yet arrived. Kiss Hammy and Norry for me, and give my best compliments to Mr. & Mrs Busse. Donot forget this; and beg him to make you learn Latin hard. I love you from all my soul. Your father F. Lieber 21

Oscar, Hamilton, and Norman Lieber.

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[cross-writing] me to collect the library in Europe while the building is erecting here, I all the time drawing the salary and deceeding travelling expenses. Oh I can wish too! Alas yes, I can – vain, idle dreams! Only I always feel impelled to say, as if not to offend the Fates: Ladies upon my honor, I never wished one moment for indolence; if I wish sufficiency it is only that I will be the more laborious. I cannot be leazy. it would be as impossible to me as it would be to some to be industrious. I take no credit for it, it is my nature, perhaps my very nervousness, certainly in part my ambition. – (in a melancholy mood after the first letter from Columbia, containing that doleful account of my foot.) – Lately I read letters written by distinguished persons of the court of James I.22 I was struck with those of the dutchess of Buckingham. Whenever she speaks of her love to the duke, it is remarkable how she writes in your strain, although I do not wish you to infer from this perhaps that I write in his, or that you would compare to him. Whatever his abilities in some respect may have been I humbly make bold to say I prefer being Francis Lieber to the Duke of Buckingham, even were he now with all his power and beauty among the living, and however modestly my name will go down to posterity I shall think it will be a fairer name than Buckingham, and, since I have got into this talk, my children and children’s children, I trust in God, will stand a fairer comparison with his descendants. Matilda, soit dit entre nous, these Sundays are most lonesome days. You ask me whether I have never thaught that after all you aught not to have gone. No, emphatically, no. I often think, “after all, it is well she went” I think we see very clearly already how good it was for you to go, for your mind, body, heart, for the children, your sisters &c and then for another reason, I will not write about, but which I nevertheless see very clearly. – Matilda, the Rubicon is past – I have accepted the Secretaryship – Oh God! but $200 for a poor devil like myself ought not to be waived, especially when Oscar and the horse’s bill (poor Oscar, placed thus) come so heavily upon me. I am sorry I had not the secretaryship when you were here, for with assistance the entrees of marks &c would be very easy. However I shall go through with it well enough, like swallowing nasty pills. If the mind is once made up it goes well enough. My Hammy that tear which you shed in crying for me when you prayed for me, will be blessed by God and never shall be forgotten by your father, you sterling, brave little fellow. So long 22

John S. Brewer, The Court of King James the First: To which are Added Letters Illustrative of the Personal History of the Most Distingished Characters in the Court of That Monarch and His Predecessors. Now first published from the original manuscripts, 2 vols. Richard Bentley London 1839.

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as I live will I remember that tear, you staunch, good hearted little soul. I thank you, sweet little boy. There will never be any flummery about you. Excuse [cross-writing, 2] my dear Matilda, all this effusion, which I know is nothing in a letter, in as much as it only shows what you know, my feelings, but conveys no news. Yet, Good God, what can I do, on lonely Sunday like this, when I have read that I am perfectly sick of books, although I say with Gibbon they are my life and my glory. Good bye, my heart. I have dined, upon pork pye! And I am a civilized man! I must tell you a story. I sent yesterday for pork, for I was fairly sick of chickens and soup. They sent me a piece which was absolutely nothing but fat. So I returned it, sending word that if I should want lard, I would send for it. At noon I went to town; Neufer saw me, asked me in, showed me a fine piece of pork, would give it, I of course would pay; looked round, saw paper, had it enveloped, put it under the cloak, and walked home. Heavens, to what may not a professor in Columbia come! To speak serious Matilda, I have heard of late of two or three such disgusting crimes here, openly committed, yet not notice taken of, that I feel again so strong my unhappiness at being here. Pray with me, oh pray earnestly that we may be removed. It is not comfort alone, it is not decency alone, it is my very moral self which is concerned. I succumb – January 9. I hope my dear Matilda is not angry with me, for sending so long an epistle to be copied for Oscar. I think it will not be without interest for you even. I mean to send this letter, so that when I receive No 11 I may begin a fresh one. Probably I shall have two letters at once or in close succession, because many Northern mails are due, owing to the bad roads. Yester-day I had a letter from Mr Dew, President of William & Mary, College, Virginia. Pres. Dew is universally considered one of the most prominent men in the South. [cross-writing, 3] He writes me that he has introduced my Ethics book in his own department.23 This is cheering. He also says: “From the very condensed and rapid sketch which you have given of the principles of Moral Philosophy, I am forced to regret that you did not give a full and complete treatment ∆ on the subject. We are sadly in want of such a work, and from the character of what I have seen from your pen on the subject, I am sure no one would be better qualified for the task than yourself.” This is worth writing to a wife – a vain, foolish thing. 23 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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Only think the boy is not yet here, nor have I even information that it has been sent! This is, I aver, the vilest meanest place for any decent sort of a man, that has one single want beyond stinky bacon, to live in. I hat it, I loathe it, I casteroil it. Es widersteht mir. Good bye. I am well; I love you, I – I cannot afford more on this destestable place. God be with you and my bairns and your sisters. My love is strong as the sun that shines before me, but my mind not as serene. Good bye your Frank Single Paid Via New-York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York Jan 16 Stamp Outre mer Le Havre Stamp Paris 5 Febr 40 Stamp Hamburg 10. Febr. 40 + red sealing wax

No. 37 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 12.01.-26.01.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 16.01.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XX Last date January 26. 1840. I am well enough January 12. 1840. No letter, my love, although I had Paris papers by the Louis Philippe which crossed in 21 days; probably a previous packet, not yet in, has a letter for me. What a pity! The wheather has suddenly changed it is so warm that the insects buzz about me when I ride out. Yester-day, when on my Nausicaa and spring’s lovely symptoms, like the first blushes of returning life and happy health upon a van cheek, were visible everywhere around me, I concieved the following lines, which as I Know that a loving heart loves nothing so much as to peep into the heart that is beloved, I will give you: Der Lenz hat Wonnen u hat Wehen; Er fühlt ein lustbeklemmtes Herz Aals sollts an Lebensfülle sterben, Der frühen Sehnsucht süßen Schmerz, Der Liebe Drang, der Liebe Freuden; Die Fülle sehnt sich nach Erguß; Erweckt, entzündet treibts den Busen, Die Lippe lechzet nach dem kuß. Vom heitren Himmel falle die Strahlen, Und schwelle die Knospen, schwelle die Saat, Und schwelle des stillen Wanderers Busen Nach Luft u Leben, Lieb u That. Wie glücklich seid ihr Bäum u Gräser; Ein jedes blüht u strebt u steigt, Und folgt dem heiteren Geseze, Bis, wohl erfüllt, es still sich neigt. So streben wir uns zu erfüllen; doch st selten wird der Mensch erfüllt, Wenn Liebe nicht ein Herz voll Liebe, That nicht die thätge Seele stillt. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_039

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An meine Mathilda. C’est un peu mélancholique, n’est ce pas? Mais, que faire? Si mon âme se rejuit dans les richesses de votre ton amour, an mois mes lêvres sont des orphelins à present; et les deux dernieres lignes sont est ce qu’elles ne sont pas des vérites prises de ma vie? Mais je suis resolue de pas écrire pour avoir une feuille entiére lorsque votre ton N. 11 arrivera. Oh qu’il soit bientôt. - Thousand kisses to my covey of partridges. I often meet on my rides coveys of these beautiful and tame birds, and, I dont know why, they always seem to me to represent my little fledged ones. Love to your sisters – those good and excellent beings. My box is still in Charleston. Good God, how trying that is. - And now, I will go and see mself whether I have a letter or no, and – unfit myself for the whole day, for if I have a letter, it is all over, if not, it is not much better. I send you a kiss of vernal life. I could kiss your lips all to pieces. Well it is for you, I have no one here; Sally,1 ‘pon my word, should be constituted your deputy reciever. - Anything might do, saving always blackies! - # No letter! Poor Frank! I found on my return a piece of wedding cake from Charlotte.2 To-morrow I mean to have one of the Westphalia’s boiled and ask Rhett, my great favorite to dine with me. Do you know Matilda, taken all in all there are very few persons in the whole universe – actual prisoners excepted, who live so solitary a life as mine? Yesterday I happened to stumble upon Hebel’s Allem. Gedichte,3 in which I found these words: “Seinem Matz, Ludwig.”4 - January 15. I am not in a good mood. When I have no letters, I have observed, I always feel first low-spirited; loneliness weighs with all its heaviness upon my mind; but when I go day after day to the post office without finding a letter, too anxious to send Elza, I begin to feel cross, for I believe that is the only true word. Strange indeed sound to me the complaints of Chatham, Niebuhr5 or any whose correspondence I read, at the brief separation from wife and child. How short was their seperation, and in what sphere did they not move! Mere child’s play compared to me, utterly lonely as I am. My crossness is probably increased by having read to-day in my 2d. vol. which has arrived at last – and such dirty, nasty, accursed misprints!6 No sand in spinnage or sallad, grinding the teeth, is half as trying. It is now a settled matter that I must go next summer again to Boston, for

1 2 3 4

Sally Newton. Charlotte McCheves née McCord. Johann Peter Hebel, Allemannische Gedichte, Philip Macklot Karlsruhe 1803. Dedication of Ludwig Oppenheimer to his cousin Mathilde Oppenheimer when she had stayed in Hamburg during the years 1820/22. 5 Chatham=William Pitt the Elder; Barthold Georg Niebuhr. 6 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, vol. 2.

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I will not allow another book of mine to be so shamefully treated. A pretty prospect! I candidly ask has ever author been deprived so entirely of all the many trifling and important aids, mechanical or intellectual or moral, as myself? It requires energy indeed, not to loose all courage. God knows! I am heartily sick of my position. Not that I donot acknowledge how good a thing it is to have a fixed salary in these times when every one else loses; but at what moral and mental sacrifice must I obtain this pecuniary advantage. I feel sometimes as if I could no longer bear the burden, It is too much for a man of my frame. Your box has of course not yet arrived. Whether Trapmann has allowed wagons to leave Charleston, without seizing upon the opportunity, I donot know, I believe he has; but it is all the same; the fact is certain I have not the box. In such a nest we live, out of all communication. The day before yester-day I recieved the little parcel from Sally, with the neet watch string and a minute golden broach - very pretty indeed and I wear it with much pleasure.7 Yesterday Fanny Appleton wrote me; in it the letter was a myrthe twig, Mary had8 worn near her heart during the ceremony. When I opened the letter and the twig – so striking a symbol, and so directly eloquent, fell out, the tears started into my eyes. I donot know why; but so it was. She wore no flower or branch in on the head. The marriage was excedingly private. Sally writes, Mary is really in love. God be thanked. I ­understand that Mackintosh has but $1000 salary, and Mr Appleton gives Mary $3000 a year. Were she not in love it would be hard for her to live upon $4000. Ma Fanny goes with them to Washington. Poor girl, she feels the separation and the prospect of Mary’s going one of these days to Europe very much. I had also a parcel of German books from Perthes. Had you never sent to him to let you know when he sends? A line from you, ever so old, a drawing from Oscar, any thing, a sign of life would have been welcome. Nay, agreable as these books were, there was some bitterness in the thaught, or rather feeling – for it was not the result of reflexion – that here there was something before me that came from the place where all I love best, sojourn, without one thing to object or word of remembrence. Perhaps the books left the same time with that unhappy box. - The January number of the N.Y. Review, which you know could not contain a review of my Ethics, owing to want of time has the following notice on my book: “We have only room to announce the completion of Mr Lieber’s truly excellent book. We donot mean to say that we consider it so well adapted to the use of colleges as it might be. Its great extent, and also in some particulars its method and style, render it in our opinion less valuable for that

7 Sally Newton née Sullivan. 8 Mary Appleton Mackintosh.

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purpose. But the depth of thaught and reach of thaught and knowledge, the soundness of its original [2] principles, the momentous importance of the topics treated, and the earnest and right hearted tone of the author, make it a work of unspeakable value for all who have time and inclination to go into a thourough study of subjects lying at the foundation of our national well-being.”9 Did I write to you that President Dew of William & Mary College, Virginia, wrote me that he had adopted it as a text book? January 16. No letter this morning, and again a package of file of Galignani! What is this, are you indisposed? Has a letter been lost? God forbid either. I set down to write you only that this morning at 9 I took up my 2d p. and without knowing it read until 12 ¼, and that once I jumped up and said loud: “This is noble, beautiful”, two facts which I know will speak to you clearer than explanations and which will comfort you, as they do me a little, after what happened and I mentioned to you yester-day – those vile misprints. But I am become considerably thickskinned. Betsy10 just brought me her money, that is yours, to count. When I told her she had $20, her whole face brightened up, and still more when I told her, upon her question, that 20 from 28, only leave 8. Her pleasure to collect this money for Missus is very great. To give her pleasure I told her that I would now send you these 20 dollars. Oh no, said she, these are so dirty bills, I will get clean ones, and dont you you think Master, missus would like silver better? I said, perhaps, only to give her more pleasure of bustling, for this collecting money for you, makes her as proud and self-important as you have never seen her. Every now and then she brings me the pocket-book – which lies in my drawer up-stairs – to count her money. Is it then not true, that a beginning of redemption might thus be made. But to be sure, they have nearly all time for themselves, wash & sell cakes at a great rate, which others of course could not allow them because of course they must either have their labor, or send them away and hire free labor = Jan. 17. This moment Mr Elliot tells me that when he was a boy they had an old negro woman who would beg, on Sunday’s, for some castor oil, to put it on her rice, as the greatest delicacy she knew! Oh God! However, do not many white people prefer Calvinism to a loving religion, and free adoration of the deity? Chacun à son gout! # January 18. God knows, how this will end! I recieve Gallignianis proof that Havre packets 9 10

The New York Review January 1840. Betsy the cook, Columbia/SC.

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are in – but no sign from you. The packet, which had sailed before the one that was in long ago, has also arrived; but no letter. Everything seems to conspire against me. The box has now been 4 weeks in Charleston, I have entreated Trapmann to send it to Branchville, which of course he can do daily, yet I have not even an answer from him. I am sick, heartily sick of all these annoyances. What prevented you from writing, or even, should you be indisposed, which God forbid, one of the sisters, I cannot concieve. When life depends upon one solitary thing – news from those we love, in my case – that one thing should be considered with some degree of tenderness, attention and judgement, by those who set some value upon that life. But even if you consider merely my time, I entreat you not to carelessly to leave me without news, for it utterly in unfits me. I cannot write, read, meditate calmly. The print of my 2d. part does not contribute to assuage my mind. If I had any sorts of means adequate to the purpose, I should most undoubtedly cancel the edition and print a new one.11 Would to God I could throughw away from 4 to 500 dollars, and it should be done instantly, on the spot. If by some accident that sum were to fall into my lap to-day I know I should do it, convinced as I should be that by my doing so, I should provide after all, better for my children, in leaving them a more decent name, than by adding $500 to our pittance. Would to God, I had that money. But the expences of this year in repaying Uncle Jacob and the journey of you and the children, and an additional servant when you return, put it out of question. Sunday. No letter! I am – but no, I will not write. Why should I pour out my feelings, for to such this writing to you to-day would amount. So I will forego to-day my general and almost only Sunday comfort. - We have it cold again, after all the flies had actually left their devices and buzzed at the windows as though it were spring. - Goodbye, I am loothe to part, but I really think it is better. Another Havre packet is in I see, and yet no letter from you! - I have written to the publishers, what I must pay to cancel the remaining copies and issue a new edition.12 - Wednesday. No letter! I implore you, if ever you send again a letter by steamboat, to write one very soon after by Havre, for the void which otherwise occurs is insufferable. Has anxious affection not suggested this to you? My situation here without letters is absolutely deplorable. Without one friend, without stirring life around me, out of the pale of civilized society, without anything except God’s clear and eternal sky, what have I to feed my soul with life, except news from those I call mine? Oh, it is hard indeed to try me in this manner day after day, until I become fairly worried out and – ashamed, when people, who moreover take after all very little interest, ask as 11 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 12 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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matter of course, when they meet me: News from Mrs Lieber? and I must always answer: No. I actually have gone out of the way of people not to have the provoking question put me. Thursday I have just gone through the disagreable ask of clearing up the table, and now sit down to – work? Oh no I cannot; my mind is to restless; to write to you? This very paper has an unpleasant look to me, nor could I possibly write in this humor to my beloved Oscar. God grant, you have not to charge yourself with carelessness in as the cause of my being deprived of my last, only and little comfort, that of writing. Your last was of Nov. 4!! I tremble of fear, to recieve perhaps some: “I thaught”, I waited till Christmass”, or that perhaps you have written by one of those wretched Hamburg vessels – always thinking of thing as it is with you, but not how it turns out here. - One of your letters begins, No 9, at least I think &c. So much these letters and my anxiety in recieving them seem to interest you, that despite of all my entreat is you seem not even to keep a list. I wonder what these numbers may be fore, if not to [3] give me certainty, whether I have recieved all or not? However, I will extort nought. Had I but news of the children! - Friday. I donot know what to do. I donot wish to keep you without news as you do me, and yet I donot know what to write. What have I to write? Nor do I wish to send you an empty sheet. How is all my inmost pleasure of writing spoiled, how the embarrassment of finding room, changed into one of finding subjects to write about! Sometimes actually the idea of my having wife & children co starts up in my mind as something quite new. I do not write hyperbolically. You frequently ask whether I donot regret having parted with you &c. No, but that one single thing, that only comfort left of all, that solitary sole means of communication – letters, ought to have been considered, in the all that enthusiasm of love, with some degree of judgement. And again I ask, is illness the case, are you, is my Oscar, is any one ill? Good God, why then did not some one write. In the losing of a letter I donot believe. It is exceedingly humiliating for any being to be trifled with on a point to which he clings with all intensity of his heart is capable of. There is a lawsuit going on in Charleston respecting an inheritance of great value, in which it is of the utmost importance to settle, whether it shall be adopted that the husband died before the wife, or vice versa, both having perished in the Pelaski, and the general rule of law in such cases being somewhat weekened by a slander testimony to the contrary. And while this is going on, we recieve the news that the steamboat Lexington between N.Y. & Storington (for Boston) was consumed by flames; of 174 people 3 were saved. Poor Follen & his wife.

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Later dates say, his wife was not on board among the perished.13 All such news press with additional force on my already oppressed heart, in my utter loneliness. I cannot help thinking sometimes that you have gone to Lubeck and “thaught” you would write on your return. Such thaughts are not assuaring. It is now more than 6 7 weeks I had the steamboat letter I believe. But what for do I write the same thing over and over again? I have tried several times to write to my dear Oscar on the last page, which at other times it gives me such heartfelt pleasure to consider as his due, but I cannot. - I trust in God you have not sent any additional box &c. All these things only contribute to harrass. I have the box not yet from Charleston. Therefore, send nothing, and do you feel inclined, write. Some account of my children’s health might at least be considered as a due to his father. - Sunday, January 26. 1840. Yesterday at length I had your No XII, which ends with Dec. 4, and this moment No XI by the Isaac Newton. Alas another box! I have not yet the first. The river has become lower and lower for the last 18 months; we can get up no things except by wagons which carry cotton from here to Charleston, when they return; but cotton is so low that no things that planters will not sell, so none goes down. However I received to-day a letter from a Charleston merchant to whom Trapmann has given that unfortunate box, that he hopes there will be soon an opportunity now. Should you send any thing direct to Charleston I beg you not to send it to Trapmann but to Messrs. Kirkpatrick & co Charleston S.C., with proper advice &c. I have so little space left that I must briefly write the most important. I feared your letters, because there would be, I thaught, much bewailing of my foot and being laid up a week, but happily was I disappointed, for you donot even mention it. So much the better. Not only since our separation but even before your departure I have continually spoken of the necessity of making Latin one of the chief objects of Oscar’s course of introduction. Yet have I not even yet now an satisfaction about this point. Oscar does not even mention it among in his lessons. Can I not even obtain a point I have insisted upon so positively & so distinctly? What is all this? I say he must have daily a Latin lesson, and if his present teacher cannot do it, some other provision must be made. It is a very sad thing to be obliged to repeat the same thing so often at such distance, and to loose of course all belief that any attention will be paid to other subjects less important. - I beg you to write with darker ink; I hardly could read the last; 13

Charles Follen was one of the casualties in the accident of the steamer Lexington that had taken place January 13, 1840 in the Long Island Sund; his widow Eliza Lee Cabot Follen promoted her late husband’s work by opposing slavery and publishing his writings, Eliza Lee Cabot, The Works of Charles Follen, with a memoir of his Life, 5 vols. Boston Hilliard, Gray, and Company 1841.

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and my directions must be written larger; the many stamps efface it otherwise, and Heckscher puts a cover over it, so that I have to pay double portage for no reason. It is not necessary to send the letters to Heckscher.14 Did all our European letters, when you were here, go through his house? It will be different when your letters, by careful calculation, may be supposed to arrive, next summer, after the first week of June, at N.Y. - I shall not cross again with redink. Indeed, if ther I were to continue in my present feelings there would be little need. - I had also a letter from Mary yesterday. Her present direction is: Mrs Mackintosh, British Embassy, Washington City. - In your last letter you say Gottes Segen ruhe auf dich. That makes me think of grammar, not of God; of Dative & Accusative not of Love; just as if absynth were mixed with the sacred communion wine; no one could keep his thaughts on the holy subject. - You speak of Raumer’s & Ranke’s last work as sent me.15 What are they? I beg you to send a careful memorandum of them, in which you will write down that they have been sent me, to Messrs Perthes & Besser, so that they donot sent the letters books again. This ought not to be forgotten. I do by no means like the idea of Oscar’s interrupting his education again by going to Zuellichau; especially since he has allowed another year wit to pass without & learning the multipl. table. It makes me feel humbled. Boston children know that always when 4 years old; he is 10! past 9! - Of course you cannot take all the children to Zuellichau; they will have some future opportunity. I should think there is no letter missing for one “you thaught was No 9” these are your words; then followed one without number by steam-boat; then the one by Isaac Newton marked XI, and the one of yesterday XII. Fair would I think one was lost, containing at least some mark of feeling with my state of health, since others, so distantly connected with me have shown it. If you have written, and the letter is lost, you see the consequences of not attending to trifles which I have begged so often to attend [4] to namely the numbering of letters. I fear I must now add to number them correctly and regularly; and perhaps to this that I always number the sheet for my next letter, the moment I send off a letter. But it is - I was going to say almost mean, to mention such things to a being distant, and – dear me – if things 14

Charles August Heckscher, and his trading house Heckscher, Coster & Matfield, New York City. 15 Raumer, Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte; Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation.

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of this sort are must be mentioned, there would be every day twenty others, equally trifling if attended to, but very important if not. I suppose I must mention that when you go to Zuellichau you need not send the letters via Hamburg, but direct to Havre. But they must be paid. - I have never liked the expression “my dear fellow”; it will hardly bear saying especially from the lips of a woman; certainly it does not bear writing. I donot even wri like it from men, e.g. your brothers. In conversation the tone, the place may do a good deal; in writing it has a vulgar sound. I am very much grieved at Hammy’s impediment in speaking, and beg you to have a thorough physician look at him; whether there is an organic fault. And have Oscar’s teeth been attended to? - I feel uneasy, there is no use in hiding it. - McCord, so says Ellet, is engaged to Cheves’ sister,16 to be married next spring. Good God! The worms can hardly have done their work with his first wife17 - I thank Caroline for the Champagne wine of which you speak. When it reaches me I will drink her health; but I hope her real health does not depend upon that, last she might fairly become a wretched cripple in the mean time. I donot expect that second box before May. This is not exaggeration. - From a remark in your letter I am afraid that the paper I have used is too large. I wrote to you long, long ago what letters on way to Havre cost. You might have told me that the rated are very exact as to paper &c. I donot know it. Your Frank My best love to Harriet! Columbia S.C. January 16. 1840. My beloved Child, Yester-day I received your Mama’s letter of Dec. 5; at the beginning of which you dictated some lines to me. I thank you my boy. I cannot write much to-day, but the little which I am going to write, I beg you carefully to store up in your mind, for it is very important. Mama writes me that Mr Busse says your obedience has much increased. This has given me inmost pleasure; but at the same time he complaints that you are too long at your exercises, and – which deeply grieves me – that you donot yet know the multiplication table. My boy, the reason of all this is that you allow your fancy to rove about, when all attention ought to be fixed on one point. You recollect, this was your fault already here; but I will tell you more; it was your fault from your early infancy, when Mama began teaching you in Philadelphia. Mark then, this is a fault natural to you, which means, you naturally incline to it, and consequently have to pay the very greatest attention to its being overcome; for natural or not, faults must be 16 17

David James McCord was engaged to Louise Cheves, sister of the husband of his daughter Charlotte, Captain Langdon Cheves jun. His wife Emmeline, the mother of Charlotte had died August 7, 1839.

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eradicated, especially this one, which is one of the very worst, and every day that you grow older it becomes more difficult. Remember, although learning various things is very important, far more important still it is to have a strong mind, and you cannot have a strong mind so long as fancy holds the rains of your charrots horses. Learn early, I implore you, to pin down your attention, to clinch it down, to the subject before you, or you will make a dreaming sort of a man of you, not one that may, with God’s assistance hope for honorable distinction. Is it not melancholy that you, 9 ½ years old, do not know yet, what little Boston boys of 4 years old almost invariably know – the multiplication table? Why my Oscar, let your poor father soon hear for the very last time of this unpleasant subject of the multipl. table. I intended to write a good deal more, about other things but I have no room left. Your loving, oh dearly loving father Stamp Forwarded through Gilpin’s Exchange Reading Room and Foreign Letter Office    N. York Stamp Forwarded by New York 8 Febr 1870 [hand written] Heckscher Coster Matfield Stamp Le Havre Stamp Hamburg 17 März 40. Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hamburg Allemagne

No. 38 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 15.01.-21.01.1840 Included: dictated letter of Guido Norman Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: letter of Henriette Oppenheimer to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5066, ALS, 4 pages, paper damaged on the edges Letter XV finished Jan 21st. All well having received the good news. of your foots recovery. Hamburg January 15th 1840. My own dear husband. It is a week since I wrote to you and every day I have been looking, anxiously looking, for a letter from you, but still I have none. The day after tomorrow it will be four weeks since your last arrived. Dont you pity me? Yet I know dearest it is not your fault for surely you have written, and I would be angry with the wind, did I not remember that it must have favored you, while it was faithless to me. Perhaps even the christmas box arrived in time, perhaps my subsequent letters have long since relieved you of much of your care with regard to Oscar. If so, I will patiently bear my own disappointments and who knows what a few days hence may bring me. My Frank, I have been very homesick lately, indeed I want to be with you again. Nothing I ­enjoy -, and I am, not ungrateful for the blessings - can replace to me, a smile, a laugh, a kiss from a cosy chat with, my own dearest husband. And I will return cheerfully to Columbia for another year or two, if it must be, looking forward to a pleasant change in our prospects; If you could but be happy, and if we could but have our own boy with us, cheerfully would I return to you even without the hope of a speedy deliverance. All I want now is to see you again, my own Frank, to be able to do something for you. I have a great deal to make up when I return home, my poor fellow. Januar 19. Gott sey dank, ich habe einen Brief von dir, mein geliebter Freund, wie glücklich bin ich nun, dein Fuß war besser, du warst über unsern Oscar beruhigt, warst nicht mehr unzufrieden mit deinem treuen Weibchen. Nun ist alles gut und so danke ich dir aus tiefem Herzen für deine fromme Liebe. Ehe ich diesen Brief gestern erhielt war mir elend zu Muthe; ich konnte dir auch garnicht schreiben, so unruhig war ich. Nun ist es süß wieder zu dir zu kommen, und dir gelöst und freudig alles mitzutheilen was sich mit deiner kleinen Vagabunden Familie zugetragen hat seitdem ich zu lezt erzählte. Erst aber, a little picking from your letter, for that is upper most in my mind now. Letter No XIV from Nov 16. to December 3, is a good one, because my Frank is not displeased with me, which he may believe me or not when he is, works so upon my mind that I can not be happy. It was a good one, because there was some sweet poetry in it; those pretty verses to a mocking bird for Oscar have charmed me and I would beg my dearest husband to allow his poetical vein to break forth more frequently, not to check it. There

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_040

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is ­something so holy, so beautiful in such tender proofs of a fathers love so sweetly expressed. Let your songs be for your boys, and if from time to time a line will fly to me I shall wellcome it most thankfully. – Furthermore your letter is a good one because it brought me cheering news of your recovery. All the circumstances which are not yet as we want them, we must bear as well as we can, hoping for a happy change. Trusting to Providence that the time may soon approach when we may be relieved from much that now oppresses us. God grant it, and oh my boy keep up your spirits, that you may not loose your vigour and disposition to enjoy when at last our hopes are realized. – Bear up and let us be strong together and grateful for the blessings which God has granted. Look at our fine bold boys, so healthy in limb and promising in mind, and I have I not you? would I change you for anything in the whole world besides? and you, my own good for nothing husband, have you not got me, and what ever I am, at any rate, I am all your own. It is no use to tag, I cannot even flirt with any one else, you know I never could and yet in the days of our young love, no maiden ever could more have enjoyed all the sweet nothings you whispered than I did & God knows how many before listened to that engaging exiting never to be forgotten tune. Tell me my boy, was I not your best pupil? I know I was, and therefore I am rather vexed that I have neither capacity nor inclination to make an impression upon other hearts as well as yours, and yet people say I look very well, youthful, good figure &c. Isn’t it a pity that I cant flirt? – Buck was just with me when I received your letter, it was the first time I saw him, when he called before I was out, he seems the most good natured creature in the world, and he seems to take the most lively interest in you, he asked me whether you had forgotten him? he wishes to see Oscar and means to go out to Eppendorf for that purpose. Matilda1 says she never saw a kinder heart than he possesses. Next wednesday Carry Hart and I are to meet him at Matilda’s who has asked us to dinner. Carry and Hart are quite in love with Matilda, think she must have been a very handsome woman which I dare say she was considering all the nice messages and reminiscences of older days I have to repeat to her from her devoted of fourteen years since? Herman2 is quite a nice lad rather greenish yet though, with many scrapes “Gnädige Frau” & all that; he is musical, can converse and make himself quite agreable. The youthful rubbish and conceit will wear off. For Anna3 I truly pity poor Matilda, though I believe she is not herself aware of her singularity, the girl has a most unhappy head, a face ugly almost to deformity, a heavy voice, extreme ­childishness making 1 Mathilda Benecke. 2 Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilda Benecke. 3 Anna Benecke, daughter of Mathilde Benecke.

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her a companion to Carolines little girl though she is three years older than the latter crying when her mother the other evening bid us goodbye, before she was quite ready to go. It is a great misfortune, but so disagreable is the child, that Caroline dislikes bringing her together too much with Clara4 and regrets it so much from having taken so very great a fancy to Matilda herself whom she would like to see very often indeed. The first pretty performance at the theatre which we none of us know yet, Carry means to invite Matilda & her children to dine with us and then to accompany us to the amusement they are all very fond of. Matilda seems to be quite at home amongst us; she came the other evening uninvited, we were just on the point of going to Uncle Julius,5 but remained at home and had a delightful evening with her. She converses very agreably, is full of animation and then her handsome eyes sparkle. She also sang, but her voice is no longer beautiful. They have a small house to themselves, consisting of three rooms and a kitchen, opposite dem Hafen in a very out of the way place, an old peasant woman, who has been 15 years in the Benecke’s family, is her only attendant. She has great fun with this old woman, who is a great original, a regular Juliets nurse.6 She tells her ‘Heuren muß Sie, det is nieds, so umherziehen mit de Kindes, die dankens nit. Die Oldre daun wat für die Lütje, aber die Lütje nie für de Olden; Hef auch eine Töchter, hat a Mann und a Hus. Ich geh nun oft hin und besuch sie. Was denn nu? Hef verdüvelte Langweile, freu mich wenn es halbig 3 uhr schlägt daß ich wieder zu Hus gehen kann u.s.w. – she scolds Matilda when she goes out too much: das ist eine lüderliche Wirtschaft! and seems to make quite a character in their little household. M. tells such stories with great spirit – At the beginning of last week I wrote to dear Oscar; On Friday Dr Busse was with me. (To day is sunday) Our dear boy was well and hearty, had made great progress in skaiting and enjoyed it, the other boys had praised him for his improvement which pleased Oscar very much. He has not at all felt the cold disagreably although we have had as much as 12° Kälte and now in the course of a week again it is 3° Wärm∆r, so that the great changes might make one more susceptible of the cold. Busse spoke very highly of Oscar, of his upright honest character his good capacity. He told me an instance of his honesty. The day before Oscar had practised on the Piano over at Palms and had there left the room several times, where he 4 Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz. 5 Julius Oppenheimer, uncle of Mathilde Lieber. 6 Reference to the former wet nurse of Juliet Capulet, personal servant and confidante in the Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet. Considering the dialect Mathilde Lieber tried to imitate in her writing the nurse did not hail from Berlin but from a region where Low German was in use.

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was alone Busse told him he must not do that again. Ein paar mal darf ich doch wohl hinaus, said Oscar, which Busse [2] was pleased with, as he might have gone without being observed, as many other boys would have done. – The christmas tree has also been standing in his room and Dr Busse says he is convinced, although often left alone with it Oscar has never touched a thing. In the evening these articles are generally played for. In such matters Busse finds him different and purer than other boys of his age and he therefore likes to be with him – when he plays with the rest that these good principles may grow firmer before he is brought into a more lively contact with other boys. He thinks that his Empfindlichkeit, sein leichtes Weinen, is wearing off, in obedience he is improved, and that he begins to feel pleasure in application. Several times after having been very dilligent and attentive he has himself observed how happy he was. The first days of the week he had been very dilligent; but the last three he had not worked well, and Busse asked me whether I agreed with him that he should on that account not come home this sunday. He does not like to punish him in any other way & yet some punishment is necessary. He will sometimes take two hours for a work which at a happier time, he will accomplish in half an hour, and Busses great object now is to induce him to keep his thoughts bent upon what ever he is doing and work quicker – Jan 20. So far yesterday when I was variously interrupted. We dined at Uncle Haller7 where there was much said about the Chinese & English affairs and every body seemed to know exactly what England and what the Emperor of China would do.8 Altogether I must confess myself often surprised at the great assurance with which such matters are debated. One would suppose that each debating individual has received his private information from the fountain head. Theatricals were also discussed and on this point there seemed but one opinion, the distressing decline of the stage, the degraded taste of the public, the complete want of even mediocre performers, the non existence of a single valuable dramatic poet. Uncle Haller après cela proposed to his company a plan he had long meditated; A novel writing society should be formed, and novels written, after the plan or story has been properly meditated and 7 Martin Joseph Haller, uncle of Mathilde Lieber and father of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller. 8 Mathilde Lieber alluded to the First Opium War that was fought between Great Britain and China in 1839–1842. The war over different concepts of trade and diplomatic relation ended with a British victory reflected in the Treaty of Nanking and led in the long run to the Second Opium War of 1856–1860.

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regulated in letters. Every one taking his part and making it all together his own. This he thinks would give a pleasing variety of style. The individualities would form pleasing contrasts. I for my part consider the idea a ridicule as our Oscar used to say.- which could never be united into ein gutes Ganzes, und gar nicht ausführbar. Noch sprach man über eine neuerdings beabsichtigte Hamburger Steam navigation company die Dampfböte zwischen Hamburg und Hull laufen zu lassen die Absicht hat.9 Englische Dampfböte zwischen den beiden Ortern fahren schon seit vielen Jahren und die Hamburger haben eben ausgefunden daß sie dabei einen großen Gewinnst den sie selbst haben könnten, verlieren. Sehr schnell wurde eine große Anzahl der shares verkauft, da auf einmal wurde der Patriotismus gehemmt, weil die Englischen Huller den Hamburger Unternehmer bestimmt erklärten vor dem Augenblicke daß sie anfangen ihre Dampfschiffe zu bauen, wollten sie sich gänzlich zurückziehen und ihnen keine Waren mehr zuführen. Nun ruht die Sache, denn der Verlust wäre für die Hamburger groß wenn sie warten sollten bis sie ihre eigenen Schiffe gebaut haben. – Wenn du nur wüßtest, mein lieber Freund welchen Reiz das Wort Neu York jezt für mich hat. Jeden Morgen durchsuche ich unsere ­Nachrichten, ob denn gar nicht von unsern V. St. die Rede ist. Noch ist des Presidenten Message10 nicht hier. Verwundert war ich über Massachusetts Übergang.11 Froh über die etwas bessern merkantilischen Nachrichten; viele Banken zahlen wieder, die neue in Holland bewirkte Anleihe wird wohl auch einen guten Einfluß haben, so verliere ich denn nicht die Hoffnung – daß du mit mir über mein gründliches Zeitung-Studium zufrieden seyn wirst. Also wirklich, unsere Mary ist Braut? Gott segne ihren Bund, wenn dem so ist, sehr begierig bin ich das nähere darüber zu erfahren. Du hast ihn gesehen?12 Das Alter finde ich nicht unpassend. Du theilst mir doch gewiß alles darüber mit was du erfährst? Caroline und ich kommen eben von der Schule zu Hause wo

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Ernst Baasch, Zur Geschichte der ersten deutschen Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft im Verkehr zwischen Hamburg und England, in: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 60/115, No. 2, 1920, pp. 143–149. The well-informed US-American Mathilde Lieber was waiting for the publication of the annual speech of the US-American President to the state of the union; in this case the speech was delivered by President Martin van Buren, December 2, 1839. See State of the Union, American History let.rug.nl (28.12.2016). As she treated economic topics perhaps she was alluding to Massachusetts’ decision concerning infrastructure. See Ludwig Klein/Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner, Die innern communicationen der Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerica, vol. 1, Vienna Förster’s artistische Anstalt 1842, p. 269. Mary Appleton and her husband James Robert Mackintosh.

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wir unsere kleinen Knaben abgeholt haben. Wir fanden um einen großen länglichen Tisch herum 9 Knäbchen von 4 bis 8 Jahren. Hamilton Emil und zwei andere die die lila Klasse bilden waren beim Schreiben, die 5 Größeren lasen, und Mamsel Schlumpf ging um den Tisch umher auf einen und den andren merkend. Hammy hatte eben eine Reihe Schiefer zu Rande gebracht. Mamsel Schlumpf macht mir Hoffung daß er lesen wird ehe wir zurückkehren, doch ist es sehr schade daß er noch garnicht zu sprechen anfängt, obwohl er gewiß die gewöhnlichen Sachen versteht. Auch ist seine englische Sprache obgleich ich sehr darauf achte gar nicht besser als früher. Norman spricht viel besser. Die beiden Kinderchen haben wieder deinen lezten Brief durchgeküßt. Hammy war mit der Außenseite nicht zufrieden, öffnete den Brief und küßte herzlich. Für Oscar schreibe ich sogleich deine Zeilen ab und dein liebes kleines Gedicht für ihn, wie wird er sich freuen, und verstehen kann er es sehr gut jezt. Seine Fortschritte im deutschen sind wirklich merkwürdig, - Gestern besuchte mich Dr Julius,13 sagte mir daß Sumner14 nicht herkömmt, wie leid that es mir, ich hätte ihn so gern gesehen, und dann hätte ich ihm ja auch das Päckchen mit Oskars Arbeiten mitgeben können, daß die so lange hier bleiben müssen und du die Freude entbehren mußt dich über seine Fortschritte zu freuen, ist ja so schade. Ich sah neulich in einer Hamburger Zeitung worin die soi disant Packetschiffe die im Laufe des Jahres von hier nach N.Y. angegeben wurden daß am 25sten July die Cuxhaven und am 25sten August die Washington segeln soll, or vice versa. I am not quite certain which, with one of these I suppose ever return home. Tell me, dearest when you wish me to be in New York. I wander whether James15 will be there, I almost fear not for according to the last West India accounts Theodore Ahrens means to be several months in New York which must of course delay James’ journey and make it late in the season, I am sorry for it. I suppose you have heard from our brothers16 of the new contract giving each partner an equal share. There again a proof of American generosity and fairness, but I really think our Theodore had a right to retain an advantage over the others, who have entered so much later and after he had broken the ice for them. Besides he with such a family of children already. However they know best. It seems that Theodore has the intention to remove to the U St ere 13 14

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Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius. Charles Sumner who had been on a two-years trip across Europe in 1837–1839 had already returned to the USA. Obviously Mathilde Lieber did not know that; she knew, however, that her husband had provided the young lawyer with letters of introduction to friends, colleagues, and relatives in Europe. James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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long. T.A.17 on the contrary is bound by contract to remain 5 years stationary at Ponce. 4 N. York packets and the Liverpool arrived almost at the same time in England. The Elbe has been frozen firmly, waggons crossed to Hamburg, a fair on the Elbe in Altona, but now again we have very mild weather which if it continues will make the river navigable again in a short time. I believe I near delivered all the love commissions I generally have for you for all our friends are always anxious to be remembered, but it takes up too much room. – Your letters via Havre my dear fellow come generally to about 50 cents not quite so much, mine a few shillings less because I take thinner paper and less sealing wax. Since I wrote to you last, I have had no letters from Berlin. Your message to Gossler18 shall be personally delivered as soon as this letter is dispatched, which is going today the 21st January. We are now already separated half a year my dearest Frank. ‘Tis time indeed my heart longs for you. I think however the time I yet have to be here will pass rapidly enough. Only my poor dear Oscar is on my mind, else all can be born patiently. I trust, I truly believe however, it is for is good and therefore we must not complain, but look forward to a happy happy meeting not far distant. From Clara19 we have not heard lately. We have again begged her to come for else [3] I fear I shall return without seeing her for we cannot afford the expence which Caroline has written to her plainly. Do you wish me to settle with Perthes and Besser? You know that Uncle Jacob allows me to draw upon him freely and does not care to have it settled until after my return to the U. St. On this point you can be perfectly easy as he does not wish it any other way. Then we may decide upon selling The Pollnische Loos which we yet have on note.20 Uncle21 wished me to keep it at any rate for the present as this lottery is drawn in July next, when we may perhaps gain something upon it. – How I long for our bright sun, it is so dark here and rains so often. Now, at 10 OClock in the morning I am obliged to strain my eyes to see sufficiently for my writing. – To Charlotte22 17 18 19 20

21 22

Theodore Ahrens, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. Johann Heinrich Gossler, Hamburg. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber in Leominster/England. One share of the so-called Polnische Loose was worth in 1840/41 300 florins, a great share 500 florins. See Allgemeine Zeitung für das Jahr 1842, drittes Quartal, Stuttgart und Augsburg, Verlag der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung 1843, p. 2688. Jacob Oppenheimer. Charlotte McCord, had married Captain Langdon Cheves jun. on Christmas Eve 1839.

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i­ndeed - married, give my affectionate love to her and tell her she has not a friend whose wishes for her happiness are more ardent than are mine. May her health be entirely restored and her life be brighter than her early days could even allow us to expect. Charlotte is a spot in my Columbia retirement on which I love to dwell. I can assure you there are few girls about me here whom I could compare to those we love best in America. Externally and internally. I have heard persons upon whose judgement I place great confidence and who see more of the young society than I do, observe how extremely difficult it is to make the young ladies converse. Their education is well attended to, I know of no girl who is not perfect in English and French, they are accomplished far more than the American girls, yet by their entire want of sociable sprightliness, they make no figure in society. (Norman is dictating) Papa is good, Mama is good. Dear Papa I got a little cat, dear Papa I got a little kitchen and a picture book and a man called Barley corn who is very funny, and you would like to see him. I got a good little Timur in Merica by my Papa. Becca called a good girl, and aunt is a good aunt and all people good and Norman a good boy too without a dirty face. When my Papa comes home then I show him what I got upstairs, a nice stable with horses in it which Uncle Moritz gave me. Good bye dear Papa. I kiss you. – I heard the other evening at Ludwig Oppenheimer who is just defending a person accused of some crime several subjects discussed and circumstances referred which I thought would be of interest to you. A Dr Baumeister,23 a judge, was also there: The prison for the accused must be in a deplorable cond. Prisoner confined there, and not unfrequently remaining there for years before their cause is decided, are without occupation of any kind, in solitary cells, writing materials are not granted them. (this individual had constantly torn from the wall a piece of paper with some proclamations which had always been replaced again, and which he employed for scribbling upon) Their food is Rumfordsche Suppe once a day,24 black bread and water the remaining meals. So bad is the prisoners situation before his actual punishment begins that invariably the removal after his offence has been proved, to the prison for punishment, is wellcomed. In the latter they are obliged to work hard but together with others, and their food is good that they may be better able to work. The gentlemen were of opinion that there was so much room for 23

24

Dr. iur. Hermann Baumeister, influential Hamburg lawyer. His discourse on Das Privat­ recht der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2 vols. Hoffmann und Campe Hamburg 1856 was considered as “Baumeisters Lehrbuch” the textbook of Hamburg law. Soap made from barley and peas, favoured since 1795 by Benjamin Thompson, Reichsgraf von Rumford as nutrition to soldiers, and inmates of prisons, orphanages or working houses within the territories of Prince-Elector Karl Theodor von der Pfalz.

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improvement in the regulations. – Did I tell you that the law has been carried here that individuals occupying a property which is necessary for the proper accomplishment of some public institution are compelled to give it up if the city wills it. The subject was debated there being great difficulties in this way against a proposed railroad to Bergedorf which great work is now to be executed.25 Dear Caroline and Hart are both very well now, you may suppose so when I give you the following list of our evenings out since Jan. 10th being Friday week when we dined at Uncle Jacob. Saturday 11th The large party and theatricals at Minchen Arnings, of which I will tell you more by & bye. Sunday at Hesse in Altona. Monday to the theatre where I was perfectly enchanted with the Nachtwandlerin, a sweet opera and well performed.26 Tuesday Hallers27 & ∆ at our house. Wednesday Hessens & Aunt Minna at our house. Thursday, we at Ludwig Oppenheimers, Friday Matilda ∆ our house, Saturday we at Uncle Julius. Sunday we at Hallers, Monday we at Uncle Moritz. Tuesday being to night, we go to Aunt ∆ mistake for this minute while writing the last word, a message came from Mrs Gossler.28 Ob Frau Doktorin Vergnügen ∆ heute abend mit ihnen ins Theater zu gehen which Frau Doktorin has accepted, a new opera is to be ∆ Vampyr nach Byron29 – I have not yet become acquanited with Dr Gossler, both he and his wife are ∆30 as Henrys wife31 is generally disliked here. Yet Dr Gossler has been very unfriendly for Harriet tells ∆ me ∆ advocated deal at their house in Heidelberg and he has not noticed them here at all; she also met and ∆ at became ∆ [a]cquainted with his wife and sister in law last summer at Ems. Dr Gossler was one of the ∆ performers ∆ [Arn]ings theatricals, Ferdinand Haller, Mr Merck who has lately imported a very handsome beautifully ∆ busted catholic wife from Frankfurth,32 who is much talked of, and of whom much is seen, I mean the neck, Dr Heckscher,33 Dr Kraut, Fräulein Chaufpié, and Fräulein Simon were the principle actors. Two pieces der 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

The promoters of the Hamburg-Bergedorf Railroad had had to overcome several obstacles like the opposition of Denmark. The project was started by William Lindley in 1838; in 1842 the railroad started operation. Die Nachtwandlerin/La sonnambula, opera by Vincenzo Bellini, first performance Milan 1831. Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller, cousins of Mathilde Lieber. Elizabeth Gossler née Bray. Der Vampyr, opera by Heinrich Marschner, lyrics Wilhelm August Wohlbrück, first performance Leipzig 1828. Dr. iur. Ernst Gossler and his wife Mathilde née Hüffel. Elizabeth Gossler née Bray. Dr. iur. Ernst Merck and his young wife Johanna Anna née Borgnis. Dr. iur. Moritz Heckscher.

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­Gefangene and the Diplomat translated from the French were performed.34 The company met from ½ past 7 to 7 uhr when the performance commenced. A large suite of rooms in the belle etage35 were arranged to recieve the 150 guests, the entries decorated in a tent style with silk drapery, which were also hung up in place of doors which had been removed, the light was brilliant and the dresses though not so tasteful or elegant as I have seen them in New York or Philadelphia were improved by a far greater display of jewelry and brilliants than suits the republican taste and purse of the fair Americans. I was told that however much handsomer dresses would decorate a ball room than a company assembled for an occasion like this. What amused me was the division of the young and the married ladies, who were immediately lead into seperate apartments by gentlemen who took their stand in the anti room and whose duty it was to bring the ladies to a chair into the room assigned them after they had made their reverence to the lady of the house. But very few gentlemen moved in the ladies room, but after some tea had been handed, the order for going down stairs to the theatre was given and then there was a general rush of gentlemen upon the ladies to do their duty in arming them with courage to descend the stairs. My good Uncle Haller36 was my beau. The company traversed several rooms before they came to a large saloon part of which formed the theatre, while the remainder was arranged with seats increasing in highth towards the back that all the guests might see to their hearts content. The ladies only were seated. Five minutes we looked at the curtain when at length our curiosity was relieved, and Miss Simon, pas des miens though you might think so from her name, but niece and cousin to the Parishes & Godefois37 and all those great people, made her appearance, as secretly married wife to the prince (Dr Gossler)38 who is pressed by his father (Heckscher)39 to accept either of two neighboring princesses in marriage, in whose behalf two negociating ambassadors are now at his court (Kraut & Haller)40 Mr Ernst Merck had in this piece, the best part. The Diplomat, a young lively person who comes to 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Le Prisonnier d’une femme, comedie-Vaudeville en un acte, 1836; Ein feiner Diplomat/Le diplomate, comedy by Eugène Scribe and Wilhelm Mejo 1838. First floor of a bourgeois townhouse, laviously furnitured with high ceiling ornamented with stucco. Martin Joseph Haller, married to Mathilde Lieber’s aunt, a sister of her mother. Hamburg family; the Godeffroy belonged to Hamburg’s High Society like the family Parish. Dr. iur. Ernst Gossler. Dr. iur. Moritz Heckscher. Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, cousin of Mathilde Lieber.

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court without any purpose at all, but who is believed by all to have some mighty commission from the French court. He is made the principle by each, and there are a number of must ludicrous situations. The Prisoner, is prettier still, and Ferdinand who has the first part in it, played perfectly, he is a first rate actor. Herzfeld who had refused to perform, considering it not suitable to his station, was nevertheless prompter. Between the acts and between the pieces ice in abundance was handed round, and when the performance was at an end, the ladies left their benches and gentlemen again offered their arms to lead them to the supper room. Under Georg Hesses protection I was happily seated; On the other side young Gossler41 was indeavoring to enliven two very plump maidens who would neither eat nor drink nor talk. In five different rooms tables were elegantly covered with good things which was room sufficient to seat the whole company. – Every thing went off excelently; The actors had a table to themselves, and were good companions to each other. Arnings have been complimented ever since on the perfectly arranged entertainment. – We three sisters amused ourselves [4] on the whole pretty well, and were told that we were very nicely dressed. Hart had a light dress, a black mantilla and pink trimmed cap, looking the perfection of gentility. My more showy sister had on a cerise changeant silk dress, blonde cap with white flowers, her ruby necklace and looked very pretty indeed and my Wenigkeit was clad in a more delicate changeant silk made long waisted & very full low neck a white gauze scarf thrown over, my pearls round the neck. My hair very becomingly dressed by a young girl who does it for a quarter of a dollar. A beautiful wreath of flowers given to me by Matilda Hesse of corn ehren & red flowers intermixed was very prettily arranged, and I had many compliments paid me. If Caroline will she may write you a few lines and tell my vain husband a word or two about it. – I had the other day a consultation with Dr Garson, as you wished it about myself. He does not make much of the circumstances I communicated to him and which indeed have not been frequent since I am here. – I shall certainly write to Berlin about your pardoning business.42 By this time you know the name of the friendly Justizcomm.

41 42

Wilhelm Gossler. It seems that Lieber tried to get rehabilitated and pardonned by the Prussian king; however this would happen only in 1842 when Friedrich Wilhelm IV. had succeeded his stubborn father, Friedrich Wilhelm III.

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∆ at you Gustavs43 letter. - I can not this time tell you the price of Savanarola,44 it is pouring ∆ & I cannot go out, and all Carolines servants are ill. I shall write soon again and then give you ∆ answer, also about the Literatur Zeitungen, concerning which I have not yet ∆ formed. – M.B.45 shall certainly write to you if I have any influence, I shall tell her what you say. Mrs Busse is really a very nice woman lady like, but lively and pleasant and she appears to take a great interest in our boy. Of that “twiddle-twaddle-patchy lovingness”, she has nothing, she is moreover young and pretty, at least pleasing. I am very glad that you have got a horse at last, never mind the expence. If we must save, let us save in something else this I consider necessary for your health, and therefore nothing must prevent it. Oscar will be pleased too. I hope you will feel satisfied with Busses letter, which I trust had a quick passage and relieved many anxieties. God bless you my own boy. Tell Betsy & Elsy I have not forgotten them & little Henry46 too and pat Timur for me, your only true companion. Much joy for your approaching birthday, approaching at least when you receive this. Gott gieb ihm ein glückliches Jahr. Endlich die Erfüllung heißer Wünsche! I now send all my letters via Havre. Rebecca wishes to be remembered. She requests you to let Elsy ask Fenton the shoemaker if he could inquire for her whether her brother John McClelland is still in the same store he was in. Fenton does business with a house in Charleston who are connected with those people and would perhaps inquire for her. She has heard nothing from her brother & is anxious. She sends her love to Mrs Richardson. – Carry shall fill the rest or Hart, both love you dearly, and you may love them again as warmly for they are dear creatures. Good bye. Good bye my boy – your true hearted wife. Matilda Hart sends her love and a kiss and many thanks for dear Franks kind Love in Matildas last letter, we were anxious for it, it remained away rather long, we are very glad to hear that your foot is quite well again my dearest Frank all is well with us, we all love you dear Frank your verses to dear Oscar were sweet – Tilly looked very handsome the other night at Arnings [cross-writing, 4] you would have been delighted to have seen her & we have heard from so many visitors since how pretty she looked how maidenly and youthful her pretty 43 44 45 46

Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. Perhaps the book by Andreas Gottlob Rudelbach, ed., Hieronymus Savonarola und seine Zeit. Aus den Quellen dargestellt, Verlag Friedrich Perthes Hamburg 1835. Mathilde Benecke. The slaves in Lieber’s household: Elsa, Betsy the cook and her son Henry.

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neck, she is always called fräulein here, and is much stouter and looking so much better than she did. may God bless you my dear Frank Carry will write next. your loving sister Hart Single Pr Packet Via Havre & New York Single Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Care of Messrs Heckschers Costers & Matfeld New York Stamp Hamburg Jan. 40 Stamp Le Havre 28 Janv 40 Stamp New York + faded stamps

No. 39 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 26.01.-01.02.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XXI Columbia S.C. February 1. 1840 This is half a sheet of that large folio paper I took from England to write to you upon. It seems that it would cost too much through France, were I to send the whole sheet. I wish I could get thin large paper. But a civilized wish in Columbia! – I have sent this morning No XX, and unwilling as I am to continue the subject with which it ends, for it does me no good, indeed, it makes me deeply sad, I feel obliged to show you, with what degree of solicitude you write. That “long letter” to which you refer several times was written ended on Nov 5. It begins by saying that you have just sent one via Havre, so that you have not much to say and may write wide and large. Your letter XI begins by saying that you have just sent a long letter by steamer, and that No XI will not be a proper one”. In it you say that you mentioned all articles sent by the Isaac Newton, in the long letter there is not a word in it. No XI is of Nov. 25. So that “just having sent” means ten days. The letter is wide &c. No XII ends by saying that although you had two new letters you leave answering my sub letters for a proper letter. Draw your own conclusions. “To and fro is a very good motto for a shuttlecock, not for a heavy heart, which might burst and bleed if inconsiderateness should play too long with it. I shall avoid returning to the subject, for I feel humbled already enough by having been obliged to write so much. Each letter as it came I hoped would contain some explanation, but I had to say to myself – Well, it is enough of Sunday pleasure; so I had better stop. – Monday. I have just been hunting up files of papers to arrive at the truth, for my heart yearns to have the matter less painfully explained and could not easily fall asleep last night. There was a long letter sent the last date of which was Nov. 5; it came with by steamer, and must, of course have left England Nov. 15, which was the date the last steam boat of 1839 departed. Now you say in your next which is Nov. 25, therefore 20 days after that letter was dispatched, that you have just sent a long letter by steamer, and call that letter No X, which would fit that long letter, although it is not numbered. Either you mean then this letter, or you have really sent another, thinking that there would be a steamboat, not inquiring whether so it was really so, and, the letter being directed “by steam boat”, has been probably lying a whole month, until on January 1. the British Queen was advertised to sail, so that a letter sent by merchant vessel after it, and one sent much longer after it by way of Havre have arrived before it. In brief the matter stands precisely so: either you have not written in 20 days and never mentioned even a word of sympathy, of natural interest in my sufficiently poor

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_041

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being here, or you did write, but cared not to inquire whether the steamboats continue through winter, or did it in some other respect in a bungling way, that the letter did not reach me. Is this attention, delicate attention, is it love I ask, to a distant, lonely person? Is it attention – not calculated attention, but the natural effect of anxious affection – or wanton trifling? Would to God I could pluck the remembrance of this affair out of my heart! It haunts; I wish so much I could forget it, but facts are facts. The British Queen is not yet in; probably she will bring me the old letter. And all this just when you had received a letter, or several, complaining of my being left so long without news!- Tuesday. I have shaken it off I stand too much in need in love; nothing can stay or brace my heart except the prop love, and where could I find it if not in thine own bossom; oh Matilda. I have calculated all chances, I have said to myself: She may have written another long letter marked X, and may have asked whether there was a steamboat; those that ought to have known, may have given her erroneous information, and thus the letter may have remained idle a whole month in England. We must have the news of the arrival of the Brit. Queen at N.Y. soon in here; for she sailed from Engl on January 1. But I promise you that even should I not have a letter by her, I still will believe that you wrote me, but that it miscarried. Let me then forget all, and only once more pray you that besides the inspiration and enthusiasm of love we want for life the judicious economy of love. Unfurling the Oriflamme may inspire French hearts, but to save her in times of war the calculating eagerness and book-keeping commissiary to provide for the stomachs under love. – The words of Hammy, Please, dont die, Mama, are very touching. Take care, I beg you, that Norry does not become ein verhätscheltes Ding. – Hammy’s Speech concerns me very much; if you go to Berlin, I wish some of the physicians there would look at him – You write me that you had just finished a letter to Keibel’s;1 had they written to you? I am very sorry I have crossed so many letters with red; I would much rather I had written but half as much, and that you should enjoy it. Do you not forget, I beseech you these two things: [2] Oscar’s Latin, and to ask about your own case a physician, for Matilda, to speak plain, I would not bet odds against your becoming pregnant shortly after our reunion, and I do not wish to see you miscarry again. Think of this, you know what ailed you. Speak with an elderly physician. – Since Oscar will not probably go with you to Zuellichau, certainly not if you go in April I would not 1 Wilhelm Keibel and his family, Berlin.

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stay long in that place. If his vacations fall so that you can manage to go to Z. then, I would suggest to prefer that to going to the wedding. It seems to me more important. I wish I had time and disposition to write you all the poems I make in riding, but they come and flee, and once settled at the desk, I have to write of more substantial things. About ten days ago a M. of Congr. desiring some ­information from me, began his letter thus: “Dear Sir, knowing the extent of your information on all subjects and your particular attention to statistics among others, I take the liberty of soliciting some hints on a subject &c.C. I declare! On all subject! Alas! Alas! How low must be the state of knowledge in this country if I can be considered a polyhistor! – The question was about changing or not the naturalisation law. On this however I was fortunate enough to be able to give him some hints, and I think substantial ones. – You have, you write good hopes, and you do well to write me so, my love, but – I have not. As to Philad. I have made up to do no more, that is, I do not mean to play the sullen fool; but they know my wishes, the wishes of Sergeant, of Ingersoll &c, and they will do something they may, if not – hang it; I am not made to antichambre about for years. I see from the papers that Dr. Bache has at length made his report; whether it is printed already I do not know. I have recieved no copy yet, and should think that Mr Biddle would in secrecy consider himself bound to send me one. – Box not yet arrived, not even started from Charleston!! – Had I known all this I should never have dreamt of asking you to send me things. Now I ask any impartial man, is not this a detestable nest? We have books for the library on the river even since Oct. What do you think of that? – Our new professor, Mr Hooper, is all the dullest, prosing fellow you can imagine. He called the other evening and remained 3 hours! He asked me whether I taught any German now. I told him, Mr Elliot learned it with me. “Well, said he, I shall thank you for giving me lessons too.” I very promptly answered: “I shall thank for not taking any; I have not time.” Impudence! And for what? That these arrogant religionists treat one as a benighted savage out of the pale. – Matilda, would you believe that not one person here in the College – except students – has breathed a word to me about the publicat. of my 2. vol. of the Ethics?2 That is encouragement! Verily, when distant people write to me about this book I feel like a prisoner in a high turret, to whom a vine, a flouret has crept up along the wall. a little sign of life from the world without. – People in Hamburg seem to me very much to move in the heavy Dutch style as to social intercourse. I wish you could become acquainted with Dr Wurm; he likes me from old,3 2 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 3 Armed with a letter of introduction by his cousin Albert Baur, Lieber had met the southern German Dr. phil. Christian Wurm in Epsom, England in 1826.

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and would kindly take care of my name now and then in the papers. Does not one of the your Cousins know him? How easy would be anything of the sort in America! – How long is that B.4 going to stay in Hamb? Her kissing and caressing my Oscar with such warmth, is a poem of itself to me. She, Matilda Beneke, kissing my boy! What changes, yet despite of all changes, some things in the hearts yet the same. You must have very little intercourse with the Gosslers.5 It is not impossible that they are prevented by prejudice against Hebraism. If so, I say: Brutes! Let them go. In America, you know, old Gossler6 would long have invited you, since he knows that I am intimate with his sons. – And has Gossler’s Brother – William I mean – who was here, never come to see you? But I must break off. I am very sorry indeed, I cannot find here thin, yet strong and large letter paper. This, I write on, will not do. You have never written me what Oscar wears. – Have you or have you not sent the Hermeneutics to Mittermaier!!!7 Surely this is about the 6th time I ask. – Wednesday. Yes I have shaken it off. The humor in which I was the last days, had stopped my bowels; riding gave me no pleasure; I could not work – altogether I cannot work. This winter half as well, my ideas thaughts are with you; perhaps one reason also may be the fact that I am not engaged in a work of intense thaught, of inventive thaught; I feel my mind expand and grow under difficulties; it was always so; I have no free flow of health unless I am [3] intensely engaged. Yesterday however I returned to my labor, and then took a ride and felt at once better. There are two great restoratives in man’s life – doing one’s duty and loving and being loved. Both returned yesterday. Yes I love thee, woman. # When I spoke in my last of the expression Fellow, I may have done so in no terms of kindness, at least not gentleness. But I repeat now, I donot like it, noble fellow is a term for itself, and very significant, yet would I not like it from a woman’s lips. My boy, is a very different term. Elza has gone to the P.O. We expect daily news by of the arriv. of the Brit. Queen and I trust she brings me the missing No. X but if she donot, I shall not act cold. Be not afraid. Soon I shall hear of your Christm. How very quick it seems to me I have had answers on my October letters? Now in January I had answers on my letters written towards the end of October. And yet it is not so very quick either, except c­ ompared to 4 Mathilde Benecke. 5 Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler. 6 Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. 7 Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics.

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the time generally required. I wish you had made a parcel of my coat, that it might be entered without going through the c. house, also these things I verily fear come higher than when baught here. However that is too late now. – Thursday Mathilda, meine Drüsen sind wieder etwas geschwollen. I declare it is a hard case. A poor fellow is condemned to live like a saint, well & good, he is ready to it; but this not enough; he is punished for it! Surely, I deserve the Croix de Sagésse. Matilda Matilda, if I were in N.Y! or Philad.! Where there is another Matilda.8 Do you know, I made her show me her leg? We spoke of fine legs, of her dress at a former fancy ball. Now she actually has a beautiful leg, such as is rarely seen with women. I insisted upon Americans never having fine legs, until – from mere patriotism you know, to vindicate her country – I made her do what queen Elisabeth once did to a French ambassador. How high, you ask? Ah, Matilda, you need not be afraid as to that quarter; though truth is truth, and she has one of the finest legs I ever beheld in women, her waist is gone and her face is very ugly, but her neck beautiful. She insisted upon my telling her whether I liked not Sally9 much better than her!! I drew out of the affair that by saying that Las Cases, when Napoleon asked him what pain was the greatest, answered: the present pain. For the rest she said, and true enough: “Now go, for you are separate from your wife, just like a hungry wolf. Men of your passion, who are yet not debazcheet, are always the most dangerous and most furious.” Matilda I sometimes suffer dreadfully. You ought, I do think to have established a leutenant in your place. – You ask me perhaps whether Mr Hooper the new prof is a gentleman. I saw him yester-day in the street with turnips or some such article in his handkerchief, carrying home. Is he a gentleman? No. Is he a blackguard? No. What then? Why, what are some hats? What covers Darry’s stupid pate? A mongrel thing, and what of that! Its mother was a pancake, sure; Its father was perhaps a hat. The box? Oh, I forgot; there is such a thing in Charleston for me, and another in N.Y. These boxes, I think, reason rightly. If they have come some thousand miles toward me ought I not go at least a hundred to meet them? You write nothing of Miss Benecke. Does she look like her mother? What’s her name? How old ? If you have had proper information, you might have written, I believe, all about Christmass by the Br. Queen, and I might have the letter daily, for she was to have sailed on Jan. 1. 1840. It is so warm that I was obliged to open 8 Mathilda Willing, Philadelphia, who liked to flirt with Francis Lieber to the annoyance of an otherwise quite patient Mathilde Lieber. 9 Sally Newton.

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the door, but we shall have it cold enough again. I shall send this letter on Saturday, with Mrs Ellet’s brother;10 for I am afraid to leave you long without news after that angry No XX. – This moment a letter from James,11 Mayaguez, Dec. 18. He is well, his buseness turns out to be excellent for Hamb. importations, and he wants to know what you say of Emma. Does that not in part depent upon old Heyne?12 Nay, nay, I am not bitter, it is all meant well, although true. = February 1. There is another month gone; one month nearer our re-union, but also one other month gone without a sign of release. I speak frankly to you – the thaught of the approaching, besides that it is embittered by the reflection that my Oscar will remain behind, is marred likewise by the consideration, that the poor other boys will be dragged back to this detestable, liveless, despicable place, after they have tasted the sweet of living with their equals, and with loving relations. Good God, how they will long back from this mean hole to their Emil and Felix, to their aunts! And is it anything extraordinary I desire? No more than what every peasant’s child has. Give me dangers, give any thing to brave it, but not this dull filing day after day on my very bones. In short I donot look with pleasure toward next summer. I cannot help it. And that renewed process of every year of bringing one’s mind sufficiently down to this low, mean level, to live with such men; to teach such students. Those that think me impatient let them try it. I candidly say, I am fast wearing out. I feel it but too seriously how ill the effect is of living in a country you care not for you have no sympathy with, in arrogant vulgarity. It makes selfish, deadens all moral and intellectual elastici – it is a grinding life. What have I done to deserve not pain or suffering, but the annihilation of what is best in me? I sometimes pity my better but long passed qualities; I have a sort of respect for them, and as they were. Wit, energy, goodness [4] all are going fast. I become, perhaps morose at times, but generally I am dull; I have lost my own pride and respect for myself. When I see former labors, endeavors of mine I could cry, were it not for the dullness of my heart. that I meant to write here to Oscar but my spirits donot admit of it. – I send this soon after the last because I thaught that I was bound to tell you that my cross fit has ceased, though the blue fit not. Mrs Ellet’s brother takes it to N.Y. The 10 William Maxwell Lummis, brother of Eliza Fries Lummis Ellet. 11 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Mayaguez/Puerto Rico. 12 Salomon Heine, grandfather of Emma Oppenheimer, the bride-to-be of James Oppenheimer.

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box has not yet left Charlest; and I have resolved to be harrassed no more about is. If I had only the morning gown. – I was just thinking a long time what I should write. To such straits I am reduced? Formerly I could not sufficiently subdue my thaughts. Is there no chance of seeing one of the sisters here?13 The Brit. Queen has not yet arrived. She cannot have sailed on January 1, I should think; or the our mails may be the cause of our not having news, for Kendal, the postmaster general has a synabble with the r.roads at the North &c. – Goodbye. For the first time in my life have I sooner stopt than the paper afforded room, being at the same time in no cross mood. It speaks volumes; I feel blank - empty; all I can call up in a sort of mental recklessness, such as: Hang it” – that is comfort. – Kiss your boys Oscar, Hamy, Norry – all, all from their father whose affection to them and you and yours is almost all that is left of fervor in a soul, which Niebuhr never calls in his Corresp, as I found “Eine glühend heiße Seele”!14 Alas, my noble friend! How couldst thou complain as thou didst in Rome! Look down upon me a being to whom some capacities were given which show him the wretchedness, the intellectual, moral and aethetic barrenness to which he is condemned only the Keener. Sentence Calderon15 the glowing poet to N dreary Siberia and my case perhaps might be compared to it. Say not my Matilda that I dispair. I speak of nothing but what is, is fact. All may change, God grant it; what is, however is; and it is a fact, I drag out a poor life. Goodbye to you, who are faithful, Kind and forgiving, and who would be perfect, where you to unite a little more consideration and calculation & I mean carefulness to your other qualities. But you are my Ximene, although I not Cid – Good God, Cid! Yes I might be called the Cid of Vulgarity, fighting with vulgarity. Kiss my dearest Oscar and my good Hammy. As to Norry, I suppose others kiss him. [cross-writing, 1] enough kiss Caroline and Harriet and Matilda Benecke from one that Knows not from the present state of his heart, but from what he recollects that he had a bosom what could love, and glowingly too. That watch cord with the little golden heart for a slide which Sally16 sent me, gives me real pleasure – it is like a sweet little poem. Every night it reminds me of her. You ought to have sent me some such remembrences. However if a heart from you is not in on my breast, 13 14 15 16

Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber. Barthold Georg Niebuhr; Lieber had checked Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten. Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Sally Newton.

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your heart is in mine. I kiss your eyes and – if you have any regard for me donot write me hasty letters. The effect when, after long waiting [cross-writing, 3] I recieve a hasty letter referring back to a long one or forward to one that will be long, and in two minutes I have perused it, is – in my loneliness – dreadful. It would be quite different if I were in a seaport town; then indeed slips by direct vessels would be delightful but not in this accursed Nest – accursed, because the curse of dullness lies upon it. They say that McCord will marry in a few weeks. I hope, I trust not. It would be disgustingly indecent – Hamlet! Goodbye, my, once more Ximene. Your simple Frank Stamp Forwarded through Gilpin’s Exchange Reading Room and Foreign Letter Office New York Stamp Paris 10 Mar Stamp Hamburg + 17. März 40 + stamp faded Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hamburg en Allemagne

No. 40 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 30.01.-07.02.1840 Included: dictated letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5067, ALS, 4 pages Brief XVI ∆ Brief 16 & 17 auch schon erhalten Antwort auch Brief 15 above 7ten December, Hamburg den 30sten Januar 1840. Das war ein langer Stillstand du lauer Junge, Meinen lezten Brief beendigte ich am 21sten, und von diesen neun Tagen habe ich dir nun Rechenschaft zu geben. Zuerst du Herzensjunge aber dank tausend dank für deinen schönen Brief XV denn den habe ich in der Zwischenzeit erhalten und mit allen Kräften meiner Seele genossen und Gott aus tiefstem Herzen gedankt für das Kleinod, den reichen Schaz den er mir in meinem Geliebten gab. Deinen Brief an Busse der auch drin enthalten war schrieb ich sogleich ab wie auch die süßen Zeilen an Oscar. Was du dem Lehrer schreibst ist alles so wahr, so auf Erfahrung gegründet und trägt so sehr den Stempel deines eigenen reichen Geistes, daß ich in vollkommener Uebereinstimmung aber mit dem Bewußtsein daß ich selbst nicht im Stande wäre solche Anweisungen zu geben; mich glücklicher fühle als ich es mit Worten aussprechen kann daß meine Kinder dich zum Vater haben. Oh mögen sie dieses unaussprechliche Glück nur immer dankbar erkennen! Daß dich dein Oscar über alles liebt, diese Beruhigung glaube ich dir gewissenhaft geben zu können; mein bester Franz. Mache dir darüber keine Sorgen. Busse hat es mir schon oft gesagt daß er seine Liebe für dich ausspricht und fühlt wie es selten ist bei Knaben seines Alters. Ist sein Sonnen Untergangs Gebet nicht auch ein sprechender Beweis davon? Oscar sagte mir einmal, Dr Busse is always the same, never very angry. Papa used to be very angry with me sometimes, but then when he was pleased, he was so kind and affectionate, and so full of play; I like that a great deal better! – This anxiety you express, my dear Frank is so perfectly groundless, that I hope you will at once eradicate it for ever. It is so entirely opposite to what you may expect from the character of your child and so unjust to yourself that I feel it my duty to endeavour to convince you of this thoroughly. Can you for a moment believe that Oscar, if he were now to see you again would not follow you where ever you go, enjoy your presence, as he has ever done; is it in a lively warm hearted childs nature to brood on a punishment if it is given by one whose right and whose justice; it does not question? – Not only a child but every uncorrupted being will remember a benefit when an unkindness is long forgotten, thus also our memory of happy days past is more powerful than the memory of our misfortunes. What would be the unfair situation of parents if it were not so, who by their very

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_042

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character as parents are directed to govern the young wavering dispositions and were strictness often becomes a duty. – That you of all men should fear to have the heart of our boy estranged or still more to see it revolt against you, you Frank whose unbounded love, whose unequalled facility in indearing yourself I have often been jealous of, is indeed most astonishing even to me who know my anxious husband so well. But pray do not seek troubles where there is not a cause. Oscar loves you devotedly, affectionately, remembers you as his dear, kind loving father, whom to live with again is the most earnest desire of his heart. Then never let a doubt again enter yours, for I assure you in Oscars name and in my own, it offends me. We are all yours, and we are proud of our good fortune loving you with all our souls, thinking of the happy past when we were all together, looking forward to a happy future, which God grants us.  – ­February 5. My heart is so full, I have had our dear Oskar at home, he has staid with us three days, and now that he is gone I feel such a void. While he is with me I think of nothing else, do nothing else but attend to him, I walk with him, take him to see Adela and watch him when he is drawing playing, or whatever he is about. Only his walk to Uncle Jacob with his testimony I let him take with Edward1 and George. Uncle2 has taken a great fancy to our dear boy and thinks highly of him. He gave Oscar and Edward the commission to make a theme on Preciosa3 for him which they had seen at the theatre. If I can get Oscars back again I will give you a copy of it. Uncle was much pleased. – What really delighted me in Oscar during this last visit, which lasted from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday morning, was his constant desire to occupy himself; neither he nor Edward who in many respects is an excellent example for Oscar, were unemployed during any portion of the time they were at home. Oscar either copied some poetry or did some drawing or painting or built with his building blocks, wrote some copies for the little children read a little German or English but never stood about inactive. The boys have each their closets where in they keep their things which as they only see them seldom have a great charm for them. Oscar also agreed much better with George4 than he used to do. George is unfortunately very backward and he being two years older than Oscar and he not who having any no respect for him, it had a bad influence on the latter and caused him to express himself sometimes unkindly. This was much less the case; he is beginning to check himself in his extreme excitability in his intercourse with other children, and his great desire to please us makes him ready 1 2 3 4

Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. Jacob Oppenheimer. Preciosa, opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performance Berlin 1821. George Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz.

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to do anything I request. I feel that we have every reason to thank God for that dear boys disposition and his great liveliness, his affectionate temper while it blesses all we do for him makes him so beloved by and so interesting to all who know him that we may hope his will be a successful and a happy life, which God in his mercy grant him. At the same time he is so fond of the ridiculous, has such a lively sense for fun! The other day he placed himself right before Caroline: See what a little darling, clear, sweet crystal drop! isnt it a beauty hanging at Aunts nose, just like a dew drop! To the hair dresser he said: Schneider die Haare ja recht kurz, damit die Lehrer nicht raufen können, and when the man asked him. Thun das deine Lehrer, he answered: nein, es ist aber doch besser daß sie nicht in Versuchung kommen; He is very fond of Edward whom he likes best of all his school fellows. Edward will soon be fourteen but treats Oscar as if they were of the same age with a most praiseworthy good nature, taking many a little Neckerei from him without getting angry or repaying it. Both the boys are very much delighted that in the new house to which Caroline moves in spring and which is also in the Esplanade they are to have a room together.5 Edward begged that it might be so. – It is quite a difficulty to make Oscar go out when he comes home, excepting to the play, paying visits is very tedious to him, he wants to remain at home all the time to enjoy his toys and books and the childrens company who doat upon him; Hammy and Norman are not happy without they sit close to him, and often do I hear: will you allow me to sit near you Oscar? They put their arms round his neck and it would have delighted you to have seen how Hamilton reddened in his face with affectionate pleasure and flew to his brother when he came home, & his disputes with his little Cousins: it aint your Oscar, its my Oscar, Hammy came to me the other day and said: Mama what is Jägerhaus, I read that in school today? You can see from that, that your second son has not been in school for nothing. Poor fellow he was put in the corner yesterday because he did not take any pains to make the a strokes well. He brought me home his first writing book, and though Miss Schlumpf says: es ist herzlich schlecht, you will still like to see it I am sure. Hammy came to Rebecca yesterday: Becca, there’s a dear little baby down stairs, not made of the same stuff as Claras doll; made of the same stuff as Normy. – And little Norman to give you a bon mot of his too, surprised us by his running; accidents happen very rarely, but when ever they do, he invariably lays blame to Rebecca with whom he still sleeps, so he said to us the other evening when he was refused more water: If I drink too much, Becca will wet the bed. Oscar and I read your letters together, he wept over them and kissed your dear handwriting. He is as anxious to be with you again, as even you are to be 5 Esplanade No. 13, Hamburg-Neustadt.

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with him and that is sufficient is it not? How often does he exclaim: Oh dear Mama, do let me go back with you to Papa! his heart is steadily bent upon that one thought. I try as much as possible to convince him of the necessity, painful as it is. He feels that we could not educate him in Columbia, as long as we remain there, and that we shall feel the seperation as much as he will. That I dread that [2] seperation more than I have words to tell, I need not tell you my Frank, but to strenghten him is my firm object, his tender feelings must not be exited too much. I will have him home immediately before I go and Caroline will have him again directly after; but our last parting from Hamburg I think I will not let him see, it would only break his heart. It is an unspeakable comfort to me that he is so fond of his aunts and the children who will again do every thing in their power to reconcile him to this necessary seperation. Busse was here the other day when I was out and spoke to Harriet in the highest terms of the dear boy, his abilities, his disposition, but he was also delighted with your letters to Oscar and that sweet little poem which has charmed every one: das muß ein herlicher Mann seyn he said, wie gern möcht’ ich ihn kennen! Dr Palm said to Caroline who visited him on account of her own children: der Oscar ist ein herlicher Junge. Der wird was lernen. I have made up my mind to take Oscar with me to Berlin, I do not see how I can do otherwise, & as our going will be about the time of the examination in Dr Palms school I do not think there will be so much loss to Oscar who has been too short a time at school to have much to do with the examination which will of course prevent the regular study some time before. I think of setting off about the 1st of April and certainly shall return by the 1st of May. Oscar shall not be unemployed during his absence, and besides all he will see will also increase his information. In Züllichau he will have the opportunity of seeing the whole progress of silk manufacture.6 My way of travelling will be with the dilligence and I trust the expences will not be too great for I feel very uncomfortable now when I spend much and know how hard it is gained by you. But money flies here rapidly. You are right to think Oscars schooling very high, I thought so too but I understand all the boarding schools are about the same charges; The day schools on the contrary are cheap, so that school of Werner where Oscar first went and which is one

6 Francis Lieber’s elder brother Eduard managed a silk manufactury he owned together with his lifelong friend Carl Knoblauch in Züllichau.

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of the best was only, 150 Marks a year, about $40.- Hamiltons schooling is 30 Marks pr quarter. Uncle7 has sent me his account at New Year, which he always does to the girls also and which I will forward to you by next direct opportunity when I shall make up a small parcel of letters and Oscars works at the same time. But there is no need to think of remitting until after my return. I went into Perthes & Besser as I often do. I inquired about Servenarola.8 He wrote me down two historical works on the subject. One by H.B. Meier 1836 price Th 1-20 gr.9 and the other by (as distinctly as I can make upt the name) Ruckbach 1835 Th 2-9.10 Your commission to Gossler concerning Mittermeier’s I attended to immediately writing a note to Henry Gossler, which however he has not acknowledged. I am not aware of having treated them with the slightest disrespect but of course I have no opportunity of showing them any attention.11 Gossler I like very much, he has always been extremely polite to me when I have been there, & I am sure still takes the liveliest interest in your wellfare. He is alltogether a man of business and I dare say the idea never enters his mind of coming to see me, at which I am not however at all offended, besides it is not much the custom, and I believe in all those matters he is nicely governed by his wife.12 She is a little snappish creature whom I do not like at all. The last time I was invited there to go to the play with them, she really made it so apparent that I was merely asked for her convenience, as it was postday and her husband could not go with her, that I most undoubtedly shall not accept a similar invitation. I do not believe that there is any anti-jewosity connected with this for the family all have intercourse with Arnings, Hallers &c. - They I believe see very little company and nothing I believe beyond a gentlemans dinner. I have sent Oscar over several times, and at christmas particularly, Henry Gossler having asked me to do so. I was a little surprised, I must confess that he did not then give his godson the smallest trifle, it being a season when every one is so ready

7 8 9 10

11 12

Jacob Oppenheimer. Savonarola is the name. Not H.B. Meier, but probably Friedrich Karl Meier, Girolamo Savonarola aus grossen theils handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt, G. Reimer Berlin 1836 Not Ruckbach but probably Rudelbach considering the fact that the study was a production of the publishers who had been asked for advice: Andreas G. Rudelbach, Hieronymus Savonarola und seine Zeit. Aus den Quellen dargestellt, Hamburg bei Friedrich Perthes 1835. Both studies in their times were highly controversial. See Joachim Weinhardt, Savonarola als Apologet: Der Versuch einer empirischen Begründung des christlichen Glaubens in der Zeit der Renaissance, Berlin 2003. Johann Heinrich/Henry and Elizabeth Gossler; Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier. Elizabeth Gossler.

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to give. They mean to go to the States in May and you may probably meet them some where or other, I suppose Gossler has so much more to do his fathers13 health being bad. - I had a letter from Theodore the other day in which he seriously speaks of retiring to the United States after a few years have ­elapsed – Is’ nt that glorious my dear Frank. Now just think a little bit. We in Philadelphia because you know: Was lange wahrt wird doch am Ende gut. – he in New York, some summer months spent together, our children all with us. I am sure this will repay us for our long and tedious anticipation. What says the wise barber:14 paciencia, coraggio! and something else which I have forgotten. Laß den Muth nicht sinken alter Junge; entbehrst du viel, so hast du auch noch viel; erstlich ein ganz ungemein treues Weibchen wies es derer gar nicht so viele giebt, zweitens ein außerordentliches nachsichtiges Weibchen wie du mit deinem lockern Sinn sie sehr bedarfst; und manches andere noch beiher. Bester Franz weißt du was du siehst noch viel jünger aus als Ferdinand15 und Ludwig16 die beide mit mir im gleichen Alter sind ist also doch das amerikanische Klima nicht so arg wie wir denken, denn auch ich sehe jünger aus als meine gleichaltrigen cousinen und Freunde. - Und sind diese Menschen im Herzen glücklicher als wir? Lieber Franz ich bezweifle es. Sieh nur einmal Ferdinand, der an sich eine glückliche Natur hat wie kränkelt seine Frau ewig. Adele selbst ist nicht glücklich, sie ist nicht mit ihrem Innern im Reinen sie verlangt mehr von sich als sie leisten kann und zerstört ihre Ruhe häufig durch trostloses Grübeln. Ludwig hat einen ruhig zufriedenen Sinn, verlangt vom Leben wenig und eigentlich wurde ihm auch wenig zu Theil. Seine Frau17 ist ewig krank und ihre geistige Tüchtigkeit ist nicht hinreichend wie bei Adelen die körperliche zu ersezen. - Trägt denn nicht ein jeder Mensch sein Kreuz, und glaubt nicht ein jeder daß seins wohl das Schwerste ist? – Mein Franz du weißt ich fühle deine Lage tief; but my blessed boy be above it. Muthig sorgen – Muthig wagen – wenig klagen – Und das Glück kömmt, mit frohem Muthe greifst du hinein, wirkst, genießest. Weib und Kinder dir zur Seite. – Ertrage noch ein wenig, laß die Hoffnung nicht sinken, erstirbt sie dir wie würdest du dich schämen wenn die Gewährung kömmt daß du so wenig F

13 14 15 16 17

Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. Francisco Astorini, barber in Boston. Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Emilie Johanna Elise Oppenheimer née Buchholz, she died in 1845 mourned by her husband and Minna Benecke. StaHH 622-1/121 Familie Benecke J 5b Transkriptionen Alfred Beneke to his family, passim.

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[3] My dear Papa. I love you with all my heart, do not believe that I do not do it. Papa I was at school when I received your dear letters of Dec 8th 1839 & Dec. 3. and I have begun to write an other letter to you at school, but as Mama is so kind she will let me dictate to you this evening. My dear Papa I thank you excedingly for that beautiful little song and my teacher also thought it very sweet. Oh Papa I am so glad that it is as not as in old times where people could not communicate with one an other by letters & where there were no posts, and stages & packets, & ships, though there were in older times vessels but not as we have now, and instead of paper pen & ink the ancients used wax on a ball and wrote the letters with a pin on stone or some sharp instrument as you told me. – Then it would be a complete prisonlike banishment from one another, which now it is not so, though it is always bad enough. My dear Papa I should like to see Nausikaa. Please Papa tell Mr Cheas to take her likeness. Papa how nice it will be when I come home perhaps you will allow me to ride to the post office upon her, or is she too wild? Papa dont you think that when bodies or the little of them which is left by the greedy turkey buzzards patrify and when they become dust that it mixes with the air and becomes also air itself? Please tell me. While we are writing here, Hammy is with us, and just now Mama said: be quiet Hammy Oscar is writing, and he said: No Oscar t’aint writing. He is very fond of me and I will always try to give him a good example. Papa I am surprized that you like the pines after all, for you used to dislike them so much; I should like to see them again very much. I thank you for being so kind to Timur, does he run after you when you take your rides – And now my dear Papa it is time to get ready for the play. Aunt Caroline is going to take us all. God bless you my dear Papa. Your loving son Oscar. F Auf Gott vertraust. Ich sage es nicht blos um dich zu beruhigen aber gewiß ich glaube fest an eine glückliche Wendung unseres Schicksals. Auf Gott für mich ist es ja jezt schon nicht so schlimm. Habe ich doch dich – und sieh wie einsam stehen Caroline, Mathilde18 – Franz ich darf nicht undankbar seyn und klagen. – Die Gedichtchen für Oscar hatte ich Tante Emilia19 vorgelesen, sie war entzückt, bat mich um eine Abschrift die ich ihr den nächsten Tag brachte. den selben Tag war beim zweiten Frühstück eine kleine Familienversammlung wo Minchen Arning das Gedicht vorlas. Ich war nicht zu ­gegen dort hörte aber nachher von der großen sensation die es gemacht hatte: Es ist

18 19

Mathilde Benecke. Emilia Oppenheimer, wife of Jacob Oppenheimer.

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ganz allerliebst, sagte Onkel;20 wie rührend! sagte Minchen: wie lieblich! Adele und beide hatten dabei Thränen in den Augen. – Mich erfreute die Aufnahme dieses Gedichtchens so sehr daß ich noch Nachfolgen erbitte. Oscar selbst war tief gerührt und will es auswendig lernen. - Von Busse habe ich noch ­keine Antwort seitdem ich ihm deinen Brief sandte. Onkel dem ich ihn vorlas fand ihn vortrefflich und hatte Adelen so viel davon erzählt daß sie als ich sie später besuchte mich sehr bat ihn ihr mitzutheilen. Von allen Seiten werde ich gebeten Mittheilungen aus deinen Briefen zu machen. Minchen sagte, ich wünsche so sehr seine Bekanntschaft zu machen du mußt mir einen Brief mitbringen. Onkel betrachtet es schon als ein Anrecht welches er verlangen kann, und du kannst gar keinen dankbareren Zuhörer haben. Tante Minna nicht zu vergessen die alte gute, die so enormen Antheil nimmt. – Ich muß dir noch manches erzählen. Erst vom Vampyr.21 Das ist ein ungeheuer ergreifendes Stück. Die Musik ist sehr lärmend und man müßte es wohl öfter sehen um es ordentlich zu würdigen. Aber der Gegenstand selbst und das wunderbare Spiel des Vampyrs haben mich tief ergriffen. Du kennst die Geschichte wohl wie sie Byron erzählt. Dem ähnlich ist auch der Gegenstand der Oper. Eine Jahresfrist wird noch dem Vampyr gegönnt wenn er in Tagesfrist drei Bräute nach den bösen Mächten zuführt. Zwei fallen als Opfer seiner Blutgier, & von seinen Liebesworten angezogen, die dritte wird durch ihren Geliebten ­gerettet. – Es war schauerlich genug und selbst die kleine Gossler konnte mich in meinem Genuß nicht stöhren. – ­Seitdem bin ich noch mehrermal im Theater mit Caroline und Jette gewesen. Habe ich dir erzählt wie sehr mich die schöne Musik der Nachtwandlerin erfreute?22 Johanna von Paris war minder gut.23 Die Schauspiele und Lustspiele sind alle erbärmlich. Der souffleur thut dabei das meiste. I told you, my sweet one that we were going to dine at Mathilde Benecke. Carry and I went for Hart was not quite well. We were not quite certain that we should not have to go in a boat, for the stormy weather westerly winds and pouring rains had deluged part of Hamburg most terribly so that indeed the intercourse was only kept up by the street navigation, children came to the schools, merchants to their counting houses in boats, poor people were turned out of their cellars in the dead of night when they heard the awful sound of the guns which announce the approaching high water and I have heard from 20 21 22 23

Jacob Oppenheimer. Der Vampyr, opera, music by Heinrich Marschner, lyrics by Wilhelm August Wohlbrück, first performance Leipzic 1828. Die Nachtwandlerin/La sonnambula, opera by Vincenzo Bellini, lyrics by Felice Romani, first performance Milan 1831. Johanna d’Arc, opera by Johann Vesque v. Püttlingen, Vienna 1840?

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eye witnesses that it was really terrible to behold how these poor creatures had to turn out all their goods in the open street when the waters from the Heavens were hardly more merciful than the rivers unmerciful power. Carry and I however came safely to Mathilda who had quite unexpectedly to us invited several guests to meet us. Dr Benecke24 who told me that he remembered you quite well, though he must have been quiet a lad when you were in Ham.25 he recollects accompanying you on some tours in the neighborhood of Hamburg and tells me how deligh ∆ you were. He is a great friend of Matildas, when he studied in Berlin he was a great deal at her house.26 Buck was there, a Mr Moller from Mexico a friend of Etienne Benecke - Young Keibel,27 Krutisch Miss Bene[cke].28 ∆ quite a party in her little garret room. I read to Matilda all your messages who has promised me that she will write to you very soon, she still loves you dearly. You, she says are so connected with all her fond recollections that the sweet memory of the days past with you will remain when even later days are long forgotten. We had music there, I read your poem to Buck who was delighted as was M. also. When the gentlemen went down to smoke in Hermans little room, we ladies jointly cleared the dining table and prepared for the gentlemens reception. It was quite funny. Matilda likes Caroline very much. – Den 7ten. My boy what a joyfull day I had yesterday. Two dear letters at once N. 16 of Dec 16. & 17 of Dec 22. You are indeed the best husband in the world, such darling letters; only one thing in them disturbed me, that my letters do not seem to satisfy you. – I thought that in some I have written very circumstantially. This one I own is a good for nothing: but nevermind I will write 24 25

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Dr. iur. Otto Benecke, son of Ferdinand Benecke, friend of Mathilde Benecke née Schweder. Franz Lieber had been to Hamburg twice before he returned for a longer stay in 1844; the first stay was September 30, 1825 when he had visited the family of Ferdinand Beneke, close friend of Wilhelm and Stephan Benecke. Ferdinand Benecke had commented his meeting with the young man who tried to overcome his wild reputation; the second time Franz Lieber had spent some days (19.-22.5.1826) in Hamburg before he migrated to England. Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 77–83; Frank Hatje/Ariane Smith ea., eds., Ferdinand Beneke, Die Tagebücher, Göttingen 2012ff. Dr. iur. Otto Benecke had read law in Berlin since 1833 before he moved to Heidelberg to take his exams. He settled as a lawyer in Hamburg in 1836 but in 1840 started his career as archivist at the Hamburg Senatsarchiv under the guidance of Johann Martin Lappenberg. When Lappenberg retired in 1863 Benecke became his sucessor. To his relation with Mathilde Benecke who was much disliked by his mother see StaHH 622-1/121 Familie Beneke J6 letters of Dr. iur. Otto Beneke to his brother Alfred Beneke in Amerika, passim. Gustav Keibel, son of Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin. Anna Benecke, daughter of Mathilde Benecke.

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again in a week and make up for it, telling all I have to tell and answering all I have to answer, and dearest I will write better too, so that you may be pleased. The news of Mary’s29 engagement has gratified me extremely. Of course I shall write to her. I am delighted at her prospect of happiness and I believe Mary too faithful a friend to give us up. All your little impudences shall be punished well my good lord, stop a little bit, you entirely forget how much more I have in my power at present than you have. I have enquired about the Literatur Zeitung. Die Berliner Jahrbücher werden mir empfohlen, ich werde mich aber noch mehr bei Sachverständigen erkundigen. – Ich werde heute Dr Busse sehen und will gern ehe er kömmt das für ihn bestimmte aus deinem Brief abschreiben, deswegen werde ich heute die rothe Tinte nicht v­ ersuchen.  – Über die preuss: Loose werde ich mit Onkel30 sprechen. Ich habe dir schon gesagt, das kein Amerik. Journal hier ist, wenn nicht Privatleute es besitzen was ich nicht erfahren kann. Caroline u. Jette [4] Oscars Zeugniß. Januar 31. 1840. – Im Allgemeinen ist Oscar in diesem neuen Jahre fast in jeder Hinsicht etwas vorgerückt, und hat in seinem Wesen an Ruhe und Stätigkeit gewonnen. In seinem Betragen ist, neben stehts zunehmender Folgsamkeit besonders Freundlichkeit und Gefälligkeit, so wie eine gewisse Antheiligkeit lobend ­hervorzuheben. – Leider sind bisweilen noch Momente gewesen wo seine übergroße Empfindlichkeit ihm Tadel, einmal so gar Strafe zuzog. Mit seinen Arbeiten ist Oskar dieses Mal ganz fertig geworden; mehrere Tage dieses Monates habe ich ihn mit “Recht fleißig” bezeichnen können. Auch scheint er sich zu bestreben, seine Arbeiten mit größerer Lust zu betreiben, wo durch es ihm nicht selten gelungen ist, sie in viel kürzerer Zeit zu vollenden! – In seiner Haltung u seinem Gange scheint er mir kräftiger geworden zu seyn; nur muß er beim Gehen sich gewöhnen, die Füße mehr auswärts zu sezen. Das Schlittschuhlaufen in den ersten Wochen dieses Monats hat ihm viel Freude gemacht, er kann sich (was im Verhältnis mit der kurzen Übungszeit schon etwas sagen will) auf den Schlittschuhen schon vorwärts bewegen und ein wenig rollen. – Das Tanzen betreibt er noch immer mit Lust. – Das Rein halten der Hände ist ihm immer noch eine schwierige Aufgabe. Sonst wäscht er sich gern, und geniest vorzüglich das Erfrischende des Kopf und Brustwaschens. Über das Reinhalten seiner Kleider hat meine Frau seltener zu klagen gehabt. Sein kör29 30

Mary Appleton had already married James Robert Mackintosh. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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perliches ­Befinden war sehr gut. ==== Im Lesen des Deutschen und Englischen ist er etwas sicherer geworden; auch schreibt er ortographischer. Indeß kömmt es hierbei noch zu sehr darauf an, ob er grade recht dazu aufgelegt ist, oder ob ihn der Gegenstand interessiert. – Die Grammatik des Deutschen wird ihm noch schwer, jedoch hat er auch hierin schon einige Fortschritte gemacht. – Im Rechnen ist er diesen Monat fleißiger geworden – Im Zeichnen: gut. Im Schreiben gewinnt seine Hand etwas an Schlankheit und Bestimmtheit. Die Aufsätze aus der biblischen Geschichte werden ihm nach und nach leichter. Bisweilen giebt er das Erzählte recht gut wieder. In der Geographie muß Oskar das Einzelne noch mit größerem Eifer lernen. In der Musik ist Herr Albers ganz zufrieden mit ihm gewesen. Auch im Singen unterscheidet er jezt die Töne schon besser. In der Deklamation hat er seine Aufgaben fleißig gelernt und giebt sich auch Mühe im Vortragen. (unterzeichnet Dr Busse) ∆ Abschrift aus dem Conversations Lexicon (Brockhaus 1839) Deutsche, die, wie Follenius oder Franz Lieber (s.d.) als Lehrer oder [du]rch ihre Schriften eine Stellung sich geschaffen, haben sich vorher der sprachlichen Taufe unterziehen müssen und sind Neuengländer im ∆ [wa]hrsten Sinne des Worts geworden. Namentlich Lieber, der als Professor am Girard College angestellt ist, welches er selbst nach deutschem [Mu]stern begründen half, hat in seinen englischen Schriften viele deutsche Ansichten und Kenntnisse in Amerika verbreitet. Die von [ihm] gemeinschaftlich mit W. u B. herausgegebene Enc. Am. ist ihrem wesentlichen Inhalte nach eine Übersezung des Brockhaus’schen Conversations Lexikons, dem überhaupt die Ehre zu Theil geworden ist u.s.w. Lieber hat natürlich seine amerikanische Ausgabe mit [zah]lreichen Artikeln vermehrt, die speciell auf sein neues Vaterland und auf die berühmten Männer desselben Bezug haben; die Grund[lage] des Werks und namentlich alles, was darin über Wissenschaft und Kunst vorkommt, ist jedoch deutsch geblieben. Im Jahre [183]5 hat Lieber ein interessantes Buch über den auch in Nord Amerika durch seine Römische Geschichte bekannten und [ge]schäzten Niebuhr herausgegeben, ein Buch daß in England nachgedruckt worden ist, auch dort ein großes Publikum, in [Deu]tschland wiederum einen Übersetzer gefunden hat31 --- Letter from Oscar. My dear Mama, As I have got such fine […] ne to day I will write to you. Dear Mama I thank you very much for your nice

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Conversations=Lexikon der Gegenwart. Ein für sich bestehendes und in sich abgeschlossenes Werk, zugleich ein Supplement zur achten Auflage des Conversations=Lexikons, sowie zu jeder frühern, zu allen Nachdrucken und Nachbildungen desselben, Heft 7, Leipzig F.A. Brockhaus 1838, p. 1019 “Deutsche Literatur im Auslande”; Barthold Georg Niebuhr; Follenius= Charles Follen. Encyclopaedia Americana

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letter. Please tell Uncle [Ja]cob that I am making the story of Preciosa.32 My dear Mama I can now skate a little. It has [b]een very cold and it is a pity that it is now such bad weather, the whole place [i]n which we skate is quite soft and bad so that one can not run well. I will try to get home on sunday. How are all the children at home? Kiss them for me and both Aunts & give my love to dear Papa. God bless you Your loving son Oscar Normans letter to Papa. Good Papa. Thank you Papa. Little Normy says good Papa. I have take a walk with Becca. Good Papa very good. Hammy is in school O sende dir die herzlichsten Grüße; wie sie dich innig lieben. gar zu gern mögten sie dich hier haben. - Hammys letter to Papa: My own Papa will on let me ride upon your pony. I love Papa, and I learn my lesson now like Oscar. Soon I come in a ship to see my Papa. Hamilton. – Lebe wohl mein über alles Geliebter. Gott schüze dich – Schelte nicht über meinen Brief das macht mich so betrübt wenn ich dich nicht befriedige. Für den ich doch so gern alles thue was ich nur kann. Gott mit dir mein Freund. Mein Franz – deine Mathilda. [cross-writing] Weil ich sie ordentlich beantworten will, und damit anfange sobald dieser fort ist, habe ich kaum deine segensvolle Briefe erwähnt. Laß dieses dir nicht unangenehm seyn. Good bye my sweetest blessing. Oh for one hug! I am sick at heart & every day my longing increases for hugs = Alas who will hug me? Via Havre New York single Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. aux Etats Unis pr Packet Stamp Hamburg 7. Febr. 40 Stamp Tour Givet 12 Fevr 40 Stamp Bureau Maritime Le Havre 13 Fevr 1840 Stamp New York Ship Mar + stamp faded

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Preciosa, opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performance Berlin 1821.

No. 41 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 02.02.-05.02.1840 Included: Letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 03.02.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No. XXII. THE [sketch of a large chest] HAS ARRIVED. Columbia Febr. 5. 1840 Alas! It is not good to have too fine things. The morn. gown being so exquisite I donot sit upon it, which makes her less comfortable than the tattered one! Sunday Febr. 2. I must say at least: how are you? Yesterday I sent XXI and hope it may soon reach you. We are in daily expectat. of news by the Brit. Queen. Perhaps she may bring the news as late as of your Christmass. She might certainly if you have Known that she was to sail on Jan. 1. and have written immediately. – Matilda, my glands are better again. I almost expect a few lines from, in one of your letters, from Matilda B. How it would delight me! I had an awful accident yesterday. The rock-chair came in contact with the lamp, which tumbled behind my back and soked the cushins fairly through. I dont Know what to do? They smell terribly. – Box – of course not. Soon the bother respect. two will begin. This is a life! – Notforme! Notforme! Too insipid in itself, to live cut off from civilisat. Have I ever told you how Col Gregg told me that the way in which I ride is not considered military here!! It beats everything the ignorant arrogance of a small out of the way place. Of all things military riding in America! We, that is you and I, recieved yesterday an invitation to Mrs Black. Who is she? Goodbye. Write me what Oscar wears. Have indeed Gossler’s1 never invited you? – Tuesday Hurrah! Let the three boys huzza loudly, three times three, even 9 times 9 as I see the tories do sometimes cheer so many times at present some peculiarly relished tory toast (rather lengthy I should think). And what for? Are we released from our exile? Oh no! Is there at least some promising news from Philadelphia? Oh no! From New-York? Oh no! (Then surely a few thousand dollars, which w bring at least the possibility of retiring from here nearer, have unexpectedly fallen to my share. Oh no! Then at least the box has arrived? Oh no! Well what then? Why the box, according to important dispatches braught yesterday, is put handed over to some waggoner, who may start soon! These are the great events which stir my life, and thrill through every nerve. These the occurrances which tally so well with the deeds of the Chathams, the Burleighs, whose perused fill my days. These the acts of the life of one whose every nerve tells him that he was made for s­ tirring 1 Johann Heinrich Gossler and his wife Elizabeth.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_043

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action, and feels the substance for it within. – Matilda when I yesterday reflected upon my life I found, what indeed has several times occurred to me, that among my many great privations, and without faint-hearted complaint, they are great indeed, is one of which many people would not think. Consider how the memory of those who live in some active sphere is kept alive by intercourse. They talk, converse, and every now and then facts, names, dates are braught back again to their mind, and sunk deeper in their soul. I on the other hand, have all, all to prop and support myself. Not one solitary conversation refreshes the memory. Not unfrequently I happen to remember a fact, or am led back to it, which once was clear and perspicuous in my mind, and have to fetch it back like an old, half forgotten paper, must dust it, read it over, and with toil and labor make myself again master of it, yet cannot frequently do so to my satisfaction. Wie schwierig ist mein Leben in tausendfacher Hinsicht! – A tutor has sent me about 15 fine birds. Shall be pied, roasted, stewed to morrow and consumed with him. – ­Yesterday I found one elm tree in full blossom! That is early. – I am really pestered by letters. I have now 3 letters from different quarters of the Union with strings of queries, many of which take a good deal of time to answer. What shall I do. So far I have always answered to the best of my ability, but it becomes troublesome. – Johnston has given up his paper. It was for Preston and was no longer supported. The other, for Calhoun, lately established here, is edited by a man who has taken a wonderful liking to me despite of the difference of our opinions on present polities. To-day he met me, said he had not given yet an article on my book, because he had begun to [2] To read it, and found that it is a work which requires justice to be done to it that he was so charmed with it, that he must read it through. That he was carried along by the book and cannot dissent from any point that above all he reverenced the way of my straight forward treating matters. That he had gone to Cuninghams and baught every book of mine &c &c. And all this while I was on horseback, and he, being pretty deaf himself, screeming all the eulogiems in the street. We have not yet the Brit. Queen in, which, I am sure will bring me news from my three lovely flowers, fostered by the lovely gardner, alas! Were but the garden not so far away. Let me have then have frequent accounts from my blessed garden, for there is my spring, my joy, my life, however lovely the sun may shed its vernal ray here from a pure and bright sky – pure and bright indeed, but it is a majestic vault over sand and negros. – I have to write the one hundred and seventy monthly accounts to the parents of the students. If you were here it might be very easily done by dictation; but alone as I am it causes

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a good deal of most mindless drudgery; very much against my grain: but I must through with it. I donot think I had the right of giving away the two hundred dollars, under circumstances. – I am all expectation for the Christmass letter. I believe I have not yet even thanked for Caroline’s “loving me most tenderly”. It reads like a “most tender” kiss itself. I thank her for all that love, for her “dearest Frank”, for her warm affection. Opportunity? I wonder for what opportunity she waits to write me. She does not mean, I hope, box opportunity. If so, oh dear! Time enough to cool a love glow fuming like a Vesuvius. – Thursday morning. With joy and gratitude do I sit down to write to my beloved ones. Oh, it does the heart good to feel now and then some pleasure. I took my ride yesterday late, because I had written all day. The new moon, which never fails to gladder me here – it is one of the few, very few objects of beauty and grace, I have here – had disposed me well. Before I returned home I thaught I would ask at Cuningham’s, to whom I had given directions to send the box, whether it had arrived. It had! “You cant have it this evening, it is too late.” Cant I? So I rode from shop to shop whether some negro would not earn a quarter of a dollar. At last I found one. I had the box carried into my room. The servants and even Henry2 were present. He asked: Matter, wa Gy – Norma? (Master, where is Guy-Norman?).3 I was filled with joy, delight. God bless you for that assortment of love. The servants were excedingly delighted at the shawls you sent them, and blessed Missus; Henry not the less with his ark; but it seemed to me as though the old ones thaught it quite as fine a thing for themselves. There was afterwards a réunion de societé noire in the Kitchin, wheren the ark was displayed on a table and grave debates were had on the dress of Noah, Betsy, I dare say, shining by way of ecclesiastic Knowledge. If the blacks were elated with joy, the white one was no less so. Thousand thanks. Oh how sweet the German ginger bread tastes. I gave some to the blacks. Caroline, thrice do I Kiss each eye of yours for that gown! You Know Matilda how much anything, the merest trifle, delights me if perfect in its way. No this gown is perfect. It is comfortable, wide, warm, handsome, eastern-looking, in style, soft – it is lovely like the giver’s affection. God bless her bonny face for it. The soap the little things, the incense, the pens, (I write with one), the promising mustard – ­everything is fine. Oh, and that Curasseau!4 I thaught I had not tasted anything like it for years. It cheered me. I made afterwards my round with the students in Carolines Persian caftan! I have looked at it, at myself a hundred times. Oh it 2 Son of Betsy the cook. 3 Guido Norman, Lieber’s youngest son. 4 Curaçao, alcoholic drink made from bitter oranges, produced since 1834 in France; the production of Curaçao on the island Curaçao in the West Indies started only in 1896.

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is so mellifluous! But, my Matty, that foot concern I shall put away for you. I have told already a student to shoot me some good game, an on Saturday, and we will have a regular set-to on Sunday. Dear Harriet’s letter of Oct. 14 was still most welcome, for it speaks of your good looks, your handsome waste and the like articles, I love so much, for I do say, a graceful, perfectly round waste, above voluptuously swelling hips, sweeping out in the enticing lines, which cannot be hid, and under a gentle, loving, clinging heart in is one of the things I adore à la follie. The letter from your Sally5 in Berlin is really fine. It breathes such happy attachment, and is written so free, so fine. If that damsel however writes thus about America I shall bombard her, though it be with confect, una confettada à l’Italienne. I hope you will stay with her some days in Berlin, si çela ne vous entraine pas trôp dans l’Ébrenisme, by which I mean only if it does not se burry you too much in one particular small circle. – I donot like in Palm’s plan one thing, that is Latin & Greek are treated too much à l’Hambourgoise, commercially. When a friend asked Chatham the Great, to what he ascribed his wonderful terseness in reasoning and vast command of words, he answered: Because I studied early and thouroughly logic, and [3] and my father made me when a boy reade every day a passage of an ancient author to him, translate it first literally and than flowingly. The ancients, when properly read, not pedantically, which, indeed, is but too often the case in Germany, are greater well of noble, broad citizens thaugths, than any other – the very thing for a boy like Ossy, who will make his way in a republic – I have not yet the precious things removed; on the contrary they stand in rank and file along the wall – mostard pot and all – to delight my eayes and every now and than, even now when writing, I glance at that regiment and body guard of love tokens. Oh it is well, very well, you sent it! How we laughed, nigger and all, when out we pulled Ossy’s breeches! Strange, when Betsy asked Henry,6 what it was, he said: Os. – I shall now send the lovely paper to Mrs Ward, alias Miss ­Olivia. Les pantouffles will be fine when warm weather comes. My heart is so full; I thank you; and than those preserves! Tell the famous the “Aunt Minna”, the good, the beneficient, that Oscar cannot have felt more grateful when first she accoutred him to school armament, than his father does for the preserves. Tell her, and I tell you, that not one bottle was broken. God’s blessing was upon the box. Dont laugh. I donot see why this box is not as dear, as 5 Sally Jacobsen, Berlin, friend of Mathilde Lieber. 6 Son of Betsy the cook.

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poetical an object as all the spring; for it is vernal garden of love, each bottle, pot, boxlet (you see I am inspired and make words) is a fragrant flower from the genial soil of love. I Kiss you not nine times nine, but nine thousand times nine millions, and any one who care for the chips of kisses, may draw near, for I have plenty to-day, Carry, Harriet come here, and you Matilda Benecke, let me print a fresh, whole and warm one on your lips. – I see from Hart’s letter again, les dames ne goutent pas mon Oscar trôp. Never mind! He is nevertheless a noble boy, my eye-apple, and you will see, he will turn out a clever lad, a dear one, to make you all proud of him. But I was delighted that H.7 says, Hammy is her favourite. Poor thing, I thaught the heavy little chap was entirely out tripped by the gazelle-like Norry, who with the grace of a Chamois leeps nimbly into the hearts of others. Sturdy Hammy, stand fast upon your ground; dont move, my love shall be as strong a support to you, as the stick and prop in the back of German toy figures, pasted over with dow ∆ – I stopped for a moment to survey again my m. gown. Great and noble thing, worthy of being sent to a prince. – So soon as I shall have tried the shirts I will report. The raisors I have not tried yet. – I forgot to tell you that yonder editor spoken off at the ­beginning said likewise that he had never yet seen any single thing of mine that was not ­entirely original or handled with originality. Now Mathilda mine, peep into my heart. Originality is with me not only natural, but I positively have to struggle against going my own new path where the old one is good and right. I remember that once my dear mother said to me, when we were walking to-gether, and I perhaps soiled my nankine breeches by braching through the copse: Ich begreife nicht Franz, daß du nie auf dem ordentlichen Wege gehen kannst. At present I come frequently home with a torne face because somehow or other it always drives me off from the road into the thicket (I thaught really this was a word but it is not) into the thickset then – this is correct according to Dryden. I have always broken a new path, more or less important, when treating a great subject; hence I dont succeed so rapidly with the multitude, as if I should, were I to collect and arrange old matters only. – I shall send this letter immediately, for I Know it will annoy you to hear, letter after letter, for the nonarrival of the box. That Nußknacker I could not find courage to give to Henry;8 I want to bestow it upon Rhett, as the image of a Militia colonel – a token of his loving Teacher. What say you? – No letters, nor news of the Brit. Queen. I dare say she did not sail on January 6. – Poor Follen9 is really dead. – Matilda, 7 Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg, sister of Mathilde Lieber. 8 Son of Betsy the cook. 9 Charles Follen, a former friend of Francis Lieber during his times as a political opponent in Prussia had tried hard to convince Lieber to migrate to Massachusetts in 1827. He had

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before I ­forget it; if there are good substantial contrivances to Keep the dishes warm, and also the plates – for I monstrously hate to see a dinner fine and nice in every way but – spoiled when finally it comes upon one’s own plate by stiffening into tallow – yo and for a moderate price I think I would bring some. By the way, Hawes the tutor told me yesterday that Betsy10 stands on the pinnacle of culinary reputation with the students. You have interdicted the crossing, so I must end here, oh could softly let my lips dwell upon yours in a long and gentle embrace Life imposting like the first breathing of spring – (It would not remain very long gentle, either, [4] I suppose at least; I donot Know much of these matters, and being, as you Know, rather of a coldish nature). Goodbye, for I must not trespass upon O ­ scar’s territory, to whom belongs the reverse of my letters, yet the obverse of my soul. I this moment consecrated one of the sick Kerchiefs with a tremendous trumpeting blow – a bumper, as was meet and fit. Fie! You say? Books for reading, Kerchiefs for blowing. Oh that I ever upon all my various pereginations lost Mat. B’s Khandkerchief she gave me when I came from prison! – But I must add, that you must send my very warmest love to Zuellichau. Were I but have as good as my sisters and yours and you – I think each might give me a scap – my patchwork would be better than millions, and thus I now am. Goodbye. I Kiss you fervently – sensually, amorously, gently, intellectually, everythingly. Your Frank. Febuary 3. My beloved Oscar, Who do you think loves more, you me or I you? Never mis loves reckons not; love loves from the depth of the soul, and rejoices in being loved. When you read the Arabian nights11 you will find that a handsome woman’s face is frequently compared to the moon, the full moon. In Germany this compar. has

10 11

sent him several letters and given pleasant prospects of an US-American future. While Lieber tried hard to find a living, Follen successfully had found his position in Harvard University where he created the basics of German Studies. Follen had died January 13, 1840 in an accident when being on board of the steamer Lexington the ship caught fire and sank in the Long Island Sund. Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC. Arabian nights = Tausend und eine Nacht; in the first half of the 19th century those originally outspoken erotic tales were treated as fairy tales for children; it is not evident which translation Lieber gave his son – there were several German and French translations from the Arabian version.

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very little force, but if you remember our moon here – and the Arabian moon must be about the same – the camparison is well founded. I thaught of this when riding yesterday, on Nausicaa, and the first delicate rim of a new moon was brightly visible while, as you remember, the whole rest of the disk can be seen as a transparent circle. It was so graceful, and endeed I wondered that no Arabian had ever compared the eye-brows of a beautiful woman, to the first, delicate line appearing of a fresh-born moon. When I looked at our moon, to which I have often looked with my boy, I thaught of you. Oscar, it gives me the greatest pleasure to hear from Mama that you are Kind and loving to the boys. Love them always dearly; let them look-up to you, as to one, with whom they Know that they always find a heart full of love, and a good example. It also gave me much pleasure to hear from Mama that your teacher says you ab advance in music. My boy, in one of your letters you spoke slightingly of music. You must not do it. Oh music is so sacred an art; given by God to soothe, rejuice inspirit and gladden man’s heart; the older you grow the more you will find – that music is so holy, so beautiful an art; and when you begin to read properly my works, you will a passage on Music, in which I have given my views at length. Some men have recieved a fine ear for music others not; it is possible you have not; but neither you nor anyone else can know this yet, and it is your duty to try with all your power, whether your ear cannot be cultivated, for not all have at once, from the beginning a delicate sense of hearing for tones. If then after honest and faithful trial, you really find that God has not given you a sense for music, I promise you that you shall not be obliged to lose time with unfruitful attempts. But even then slight not music, it would be wicked; for deplore regret in that case, that God has not willed it so, while he has given you perhaps a stronger sense for for forms and colors, as I should much regret it. Oh, you cannot Know how devine an art music is, how much, oh how much and how often I miss it before all, but then your father’s youth fell in so agitated a time. Mama will explain it. Yet my love for music remained. Consider that as God has poured out light and colors in his beautiful universe, so he has poured out sound and melody, and while his birds chirp and sing and rejoice, we read that the angels in heaven sing his great name. A merry wanderer whistles a tune, and the peels of the solemn anthem swells in the church from the organ; the peaceful shepherd flutes away his time, and the din of martial music leads to battle; the loving gondolier sings to his guitar under the window of a girl he loves, and the dead are sunk into the grave while we give them our last adieu in a dirge in which we sing out our hope of seeing them again in God’s mansions above. Every where is music; yes when lately with the first warm rays called forth the flies from their crevices and they hummed and buzzed about at the window it was music to me, and music it would be to my ears, could I but hear

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once the noise of my three gladsome boys about me – oh, it would be music indeed! Do not forget Latin, and always remember boy, that if I have made Known the name of Lieber by a few works in which there may be now and then some things which are not quite bad, it is for you to make this name truly esteemed. I had intended to write much more; having many [cross-writing, 4] things to tell you, but the paper is entirely at an end, nor dare I to cross much, because your dear mother’s eyes would ache, and surely neither you nor I would wish to hurt those blessed eyes, or give any discomfort to her whom we both love so much. So I must conclude for to-day. Kiss your dear brothers and cousins for me. Your ever loving father F.L. Our elms in the campus are in blossom. What do you think of that boy? This last little place, which is always like the last waving of the Kerchief to a friend sailing out of port, shall be occupied this time by the important news that I have tasted that Piccadillo12 – or what’s the name? And it is the veriest thing for me here. Pungent, sharp, yet fine – it is exquisite! You have no idea how these edables please me – I suppose my solitude has made me a little childish as prisoners and sick become likewise so – n’importe what is the cause, the fact is, each time I nibble at one these sweet things, I enjoy your sending them anew – and that nothing was broke! But Mat. let the children none of these German Confects – I pray you. F.L. Single Via New-York & Havre á Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne per packet Stamp New York Feb 15 Stamp Paris 17 Mar Stamp Hamburg 22 März

12

Piccalilly, mixture made from sliced cooked onions, cauliflower, carots etc. in a mustard sauce spiced with ginger, curcuma, curry, vinegar, and sugar.

No. 42 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 05.02.-09.02.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 09.02.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XXIII Columbia S.C. February 9. 1840 My dear Matilda, pray donot call me ein Nero; I would not be called so, yet I must confess that I have already taken my seat in the stage-coach for Charleston! For June you Know! The fact is, I saw the grass and herbs so merrily sprouting, Spring, Spring, Spring was written on their every leaflet, that my heart felt so happy, although never at those moments without that shooting pain, caused by the flitting thaughts that, oh my Oscar – he must remain behind, and that another year will soon have passed, and I still chained here. But Matilda I have made up my mind to set a little about it myself, when next at the North, to prepare at least more definitely, a return. I Know the thing will present itself a little more feasable when Sumner1 is back; I mean I can freely correspond with him, while he is enthusiastically disposed attached to me. – I had to-day a letter from Brinkmann in N.Y. that the box, p. Sir Isaac Newton, has been sent from N.Y. to Charleston, and am very happy to inform you that the terrible want of conveyance has caused people here to go about it a little, and we have no nearly every week a wagon going to Branchville &. But Brinkm. says that if you were to send things to him through the Captain, and not on the manifesto, he would, of course get them without their passing through the custom house. The last box cost $ 8 duty! In that case however the bundles or boxes ought not to be large. However all this will now be too late. Never mind! But I beg you, and Har. and Caroline, to let me find, when I arrive in N.Y. beginning, a bundle or small box full of love, to Keep up my spirits when I go to Boston, ah dear, dear! and read proofsheets, while waiting for you. Of course ne edables, but anything you can think of; letters big, large, with “the tenderest love” of the blackeyed Susan.2 Such packet let go direct to Brinkmann, not on the Manifesto, but, harken: he must be informed that there is a bundle on board directed to him, and you must calculate: I you Know, shall be in N.Y. beginning of July. Sweet love, attend to this, will you, but – let me not be in want of regular letters on that account. I am quite very happy that now things may come easier, for I was so much affraid, that when you should be with your poor bear again, no love tokens by way of bundles could reach you. But now they can. Oh tell Carry betimes, that bundles are so lovely, so excellent, and their 1 Charles Sumner, Boston. 2 Lieber’s nickname for Caroline Lomnitz.

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arrival such a feast. – What is to be done with the gown you sent? I have some faint idea that you wrote it was for Betsy3 yet I donot remember distinctly, and, Matilda, these are not all raizors, there is one especially wanting, the best blade in the worst handle. Did you not count the number when you sent them. Your exquesite Windsor soap is on my writing desk merely for perfume’s sake.4 I do wish there was such a thing as a perfumed something to place before one while writing. I do love delicate perfumes – but for heaven’s sake, no much for me. Matilda I really yesterday used the footbag; it is fine; it was not cold enough to make fire, yet the feet were cold; but I always come back, my dear Caroline, to that respectable, gentlemanly, oriental, voluptuous Caftan. It pleases me like a child – I stroll in it, like a peacock – I look at it again and again like a former poor nobleman at his brocade dress, put on on galeya day – I enjoy it, like a squirrel nestling in moss – I admire it like a the beauteous cover and encasement of a poor d—l of a professor – I like it, because a fine product of German industry – I love it, because Carries blackish eyes must have selected it. – If you ask for the date of these lines – why I am ashamed, this moment only I carried XXII to the Post Office – therefore it is Febr. 5. – I have read a good deal already in vol III of Nieb. Letters.5 You Know how much I love and respect ∆ , to so many superficial things in our times, as indeed my works prove; yet Nieb. took a totally wrong view of our times, and the older he grew the more he talked himself into it. Die Zeit unserer Vorväter becomes the perfect near-ideal with him. Well then, let’s talk both in the bulk. Good God! Is the very time of court mistresses, and perfect abomination on the thrones, of avowed, horrid bribery in Brit. Parliament, of murder in Russia, of tardy expensive and pedantic administ. in of justice everywhere, of pedantry in literature in most branches, of flogging in the armies, of systematic annihilation of all action in the communalities of stiffened absurdity in the fine arts, of the most disgusting trickery in the diplomatics, of dresses – ugly though ours be, God wits – the most absurdly ludicrous, lumbersome and unhealthy – is that time so wonderfully preferable to ours, when civism does return despite of all he may say. When they praise old German patriotism it makes me sick. When did it exist? In the middle ages? 3 Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC. 4 “Die Windsor=Seife zeichnet sich durch einen eigentlichen Geruch aus, und dadurch, dass sie in kleinen viereckigen Stücken vorkommt, die oft mit sehr prahlerischen Etiketten umwickelt sind. Sie ist nichts weiter, als eine gewöhnliche, aber von recht reinem und weißem Talg zubereitete Kern=Seife, die mit folgenden Ingredienzien parfümirt ist: Kümmel=Oel 16 Loth, Bergamott Oel 8, Lavendel=Oel 4, Spanisches Hopfen=Oel 1, Thymian=Oel 4...”, Johann Georg Greve, Gründliche und vollständige Anleitung zur Fabrikation der Seife zum Selbstunterricht, Band 2, Hamburg in der Herold’schen Buchhandlung 1833, p. 142f. 5 Barthold Georg Niebuhr; Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten.

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Read its annals, and you will see what patriotism those black times in Germany developped. Is it later in the 17th cent. with its 30 years war, or the 18th cent. with Fred. II, who great and gl wise as he was, much greater than the English often allow him to be, far less a very saint, as they now make him in Berlin, still cannot be charged with Germ. patriotism. And what is strange, I do say – though it sound paradoxical – Niebuhr had a great element of the liberal or as he called it revolutionaire in him, however severely he may preach against them. His history and his letters even at times show it. Besides, what use view is it of mankind, if ev to believe that everything goes down, down, every thing past was good, no one of the rising generation worth a fip, and to pass one’s whole life in croaking. Truly, it seems, that if he really meant to act upon all these views they could not well employ him, for, even though a [2] a man might be even mistaken in not believing that all his time and every one in trash, still it is clear that one who does believe so has lost the whole handle and sole [function?] for action on men. Still I do esteem him from all my heart, love him, admire him, but I also say, his nerves were not strong enough – I mean physically als as well as mentally. But Good gracious! how I have run on! And it is one o’clock too, and Friday. Good bye. I send you annexed 9 Kisses and a half three for your sweet lips, the others I beg you to distribute thus: one on each eye of Carry, while she says: dearest Frank, two on Harts mo lips for all her goodness; and one on each eye of Mat. Benecke and a half one on her lips – must I send one for the daughter too? I am out of stock, I cannot possibly give more to-day. I also send a quart full of boys Kisses – another sort – give them equally to my lovely lads. And now be done with! – # Pray, obtain the recipe of that Piccallilly, but without carrots. That’s a Germanic slop-idea to mix carrots with so excellent a thing. Carrots are good for soup, but ought never to intrude farther. They are already like impudent parvenus if thrusting themselves among the worthy vegetables – unless they are quite young, and who does not allow even a rosy freshblown girl even though a peasant girl, to sit anywhere? But when they make carrot pancakes in Germany! by all the Plinsen, that love ever swallowed, it reminds me of their former courts where all ideas administrative and judicial where jumbled to-gether. How a carrot, however, gets into this delicate piccallillo, hard vulgar carrot – for I found one to-day – I cannot understand. I am sorry Caroline, but that Carrot detracts a good deal from my lately so rapidly rising oopinion of you. A carrot! Why Caroline! – Do you, Matilda, collect Acta culinaria or good recipes for fine, smart, yet famila ­dishes – dishes that are like the great Chatham refined and exquisite yet within

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the reach of Commoners. Monday February 9. If forgivingeness hangs upon your lips, donot pronounce it, but let me Kiss it off. I love you, and ask your pardon if in my last but one I have been harsh. I have your letter 10, the large one. I felt, I own so hurt, when after waiting so long I recieved nothing but hasty letters, and could not Know whether you referred to the large unnumbered letter, I had recieved long ago, or to one which I had not yet recieved, as it now turns out. But the letter did not come by steamboat, but by common packet. Perhaps does the Brit. Queen, which is to have sailed on January 20 bring me the Christmass account! Your letter 10 is far one of far the sweetest that I have received; it has given me great, deep joy by the accounts of the boys, God bless them! But these pleasures carry along with them always great melancholy. Not that I mourn at being separate from them. I could manly bear it; but that there is no end to be seen of the separation from my beloved Oscar, that the lovely and dear must be deprived of the guidance of his parents, that he so young, tender with so loving must be left like an orphaned soul child, that I cannot develope his fine mind and noble sole, that I shall be deprived even of him, in my unhappy, humiliating, sapping way of living here, that will often break my very heart, and never leaves my bosom without the shall of sadness. I am not unmanly. I should be so if were unable to feel this grief, as grief founded upon facts, not imaginary, for it relates to the very vitals of a man. ∆ how tattered is my poor life; how useless are hundred qualities which, had they been brought into their proper sphere might have been called noble; how oppressed is my sad heart, made to feel for the best fruits of civilization, in this state of unfeeling barbarity, which it is. Ther is no use in cloaking over matters. I live We live here in ignorant vulgarity and brutality. Things that in other regions were ripe two hundred years ago, but have batten down, weigh down my very soul here, as if there wa had been no history. Even the inmost longing of my soul to adore my God with fellow-creatures I am deprived of, and stand solitary between disgusting and coarse fanaticism and equally disgusting arrant unbelief. Hah, it is hard indeed to live heare and not to dispond! That is certain, my mind will be ruined here, dry up, loose all its vitality. I am probably more sad than usual, for the 3d. vol of Niebuhr is so melancholy;6 his end so truly tragical; than your words: Sie (M. Ben.)7 hat eine ärmliche Wohnung” Es ist so schneidend! – Let me break off, and speak of some points in your letter. The passage that your uncle has expressed so good an opinion upon of my Girard Report, gave me very much pleasure, for he is peculiarly qualified to pronounce upon

6 Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten, vol. 3. 7 Mathilde Benecke.

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this book.8 The pleasure was enhanced by the fact, that reading that passage I took up myself the book, not have looked at it, for five years, for certain. I therefore read the Introd. entirely as a stranger and less indulgent than most would be, as authors, under of my character, under such circumstances must ever be. Although I had but a few days ago read some judgments given by Lord Mansfield9 and their perspicuous brevity was still in my mind, I read my Girard Report with increasing pleasure and could not help pronouncing it very terse, clear and [3] and sound.10 Why should I not say to you? It is a fact. I speak of it, as of the work of another. But here again, absynth is mixed with the pearly wine, for if it is so good and sound and has made no impression in Philadelphia, how then is success to be expected? I Know, I see, no one here could have written that thing; yet who thinks of me? It seems then that something entirely different is to be made the standard, or the motive. No one now even writes to me, and as I said to you in a former letter, I am sickened with talking any more about Philad. or to anyone in it about the matter. From the papers I see that Mr Bache has made his Report; whether it be printed or not, I donot Know; at any rate no one I have recieved none. I repeat I thank you for the pleasure thus offered me. – Respecting a professorship in Hamb. I say no, no, no! If I ever tear out the fibres again, which I have taken root here, it shall be, to g obtain somewhere an independence, not to be schoolmaster again. If I leave this country again, I shall ask the brothers11 to let me join some one of their concerns, and altogether I have lately thaught that this might come about, if there is no end here. I cannot, I will not remain here. I shall not thus become happy, I Know – I would not expect it – but I would at least endeavor to become independent. They talk of going to Europe; perhaps that I might then do something in their place. – James has written to me that he is going to Europe. – What does the passage in Sally Jacobson’s letter mean, that she admires your courage for whipping the children, when they cry of hunger, before they go to bed? I wonder whether no 8

Mathilde Lieber had informed her husband about Jacob Oppenheimer’s praise for Lieber’s, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College. 9 Perhaps Lieber had read the judgement William Murray 1st Earl Mansfield had given in the Court of King’s Bench on June 22, 1772, in the so-called Somersett vs Steward case that strongly supported the end of slavery. 10 Lieber, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College. 11 The three brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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friend of mine in Berlin, has thaught of sending me through you a reformation medal? – My dear Mat. introduce Herm.12 to Henry Gossler in my name, and tell Gossler, I beg it as a particular favor that he will be kind to him. You Know that acquaintances with merchants, may always prove advantageous. I wish to Know whether Matilda13 thinks that Herm. where he is placed is not well placed and whether she would have any objection to your applying to Gossler14 to take him. If not I beg you at once to ask Gossler and tell him distinctly that this is not a mere passing request, but one of high importance to me, and that he will greatly oblige me, if he can possibly take him. But of course Mat. must decide. Be very kind to Herm. Matilda will be so, I Know, to Oscar. So she has burnt my papers! I recieved that letter yesterday morning, and in Church made a poem on it and meant to send it, but there is no room. The confect which you sent me, has most strangely reminded me, by the different tastes, which I had not Known these many many years, of my childhood and youth, especially the burnt almonds which were always favorites of mine, and a certain cherry jelly. Every now and then I go and take a piece, and it my palate likes it so much that, for that reason I beg you, not to give ever any of these things to the children. I beg you. Socks of course. Stockings are a Germanic philisterish affair. Really, sweet Caroline, they are. You too, my sweet sister, would you not sooth poor Frank’s broken heart? Your love is a great comfort to me. Altogether the two sisters and the fine, warm hearted brothers are my very comfort, together out of the family.15 Believe me, Mat. Your sisters affection is a very great delight for me. Yester-day I had a fine dinner – Hawes and Rhett had sent me fine fat wild duck, and partridges; Betsy16 had done her best; champaign, the most exquisite “minced pickelsles of Caroline, French mustard; the fine confectionary and Curasseau &c&c – in short I had made it as refined as possible. Do by no means to forge a ∆ Those “minced pickles” for never tasted anything so more delicious to me; their peculiar taste suits me peculiarly ∆ und unter ihrer Aufsicht machen lassen? Das muß ja eine der ausgezeichnetsten ∆ sein! But Oscar has forgot to send me a neat, useful, small pocket Knife. Tell me in your next my dear Matilda, whether the boy never talks of me. There are never any traces in the letters. And here I want you to decide abo upon a point. I feel I have acted sometimes rashly toward that boy; I regret it; I write it now with tears in my eyes. Do you believe it would have no good effect upon him, if I 12 13 14 15 16

Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke. Mathilde Benecke. Johann Heinrich Gossler. Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette, Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer. Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

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am to tell him so, that he shall again freely love me? If I donot tell him so, it is only that I donot wish to burden his soul; my soul would feel easier. – You donot seem to have sent to Brinkmann in N.Y. a list of the things you sent in the box, as I distinctly and even repeatedly begged you, Knowing how it would be. They valued the things in the N.Y.C.H.17 and have charged $ 8 duty. Now none of these articles pay more than 33 ½ pro. cent. So they must have valued the contents at $ 24. What in the world can that be! The shirts are not overgood. They draw as usual under the arms; the collars are too low, and spoil the shirts, but that may be changed; the breast peace draws up, so that the middle of the lower line of the breast peace is draw up thus [sketch of a line raised in its middle part]; the piece near the hand, how do you call it? is cut too much off in rounding it. If the other shirts are not made already, I would like some of the collars rounded off instead of pointed, if that be worn; I mean this [sketch of a shirt] instead of [sketch of a shirt]. In England it looks very bad. The tories are factious in the highest degree, and have sunk very low, even in language; yet they will come in, I suppose, and than act again with all their grossness against Ireland, where blood will flow, nor will England remain quiet; than the radicals or radical whigs will come in, and will be bound to act much more wholesale. Oh my noble England! Ruined, in a great measure at least, by such bigotted, hypocrytical wretches as the screaming Tories are. – What I said above of my excellent Niebuhr,18 must be much modified if after I read on and finished the book.19 Still he took in some things a radically wrong view of the times, and certainly treated our own times too much with philologic and antiquarian view. You must write me whether Oscar carries on Latin; I insist upon it. Let him by all means learn texts by heart. Write me all the children say and do, but consciencious with the maternal file and polish. [4] Columbia February 9. 1840 Mama has given me an account of you, my beloved boy, which has given me great joy. You were so loving to her! Would your poor father might come in for his share! Would you like to take a walk with me? To have a regular talk with me? I would be so Kind to you, my dearest boy, I would explain everything I Know, you would Take my hand, and Hammy, perhaps, would walk with us.

17 18 19

The New York Custom House. Barthold Georg Niebuhr. Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten.

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Oh, I should feel very happy! I send you my Oscar, a little plant, I plucked about a forthnight ago, near the wall of the churchyard. It was the first little herb I had seen in this spring, and thus send it to my sweetest son. Let it be a token of love. Be always Kind to your brothers, and let me only hear that you are hard at Latin and not too long at your work and you will make me quite happy. My boy, I pray you very particularly to make your letters more up and down, and try to obtain a freer hand in writing. Your hand is cramped. Write, upon some sheet of paper, a number of large letters up and down, it will give you a free and yet a firm hand. About 6 weeks ago, I think, the corn of the barn-yard fowl began to redden, which is with us the first symptom I think of approaching spring. The cock became again more polite to the ladies and called them when he had found a choice and dainty gra ∆ as gentlemen always ought to do. The pigeons paired, built wed, built nests and now they have young ones. Some blue-bottles made their appearance and hummed at the window. You remember how very troublesome the flies are here in summer and surely their buzzing is nothing less then agreeable; yet now it seemed to me like sweet music. The winter-corn had sprouted long ago, but really like spring it looked when the catkins of the elder tree, in brushing by on horse-back, bedusted my coat with yellow pollen. I could can bestow no greater favor upon Nausicaa, then stop at an elder shrub and let her brouse the new flowers. At present nearly all elm trees are in blossom, and this morning I found the gracile branches of the willow tree in the yard set with the fir leaflet just opened, like a rod set with great green stones. But we are much afraid that we shall have it cold again; last year you remember we had the very curious sight of seeing snow on green leaves. Do you remember the elm trees, and how they had all the trouble of shooting forth a new folige? Rebecca I am sure remembers. I suppose you have been very happy at Christmass. My sweet Oscar, I find that the brilliant sight of New year’s day, which I described to you, was observed all around here, and every one says, that he has never seen anything so beautiful before. I forgot to tell you, I believe, of the uncommon beauty of the holly, with its fresh green leaves and high red berries all crystalled over. And when I spoke of the crabapple I made a mistake; I meant the angular branches of the hawthorn. which looked so very curious and beauteous. I hope you will write me how spring comes first with you. We had it here yesterday 76° which is very hot. I could not wear my morning gown. My Oscar you must have observed how much earlier it becomes night grows dark in winter in Hamb. than here, and how late the day breaks. Now pray, write me the reason in your next for I am sure my boy has asked why it how this comes to pass. I must always break off for want of room. Many compliets. from Nausicaa. Your loving father

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[cross-writing, 1] I will merely cross in red to take leave and write so that you must help reading it. Respecting Oscar’s seeing things too small I beg you not to talk with a physician; it can be of no use duly let his attention be distinctly and constantly directed to that point. But his teeth! The affection with which you now speak of the boy does my heart good; it is grateful to me. Could I but send parcels from here, since Hammy is so happy of them. And to Normy I ought to have sent something likewise. [cross-writing, 2] And now good bye – not to hurt your eyes. Do you not mean to see Clara?20 I suppose not one of your cousins has spoken of my Ethics to you.21 They seem to me not very geistreich. Alas, if Oscar remains there he will have the truly fruitifying intercourse with no superior man. Good bye. Kiss my darling children and endeavor, pray, to press Oscar with the great love I bear him Ever Yours Single paid 25 Via New York & Havre á Madame F. Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Stamp New York Feb 17 Stamp Le Havre 10 Mar Stamp Paris Stamp Hamburg 22 März 40 + red sealing wax

20 Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England. 21 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

No. 43 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 18.02.-22.02.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XXIII Love begins it, love ends Columbia S.C. Febr. 21.1840. it, to begin again with love. Congress paper is at an end! I wonder whether this will do? My sweet love, I sent yester-day No 22. Before I sit down properly to work – it is Tuesday, “full days” with me – I must write a few words to you, respecting your No 10 yet I will write to you about Raumer & Ranke.1 Of course I must read them, but the question is only whether I cannot obtain them as quickly if they are sent for by the College Library, which will of course have them. Pray write me in your next the price of all of Niebuhrs works – of course I mean his original ­works – ­History, Kleine Schriften, Translations of Demostth.2 Messrs Perthes will send you a note if you ask them. I beg you likewise to tell them to continue for the present the Hall. Lit. Zeit. but, remark to them, that if, as I think they say in their letter, I can always have the numbers of that periodical for a me very reduced price, if I recieve it half a year after publication, they may always thus send it.3 The difference to me is really not so great. Tell them farther that I have never recieved the 3 vol. of Geijer Schwedische Geschichte;4 that I have not yet the Hall. Lit Zeit. farther than that I have duly recieved everything I believe; ask them likewise where Marcus Niebuhr now is, or his direction. I revert once more to the pleasure your uncle’s opinion has given me.5 I Know that his head is clear, his judgement sharp, that this is a sphere in which he thinks entirely independent, and that he was of course not biassed in favor of me. Under such circumstances and when I Know that my task was a delicate one, no in more than one respect, and that in others I executed it with great boldness, and yet

1 Raumer, Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte; Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. 2 Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, 3 vols. Berlin 1811–1832; Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Über geheime Verbindungen im preussischen Staat und deren Denunciation, Berlin 1815; Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Demosthenis erste philippische Rede (Übersetzung), Hamburg 1805, 2nd. ed. Hamburg 1831; Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Kleine historische und philologische Schriften, Bonn 1828. 3 Hallische Literatur Zeitung. 4 Erik Gustaf Geijer, Geschichte Schwedens (= Geschichte der europäischen Staaten, hrsg. von A.H.L. Heeren und F.A. Ukert, Bd. 3) Friedrich Perthes Hamburg 1836. 5 Jacob Oppenheimer.

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I have not only his concurrence, but that my arguments seem to have gained him entirely, I must value his opinion highly. My Girard Report,6 I Know, will exercise, or has exercised great influence. The very idea of making that College a seminary as well as a polytechnic school, is now in an old and settled one with many; but would they have been adopted without my report? Perhaps; perhaps not. There will be several ideas of my report adopted – I mean organic traits, radical features, which must exercise great influence in the future course and development of that institution, but whether they will their origin and parentage will ever be acknowledged, whether the future observer even will trace them back to me; whether they will aid in any degree of bringing me into a permanent connexion with that institution – that is a very different question, wholly unconnected with the first, wholly or at least, may be so. Adele’s solicitude to see me in Hamb. has not left me untouched. To say the truth I thaught little that your relations cared one bit for me. Upon the whole I think they are a contented, self-sufficient Völkchen – and why should they not? – Troubling themselves little about this and that and among other things about Mr Francis Lieber. That none of your cousins havs once said to you: Send your husband this and that book, this or that news, or something of the sort, shows a great abstinence from interest beyond the close family or town circle. Adele’s desire then was welcome, although I see very well that the desire is to have you there, and me as appendix, nor do I blame this in the least. What do they Know of me? Your packing in the first box all sorts of liquor in glasses together with cloths shirts &c was bold. Ich habe deine Naivität bewundert: 999 chances there were against a solitary one, that all would come safe; still, for once, this solitary chance has happened! What do you think – to this – day I put on one of the German shirts a second time, and – a button came off. Oh, Ye German seamstresses, are ye no better than my wife? – You ask, whether I have never regretted that you went. Not once. There is not the point that makes me unhappy. I can suffer, I can manfully suffer, but what breakes my heart is that the boy will have no father to guide him, and that my inner life is broken. I had read, yester-day afternoon in Niebuhr’s Letters7 – and was obliged to go to the Freshman Class to teach. It is a peculiarly heavy one, utterly untaught – cubs as uncouth, intellectually and physically, as you one can imagine. When I began, the lump in my throat rolled between th my words and for a moment stopped my speaking, while my eyes were full of water. A world weighed at that moment upon my soul; I felt so lonely, so utterly abandoned in the universe, so

6 Lieber, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College. 7 Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten, 3 vols.

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­unverstanden von irgend einer Seele hier, and so bitterly tried by having Talents and faculties granted me, which to apply every inch of ground is denied me. To you I can confess such things, others would think it great weakness: would it were weakness! But is it is from strength; I cry, because the pain of unapplied, untried faculty is acute, I cry, because my mind is made for what is good and noble, and it must live in vulgarity; I feel so lonely, because my soul is made, if ever any were, for intercommunion, exchange of thaught, affection, joy & pain, for life of humanity. Alas, I have said too much already, but that I Know [2] that while I was there blowing hard to hide my deep emotion and get a start of my tears, there was a poor mortal in a great mental oppression. Could I describe to you the agony I felt just then to occupy myself with those i­ndividuals – no mind, no soul, no Knowledge – at least all this if there be any under the thick crust of looseness of of rudeness! Have you ever seen a seal from near by? Seals have peculiarly human eyes; the form and expression are human and attractive. When I was a boy, two sailors from Hamburg carr exhibited a seal in my native city, carring it from house to house in a tub. When I looked at him, the poor animal bent in a tub, too short for it, without water, his fins for no use, on the contrary, Knocked and bruised, and the beast looked at me wistfully and good – naturedly, and so eloquently, I felt the whole extent of its misery and would have given anything to make him replunge into his element. This seal has repeatedly darted before my eyes, of late. He looks at me, he implores me, he is helpless, he is dragged about, he suffers from want of his element – Ah!! I am, I am that seal. – I have wept very bitterly just now – the tears of a chained soldier! – How melancholy Niebuhr’s letters become toward the end.8 He evidently allowed himself actually to be toren into two pieces by the times; he was no longer above them, but only between the parties. You must read the book of course. He speaks so Kindly of me when in prison, and he in Berlin. Once he says: “Es ist doch schrecklich einen guten Menschen so schmachten zu lassen, wenn doch keine Grausamkeit dabei ist.”9 Also hast du einen “guten Menschen” zum Gatten, u die Kinder einen guten Menschen zum Vater? Pray tell dear Matilda B. that he speaks very Kindly of them in his letters to his wife, of Benecke’s herzliche u aufrichtige Freundlichkeit. I cannot find just now the 8 Barthold Georg Niebuhr, see his letters in Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten. 9 Lieber quoted from a letter written by Barthold Georg Niebuhr in April 1825 that had been published in Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten, vol. 3, p. 137ff.

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passage, or I would copy it for Matilda;10 but I found the one above allured to, it is: Diese Gleichgültigkeit einen guten Menschen in Fesseln schmachten zu lassen, macht mich unmuthig wenn auch keine Grausamkeit darin gemischt ist.”11 Küsse Matilda’s Augen für mich.12 Mein Gott, wie habe ich zugeschaut! Lebe wohl. – Thursday Wednesday. You have never yet written me whether you like the Germ. sermons much better &c. nor have you ever indicated by a word how the treatment and whole position of the servants appears to you. I am very sorry I have never thaught of asking and you never of telling me what I must give the negros in spring. I shall ask Mrs Drayn. Knowing that the servants will not have too little in that case. You must make inquiries about the raisor – the best with the worst handle is missing. Such things at such distance and from so near a person as one’s wife, are not agreeable. Really there was no great exertion in counting the raisors before they were sent, and doing the same when they came back. Has no one in your family Englemann’s Gespräche mit Goethe? If so, I beg him or her to lend the book to me. I dont want to buy it at once. I have had heavy book seller’s accounts, and must be more careful. ­Englermann would be a fine book for me to find at N.Y. and read while reading proofs.13 – Neither you, nor Carol. have written me anything more about the books of father’s inheritance.14 Where are they? Pray dearest Mat. Think a little yourself of our affairs. It makes me feel sometimes very wretched, to think of all these trifles here and then write, and of course, forget half before I come to write the letter. So you have not yet written me about your money, the Prussian paper which you had from your mother. Now, really, I have not only asked, but distinctly begged you to inquire. Instead of this I recieve, in every letter accounts how vehemently you love your Uncle.15 That’s all very well, but so long as we live in a material world we must not only float in some aether or other. I now once more distinctly ask you to inquire, what the name of that money is, who has it, how much is it, and what the nature of that Prussian lottery is? If you donot answer upon this, I shall write no more about this money about which I have began to write in Boston! How very attentively you attend to my 10

11 12 13

14 15

Mathilde Benecke; Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Berlin, to Dora Hensler, Kiel, April 2, 1825: “Heute Abend bin ich bei den so herzlich freundschaftlichen jungen Benekens.” Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten, vol. 3, p. 142. Quoted from Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten, vol. 3, p. 138. Mathilde Benecke. Lieber was mistaken; the name of the partner in conversation with German poetus laureatus was Eckermann; Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, 2 vols. Brockhaus Leipzig 1836, vol. 3 Leipzig 1848. Will of his father in law Georg Oppenheimer, see TNA PROB 11/1899/408. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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specific questions! After six times writing what the children wear, I recieve an account of the two youngest. Pray consider this as standing for six successively repeated requests to let me Know what Oscar wears – for thus you may save me the very distressful repetitions. [3] As to Keeping a memorandum book, I never dream of asking for such a thing any more. How could I expect that trouble to save time, and omission. I do believe that of all questions I have made not more than one half have ever been answered, and what is worst the less important half; for those which cannot be answered at once and require inquiries are forgotten and dismissed at once, as for instance, that money Prussian money. Your way of corresponding distroys all calm repose in the correspondent, because there is no confidence in your attention. I donot feel, for instance, perfectly sure, that you will make Latin instruct. of Oscar as prominent a thaught with you as if it were your own. Why should I now do so, when I Know that I have spoken of it here millions of times, written it in the blue book – and everything is just a blown in the wind. Now I repeat here that I actually wish to Know where those books are, destined for me of your father’s,16 and that I make this query with the desire of having an answer, which answer I cannot obtain unless you write it down, but not by your mere thaught of intending to do so. – What shocking note that of Mrs Gossler!17 Horrid! Twiddle twaddle about wearing, and “affairs becoming brighter”, and such English!! How did you like old Gossler? You write you dined with him at Henry G’s.18 Well and what impression did he make? There are very many things which would be very agreeable to hear a word or two about, but they dont bear writing asking about them across the Atlantic. You Know how often I have heard of old Gossl.19 That I know his brother, his sons20 – a word therefore about him, would have been acceptable. But, gracious me, if I must first tell this, it be much better altogether omitted. Sunday. What a pity, 16 17 18 19 20

See will of Georg Oppenheimer, TNA PROB 11/1899/408. Georg Oppenheimer had bequested parts of his library to Francis Lieber. Elizabeth Gossler, wife of Johann Heinrich Gossler. Old Gossler= father of Johann Henry/Heinrich Gossler jun. Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. The brother of Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. was Johann Nikolaus Gossler; Lieber had met Johann Nikolaus Gossler’s daughter Julia on board the Britannia when leaving Europe for America in 1827. On arrival in New York he had been introduced to the Hamburg merchant who lived in New York through Julia Gossler. The sons of Gossler sen. were Johann Heinrich, Gustav, Ernst, and Wilhelm Gossler.

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that you baught these pens, and did not take the time of making them! They do not suit me. Dont forget Matilda to bring two or 3 pencil […], quite coarsely set, without spring. You Know we cannot get them sharpened here, so there is no use in having good ones; yet I have now so many pens! – I have worked all day hard, took a ride, and now feel as though I must write; yet, there is but little room left and when the Christmass letter arrives, I know I shall be anxious to let my heart flow freely. – My dearest Hariet, I have to ask your pardon. I donot Know why I had the impression that Caroline alone gave me the dressing gown. Yesterday I wrapt something in a paper in which it had been packed, and on it was written from C & H. Then I remembered Mat. had written that that exquisite present came fr. both of you. I have nothing to excuse myself, but I ask your pardon most sincerely. I would not hurt you for anything. Of all the thousand beings with whom I have become acquainted in my sea and land faring life, you are one of the best and Kindest. So forgive me and believe me the gown is still dearer to me, since I it reminds me, that you too have a share in the luxury which it affords me. – Mat. whenever we shall arrive at our true home – I speak of it, as if God most certainly would not always withhold this almost indispensable requisite from of a good man from us – I will have a rolling waiter made, which presents all sauces, pickles, mustards &c at once, for it is troublesome to think of and than to send for them. Besides it is not for a manly mind to reflect long what sauce, what pickle suits best with this or that, but it is to eat and enjoy them in their nicest state when they are there. I have added a great improvement to that simple dish which Adam Knew already – fried ham and eggs. It struck me the other day, that French mustard on the ham before the eggs are broken over it, must add much to its savor. So I ordered it, and it is worthy of imitation. Ah, Matilda had I become a cook, I might be by this time “at the head of that profession”. – The other day the deputy sherif went to arrest a man; & the man shows a pistol; the officer shoots him dead on the spot; no person talk about it. Nor do I feel about these matters as I was want to do, I feel horror struck at not feeling more. Studying so much history, were the fors of life is so often spoken of in a wholesale manner, and the living here among these steamboat disastors, makes one really, I will not say callous, yet much calmer about these matters. I now only understand the little impression murders and imprisonments made in ancient Byzantine empire, in the middle ages in Europe, in Russia under Peter, Anna, Elizabeth, and do to this day in the Asiatic despotic governments. I verily understand now better the indifference at death in The French revolution. – It is sad, I own, very sad. Here however comes to this feeling of sadness, of conscious indifference, the sad consciousness of living with brutes, barbarians. Oh heavens, my Matilda, consider my acquaintances – Stark, Clark, and all such! Good bye, for since you wish me not

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to cross, see how little space is left. Norman’s “No it ain’t Papa &c” war rührend. Tell me only, but very sincerely, whether Oscar thinks of me independently and of himself, and not only when reminded. – When I came home a sweetly dressed little girl walked before me – pink ribbons flowing from a straw bonnet, a handsome shall, gloves and fine shoes – she looked round, and – it was Elza!! Your shawls blaze, although I have seen negroes before in them here, and in much larger ones. Betsy21 has taken the high colored one for herself. Many kisses to the boys and to you! – I must repeat, my Mat., in buying for us, for me I mean, donot forget that we are poor. The silk slippers! That footbag! – Tell Har. that without hesitation I like her kerchief – the yellow one – best. Oh the negros thaught it such a beauty! – Feb. 21. I had a letter from Gust. and the boys22 which made me cry. They too generous, noble fellows. You Know of what I speak, before you get this. Pray write to them; Gustavus complains of your hasty P.S.S.23 I have written this morning two sheets like this; but not so crowded. I had a booksellers account. Bad, bad! The trade utterly down. So at Gustavus! And they had so much sickness. How sincerely will I thank God if they once have their concerns clear and can remove to sounder climes. Oh! how happy we could live to-gether.24 I had this morning a fine letter again of Prescott. His history is translated.25 in Rome, and the Neapol. Acad. made him a member. This is worth something because he had to speak much of Neaples in his book. – I frequently dine upon “bacon & eggs”. The ham from Westphalia; the mustard from you, the pickles from Carol, aber die Eier legen wir selbst. – No letter. It is oppressively hot. I kiss you many times – Your Robinson Crusoe, Oh why did you do so! [4] An meine Treugeliebte Die Liebe sendet diese Blume, doch stellt sie nicht die Liebe dar; die Blume blühet wohl nie lange, die Liebe blüht das ganze Jahr.

21 22 23 24

Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC. The brothers Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer of Mathilde Lieber. Post scripta. Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, merchants-planters in Ponce/Puerto Rico. 25 Prescott, History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

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An meinen Knaben Drei Blätter hat das Veilchen klein, Drei Buben hab’ ich frisch u rein; Ein jedes Blatt denn bringen muß für jeden Buben einen Kuß. [Dried sample of a violet attached to the letter] My boy, a violet has five leaflets, two larger ones and 3 smaller ones – our ­family – 2 parents and 3 young ones. My dear beloved boy, Peaches are in bloom; the Crocus and Narissus (the Negros’ cup & caucer) garnish the garden beds. The early little white flower sprouts every where, the dark red tufts of the flowering maple adorns the forest, the first delicate foliage covers the bending elms like a graceful green transparent veil thrown over gracefully thrown over the lovely tree; the new shoots of the roses are three or four inches long, and the sap has rushed into the stem of the succulent varnish tree of China, and changed on a sudden the its yellowish winter color into a fresh, clear green – the birds chirp and call one another, the frogs and crickets make their loud noise every evening; and Nausicaa wants to catch every fine green blade as it p she passes it – every thing breathes spring, and my heart longs, oh! long to so sorely for my dearest boys. I forgot to sent you the first plant I found, of which I spoke in my last. I send it now, perhaps it will be powder before you get it. Whenever Mama writes me that how loving you have been to her, it makes me truly happy. Do you love your father too? To-day my boy is the 21 of Febr.; tomorrow is Washington’s birthday,26 on which the students always deliver an oration and have a holy-day, but as they have but one lecture on Saturday’s at any rate, the lazy fellows petitioned the Faculty by a very grave committee that we should give them Friday, lest they would lose a holiday; so it was given them, and had it not been for lazy students, your father could not have written now. The other day on one of my rides I came near a field in fire – you know they burn here the grass in spring that it may grow better, and also to destroy it in the cotton fields – which had however cought the wood near it. You recollect we have seen them often from a distance, but I had never been near one. They care not here for wood as trees, except when spent and braught to market. In old countries, as where you now are, the greatest care is taken to preserve the forests and raise new trees. Say some countries that have been peopled for thousands of years as they are almost shaven of all forests. The sight was very beautiful and fearful; the noise, great; I could hardly 26

February 22, birthday of George Washington, 1st President of the USA, who had been born in 1732.

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make ­Nausicaa stand; she pawed, she reared and turned. Some fire was running along the ground consuming the dry blades of last year, sometimes swelling to large rolling volumes; while other flames would run up the pine trees from tuft to tuft with the nimbleness of a squirrel, and perhaps settle in the crown of the tree and soon extend and wave in the air like a flag of flames waved by Distruction, stretching its points like the tongue of forked tongue of snakes, searching for more pray, than again some fire flame would run up a trunk and winding round it like a flaming vine; every where sparks, flame, crackling, some times like the noise of the single firing of guns in battles, and farther and farther it extended until every thing before me was a vast semicircle of perspective fal flaming volumes, and I thaught how much it would be have delighted Dante a very great poet, who describes the punishment of wicked people after death, and whom some day I shall read with my dear boy. – I donot know why I happen to think of it, but since I think of it, I will mention it otherwise I might forget it. About 11 years ago I read Caille’s journey to Timbuctoo, and remember that he gives an awful description of those desert sands when they come and cover a caravan.27 Beg Pray your teacher to let you read it some day; for it is perhaps the best description of that fearful spectacle. My boy about a fortnight ago Nausicaa whisked for the first time with her tail right and left; that showed me that the flies must have come forth from their winter-retreats. – My dear Oscar, Uncle Gustavus wrote me that he, Theodore and James wish to do anything that you may recieve the best education.28 You are extremely happy in having uncles that have been kind to you ever since your birth, and whom you can love so much (besides the teasing to which you have exposed them!). Love them dearly; and you would oblige me by sending them a letter, and ask how Oscarito is. You have another W. India cousin, called Isabel Antonia. Why, you will have as many cousins by and bye, in Germany, England, America, as plenty as black berries! – Is it not strange Oscar that pigeons here are very different from those in Germany? Here I observe they often change husbands and wives after they have hatched one set of young ones. Very unpigeonish! Then they are not half as steady in hatching, every thing takes their attention off, as that of a certain young man from his labor, they abandon frequently their home altogether and fight all day long. In ∆ Germany I have known the cocks few the pigeons hens, while they were hatching as gentleness ought always to do. Here I am at an end. Perhaps the hot climate makes them more unsteady, so I found cats in Italy much more ferocious then in Germany, perhaps they are a

27 28

René Caillié, Reise nach Timbuktu 1824–1828, 1829. The three brothers of Mathilde Lieber.

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little mixed with the wild pigeons. – Good bye little pigeon, my best to the dear doves. Your mostloving father My Oscar I wish you always to remember well Feb. 22, Washington’s birth-day; he was so good, so true so firm a man! (The second box is in Charleston; the festival of the arrival is yet before me. Kiss my Matilda, Caroline, Harriet and Matilda B. for me) Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne p. packet Stamp Forwarded through Gilpin’s Exchange Reading Room ad Foreign Letter Office New York Stamp Le Havre

No. 44 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 19.02.-28.02.1840 Included: letter of Caroline Lomnitz to Francis Lieber Included: copy of a letter of Mathilde Benecke to Francis Lieber, Hamburg 25.02.1840 THL Box 54 LI 5068, ALS, 4 pages Letter XVIII. All is well ∆te. 28th Feb. [Hamb]urg Feb 19, 1840. Good morning to you my best and dearest. Several things I forgot to mention in my letter of yesterday, I had better do it at once now. Oscar is getting over his touchiness I have not remarked an instance of this long while and Dr Busse also finds him much improved in that respect. I think it will not be difficult for him to gain the reward you have promised him if he does not cry in the course of three months, except from emotion. I saw Dr Busse yesterday, he is well satisfied with Oscar in every respect. Only cyphering still remains a great difficulty. He has given Oscar a certain number of sums which he must finish b­ efore his next coming home. Dr Busse brought me his cards yesterday. At Michalmas1 he seperates from Palm and wishes to continue a seperate establishment entirely on Dr Palms princip I shall send you some of his cards, perhaps you may be able to procure him some American scholars. He does not wish to exceed the number of 12 and does not wish to have any other foreigners but English & Americans. For Oscars sake I should very much like a few English boys among the rest. I have just received for you from Perthes & Besser Dahlmanns History of Denmark.2 I suppose you ordered it. Also their bill of 1838 & 39 of Bo of 311. Had I not better settle that? I should be glad if you would after I am gone communicate with Perthes & Besser through Ludwig Oppenheimer who is the most obliging creature in the world, and will be very happy to be your commissioner. I should like you not to have anything more to do with Gossler3 in money matters. Let him have no demands upon you. With Ludwig you can ­correspond after I am gone and he will be very accurate and attentive and also see that the charges are correct. But before I speak to him I should like to have all the old concerns cleared and now only await your orders to do the needful. Last evening Carry & I went to Augusta Söhle. We had a good many jokes, speaking of the old times, our early Governesses, we having had a most 1 Michaelmas was since the Middle Ages an important date in the Anglo-American tax and business year as on that day hiring/firing of servants took place. 2 Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Geschichte von Dänemark, Perthes & Besser, vol. 1 Hamburg 1840. 3 Johann Heinrich Gossler.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_046

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e­ xtraordinary set. One in particular who was bonne amie to a prince, Caroline herself remembering being present at one of their rendez vous. She was a beautiful woman. Another now our vis à vis neighbor, is married to the son of a former lover. The third Rosa Maria Varnhagen4 received at our fathers house all the beaux esprits who by chance visited Hamburg, was in correspondence with many of them. Rosa Maria died a few weeks ago. The 4th Jeanette, who whipped me so unmercifully that it is not her fault I have not become a most malignant person, I am sure I should if I had remained under her care. You remember, for I certainly must have told you of this early piece of malice of mine which has made such a deep impression on my mind, when I was once I believe unjustly locked up in a closet, repeating to myself as a kind of comfort an intelligence which had not yet been communicated to her, and which though I did not say it loud enough for her to hear it, shows a frightful depravity in a young child: Dein Bruder ist tod, dein Bruder ist tod! these were the consoling words I repeated to myself while I was thus imprisoned. X 20. – Yesterday I dined at Adela, poor Adela, I feel heavy at heart when I think of her, she is not happy and one can do nothing for her. Ferdinand is an affectionate and kind husband, her children are promising and she is an attentive good mother, yet life does not satisfy her, she is not at rest with herself. In Adela I can see clearly the evil of an unsound education particularly were there is much talent & thought. Adela read a vast deal of an infinity of trash amongst the rest and thus now she is satiated even in her reading and she has no longer the power of enjoying anything though one can not perceive this when Ferdinand is present, for then she appears to enter most willingly into his playfulness. I am ­myself convinced that her constant ailing has done much to bring on this melancholy. She is continually suffering from one complaint or the other. Her affection for me is unchanged and how gladly she remembers former days the days of our young enjoyments. I shall very much advise Ferdinand to travel with Adela, something must be done to strengthen her nerves. I take your letter XVI before me. I have three later ones, but it has never been decently answered. The freshmen vex you by their ignorance, my poor dear Frank, bear with it a little. Feb 22d Here I was interrupted two days ago by a visit from our pretty cousin and her French lover. Mr Capdeville is quite a likeness of one of the Otrantos, wears mustachoes and is rather good looking. Matilda Hesse looks perfectly happy introducing her friend to all the relations in her handsome green silk petion & white hat. The wedding will be while I am yet here. Her last birthday at home being her 22d will be celebrated by a large ball on the 4 Rosa Maria Varnhagen, nanny of the Oppenheimer children in Hamburg 1807–1810; sister of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, married 1816 Dr. David Assur/Assing, Hamburg.

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16th March. Norman is just talking of you, he says: when I go to see Papa, then I kiss Papa, and dear Papa says: Thank ye little Normy. This gentleman is growing extremely independent, he walks about the house alone, is very fond of ‘Malie’ the cook. Yesterday we were looking for Emil & Normy after a little search they were found busily engaged at a saucepan in the kitchen. Emil had the spoon and was alternately feeding himself and Norman with soup. It was indeed a picture, the black eyed dark curly haird boy with his round head and red cheeks and his little fair blue eyed companion, of two years younger, the saucepan, the wooden spoon, it was a scene for Morillo. Norman a few days ago finding, when he awoke from his mid-day sleep that both Rebecca and I were gone out, was very much displeased, and not at all satisfied with his aunts company, so the very independent young gentleman went to the house door, opened it, and was on the point of walking off. Rebecca bids me tell you in answer to your query, that indeed she loves Oscar very much, that she always loved him only it was difficult to manage him, now when Oscar comes home Rebecca immediately runs down to see him, and Oscar always wants to kiss her. Yesterday evening I passed with Uncle Jacob and aunt Amelia I was not as comfortable as usual, for just at dinner Uncle received a note which absorbed him completely. In the evening a little Mathematicus came to play at chess with him. – I must tell you my Frank, that the more I watch the family life of others, the more I convince myself that there are none happier than we are. All have difficulties to content with, all struggle for something they have not; but few are contented. And then when I say to myself, is there any one here in the circle of your family with whom you wish Frank to change? Indeed there is not. Frank let us then try to be reconciled to our fate. America must be our home, then let it be our wellcome home. If there is much we wish changed, there is yet much to thank God for, and let us never forget the blessings he gives. You should see our boys, their sweet faces blooming with health & intelligence. With a mothers pride of heart I look upon them, and feel those boys will yet honor their country. That glaring South to be sure, I disown but when we are once removed from it, those years will not be lost years. Perhaps you would elsewhere not have had the leisure to write your books. Certainly new ideas must have been awakened and you can judge of much which before was indistinct in your mind. And when we have left Columbia, never to return, shall not we often gratefully remember the bright sun, the glorious trees before our house, the lovely moon shine, the comfortable house, the fine books, the sweet mockingbirds? We shall remember all this and retain some attachment for these past enjoyments. I can judge of this now, for seperate from my Frank longing, I really have the desire of seeing even that Columbia home again. – At any rate, let us endure patiently as long as it must be. I wander whether I told

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you, you vain husband of mine, that a young girl who dressed my hair when I went to Adelas party said to me, when I asked her whether before I returned to America she could not give me some lessons in dressing my own hair: Mein Fräulein Sie wollen nach Amerika gehen: ja ich bin kein Fräulein, ich bin doch verheirathet und habe drei Kinder. Das ist nicht möglich, ich hielt Sie ganz gewiß für ein Fräulein. The servants almost always take me also for an unmarried lady, but it certainly arises not so much from my appearance, than from the different style of dress, particularly the hair. I am going to have Oscar revaccinated when the weather is a little warmer again. It is generally thought advisable here after seven years. – Talking of this reminds me of the saw which I was to bring with me. Do you really wish it? I think myself it will be a very troublesome and expensive business and scarcely worth while as we have no settling plans. Consider it a little more and then write me what I am to do, if you please dear Frank. – Arrived here the Daniel Webster from Charleston. […] 25th best dearest husband give me a good morning kiss. How truly, how warmly do I love you. My own Frank! Several days have elapsed since I have written, not many hours since I have thought of you. On Saturday 22d we three sisters dined at Morris. Uncle Morris has three daughters, one of them is married to a wealthy Gutsbesitzer near Berlin, the other to a Dr Gabe a soi disant lawyer, without business, without money and with a very small portion of mind. He and his wife are on a very foolish footing. She sending him about upstairs or down stairs, where ever she wants something fetched, and he kissing her in the presence of everybody most disgustingly. She is the young cousin who was sent to Papa in Heidelberg that she might forget her attachment to her present husband. While there she troubled them all very much by her extravagant coquetterie. With one of her cousins Wilhelm Hesse she carried on a flirtation to an indecent degree and several others she gave so much encouragement that they were induced to offer them selves. Among these was Dr Thibaut who occasioned to pop the question in a ball room, and upon her denial made a terrible scene, rushing out of the room in the presence of all the company after he had exposed himself and her in a most unbeseeming manner. After all this Bertha is not more than ordinary pretty, has no talent in the conversation way, and her attractions must have been little else than her flirting powers so tempting to many of your sex. I must relate to you a little anecdote of Carrys who seeing Bertha & William Hesse in rather too confidential a position than she thought suited a girl who considered herself engaged to another, wished to apply a cooling draught. The amourous young people were seated at an open window; the young man leaning out sufficiently to make a shower bath from above applicable, which Carry in the conviction of doing him an essential service, bestowed upon him by relieving a water pitcher of its contents. B. than

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has been married two years, has a child, and she and her husband are the most uninteresting people in the world; he not allowing her to move a step without him, and she making him her servant of all work. Emmas is Uncles 3d daughter a nice little girl enough, in whom brother James fancies himself in love, a matter to be decided upon when he returns to Hamburg, she, I think is already very fond of his pretty face. We spent the evening in playing at vintun, and I was glad when we went ∆. Among the attractions of that day however I must not forget, an exquisitely stewed Turkey in a mushroom sauce. Teltover Rüben with sausage, gespikter Hase, and a Lemon tart, a tout ensemble, in which Emma, as her fathers housekeeper5 deserved ample praise. Emma [m]oreover plays most beautiful on the Piano, with great execution and delightful ∆ [2] expression. She is also clever in languages, talking admiting English perfectly, and both Caroline and Hart are fond of hers and on the most intimate footing. Uncle Morris I like very much, he is a little impudent sometimes it is true, but with all he has his excellent qualities and I think is very fond of James.6 On Sunday Morning I took our little son Hamilton to see Uncle Jacob and spouse. They think him very much altered to his advantage, in appearance as well as manners. We took our luncheon at Aunt Minna, after which I proceded to Adela, whom I really found very ailing; I dined at Uncle Jacob, with whose family I went to the theatre in the evening to see Aschenbrödel.7 A busy day that, yet not more so than yesterday. For upon finding by the newspaper that the next day: Die Stumme von Portici8 should be acted, Carry wished me early in the morning to go up to Matilda to invite her to see it with us, after previously taking her diner here. So off I set, first calling at Perthes & Besser, upon some business of yours. Matilde I found yet in her morning gown, but her hair neat as usual. She received me most tenderly, made no ceremony with me, called her old Dueña, a complete character of the house, to lace her stays for her, showing me her pretty figure which has yet all the fullness of youth, not the cotton of middle age, so much used here as well as in our bel Amerique. After that we 5 Morris Oppenheimer, uncle of Mathilde Lieber. 6 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. 7 Aschenbrödel/La Cenerentola, opera by Gioachino Rossini, lyrics by Jacopo Ferretti, first performance Rome 1817. 8 Die Stumme von Portici/La Muette de Portici, opera by Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber, first performance Paris 1828, This opera had a strong impact on the public in kindling the Belgian Revolution in Brussels in August 1830.

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two lunched together, Matilda gladly accepting Carolines invitation, I returned home, made my toilet to pay with Caroline my visit to the affianced in Altona. Put on my straw colored hat with corn flowers, my Kornblumen colored mousseline de laine dress, straw colored gloves, over all my cloak, and found the couple in perfect happiness. He a very nice young man, she a very sweet girl. The mother, aunt Hesse thinking more of the seperation than of might else. Matilde Hesse asked me why I had not brought Norman, she wanted to show him to Capdeville.9 In going home first called upon Aunt Minna, then dined, Herzfeld calling, were told by him that a good piece was acted we should go to see it. Hart felt inclined, persuaded Caroline and me. Lene was dispatched to get us tickets. Got us bad seats, where upon I went to Uncle Jacob, and requested permission to have his box. Received it, hurried to run to the Theatre, and thus finished the day. Too much, too much. I do not like this racing about. It does not do one good to spend a day in this manner; it makes me long for my quiet home and my active life. Before I come to you again, dearest, I must write to the boys.10 They complain sadly of my neglecting them since I am in Hamburg. My writing to you so much, I suppose does all the mischief; but indeed they do not deserve ill treatment from me and I must make up if I have ­behaved badly. The piece we saw was, Werner,11 ein Schauspiel aus dem Bürgerleben, and I will tell you the story. Ein Adeliger und Minister nimmt einen jungen bürgerlichen Studenten der sich in seine Tochter verliebt zum Schwiegersohn. Angezogen durch die ausgezeichneten Talente dieses jungen Mannes will er ihm eine glänzende Bahn eröffnen, er wird im Adel aufgenommen, nimmt den Namen seines Schwiegervaters an, hat im Dienst der Regierung eine sehr an­ gesehene Stelle und lebt geachtet und geliebt in den aller glücklichsten Verhältnissen, aber eine Reue nagt an seinem Herzen und er vermag nicht die Gaben des Schicksals ungestört zu genießen. Seine Gemahlin deren Schönheit und Liebenswürdigkeit ihn befriedigen sollte vermag es nicht mehr, und der Anblick seiner Kinder scheint nur Schmerz in ihm zu erregen. Eine andere Scene wird dem Zuschauer vorgestellt, wo ein armes Mädchen ruhig mit einer Handarbeit beschäftigt ist. Sie ist Waise und von aller Welt verlassen empört durch die Zudringlichkeiten eines unangenehmen Mannes der sich bei ihren Miethsleuten einzuschmeicheln sucht um sich ihr auf diese Weise zu nähren. Sie um sich Ruhe zu verschaffen sucht sich eine Stelle als Erzieherin, findet sie grade in dem Hause jenes Geadelten, geht sie um sich der Dame vom Hause zu 9 10 11

Pierre Henry Capdeville, merchant from Bordeaux, engaged to Mathilde Hesse, cousin of Mathilde ­Lieber, Altona. Mathilde Lieber’s brothers in Ponce/Puerto Rico. Werner oder Herz und Welt, by Karl Gutzkow 1840.

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zeigen, sie ist aus, der Manne nimmt Marie, so heißt das Mädchen an. Eine Erkennungsscene folgt, sie war seine erste Liebe, während er seinem Ehrgeiz zu folgen seine frühe Verlobung mit ihr vergessen wollte war sie ihm treu geblieben. Werner verlangt nun daß Marie im Hause bleiben solle. Sie weigert sich, er besteht darauf, sie willigt ein. Julie, die Gattin, als sie nach einiger Zeit das Verhältnis mit Marie erkennt, verlangt von Werner daß sie nicht mehr im Hause bleiben. Er aber will Marie nicht aufgeben, denn er meint auf diese Weise sein Unrecht gegen sie gut zu machen. So folgt denn zwischen den Eheleuten eine gräßliche Scene und Julie verläßt ihres Mannes Haus und nimmt die Kinder mit, sie flieht zu ihrem Vater. Unter dessen werden im Departement worüber Jordan (der angenommene Name Werners) präsidirt, wichtige Papiere vermisst und er, als er wüthend in seiner Schwiegervaters Haus gelangte, um sich seine Kinder zurückzunehmen, wird dort verhaftet. Der Verführer spielt bei alle diesem eine wichtige Rolle, er sucht die Glieder der Familie des ihm verhaßten Jordan, verhaßt durch seine Theilnahme an Marie, immer mehr und mehr zu entzweien, er hat die Papiere die vermisst wurden, entwendet, Jordan hat einen Freund den er liebt, dieser sieht Marie und durch seine Theilnahme für sie wird der schwere Knoten aufgelößt, denn nachdem Jordan wieder frei gesprochen und der wahre Missethäter vor Gericht gefordert wurde, willigt Marie nicht aus Neigung sondern um dem Haus ihres Freundes wieder Frieden zu geben sich ihrem Bewerber zu vermählen. Jordan sieht sein Unrecht ein, Julie das ihre, daß sie ihn verlassen hatte, er giebt seine Stelle, den Adel, seinen angenommenen Namen auf, und nimmt als Werner eine Anstellung an als Lehrer bei einem gelehrten Fache in einer Universität. A queer story, isn’t it. What would you have done in similar circumstances? First of all you would not thus have been faithless to your first love. Of course you might have found yourself mistaken and your attachment decrease but you would not have left a girl who had the right to call herself your betrothed without explaining yourself. 2ly, after having been married and happily situated five years you would not suddenly make yourself miserable by the recollection of ∆ y attachment. 3dly. You would go openly to your wife and explain your acquaintance with the young girl whom ∆ wished to receive in your house, and as for that wife, if she had felt like yours Frank, she would not have left you for all the Marie’s in the world, she would have begged you to consider what was right and just and act like a man, and then she would have born her fate. How strange is the love which some of these authors would represent, there is often neither life nor truth in their portraits, their forms and characters of fancy bear no resemblance to reality and if we narrowly examine some of these heroes and heroins whom they wish to be supposed perfect and correct we shall find them often very ordinary personages, with little to interest and less to commend.

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26th Yesterday Matilda12 dined with us. She brought me a dear letter she has written to you which I am sure will delight you. She is a dear creature and I love her tenderly. How gladly would I see you two united again. Trust me, there is not a shade of jealousy in my heart when I think of your conexion with each other; nor would any sign of attachment you might give disturb my peace. Hot headed, warm hearted and inclined to love as my boy is, I know he would never wrong me, and in Matilda too I trust, her soul is pure and tender. I have again grown fonder of Matilda and I feel she is not made of common mould. My dearest Frank, it does me so much good to love glowingly, to love even a ­woman mit Sinnlichkeit. Do you understand me? There is a colder kind of esteeming, honouring, and also tenderly loving, this is not the feeling I most delight in. I enjoy when my senses, my immagination are all at work together, and friendship is no longer a name for such an exited sensation, it is ardent love, even like the love of man to woman. I mean to see Matilda more now, I am more warmed towards her and I am sure the renewed intercourse will do me good. If I said anything in my last letter which could in the least be construed as if I do not esteem her so much, I beg you to forget it. For I am now again more awake to the conviction that there was nothing wrong. You were not ordinary people and therefore must not be judged after ordinary rules. Here is the copy of Matildas letter. The original shall follow [3] Hamburg den 25sten Feb. 1840. Jahre sind vergangen mein lieber Franz, ohne daß unsere gegenseitige Liebe sich durch äußere Beweise kund gegeben hat, ohne daß wir uns des gewöhnlichen Sourgats für Getrennte bedienten. – Sollte dies ein Zeichen der Erkältung unserer Herzen seyn, daß sie das Bedürfniß der Mittheilung nicht mehr fühlten? Oder lebt in unseren Seele die seelige Gewißheit daß wir der äußeren Zeichen nicht bedurften um mit einander fortzuleben. Ich für meine Person glaube das Leztere, denn ich fühle es tief im Herzen wie Sie mir nahe blieben und wie nicht Zeit, nicht Raum im Stande waren Ihr mir so liebes Bild zu verdrängen, ja auch nur zu verhüllen. – Sie leben noch frisch und lebendig mir im Herzen, und meine Liebe für Sie ist diesselbe wie ehemals geblieben. Sie verlangen nach einem Brieflein von mir? Ist dieses Verlangen ein leises Zweifeln an meiner Liebe? Oder wollten Sie nur prüfen ob Ihre Augen in dem langen Zeitraum nichts von ihrer Vortrefflichkeit verloren haben, und noch im Stande sind meine kritzlichen Züge zu enträthseln? Habe ich es errathen, sollte mein Brieflein der Probierstein seyn, ob Sie noch 12

Mathilde Benecke née Schweder.

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lange keine Brille bedürften? Nein runzeln Sie nur nicht Ihre Stirn, ich höre schon auf zu necken! Will glauben, daß Sie nicht zweifelten, und daß alleine sehnsüchtiges Verlangen nach meinen geliebten Schriftzügen Sie den Wunsch aussprechen ließ: ich möchte schreiben! Ha! Ha! – Herr Gott, lieber Franz wie ­unaussprechlich habe ich mich aber gefreut, als ich Mathilden hier erblickte! War es mir doch als hätte der liebe Gott mir einen Engel gesandt, der mich liebreich über die Schwierigkeiten und Unbehaglichkeiten der Fremde leiten sollte; in ihr fand ich eine befreundete Seele! Sie ist mein liebster Umgang hier, und mit Zagen denke ich der Zeit, wo sie wieder von mir scheiden wird, und ich ohne sie hier leben soll. Auch Mathildens Schwestern sind mir sehr liebe Erscheinungen, die mich durch die vielfachen Beweise ihrer freundlichen Liebe wahrhaft rühren. Ihre Kinder lieber Franz sind prächtige kleine Wesen. Norman ein wahres kleines Engelsbild; Hamilton ein liebes ehrliches Gesicht und Oskar? Nun, das lebende Bild meines lieben Franz wurde mir durch ihn vor Augen geführt und dadurch habe ich ausgesprochen welch ein Eindruck der Knabe nothwendiger weise auf mich machen mußte. Ob ich noch der Zeit gedenke wo Sie zu meinen Füßen saßen, mir die Hand von der Arbeit nahmen und damit zu spielen oder sie auch wohl zu küßen? (Franz dies ist jezt dein Weib die spricht, während ich dieses abschreibe, wird mir so sinnlich begehrend, so sehnsuchtsvoll nach dir. Ich bin hier ganz allein, alles im Hause schläft, aber was hilft mir die Einsamkeit, der geliebte kann doch nicht zu mir. Genießen wollen wir, wenn wir uns wieder haben, nicht so, mein Junge?) Ach Franz ich müßte ja die seeligste Zeit meines Lebens vergeßen, könnte die Erinnerung jener Stunden meinem Gedächtniß schwinden. Unser Beisammenleben fiel ja in eine Zeit wo ich das seeligste Weib auf Erden war, wo mir in dem Besitz des Geliebten meiner Seele der Himmel auf Erden erschienen war, und ich es für unmöglich hielt daß die Welt noch ein Wesen, glückseelig wie ich aufzuweisen habe. – freilich lebten Sie auch noch bei mir, als die äußeren Stützen meines Glücks schon zusammen gestürzt waren – aber ich war ja doch noch Gattin, der Grundstein meines Glückes war ja doch noch nicht ­erschüttert – aber ­später – doch nein still davon warum die fast schon vernarbten Wunden wieder auf­ reißen. Ja wären Sie bei mir, könnte ich mündlich Ihnen mein Leid kl[agen] ∆ wollte ich Sie, wollte ich mich nicht schonen; Sie sollten den Schmerz mit mir noch einmal durchleben, ich ∆ Ihnen den Trost der Theilnahme nehmen – es liegt ja im Schmerze so hohe Poesie – aber dasselbe ∆ Briefe anvertrauen? nein, das mag ich nicht; denn Ihnen würde es viel ein ∆ wirklich ist ∆ weil Sie mich dabei nicht sähen, und also nicht beurtheilen könnten, in wie weit ich ∆ selben überwunden habe; und ich würde mich im Schreiben zu sehr darin vertie­ fen, steckte die theilnehmende Liebe des Freundes mir kein Ziel. Also meine ­Erinnerungen seien nur der seeligen Vergangenheit gewidmet. Wie freute ich

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mich immer, mein lieber Franz, wenn ich im Spiegel meines Fensters Sie daher kommen sah. Sie bogen um die Ecke der Königstraße und waren dann in wenig Augenblicken bei uns. Zuerst erschien ich Ihnen dann als strenge Richterin. Sie lasen Ihre Gedichte und ich begünstigte oder verwarf. Sie verteidigten sich tapfer aber in der Regel siegte ich doch, und schlug entweder mit meinem Gefühlsurtheil Ihre Verstandseinwendungen aus dem Wege; oder umgekehrt mein Verstand rieht mir Ihrer Gefühlswelt einen kleinen Damm zu ziehen, damit sie mich nicht zu sehr überflüthete. War nun dieser Akt vorüber, da trat anderes ∆ ein, und dabei geschah es dann wohl, daß meine Hand von der Arbeit genommen, und zu anderem Dienst gebraucht wurde. – Ach Franz und wenn dann Willhelm13 kam, mich in die Arme schloß, mit Küssen bedeckte! Dann standen Sie ganz betrübt dabei, daß Ihnen nicht auch eine Geliebte im Arm ruhte, und wir vertrösteten Sie auf die Zukunft. Die Zeiten ∆ für Sie erschienen. Sie nennen ein prächtiges Frauenbild Ihr Eigenthum! Gott wie wunderschön war doch diese Zeit, wie glücklich waren wir ∆ Franz, und wie warm blieben unsere Seelen, obgleich wir ein gefährlich Spiel spielten. Ich konnte aber auch mi ∆ Wilhelms Gattin dieses Wagniß unternehmen, nur neben ihn waren Sie mir nicht gefährlich wäre mein Geliebter weniger liebenswürdig so hätte ich es niemals unternommen. Und dann durfte ich es ja auch nur mit einem Mann wagen, der von so einem regem Ehrgefühl wie Sie beseelt waren, dem ich so unbedingt vertrauen durfte. Wohl uns mein Franz daß der Himmel uns diese schöne Zeit erleben ließ, wir sind sehr reich in ihr gewesen, durch sie geworden. Aber das galt wohl uns daß wir mit ruhigem Herzen, uns keiner Schuld bewußt auf sie zurückblicken können! – Wie nun jezt mein Leben ist? Mathilda mag es Ihnen erzählen wenn sie wieder mit Ihnen vereinigt ist. Meine Welt sind meine Kinder. Ihnen ist mein bestes Lieben, treustes Sorgen, innigstes Lenken gewidmet. Geht Hermann nach drei Jahren in die weite Welt, so kehre ich zur Heimath zurück, denn Hamburg mit aller seiner Herlichkeit ersetzt mir die Heimath nicht, und die Hamburger mit all ihrer Liebe füllen die Lücken nicht aus die mir durch die Trennung von der Heimat geworden ist. Aber Gottlob das fühle ich doch tief, daß mein inneres Leben trotz Schmerz und Trübsal nicht gestört worden ist, ich trage noch einen reichen Schatz von Liebe in mir, und die Poesie des Lebens ist noch nicht in mir untergegangen, es bedarf nur einer leisen Berührung, und sie tritt hervor. Und so hoffe ich denn friedlich und freundlich mein Leben zu beschließen, denn lassen wir nur nicht die Poesie des Lebens über uns zusammen schlagen, hüten wir uns nur nicht ganz zu versanden, dann wird uns auch immer noch ein frisches grünes Bäumchen auf unserm Lebenswege blühen, an dem wir unser Auge und Herz 13

Wilhelm Benecke, late husband of Mathilde Benecke.

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laben und stärken können. Und nun Ade geliebter Franz. Gott sey und bleibe mit Ihnen. Ihre Mathilde.14 [4] 28th. Bless you my bonnie boy. It is a bright glorious day and I have just worked hard sowing up a parcel for you which goes to Bremen today from whence a ship called the Diamant. Captain Balleer will sail on the 4th March, so I suppose you may get it towards the end of May. It is but a small parcel & contains a few books, stray letters, and Oscars works, nada mas, but such as it is I trust it may arrive in safely, I have directed it to Trapman and sent it to Oehlrich to forward. I feel so light and happy to day. My own Frank I thank God that you are mine, that I am yours. Well ought I to be a proud wife. With what satisfaction do I swallow all the glorious news of your Anerkennung. How I dwell upon Prescotts lines and every other proof of acknowledgment of your talent, which you from time to time communicate to me, how I make my relations praise you, desire anciously to know you, and above all wie weide ich mich an Mathildes15 immer noch fest bestehender Liebe für dich du liebster Freund. Wahrhaft erhoben fühle ich mich, und glühender, geneigter fühle ich die Kräfte meines Herzens. Mein Franz wie liebe ich dich, but no dearest, I am not as good as Jeannie, I could not say those mild words with her. For the present my love is of a very different stamp, it wants to press, to breath from your lips love again, and you must think of me, as one who is your own, and whom you must ever remember with affection and even devotion. Great God let me be once more folded to his breast, and I will be good. – Yes active, happy, dutiful that my own husband can feel that God has blessed him, as I can say with honest truth: I would not exchange my fate with that of any human being. To morrow dear Oscar comes home and remains sunday and monday, then I live for him alone, My next letter will then bring you some news from this dear child, and we will write to you. Dear Caroline and Harriet send you much love. They also promise to write soon. Both are devotedly attached to you and both are dear creatures, whom I thank God that I have seen again; Carry found by chance an old letter we two had written from Boston soon after our marriage, how in love we were, reading that letter how paridisial seems to me the life we then led. After all, dear Frank, we have been happy, have we not (Oh let us be grateful to God. And now I feel again like a bride. We are not old yet, we will enjoy life again and gbd glory in our existence. […] mein Herz ist voll.

14 15

Mathilde Benecke. Mathilde Benecke.

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This little space seems just cut out for me to tell my dear brother Franc that my thoughts wander very often across the atlantic to him, oftener than he would suppose from my silence. My heart is full of sisterly love and affection for you my dearest Frank, yes I can say with good conscience I do love you from my very soul. I love you because you are a dear exellent fellow, I love you because you have rendered us so truly happy by sending us your own dear beloved wife, and your darling children, I love you because you are so loveable ∆ cannot help loving you, and if you only were within my reach, I could give you evident proofs of my warm warmheartedness also. [cross-writing, 4] Thanks to the Allmighty I can give you the best accounts of your dear ones; Matilda is cheerful, well happy dear creature; beloved by all, every one desires her presence, and but too often, she runs away, but we will ∆ be selfish, gratefully do we acknowledge your kindness my dearest Frank, we will enjoy her presence, short as the time appears, and not throw a dark ∆ upon it by thinking of the future. The children are dear creatures. Oscar is indeed a fine noble boy, I love him with a mothers heart, you may make yours ∆ [cross-writing, 1] X I shall even consider the dear boy as one of my own, I shall love him as such, and we shall be the best friends in the world! He shall unburden his little heart if ever in trouble unto his mothers breast, for as such I trust he will look up to me during the absence from those who are dearest to him, and I will bless and comfort and cheer him as much as it ever lays in my power. Make your mind perfectly easy my dearest Frank. your darling child will be taken care of, I can say no more today. God bless you pray write me soon a line or two ever your loving sister Caroline [cross-writing, 4] Now for a little space to say good bye. Goodbye my life, my love, Heavenly blue ayre. Take a fine ride, pat Nausica and think of me. Your loving wife Matilda Matilda16 thinks you would not like to call me wife, rather Geliebte. How is it? Pfe pfe two kisses Alas no spelling will do thenn. Hammy & Normy kiss Papa! 16

Mathilde Benecke.

428 Pr Paquet Via Havre and New York Single Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Franco Aux Etats Unis Stamp Hamburg 28 Febr 40 Stamp Le Havre 4 Mars Stamp New York SHIP APR 9 + sealing wax

Letters

No. 45 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 23.02.-04.03.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 26.02.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XXIVColumbia S.C. March 4. 1840. Are you not ashamed for me? I am, seeing that this is the 24th letter since the middle of July, which makes almost a letter a week! I sent yester-day, on Febr. 22, my No 23 by Mr North. I dont Know why, but I have made up my mind for a letter to-day. Yesterday I recieved Galignanis up to the middle of Dec. direct via Charleston; but I had no letter. Yester-day was Washington’s birth-day. One cannot help falling into a reflective mood on such day. Matilda, what is my life? I, made for a life of action, entirely so, am – oh, an author! Experience has shown me and an undeniable consciousness teaches me, I was made to act. The greater the danger and difficulty around me, the more I feel my soul get hard, a strange expression, but it is the best and most expressive; I feel my soul consolidate, stiffen, like an arm stretched out for combat; as my mind feels collects strength within itself, the greater the difficulty to be that is to be solved. Yet this is not the whole loss. There is action in a purely mental life too, though I was made for a different sphere of action. This too is denied me. Instead of teaching vaster ideas than are common here; instead of transplanting the noblest flowers; instead of showing Plato’s devine saying: Not to live, but to live nobly – in short, instead of teaching at least young man, I am bound to do – Oh my beloved Matilda, only being, to whom I thus utter my deepest pains, what I am; how cramped is my whole life! Matilda, I intended to go to church this morning; I had not been last Sunday for the college’s sake. I stepped out of the door, however this moment; the air is so balmy such a breath of Gods creative spirits breaths through the air, that it filled my soul too much; feelings for which I have too much respect to break, heeurt, mangle them by going and hearing blasphemous ranting, almost idolutrous vulgarities. Reflect, my soul’s companion, reflect what a world of suffering it expresses for a soul by nature fervently religious whose deepest, deepest joy is to adore, cautiously to abstain from going to the place where puerile dogmatics, and unfeeling denunciations. Reflect what a man like myself must feel, when he sees that it is absolutely impossible to make any impression upon any young mind around him, because carried away by by the flodding waters of coarse dogmatism, and having been being braught up with two deadly, revoltic extremes before his eyes, that of low church coarseness on the one hand, and low, vulgar heartless scepticism on the other, it is he is utterly unfit to understand anything higher, truer, nobler. Their eyes are put out. Good God! my dearest Matilda my life and situation

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_047

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press upon my soul as the metal shoe on a Chinese foot – it will become a cramped cripple – it is perhaps already so. When I used to make pedestrian tours, it was a voluptuous feeling, to shake off in the evening a cramping shoe, and step boldly on soft cooling ground, give play to every bone and muscle of the heated, feverish foot. For such a glorious feeling longs my soul. It wants to stretch and shake and rear its wings, freely roaring in God’s sunshine, having been prisoned – and caged up so long. Matilda, my love, my dearest love, you who are so generous to me, I ought not to harrow your heart with such my deepest sights, but shall I even cramp my complaints – my sighs. Could rest my head at this moment on your breast, I believe I should cry like a child. – Enough, enough! – You have made a sort of culte of the children’s love for me, by letting them always kiss my letters. It is right – much forms are so dear to the soul – oh, there is the secret of Catholicism! I beg you now, my Matilda, to cultivate in my boys with equal care, there love to their uncles.1 Not only because the latter deserve it, it m that is not the most important; but because it will do good to the former. Let them expand their heart in affection. I Know it will give them pains; no matter, the deepest joys also, and it nobles. Poor, poor souls; how robbed of love their little hearts will be here! – Is there no chance of onee of your sisters accomp. you back? It would be the greatest delight to me. – But see, how I have gone on. This letter indeed shall not be sent until I have one from you. – My beloved Matilda, do you Know that it is not for me alone that I desire a change; no doubt, my heart aches, and where there are pains there is a desire for their cessation, but I long for a sphere, which is true and not false, action which is free and not cramped, life which is noble and not vulgar, communion which is free and genial not hampered and odious, far more for you and and our dear boys. Matilda, would God but grant me so much ground, that I could stand upright, free, and move my limbs, that you – pure being that you are – could once see me as I truly am – Your [2] real Frank, as he is by nature is, not chafed, harrassed, sore, clogged; and then are dear ones! But it is enough. – I did not tell you that I sent yester-day by Mr North, a Ms of a little book for a series they publish in Boston. The little is Great Events described by Great Historians &c. Oscar shall have a copy.2 I was very 1 Especially Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer. 2 Francis Lieber, Great Events, described by distinguished historians, chroniclers, and other writers, published under the sanction of the Board of Education of the State of Massachusetts, (= School Library, vol. 17) Boston Marsh, Capen, Lyon & Webb 1840.

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desirous of dedicating it to my boys, for it is for young people, but I thaught upon the whole better not. My feeling was decidedly that of similar importance with that little book is, perhaps, that the Hamb. shirts have nearly all use faults, my former shirts had – the breast rising out of the west-coat like crop of an angry pigeon; though exceedingly wide, they pinch & pull. Why could they not copy! I shall in future send my shirts to China, but washed, unless they imitate even the ink-spots. I begin to long again very much for a letter. – Do you receive this already at Zuellichau? If so, love them tenderly for me; they deserve it so fully. May God grant the best health to Karsten. He and Doris will feel the separation from Charlotte3 much. – I have often missed since our separation a ring with your hair. But it is now too late. – Stop, stop, I say, stop – or I fill the letter without writing anything. # It is evening, Sunday, I cannot tear myself from you. The whole day I have thaught of you. Oh, my Matilda, I cannot but think with trembling of your return. You live where you find love and life, and to what life do I drag you back! Poor, poor Matilda, why must I be the cause of such miserable life for you? Ah, and without Oscar! Good God, is there no way, no means to lead us hence? My dearest Matilda, generous, good being, how unjust have I been to you. My life shall show that during this solitude has been a time of deep reflexion with me. Oh, mercyful God, give me but the opportunity to redress thee wrongs I have done to my Matilda and my children! Kiss them fervently for me. I dont Know, but the most melancholy thaughts have gathered to-day around me; I must stop; I feel so sad. Do you bless me in your prayers? # Monday. I was yesterday very, very sad. Have I told you that Gustavus4 wrote to Möller to send me two boxes of the best cegars. They are so very Kind. Pray tell Oscar this. Pray, pay attention to what I write to Oscar about India. February 25. In the letter of Ed. Woodhouse, which Gustavus sent me, there is a passage remarkable for me! He says that (white) emigrants from all nations pour in at Trinidad, and greatly welcomed; because the negros wont work. Now, to-day, I found an advertisement in the N.Y. papers, of a captain offering free passage and common provision to any white emigrants to Trinidad without putting them under the obligation to serve for a time at that island, to work off their passage expences – so at least I understand the advertisement. A society therefore at Trinidad must pay him.5 However that may be, this is a very interesting item. Matilda, I I confess to you, I think with horror of the 3 Charlotte Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber, daughter of his sister and her husband Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten, Züllichau, was going to be married. 4 Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 5 Officially forced migration from Africa to Trinidad ended after 1841; voluntary immigration from Britain and Madeira improved as well as voluntary migration of indentured labourers

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­ ossibility – perhaps it is already more – of the English emancipation’s turning p out badly. For it would awfully tell for all societies placed like ours here; because on the one hand slavery is against the great mighty current of the spirit not of the times but of our centuries; on the other hand there would stand the ghastly fact: We have negros, they must live, we must live, we cannot allow this immense part of the population to idle away a brutish, vicious existence, therefore for their and our benefit we must Keep them in servitude. God avert it! How fearful, truly hart-rending the contemplation for a man like myself: Slavery is bad, vicious, essentially bad; emancipation is worse, or impossible. No, no! I will not yet, I cannot believe it – Mrs Bay sends me this moment lettuce. Thanks to the old woman. When this arrives you will be on the point of setting out for Z.6 But Matilda, I implore you, donot expose yourself; I say I implore you! April is a cheding season in Northern Germany. Think what I should feel, you fall sick. To go to that wedding is natural, but indeed, it is not so important, to expose yourself; for; after all, you visit will be quite as welcome a little later. Such reasoning never seems very strong before the mischief, I Know, but very much so after. I beg you therefore for my sake, to be very cautious. Indeed I herewith call upon Caroline and Harriet, to whom I have entrusted all that I possess in this world, to weigh the subject well with some men of your family. Besides, will you be able to go just when you like? You must have a companion. My dearest Matilda, I reproach myself so much, not having written about this immediately. But though the letter should arrive but a few days before your intended journey; still weigh what I say well; what is a little disappointment of theirs compared to desastrous consequences. Think of your best friend you have, and for him, decide. I dont Know why, but I wish that journey was over. While my mind Knows you at Hamb. my soul feels quiet, but it is restless and unsettled until so soon as I think of your travelling there about; and will be so, until I Know you again safely in Hamb. – I had no letter, nor has the box come. What does Caroline mean that she will write by first opportunity? For heaven’s sake, I hope she will not write by boxes!! She had, if that be the case better wait until you can bring the letter. Ah my Matilda, how bitter will be your departure. However try to brighten up your thaughts by the idea that should God send us deliverance from here, I will strain every nerve, I promise you, to go between my leaving here and entering upon any new duty, whatever that may be, to Europe. You Know best how necessary it is for me! God grant it. – Matty, Matty from the East Indies who found employment in the Caribbean sugar estates. See Bridget Brereton, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad 1870–1900, Cambridge 2002, p. 10. 6 Züllichau, residence of several members of Lieber’s family: his brothers and sisters with their families.

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love me. Kiss the bairns, my lovely bairns. # Febr. 26. Miss Cheves is here and – stays at McCords.7 If it is true that he is engaged to her, and it is certainly so, it is – I cannot find another expression – disgusting. I am sorry, for I never like to feel disgust against a person with whom I must commune! Oh Hamlet! I see, these people cannot have any imagination. If they had, it alone would prevent such impropriety. [3] I cannot help seeing all the time the late Mrs McCord8 yet walking about, when I think of this matter. – I believe I never wrote you that Mary communicated to me that Mrs Appleton9 has a child – I think a son, and that her father enjoys the bambinades exceedingly – I should like to Know what is the matter with me. At no period in my life have I so easily and so suddenly felt d­ isgust – ­physical, bonâ fide stomach disgust; yet my stomach in good order. Donot believe I give way to it, I force myself, yet this forcing extends to the mouth only; I eat despite of disgust, but the stomach is a sovereign lord. The merest trifle upsets a whole dinner. I believe the causes and connection is this. My imagination always strong is at present peculiarly – if not active at least fidgety. And then, I cannot think of that Henry10 in the Kitchen, oh and altogether a negro kitchen. Ask a physician whether he thinks that this disgust can come from excited nerves. A propos of Henry. If that boy were well washed & dressed he would be found to be a fine boy. He talks at a great rate to me, only I cannot understand him. “Marter” is a great person, every stick and stone is shown me. Him too I fear when the children return; for either we enforce his separation from our children, which cannot but make them callous; even the mere fact of our being obliged to Keep Henry out of the house, cannot but have an evil effect upon the boys; or we allow them to play together which has other evil effects. Matilda, Cato was in the habit of ending every speech of his in the Senate, whether relating to Carthage or not: “For the rest I think Carthage ought to be distroyed”.11 What ever I think, feel or say, I should always like to add: “For 7 8 9

10 11

Louisa Cheves, David McCord. Emmeline McCord, David McCord’s wife had died in August 1839. Mrs. Nathan Appleton who had been recently delivered of a child was the second wife of Nathan Appleton, father of Mary and Fanny; her maiden name was Harriot Coffin Sumner, she was related to Charles Sumner. Son of the cook Betsy in the Lieber household in Columbia/SC. Cato the elder is supposed to have ended each speech in the senate of the Roman Empire with his plea “Ceterun censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” = “I am of the opinion that we have to destroy Carthago”.

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the rest, I ought not to be here”, as fixedly and continuedly as the Episcopalian “World without end.”12 – While Mr Shand was at Charl.13 for the election of a bishop, his son, 12 years old, was attacked with the Cholera on Saturday. On Monday the child was dead! It is so true what Mrs Labat once said: “People are never sick in America, they always die”, with reverence to the case with which they take it here, she might have said “they only die”. – I forgot whether I wrote you that a bishop has been elected and, to my great comfort, not Mr Elliot. For had he been elected, as many expected, I doubt not but Mr Barnwell would have resigned. Then Henry,14 the most arrogant ignoramus would have been made president, and Thornwell to a certainty have obtained Elliot’s place. I hope this wretched faculty will nevertheless keep together as long as I am here. There is a letter here from Stuart. All well and head over ears in snow.15 – Donot forget to give something neat, if possible lasting, to little Clara,16 Gustavus’ child in Berlin. In speaking of this Gustavus,17 I am reminded of yours.18 What has become of his children? You never have written me a word. What do the sisters19 say? I wonder whether the girl might not become a governess in the family, with us? Or would that not be prudent? Certainly the children, especially the girl cannot always be left at that distance.20 Ask about their appearance, and everything, and write me. My most beloved Mat. when I contemplate my life, I never think of myself alone; I Know but too well, that you too would have had a higher life, and would have been developped your essential self very differently had I been led into a sphere of action. Your character is strong. There is that in you, which is heroic; yet you are doomed to mope away your life with poor me! – Matilda, as to your uncle,21 I say: Love on, love on! You write of him in a manner that I can see perfectly well that there is deepfelt, genuine, intense 12

Part of the Gloria Patri, also known as the “Lesser Doxology”, used in services of Morning and Evening Prayer in the Episcopal Church: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen”. See The Episcopal Church URL episcopalchurch.org (5.1.2017). 13 Charleston/SC. 14 Prof. Robert Henry, colleague of Francis Lieber at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. 15 His former colleague Prof. Isaac William Stuart had moved to Hartford/Conn. 16 Clara Lieber, daughter of Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, Berlin. 17 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. 18 Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 19 Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg. 20 So Isabella, wife of Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico, had taken ill, died or left the family for good? 21 Jacob Oppenheimer.

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attachment on your part, and that – as indeed it is a matter of course – this affection does your heart, your soul, good. I say again: “love on”. I hope that all will not be over, except that sweet remembrance remain, when you come back; I mean that you remain in correspondence. And this does not depend upon a resolution, but solely upon mutual want, and whether your uncle will feel, that, large as his family is, and occupied as his mind is w necessarily is with many affairs, and, moreover, occupied as his heart is with love to Adele, I cannot Know, of course. Still, you will try I Know You will not let this dear plant of affection allow to whither away from want of attention, from mere neglect. For in matters of affection it is very much as with gardening. The sweetest, loveliest flower requires watering. Water is but an indifferent thing; the act of watering but a drudgery, unconnected with the lovely laws, which the plant develops; yet if the simple watering is neglected to the sweetest mon-rose as well as the proudest Strelitzia, droop must droop, whither, die. And how many forget from sheer neglect this simple act! Oh, how many spots are not in the garden of every one of us, where we must stop and say: Here too would now stand a beautiful flower, ah! Perhaps a fine fruit tree with juicy fruits for my friends and children, but I was careless; I forgot or shunned indelently the little trouble of watering; of now and then plucking out a weed growing up near it. Now it is too late. The plant is gone; the weed rules in its place! Am I not very wrong in thus filling again my paper, without a letter from you? Elza has gone to the p.o. Shall I have a letter? March 4. I donot Know how it is; according to your letters you recieve very regularly accounts from me. How I receive yours, you may judge from my letters. Yester day It is now again above 3 weeks that I have recieved nothing; thus I am kept in a constant state of excitement. Yester-day, I recieved Paris papers to the 7th of January, which would give ample time for letters to the last of ­Decemb. from Hamb. and min my latest from Hamb. is Nov. 22. Dec. 2!! This after a long tirade, whow regularly you would write! – I am sorry, very sorry for it, for it takes away all my spirits to write. Here I am, I have a thousand things to say and am desirous of sending this letter in a parcel through ­Senator P ­ reston, yet I feel as though my veins were choked up. I cannot write anything. I feel dumb. I beg you to reflect for a moment upon the fact as it stands there before you. Paris papers to January 7, private letters to a anxious father, and who b­ esides, lives, God knows, no over agreable life, separate from all and ­everything that is dear to him, to Nov Dec. 2. I donot say that it is entirely or partly your fault; but it is very dispiriting indeed, and I cannot help thinking that if you wrote regularly by Havre packets, I must more regularly receive the letters, although the passage out is always longer and less regular than to Europe. The box left Charlest. by wagon 5 days ago, so it must be here to-morrow, but I could would not stay

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the letters, because I could not, after all write much on the nearly filled paper. I Kiss you all. Ich sage nicht daß ich unendlich leide, aber ich sage [4] dass ich unendlich entbehre – entbehre in jeder Weise. The other day I heard for the first time again the lovely first notes of the mocking bird. It made me feel so strange, that when I carefully examined my feelings – the blood has rushed in my face – and into the images which, by that tone, had suddenly started up before my inner eye, I found that my deep emotion and blushing was owing to the fact that my ear had not heard for months tones endeared to me; for that bird’s music had suddenly braught the faces of men before my soul; they were no particular faces, yet all friendly, smiling and they spoke. The connection as I say was that my soul felt surprised and suddenly roused at tones it cared for. It is – here came a student; I dont Know what was the sentence I had begun. So good bye. Your loving Frank. Columbia, Febr. 26 1840 My dear Oscar, I hope you have looked at the map to see the marches and conquests of the British army in Caboul. Donot forget it, and beg your master to assist you. You must also look at your fine Atlas for Syria and the marches of the Egyptians. It is thus you learn a great deal of Geography, and many events, which otherwise would escape you for ever. Never, my boy, never allow yourself to hear of any great event without Knowing on the map when it happened. And, my Oscar, do you know by this time the form of government of Hamb? How they make and abolish laws, levy taxes, enlist soldiers, administer justice, rule over dependencies &c. You must ask also your teacher to tell you of the Germanic confederacy, which differs very much from ours. I will give you an outline of ours, perhaps in this very letter, but at this moment I am too much pressed with buseness. – Uncle Gustavus22 sent me a letter from one of your Woodhouse cousins, from Trinidad. It is a fine, manly letter. I like it very much. I wish your dear Mama would write so to your aunt Clara. # My dear boy, you must beg Mr Busse, to show you, when spring sets in with you, a German village embedded in the blooming orchards, that Blüthenschnee as the German poets finely call it. A German village, which you will have already observed is quite very different from an American or Dutch one, and so it is from a French, Italian, or English, surrounded by blooming apple trees, with their beautiful, slightly blushing white blossoms, and close by fields on which good horses slowly drag 22

Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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the heavy plough through fertile land, is a sight characteristically German, and has filled with delight an author, you will read one of these days, Jean Paul. Oh! It often has delighted the breast of your father too on his pedestrian excursions. I remember Saxony, Thuringia, ah! I remember Heidelberg with its almond trees, so lively! – This pen, as you see writes well; it is one of those your dearest mother made before you parted from me. She is so good! Forget not, my loved boy to thank God in each prayer for having vouchered you so good, so generous, so loving a mother. Many will be the blessings yet, I hope, which God will bestow upon my dearest boys, but none will be greater, than the one he has granted you already in giving you so excellent a mother. March 4. My dearest Oscar, many trees are now in blossom, and when I ride, especially through marshes, or swamps as they call them here, I feel the greatest longing for my dearest boy, who I am sure would enjoy this lovely, often gorgeous flowers and blossoms, with their great variety of form and color so much. Often I think, if but my beloved boy was near me on a pony, how we would return to Mama laden with blossoms and branches, and then we would find out their names in Michaud’s work.23 As I had no horse in former years I never Knew the beauty of these forests so as I do Kn now. And the mocking bird, having been silent for some time begins again to sing, not yet so unceasingly almost madly, so enthusiastically as it sings nigh day and night, noon and midnight as in summer, but only in a few tones, now & then, as though bashful yet of its own sweet melodies. But it will soon become the bold master singer of the forest, the rhetorician of the wood, the very professor of the sylvan college. A week ago I saw in Russel’s garden a beautiful shrub in blossom, the Magnolia purpurea, or purple magnolia, which grows wild in the mountains of North Carolina. It was beautiful. Every where, where I look I find the lovely peachtree in blossom. It is a sweet, delicate blossom, indeed. Do you Know that Chinese poets and novel writers are full of comparisons drawn from the peach-blossom? I think the graceful willow and the blushing peach blossom are mentioned more frequently than anyother; and so we, different people, on the opposite part of the globe love and admire it. Thus Oscar is a pure and tender heart. All, all love its of whatever age, country or religion, color or formation of face. – You ask about Timoor. Why the gentleman now always accompanies me on my rides, but pants enormously. There we jog along, Papa, Nausicaa, Timoor; Nausicaa, Papa, Timoor; Timoor, Nausicaa Papa; I cannot make more than these three

23

Andre Michaud, Histoire des chenes de l’Amerique septentrionale, Paris 1801; Andre Michaud, Flora boreali-americana, 2 vols. and Histoire des arbres forestiers de l’Amerique septentrionale, Paris 1810.

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however I may place them. I Kiss you and your dear brothers many times. Your loving father. Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Stamp Forwarded through Gilpin’s Exchange Reading Room ad Foreign Letter Office New York Stamp Le Havre ∆ Stamp Paris ∆ Stamp Hamburg 9. Mai 40 + red sealing wax

No. 46 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 05.03.-17.03.1840 Included: dictated letter of Hamilton Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: dictated letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Mathilde Lieber, Eppendorf 07.03.1840 Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Hamilton Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5069, ALS, 4 pages All well! Hamburg Donnerstag den 5ten März 1840 Letter XIX. A letter from Hamilton to his Papa. Dear Papa when shall we see you again. I like now to go home to my Papa. When I come home, I kiss Papa, dear Papa good Papa. Papa has got a horse to ride on. Will Papa let me ride on his horse. Normy cant, he fall, he too little. My one foot hurts me. I got Friederich and Carl at Miss Schlumpf in my school. I dont like Karl for all the day got a dirty nose, but I like Friederich because he has’nt got a dirty nose. Dear Papa, Aunt Caroline found a mouse in her bed, and all the time I got some mice in the wall near my bed. Please send a ship now, because I want to go home to my Papa. Very soon the ship must come. When Sunday comes then we must go. Dear Papa, I’ve seen ice, it looks weiss. Goodbye, Papa. Hammy. Specimens of Hammy’s German. “Mutter Morgen ich geh mit dir und mir in eine Kutsche. Fahren aus den Dammthor. – Nein Pfui. Karl nicht, Karl ist unartig, take Menschen ein Pferd weg zu reiten und Pferd reitet über mich. Ich will reiten in Schiff weg, in mein Vater. Wenn Vater unartig ist denn er kriegt Prügel von mich. Wenn er gut ist dann er kriegt ein Strich. – Binde mein Stiefelband – Gieb mir mein Patrontasche. – Gestern Norman ging mit Dr Herzfeld in eine Kutsche. Dr Herzfeld ein guter Mann – Mutter gieb mir mein Band. Ich want a piece of Brod. Mutter gieb mir ein Brod! – The above, taken word for word from his mouth and being the most connected phrases I have ever heard him bring forth in German. He has decidedly a better ear for the German than the English and pronounces it more correctly. – Letter from Oscar to his Papa – “My dearest Papa, now I am at home. Mama read me that dear letter of yours about the silvered ice and the claws of the draggon to which you likened the icecles on the oak trees. And Mama also was so kind to help me copy a letter which I dictated in German to Dr Busse as I did the last and which I will send you when it is finished. Papa, dear Papa, I like so much your dear books, and the binding also is so nice & I like it as well as the binding of yours. When I come home and look at my books I like to take each Volume in my hand to see if all is right. To day Mama took a walk with me a beautiful one, the weather also was fine, Hamilton, Felix, and at first Norman were with © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_048

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us, but Mama thought it was too cold and took Norman back again. We went to Mrs Benecke, she calls me: kleiner Franz! & skipped round the room with me whirling me round her. She told Mama a funny story which I also heard. In a ball room a gentleman dropped his glove; his friend was standing near him and he said: Bitte Benecke hebe mir den Handschuh auf, ich bin so fest ich kann mich nicht bücken! (it seems the Gentlemen lace here, Papa) his friend attempted to pick up the glove for him, but found it impossible, for he was also too tight & said: Liebster Freund mit dem besten Willen, ich kann nicht, bin auch zu fest. A young lady the partner in the dance of one of these gentlemen overheard the conversation, as quick as lightning she hastened to them, bent down with the greatest ease, and smilingly handed the glove saying: Hier meine Herren! they were of course, as you might think, very much ashamed. Now we are going to the theatre to see: der Teufel ist los, Emil said half crying at the thought that his mother was not going Tante Jette geht zum Teufel und Mutter nicht! and afterwards he begged his Mama: Mutter wenn du zum Teufel gehst, nimmst du mich dann mit? which sounded excedingly curious.1 Goodbye dear Papa I kiss and press you to my heart thousand times. Your Oscar. Pat Nausicaa and Timur for me! – Letter from Oscar to Mama dated March 7. Eppendorf “Meine liebe Mutter, Ich danke dir dass du mir meine Sachen geschickt hast, aber ich habe sie erst gestern am Donnerstag bekommen; woher kömmt das? Liebe Mutter George2 sagt dass Onkel Palm einem andern Jungen gesagt hat, dass wenn er es gewusst hätte dass es ein Festtag wäre, brauchten wir erst am Mittwoch von Hause zu kommen. Mutter, um Ostern krieg ich einen Kameraden der heisst Meier, ist dass nicht nett? Onkel sagt dass er dann wie er hofft seine Schule anfangen wird. O! Mutter, da freue ich mich sehr zu. Küsse sie alle für mich. Lebe wohl liebe Mutter. Gott segne dich. Dein dich liebender Sohn Oscar. – Oscars Zeugnis vom 29sten Februar. Oscar hat in der kurzen Zeit dieses Monats ziemlich viel gethan. Dies wäre mit großem Lobe zu erwähnen, wenn er nicht noch immer gar zu sehr des Antreibens dazu bedurft hätte. Durch unrichtige Vertheilung seiner Arbeiten auf die ersten Wochen und die Selbsttäuschung daß das noch zu Vollendende ja ganz leicht sey war auf die lezten Tage so viel der Arbeit gehäuft worden daß er kaum die Zeit zu der schönen Erholung des Eislaufens finden konnte. So sind denn dieses Mal nicht so viele Tage mit dem Zeugnis fleißig einige sogar mit träge und schläfrig bezeichnet worden. In seinem Betragen ist dieses Mal nichts Auffallendes zu bemerken. Sein etwas weinerliches Wesen hinderte ihn oft an angestrengtem Arbeiten; indeß hat er auch 1 Der Teufel ist los, oder die verwandelten Weiber, opera, lyrics by Friedrich Wilhelm von Bork 1743. 2 George Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz.

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nicht selten bemerkt daß die mit Lust unternommene Arbeit noch ­einmal so rasch von Statten gehen. – In seiner Haltung läßt er noch manche Wünsche unbefriedigt, beim Gehen fängt er an die Füße mehr auswärts zu richten. Besonders ausgezeichnet hat er sich in diesem Monat durch ein immer besseres Erlernen des Schlittschuhlaufens wobei er neben vielem Muth auch einige ­Gewandtheit zeigt. – Im deutschen ist es noch immer nicht so wie ich es wünschte mit dem Lesen. Richtet Oskar indeß Blick und Gedanken auf das Vorliegende, so kann er ziemlich ohne Anstoß vorlesen. Er hat nur eine gewisse Monotonie (dröhnen) dabei zu vermeiden. – In der Rechtschreibung des Deutschen schreitet er etwas vorwärts. Im Rechnen auf das sich Oskar während dieses Monats besonders gewandt hat, ist ebenfalls einiges ­Fortschreiten zu bemerken; nur mußten auch hier die Gedanken immer recht bei der Sache bleiben. – In der Geographie, zufrieden. In der Bib. Geschichte hat er dieses Mal keine Aufsätze gemacht sondern das Vorgenommene nur aufmerksam im Buche nachgelesen. Im Zeichnen wünscht Herr Stuhlmann auch größere Genauigkeit und mehr Fleiß. Im Schreiben hat er Fortschritte gemacht. Er hat die deutsche Schrift angefangen und einige Seiten sind recht gut geschrieben. In der Musik hat Herr Albers bisweilen größere Aufmerksamkeit gewünscht. Sonst ist derselbe zufrieden. In der Deklamation hat Oskar bis auf das lezte Mal die aufgegebenen Gedichte gut gelernt. Nur muß er beim Vortragen sich bemühen, deutlicher und kräftiger zu reden. (unterschrieben) L. Busse. – Den 8ten M. Ich muß dir doch guten Morgen sagen, geliebte Seele, ehe ich mich zu meinem längst versäumten Pflichtbesuch wende. Mit der Feder in der Hand kann ich es mir nicht versagen erst zu dir zu kommen. Gott grüße dich. Ach hätte ich nur erst wieder einen Brief von dir! Diesmal muß ich lange warten. Jeden Morgen mit dem Erwachen denke ich mir: ob heute einer kömmt? und ist es wieder Abend geworden und ich habe vergebens gehofft, so lege ich mich mit schwerem Herzen nieder, und dann kommen oft ängstliche Träume oder sinnlich erregte und angstvoll sehne ich mich nach dem neuen Tage, der mir vielleicht Trost bringen wird. Lieber Tag bringe mir doch heute einen Brief von dem Geliebten! 9ten Noch immer keinen Brief von dir, ehe dieser Brief abgeht bin ich doch gewiß beglückt. Zulezt schrieb ich dir am 28sten Februar ∆ brachte ich bei meiner Adele zu, wir waren heiter. Adela fühlt [2] sich wohler als gewöhnlich. Ferdinand war full of pranks, and plagued me ∆ all night; he can not bear Adelas friends to gon home in the evening. He gave Adela and me a lesson in Algebra; how hard it is! It’s gone clear out of my head again. He is very fond of mathematics, and sometimes remains up late in the

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night deciphering some problem. We are on excellent terms and away from home it is with Adela I like to be best. There is such a free and easy tone in their house. With Adela I am very confidential indeed. Though we differ in some matters she is perfectly able to understand me. Mathilde Benecke brought me a book to read Galathee by Sternberg, a dangerous production.3 There is a sensual spirit in the book which worked me up and though poetical throughout the tendency is most destructive. The language is fine and you meet with nothing disgusting but a great deal which could seduce and destroy a young mind. Religious & sensual feelings are combined, the former taking quite a Catholic character. I understand there is much of this spirit abroad. Sternberg is one of the authors – des jungen Deutschlands4 – as it is called which appellation designates this extreme sensual tendency; but there are many who go far beyond him and declame entirely against marriage, at lowing & promoting the freeest intercourse of the sexes. Galathee I will send you merely to give you an insight into the character of that species of present novelists. It has none of the Schwulstigkeit which we both so dislike and while you read it, it interests but the impurity, and particularly when you hear that it is the expression of great part of the young generation is too distressing. It is not the passionate love of one individual to another which even in its excess remains a holy thing, but that swindling in voluptuousness, that vampyrising which must break down all higher and nobler feelings. Since then I have read Atilla by James.5 How great a contrast with the other. In this purity of feelings & thought and noble characters which satisfy the hearts. While the other leads you into the very atmosphere of corruption, throwing religious garments over unrestrained voluptuousness. Perhaps even you will be interested in reading Atilla you, my anti-novel reader. I like it much and you know I too am rather particular. On Saturday my dear boy6 came home. God bless him! He was full of the tenderest affection and in the highest spirits. I have been very happy with him. He is the dearest companion I have, & I always manage it so that I can devote myself to him entirely when he is there. His first amusement was to take out your books 3 Galathee, novel by Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg, Stuttgart 1836. 4 Junges Deutschland i.e. Young Germany was the contemporary label for an informal movement in German literature created 1835; its representatives were authors like Heinrich Heine, a relative of the Oppenheimer family who favored democracy, liberalism, and social justice in the years before the so-called German Revolution of 1848/49. Many of texts written by members of this group were forbidden in most states of the Deutsche Bund; Hamburg however was not that strict so that the publishing house of Julius Campe in Hamburg became the center of ‘Junges Deutschland’. 5 Attila, novel by George Payne Rainsford James, 1839. 6 Oscar Lieber.

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and look at them one after the other, pressing his lips to some of them. On Sunday I took all the boys out to walk and they had fine sport running on the ice, for the Alster was then frozen. In the evening Aunt Minna & Auguste7 came and we played several round games which greatly amused the children. Oskar was in high glee & showed his brightness again in these games. You can look forward to a happy future in the development of that child with his peculiarly affectionate disposition, he combines an honest character and good faculties, comprehending with ease and sprightliness. Indearing himself even to strangers while his purity of soul, the soundness of his principles so developed already will make him a comfort to his doating parents. Heaven bring him under your guardianship again! On Oscars word I would depend firmly, I am sure he would never be guilty of an untruth or try to deceive us in any matter. I trust him confidently. Could you but again hear him say his prayers. How fervently his whole spirit seems absorbed when those beautiful innocent words pass his lips; when he is at home then he loves to have me near him, and to give me at the same time some signs of his affection. I have had several conversations with Busse concerning the dear child. He always speaks with admiration of the force of his attachment to us, his open ∆ tedness and the pleasure he always feels when he thinks he has done something to please us. His difficulties still to be conquered he has also mentioned to me, they consist principally in his not being at all times disposed to do the works required from him, that he, he does them; but sometimes what he can do in five minutes, will take him an hour. He feels it himself whether he is in a good way to do one thing or the other. Now Busse seems to wish him particularly to overcome this and to bring him to the point that he should always do what he has to do, willingly and with all his active facilities. Now I must tell you candidly my dearest Frank that Busse is not the man, to whom I should like to intrust Oscars education for many years; he has good sound principles & understanding, but he has no genius about him, nothing that particularly indears him or makes him interesting. His treatment of Oscar is kind and fair, he has never been unjust to him. He is perfectly calculated I think to instruct and guide a young mind and regulate it, giving a good foundation and teaching soundly what he teaches, & thus. I think for two or three years to come I should be contended to have Oscar under his care, particularly as he pays constant attention to his bodily development, exercise and the strengthening of his limbs. In this respect he is well placed, as also in the practical tho rough knowledge of those things which he studies. But this would in a few years hence not be sufficient for an inquiring mind like Oscars who has learnt under your guidance attention to all the thousand things 7 Wilhelmine Arning and her daughter Auguste, sister and niece of Adele Haller.

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which ­surround him. I find that his questions are some times but not always answered. From many observations however I have satisfied myself that Oscar has confidence in his teacher; that he relates to him every little occurrence of his life when at home, that he is in every respect is communicative, and that he has to deal with people who take a decided interest in him. Therefore I am contented. Do you not also think that it is what Oscar particularly now requires to perfect himself in the fundaments, so that these should be brought to a point that they no longer delay him. It is not well for Oscar that writing, reading and everything connected with it, & arithmetic should be made his principle studies, that he may soon be no longer ∆ by difficulties in these? Of course you know from his “Stundenzettel! that they are ∆ only things which now occupy him. Are you satisfied with this for the present, or would you ∆ in more generally instructed at once? I of course am not able ∆ an are, but still the [3] reflexion and anxiety which ∆ voled upon this point in many sleepless hours, have ∆ not altogether unfit to offer, my ∆ For perhaps two years to come ∆ the plan upon which Busse goes will work well with our child. He considers it an advantage where he sees a particular difficulty, as for instance now in arithmetic, to follow that study warmly & chiefly until that difficulty is overcome, and he tells me he sees the advantage to Oscar already, he gains decidedly. Dr Busse tells me that he treasures up all your communications. It is his intention to make use of Plutarch; but a little later. At Easter he will write you his quarterly letter. I am anxious to have your opinion. Do not fear that the boy gets stupified, he is full of life, animation, thought & fun. An other boy will enter Dr Busses school at Easter. He is from a very good family (not jewish origin) and 11 years old. Oscar is much pleased as his intercourse with the boys in Dr Palms school is not so constant & he would like a constant companion. Of course I shall get acquainted with the boy who is always to be together with my Oscar, with our Oscar, for after all he is more yours than mine. Oh! how he resembles you, in person, temper, feeling, he is all all yours, our boy! – 13ten Noch immer, immer kein Brief, ach der böse Ostwind! Von Neu York sind aber doch schon Nachrichten bis zum 9ten Februar, mein leztes mal der war vom 9ten Januar. Onkel8 vertrößtet mich auf nächste Woche denn der Wind ändert sich. So will ich denn immer fort hoffen, aber meine Stimmung ist doch sehr gestört. Selbst dir zu schreiben wird mir schwer, auch dünkt mir ich habe weniger mitzutheilen als sonst. Von Karsten hatte ich vor wenigen Tagen einen 8 Jacob Oppenheimer.

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Brief. Sie bereiten sich jezt in Züllichau auf die Festtage vor. Lottchens Aussteuer ist vollendet; und sehnsüchtig sehen sie unserer Ankunft entgegen. Ich habe die Abreise von hier ungefähr auf den 8ten April festgelegt, den ersten Aufenthalt in Berlin werde ich vielleicht etwas verkürzen um nach der Rückkehr von Züllichau mich etwas länger dort aufhalten zu können, dann werde ich wie du weißt bei Keibels9 seyn und denke mir daß der Aufenthalt in ihrem Hause vortheilhafter für Oscar seyn wird. Ich werd mich aber doch in Acht nehmen müssen Gustav10 nicht zu beleidigen, Sally11 wünsche ich auch so viel als möglich zu sehen. Neanders muß ich auch nicht vergessen. Die Kleinen sind wohl aufgehoben bei Caroline und Henriette auch denke ich werden sie sie mir nicht verziehen. Aber schwer wird es mir doch werden die Kinderchen zu verlassen, wovon Hamilton besonders mir so innige vertrauende Liebe zeigt. Der kleine Junge ist schon seit einer Woche aus der Schule geblieben, er hatte ein etwas entzündetes Auge wobei ich ihn der rauhen Luft nicht aussetzen wollte. Indeß ist es jezt so weit wieder gut daß ich ihn vielleicht Morgen wieder schicken werde. Oscar dem ich grad schrieb und mittheilte was Hamilton sagte, schrieb ihm sogleich ein kleines Briefchen noch den selben Abend was doch wirklich süß war. My dear Hammy. This is the first letter I have ever written to you. Beg dear Mama to read it to you. Kiss Rebecca, Norman, both Aunts, & Mama Felix, Aemil & Clara for me. I hope you are better! Did you have any pain? I will bring you the picture I promised you. God bless you my dear Hammy. Your loving brother Oscar. 16th To day we go to the ball at Hessens. I will give you a description of it afterwards if it is worth while. But I am not in a humour to enjoy myself, for indeed I am getting very very anxious for a letter. I want even more than a letter I want my boy himself. How I will bless the hour when I can press you to my heart again. Dearest dearest Frank. Now I begin to count the months when you leave the South. Only two more after you receive this. That reminds me of house matters. Let Elsy sow the carpets and everything else which is about the house, and might get moths, for instance the blankets you do not want tightly in a coarse a ∆ sheet, the same in which they were when you came home the last time; let her put tobacco in as usu[al] ∆ 4 worth will be enough. I wander what you will do with your horse? The other day Mr Cogswell called upon me. Dr Julius brought him. A letter you had given him he seems to have lost. Allthough the name was quite familiar to me I could not at all remember who he was, or whether he had made himself agreable to you. He only meant to remain in Hamburg two or three days, and therefore I 9 10 11

Family of Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, Berlin, brother of Francis Lieber. Sally Jacobsen, Berlin, related to the Oppenheimer family, married to a wealthy merchant.

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could show him no ­attention which indeed in my situation would be difficult at any rate. – ­Chateauneuf also has been to see me, he was delighted with Norman, he has sent me a letter for you and a book containing plates of some of his works.12 The book I shall have an opportunity of sending to New York by a young man who goes as mate of an American vessel from here. I shall direct him to take the parcel to Heckschers and Heckscher I shall write a note telling him to keep it until your arrival at New York.13 The young man is the son of Burmester, Papa’s former partner, and he will deliver it safely.14 From Clara15 I have had a most pressing letter, wishing me to come over to her, they are anxious to defray the expences if I will come she refuses to join us in Hamburg. It is therefore possible that I go over for a fortnight on my return from Berlin, but I have not yet made up my mind. Then I may perhaps take Rebecca & Norman with me. Hamilton I wish to keep at school as long as possible. Dearest Frank, it is so disagreable to have to decide everything myself. I wander what you would like me to do! Oh for my boy, my boy! I like to be here; but I like better to be with you; much much better. – Chateauneufs letter I will send you the next time there is nothing particular in it. Caroline & Hart, dear girls, have given me a new dress for to night. It is a gold colored crape beautifully embroidered with velvet leaves of the same color. Over white satin the effect is very striking and as the body is made so [sketch of a female body with a wasp waist and showing much cleavage] and makes me broad where I should be broad and narrow where I should be narrow, you would be quite satisfied. In my hair I shall have white flowers with green & a little gold, white earrings & pearls will complete me. Aunt Malchen says I must certainly dance. We will see! To Morrow is ­Edwards16 birthday, so we have asked permission of the teachers to let the boys come home and celebrate the day. – Carry has been in great trouble for some time past, her Heidelberg servants are all going to leave her.17 17th In a few moments I expect my Oscar. It is Edwards birthday to day and we have asked leave 12 13 14

15 16 17

Alexis de Chateauneuf, Architectura domestica, London Ackermann & Co., Paris Brockhaus & Avenarius, Hamburg Meissener 1839. Heckscher, Coster & Matfield; Charles August Heckscher, New York. Johann Heinrich Burmester, Wandsbeck, stepfather of Amalia Schoppe, had been associated with Georg Oppenheimer. See TNA C 13/2347/68 Murphy vs George Oppenheimer and Johann Heinrich Burmester. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber in Leominster/England. Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. Caroline Lomnitz had kept her parent’s employees when she and Henriette Oppenheimer had left Heidelberg, the retirement residence of her parents, and moved to Hamburg in 1838.

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for the boys to come home and spend it with us. Carry & I have just returned from a search of a few birthday presents for the lad it is his 14th birthday. Oscar will also give him something. I danced a good deal yesterday evening and Carry says looked as well as any body in the room, but then you must make allowances for sis ∆ tion. However I was myself aware that I was well [4] I looked my best, Aunt Malchen was quite delighted and gave me several proofs of satisfaction. Carry says my neck looked first rate yet. My little hair dresser girl had arranged my hair and flowers extremely gracefully. My dress maker a perfect clue in her art who works with a confidence and talks with a precision, remarkable in her sphere whose talents are in great demand amongst the theatre belles and who knows the ins & outs of a ladies shape and the requisites to a nicely made my dress in good taste and I had every reason to be satisfied with the tout ensemble. Caroline too looked extremely well and I only regretted that by her not dancing, she would not be seen so much to advantage which also I mean her not wishing to dance made us go home sooner than we otherwise should. At 2 OClock we were snugly in our beds again. Charles Parish told me that Mr Cogswell had come to Germany on old Asters18 account. For the sake of purchasing books for a library. Alas, if that had been your task my Frank. And now I can put no faith in a man who chooses for such an ambassy a man like that, cold, stiff, heavy, prosing, when he might have gained one like my own, my own dearest best Frank. Oh if the world would but do with you as you merit! The fai ∆ is you are not common place enough, you are too good for them. But hope shall not forsake me. There will yet be brighter, better days for you, God grant they come soon! Now let us think of our meeting again, and this then a question which I beg you to answer forth with. Would you prefer me to arrive at any other port than New York? Charleston perhaps better not in case the fever should be there but would you prefer Baltimore. Indeed if you think Charleston will do I have no objections myself. Then I would ask you when I should leave here. These things ought to be soon planned at least if I am to have the benefit of arranging matters after your pleasure. Gosslers19 I think are acting strangely. I will however make one more call, and then with the consciousness

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John Jacob Astor; Cogswell chaperoned Astors grandsons and took them to their boarding school in Dresden as well as ordering books for the Astor library he managed. Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler.

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of having omitted nothing resign myself to my fate. Young Gossler20 was at the party last night, he is engaged to a very nice girl.21 Perhaps I shall see Sophia Mason now Oehlrichs at Potsdam. She is now living there as her husband is Prussian officer. I will tell you more about the party and my observations in my next letter. The rest of my day is Oscars. God bless you my dearest boy. Be not angry with me for this magere Brief, ∆her how long it is since I have had a cheering word from you. I trust ∆ days more will bring me one, and then I shall be happier and write ∆ – I write this a few hours later Oscar has come home, he looks blooming & ∆ – but, my heart has become heavy, heavier than it was. Within the last two hours [cross-writing, 4] I have received your letters XX & XXI. My dearest Frank you can not know how you have written to me in them particularly in the first which from the beginning to the end shows me nothing but displeasure. I greive that I have given you cause. God knows it is not willingly I ever do any wrong, and many many evils would I rather suffer than the thought that you are angry with me. My Frank I know my letters can not always satisfy you for how much must you require in thus seperation from us all. It is not that I have not the will. My poor poor boy, that you have such a wife! Indeed I wish I were [cross-writing, 3] otherwise. I can but say again and again. I will try to be better, to please you to make you happy. I have written to you for a long while part every fortnight regularly and I can but feel convinced that now you can have had no similar cause of complaint for several months. This must comfort me and my resolutions for the future must do the rest. And do not think I feel angry with you that you have scolded me. Oh no! My poor Frank. With so much to put you out of temper I can imagine how the long delay of my letters must have worked upon you. I too had been five weeks without a line when these two came to day. How anxiously did I open them and now how I have wept over them. But pray pray be just to me. I have lately sent a parcel via Bremen to Charleston directed to Trapman. This was done before I received your order not to send to him any more. Do not think I disobey you in this. There have been several

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Wilhelm Gossler. Margarete Elisabeth Donner, Altona.

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[cross-writing, 2] instances of the kind which makes me mention this. So then I must not take Oscar to Züllichau. I am very sorry for this. I have promised it and all are so pleased. I will take be very decisive about the Latin. Oh! I wish I had never left you. I fear when I return you will not give me the hearty wellcome for which my soul longs. I have been several times to the Dentist about Oscars teeth. He will do nothing to them. The front teeth have returned which were missing when he left America. I have spoken to a Phisician about myself. The best Phisician in Hamburg, he thought nothing of my complaint & satisfied me. – It is too bad indeed with that horrid box. It was still in Charleston when you wrote. How distressing that the 2nd volume of your book should have so many misprints I feel how all this must have acted upon you, and I do not blame you.22 Only I have wept over your letter. I am glad that you will try to have those printed copies cancelled and get a new edition. The thing is too provoking. My hearts best treasure. Oh love me. I can not live without your love. The plant will wither if its sun does not give life and vigour. I wish I had never left you. Preserve your health, cheer your spirits, kiss your wife and your children. God protect you. Be my good husband. Your own Matilda Single Via Havre & New York Mr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Franco Aux Etats Unis Stamp Le Havre 21 MARS 40 Stamp Bureau Maritime 22 MARS 1840 Stamp New York ship Apr 19 22 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

No. 47 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 05.03.-07.03.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 05.03.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XXV I am very well and enjoying your good things – dearest, dearest, gentle love. Columbia S.C. March 7. – 1840 Thursday March 5 when I have one lecture at 7 o’cl. in the morning only; so I thaught to do much to day; but I wished to see first whether I had no ­letter. – none – but I found the box at Cuningham’s. I have sent Jim Ruffin to fetch it. Do you believe that I can do anything until it is arrived here? If you do, you err. Do you think I shall be able to do anything after it has arrived here? If you do, you err likewise only one thing I hope, that no liquids are in the box; for it could hardly be believed expected that a second box could arrive under such circumstances without damage. Nous verrons, as those of our editors continually say, who Know no French. # My ever dearest Matilda, Verbubangt habe ich gestern allerdings, aber es war eine so schöne Bubangerei, u ich dachte recht glücklich an dich schreiben zu können, but this morning I recieved the double letter from you my love and Oscar, and find in it that I have been lieblos toward you in one of my letters, that I have “judged harshly” of you, and what burns still more on my conscience is that you will yet recieve a letter, alas, I am afraid worse than the one you speak of. My Matilda, my love, my dearest Matilda have a little patience with me, and consider my situation, not my loneliness, but the loneliness with that harrowing idea of being banished from all and everything that my dearest I hold dearest. I say, be patient, and alas, that grieves me just so much that you are so good and beyond expression generous. I am sure, you have done all in your power; nay, nay, write love again, not for your comfort but for mine, and, I conjure you by all that is sacred to you, donot feel constraint, but easy, free and freely loving when you write. Think that when I wrote that letter XIII, that I had been put up in my room ever since the first of October, and even before, that my mind always working, is now peculiarly so, because thinking of you all and you are distant cond consider that not having any exercise, my body became fretted, and not receiving any impressions from without, I worked out, if I can call it so, every thaught, which otherwise might have remained but a single thaught, a passing one, farther and farther. Yes my Matilda, among the good things, effected by your journey will also be this, that I not being able to stop the effect of any unkindness on my part by merely applying to you, and, I will call it by the right name, impose upon your generosity, I feel to how hedious Lieblosigkeit is. It is right I am made to suffer

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_049

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so. Oh! could I nevertheless, hurry, by any sacrifice, this letter to you, that it might arrive before the ugly one. Poor, generous, loving heart; you who with an unparalleled devotion of soul have never shown even a flaw of selfishness, who took pleasure in my admiring other women, that you should suffer from him who should acknowledge this in comparable goodness and from whom you should recieve and reap nothing but comfort and Kindness. I felt it well, my dear Matilda, in reading your lines, that I cannot do without love, without that comforting feeling of pride in of me which your letters have breathed so far. Again, I implore you write freely. I find some comfort in the fact that the day before yesterday I sent a letter to Boston with the preface, title &c of a little book for young readers, to form part of a publication in which Story, Wash. Irving, Ed. Everett &c take part, and that I dedicated to you, thus: “To the best Mother I Know”,1 I did not want to print your name, nor your initials, I thaught this more delicate and, indeed, carrying greater weight, for everyone may easily find that it must be you, and that I want to indicate you, since, were this not the case, surely I would not be stupid as publicly to say, that I Know a better mother than my own wife. It agrees better with your character and altogether, I donot like much these family love epistles in dedications, while this one to you is strong, stronger than which I could not make, though slightly veiled, and without this slight veiling I could not have spoken so strong. In short I Know you will be satisfied; will you not? If I add that I say it from the depth of my heart, I hope you Kiss and forgive my rashness; indeed, I Know your inexhaustible Kindness has long forgiven you me. I will now speak of the box. Soon after the above lines were written, it arrived. Not one thing spoiled or broken. Thousand thanks to all, you, Caroline, Harr. and A. Soehle, who, as you wrote me sent the paté, when I had forgotten who she was; she blessed like the Roman Unknown and Unnamed Deity. And what a blessing that little pot proves; and the pot so sweet, reminding me in this stiff, positive, dry country, of the Greeks who could not produce a single lamp, cup, or whatever it was, even for the commonest use, without furthering, ornamenting; I allude to the wreath of wine leaves and grapes around it. I distributed the things to the servants, although I had a great mind not to give that flagrant apron to Elza, for it will really blaze too much; it is not proper for her. However I wished her to have something, and then you sent it, so it went. Upon this I admired those little sweet Kegs with prunes, and the lovely champ. Carries. Sweet little children

1 Francis Lieber, Great Events, described by distinguished historians, dedication “To my Wife. The best mother I know”.

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of that blackeyed widow.2 And when shall I drink dear Hart’s Hock. Speaking of wine, I should feel compunetious if I did not declare, avow and testify that every thing has lost taste in this my solitude – I have not even yet found a heart to open the first box of petits pois, and think will leave it them until I celebrate (ah celebrate!) your return – except wine. A bo Much as I have ever valued wine, I do declare, it has proved the most generous friend in this exil of mine. I have clung to it; it has increased its powers; oh! it is a lovely thing, that wine. – Having unpacked &c. I made a plan to enjoy some of these things. So I resolved to take a hard ride from 1 to four o’clock, and than being [2] hot and fatigued, enjoy some things. So I did; rod hard, admired and brought home some fine blossoms, and first of all changed stockings and put on the delicate slippers. You Know how much better a dinner tastes to me, on a warm day, when I have pumps on and the feet cool. Than I washed and dined thus: A piece of your sour goose – admirable and what geese those must be; upon this some sausage – which is perfection – with salad; then some prunes, which Betsy had cooked very well, than I opened that mysterious little box, die Schaale mit der edlen Pastete, all the time moistering with the sparkling wine of Caroline and a dream of Bachus. Then I took a glass of Curasseau3 with some of those cakes in the handsome tinbox, old acquaintances of mine. Upon my soul it was a royal dinner of a republican. When I was smoking my cegar, Elliot sent to look at 4 boxes Engl., German and French books, just arrived for the library. I was overwhelmed, and taking home sundry grave and potent quartos, I also took home a beautiful edition of Rabelais and of Beranger with engravings.4 And read and – thus I spent the day, This morning I recieved the double letter often looking at Oscar’s map, which pleased me much, so his drawings. Elliot, who took his Germ. lesson, carried them off to show them to Bet,5 “to incite her”. I thank you much for the scenting paper it is very fine. One thing in that box grieved me – the letter from Busse, because he calls you: Frau Doctorin, and Sally whats her name? calls you Frau Professorin. Heavens, how do these nasty titles come to stick to my dear wife? And How in the world began it? I 2 Reference either to Caroline Lomnitz or to the champagne label, Lieber favored, Veuve Clicquot, widow Barbe-Nicole Clicquot who had taken over business in 1805. 3 Curaçao. 4 P.J. de Beranger, Oeuvres completes, 3 vols. Edition illustree, contenant 120 sujets nouveaux graves sur bois d’ apres les dessins de Grandville et Raffet, Paris 1837? 5 Betsy, daughter of Prof. Elliot, Columbia/SC.

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hate it, yes hate it outright. Your friend Sally must take much interest in your affairs, beyond your own person, that she asks, almost, who I am. Yet, I care not, I like her letters; they are at once firm and so girlish, I like them vastly besides, it is evident, they breathe love to you, real affection, and would please me of course greatly were there no other ground. But will you to remain a few days at Berlin? Oh, now I remember her name – Jacobson – and I assure you, I did not look at her letter. – The letter I have recieved today from Oscar has pleased me much, very much – that dear boy. I am ready to cry whenever I think of him. Dreaming as I do sometimes in bed, I before I sleep, I often think; if I could go to Europe, I would take him, by a pony for our things and him to ride now and then, and go with him through Thuringia. Good God, how I would live in those days! I have enjoyed every word, every expression in his letter, and anticipate the greatest pleasure from the Christmass letter, which you promise. No XIII of yours, of which you speak in the letter I have recieved, has not yet come to hand, but I find by the papers that there is a whole fleet of packets at the Banks. Hecksher6 had written a few lines on it, through which I find that the cegars which I recieved, and which I thaught were those, which Gustavus so nobly asked Möller to send me, were sent by Heckscher, to puff away üble Launen. I consider this very handsome; & especially if you remember that when I was at N.Y. he gave me a box of the very finest cegars, such as a connesseur, like my myself alone can value. Pray tell me in the world how such people as Bachelor Hesse7 get the Americana,8 and why – So you wrote me that a fellow passenger of yours on board the Rotterd. steam boat had said he had it. How, in the name of Mercury – I suppose he being the god of cheat is that of authors too – do they get it! Truly, I think it would not only be natural, but dutiful in the said rich bachelor, to think and feel convinced and penetrated that said Americana is a sublime work, that the author cannot have made money by it, that there is absolutely nothing which equals so much to the acts of a great and good monarch, as if a a private person’s aiding the cause of letters, that this aid is sweet, oh so sweet if it comes in shining clunk, that some 10 or 15 000 mark more or less is nothing to him, and a great deal to me, for 20000 M.B. would be no trifle. Only think what we might do for 50000 Mark. Why we would be almost independent with an 100 000, certainly with 250 000, at any rate with 3 or 400 000. – To-day is Friday, and I write this between my lectures, because I wish I to send it to-morrow; I dont care for the postage, so that you have a letter, which will efface the impression the last but one must have made. My dear Mat. as far as 6 Charles August Heckscher, New York City. 7 Hartwig Hesse, Hamburg merchant. 8 Encyclopaedia Americana.

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it is possible prevent chilblains with Oscar, it is partly owing to these repeated chilblains I doubt not that Germans have such monstrous feet, enlargement of the toe joint, and all the trouble connected with it, in short every thing not belonging to what in a horse is called a clean foot or joint. – Saturday. If I felt sad, very sad yesterday, I do so still – more-to-day; I feel zerknirscht, for I recieved this morning your XIII, ending with Dec. 20. While I was rudely, coarsely scolding, you wrote this incomparable letter, yes, I call it incomparable for its richly gushing spring of love, its even and lovely tenor, the detailed care with which you give me an account of everything, the modesty and meekness [3] with which you cling and repose on me, the fervor with which you cling to me, the pure style, which is but the natural reflexion of a pure and intelligent mind, ardent yet not confused feelings, and a loving desire to do good to a distant friend. Matilda, I donot speak in an overflow of feeling, but calmly, you are the truest, best wife of any that I Know from personal Knowledge or from history, you are far the most generous and all, all I can do, is to ask your pardon for all offences. They are great, I Know it but too well, I have been ungenerous; oh! I feel with pangs, but my only hope is that God will grant me time to make amends. Good God! Perhaps you recieve that bad, ungenerous, unkind and hard letter, when you are still farther from me, and even at a distance from your beloved sisters, when you want most comfort, when – it drives me almost mad – I shall make you cry weep, and perhaps this very letter will be opened by her I love best, who clings to me, with fear, instead of trembling joy, with which her noble soul would be filled at the arrival of every letter from me, were I not so gross and coarse. I can say no more; I feel too strongly, and fain would I put the letter aside to resume it at a calmer hour, were I not anxious that it should go to-day, that a burden may be weighing on my soul may be a little lighter at least, and that, before all, the bad effort of previous letters may be counteracted. Could I but recall and cancel those letters! But so we are. The sweetest loveliest flowers are offered by generous love – we trample upon them. The tenderest looks beam upon us from affectionate eyes, we make them weep. The truest hearts but beat glowingly for us; we grasp and cramp them rudely. You stand before my eyes like the gentlest shepherdess with your three gamesome, happy lambs; and I like an ugly wolf, prowling and disturbing. – I will answer a few points of your letter, but only generally, because if I read it over once more, it will totally unfit me to write to-day. Alas, my best wife, when you praise me, you often do innocently pray what is worst for you. My lively imagination, entertaining enough, when entertaining; amiable, when amiable, is that very thing which

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when unpleasantly touched, sees not only but one thing, but even this one thing, farther and farther, increases and swells it, and – makes me so unjust. If I could erase from Oscar’s mind the remembrance of any scene when he has seen me unjust toward you! So soon – as his years will bear it, I shall unburden my soul and tell him in a solemn hour, how I have suffered from my own injustice, and that I leave it as his most sacred to him to make amends for his impetuous, heartless father’s faults. – The more you write me about Mr Busse, the more I am pleased and convinced that it is a great blessing for our beloved boy to have been sent there. If Busse only loves him very much; I doubt not he does. I see with the greatest pleasure that your uncle9 is really like a father to you. You say: he told me I must write to you a very full account of Christmass &c”, it sounded so paternal and spoke directly to my heart. How happy might we be if, as sweet Oscar expresses it, we would live again comfortable; that is to say the word Again is to be left out if my feelings are to be expressed. I am glad indeed, more than that, that you have re-entered upon a true standing with Adela, a relation in which mutual want of affection forms the soil of living flowers. Let them not droop again when separated once more for want of kindly watering them irrigation by frequent communion. – Again and again, I implore you to write me frankly – long if you feel disposed so, short and hasty, if circumstances thus require it; of love if you feel so; of the children’s dress say prattling if you think of it – anything but with freedom; for love without the liberty of the heart is a rippled, sickly-colored plant. Pray forget everything about me, except that I love, honor, cherish you as my life; more, as its best principle. – How could you call your letter a scrawl, when it is the neatest letter, and of the largest size ever written? I find it difficult to single out subjects to write about, not, alas! as in one of my last letters, but because there is but one thaught and feeling in me: adoring love, but one word for me lips: pardon gentle soul. – When I said yesterday I had no relish for good things, I said too much, for those you sent me delight my palate, and as to Aug. Soehle, tell her that her name is coupled in my memory with such amiable mark, that she she could have hit upon no better means of all the art of memories, to make me never forget her name then the little pate. I believe it will be best to send no more edables, for it will be too late. As to Oscar, I am afraid you will have to shorten your visit too much if you take him. The expense for Charlottes10 wedding present you must regulate. Let it be decent and for us liberal, that is all. You Know our expenses will be very great considering our means. I pray again, donot stay too long at Gustavus’,11 for 9 10 11

Jacob Oppenheimer. Charlotte Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber, Züllichau. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin.

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­various reasons. Give a had handsome present to Clara12 &c. Arrange it so, that you go after having been a few days at G’s13 into the country to – here upon my soul I donot who, which, what, where – some cousin or other – and then on your return with the others. I should wish you to stay at Keibel’s some days; I wish it much. They are truly good people and, for your heart’s sake, you must ramp over old rumps with Sally14 – […]. I shall copy your sweetest lines respecting Sally Newton. Goodbye, Goodbye. Your Frank [4] March 5. This moment my boy I find several peas in blossom. Is this not very early? I wonder when they begin to bloom in Hamburg. In the beginning of May? Your little prune tree near the fence, you recollect, thrives handsomely. You know, you told me it was a wild prune tree, and begged me not to pluck it out. The little tree is now doubly dear to me. I foster it well for my Oscar’s sake. But there is a garden better than mine here; in it are three flowers so dear to my heart, and a gardner, kind and loving, takes care of them; oh! that I could delight my eyes with beholding Garten u Gärtnerin, die Blumen u die Blumenpflanzerin; denn die Blumen sind meine Buben u die Gärtnerin ist ihre Mutter. March 7. My beloved son, I meant to write to you in this letter something about our Constitution, but I cannot because my heart is so full since I have recieved your letter, which has rejoiced me, your maps in the second box, together with your drawings and to-day a long, beautiful letter from your dearest mother. Oscar mark what your father says to you. I know many ladies, and have read of a great many wives in history, and among these are many excellent ones, yet never have I known one equal in sweetness and generosity of temper, love to her husband and children, and kindness of soul, to your beloved mother. I give it then as one of your most sacred duties to you, my dear boy, to love, honor and cherish her, most tenderly and without any doed of interruption. My dear boy your letter pleased me very much; do you know what hude at the end of so many names of villages around Hamburg means, as Winterhude &c? If not you must ask your teacher. You make a few strange mistakes in your letter, yet strange as they are you repeat them. How do you come to say: half a past 4 o’clock? We say half a thing, not half a past. You write always morast, that is German, the English is morass; you write dansing, it is dancing. You say nothing great has “passed by”; things pass by, for instance, but events only 12 13 14

Clara Lieber, daughter of Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, Berlin. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. Sally Jacobsen, Berlin.

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pass. Passing by, means before your eyes, or passing you! but passing means to change from the present into the past. You ask whether I have recieved morngown, slippers &c. Yes, and how fine they are. pray my Oscar take as much care against chilblains as you can, they deform and frequently ruin the feet; because the deformity causes pressure of the boots. My dear boy I wish so much to give you some pleasure, but how can I send anything from here. Sally Newton latelly sent me a little parcel, tied with a silken cord, of which I send you a piece in this letter. Beg aunts Carol. and Harr. each to fr attach to one end any little heavy purse ornament, and then use it as a booksign and it will remind you of your aunt, and your father. Oh, my boy it is so balmy for a parent to feel joy and pride in his son. You ask my forgiveness, my boy, for all you have ever done wrong. I had long, long forgiven you, and if I could but see you, you would see that there is in my whole soul nothing but love to you. Learn heartily, and my boy, constrain yourself to learn those things you donot like; it is all important for everyone, for you in particular. I thank you that you have not forgotten the sunset prayer – sweet boy. I see you love me yet; love me always. Good bye boy. Kiss Hammy and Norry. Your father FL [cross-writing] Preston wrote me to-day a letter of such utmost unbounded confidence I dont know what to make of it. A degree of reliance which can only be placed in a man of whose honor we hold ourselves specifically assured. Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne ∆ + red sealing wax

No. 48 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 08.03.-19.03.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 18.03.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 8 pages No XXVII March 19. 1840 No letter. Organ still going!! March 8. I will be outrageous, and take of the old love-letter paper, for having sent of late many letters in quick succession, I donot mean to send this so very soon, yet it if so, I shall have, at least, wish to write much – therefore this ridiculous paper. My last was sent by yesterday, so if you have that and no No XXVI, know that no letter is lost my dear Matilda. I forgot the exact number. It is Sunday, and for the 3d time since last October it rains, and we praise heaven for it. When you write about dirt mud in the streets, bespattered calves and high-borne petticoats, it sounds like news from third a distant world, halfforgotten. But then to be sure, I soon remember that unfortunate native city of mine, as to weather. It is remarkable wh with what regularity one can taken his daily experience here. But I remarked it in Italy too and remember having spoken of it to Niebuhr,1 that I felt like an emancipated slave, not being continually obliged to think of how weather is in Germany, as to dress, plans of parties &c. – If that medal which was struck in Berlin can be baught for little,2 I wish you would bring one for Elliot, for I know he would greatly value it, and has taste for the fine arts – in short on his table it would be placed as well as anywhere in S. Car. Then you bring me one, is a matter of course. If the price, in any comparison to its excellence, which I know will be great, is very small I would bring several, for they this medal is a fine present from me, a Berlinois, to people to whom I may be obliged. Is it in copper?, for then I know it will be beautiful. – That Miss Sieveking, of whom you write me, ought to whipt! Good heavens! Are there these meeting-busy-body-philanthropic-pestering women in Germany too? I thaught we had that ugly breed here only. But dont you remember Matilda how often I have said, that, put woman in a public place, and tear her out of her proper relations, and they she becomes the cruellest, most unprincipled, intriguing creatures at once. I have spoken of it under Woman in my 2d. vol.3 What imprudence! Either she knows nothing of these matters, and than of course it is the height of imprudence to make propositions about it, or she does Know the details of criminals, and then! God have mercy upon her womanly character. Write me whether this Miss Sieveking is not a lank, dry, 1 Barthold Georg Niebuhr during their stay in Rome, 1822–1823. 2 Medal in honor of the Reformation started by Catholic cleric Martin Luther in 1517. 3 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, vol. 2.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_050

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bony, Calvinistic – perhaps spectacled, sort of a spinster. I am sure she is; if not, if she be fat, I dont hesitate to pronounce her a hypocrite in the bargain. – My Matilda do you then not remember that I have said a thousand times that the rattling noise of an alarm-clock might easily and ought to be exchanged for musical box. I always said so; but that auto-igniting taper is an addition but not new (Except – and mark! – if they are made in Germany or Geneva, depend upon they will all the time be out of order, after the first 20 times) You know I donot rise early. What a pity we are not Buddhists for then we might add to that machine the morning prayer, and turn it with the increased velocity (and consequent intencity) of improved machinery which would out do all the turningpart prayer-mills of that sage sect. – I have written this moment to Mary,4 the first letter to her since her marriage. It was a strange feeling, I could not bring myself to it. I love her too much not to feel unbehaglich at the thaught of know her heart being given to one I donot know at all. I feel, as though something sacred to to me was given into the hands of somethi else stranger. How sweetly, generously you write about Sally.5 I candidly believe that there was never a more elevated soul than yours. Others have done the same from dullness, want of affection, what you do from intensity and devoation. Matilda – it has come to a bad pass with me. I cannot any longer write to you with any degree of intensity, that I must not get up and walk about; so excited becomes every nerve of mine. I suffer dreadfully, and did not Luther allow two wives to the Landgrave of Hesse? (In the which by the way I think he missed his calling terribly – old gemman!) – A propos, Elliot said the other day to the me: Since the days of the apostles; since St. Paul, Luther is the greatest man of the church, and St. Austin is the only one who approaches him. “I am very sorry I cannot somewhat reciprocate respecting archb. Cranmer, the great gun you know of the Engl. Church – a man for whom my respect has lessened with very many details of history, as I learned them. He has done some shameful things. But what do you care, or need you care about Cran[2] Page 2. (If this is not in style!) Cranmer; – About your return, this, in time, so that you fairly advise with uncle Jacob, on those points which donot involve money matters. It would be hard, if you could not see Clara,6 but, to speak candidly, with a poor cash of a professor the question will be, how much does 4 Mary Appleton Mackintosh, Washington/DC. 5 Sally Newton née Sullivan. 6 Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England.

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it cost? If not over much For the whole of from Oct. 1840 to about that time of 41 will be necessary to pay off expences in Germany, pass our return &c. At least I think or fear so. But if it cost not overmuch, and Harr. would accompany you, I wish you could go, and stay 2, 3, or 4 weeks with Clara, 4 weeks, alas, will be much as if robbed from Oscar. The advantage would be also this that I can than expect you with great certainty. In that case I believe I would prefer a Lpool packet to a steamb. for they are horridly managed, crowded &c. and you know very dear. All I want of you, is, to be in N.Y. by the middle of Sept. and not before, according to fair calculation. Now if you dont go to Engl. the question is whether there will be good, sound, and sailing vessels, not creeping ones, by that time, or whether it would not than be by far the best to go by steamer to Havre and thence by packet. I think that would be well. Baths can easily be taken in Havre, and acquaintances always go from H. to Havre. – You have no idea with what difficulty I speak of this subject – my throat is all the time drawn like a purse. So I will hasten and finish it. Should there be a fine vessel at Bremen for N.Y. or Baltimore, I donot Know whether you might not start from thence; the difficulty only is that one never can depend on what he hears of a private vessel. Everything is always excellent, Capt. clever. The merchants themselves Know nothing about it, and the owners think ther always their vessels paragons, or, cannot well say; It is an old crazy box. I almost think that the Havre tour would be the best provided you donot go by Engl. Debate matters well with your uncle,7 and keep always in mind that, as far as that can be fixed, you ought to arrive toward the end of Sept. I must be by the 5th of Octob. in Columbia, which is the first Monday in October. – Oh, let me rest; it is too painful. # I am glad, my dear girl, that you did not send the goose-breasts, for to a certainty they would have been spoiled by the long waiting in Charleston. But, if ever we should live again in N.Y. or Phil. how many good and delicate things we would have for some fine suppers or small dinners, those pieks of civilization, if spiced with intelligent conversation. – All you relate in your letter of the beginning of December of your uncle8 is touching, very much so; and I feel very grateful to him; but – my dear Matilda – will not your relations laugh at you for your plaguing them with my hasty and jumbled letters? How can they feel an interest in these lines which have value only by from our mutual personal interest. However, I have that is for you to decide. I wonder what I wrote that delighted so much and so many, for instance Adela. I tried to recollect, but I cannot. – Yes, pay Perthes, and take a recieted bill, with the items of and up to what date, mentioned in it. # do not, I pray, forget to ask Gossler9 whether 7 Jacob Oppenheimer. 8 Jacob Oppenheimer. 9 Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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he ever paid a bill drawn by Mittermaier,10 as I begged him. – I hope you donot speak against Dr. Julius, for although a person may be disagreable to us, we have no right to speak it sharply against him, if he has done nothing wrong, especially if he is in some sord dependant, as I believe Dr. Jul is # you have never written me whether you made the woollen part of the foot bag. It has been so warm here for the last weeks that there is no possibility of my wearing the noble morning gown, which is greatly admired, and not the least so by me each time I put it on. – How are Adela’s children? You say: Adela likes me again. Has she ever been really alienated from you? James11 will be here as in the States as he writes me by June, therefore he will be in Hamb. before autumn as you think. # Dr Ellet dined with me to-day, Sunday; I made up nearly a whole dinner of German niceties. Pray write me whether those pate’s are made in Hamburg, or come from France. It would much increase my respect for Hamb. if they were. Thousand of my warmest kisses. [3] Page 3. Monday Morning, before Faculty Meeting. Every beginning of a month, you ought to say thrice and with peculiar Innigkeit: Poor, poor, poor Frank. For I have then to write the one hundred and seventy monthly accounts of the ­students, which, alone as I must do the work, is very tiresome, and, in so far laborious, as I must all the time constrain my mind to remain with the mechanal labor, else, as I have actually done, I make blunders. Were you here, too we could do it very quick. But $ 200 is too much for me at present, to allow throw away, and – Matilda I kiss your lips while I say it, and I want you not to say a word – it does my heart good to think I do it by way of penance for my unkindness to you, because they will go toward defray, your journey. But, dear me, why so, I may as well consider the money as going to defray the expences of the horse! – This is a solemn day, in as much as Francis Lieber Esq of S. Carolina has put on boots for the first time again ever since last September. I have been of late looking it at Aretin’s Staatsrecht der constitutionellen Monarchie, fortgesetzt von Rotteck, that book is one of the class; which I believe enjoys the highest reputation in Germany.12 There is much application in the book, and an ­honest endeavor for Law and Liberty, but how much more I Know about these

10 11 12

Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg. James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Johann Christoph Freiherr von Aretin, Carl Friedrich von Rotteck, Staatsrecht der constitutionellen Monarchie. Ein Handbuch für Geschäftsmänner, studirende Jünglinge und gebildete Bürger, 2 Bde. Literatur-Comptoir Altenburg 1824–1828.

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things than all these people! How very mistaken they often are, and ignorant of the practical play of political elements. I frequently make the same remarks when reading German works on on ancient history, especially on antiquities. I have the advantage of enjoy the three advantages, rarely conjointly enjoyed, I have some talents, I am imbued with European continental knowledge and I have lived for many years as practical citizen in this remarkable republic, where I have seen every nerve and artery laid of politics laid bare, and, at the same time, am acquainted with the leading men citizens, in an extent enjoyed by very few natives indeed. I never knew so distinctly how very superior my knowledge on that part of politics is, until I read Aretin. Matilda, my thaughts in my musings have of late fast concentred to-ward one point. If God should grant a removal, if God should grant a European expedition, do you know that I believe I should spend some time in Portugal? To do what? I should collect materials to write that brilliant, noble romantic period of Henry the navigator, the discovery of Cape of Good Hope, settlement of India. It is a glorious subject, and I believe never treated before, in the manner I propose it. What a field. The reviving spirit of inquiry, conquest of Constantinople, news braught by travellers from Asia, geography studied every where, or cosmography as they called it, every where stirr, the Turks pressing from the east, and Spain and Portugal fighting against the Turks. There, that most noble prince Henry, full of ardor to conquer land and knowledge, surrounded by learned men; inventing the astrolabe; than the gradual conquest and discoveries, the judicious settlements, and finally the woundrous tales of the east by the returning mariner and soldier and the inspired Camoen’s. Oh it is a glorious subject, the soil and climes of the theatre, the peculiarly romantic character of the seafaring knight – at least to me it is infinitely more attractive than the land crabs of knights – the beautiful degressions I could make in the Portuguese cities compared to French & German city charters; the sh study of sciences, philosophy, my most adored Aristotle, the influence of Ptolemy’s geography on our Western race, the descriptions of the vessels, the stir in little Portugal when the adventures return, a degression on the trade of the period, into all details; how they managed matters, drew &c. how vessels were fitted out and the who became adventurers in the profit, thousand, thousand things, and all surrounded by the balmy air of Portugal of the glowing sun in the east, and the chivalrous poets of the times – Stop, stop, stop, I say, or I begin to write that beginning even now. But I would not write that work unless I could go to Portugal, to give if possible new things from archives. You know how easy it would be for me to obtain the best official recommendations. But, what do I talk about it. Silly dreams! Still I say that the book should be at once a learned one, and one that every one should be delighted in reading. I must prepare myself a little for a lecture. Goodbye.

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[4] Page 4. Dateless, is the day, when I recieve naught from my love like the dateless desert. Oh, how beautiful a pun! No packets in! of about one hundred packets hailing from the port of N.Y., but 5 were in that port a week or so ago. Our times are horrid. Hamilton13 has lost terribly, but will come up again. I beg you, my Matilda, to get for me through some friend, if it does not give much trouble, a copy of the papal bull, issued last December or Novemb., against every traffic in negroes!14 No doubt a translation has been given in some periodical or paper. Keep it until you can bring it. – Elliotts have recieved a large organ from England, and this moment the organist of, sent for from Charleston is here putting it in order and turning it – and such a howling. I have said too much to Mrs Elliot to comfort her, when she said that the organ would make a devil of a noise – (she did not say “devil?), so that it would be perfidious in me now to say much, but upon my soul this was yet wanting to make religionisticism agreeable to me! The day before yesterday I finished a letter to Preston, probably to be printed on international copyright law.15 It took me two days, and let me tell you I purposely read nothing upon it in order to write – short as thin must be – quite unencumbered, and I had that mental comfort and aise d’esprit which I always have when I intellectually produce, strike out new paths I then dined at 4 o’clock fine dinner compound, of your sweetnesses. It was so fine, and Hart. Hock! Is it not Rudesheim or Liebfrauenmilch?16 I should think Rudesh. Write me. I then rode to Hampton’s Woodland17 to see his glorious Monarch, a horse imported from Engl. – a most noble racer.18 Went with him, 13 14

15 16

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James Hamilton Jr. In supremo Apostolatus fastigio, official letter by pope Gregor XVI from December 3, 1839 in opposition of slave trade. Although published in the USA by US-American bishops assembled in Baltimore, the public ignored the papal epistle. Francis Lieber, On International Copyright, in a letter to the Hon. W.C. Preston, New York 1840. He indulged in his delight for German white wine, produced in the vinyards of either Rüdesheim or Worms where since the early 18th century the famous Liebfrauenmilch was produced by only four vinteners and considered as one of the top-range wines in Europe. Woodland plantations founded by Wade Hampton I in ca. 1786 on the banks of Congaree River at Gills Creek, in 1835 after his father’s death the Woodlands were left to Wade Hampton II who renamed it Millwood Plantation, today enlisted in the National Register of Historic Places, 409 Old Woodlands Road, Columbia/SC, Richland Co.; nothing of the original buildings still exists; the remaining house was erected in 1896. The stud Monarch (born in 1834) had belonged to the Royal stables of King William IV and sold to Wade Hampton II. See American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, vol. 9, No. 2,

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to take tea. Miss Hampton is very pretty, and looks good and modest, and has, what I believe is peculiarly fine and frequent in America, more so than any where else I think – delicate, wellshaped, dark and distinct eye-brows. Rode home in moonlight – the hermine perfuming the rod road in many parts. # Sunday, heaven Knows what date! I know it is far advanced in March. If ever man was poorly favored by Mercury, or whoever else may preside over the post office establishment, it is myself, I think. Yesterday we had the news braught by the Great Western, which brings us information 45 days later than we have had. Had she braught me a letter, I might Know how you all have been up to the latter half of February, but my news only goes to the threshold of Christmas ever. There I stand like a boy longing to get a peep into the lighted room, and feed my soul with the happy faces of the souvereign felicity of childhood, but I cannot obtain a sight! I have been at the door for weeks! And to Know as I do, at the same time that there are a number of letters floating, yet that vessel of all, which arrived quickest, unfortunately brings me naught. We had yesterday the News of little Vick’s marriage.19 How solemn, and noble that service. Victoria will thou obey, love and cherish him?” May God bless them, may they be happy and have as fine a prince of Wales as our Oscar is. It is the best I can wish them, and I do it in honesty, that however with this salvo, that, loving England better than her queen, and liberty best of all, I cannot in conscience wish them, without limitation, a prince of Wales supremely clever, but I wish me a boy supremely clever. For give to a monarchy like England a monarch like Frederic, or Henry of Bourbon, and bitter times would be the the consequence: Sad, high and working, full of state and woe. Since things, however, in all probability will not be very strongly affected and the broad course of history not very deeply influenced by the wishes of a professor of history in Siberia, we may calmly close this chapter on Victoria and pass over to that of Matilda – whether the first of whom comes make a second, I donot know; but I do Know the second could make a first, and every inch of it (except that Victoria’s beautiful hands are praised. Come, come, dont be angry, I did not marry your hands, nor ever fall in love with them. Worse still. Dear me! I assure you I feel qu queer, having joked. By and by I shall become like a Mr Adams, with whom I lived in the same inn in London. Before he delivered himself of a pun, it worked in him for 5 minutes like calomel;20 then he began

19 20

1837, p. 89. URL https://books.google.de (31.1.2017). The wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha took place in a chapel of St. James’ Palace, London-Westminster, February 10, 1840. Calomel, Kalomel, Quecksilber(I)-chlorid, medicine prescripted to cure all kinds of illnesses from infections, syphilis to indigestion.

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to restlessly to move his Knees. At last the pun came, and than, poor old man, he could not restore the equilibrium of his soul, after the exertion for a long time, and laughed and grinned at least for 10 minutes.) – I am unfortunate. When I feel sad, I donot wish to write; when I write, I soon feel sad; For I think of our dreadful life here without Oscar, God!, and how you will feel here, having tasted life again! And that, I must pronounce it, it seems to me that the chances of rescue lessen. Still, there is one comfort within me, and that is, I will not remain here. Old Astor is the only chance which looks to me like – what? probable? Oh no, but decently possible. – Pray Matilda tell your cousins if they are do indeed belong to the class of Eaters and not Gulpers, to which nearly all men belong, that I found yester-day, after a pretty hard ride of 26 or 7 miles in 4 hours, that Pat.d.f.g.21 is by no means which develops its whole perfection, if eaten, as is usual after the main meal is dispatched, but before. I was hungry and thirsty. So ate a piece of bread just to take away the vulgar edge of appetite, without influencing the taste, and to produce greater capacity of keen taste, than, I just washed down half a tumbler of claret, and than for Mad. Soehle. Oh truffles! Oh Strasburg! Oh Gooseliver! Oh blossom of civilisation! – When were the p.d.f.g. invented? Who is that benefactor of that mankind, their Inventor? And his descendants not peers? Gracious! What is gratitude! – of the various experiences, which I have made in my life, one entirely unique, was yet untried until within a few days. I have [5] now gone through, and I defy any man to Know the least about it, if he has not experienced it. It is unique I say, namely living in a house but thinly partitioned from your neighbours, in which an organist is setting up and tuning an organ for three livelong days from 8 in the morn to eight or nine in the eve, and the whole ending by the neighbours’ playing upon it from 7 to 11 o’clock in the evening in extacy, that the thing at length has been joined and doeth pipe. By all the tromboons ever blown or to be blown by the thickest checked angels! it beats ten times the pleasure, when a man over your head is learning the viloncello. That I Knew from experience; but this, oh holy Caecilia, thou Knowest I love music; thou Knowest I love thine own organ; thou Knowest that it has often times pressed my heart corely, but this was to enough to make a very Plato raving made mad! Oh, most holy music, how hidious art thou, when turned into a means of annoyance, instead of blessing! Like woman, so sacred when pure; so hideous when hideous at all! Like a paté d.f. gras, which, if spoiled at 21

Pâté de foie gras.

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all, smells enormously; like an oyster, lovely when sound, but how awful when spoiled! Like a companion, a collaegue, the greatest blessing when kind and sensible; the greatest curse when a jakass; “like a letter, so dear when from beloved ones; so infamous when people at the distance thank you for a book of yours which you have presented to a public library, and make you pay in addition double postage for that vote of thanks, as happened this week to me. Ergo, no book of mine will be presented in future to Cambridge Library, near Boston! Prepare yourself Matilda for that organ! Last night, however the pleasure was double refined. The students you know are peculiarly noisy on Saturday evenings. Last night they had got two fiddling negroes, who played Yankee Doodle while the organ heaved its long and repeated, groaning sighs. Oh it was exquisite. Have you ever seen Kotzebue’s Kleinstädter?22 You remember the scene when they fiddle, sing &c from all windows? It was nothing to my reality here. – I must stop, I believe; for I am sure, some day this week I shall have 4 or 5 letters from you all at once. Therefore, Goodbye. Since I wrote began this letter, I have read another work on polit. Law; a French one, and very good, but again I say, I Know all this ten times better, and never Knew how much I know, before I Knew that these books are considered every good authorities on the continent. – For some reason or other, I really donot Know why, the students have applied of late to me at a boring rate for subjects. You Know the Seniors speak in the chappel, besides that all students speak in their societies; than those who prepare themselves for honors. In short every now and then some one comes: “Doctor I would thank you for a subject.” It is not easy to find one just fit for 10 or 20 minutes speachyfying; their calibre, or on which we have books in the library. Still you may imagine I do my best to satisfy them. – Trapmann’s daughter was lately asked by her father to get ready for the theatre: “Papa, I have given up to go to places of public amusement.” And upon inquiry the father finds that his net daughter to is engaged to a minister; arranged by Mrs Trapmann, a very “religious” woman, while he was at the North, and informing him of nothing. That is American Religion; American Dutifulness, and American conscienciousness of a minister! Fye, upon their gross hypocricy, or if it be not that; heathenish ideas of religion, which makes them forget the most sacred duties, sever the dearest ties, and, not heathenish, puffes them up with conciet and pride of being better than all the rest, toward whom the very obligations of children are weakened or des distroyed. Do you Know that I can observe that there is in some men an unpleasant feeling that I should have written a book so pure as has been said in morality, and I not “a Christian”. We 22

Die deutschen Kleinstädter, comedy by August von Kotzebue, first performance Vienna 1802.

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have had most silly, and according to my opinion most blasphemous sermons about it. – ­Hooper, the professor in Stuart’s place, is the weakest, stupidest ­fellow I ever knew in his position. An egregious fool; and ignoramus! And why was he elected! Because, forsooth, he was a minister! Oh it is beastly! D ­ isgusting!  – Save me, save me! My soul dries up! My Gall is poured into my heart! Oh, save me! save me! – I was this moment out of the room on most important buseness – ­derecting a claret sago soup; for the first time of your sago. Your Bremen cookery book says the sago must boil 3 hours. Nonsense! The French Dict. de misme says ¾ of an hour.23 Now how shall a poor professor decide between these ­authorities? Some dishes I Know full well when while once I was Pommeranian rifleman. I decide for the French. I have succeeded to inspire Betsy with a perfect enthusiasm, by praising and blaming, justly mixed. So she does herself consider her honor endangered when she sends me a heavy loaf, Knowing she can bake so well. We have succeded to boil the prunes most admirably – quite puffed up. Our sago seems to succeed à merveille. Twice has she been over with a spoon full to show the state of things. These are important matters! I have compoused a dish which is truly great: “Dinde aux olives et apples. The turkey is first roasted, than a stew made of the finest parts, plenty of fresh butter or, turkey’s own fat, plenty of onion, olives and – ah! There is the great genius! a tea spoon ful of p.d.f.g. yes madam, why do you not find in any cookery book this simple means of giving the lustre of Truffle peerage to a chicken, a turkey, anything by infusing some drops of blood of this the first baraon of all dishes – p.d.f.g. Noble Letters! The very initials of civilisation! How imperior to all your S.P.Q.R. yes even to your [6] Page S.P.Q. Hamburgensis with your four Burghomasters in the bargain.24 My dear Matilda what I wrote some time ago about eating, appetite &c was true, but is no longer, for the various niceties, the very combination in which I may practice my gastronomic skill, the variety by which I may in a small degree 23 24

The Liebers owned several cookery books; perhaps he referred here to “Cuisine, Nouv. Dictionary de Paris, 1826, see Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 413–433. S.P.Q.R. famous abbreviation of Senatus Populusque Romanus = The Senate and the People of Rome. This ancient inscription demonstrated the power of the true sovereign, the people, the City of Rome, and the Roman Republic; the abbreviation S.P.Q. Hamburgensis adopts this concept; the inscription as proper expression of Hamburg’s constitution, ­image, and self perception as a city-state is put on most public buildings within the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg built in the 19th and early 20th century.

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interrupt the monotony of my dinners, the patriotic associations connected with some dishes, for instance the Methwurst – all these pay contrebute to make my little dinners more agreable. To-day being Sunday, although cool, I shall drink one of Caroline’s little dears.25 I suppose you will not say, what a sensualist. A sensualist is every one that has senses worth being a sensualist, and since senses belong to our veriest nature here, I will enjoy them, as I enjoy hock at the Rhine, before I go to Italy to enjoy Raphael. Woe, who is but sensualist, indeed he is no sensualist; but on the other hand I do maintain that every finely and delicately organized ind Natur (the Engl. nature does not express it) dir finely distinguishes it between taste and taste. Yet a manful soil will not complain if it has not fine things, nor be prevented from doing noble things. As to complaining I mean if there are but plain and decent things. A man might indeed have a right to complain were he obliged to eat daily with the country people here their beastly bacon with greens – unhealthy, barbarous and slovenly poor, from no other reason, but indolence # March 17. Again and again I have been disappointed; vessels are in, but they bring no letter, I am sorry, and worst effect of this tantalizing and daily disappointment is that it unfits me for free writing, at least for that disposition in which the writing is but a necessary and delightful consequence. – I am unfortunate as to writing. When I am sad, I donot wish to write, when I do write I soon become sad. I think how I drag you back here, where, oh it cannot be denied so much is withheld from us. Sweet Caroline exclaims in the lines, which she wedged in, in your letter: Oh if it were not for that far, far separation from those we love so dearly! – Alas, does she exclaimed so? She who has still many beloved ones around her. Let her look at us. No souls who sympathize with us; no community around us with which we wish or can desire to assimilate ourselves; no garden where we wish to plant a tree that may shade our children; no people among whom we wish to leave our ­memory; no church where we wish to prostrate ourselves in fervest devotion – no state that has any endeared recollection and association for us – Let me stop. It makes me too sad. I finish this letter – at least I think I shall do so, b­ ecause I have to send a letter to Mr Preston and shall add it to get his frank. – The organ now absolutely goes the whole day, sometimes well enough, sometimes Betty26 practices. It is a trial, “I can tell you” as Oscar says. And how will it be when all the windows are open? – A brief Commentary upon the Lord’s Prayers for Queen Victoria. An ancient sage has said: “ There is no royal road fo to knowledge”. there is no royal road to God either, oh queen. This prayer is the common prayer; the saviour, not of the rich alone nor of the poor alone, not of the white 25 26

A bottle of champagne sent by Caroline Lomnitz from Hamburg across the Atlantic. Betty Elliott, daughter of Prof. Steven Elliott, College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC.

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or the dark, not of England or Europe, not of the crowned or the s­ ubjects, but of all all, taught it to all. Thou needest it, and every part of it, as much as the humbest, the wisest or the lowest gifted. Thou beginnest. Our father, not “my father”, nor the “father of any country or tribe. When thou sayest: Our father” thou adressest the father of all mankind; thou art no less; but neither any more his child than the lowliest of the realm and he is no more; but neither any less the father of blessed England than of the distant islet in the vast ocean, or the bewintered region of the Arctic zone. We are taught to ­address God as our father. It is an address resting upon a simile, for father means originally a human relation, a procreator, yet of all human relations which rest of on the difference of authority, and in which there are superiors and inferiors, Christ has chosen that of father, because it unites with the authority, love and kindness and the deep interest of the procreator in his child. He might have addressed him by our other human appelations, he might have said: Our King, Our Ruler, Our Judge, our Maker, but he choses that which ind directly, indicates less power indeed, but also love and loving interest. He then, that is not only the ruler of a country, not only the ruler of the earth, not only the ruler of the universe, but who first createth what after the creation he ruleth, as only true essential sovereign, and who measures measureth the breath of each subject, and the obscurest smallest animal, even he wills us to address him as father. If he loves his children, that is the creating ruler, how mighty is the obligation for thee, but the created ruler, not only created by him as human being, but the creature of the law, as monarch, to love, to love generously, and to be guided by kindness to all, even those beyond ye thy realm; and not to seek to oppress or injure them, nor to allow any to be oppressed or injured as far as thy power reacheth. But he also comported likewise he is thy father too. God is not the father of the weak and poor alone he is the father of the rich and powerful too, but likewise their judge. He will assuredly love and bless thee, if thou art good. He will as assuredly judge these [7] if thou art wicked or negligent, hasty or indolent. For he is the the father, “which is in Heaven”! thither his children will follow; There no earthly crown can protect; nor can those enter the mansion of their father that are not fitted for those mansion. If thou prayest at allowed by thy name thy will be done on earth Kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, r­ emember that his name is hallowed and kept holy when we seriously dwell upon his name that is his attributes and live accordingly: His name is Justice, Love, Liberty, Truth, Light and Righteousness. He is the God of Knowledge, of bold in-

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quiry, of civilization, of pure taste and elevated literature, as he is the God of the hungry and the naked. Thou prayest that his will be done? Oh Victoria, his will before all is that man his own image should on this earth enjoy and establish liberty freedom; that men, from generation to generation, form one society, and should love one another, not only those that live, but those who have past away and those that are to come, so that what the former have established we should cultivate with respect and gratitude vor them, and with loving providence for the latter. Thou art the monarch of the noblest Kingdom, and shouldst bless God, in each prayer, that he has placed thee on a throne, propped indeed but also surrounded by law above thee. His will is that princes, although placed supreme on earth, should not on that account act without control, for not their will is to be done, but His, and the good law is his will. Not their temper, or momentary desire, liking or disliking shall rule them, but His will. Not the advent of their Kingdom is prayed for, but of his Kingdom, but his Kingdom consists among other things in the great institutions of freedom. Victoria, thou art a woman; yet the laws of thy land place thee on the throne; remember than thou sittest there not that thy Kingdom come, but God’s. Pray that he col close thy womanly ears against flattery, and elevate thy woman’s heart above resentment, for not thy Kingdom’s but God’s. – It Is it unneccessary that thou prayest for the daily bread, or mayest thou in fairness pray less ardently for daily bread? Kings and queens have been dethroned and suffered want and misery. God avert it from thy innocent heart head. Still, remember, that thou art but a feeble mortal like them; remember also that God must bless the choicest as the sim commonest dish, if it shall do good; remember thou prayest for daily bread, that means for sufficiency in thy state; pray not for oppressive riches; they for a higher and higher revenue, but be contented with what is fairly given, and when thou hast recieved it, thou canst not consider it as well spent, what God has bestowed, if thou does not spend it judiciously and kindly, not arbitrarily or wickedly. But when thou utterest the prayer for daily bread, remember before all that thou prayest: Give us our daily bread” not “Give me my daily bread”; thou, when thou kneelest before him, prayest with and for the meanest child of the dark and unhealthy lane, of for the poor child in th worked down by labor eare it tasted the sweets of childhood, for the maiden who, starving with her parents, stands on the brink of losing her last and her best, her virtue, because she has not her daily bread. Thou prayest not sincerely, if thou doest not all, all as far as in thee lies, to bring about that the object of thy prayer, else thou wouldst only desire to make God the partaker of thy indolence. – What part of the prayer which issued from the Saviour’s own lips should be more truly prayed offered up as by a monarch then the one in which we pray to be forgiven as we forgive not those only that have trespassed

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against us, but even those do that do trespass. Not that the law should stop; let every one meet with his true deserts, but remember not personal injury, interpret not into personal injury, what was not meant as such; be generous; think not because thou belongest to the weaker sex that thou must revenge the sooner to show thy power; think not thou art placed on that thy exalted throne for thine own sake. Thou hadst no merit. Re The Monarch How unjust when the monarch revenges, what was done to the private man! Men did not give power for that purpose. Yet it is most difficult indeed to have power, and not use it, if we believe ourselves offended in whatsoever capacity this may be. For The monarch it is the more difficult because he finds so many persons ready to do as he bids; and most so for the female monarch, who cannot have all the Knowledge, because she cannot pry into all various branches of life so as easy as the male monarch may do. And for this reason pray most fervently: Lead us not into temptation”. Favor truth around thee, not flattery; for thou mayest indeed in some cases indeed think that thou actest most justly, and yet perhaps with crying injustice, because thou didst not originally take care sufficiently care not to be lead into temptation, by discouraging disagreable truth, and, perhaps unconsciously, favoring those who ministered to their personal capricious likings or dislikings. Thou prayest: Deliver us from evil”, but Kings and subjects of all periods have acknowledged it that the prince’s greatest evil is the flatter, the prince’s greatest blessing a man who says the truth. Oh, how many monarchs have bitterly wept at a later period over the ready compliance of those whom they had placed around themselves; how many have blessed from all their heart strong manly and pure opposition, as Henry of Borbon blessed his true friend, faithful servant, [8] and for that reason, at times unyielding opponent. Amen. Thy situation is high, alas! very high, thou Thy duties are numberless, without the aid of God, thou canst not sit upon a throne with fulfil them, with his aid, be strong and confide in him. – All this ∆ to me when I read yester-day the Engl marriage service in the Engl. Common Prayer book which I have, you know, with reference to Victoria’s marriage, and some how or other it was in my mind, and wanted to be given birth to. – So! There is the letter filled. I kiss thee a thousand times. I try to remember what there is in the letter, and in spite of the large sheet I remember nothing. So pray excuse me; and consider I have nothing to write, but what I must spin out of my own brain or heart, nothing occuring arounst me, except now and then a mouse caught. – Our peas are so /----------------------------/ long already, is this not very early? I am quite proud of my gardening. Perhaps

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you dislike my having written my the paraphrase of the Lordsprayer in the letter. I might, you think perhaps, have written it more decently in the Green Book. Well excuse me; I love you, and so you may as well take that coming from my heart as something else. But I am sorry that my dear boy has thus been cheated on of his space, at I meant to write very much to him. My boy I kiss you so tenderly. March 18. This is my birth-day;27 I had calculated upon a letter; but there was none. It rains hard; I have been obliged to copy part of my letter to Preston, no copyist to be had you know.28 All this makes me feel very poor. So many thousand things are wanting around me, which make life so difficult to me. – I must really give up writing to the boy to-day. A few words I will write nevertheless. You have never sent me the that engraving of Retzsch framed.29 I write now about it merely that you donot forget bringing it back for I love it. Perhaps better not framed, all these things cost so much duty, and I or rather we must be really very saving. Few things turn out in a pecuniary way as one hopes, at least as a professor hopes. I kiss and bless you from all my heart. Your Frank. [cross-writing] Columbia March 18 My dearest Oscar, I meant to write a long letter to you to-day, but the paper was filled ere I was aware of it; so I will only tell you that mama wrote me your teacher had told her, that you loved us very dearly. I kiss you fervently for it. God will bless your loving heart. I love you too from all my heart. I have not yet the letter which mama said you would write after Christmass. It will be a festival when it a­ rrives. It must soon be here. Good bye my dear boy, kiss your brothers, mama and the aunts for me. Your ever loving father March 19 27

In fact Lieber had been born in April 8, 1798. For practical reasons his parents had celebrated the birthdays of their numerous offspring on especially selected days instead of keeping to the real anniversaries; Lieber gave as his year of birth 1800 instead of 1798; so his given birthday date (March 18, 1800) reflected decisions of his parents and his own will. 28 Lieber, On International Copyright. 29 Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch, Die Schachspieler/The Chessplayers, Etching and painting, oil on panel, 1831. The translator Anna Jameson who had visited Retzsch in his Dresden studio published her comment to this adaption of a contemporary memento mori, Faust playing for his life in Anna Jameson, Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, London 1834.

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I have copied those unspeakably fine lines of yours for Sally.30 Be not afraid that I cease to love Mary & Fanny.31 These letters pain me on that very account if they displease me at all, and also because they may write so sweetly. But they are not lively feelers, though I hope deep feelers. My dear Matilda one prayer: When you come back, donot always oppose me in trifles; believe I can see where it is reasonable or not; you have no idea how it unsettles me, when I know and feel, that of everything I say or desire first the opposite will be maintained. I take now the M.S. to the post office. Perhaps there is a letter, but this must go by in the letter to Preston.32 I kiss you from all my heart. – My true love to your sisters. Good bye. Why dont you write about Adela’s children? Thine own, Frank Stamp Forwarded through Gilpin’s Exchange Reading Room ad Foreign Letter Office New York Stamp Hamburg 9. Mai 40 Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemage

30 31

Sally Newton. Mary Appleton Mackintosh and her still unmarried, however, courted sister Fanny Appleton. 32 Lieber, On International Copyright.

No. 49 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 18.03.-22.03.1840 Included: copy of a letter of Alexis de Chateauneuf to Francis Lieber, Hamburg 12.03.1840 Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber, Eppendorf 28.02.1840 THL Box 54 LI 5070, ALS, 4 pages Zwischenläufer between XIX & XX Last date. March 22d. All well! Spirits health & Gods blessing upon us! Alter Freund Hamburg d: 12 März 1840 es ist mir eine recht innige Freude gewesen Ihrer Frau u Ihren schönen Jungen hier zu begegnen, da mir hierdurch der sprechendste Beweis Ihres Glückes geworden ist. Denke ich mir nun freylich, daß die Sehnsucht nach dem alten Welttheile & Vaterland Sie nicht verlaßen mag, so bebelehrte mich dagegen das englisch Sprechen Ihres Knaben, daß dieses Sehnen unter tiefem Verschluß ruhen müsse, u Sie unter dem aufstrebenden Absondern sich schon wirklich eingebürgert haben müssen – Ich beneide Sie wahrlich um die Entsagung Ihres häuslichen Glückes, welches Sie sich durch das zeitlange ­Vonsichlassen von Frau u Kindern auflegen konnten. So etwas wird von besitzlosen alten Junggesellen vielleicht am Tiefsten empfunden! Zudem ich nun einerseits Sie im herrlichsten Eigenthum weiß, denke ich mir auch daß Ihre Wirksamkeit bey der noch in den Flegeljahren stehenden Bevölkerung welche Sie ­anzieht die sey was nichts seyn müßte, vielleicht mit wenig Dank u Anerkennung verbunden, doch mit der festen Ueberzeugung, daß Sie das Richtige zu Erreichende den Leuten verhelfen können. - Sonderbar gehen die Wege der Menschen. Wenn vor fast 20 Jahren als wir vom Vesuv herab die Herrlichkeit der Welt überblickten, jemand zu mir getreten wäre, u uns erzählt hätte, das werden Eure Thaten seyn. – Vielleicht wäre selbst ich zufrieden gewesen, so viel, u so manch würdigen Verwurf in meiner Kunst bearbeiten zu können, so lange die Angehörigen im Wohlseyn um sich mich erhalten zu wissen, u so viel treue Freunde zu ­erwerben. – Seitdem Sie hierdurch, dem “heimischen” Adler entwischten, benutzte ich bald darauf eine stille Zeit in meiner Praxis, um in London, Paris, München u Berlin die Thaten meiner Collegen mit ­eigenen Augen zu beschauen. Ich lernte in 6 Monaten viel Uebung, u hatte das Glück als ich heimkehrte reichliche Arbeit zu bekommen, woran so ich eine freyere Entwicklung zeigen konnte, u von höchster Gunst der Geschichte kann ich sagen, daß Bauherren da waren, die mir gestatteten die Schwesterkünste der Meinigen anzurufen (von jeher mein höchstes Bestreben), u daß ein Künstler da war, der mir zu helfen; in mächtigen Schritten mir vor eilte. Es war Erwin Speckter, den ich nicht lange besitzen sollte. Mit seinem Tode

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_051

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v­ ersiegten auch die Quellen meiner Arbeiten, ich hatte nicht viel länger seiner Hilfe mich erquicken können. (Einige Proben meiner Wirksamkeit von anno 30 bis 37, finden Sie in einer Publication, welche ich Ihrer lieben Frau für Sie übergeben habe.)1 Noch hätte ich die schönsten Aufgaben in Aussicht wofür ich seit einer Reihe von Jahren dem Staate die mannigfachsten Vorarbeiten geliefert hatte, Bibliotheck u Schulen, die Beurse mußten hier gebaut werden, als, da es zum klappen kam, plötzlich, die Niederträchtigkeit der bürglichen Collegien u die Kopflosigkeit des Senats, mir diese Arbeiten entrissen.2 Der Standpunkt von dem aus ich hier wirken konnte war zernichtet, u ich konnte mich glücklich preisen, daß die Absicht mir eine eigene Häuslichkeit zu errichten sich zerschlagen hatte, denn um auf einen mir gastlichen Acker wiederum pflügen zu können, mußte ich mich zum Auslande wenden. England schien mir der rechte Boden. Seit 2 Jahren suche ich mich dort bekannt zu machen. Sie wissen daß das nicht leicht ist, doch ist meine Bemühung nicht ohne Erfolg geblieben, gar ehrenvoll sind [2] die öffentlichen Organe mit mir umgegangen, gar beide haben unverrichthet mich aufgenommen. Ja ich habe sogar das unverschämte Glück gehabt den 2ten Preis bey der Londoner Berufenconcurrenz zu erhalten.3 Gleich auf! ich werde die angelernte Schrift nicht verlassen. – die Theuerheit des Aufenthaltes in London läßt veranlasst mich nun vorübergehend dort zu verweilen, um so mehr da kleinere Arbeiten mir allhier nicht ganz ausgegangen sind. Und so fort. Mit herzlichen Grüßen von den Meinigen Ihr Chateauneuf. Da Oscars Brief vier Seiten füllt schicke ich ihn nicht gern mit der Post. Er wird auf Gelegenheit warten müssen. Er diktiert diese Briefe an Busse und schreibt sie nachher ab. – Abschrift eines von Oscar angefangenen Briefs Feb. 29. 1840 Eppendorf 1 Alexis de Chateauneuf, Architectura domestica, mit 19 Kupfertafeln nebst deutsch und englischem Text, London Ackermann, Paris, Brockhaus & Avenarius sowie I.A. Meissner Hamburg 1839, 12 Thlr. 2 He referred to the decision of the Hamburg authorities to dismiss him from the municipal building committee in 1841 StaHH 131-1 Senatskanzlei 33 C 123 Entlassung aus der beratenden Baukommission der Baudeputation 1841. Lieber and Chateauneuf had met in Rome 1822– 1823 and Lieber had stayed in the house of Chateauneuf’s parents in Hamburg on his way to London in May 1826. 3 1838/39 during his stint in London Chateauneuf had reached a nomination in a competition for a new London exchange.

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Mein lieber Vater. Ich habe dir so lange nicht geschrieben weil ich noch so viel zu thun hatte, bis ich nach hause kommen durfte. So eben bin ich erst fertig geworden, und werde am Nachmittag zu Mutter kommen. Diese Stunde will ich benutzen an dich zu schreiben. Ich hatte ganz vergessen, dir von dem Donner und Blitz zu sagen, am lezten Mittwoch vom Januar. Es war in der Zeit sehr warm gewesen jezt ist es Morgens und Abends kalt und es friert Eis; bei Tage aber thaut es durch die Hitze der Sonne, die immer höher steigt, wieder weg. Das schöne Wetter haben wir, so lange kein Eis war zu Spatziergängen benutzt. Wir sind am Sontage vor drei Wochen nach Niendorf gegangen, west-nordwestlich von Eppendorf, und alle Knaben gingen mit. In Niendorf ist ein kleines Gehölz; am Anfange desselben stehet auf einer Tafel an einem Baum genagelt, eine Inschrift, welche sagt dass man dort keine Blumen abpflücken und keinen Baum beschädigen dürfe. Ich fand verschiedene Arten Moos und Epheublätter und eine Lindenknospe, die ich für dich gemalt habe, mein lieber Vater. Bei dem Bäcker hat Onkel4 uns einige Pfeffernüsse gekauft und vertheilt, wie du sie von dem Deutschen Bäcker bekommen hast, aber viel knuppriger; wenn man sie ein wenig im Munde behielt, schmolzen sie; die in Hamburg sind nicht so schön. Nach drei Stunden kamen wir erst wieder; ich war so müde, wie ein Esel, der den ganzen Tag gearbeitet hat. Einen andern Gang machten wir am Donnerstag vor 14 Tagen; wir hatten frei, weil so schönes Wetter war. Wir gingen (8 Knaben und Onkel) nach Langenhorn auf einem andern Wege als sonst. Wir kamen über Fuhlsbüttel, einem Dorfe an der Alster. Vor diesem Dorfe sahen wir Männer, welche Steine auf den Feldern ausgruben zur Chaussée.5 Einer von ihnen erzählte uns, wie schwer diese Arbeit sei, und wie wenig sie dafür kriegten. Sie könnten täglich höchstens 2-3 Tonnen ausgraben, und die Tonne kostet 3ß. Einige Feuersteine (flints) waren wohl 2-3 Fuss im Umfange; diese werden aber nicht zur Chaussee gebracht, weil sie so scharf sind. Hierbei konnte ich es gut sehen, dass man davon Messer machen kann. In Langenhorn besuchten wir Herrn Burmester einen Freund von Onkel. Wir sahen auf dem ganzen Wege sehr viele Lerchen die sehr schön sangen. An einem Abend in der vorigen Woche machte ich einen kleinen Spaziergang mit Onkel. Die Sonne war eben untergegangen. Onkel erzählte mir grade von Lycurgus. Da hielt Onkel einen Augenblick ein. – With this the four pages were finished, as he dictates when ever he has anything particular to communicate to you, he does not write any regular letters, but merely as if in conversation. I hope this 4 The pupils called their teacher Dr. Andreas Busse “Onkel”, uncle. 5 Probably Oscar Lieber had observed the final touch of work on the Langenhorner Chaussee that connected several villages, todays quarters within Hamburg, in the 19th century still outside the city of Hamburg like Eppendorf, Fuhlsbüttel, and Langenhorn.

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is not disagreable to you my dearest Frank. March 19th I wish I could get over my melancholy feelings, since your last letters I can not feel happy again. The idea that I have given you cause for displeasure haunts me day and night, My poor Frank I wish you could read in my soul, I think you would guard against an unkind word even when I deserve it. And at this distance too where no kiss, no loving look can say; all is forgotten. That letter N. XX, I will not receive in your letter book, but the impression it has made upon me I can not efface. XXI was kinder and towards the end all affection again, like my own Frank, still it has not been able to cheer me. A gloom a heaviness lays upon my heart. It will pass again & my love will be a happy love, I am sure of it, yet for the present the pang remains. I have endeavored to dwell upon all that is kind and affectionate in your last, that it might relieve me; but ever the unwellcome thoughts return: He whom I love best in Gods creation has been able even to treat me with harshness. – I do not think I have been negligent in writing to you, certainly not willingly. I have always made careful inquiries from those who ought to have been informed while I still wrote by the steamers which I now have long given up. If I failed it was not my fault for I have witnesses in my sisters of my anxiety in gaining the necessary information. I did not think that those little throw between letters would have actually been disagreable if properly supported by longer ones, and those longer ones I am confident of having also written. I am sure that never twenty days have past without my writing to you. – But enough, perhaps even now while I am grieving you are contented with me; and even cheerful, and I would not make you sad when these lines are in your hands and I again perhaps enjoying in happiness & delight the fullness of your love in some overflowing letter. And indeed if it has done you good to unburthen your mind, even to scold your wife, my [3] own boy perhaps it is well that you did it and I too feel better since I have written the above. Shall I now fear your anger if I send you this one because it will not be a proper letter? Oh no! Remember it is written two days after my last and that I shall probably end it to morrow, though of course I cannot know how long after you may receive it. Be just, dearest Frank. I feel alas! your solitude, your many causes for being irritated and angry, all is clear to me and there is not in my soul one spark of anger to meet that which you have shown me, for I know that you are terribly harassed and that you have so little to comfort you. See Frank. I can love you with your faults, so truly so with all my heart and soul, I am not blind to them; can you not love me with mine and tutor yourself to meet them with less irritation? Would it were so though indeed I will strive

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to improve. – I was interrupted yesterday by visitors & perhaps it was well for today I do not feel so terribly oppressed. Give me a kiss my Frank be my own good husband again and never doubt me. No circumstance can ever change or lessen the love which I bear for you, though indeed there are some things which could break my heart. Give me my right, be true to me my own dearest friend, not only in deeds but in kindly words. – How I have dwelled upon the vexation of those many misprints you have found in your book. This is indeed enough to have put you entirely out of humor. I thought it was in such good hands and that your friend would take good care of it. Would indeed that the book publishers demands may not have been too great and that you may have had the copies still in hand cancelled. It is too bad after so much labor you should have met, with this disagreable result. I am anxious to have further information. Altogether I only hope I shall have a letter soon. You do not go with pleasure to the North this year? It is no wander that your patience is exhausted, yet let not your spirits droop. Even in our meeting again, there is not the anticipation of complete delight, for our boy must remain behind and the hopes which we expected to be realized before my return are no nearer to their fulfillment than they were at our seperation, and I too feel a pang when I think of all this; but not truly for my sake, a little for the children; but far far more for you, for you my own dearest are the one who fear requires a change, whose mind can not thrive in the atmosphere in which it is doomed to breathe. I can not believe however that this will last long, my Frank. No, God will be merciful and have pity. Something will soon turn up and there will be joy in our hearts again. Look with confidence to the future and let me hope that our meeting will be blessed by you, and let me not fear your discontent. I have a care at my heart that you will find much to reprove, much that I have omitted. But pray pray, consider my situation well and let me fly to your arms without this anxiety, for me, the worst of all. – At 3 OClock on Monday the boys came home and returned to school again the next morning at 8 ½. The offer was made to them to go to the play as Uncle Jacob had sent tickets; but they preferred remaining at home as it was the only evening! Oscar was completely happy. In the evening I read to him, and he enjoyed it. This also, is his evening amusement at school. Mrs Busse reads to him from some entertaining book. I was much pleased with his progress on the Piano, which now offers him pleasure, he said to me: Mama you do not know how much better I like it now. He is very fond of his music master and already plays a simple tune with two hands quite neatly counting at the same time with great energy. – I have sent you via Bremen to Charleston a map of the environs of Hamburg, so that you may follow the little chap on his walks. Something yet to clear me of one of your accusations, indeed I have never sent you any thing without first going to Perthes & Besser without to see

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whether they had any thing to send to you, and that parcel which you have received must have been from an earlier date than even my arrival in Hamburg for I called there very soon after and begged them not to send you any thing without first letting me know. Before I go it would perhaps be well to give them the direction for sending of the house in New York to which you wish them to direct. Ludwig Oppenheimer will with pleasure be your commissioner here, & I beg you to give up Gossler6 for I consider they7 have not been polite to me. Wilhelm Gossler certainly never called and I have seen him at two parties without his approaching me, to be sure he is lately engaged & probably is absorbed in his own happiness. It is true enough the social intercourse here is on a very stiff footing, perhaps less for gentlemen as they have their clubs & whist & smoking, but ladies have but few social pleasures. A lady who does not dance any more is still invited to a ball. There she sits on a mounted seat & looks upon the dancers, without a gentleman approaching her, good & well if she knows her neighbor, else she is doomed to perpetual silence. The dinner parties to be sure are rather better, if good luck gives you pleasant neighbors with whom you have the advantage of talking two or more hours without interruption. Your doom is fixed by the offered arm. But after dinner, Oh horror! The gentlemen first smoke then play it whist the whist playing ladies joining & the others are left to their doleful fate, relieved perhaps by a little knitting, no ­music! - The ball at Aunt Hesse I am told was a fare sample of a regular Hamburg party. In real elegance certainly not to be compared to parties in New York or Philadelphia, the first rate parties at least. The girls do not look near as well and stylishness is alltogether wanting, very little beauty indeed. I danced with Dr ­Benecke who is a favorite of mine. Matilda Benecke his friend as well as mine is a point of union for us. I met him again yesterday at Ludwigs8 where we dined and enjoyed a good deal of his conversation. Besides him I had a Mr Schütte, quite a passable man; - a young man from Peru with dark glowing eyes, & a non discript with a white cravat. There is a handsome woman here now with a beautiful bust,9 a native of Frankfurth married a few months since to a Mr Merck Hamburg Senator son. This fair one has a complete cicisbeo in a dark bearded spaniard, a former lover of the Spanish queen. In every party they are together the husband even allows them to ride home alone and the world has something to talk of. Her beautiful neck pretty much exposed was without a single ornament and really looked lovely. She and a little Altona maiden, quite young 6 7 8 9

Johann Heinrich Gossler. Johann Heinrich Gossler and his wife Elizabeth from Boston. Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Ernst Merck and his wife Johanna Anna née Borgnis.

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with an animated dark eye & a bud of a mouth, with the bloom of youth, her dark hair dressed low & falling in plat on the shoulder were indeed to the only real attractive figures. There was [4] one English girl who just reminded me of Mary,10 but an ugly likeness so that it gave me no pleasure to look at her. I can fancy what sensations that myrtle twig of Marys must have given you. Dearest Mary, may her doom be a happy one. I rejoice that she is truly in love. Try dear Frank to approach her husband when you meet, the pleasure you will feel in seeing Mary may perhaps make you devote yourself to her; do not do so at the expence of perhaps a pleasant approach to the husband. You know how delightful it would be, if we should ever in life be thrown more together – though there is so little prospect of it - if then there existed a friendly intimacy between you. That this could not be the case with Brooks certainly was a great draw back to the pleasure of our intercourse with her.11 And Sally’s husband12 had he lived would have prevented every approach to the little woman in whom you are now so much in love, and there would have been no watch chains between you. – How much do I wish that you & Mackintosh13 could like each other well. At any rate beware that you do not make him jealous as you most certainly did Brooks.14 – What you tell me of Matilda Willing requires a very decided fie!! from me. Tell me are you not quite ashamed! Do you know that indeed I consider her a very dangerous little woman. Quite dangerous for you. She has been the only one I have ever been a little afraid of. I wander how all will be when we return to Philad. Yes I say when not if. I will certainly not remain at home as I did when we lived there before & I feel the spring of life in me yet, & my boy shall not flirt away while I nurse the babes at home. I am just come down from a German talk with Hammy: Ja Mutter wann ich in Amerika, dann ich lebe mit du u Normy auch und dann Vater liebt mich – He likes much to speak German and in it his pronunciation is good, so that I am very certain there is no organic fault. – That 10 11 12

13 14

Mary Appleton Mackintosh. Fanny Brook. The Liebers liked her a lot but could not stand her husband. The painter Gilbert Stuart Newton who had died in 1835 had been very jealous and treated his wife Sally Newton née Sullivan sometimes unkindly at least her friends and relatives had considered the pair’s relationship as an “illfated marriage”. See THL Box 16 LI 2568, Eliza Buckminster Lee, Boston, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC 01.12.1842. James Robert Mackintosh, husband of Mary Appleton. Sidney Brooks, husband of Fanny Dehon Brooks.

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McCord should marry so soon again is truly degoutant. I am very sorry for it, for it makes one dislike the man, and these people were the only ones with whom one cared to associate.15 Do you know that Caroline makes sad complaints that I do not communicate enough of your letters because the last two I have kept for myself. The people all think that dancing does not agree with me, because I have looked so pale & worn these last days. They know not what my Franks displeasure can do. However I have brightened up now. All is right once more, and while I promise you to be on my guard, I will intreat you too to be on yours, & do not let me give up all my individuality. – My Adela was at the ball, but I could only talk to her minute, she does not dance anymore and was amongst the mounted ones. This is my day for her. The supper by the bye was exquisite. There are dishes made here so far beyond the sphere of American cookery, that the combinations could not even be imagined. jelly is every where the uniting medium. The professional artists on these occasions take every thing in hand and the house keeper has no farther trouble. – 20th I did not send this letter yesterday for on calculation I found I might retain it till Tuesday & it would still be in time at Havre to go with the Packet of the 1st April. I am in a great dilemma about my journey to Berlin now. Alone I do not like to go [cross-writing] for I really feel that I should be giving your relations no pleasure. Oscar I certainly can not now take with me, for throughout the whole year there are no holidays exceeding 8 days even at Christmas; at Easter they have only 3 days. Now though the examination also takes up a day or two and perhaps preparing for it a few more, still all this together would not approach the time the journey would take up. The little ones I can not take, the expense would be too much increased by having Rebecca & the children with me, besides that the fatigue would be too great for them, travelling two nights in succession. The mail goes in two nights & one day. – Put your mind at rest about the Latin and indeed about every thing you have desired. I have roused myself. They Hammy’s eye is better. Oscar wears boys cloths, made by a first taylor here so that they fit him accurately. Dr Busse did not wish him to be dressed otherwise than the other children. He has a great coat of rough material to wear ∆ his jacket in the cold weather which suits him well.

15

David McCord, lawyer, president of the South Carolina State Bank, editor of South Carolina Law Journal, was married first to Emmeline George Wagner, after her death married in 1840 to Louisa Susannah Cheves.

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I could not get him to wear gloves, in the coldest weather. He is fond of the bracing air! His missing upper teeth have returned. The dentist will not touch his teeth, not even that one which is so bad and which Blanding16 filled. – I shall wait patiently two weeks longer, if then I have no letter from you, with the permission to take Oscar to Berlin. I shall then go alone, for there [cross-writing, 2] is no use in postponing it. It would bring it too near my final departure from here & indeed I want to have it off my mind. Carry is waiting for me to make some calls with her. Adieu my dearest Frank 22d dearest boy. I press you to my heart. yesterday evening your sweet affectionate letters XXII & XXIII arrived up to the 9th Feb. Now I am happy again thoroughly happy. God bless you for those letters. Didn’t I know you would love me again, & how dearly! I would I could show you how rejoiced I am now. All is well. Glorious & now I can write again in the fullness of my heart. So happy we all are that the box arrived in safety & that you like the things. Yesterday I went to see our Matilda.17 To day I want to go again though it is snowing fast & the ground is covered two or three inches thick with snow. It is Matildas birthday & I want to carry her a trifle. Remarkable it is is how any body who has once seen you remembers you. Yesterday old Mr Hastrop with one eye spoke of you [cross-writing, 1] as a charming man. He said he once tried to persuade you to come to Hamburg, he saw you in London. Lieber war ein äußerst liebenswürdiger Mensch, said the old man of 69. It does my heart good to have you thus remembered by all. Frank dearest, how I regretted having said anything about the cross writing. How I wanted to read and read on in your letters of yesterday such heart soothing comforting letters. Thank God that you are quite well. That you love me again. Uncle18 with whom I dined yesterday Adela Ludwig19 & all the people were delighted that I had had such dear good news from you. How like you is Oscar he too can be made so happy by a mere trifle. A trait in the dear boy

16 17 18 19

S. Blanding, MD dentist in Columbia/SC. Mathilde Benecke. Jacob Oppenheimer. Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber.

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which Busse speaks of with great delight. Yesterday I saw the dear child. It was Sunday & Dr Busse had brought him in to see an exibition of flees drawing a little carriage & making different manoeuvres. He first however came to see me. Dear child he had brought Hammy a little snake of whalebone in a little box which he had brought for him. It is so sweet that he always likes so much to bring the children something home & thus lays out his pocket money. He is also so honest. I had bought a trifle for him to give to Edward20 on his birthday, which he being at school I paid for myself. As soon as I told him of this he was much pleased and immediately got out his purse to ask me how much he had to give me again, & insisted upon paying it himself or it would not be his own present. Such traits are valuable. I told Dr Busse every word you had written about the Latin. He is very sorry that you insist upon Oscars beginning it immediately. He says it would be different if the German had not been commenced. But gramattically as he teaches it to Oscar & anxious as he is to push him on the German first, he is afraid that no good will be done by adding the Latin to his studies already. Oscars disposition which is rather volatile, requires he thinks in order to steady him this particular attention to a few studies at a time only till he obtains in these a sufficient ease to make them interesting to him. Then something else may be commenced. He is himself a Latin scholar, & as he has now time sufficient, he has only been kept back from commencing with Oscar in the full conviction that it would ultimately be only retarding his progress. I made it clear to him that you too have your experience & that it is the result of this as well as of your sound consideration that no farther time must be lost & that Latin must be attended to. Thus stands the matter. He gave me as likeness in gymnastic exercises that if one begins to mount at once the swinging ladder giddyness is the result & nothing can be obtained whereas step by step one is sure to succeed. – The children all have kissed your sweet letters. I was bad I believe for those cross ones I did not let them kiss. Normy said I do love my Papa & I want to write a letter to him. Hamilton Ich auch schreib Brief an Vater. It is quite funny to hear Rebecca, Norman & Hamilton talk German together. We shall not be able to talk any secrets before Rebecca I can tell you. I wrote a note to Chateauneuf & begged him to ask Dr Wurm to come & see me. Thanked him for his present, told him how glad I shall be to see him again. Adieu dearest Thy wife kisses thee. I am sorry to day for thy poor eyes. Ever more Thy Matty Caroline & Hart love you dearly send you many kisses are so happy that the contents of the box pleased you. Adieu 20

Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz.

484 Single Via Havre & New York Francis Lieber Esq Columbia S.C. Aux Etats Unis Stamp Hamburg 24 März 40 Stamp Le Havre faded Stamp New York SHIP May 2

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No. 50 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 20.03.-03.04.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XXVIII Columbia S.C. April 3. 1840 I have Letters XIV, XV, XVI, all the sighs, lamentations, griefs and complaints notwithstanding to the contrary. That is I have the Christmass letter and XVI goes up to February 7. – Physician is written with a Y not I, as I observed sundry times some 6 or 7 years ago. Pour le reste je vous aime. F.L. Also Letter XVII. March 20. No letter whatever. Is it not astonishing, since Christmass Eve no news! I have information that the box with by the Franklin has arrived. I fear the arrival of the coat; for two things cannot well be more alike than the shirts you sent me and those old ones which are precisely like the one I gave you as a pattern I actually cannot wear them, so uncouth and pinching are they. I have never seen such piece of work. I hope this will be the last box, for the charges upon it, are again 6 $. I must pay 2 $ for the entrance of each box, I mean by way of commission small things ought not to be put upon the manifest, else they give as much trouble, and permits &c cost as much as that of whole cargos. I wish I had the box so that the receiving was over, fearing that I shall be actually unable to wear the coat. This is not unnecessary pretty, but it has turned out thus in almost all similar cases – March 21. If I were to embody my life into a Greek tragedy, I wshould make be obliged to make the Chorus repeat forever and ever the owl-like burden: No letter, and there was no letter! Mr Barnwell told me yesterday that Mrs Taylor had lately a letter from her son in Rome, here in Columbia six weeks after it was written – But week after week passes for me without news from those I love best, without comfort in my solitude. I had this moment a letter from Hamilton inquiring after his nephew.1 His letter begins with these words: “If I have not written you for some time I assure you it has resulted from no want of recollection of the kindness and friendship which I feel assured will always exist between us.” There is always feeling in that man, and God bless it, even though it should mislead him upon a time into wrong steps such as his letter respecting O’Connell was. Ten times rather this, than souls such as N. Appleton’s. A man might as leaf be acquainted with ­hag-stack – you know how long I have been acquainted with Sparks; he married Miss ­Silsby – rich accomplished &c. He has, I know it, true regard for me. Well, I took the trouble of going to Cambridge to pay him my visit. He was delighted, walked with me to the end of the village and – there it stopped, no cordial 1 James Hamilton Jr.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_052

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­invitation; no dinner – Hang their dryness. There I am every year at Cambridge Boston, a stranger, one whom they like and, besides Pickering, and perhaps Palfrey, hardly a single soul tries to show any degree of – I feel almost tempted to say, ­humanity to me. With Prescott I have become more acquainted; he has soul; in his last he addressed me: “my dear Lieber”. That sounds like a heart under the waist coat. – We have had 5 days rain, and if my box arrives in time at Charleston, I may get it by steam boat. – Hamilton writes me that next month he will embark again for England, to complete as he “trusts and ­believes” (the underlining is his) the negotiation for Texas.2 I absolutely hear nothing, not only nothing from Europe, but nothing from anyone. Story has not written; Greenleaf not; Sumner3 I donot know whether he has come by the Great Western or not. I read monstrously, but I am not in that high vigorous, productive state of mind, in which I feel so well; when sometimes I work steadily with the pick axe, some time soar on high. Yes my Matilda I might feel well, donot class me among the grondeurs; since I cannot act, I might feel content and happy if God would place me in a chair of international and public law, because I should have there the noble feeling of moving in a sphere where I am worth my price, and can freely stand my ground, the feeling that I am myself, that I see distinct, walk firm, that I understand the best before me, and am often original myself. But I donot see why I always tumble into this subject again. For the question is not, what might be, but what is. So much I know, should Astor4 found a German professorship and assist me, I shall faithfully discharge that duty (which would nevertheless but very indifferently relish, I mean the teaching German) and besides that create a sphere around me of my own, lecture on the above subjects to lawyers, which supported by old Kent as I should be, would be very feasible, and on historical subjects for a larger circles. Mais, pourquois tous ces chateaux? Good bye. Sunday. No letter. I dare say it is abundantly tiresome to you to hear this unceasing for burden, but it is far more so to me to sing it. Here is actually a whole quarter of a year elapsed that I donot know how my family is, and in that quarter of a year there was the fine opport. of a steamboat, or was there no proper opport. from Hamb? All I know is that I am very much disappointed to-day. I had yesterday a very severe headache, and the organ of the neighbours which went unceasingly until ½ past nine, when their negros in the yard began to sing, made me feel very wretched. I could not sleep, yet sleep was the only cure. This morning I rose at five, at ½ p. five I had saddled 2 James Hamilton Jr. was engaged in the settlement of Texas. In 1839–1840 he tried to convince European powers to accept Texan independence. 3 Charles Sumner. 4 John Jacob Astor.

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the mare and rode until 8; coffee tasted so well; I had thaught all the time the whole should be crowned with a letter, I had actually braught a bouquet for me, to stand and perfume on the table while reading the letter, but, unfortunately by all my studies I have not yet braught it so far as to read a letter without first receiving it. It’s a great disappointment. I wrote yesterday, to Fanny,5 I use your scented paper to perfume letters by putting a small piece in it. I think that is a sweet use I make of it. – They have formed a Statistical Association at Boston, seemingly very respectable – myself I consider one of the 15 corresp. members.6 – You say in one of your last: We all are proud of you. Matilda! “We all”! and proud of what? Say: I, and my ardeur makes me think of others too, or mistake expressions of sympathy of for reality. – If you donot write I shall stop my correspondence and restrict it to Oscar. I have already mentioned I believe that you must now direct letters to Heckscher.7 – I feel vexed a little that upon all my writing & entreating that some one should accompany you and stay with us, not even a denial has been sent. I think any respect, ever so extravagant if it comes from affection, is worth an answer. – I had several poems in my soul, but not receiving letters has the effect of thick-thawing weather upon them, they melt to nothing; this has been very often the case; hundreds of songs have I made on my rides, but they require the composure of gladness or sadness to be given birth to, not that ugly state of being disappointed and fooled day after day. If I could devise a way of hearing about the post office only when there are letters for me, I should gladly adopt it; for it has a very unpleasant effect upon a longing, ardent heart to hear day after day for weeks and months: “nothing for you”. For a long time I have gone every morning after breakfast myself, but I think I shall give it up. I feel so sheepish at the p. office. – March 24. Pacienza, Coraggio, Filosofia. Il Barbiere di Bostone.8 Yesterday, my love and life, I had your Letter XVI, which ends February 5, and brings me news that you had my letter of Dec. 22 already. This was rapid, but your XIV and XV are yet missing, that is the letter describing Christmass and another. How provoking! Still I am so thankful! You say that this letter XVI is nothing; it is, on the contrary perhaps the sweetest you ever wrote. It warmed and fed me like a fine wine sago soup on a chill day. Thousand thanks! And the good news of Oscar and the cunning of Norman, who extends the effect of animal magnetism so far that when he drinks too much water poor Becca waters the bed! Poor 5 Fanny Appleton, Boston. 6 The American Statistical Society, i.e. American Statistical Association ASA, founded February 5, 1840 in Boston; see Robert L. Mason, ASA the first 160 years, in: URL amstat.org (23.2.2016). 7 Charles August Heckscher, New York City. 8 Lieber quoted a favorite saying of his Boston barber Francis Ashton/Francisco Astorini.

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­ ebecca is very much in the position of some premiers that must take all the R ridicule and shame when their royal masters wet the bed. But here I must ­observe that I felt terribly ashamed of mine issue. What! for all the love and liberality bestowed by their most hospitable aunts upon them, they saltpetre and pickle their mattresses! It is a shame to the house of Lieber. Had I invented the art of pickling; as Boekle did, I it might be supposed the emperor Charles V, who so justly valued this invention, had bestowed upon all my heirs made the privilege to pickle everything whatsoever for ever, in which case he might have granted to my family the right of quartering the Brussels Manniken Piss, as the indecent fountain is called, in my coat of arms, but such is not the case, and the young lord must absolutely be injoined to appoint a sluice master over his fountains, by the penalty of seeing some neighboring quarter drummed upon, in spite of his excessive gentility and amiability. Gentleman indeed, in the day time and such a little black guard at night! I suppose there operates some instinct in Norman, telling him that all Irish hate dryness. Poor Rebecca! How can she stand being thus salted, even though it be by the dew of innocence! If Norman does not stop his wettish indisati licentiousness, he shall be called in future, by way of opposite, Master Stopcock, Fye! Fye! And poor Hammy has stood in the corner? Poor, dear little fellow! I wish I had a picture of him, on he stands there. But tell me how could you gather so much courage to send a child of your own to a woman with such awful name as that of Schlumpf. If but the thousandth part of all that Tristam Shandy9 says of the effect of names be true, she yet must be an awful woman. Schlumpf! Why I would not suffer such a name in the Commonwealth for fear of its drawing down the wrath of the gods. How can the Graces dwell in Hamburg while there is but one Schlumpf left. God Knows who did [2] settle the German names! I went to school with a boy of named Schuft, and when I lived in Berlin, a royal Cabinet order was published graciously granting that a man named Klutentreter might change his name into Rosentreter. – My Mattilina, I thank you for your comfort, your balm; it did me so much good, continue to give it. Yet donot believe I despond, or, because I write thus all my feelings to you, my grief has become garrulous. What do I do when I thus write to you, or rather pour out? I only speak to myself. Are wedded souls, wedded and intergrown in love, like the two coats of arms of two married high 9 The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman, novel by Laurence Sterne, 9 vols. 1759–1767.

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­ ersonages, represented by heraldry as leaning against one another indeed, p with a uniting crown over both, yet seperate and each for itself, or are their hearts rather like the two branches of a siphon, the contents of which remain always on a level, which ever way you may incline the siphon, even though though the one branch should chance thereby almost to be empty; the level remains always the same so long as God’s own laws of nature remain the same? I donot emptily complain, but you know “Poor people have a right to meeze”, have they not a right to sigh? I am an egle, perhaps an owl, perhaps a bat, still I have wings, and I am in a cage and bruize them; I am a dolphin, perhaps a mackerel, still I am made for the high seas, but a storm has thrown me on the beach and I wither in the sand, I am a race horse, and must pull a cart with stones, I am a free-man, but made a water carrier; I am a – cockchaffer, an unimportant insect, yet one of the fates has tied her thread round my leg, and like a school girl makes me buzy around her head, although but a cockchaffer, still the poor insect feels a cockchaffer pain and grief and longing and it is all the grief it can feel, just as the life of a poor day laborer in the times of the cholera was all the life he could lose, although the papers used to repeat that the desease attacked the lower orders only. Even though but a street sweeper’s life it is somehow or other all the life tha which that street sweeper chances to have, and, with reverence be it spoken, worth to him as much as that of the emperor is to his majesty. – My dear Matilda, does not the doatingly loving wife expose her husband, when she shows her Poeselei to strangers like you do? You read my verses to Oscar to Buck and “he was delighted”. – Ma fois, par complesance! However all these things show me your amiableness, for all of them take this interest in my lines, because they love you. It was a very lovely coincidence, that ever since I made those made verses to Oscar no mocking bird was heard on the campus, until yesterday, when I had read your sweet letter with the message of pleasure which the lines, inspired by this bird, had given, in the Faculty meeting, I stepped out and in the high and gracile branches of an elm tree with its delicate virgin verdure, was one of these guards in his high watch tour proclaiming like an Imam from his minaret the joyous message of spring. Really, it was as if the lovely messenger had taken those verses to my boy and now returned with an answer. I donot recollect the exertion of that poem, but merely the general idea, and that I felt deeply, warmly when I wrote it, perhaps the pearl in Adele’s and Minchen’s (who that again is, I donot Know) eye, when they heard it, was seen likewise in the father’s when he wrote the lines, or rather it was not seen, for he was alone. – Du bist ein höchstedles Gemüth, that you can forget everything. Generous soul, my life shall be one continued effort to never to remember it. I thank you for the assurance you give me respecting Oscar’s love. Tell him over and over, that he is my dear boy, that – oh indicate

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to him, that I would never be harsh again to him. – If Mrs Gossler10 is such an ugly person, have nothing more to do with them than you can help without giving pains to him. Alas! I thaught they had done with the Organ, but it was only two or three stops! They continue setting up stop after stop, and tuning all day long. Heaven, it pipes one mad! For half hours together one and the same tone more or less correct. I suppose Dante would punish thus all the parliamentary and congressional babbles, who have friendishly tormented sensible men by four hours’ speaches, without sense, taste, or object, except to shine in their own village. – If, as you suppose, we still shall live in Philadelphia, the happiness would be still greater than you imagine, for Theodore and Gustavus11 write me that if we only go to live at the North, they will settle act at least for some years wherever we are, at least they speak of N.Y. & Phil. They have not mentioned Boston. But I dont see how we should drop there. I donot know, but it strikes me at present that upon the whole, had I the choice, I should prefer a congenial situation in N.Y. – Matilda, some day or other you might write, without signature, to the editors of the Conversat. Lexicon, simply the fact that I have written: Legal & Political Hermeneutics or Principles of Interpretation in La and Construction in Law & Politics, with remarks on Predecents; Essay on Penal Law and Solitary Confinement; Political Ethics, 2 vols., provided, as I ­suppose, they are not mentioned in the Conv. Lex.12 You need not address the editors, inside, and might send the letters through Perthes & Besser, bei Buchhändler Gelegenheit. Beg in the letter thus. Herr Franz Lieber hat außer den im Conv. Lex. geschr erwähnten Werken die folgenden, u zwar wichtigeren geschrieben. Matilda, Les jours d’esperance sont passés. I cannot come up to $10000 this year. I am very sorry I have not asked earlier; whether you think it absolutely necessary that we want a servant again. If I say no, I shall not keep a horse next winter; for if I keep one, I am resolved to keep a little vehicle for you & chicks too, to use the middle horse for the carriole likewise. On no account would I alone enjoy the horse; but if so, we cannot possibly do without a male servant, but if so that requires at least $800, which together with uncle’s13 debt will sit upon me, for a time like a tourniket, unless I resolve to invade the little capital, which I am extremely reluctant to do. I know it is pretty much all the 10 11 12

13

Elizabeth Gossler née Bray wife of Johann Heinrich Gossler. Brothers of Mathilde Lieber who resided in Ponce/Puerto Rico. Lieber’s reaction to the entry in the Conversations=Lexikon der Gegenwart. Ein für sich bestehendes und in sich abgeschlossenes Werk, zugleich ein Supplement zur achten Auflage des Conversations=Lexikons, sowie zu jeder frühern, zu allen Nachdrucken und Nachbildungen desselben, Heft 7, Leipzig F.A. Brockhaus 1838, p. 1019 “Deutsche Literatur im Auslande”. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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same whether I take part of the capital to pay the debt and come the sooner to the collecting capital again, or keep it, and delay thereby the period when I may save again. Yet I am excessively reluctant to attack that little bit of saved stock, and I have no doubt, even so calm a calculator as your excellent and paternal uncle would either approve of my feelings, or, at any rate easily understand it, were he to know it. I mention this only, to give authority to my opinion with you madame. – Explain to me, how Oscar stays now and then the whole of Monday with him you. Insist upon, that Oscar makes up for all they have had in school while you took him to Berlin, for instance in geography; he must go over the all the others have had in the mean time. I am very much gratified with Busse’s testimony, I mean with the style, minuteness &c. It shows Ernst u Liebe. So Master Oscar was once punished? And pray, Sir, what was it? What ever it was, I hope, it was sound. For trifling punishments are ungentlemanly, unmanly. A schoolmaster’s coat of arms ought to be a rod erect, with the motto: RARE BUT THOUROUGH, Oh God, the Organ! Now it is beyond endurance! – I have just read Laborde’s Journey in Arabia Petraca, and visit of Petra (fine beautiful copy).14 You must read it when you come back. It made a deep, very deep, if I may call it with an uncouth word, histories reflective impression upon me; although it proves nothing of the kind to me, which the people pretend to find it, the fulfilment of prophecies. To be sure, if the prophets said: “Thou will perish.” That has been said by thousands and thousands of surprizes, who were no prophets; and Petra did perish, but so are have many cities, and are dead, solitary, abandonned to the owl, so is Persepolis, so Palenque in Mexico. When the French Revolution broke out many people predicted things even more minutely than the old prophets have B in this case; and than what strikes me as very strange, this curse is pronounced against the Edomites for what? For refusing such an outrageous rabble as the Jews were when they left Egypt, and as they could not be otherwise, having been ill-treated slaves, and as they are abundantly shown to have been by those records; to pass through their land. What government of any sense could allow such a thing, I ask any fair man? – That notice of my Americana15 in the Conv. Lex. [3] as you copy it, is considerably sufficiently wrong. Yet the articles on science, chemistry &c; and natural history I had added. But n’ importe de tout. Nothing but what a man does in a straight line remains after him, everything else is 14 15

Maximilian Leon de Laborde, Journey through Arabia Petraea, to Mount Sinai, John Murray London 1836. Encyclopaedia Americana.

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forgotten; and my straight line is that of Pol. Ethics, Constit. Law &c &c, if I do something clever in that, everything else falls like the blossom leaf of the peach tree; but the fruit remains.16 If Oscar goes with you to Berlin, I trust you stay donot stay longer than a month. I pray God, neither you nor he may feel evil effects of a journey in so interment a season as April in the North of Germany. I cannot help but all the time thinking of inflammation of lungs, so rife in that quarter. I hope you will have tried to let him ascend a steeple in Berlin, if the weather is not too bad, with a safe person. # Let Oscar address this to Caroline. I made it when I read Oscar’s remarks on C’s dew drop, which chocked me as much as Norman’s pickeling establishment: Heil den Tropfen, heil der Nase, Heil die holde liebe Base! Andere schmücken sich die Ohren; Du hast dir die Nas’ erkoren. Herrlich ist es wenn man schauet, Alle Gräser klar bethauet, Schöner noch sind anzuschauen, Nasen die sich selbst bethauen. Matilda that figure of the imam and Almtree, expanded and settled into a little song, while I was going to the bank to pay a drft – a very unsavoury thing – I hate paying people. I wonder who invented paying bills? His memory ought to be execrated. Here are the verses: Wenn der Imam Gott verkündet Laut vom schlanken Minaret, Singst du von aus der Ulman-Warte Klar u full dein Langgebet. Gott ist Gott! Er schaffet, schmücket; Farben, Düfte, Blatt u Taft, Und die Grenzen alles Lebens Zeugen Gott u seine Kraft.” “Aber hohes Zeugnis bringet Mein süßes Liebeslied; Wie das Leben Staunen reget, So in Lieb’ erst Leben blüht!” 16 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, and his oeuvre.

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Pretty considerable philosophical for a mocking bird! And German-philosophical too! How wise the world becomes grows! Who should have expected this of a S. Carolina mocking bird! But then you must consider that that bird has the benefit of the college all the year round. Should he sit so often on the top of the library and never profit by all the books, although beneath him. – March 25. The British Queen is in, with accounts up to March 3, Portsmouth. We knew it yester-day here; only think 15 ½ days from Engl. to N.Y. and about 6 from N.Y. to Lybia or the sandy Desert. By the way Matilda it is now g­ enerally believed that the Indians came from Asia. I dont. Only look at our earth here, and say whether you dont see at once the Red Man unbaked. This is the very stuff to make Indians of. – March 28. Yesterday I had the Christmass letter, containing also the letter of Mr Busse’s, and this morning I had letter XV, so I am in order, and thank you heartily. They are fine letters; fine indeed! The accounts you give me of Oscar, both of your own observation and the oral communications of Mr Busse seem to somewhat to disagee with his written accounts, for the latter are anything but brilliant. Not that I wish them different; far better they give him parsimonious praise than failing on the other side when they write to me. But this discrepancy between the two accounts certainly exists. I can see moreover that the written accounts are true, because I recognize ­Oscar’s faults. Some specific facts, only surprise me, for instance that the drawing master does not give him a better account. I thaught in that branch the boy would be excellent. I fear very much that his journey to Berlin will unfortunately unsettle him again. I mean to write to Oscar about his staying in Europe; I meant to do so in this letter, but my courage fails; my heart feels as though it would break; my very eyes refuse to guide the hand in writing it. Let me break off. People in the West mix sand with the earth to make it less fertile, at least less rich, and thus fitter for cultivation; I wish I could mix some sand of dullness with my character, it would be all the better for me, for you all. – I would be a better man at least one better for wear and tear, and common domestic use. – My Matilda, love me nevertheless, or rather the more because I stand so much in need of it. – You look so well? Alas, it is the harassing housekeeping and want of all the balm of soft intercourse and repose of soul, which makes you thin here, and having bloomed once more in the genial soil of sisterly affection; you will loose all bloom here again in the arid soil of heartless intercourse. Mark, I donot use this expression by way of reproach to people here; for ought I know they may be good enough, but congeniality cannot be forced. The ivy I have in the little garden, somehow or other, will not take to the wall and cling to it. There must be something repulsive in the wall, neither wall nor ivy do I blame. March 30. – Tuesday last Sunday, when I recieved so many of your letters during the week, and surely did not expect an additional one, I recieved your Letter XVII,

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finished Febr.18; quick as you see. I meant to write then at once, especially as I had on the same day a letter from the boys.17 Had I done so, you would have received a rejoicing letter; now it will be at least a “subdued” one, for, without any particular reason, I feel sore to-day. Another month has passed, or rather, other 6 months, of the 9 College months, and no ray of morning light on the horizon. The comfort you give me in one of your dear letters does not “take” much. You say that if I had any chance in Philad. formerly I must have much more now since surely my reputation has increased. This may be true, I allow, but the very great question indeed is whether this reputation is any aid to me at all in this quarter. Where things go by vote of many people of the most different kind, and very many not of the literary classes, any thing else but literary reputation frequently decides. Is it not but too true that appointments avowedly are made here, very frequently, against literary desert? Thus the trustees have suddled upon this college a professor of Latin & Greek, who seems to be an amiable modest man indeed, but it requires all his modesty and timidity to disarm criticism, for I tell avow to you in the strictest sense of spirit of the strictest truth, that I donot remember having ever stood in any near relation with so egregiously week an intellect as this man has! He is a perfect ninny.18 The news of our Oscar have truly comforted me, albeit they always carry a sting along with them. I meant to write pretty long to him, to-day, but seeing how far down I have got already, without answering your dear lines, I shall, probably postpone it. I feel very thankful for the interest all your relations take in you and yours, still I cannot but fear that you bore your uncle with my letters. Remember me to all of them. About my relation to Matilda I will tell you all when we see one another; for the present let me assure you, that I never enjoyed, what the Italians call l’ultimo favore, nor dreamt of it; and that she never kissed me, except when came out of prison.19 Then indeed she flew into my arms in presence of her husband,20 and perhaps on some taking leave; but twice or so I kissed her when her head chanced to come near my mouth; lastly – you see how professorlike I confess – I hold very, very frequently her hand in mine and bathed it with kisses. Let not any ever so delicate idea interfere with your affection toward her, for she is a loving soul, and what noble soul like yours would now after 12 years inquire into all the items of a loving heart and a glooming soul, whether a fraction too much here or too little there. Love although so delicate, graceful and minute, is, like spring, sweeping whole sale matters; its breath is 17 18 19 20

Brothers of Mathilde Lieber in Ponce/Puerto Rico. Lieber was lamenting the election and call of William Hooper as replacement of Prof. Isaac Stuart at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. Lieber had been released from Köpenick prison in April 1825. Mathilde and Wilhelm Benecke.

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breathed over the land, and life gushes forth irresistibly, every thing pressing forward, up to the balm of the vernal ray, sometimes not over nice about the neighbouring plant. – Am I a dangerous special pleader? – Your uncle21 knows me but very imperfectly if he thinks, that, because we probably differ so much, I should not highly prize him, should I ever see him. If I were to point out a few strong peculiarities of my mind, it this would be certainly among them, that I have a peculiar facility in entering at once in the [4] most various characters and prizing them if but perfect in their kind. Nay I have been blamed for entering into arguments or the representation of individuals in my writings &c so decidedly, that persons who donot Know how the views I entertain about opposite things or men, modify these views take one at once for a strict partisan of the subject under discussion. No, you Know with what profont respect nay enthusiasm I contemplate great mathematicians or men eminent in any other persuit alien to me. But there is a means to gain my heart in an instant, for any one, who should ever care for it, and that is truly and essentially to love you and my boys. – How rich all your Christmas has been! You are a perfect silkworm, shrouded in silk. I hope you donot send now the letter of Oscar’s, of which you sent a copy. Pray tell him and his teacher; that I liked his German letter very much, if this was all his language; and in future I shall like very well to have German letters at certain long intervalls, but that I beg him to make the common language between us by all means English. German he will learn now enough; there is no fear. In my next I write to his teacher; I suppose his remarks respecting Latin &c are so far right. Yesterday I had to write, as Secretary of the Faculty, in some official paper the name of Oswald, and this morning found I had written Oscar. – My dear Matilda, you write too praisingly to me. I know it does your heart good to pour out love in such abundant gushes, and would not leg stint a noble heart in its noble emotions, which your love is; but still your gushing kindness makes me feel sometimes sad, for I Know thus as you say, that I can do so little for one who loves so much, and that such a soul ought to placed differently. Columbia is not the place for it. – Had you but written me earlier about the thick paper, and seal &c. Timour does accompany me, if I donot go ride in the middle of the day. That is too warm for the lazy fellow. – I believe I did not tell you wh of one additional reason, of my seriousness to-day. I read Europ. papers & periodicals, and felt so keenly my loneliness of intellect & soul, prepared as that Stimmung was by a most senseless and disgusting sermon of Elliott’s. – It grieves me to hear of the 21

Jacob Oppenheimer.

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state of mind and body of Matildas daughter.22 It is very unfortunate for her, poor as she is. I can explain it only by the fact, that she is the child of anxiety and grief, for Matilda became enciente when William23 was in prison. – Last Saturday I was lying on my our sopha at 11 o’clock; when and reading, when all at once I heard music, which I recognized after the first two or 3 bars, not to be American. It had too much precision. I went to the door, and found that a regular serenade was given me. Lied das Deutsche, I asked, when the first piece was finished.24 A wohl was the answer. In short my German shoe-makers had got hold of 3 German travelling musicians, and together with them serenaded me by playing & singing. I called them in, gave them of your cake and ginger bread, a bottle of hock, some of your Cuirasseau,25 and cegars. They played long in my room, and again in the Campus. I dare say, Mrs Elliott thaught I took revenge, or rather, I donot believe she thinks so. It was very sweet, and – showed soul. April 3. Yester-day I recieved the box with my coat, which fits very well. For the books I thank you too; yet I think, I cannot help saying it, that Perthes charges me very high. 2 Germ. dollars for a 12 mo vol. like Raumers, unbound is exceedingly dear.26 I ought not to write much, my beloved, for I state it frankly to you, my dear soul, that a deep melancholy has overcast my mind these several days; not sorrow, not pain, but a very deep melancholy. Six months have passed; I am strongly reminded of my again going to the North, and naught whatsoever has changed, nothing, except that the eye apple of my life, my beloved Oscar must be left behind for an indefinite time. It breaks my heart. Every single time I think of it, it shoots hot and thick from the heart into the throat; it has at times suddenly choked my words when I was speaking to the class. Believe me, it is not verliebte Schwachheit. If I were removed to day, I could go to the North I could say: Oscar remain two years, and then I’ll fetch you, but as it is at present, Good God, it would snap a heart of stone. No home, no house, no hope, and the very love we bear to our issue, tears them from us. – How very clever that child of Gustavus’27 must be; I feel sure my relations 22 23 24

Anna Benecke, daughter of Mathilde Benecke. Mathilde and Wilhelm Benecke. Which song did they sing? It could not have been “Das Lied der Deutschen” which was composed by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben only in August 1841; perhaps they sang “Die Wacht am Rhein”, lyrics by Max Schneckenburger were written in 1840; different melodies however were attached much later. Was it the melody famous Austrian composer Franz Josef Haydn had composed in 1797 in honor of Emperor Franz II?. 25 Curaçao. 26 Raumer, Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte. 27 Gustavus Oppenheimer whose sons stayed in the household of his sister Caroline ­Lomnitz, Hamburg.

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will feel disappointed in Oscar’s supposed talents; but I am convinced it is not my fault I have never represented him as peculiarly clever, which I do not think he is. And as to Hammy, I am sure he is peculiarly unclever. But never mind; God bless his little blockhead, I love him. Good bye; I must conclude to say one word to my Oscar. How wrong such verses as those of Ferdinand.28 A whole string of abuse against a country which has never harmed him, and which never abuses his country, and of which indeed Germany can learn an immense deal, as all civilized have and ought to learn from one another. But when the light & colors of the North of Germ. are praised in comparison to America, ma fois, c’est un peu trop fort. I kiss you a thousand times. Your Frank. My beloved boy, again I have left but me a very scanty place, but in my next you shall have a long letter, my dear boy. God bless you; I thank you for your sunset prayer. What a rich Christmass you had! You must be very good and more industrious, I donot speak of the time engaged in study but while you are at study your exertion must be intenser. My dear boy you ask me whether particles of putrified ∆ become air. Whole flesh putrifies, many gasses are developed; they join the air; but the particle of substance may become [cross-writing] such indeed and float in the air – There are always a great many particles of dust, sand are floating in the air – but they are not air. Some fine study of ­Africa, or Asia ashes of volcanoes near the seashore, have been carried an h ­ undred miles into the sea, where it they settle on the sails of vessels. – I have a vol. of the Penny Mag. here, which I will bring to the North. My beloved Oscar I kiss you tenderly. I bless you for your love to your mother and your brothers. Oscar my dearest boy, I kiss you most fervently. Be very industrious, that you get over the first elements e.g. the multiplication table, and – learn to rule, bridle and fancy. And learn this early. Ever your loving father. Stamp Le Havre Stamp Hamburg 20 Mai 40 Single Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne p. packet 28

Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, cousin of Mathilde Lieber.

No. 51 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 25.03.-02.04.1840 THL Box 54 LI 5071, ALS, 4 pages Letter XX All well! Hamburg 25th March 1840 My very dear own Frank.Yesterday I despatched that Chateauneuf letter without number. This morning I have written to Berlin to tell the good people there that I have postponed my visit a little while in the hope of hearing from you again, for otherwise I should have to come alone which I am sure would not please them and certainly would be painful to me, which never the less I shall have to do if I do not hear from you to the contrary. A week or two I will wait patiently. How I wish you could have witnessed the pleasure your last letters have given – not only to me; but to all of us; that that box arrived so well, nothing broken and that you were so happy with the contents. Dearest best Frank what a delight that is for I assure you the fate of that box gave me many an uneasy hour. We are so pleased that the morning gown met with your approbation; but the girls1 beg you to sit upon it without ceremony for they promise you a new one when ever this one is on the decline, you need but mention it and your wishes shall be attended to. With piccallilli too as it suits your palate so well Caroline undertakes to supply you and I will bring the receit with me though our Columbia tough vegetables will not be able to produce anything half as good. I am thankful that some arrangement has been made for a conveyance from Charleston for the dear sisters I know will take the greatest pleasure to supply us with a few good things after my return. Your kiss messages I have honestly delivered. Matildas2 eyes have received them as well as her lips though I doubt not she would have been better pleased had there been no mediator for dearly does her glowing heart love you. How youthful she still appears, how ardently could she yet enjoy: Könnte man das alles noch einmal genießen, diese Seligkeit, dieses Schwelgen der Liebe, dieses ineinander vergehen! she has said to me when in our freest moments we have talked of love and of all our enjoyments. We were at the theatre together, opposite to us sat a young couple in the very honeymoon of their affection: Wie beneide ich sie welch ein göttlicher Genuß! said one Matilda; ach, wer das noch einmal durchleben könnte! Our friend too has such a flow of spirits. She tells a story with such animation, has so much life and soul. Carry & Hart too are very fond of her. On her birthday I carried her several presents from us all, amongst 1 Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer. 2 Mathilde Benecke.

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other things a bottle of Champaign and you should have seen how she jumped with pleasure. The champaign bottle was put as a stand for a pretty cap which Caroline gave her. On the morning of her birthday Matilda had received seven letters from her friends in Berlin. From Etienne Benecke a handsome present to which Buck had added a handsome working box, her children3 had also procured what was in their limitted power and Dr Benecke4 decorated her favorite window with flowers. It was a feest to me to behold her so full of joy and I could not help envying her those feelings. I can not feel that unbounded jumping happiness at trifles which she does. Do you know my Frank that I think she would have made you a wife more suited to your individuality than I have. A woman like she is I should myself like to have for a constant companion and with her it seems to me I could even bear a trio. What say you to it, shall I bring her with me? You know that Matilda intends to place her son5 for sometime in New York before he joins his Uncle6 in Mexico, she might come with him. I delivered your message regarding Hermann to Matilde. She thanks you for your kind offer with regard to introducing him at Gosslers.7 She is perfectly satisfied with his present situation and desires no change. Buck8 who takes the warmest interest in her, has placed the lad in a very good active house where he has every opportunity of making himself acquainted with business in all its branches. The house in which he is has also an extensive business with America so desirable considering his destination. He is a very fine boy and we all like him very much he doats upon his mother. My good sister Caroline has several times treated Matilda & Herman9 to the theatre an amusement which they can not often allow themselves. Then they come here to coffee which we drink con amore together, we walk off to the theatre, enjoy a fine Opera or Drama and return home to tea where a comfortable cup and fine bread and butter with something good besides is ready for us. Then Matilda gives us some funny stories of her by gone days and we laugh and talk till the unwellcome hour for parting arrives. Our last recreation of the kind was to the 2d Theatre where we joined a party of Soehles10 and amused ourselves exquisitely. The Theatre itself was a little miserable dark place, but the performers in the well selected 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Anna and Hermann Benecke, children of Mathilde Benecke. Dr. iur. Otto Benecke. Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke. Etienne/Stephan Benecke, brother in law of Mathilde Benecke, Mexico. Johann Heinrich Gossler, junior chef of the trading house Berenberg, Gossler & Co., Hamburg. Franz Ludwig Buck. Mathilde Benecke and her son Hermann. Auguste Soehle and her family.

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Vauxdevilles, met with our entire approbation. Matilda & I could sit hand in hand without anyone observing us. One evening Carry Hart & I were there at Matildas and quite auf unsere eigene Hand we danced together. I wanted Herman to show me how a Jäger is danced, and so at last they all joined. Matilda had made a very nice Berlin dish for us which I shall learn from her as you are so fond of Berlin cookery! But this indeed was really good. The mischief of the cooking here is that such a vast quantity of good things are required for every dish which we cannot get with us, & which makes them too expensive, however amongst the many I shall of course find a few which will suit us and with which I shall make myself well acquainted. Caroline herself has a very simple table indeed, as the children all dine with us, she has nothing that would not be wholesome for them, and therefore nothing that would suit your taste. – I have not yet given you a description of the subscription ball on which I went on the 21st Inst. Quite a grand affair. I went with my cousins Dr & Mrs Gabe; seeing them by chance in the morning Caroline said that she wished me to go, upon which the matter was arranged and at 9 OClock they fetched me I had on my embroydered crape dress which is really handsome, in the hair my nice little hair dresser fastened a deep red rose with its accompaniment of buds and leaves most gracefully, and on the two sleaves and above in front of the dress roses of the same color gave a pretty finish to my dress, Caroline besides lent me her set of Rhubies consisting of a handsome necklace, earrings and broche and they all told me I looked well; but what cared I, my Frank could not see me. Of course I wore short slaeves the white kid gloves are worn very short, trimmed round the top with a thick ruche of net which is becoming to the arm and made mine even look quite decent. Aber mit meinem Hals lege ich wirklich Ehre ein, und das ist doch merkwürdig! Es beweißt aber wie wenig eigentlich gute Figuren es hier giebt. Of our relations there were none there but my companions, Emma11 & Uncle Morris so of course I was pretty much in a land of strangers, yet I danced every dance but one. Gosslers12 were there and he immediately came up to me, led me about the room and afterwards to the supper table, I fancied that he felt he had something to make up. He told me that they were going to America with the next steamer to remain there during the summer; so it is likely you may meet with them somewhere at any rate. I think it right that you should know that I do not consider they have treated me well for it is not polite that they should always have invited me in that play going manner and never when they

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Emma Oppenheimer, daughter of Morris Oppenheimer and cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler.

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[2] had other guests, just as if they need be ashamed of my acquaintance. I know that they have had several dinner parties, and why not ask me over? It is not on my own account that I care for this, but on yours, for your wife is somebody, and must not submit to any treatment. It may not be Henry Gosslers fault, but a husband is after all accountable for his wife’s behaviour. I hear from Adela that the whole Gossler family are terribly prejudiced, she knows it from several instances which happened to herself. Once she was with Susanna Gossler who was her early friend and dear companion. They were going to get into a boat going off to Nienstädten, when Susanna held Adela back, calling out: steige doch nicht da ein, da sind ja eben Juden herausgekommen. This of course she did without thinking of Adelas own origin. but it only shows you the temper of the people. Wilhelm Gossler has not been near me, nor does he come to me when I meet him elsewhere, to be sure he is a man in love and one must excuse him. No doubt Mrs Gossler13 will take great pains to give me my due in ­America, & to let all Boston know my origin. You can have no idea what a name that little woman has here. She is said to whip her servants, her children unmercifully and the evil world reports that he has to whip her occasionally, all of which I however do not believe, for to judge from my own observation, they live very comfortable together and they have very sweet happy looking children who appear to doat upon their parents, which does not speak of domestic war. He however is considered a regular martyr. – But to return to the ball room, which was a beautiful saloon ornamented with statues and which if had been left to its original grace must have looked truly handsome, but some lover of finery had over burdened it with drapery. The 1400 lights however had their effect in giving brilliancy and the fine musical band put one in a regular dancing mood. The dresses of the ladies were handsome and I observed many pretty girls but nothing of grace or of the elegance one sees in New York in the first circle. Flowers were scattered every where, on the dresses in the hair on the bosoms, in the hands and all looked as if they enjoyed themselves. Uncle Morris paid me many compliments on my appearance. In the course of the evening Büsch came to me, he told me that he had been so good a friend of yours, which I knew, asked very particularly after you, expressed a regret that he had not met me before, upon which I begged him to come to see me, but as yet he has not been. – If you had been here with me I suppose I should have become more acquainted, but as it is the people seem afraid of coming to see one; though 13

Elizabeth Gossler.

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when in company I am usually noticed as a nice looking woman. – And: wer ist die hübsche junge Frau? is not an unusual question asked of some of my relations. Adela told me that on Hessens ball she was frequently asked after me. So you see my boy I shall get quite proud. Oh no proud not, but truly happy, grateful for your sake, that I am still passeble. It is true that I have grown stouter since I am in Hamburg and that I feel extremely well, particularly when you send me nice comforting letters. You know I saw Dr Guerson on account of the complaint I had sometimes been troubled with, he told me to send for him when I again had it, as he could better judge while it was there, but since then, now I should think four months I have been perfectly free, so that I must suppose it was nothing but weakness which has been removed by my quiet mode of life. Talking of myself I must just add one thing more which will give you pleasure. Much as I lost my hair in autumn and after my journey, the lost ones are well replaced by a new crop. – Matilda14 too would not believe my age; she thought I was very young indeed when I came to Berlin 16 or so; but now I find we are only 2 years apart, she in spirit and mind the most youthful yet. I perhaps in outward appearance. We had a long conversation about your returning to Germany. Matilda is convinced that in any University town you would easily succeed, by beginning as Privat Docent. Any one who has a pushing spirit like you who is animated with a love for any science, who has a mind and a talent with an experience like yours, must according to her opinion make: eine glänzende Laufbahn. She knows you would soon rise, you would feel happier, our existence would be a brighter one. She declares she thinks it is not so hard in Germany for people to get on, it is the fault of the individuals if they do not. She has many instances before her of the truth of the assertion. People may be learned but if they have not the pushing spirit there is no getting on. You have so many friends says Matilda, if they only knew that you wanted to return she is sure it would be easy, and once there, no doubt of your being a most favored lecturer, of quickly working your way, and she says: it is a mistake about the terrible controul, much is repeted every day and government takes no notice of it. In fact you are only to come, and you would find that there is no place like Germany, and where ever she is, and where ever we are, she would find her way to us. Caroline has just sent some oysters home for dinner. Oh that you could partake of them! 27th I took your dear last two letters to Uncle15 to read, how he liked them, how he likes you, what would he give to see you happy. His face brightens up when ever he enjoys some good dinner you had taken, your feast after the arrival of the box, or a ride on Nausicaa, reading from my heart the 14 15

Mathilde Benecke. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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delight it gives me. What fatherly interest does he take in Carolines concerns. He can scarcily expect the time for Edward16 to be grown up to see him placed in the Manchester business. He and Caroline were much alarmed a little while ago, old Sykes having written that he wished to retire from the business at the expiration of the contract which is January 1841. This would have most likely caused the giving up of the whole business, which is a most profitable one to Caroline and gives her a handsome income, though without it she is in circumstances to bring up her family comfortably. They all wrote to Sykes trying to persuade him to continue and his answer has been the cause of much rejoicing as he has consented to go on three years more when Edward will be 18 years old and may perhaps take his share. This business of Caroline has improved ever since her husbands sickness and insures her an existence free from every care, and with a surplus for a good deed now and then, she lives in a handsome house at a rent of upwards of $700, 2200 marks will probably take her seats in the theatre, and need not deny herself anything she wishes for. It is a happiness indeed to know her in this situation and all her affairs are a perfect hobby to Uncle.17 I always try to send our Oscar to Uncle Jacob every time he comes home. The last time he was there alone and came home quite delighted and gave the best praise which his heart knows to give: Uncle is so like dear Papa, he speaks to me so kindly and lovingly. He had taken your letters to his Uncle which I have pasted in a book and with which he is very much pleased and he read some of them aloud. Oscar is now able to read the smallest writing yours or mine quite perfectly – I forgot to mention to you that Mr Cogswell told me he had seen Retch18 at Dresden and that he had spoken of you with the warmest interest he had received a letter from you which delighted him and had sent you his last publication, but I do not know by what means. He considers himself not valued sufficiant in Germany – I asked – Ma foi, je ne sois pas ce que je voulois demandé. C’est aujourd’hui le 28° et j’éspere que mon fils viendre de l’école, alors je à existe que pour lui. Hier j’ai diné avec Adele comme c’etait vendredi, le jour fixé. When I told Adela what you had written about returning to Germany Adela wept for she loves me tenderly and the idea of being for ever seperated from me, causes her real grief. Her health alas! is so bad that she herself has no idea of living long, and when I see her surrounded by every comfort, an excellent husband and fine children about her, and nothing wanting 16 17 18

Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. Jacob Oppenheimer. The artist Moritz Retzsch. Perhaps Retzsch had sent his illustrations to Dante, 2nd ed. 1839 or Phantasien und Wahrheiten, Leipzig 1839. Certainly he sent a copy of the etching The chessplayers, 1831.

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for her happiness but her own health, it makes me feel very sad, for the want of this blessing is sufficient to counteract every other source of enjoyment. Yet sometimes she herself and all who surround her entirely forget this for Ferdinands excellent spirits, bring hers out likewise and as I have often told you there is not a house more pleasant to visit than theirs, one feels so at home, there are so many comfortable chairs and after dinner while Ferdinand takes one Sopha; Adela & I have an other, of such exquisite arrangement that I have already told Ferdinand I shall give him an order as soon as we get to the North, for I am certain it would be just the thing to suit you. The two seats together form a sopha delicious to me and each seperate one a chair something like the one of Mrs Otis you used to be so fond of, knowing all the virtues [3] you admire. It is Ferdinands amusement to have these things made after his own plan, and the upholsterer has now a set at hand for him which he assures me are finer still than these. In lamps he has also made some improvements. Those of his conception never smoke, the flame may even come out without its being of any disadvantage. Ferdinand plagued me the other day to tell him what character I had given him in my letters to you. I told him that of extreme vanity, and he and his whole household perfectly agreed with me, that I was right. Adela says his vanity is so open, such an impudent, bare faced vanity, that it becomes more a laughable quality than a fault. But nevertheless he is a nice chap and I like him. The children too are very sweet, by my frequent visits they are getting so fond of me, Adela19 in particular is a charming clever sprightly child. My Friend Adela said to me: Oh how our families would live together, how we should enjoy each other, the children & we grown ones, alas it can not be! – My little namesake too is a darling & both Adela & Ferdinand are so glad they have called her after me.20 31st. Oscarito has been at home and is gone to school again, dear boy. On Saturday he came home alone, the two other boys not having completed some task, we walked from Eppendorf with some school boys. How happy was he to see us all & I to press him to my heart, though I had had a peep of him the sunday before. His first business was as usual to take out some of his books, then I read his “Zeugniß and spoke to him about it, for there were several things I could not feel satisfied with. He promised me to exert himself and to think of your admonition not to let the mind wander from whatever he is employed with, but to keep it firmly bent on the 19 20

Adela Haller, daughter of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller. Mathilde Haller, daughter of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller.

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one subject. I am sure he will take pains. In the evening I read to him out of Rosa von Tannenberg a book he received from Züllichau.21 He said his prayers to me as he always does, the one you taught him, the lords prayers and “Nun leg” ich mich zur Ruhe nieder. While he says them he has his arms round my neck, and “Mama I will be good, I will give pleasure to our dear Papa” comes from his very inmost soul. I have no fear for that dear boy. His affection for us will keep him up. On Sunday he first painted a little but nothing that would do to send to you. Then we got out the letter book and read some of your letters, two he had not yet seen, he read them himself, kissed them and several times “dear Papa” passed his lips, and he put his arm round my neck in the fullness of his heart. He was very much grieved that the plant you had plucked for him was not to be found, the first sprout of spring which you had plucked near the churchyard. I promised him I would beg you to send him another perhaps the last before you leave Columbia and he was satisfied. I was very unhappy too when I looked for that leaflet everywhere and could not find it. It must have fallen out as I opened the letter, and as I read all my own part in both the letters which I received together, first, some time elaped before I came to Oscars lines, and when I made search for the plant, there was no sign of it in the room. I could have wept myself at the loss, and beg my Frank to forgive me and to send our dear boy, another of these soft messengers from his dear distant father. Oscar laughed at: the cock becoming more polite to the ladies! – After we had thus spent some hours together, Oscar drew a little map of Germany in his pocketbook and then it was time to dress for we were invited to dinner at Uncle Haller,22 with the boys. An excellent dinner & Champaign seemed to delight them and often did my eye cross the table enjoying Oscars beauty and animation. If only you could see him now, he is certainly a most handsome boy, those lovely lips and those most expressive eyes, his well formed head, the spirit which is ever playing on his fine features, make him a sight one loves to dwell upon. I can assure you he is very much improved and it is well that his boarding school life does not bring him much into the family for he would be very likely to be spoiled. Even Uncle Jacob is terribly taken by a handsome appearance & off hand manners. Uncle Morris also if he saw him often would be likely to spoil him; & Emma who admires him extremely. He looks so healthy now, and I cannot believe otherwise than that the school must be good for him. He certainly has made some good progress. I examined him in cyphering in a very short time he made his sum for me Th 627- g 15 the m ∆ after ∆ to be m ∆ in to 21 22

Christoph von Schmid, Rosa von Tannenberg. Eine Geschichte des Alterthums für Aeltern und Kinder, Reutlingen J.R. Enßlin’sche Buchhandlung 1826. Martin Joseph Haller, uncle of Mathilde Lieber.

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Reichst ∆ He reads German pretty fluently. In Geography they are now going to Asia after having got through the study of Germany. And if he were not happy he could not look as he does. You have no idea of the difference in his present appearance & behaviour from what it was when he went to Werners school, which I contributed to the confinement of the schoolroom and no exercise afterwards. He seems occasionally to have a little romping fun with Busse too. Of his teacher in Geography Peters, he said: er ist ganz fürchterlich streng wenn man etwas nicht weiß und raggt einen tüchtig, aber das muß ich sagen wenn man es weiß so ist er sehr nett. Dr Palm teaches the German Grammar in that class, their present exercise is, that sentences are given and they find out the different casus & give the reason, in which he is quite perfect and might teach his poor mother whose ignorance so often troubles you, my poor dear F­ rank. – Taking a walk, writing, reading, paying Uncle Jacob a visit and seeing Schattenbilder an der Wand at dear good aunt Minnas filled up the Monday & on Tuesday morning early they all went to school again happy in the anticipation of Easter coming soon and with the comforting companionship of 4 oranges a piece which Carry put in their coatpockets. I sent a note to Dr Busse repeating again every thing you have said about Latin and telling him that it must be attended to. I have not heard from him since (it is now the 2d April) but as he comes to Town every Friday, I dare say I shall see him to morrow. He will have to consent, though it is so much against his inclination until Oscar has made farther progress in German. Thinking, as he does, that the two Grammars will confuse him. – Harriet has taken Norman out to make some visits with him, and the little chap ran at her side so proudly. He too, often comes to me unasked and says: I love ou Mama. People are generally quite astonished when he enters the room, by his prettyness. He always talks of Papa & Merica & wanting to see dear Papa again. Hammy was going to set off: by alone! as he calls it, for he thinks you have been long enough left to yourself, & he wants to go in an Omnibus & then in a ship & when the saylors pull the ropes, then we shall soon be with Papa; but I know it will break his little heart too to leave Oscar behind, he is so fond of him, he follows him like his little shaddow when he comes home. Hammy goes regularly to school again now; he was interrupted a few weeks by his sore eye. I had a letter from James.23 He wishes me to tell him when I shall probably be in New York. The Washington goes from here on the 25th of July. On the 25th of August the Cuxhaven. With which of the two think you must I go? Pray write James when you expect me that he may arrange his coming to New York accordingly. He also commissions me to buy something 23

James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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for me & you to the amount of $200 mark. – I think I had better get a nice ­Schiller for you? Hammy and Emil had a complete love scene yesterday. Sie kriegten sich bei den Köpfen und küßten sich durch. Gleich darauf aber war auch wieder Streit denn Emil wollte Hammy Normans Besitz streitig machen und Hammy sagte: nein du mein Bruder, nicht du, ich kann Normy küßen, du nicht. Nicht süß Norman? Und der arme Kleine wurde am Ende so gezerrt daß man ihm zu Hülfe kommen mußte, Emil sagte dazu. I kn[ow] Normy not my brodder, but I can kiss him like you, if I vill. – Oscar brought me the continuation of his letter home which I will now copy for you, the originals must look for an opportunity. (A few hours later) I have altered my mind – Mr & Mrs Gossler24 have just been here and are going to morrow to England to cross the ­Atlantic in the Great Western, so I shall send the copy of Oscars letter with them. This letter I prefer to send by my usual conveyance, considering some of the contents. If I should send Oscaritos letter in propria scriptura, some clever personage would send it on for post & make it a 75ct affair which I think it right to avoid. To make up for some things I have said above, I must tell you my dear own Frank that Gosslers paid me a pretty long visit this evening, were delighted with the children, particularly with Normito who is at home immediately with every one. It will be a hard seperation from their children whom they leave under the care of a Governess who came in their house only yesterday, however they expect to return again in August. It is possible you may not meet them at all, but if you do perhaps it will be better not to remember what I have said about them and to be friendly towards them, but at any rate I should still like you to close accounts with Gossler. By the bye G. thought Norman a good deal like you in his sprightliness and engaging manners. – Caroline wants very much to write to you; but her little girl25 is not quite well and she has to attend to her, but she longs to tell you again how dearly she loves you as you take so much pleasure in hearing such confessions. The fact is the girls26 are really very fond of you and think you a dear nice good brother. Uncle Jacob and aunt ­Minna, the only two people who know besides that I am writing to you send their affectionate love. Uncle27 asked me whether you do not think him an old grumbler? – Matilda28 told me that although she has to be careful, still she is provided for & need fear no real cares, I mention this for your F 24 25 26 27 28

Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler. She hailed from Boston and the couple was going on a visit to her family. Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz. Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. Jacob Oppenheimer. Mathilde Benecke.

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[4] Oscars Zeugniß Den 28sten März. Vorzüglich ist es noch immer die Langsamkeit und Nachlässigkeit im Arbeiten, welche auch während dieses Monats an Oskar zu tadeln war. Selbst das Schreiben an seinen lieben Vater, dem Oskar jezt doch nur dadurch Zeichen seiner Liebe geben kann, mußte er mehrere Male neu beginnen, weil die erste Seite schon, trotz der vielen darauf verwendeten Zeit, theils nicht gut genug, theils fehlerhaft geschrieben war, und auch in dem mit vieler Mühe vollendeten Bogen entspricht die lezte Seite keinesweges der ersten. Oscar entschuldigt sich wohl damit, daß er es doch habe gut machen wollen; doch eben sein Wille ist noch zu schwach und zu sehr abhängig von augenblicklicher Lust oder Unlust. – In seinem Betragen ist er der Alte geblieben. Hin und wieder hat sich einmal Wiedersprechen gezeigt, das ich aber gleich im Entstehen zurückzuweisen für gut fand. Seine Empfindlichkeit scheint mir in dieser lezten Zeit sich etwas verringert zu haben. Dagegen hat er öfter Zurückweisung wegen des Vergessens oder herumliegen lassens seiner Bücher und Sachen erfahren, wo ich auch seine Entschuldigung: ‘Ich habe es nur vergessen! natürlich nicht gelten ließ; denn auch hierin soll das Gedächtniß geübt werden. – In seiner Haltung hat er sich bestrebt, kräftiger zu werden; auch giebt er sich Mühe beim Gehen die Füße mehr auswärts zu richten. Der Tanzlehrer ist mit ihm zufrieden. – Sein Befinden war auch im diesem Monate recht gut. – Im Deutschen ist er bei der Auffassung des Grammattischen noch nicht genau genug. Im Lesen ist er mir immer im Verhältniß der darauf verwendeten Zeit noch lange nicht hurtig genug, und zu oft muß ich ihn erinnern, deutlich zu sprechen. Das Englische ließt er geläufig nur muß ich ihn beim Lesen oft erinnern, seine Gedanken nicht abschweifen zu lassen. – In der Ortographie ist er oft bei ganz leichten, häufig vorkommenden Worten im Zweifel, so daß ich besonders hierin größere Aufmerksamkeit gewünscht hätte. – Auch im Rechnen könnte Oskar schon rascher und genauer sein, wenn er immer recht eifrig bei der Sache wäre. – Im Schreiben gewinnt seine Hand an Schlankeit. Einige Seiten seines Schreibheftes sind recht gut. Im Zeichnen muß Oskar sich gewöhnen schärfer auf die Vorzeichnung zu sehen und genauer die Verhältnisse der Richtung und Größe der einzelnen Theile zu beachten. Im Körperzeichnen ist er ziemlich geübt. In der Geographie und biblischen Geschichte ist Herr Peters mit ihm zufrieden gewesen. In der declamation ist Oscar zu loben. Er giebt sich mehr Mühe im Vortragen; sein Gedächtniß ist durch das regelmäßige Auswendiglernen und öftere Wiederholung des Gelernten schon viel stärker geworden. Auch hat er dadurch einen nicht unbedeutenden Reichthum an Worten gewonnen. In der Musik ist Herr Albers recht

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zufrieden mit ihm. Indessen könnte er auch hierin schon weiter seyn, wenn er seine Übungsstunden noch eifriger benutzte L. Busse; F satisfaction nor is there in her dress or appearance any thing which would bespeak the necessity of limitting her expenses very much. She and all her children29 look perfectly genteel – The children30 never get any of the sweets I sent you. Indeed they live very prudently. Norman is quite afraid of any thing sweet because he is afraid it will blacken his teeth. Besser told me that there is nothing of the kind as a law against pocket editions in Prussia; it must have been a newspaper anecdote. I have had a letter from Karsten. Dorothea has been very ill indeed & though now recovered the wedding has been deferred until the 18th May when they intreat me to come. Dorotheas illness was an inflamation of the bowels, and during 2 days Karsten writes he was very uneasy about her, but now she is daily regaining her strength. Several vessels have arrived here from Charleston, would that they returned there again but that they never do. How [cross-writing, 4] glad you would have been to have known of their sailing, You would have sent your boys something, or other, I am sure. Miss Schlumpf I hear is terribly fond of Hammy. She always kisses him, and Felix says Madame Schlumpf mocht Hamilton schrecklich gern. Er soll des Nachmittags immer zu Hause lesen, aber dabei, so gut er auch in der Schule seyn soll, habe ich große Mühe. Er ist wirklich sehr eigensinnig und will die Buchstaben nicht ansehen, und Prügel helfen garnicht, denn er bleibt dabei. – Ap. 2ten Guten Morgen und Lebwohl, mein bester Franz. Gott segne dich und gebe dir der Freude viel. Die Kinderchen sind alle wohl und munter, and send you many kisses, & your Matilda presses you to her heart. Adio Normy fragt mich eben Mama You like to do a a? You must not like to do it, you must want to do it. Its fie to like such things. [cross-writing, 2] An other word. Every body says that we must try to make Clara31 come over yet, perhaps we shall yet be able to induce her. It would be so fine if we four sisters 29 30 31

Anna and Hermann Benecke, children of Mathilde Benecke. Oscar, Hamilton, and Guido Norman Lieber, sons of Francis and Mathilde Lieber. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England.

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could be together once more, and I do not like to leave Oscar so much. If I have to go to Berlin without him that will be quite enough. Sister Hart is gone to bed and wants me to come too, so goodnight my life, my love. Oh for one kiss, I feel young & glowing again. Pr Dampfboot Via Havre & New York Francis Lieber Esq Columbia S.C Franco Aux Etats Unis Stamp Hamburg 3 Apr 1840 Stamp Bureau Maritime LeHavre 7 AVR 1840 Stamp Le Havre 7 Avril + sealing wax

No. 52 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 03.04.1840 Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5072 (1), ALS, 4 pages XXI it would be so if it deserved to be a number at all Children & wife well! Hamburg 3d of April 1840 My own dear Frank Mr & Mrs Gossler1 are going to England this evening to go on by the Great Western to America so I will send you one of my intermezzo letters that you may have the last accounts from your little family. N. 20 has been sent yesterday via France. How I should like to go with the Great Western myself for to say the truth I am most anxious to return to you again. Our separation has lasted long enough in good earnest. Yesterday I received your “Letter to the Governor”, which I have however not yet been able to read,2 for Carolines little girl3 has been quite sick & all my extra time I have spent in writing to you. I shall forward the three copies as you directed & that without delay. – A day or two ago I was amused in looking over old letters and found amongst the rest the first one I had written after our marriage, do you remember dearest Frank with a picture of the Adelphi Hotel4 on the writing paper? How in love I was, it really has done my heart good to remember it all over again. Shall I give you few extracts, I am inclined, and afterwards we will compare if my present love equals those first enjoyments. “I should like my dearest friends to give you an account of my happiness, happiness? Call it bliss call it – oh there is no word in human language for all I daily hourly experience. Könntet ihr nur meinen Ring sehen, ich bin so stolz darauf und ziehe immer den Handschuh ab, um ihn wieder zu küssen. Ich darf mich wohl freuen er verbindet mich für das Leben mit dem der mich das Leben lieben lehrt, weil Er mich liebt. Ihr kennt Franz, ach! Und wie weit entfernt seyd Ihr doch.” – “Ach! Er ist so schön!” – And so it goes on giving the best description of a girl deeply in love I have ever seen else where, every now & then your handsome looks are spoken of, and your affectionate care, your attention in dressing me out, the anxiety with which

1 Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler. 2 Lieber, On International Copyright. 3 Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz. 4 The Adelphi Hotel, New York City, had opened in 1827, the six storey building was the honeymoon hotel of Francis and Mathilde Lieber in September 1829.

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I expect your return if you have left me for an hour every thing breathes love, and to look into that past is delight to me. It is delight & why? Would it be, if the same tender ­feelings were not existing still, it is not cooled, there is still the glow of an ardent affection, chastened, hallowed, by years gone by spent in mutual harmony, and with the blessed ties, uniting firmer still hearts made to love each other – the children, the happy gift of one who has not forsaken us, who has granted us so much of joy that [2] I believe indeed my Frank we ought not to complain. Our children and I have none of the folly of a mothers vanity – are really darlings & if I compare them to any other, I feel a pride within me, a pride of happiness & gratitude to God for they are as fine, as promising as affectionate, as any others I know. Warm good glowing feelings our children have got. Heaven bless them. – The change perhaps from 295 to 40 may be this, that now the young ones share in the pride of my heart with you my dearest Frank; but the same happiness, the same rejoicing at my fate exists, doubly blessed as I am with a husband like you & children such as they are. – Many many interruptions to day. Carolines little Clara has been very sick, so much so that Dr Herzfeld has been here three times & will come again in the evening, she has had a very severe & sudden attack of the croup, but she is already much better so that we are no longer troubled. Our chicks are thank God, hearty & well, and the weather is perfectly mild. Claras illness has been brought on by some little imprudence and she is a very delicate child. – G ­ osslers came to see me last night to take leave; They saw Hamilton & Norman and were much pleased with the children, particularly Normy who seemed to take Mr Gosslers6 fancy very much. Nobody will ever believe that the little fellow is not yet three years old, everybody takes him for four. I must tell you a little anecdote of this little cunning boy. He went with me to my cousin Minchen Arning whom Caroline had promised to spend this evening with, but owing to the little girls illness we all wish to remain at home. Minchen gave Normy when we were going to leave a little toy he had been playing with a knight on horseback; but Norman refused accepting it, and told her: I got no pocket, I can’t take it, & I dont want

5 Francis Lieber and Mathilde Oppenheimer had married September 20, 1829 in New York City. 6 Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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[3] it. So Minchen said; well never mind I will bring you one myself and a better one. When at home I asked Normy why did you not take the rider your kind aunt was going to give you? “Because I want her to give me a finer one,” said the little chap. Nobody is so much inclined to spoil him as Rebecca and I have often to counteract her doings. – Hamilton has proved himself terribly obstinate these few last days, so much so that I have had real trouble with him, neither punishment nor persuasion would do anything. As a cure I have given him some antiworm medicine. He looks however perfectly well. Oscar I have seen last Sunday in fine spirits, I have given you a full account of him in my letter of yesterday, to which I have to refer you for all kind of information. – A young Irish Phisician has just brought me a letter from Gustav7 from Berlin, he has been sitting endlessly and taking up my time, which is precious, as I must soon send these lines across the road if I want them to go to England to night, so that I am writing as fast as the Steamer will go. I know my boy does not like hasty letters, but I cant help it; only consider this would you rather receive no news from us or this mere bulletine? It claims no other name and remember though this may not satisfy you: that I have been a good true wife nevertheless, and that I have written very regularly via Havre. Your brother Gustavus is terribly put out, at my not going to bring Oscar with me, they all seem to have set their mind upon seing that boy. Your sister Dorchen has been very ill indeed, though now recovered; but Lottchens8 wedding is deferred to the 10th of May, my visit I have also deferred for the present – We shall again all of us storm Clara9 to [cross-writing, 3 + 2] come here. It is too great a pity that we should not all four be together once more. The Washington leaves Hamburg July 25th, I suppose I must take sail in her? Pray write James10 when he must be in New York to meet us – Caroline & Harriet send their most affectionate love to you. They will write very soon, and now my own dearest Frank God bless you. Love me as tenderly as I love you, & I shall ask no more. The children kiss their dear Papa. Your affectionate Matilda Copy of the continuation of Oscars Letter. 7 8 9 10

Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. Charlotte Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber, Züllichau. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England. James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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“Es war der Vollmond welcher sehr gross aussah. Mit diesem Vollmond kam auch der Frost, der bis jezt angehalten hat. In der nächsten Woche will ich dir vom Schlittschuhlaufen erzählen. Jezt muss ich zur Zeichenstunde gehen. d. 14ten März. Ich habe ein bischen Schlittschuhlaufen gelernt und kann mich wenigstens schon von einer Stelle zu einer anderen bewegen. Ich habe gefunden, dass es viel leichter ist, auf dem Eise mit Schlittschuhen zu laufen als zu Fusse. Als ich zuerst versuchte, da wollte ich, dass niemand diese Übung erfunden hätte, aber jezt im Gegentheil freue ich mich sehr dazu. Kannst du lieber Vater auch schön Schlittschuhlaufen? Der beste Läufer in der Schule ist August Gorresseen, mein Freund, der aber 15 Jahre alt ist, auch Johannes Baur11 und Edward12 laufen recht gut. August kann auch viele Kunststücke auf dem Eise machen. Einmal zog er mich so schnell hinter sich her, dass es wie ein Blitz war. George13 hat noch nicht angefangen, Schlittschuh zu laufen, aber er kann sehr gut glitschen, und auf dem Eise laufen. Kurz vorher als wir die schöne Eisbahn hatten bin ich mit Onkel14 auf den ­Eppendorfer Thurm15 gestiegen, von wo wir eine ziemlich gute Uebersicht hatten. Wir sahen die Knaben in Dr Palms Garten, sie waren ganz klein, wir konnten sie aber rufen hören. Auch [cross-writing, 1] sahen wir den Weg nach Lockstedt und andere Wege. Die Wiesen um Eppendorf waren von der Alster ganz überflossen, nachher als es fror liefen wir auf den selben Schlittschuh und dies war gar nicht gefährlich, weil sie nicht tief unter Wasser standen. Das Eis war sehr schön nur am Rande war Windeis, das ist Eis lieber Vater unter welchem Luft ist, so dass es nicht gut einen Menschen halten kann. – So weit dein Söhnchen. – Du hast mich so bange gemacht dass ich gar nicht gern diesen kleinen Brief schicke. Aber – ich wage doch meines Konigszorn. Nimm ihn nur gütig auf mein Franz & let it be worth 25 cent to you. God bless you my dearest Franz. I hope you take your proper rides. Are you never invited any where? You do not mention anything about. – Rebecca desires to be

11 12 13 14 15

Perhaps his friend was Franz Johannes Baur, son of Georg Friedrich Baur, merchant and owner of the so-called Baurs Park in Blankenese. Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. George Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. Dr. phil. Andreas Busse. Perhaps the tower of St. Johannis in Hamburg-Eppendorf, constructed after 1622.

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remembered to you & Mrs Richardson. She has at last had a letter from her brother.16 Your Matilda Dr Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Favored by H. Gossler17 Esq 16 17

John McClelland. Johann Heinrich Gossler.

No. 53 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 05.04.-14.04.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Dr. phil. Andreas Busse Included: Copy of a letter of Moritz Retzsch to Francis Lieber, Dresden 06.04.1839 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 9, ALS, 4 pages No XXIVIX All well, that is Timoor, Nausicaa u meine Wenigkeit. Give my best remembrance to Uncle1 and Adele, and my love to Carry & Hart. – Concluded on April 14. 1840 I had this sheet once rejected, but now I must take it,2 or I must send you, poor Matty, a small sheet. I have asked in town, but there is no thin foolicap to be had – Sunday Morning; very delicious weather; balmy and pure; thin coat on; study door open, roses just unfolding their budds. Sun iry flies buzzing; the elms’ foliage beginning to hide perceptably the library.3 Now, dont you Know precisely what sort of a fine day it is? And shall I go to the chappel, and here a senseless and blasphemous sermon in which the essence of Christianity is endeavored to be shown to exist in nothing better than in the antique idea of Fatalism a little christianized, for to that stark-naked Calvinism amounts. No, no! Let us never forget that praying is one of the most essential acts of all religion; and when Christ gave a norme of prayer, by which I believe he intended to show in what spirit &c we ought to pray, he, to whom as few the idea of God’s being a mighty, jealous monarch must have been so familiar, yet begins that model-prayer with the words: Our Father. This is not accidental, and if not accidental it is of most mighty import. If he the Maker be our father he cannot barbarously have resolved in his mind first to make little puny beings called men, and than, for some reason or other, be that what it may, terment them eternally. Good gracious, I had almost said how beastly; how loathsome. Imagine with what utter disgust you would turn from a felon who should have the power to ere call flies and moths into existence, and make use of this power for pricking a needle through the poor things created by himself, ringing their wings and roasting their bodies and look at it very complacently. And what would all this infamy and cruelty be compared to a gaod – a god? No, the almighty god creator and preserver, who makes beings infinitely more distant from him than the fly from us, in order, not to roast them once & let them die, 1 Jacob Oppenheimer. 2 His reluctance to take that piece of paper is understandable as it lacks a great part on top; he adapted his writing to the paper’s flaws. 3 Library on the Horseshoe, campus of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC.

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but to render them wretched, spiritually wretched for eternity. – Only thing to what it amounts the idea amounts of plucking to seed of virtue, of goodness, of the means of purification eternally out of the breast of an immortal being. Good God! Ten thousand times rather Grecian mythology? There is more consistancy. Aye, far more comfort in it. Dreary, melancholy as I own the all ideas of an afterlife are in Homer, very chill and somber, they are not fiendish and diabolical like these. No, let us call out: Our Father! I know, man’s intellect cannot reconcile explain the co-existence of free-will and Divine Omniscience, for he who Knows all, must know what will come; if it is Known it is fixed; yet on the other hand human intellect cannot, despite of all unworthy dialectic tricks reconcile Predestination and all that wretched stuff of hereditary corruption with the existence even of the commonest morality. All I can say is, I cannot explain it, but if God be Father, will he not love paternally? – I dont see why I have plunged into the subject? – Perhaps because Mr Elliot’s sermon was so last Sunday was so utterly senseless. – Let me, my love, speak of some subjects which I donot wish to forget. Rebecca ought to show you some confidence ­respecting her lover; I understand she is said among all the little shop keepers, to be engaged; somewhere Betsy4 asked me the other day about it, and said, I forget who, had told her, that the person to whom she is engaged is a drunkard. Now I attach no sort of believe to this talk, marrying here in the South, a ­worthless ­fellow is so awful a thing, and feel so much interest in the girl that I should be very sorry to see her unhappy. Why has she never asked me to ­inquire about him, for she cannot know him much? You must not tell her this; but you ought to gain her confidence upon this point. – Some days ago a student sent me a piece of venison, he he had shot; so I had him, Rhett and Side Johnston – who becomes duller every day – to dine with me yester-day. I had peas of our garden. The first gathered dish I sent on April 2 to Mrs Hayne. She returned this note: Mrs Hayne returns Dr Lieber her grateful thanks for his kind attention; but dainties, like every thing else, now in this world, seem to have lost their former relish.” What a gratuitous exhibition! You think my remark perhaps harsh; but it you would not did you know the forbidding and long face with which she recieves one now, except I dare say Mr Shand. It is not the mild grief which shows itself in the features of suffering yet kindness, and it is, I had almost said the grambling long-drawn face of Calvinistic harshness and religious concert. I donot say this personally against Mrs Hayne, I assure you, but she only exhibits an individual effect case of the effect of that hardening and barbarizing fanaticism they call religion. How totally different would a gentle soul with gentle religion have answered. Before all she would not have 4 Betsy the cook in the Lieber household.

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made an Aushängeschild of sudden Religion, for thus American religion must be called, a thing they put on like a dress, a uniform, sudden apruptly – it is like entering a monastic order, not thing intended for all. I donot Know whether the note stri will strike you in the same manner; it was to me very repulsive. I go to her very rarely on account of that forbidding face; I donot know whether she wishes to see me. And than I find often that emptiest of all empty heads, Mr Shand there. However I really believe he is a good man enough, and has the advantage over some others not having at any rate not some of their incongruities in his head. Every day the truth is forced more upon me that American professed religion is no religion at all; it is a hideous, harsh, lifeless, embittering, querulous dogmatism and empty system of set phrases – no well of life; unproductive, sterile, cramping instead of enlarging; fettering instead of elevating; distroying love instead of infusing charity – poisonous to intellect, wit, genius or any originality. Even that solace, my Matilda I have not, of pouring out these my inmost feelings to some friendly soul. McCords eternal talk of irreligion disgusts me – I have written yesterday to the boys.5 They are very noble boys. A propos! They never wrote to me about the condition of 5 years. Pray write me whether Carol – proposed the matter to the boys, or the boys to her, or whether the proposition of both parties crossed each other – My Matilda, be cautious in not buying things which although they strike you as fine, we do not want. Does not that oil cloth pocket book belong to this class? It is very fine, I own, but it costs money and I donot want it much. We really my Matilda have not much money and 3 boys cost a great deal before the parents have done with them. Besides the things you sent to me have been terribly charged for. Pray, pray dont consider me stingy; you know I am not; on the contrary I am continually betrayed into greater expences, by way of books &c, than I ought to incur. A propos I had a letter from Gossler,6 sending me a bill of the freight of the boxes &c &c sent to him. The letter 1 ½ pages as dry as our leaves here of last autumn. He says you are not neighbourly. I am glad you did not much go if she7 is so disagreable a person, and especially so arrogant. – I repeated on my ride yesterday the verses I sent you in my last. You had better read Künden instead of Zeugen, in the 20 stanza. I have tried to remember the poem to Oscar, which has given you so much pleasure but cannot. (Dont copy it however in one of your letters. You may fill the place with far better things)

5 Brothers of Mathilde Lieber in Ponce/Puerto Rico. 6 Johann Heinrich Gossler 7 Elizabeth Gossler née Bray.

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[2] Herrn Busse. Ich habe Ihren ausführlichen Brief gestern hier über Oscar e­ rhalten u erkenne die Wahrheit Ihrer Bemerkungen, weil ich die Eigenthümlichkeiten des Knaben genau kenne. Ich wiederhole jezt nur, daß Sie sobald Sie nun finden daß der Knabe einigermaßen aufgeholt hat was ihm an ersten E ­ lementen fehlt, ja Latein mit ihm anfangen, u ihn Englisch recht tüchtig treiben lassen. Was ihm vor allem Not thut, ist daß er lerne seinen Geist zu fixieren, zu concentrieren. Sein frühes Leben wodurch er in viele verschiedene Gegenden kam, sein stetes Zusammenleben mit seinen Eltern u. seine Eigenthümlichkeit des Geistes bewirken ohne Zweifel was Sie sagen, u. was ich tausendmal Gelegenheit gehabt habe zu bemerken, nämlich daß er es gar nicht in seiner Gewalt hat seinen Geist zu fixiren u. durch bewußten Willen, von allen andern Gegenständen abzuziehen und auf einen einzigen bewußt u willensgemäß zu lenken, […]. Dennoch ist beides von höchster Wichtigkeit. Ohne jenes kann nie etwas tüchtiges, schöneres, dauerndes geleistet werden; es bleibt alles mehr oder minder Tändelei. (Es ist eins der Geheimnisse, wodurch so häufig in Parlamenten, Staatsräthen Leute von nicht besonders eminenten G ­ aben die brilliantesten Geister überflügeln, u schaffen während diese deklamieren; wahren Anhalt haben, während von diesen weit mehr die Rede ist, u doch nichts zustande bringen können, Stimmen im im Congress leiten; ohne viel Rede, während diese alle Zuhörer um sich sammeln, sie ergözen, u doch nicht ein Votum rechts oder links bewegen können). Ohne dieses ist nie ein stäter Fortschritt möglich. Ja es ist nicht nur für das Kindesalter wichtig. Viele Leute können nie in späteren Jahren etwas ganz neues lernen, lediglich weil sie nicht gelernt haben, Bausteine zu tragen, u Kalk zu bereiten, wie langweilig das auch sein mag, sondern mit der Bewunderung herrlicher Gebäude u Raisonnements über Styl anfügen u endeten. Sie sprachen von Botanik. Hinsichts dieser muss ich Sie recht sehr bitten nicht wie man so oft in Deutschland thut u man mit mir gethan hat, mit dem trockenen System, der Classification anzufangen. Wie nötig d alles dieses auch später ist, oder beiläufig nüzlich, wenn beiläufig, auch schon früh, so bringt nichts perlenbildendes davon. Die vegetabilische Welt umgiebt uns allenthalben, sie gewährt unendlichen Nuzen u Freude, u der Mensch soll deswegen allerdings lebendige Begriffe von derselben haben. Wie viele Städter können kaum Roggen von Waizen unterscheiden! Aber lassen sie ihn Oscar mit lebendiger Anschauung vom Großen sowohl als kleinen u Zarten anfangen. Nicht blos die Linnaisch wichtigen Staubfäden einer Baumblüte sind wichtig oder das Wichtigste, sondern der ganze Baum, der Wuchs der Äste, das Laub, die Härte des Holzes, […], die Langsamkeit des Wuchses, seine FamilienAffiliation weit mehr. Vom reifen Farbenglanz der Bläther u ihrem Honig, zum

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segensreichen Mahl der Getreide, lassen Sie ihn alles von diesem unermässlichen Reiche, von dieser üppigen Palme bis zum kleinsten Mohn im Norden lebendig auffassen u genau wenigstens bestimmt auffassen, ohne Pedanterie; wie dieses allverbreitete Reich der Natur tausendfältig durch Nahrung, Feurung, Bau u Schutz, Geräth u den zarten Schwingungen der Geige und des Pianos in die Existenz der ganzen menschlichen Gesellschaft eingereicht, u sich der Civilisation in wunderbarerweise schmiegt u fügt, für Nuzen, Gesundheit u Lust; wie der Mensch seine hohe Bestimmung die Erde zu beherrschen wohl in keinem Gebiete so bewährt, wenigstens in keinem mehr so als im Pflanzenreiche; denn er macht die fremdsten Pflanzen zum Nuzen u zur Ergözung bei sich heimisch, veredelt ihre Früchte, vermehrt die Nahrung die sie geben millionenfach, u macht es möglich, hauptsächlich durch seine Herrschaft über dieses Reich, daß tausende u abertausende leben können u Bildung geniessen können; wo ohne diese Herrschaft nur ödes u wüstes Einödlei bestehen könnte. Wie wichtig auch das Thier- u Mineralreich für Nationalökonomie ist u für den weltverbindenden Handel, das Pflanzenreich ist es unvergleichlich mehr. Kleidung, Nahrung, Hausung, viele die in feinster Gaumengenüssen, Erholung, die ganze Blumenpoesie des Dichters, die ganze Landschaftspoesie des Lebens u des Malers – was danken wir nicht alles diesem überschwänglich reichen Theil der Schöpfung! Ich erinnere mich sehr wohl wie ich Botanik unter meinem Lehrer anfing u mit dem Trocknen u Bestimmen“ der Pflanzen. Die Folge war daß ich nie zur lebendigen Beschauung kam, u bald die ganze Sache mir verleidet wurde u alles vergaß ohne irgendeinen tiefen Eindruck erhalten zu haben, als ich in das thätige Leben eintrat. Ich muss Dieses Erlernen des Systems, die in mir Freude an der getrockneten Pflanze mit hübschen Zettel, mit Geschlecht u Ordnung, größer als die an dem lebendigen Reiche in der Natur, aus wirket ist nicht für einen Knaben die Grammatik dieses Zweiges, denn es führt ein zu dem worum es sich hinsichts der Pflanzen beim Knaben handelt. Aber ich muß abbrechen, u Sie haben mich gewiss auch schon längst verstanden. Leben Sie recht wohl, u bewahren Sie meinen mir über alles theuren Schaz. Ihr ergebener F.L. – April 8. We have had cold rainy weather for several days; I have not been able to ride, and feel very sombre. How good a letter would do to me just now, although I cannot in conscience expect one. Two thaughts besides pursue me just now. You were to have left Hamburg on April 1. Now, although you are so far from me, you can have no idea how it unsettles your poor Frank’s mind, that he cannot think of you as at a fixed place, and then the thaughts of danger! I Know they are not great, yet I cannot help thinking what would become of you, should anything happen. Besides April is such fiendish month in the North of Germany. Will Oscar be able to stand the cold? Happy shall I feel indeed

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when I recieved the your first letter from Hamb. again. I donot Know why, but I dislike this whole journey so much, and would have liked you to put it off so much. But I must not harrass myself. The second thaught is that you will to recieve my ugly letter about this time. I long for the day with all my soul, when I shall be able to say, well now she has the next one after that ugly one at any rate. If only that bad letter did not reach you, when you were from Hamburg! Pardon, pardon me. My dear Matilda let me make one prayer. You are so loving, coaxing in your letters – I donot speak of your flattery, I assure you, for that makes me often sad, because my life stands in too strong a contrast to those effusions of on my, I dont Know of what all, of yours; pray when you return be a little so, but a little in words. Believe me, ein anschmiegendes Wort, a lively expression of the pleasure at seeing me again when I come home, a kind yielding to a momentary desire (for in essence you not only yield always, but you desire nothing but to do my wish in your whole life) are not thrown away upon me. I on the other hand will be kinder, milder to you. Oh, believe me, my love, I wish an improvement in our situation as much for the sake of being put in a better frame of mind and freed from that soarness of soul which results from false positions, so that I may be a better husband to you, as for many other and almost all equally strong reasons. I must conclude for to-day. – April 10. Yesterday, when walking in the garden, that is in the spot where a few peas and lettuces grow, a little parcel was delivered, by a boy who waits upon the sudents: “A colored man gave it me at the door.” Upon opening it I found it to contain a letter from Gustavus Lieber of May 1839, and a parcel with letters from Retzsch, the famous draughtsman in Dresden. Two years ago, when with Theod.8 in N.Y., I one day saw for the first time Retzsch’s Chess player at a shop window.9 The whole made the deepest impression upon me, and when I came home, I could not resist writing to this excellent artist a few lines – it was an impulse I could not resist – Raphael, Italy a thousand things were working in me. Retzsch writes me in answer the following lines, Dresden d. 6te April 1839! Endlich ist es gelungen eine zuverlässige Gelegenheit aufzufinden, welche mir die Überzeugung [3] gewährt, daß diese Zeilen an Sie gelangen werden ohne der Unzuverlässigkeit der gewöhnlichen Briefspedition, bei so bedeutender Entfernung, überlassen zu sein. (!!!) – Ich kann Ihnen nicht sagen, wie dankbar ich Ihnen bin, daß Sie 8 Theodore Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. 9 Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch, Die Schachspieler /the Chess Players, 1831.

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die Empfindungen, welche mein Schachspieler in Ihnen erregt u den Eindruck den das ganze auf Sie gemacht hat, mir nicht vorenthalten, sondern Ihrer reinen Aufforderung Gehör gebend, mir schriftlich davon Kunde gegeben haben. Sie können es glauben wenn ich Ihnen versichere, daß mich diese in der Sprache größter Einfachheit u Wahrheit, so wie des wärmsten Gefühls, mir durch Sie geworden Beweis geisticher Ansprache aus fernster Ferne, sehr glücklich gemacht u mich mit der reinsten Freude erfüllt hat; daß meine Freude in diesen Zirkeln Ihre mir unendlich werthen Zeilen mehrere Male die Runde gemacht haben, gleich mir dadurch hoch erfreut worden sind u Ihnen den Schluß auf eine im Leben seltene, höchst achtbare Individualität des Verfassens derselben abgenöthigt haben. – Es giebt keinen schöneren Lohn künstlerischer Wirksamkeit, nichts belebenderes u aufmunterenderes für das Streben eines zugleich nach Gemeinnützigkeit ringenden Künstlers, als den Ton, welchen ihm der Genius anzuschlagen gebot, hier u da, ja selbst aus weitester Ferne, als Naturlaut in gleichbereiteten Menschenherzen wiedererklingen zu hören; zu gewahren, ist die Andeutung indessen, was die eigne Seele bewegt, obschon durch schwache Mittel so auf enge Grenzen beschränkte Zeilen kund gegeben, in anderen Seelen nachhallend, klar erkannt u verstanden auch von jenseits des Meeres als verwandter Gegenwart antworten herüber tönt. Sie haben, ich muss es nochmals wiederholen, mir viel viel Freude mit Ihren werthen Zeilen gemacht, ja mehr als Sie vielleicht selbst geahnt haben mögen. – Obschon ich nicht läugnen kann, daß mir schon mannigfache Beweise der Anerkennung meiner küstlerischen Thätigkeit, besonders von außerhalb der Marken meines Vaterlandes geworden sind, so tragen jedoch nur wenige davon so lauter u rein den Stempel ungemischter Wahrheit ächten Gefühls u tiefen Gemüthes an der Stirn als Ihre einfachen Worte. Möchten Sie den dankeswarmen Händedruck fühlen mit welchem ich im Geiste Ihre Hand fasse um daran abzunehmen, wie das was ich sage, aus dem Herzen kommt &c“ Er spricht dann von Oscar u er endet “u grüßen Sie mir Ihr Söhnlein”. Wie deutsch ist dieser Brief! Voll Seele,Wärme, u Gemüth, reiner Freude, in langen u verwinkelten Säzen u “meine sichtbare Individualität” – wie ins Gefühl gesagt. Ich werde ihm natürlich wieder schreiben. Laß uns ja Oscar bei nächster passender Gelegenheit ein oder einige Hefte von Retzsch schenken, vielleicht Romeo u Juliet. Es sind die besten Dinge seinen Formensinn zu beleben, u zu wandeln u. ihn nachzeichnen zu lassen. – Yester-day I had a letter by Hillard in which he tells me that Mary10 had left Boston for N.Y. to embark for Engl. I knew of nothing; it was a shock to me. We g become lonelier and lonelier here 10

Mary Appleton Mackintosh.

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every day. If I knew Mr Mackintosh11 I should not feel all this so much. Hillard writes me he has recieved your pretty purse, has thanked you in a letter, which, however, still lies at Knorre’s, and begs me, in the mean time to thank most sincerely. Shall I have soon a letter! I begin to long for one again, but cannot well expect one yet. My mind is overcast; and it makes me unhappy to see that the nearer the time of our reunion comes, the sadder it seems feels me heart, because nothing has changed, no speak beau has arisen at the horizon boding hope, on the contrary a new and greatest sacrifice must be braught to our false position – separation from our boy. We may be masters over our tears, at least in many cases, but over the weeping of the heart we are not masters. Does not every physiology teach that the pulsation of the heart belongs to the involuntary movements? I frequently get up from my chair, sopha with an exclamation such as: God, what a life! The other day, I started up and said: My boy, and out came the tears before I could stop them. A train of thaughts had just put me in that frame, when the mere utterance of a single word of mouth is all that is requisite to disturb that most nicely adjusted balance within by which we may contrive to suppress tears. I thaught how we should live here, how he will always be missing; how we shall be anxious for results how the children will often inquire for or long for him. Oh, it will be a hard life indeed. The whole life will be veiled with one lasting gloom. Is there really no deliverance in store? Let me break off. To-day you set out perhaps for Zuellichau. I hope, you have better weather than we have; it is cold, wet, dark here. – Almost all the students have been with me to “get ideas” for the speeches to be delivered at the exhibition in May. All this would be pleasant if one meant to remain, because it would be like sending out fibres in all directions and growing former to the place, but as it is, there is nothing cheering in it. I cannnot help it. Man is made for a community; he shall live in with, for a community; I feel it, I know it, I long for it; yet it is denied me for no one knows me would say: it is thy duty to settle for me here. No, no! not that! I exclaim it with trembling. Good bye, sweet love, I kiss you and the three boys most tenderly – your loving eyes, your living lips. If I should compare myself to some object in creation, such as I am now, I could find nothing that expresses the furnishes a true comparision except ein ga a smoked herring – dry, shrivelled, lifeless, without value – except I dont smell I believe. – Dont you remember Matilda, that, formerly, I had generally, after long, sad intervalls, some happy letters all at once I wonder whether for time is not tying up a bundle for me somewhere. To be sure, each letter from you, which show your incomparably elevated soul, is a bundle of happiness; oh! I donot deny that; but it is also a source of grief, that such a woman must live 11

James Robert Mackintosh, husband of Mary Appleton.

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in such a position! I am afraid that if you are here, I shall want you to be all the time in my room. Poor Hammy must have felt your separation very much, according to the description of his affection for you. His character is a fine one, I  think; if he were only not so dreadfully backward. I love him dearly, most dearly. What has Oscar done with the flag? – April 14. I suppose I must “shut up” the letter, and wait no longer for one from you. The winds may withhold that balm of my soul for many days yet. This moment I looked for a steel card with steel pens and opening the upper half of my desk I found in it a piece of the ribbon worne with Prussian medal; my Doctor diploma;12 a piece of glossy eastern paper with Turkish on it which I found in a desolated house in Corinth; the needle book, Amalia Goldschmidt13 gave me, Mary’s ring,14 and – two letters you wrote me at the beginning of our love, which I have always kept separate in a little leather case, Look at these things, how they represent my life! My  life! It might have been something. – My sweet Matilda, you know that Mr Bache has some several months ago handed it in his Report. This morning I recieved a number of the N.Y. Review. In it there is an article on Baches report and all the various documents and reports which have been published up with reference to that institution except – my report.15 My name is not even once mentioned in the whole, pretty long article. The two prominent ideas in my report are that the whole College should be devided in a common and High School, and that the College ought to be made likewise a seminary for teachers. Respecting the latter Bache agrees with me, I donot say that he adopts my view, for he may have had it of his own; this view is greatly extolled in the report article, yet not a word about my proposing it. This is encouraging! I have not seen Bache’s report; no one has sent it me, after, as you remember, Mr Biddle wrote me that Bache’s and my report should be both laid before the Board, and a ­report on both should be made. This too is encouraging! Believe me, my love, it is disheartening to find that the most earnest endeavors, acknowledged abroad, donot even move a leaf, where their real sphere is. I donot desire for pompous 12

On July 10, 1820 Franz Lieber had taken his doctorate in Mathematics at the faculty of theology at the University Jena; the length of the title of his thesis nearly matches its 10 pages: “Ein in einigen Stücken ausgeführter Plan zur Darstellung der Theorie der höheren Reihen für den Unterricht”. Universitätsarchiv Jena Bestand M, Nr. 245, see Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, p. 72. 13 Amalia Goldschmidt had been a close friend of Caroline and Mathilde Oppenheimer in London; Lieber had admired her nearly as much as her mother Adelheid, he esteemed the perfect society hostess. 14 When a young woman Mary Appleton Mackintosh had flattered Francis Lieber by presenting him in 1837 a precious ring that held a lock of her hair, Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, p. 242f. 15 Lieber, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College.

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proclamations, but do only regret, that the most earnest endeavors serve no way to promote in the most legitimate manner their cause. And ought I not to conclude from this that is not only an absence of positive good will, but the existence of a positive desire to push me aside? I donot know; it looks very much like it.16 How happy could I find a Northern Independance elsewhere. – Last Sunday Rhett took tea with me; we spent the evening with looking at Retzsch glorious Retzschednesses. Rhett was delighted; he felt, seized the beauties. He is, I should tell you, a fair draughtsman. – I forgot I have written this moment to Mr Biddle. Last Sunday I put up the dear Hammock. I love the old thing dearly; but I cannot write at present about such things or jocosely, I feel so very heavy at heart, and pray God may send me soon some c­ heering news or other. With the exception of Retzsch’s letter, there has been everything about dull of late. – I mean news, letters or absence of letters – even that Mary could go without writing me, was unpleasant, but of course is only a drop in the otherwise full bumper of absynth. – Henry17 looks disagreably like Hammy, from a distance. He is about as large, and square as dear Hammy when he you sailed, Henry moreover wears old coats & pantaloons of Hammy’s even the pinnafor, so that when I stand at the window, and Henry suddenly comes out of the garden, I am sometimes deeply and not pleasantly touched indeed. Otherwise, Henry is very fine looking Mulattoe boy. It is disgusting to me to see how that boy grows up, without instruction of any sort. And yet I cannot do anything, and if I could, I would make him, by way of exeption, but miserable. But it increases my disgust at slavery. I am not made for it, oh God! Thou knowest it, thou seest it, I am not! Oh why doest Thou let thy servant wither in this misery? Why must he, less made for slaves, than any one be placed here? Canst Thou not save me? Stretch out thine hand [4] and lead me out of the land of my mental bondage and the servitude of my soul. My love, my companion, my fellow-exile, I love you tenderly; and if I break off suddenly it is not from want of love; no, it is from overflowing. My heart is very 16

17

While Lieber had lived in Philadelphia 1833–1835 he had been hired by the executors of Stephen Girard’s will. His task was to draft a system of a college combined with a boarding school for white boys. Lieber had spent time and energy to prepare the so-called Girard Report; in that report he had created an elaborate concept for the future college to be built thanks to the funds dedicated by the late Philadelphian merchant Stephen Girard. The late Frenchborn Girard had left in his will the financial means to create a college in Philadelphia in his memory. Slave Henry, son of the cook Betsy in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

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full; fuller of late than it has been for a long time. Accept the tenderest lines of one who loves you dearly and who shall be so happy, if he hears of your safe return. Your faithful Frank. My beloved Boy, I have very not properly written to you for a long time; but I always love you dearly, sweet boy. All the faults of yours, which Mr Busse mentions, are precisely those which I always observed. This my boy will show you at once how correctly Mr Busse sees because if two persons at such a distance, who never saw each other, observe the same thing, they cannot well be mistaken. I make this remark, that you may pay still more attention to what Mr Busse tells you. You have once been punished. I wish you had felt in your heart that which would have prompted you to tell me of it. I would not ask it of you, my dear Boy, but I shall always be delighted to find that you have such confidence to your father who feels naught but love to you, that you frankly tell him about your punishments as well as the rewards you may have recieved. – Go straight my boy, I refer to shoulders and feet. – I must now speak of what I promised you long ago – the constitution of the U. States. After Columbus had discovered America, many European nations, especially the Spaniard, Portuguese, French and English, sent colonies to this new hemisphere. The English followed a very different plan from the Spaniards. They gave to various people or societies, different charters, so that the new colonies might govern themselves in all domestic matters, and should be under the general control of the British Crown and parliament only. There were thirteen such differently c­ hartered colonies; when they declared themselves independent, and faught it out like men that love liberty. As all these colonies had always been independent upon one another, and only dependant upon one common mother country, it was clear that they were quite independent as so many kingdoms, so soon as they had cut asunder the only dependance which united them to the parent country. But common descent, common language, common religion, common interest, and a general national feeling are stronger than mere political forms; so these independent states united into confederacy as on certain conditions, called the articles of confederation. According to these, each state sent deputies to congress, not more nor less than a certain number, but otherwise as many as they chose; they deputies together had but one vote, therefore it was the same to others, whether a state sent many or few. For many some things unanimity of all these votes was required, and always for all other subjects ¾. Some years experience showed that this would not operate at all. The states, although confederated, still met almost as quite independant states, somewhat like the German states at the Diet of Frankfurt. It was found necessary to make a more national government, and the wise framers of our constitution had the bold idea, for it was very bold indeed, and for the first time in the ­history of the world, to ­superinduce a national government upon a confederacy with

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one chief ­magistrate and two houses, like a parliament of England. The one house, called the Senate has two Senators from each state, whether that State be small (like Rhode Island) or large (like New York), and each Senator has a separate vote for himself; the other house, called the house of representatives has a number of members from each state, which is apportioned to the population of each state, according to a proportion for the whole union, for instance now one member for 40000 citiz people, so that one has state has many the other few. Rhode Island has two Senators, because she is a state, but has but one representative, because so small. The representatives all vote for themselves and not the states, so that they have indeed a national character. I have spoken on this subject at great length in the 2d – vol. of my Ethics18 which you will understand when you are about 16 or 17 years old, at least with my explanation. At present beg Mr Busse to explain what I said. Our constitution is therefore quite different from that of Germany or Switzerland, or the former one of the Low Countries, all of which are or were confederacies. – My boy, the other day when, for the first time after so many months, I put on boots again, I made this pun for you. When is the left boot the right one. And this: How can you make of a [cross-writing] common gentleman asking, not by placing something on his head by adding a little bit of a tail? (For the beloved copyist. This pun is so stupid that I must explain it myself: By adding e to Sir, and making Sire. I know it is very stupid. Dont say a word. I ask your pardon, and will do no more so) My paper, you dear boy, is at an end, and although I should have liked to talk, longer with you, for love likes to talk, I must stop. Kiss your dear brothers from your father who loves you all and Mama dearer than nought on earth. Remember me kindly to Mr & Mrs Busse, professor “Windsack”, as Mrs Busse justly calls my boy in one of her notes. Your loving father Single Paid Via New-York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per Packet Stamp New York APL 20 Stamp Le Havre 20 Mai 40 Stamp Hamburg 26. Mai 40 18 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

No. 54 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 06.04.-17.04.1840 Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Mathilde Lieber, Eppendorf 09.04.1840 Included:copy of a letter of Wilhelmine Charlotte Lieber to Mathilde Lieber, Züllichau THL Box 54 LI 5072 (2), ALS, 4 pages XXI (2) All well. Hammy & Normy having had a little cold but being recovered Last date April 17. Good Friday Hamburg den 6ten April 1840 Mein bester Freund. Ich schrieb dir zulezt als wir noch in einiger Besorgnis für die kleine Clara1 waren, die einen sehr heftigen Anfall von Bräune hatte. Jezt ist sie schon auf der Herstellung und wir sind alle wieder beruhigt. Obgleich der Arzt der Meinung war daß die Krankheit nicht ansteckend ist, so hat er doch selbst Trennung der Kinder anempfohlen, welches wir auch sorgsam beachten, und die kleinen Jungen waren alle unten gehalten nachdem sie von der Schule zurückkommen wo sie jeden Morgen von 9 bis 1 Uhr studiren. Norman ausgenommen, der da Rebecca immer die Kinder nach die Schule nimmt, und nachher ihre nursery Arbeiten zu besorgen hat, gewöhnlich bis 11 Uhr unser Gast bleibt. Er ist diesen Augenblick damit beschäftigt sein Pferd zu füttern indem er immer leise mit dem Pferde spricht; ich sage ihm: come Norman tell Papa what you are doing“ and he answers: I cant, Papa dont ask me. – Ich hatte neulich ein Gespräch mit Hamilton über den lieben Gott, und wie gute Kinder zu Gott kommen. Hammy sagte: Mama I dont like to go to God, God is in Heaven, & I cant stand there I fall down. I want God to come down to me. I want to see him. God a man, Mama? I want to play with him. Mutter, ich nicht leiden du sterben. Er hat jezt große Lust deutsch zu sprechen, da er aber nicht alles ausdrücken kann so werden die beiden Sprachen sehr vermischt, den Versuch deutsch zu sprechen macht er erst seit einigen Wochen, und da er jezt schnell darin fortschreitet, hoffe ich daß es ziemlich damit gehen wird ehe wir Hamburg verlassen. – Normy sagt: Please Mama ask Marie2 to give me some milk to cook with? Ich sagte: Marie wont give me any. Then, said the little chap, you must take some from Marie Mama. – Fine principles for a young mind: what we cant get by asking for we must take! 8ten I have great longings for a letter from my dearest boy. 17 days today since my last arrived. The quiett life I have been leading, makes me miss you still more than usual my own Frank. Again and again my thoughts wander to you & I pray to God that 1 Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz. 2 Marie, cook in the Lomnitz household, Hamburg.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_056

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our meeting may be a happy one, that I may have accomplished every thing you wished me and that no displeasure may rest on your mind. – I told you in a former letter that I have so great a difficulty in making Hammy repeat at home what he has read at school. Lately I have given it up, because I was afraid by exacting it I might make him loose all inclination, and in fact his hours at school are sufficient for so young a child. The plan of compelling children to accomplish so very much is no longer followed in Germany in general. This is called the old plan. But Miss Schlumpf seems still to belong to that school and poor Felix has always a great many works to do at home, which almost take up his whole afternoon. Caroline Hart & I however are of opinion that this only can do harm to the child and therefore Carry means to interfere. Certainly it can not be necessary for so young a boy to work so hard already and we think the constant writing would ultimately injure his health. (9ten) Yesterday night I sat up until 3 OClock with Carolines sick child and I thought I should be able to write to you, but it was too dark in the room and I could not. Our children continue to be well, thank God, and are in excellent spirits. Every day Hamilton talks more German, Norman also comes out with a few words now & then, but I believe his acquirements will soon be lost again, with Hamilton however I am very desirous to keep it up. My poor Adela has been very ill indeed, so much so that I had been seperated 10 days from her when I first was allowed to go to her again & when I found her looking extremely ill. To day she was rather better but yet extremely feeble, so that she cannot go up and down stairs alone. I often feel very much alarmed for my poor friend. She is perfectly familiar with the idea of not living long & looks with melancholy to the future, though when you see her with Ferdinand, her pleasure at all his fun and peculiar talent in drawing it out, you would not suppose her suffering so much in body & mind. My poor dear Adela, I feel more and more how affectionately I am devoted to her. It always causes me the greatest resolution to part from her again after I have been near her a few hours again. (11) I have not been able to write to you my dearest spousy, for my time has been much taken up with the children the whole house have had colds which commenced in Carry’s nursery and finished with mine. However with the exception of Clara they have all remained free of the croup or anything approaching it, though they have coughed and have had a little fever. Our young ones have merely had a little opening medicine and are now running and skipping above me; yet for the present I have made them prisoners in their room, preferring to use the utmost caution. I must tell you another little trait of Normy for he is a cunning little chap. I found him busily employed widening an aperture in a chair. I told him: Normy, Normy, you must not do so, I shall punish you if you do it again! upon which he said: I will wait till you’r gone out of the room, then I do it. – Hamilton & Norman had both a

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cake given to them. Norman had eaten more of his than Hammy, and the latter remarking it said: see Normy I got more than you! Norman I suppose unwilling to let Hamilton feel his advantage answered: I like to have little. – Hamilton has just now made me a nice copy of 60 very well done. The two children play very nicely together and nothing can equal Hammys patronizing affection to Norman excepting his respectful affection to Oscar, of whom I am sure he is convinced he can do nothing wrong. My Adele is rather better again and able to ride out short distances at a time, but she has gone through very painful operations and I fear she will not so easily regain her strength, I have been often with her since her illness, but only on short visits. How she deplores that you have no thoughts of Germany, at least of Hamburg. She thinks we should live so happily together, that you would like Ferdinand, that she would also be able to gain you, for she immagines that you have a decided dislike to her. I never come near, but she begs me to communicate some of your letters, she is growing fonder of you by every communication of these, and your love for me she enjoys with the feelings of true friendship. I assure you my boy you too would not only love Adela, but you would esteem her thoroughly if you knew her. May her health be improved is one of my [2] most earnest prayers and may her children long enjoy the blessing of such a mother, and her excellent hearted husband the happiness of possessing a wife so gifted, so true, so affectionate. Without being at all sinnlich, Adela has so glowing a heart, so ready to give the most earnest, the most devoted proofs of attachment, that I must consider her a most loveable being. With regard to her mental superiority, she never lets her inferiors feel it otherwise than admiringly; you must like her my own Frank for your Matildas sake who is again very very fond of her. Adela has just called to ask me whether I would go and dine with her to day; I could not because Carry & I are to spend the evening with Auguste Söehle, my fat, much in the family way cousin. I mention this my own dearest, that should the idea of being at all uneasy about the children cross your mind you may be relieved by the knowledge of my going out, which of course I should not do if the chicks were really sick. I might to be sure not have mentioned their slight indisposition at all, but from the first I determined what ever was the matter during our seperation to communicate it freely to you; the responsibility would seem to me still greater were I not to do this, and thus as you can depend upon my veracity, anxiety is out of the question. Norman – I find I always come back again to that little chap though I assure you he does not get in the least spoilt by me; indeed if I favor either of the two little ones, it

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is Hamilton – but Norman I think is very much like you in character, such a roguish little fellow, full of tricks. Yesterday Rebecca was just placing Hammy on a chair before the tea table when he quickly put one of the cups on the chair that Hammy might sit down upon it, and then the laughing, and enjoying his fun. Rebecca has to put up with a great deal from him, throwing her thimble under the bed, coming slyly behind her chair with a lump of pomatum on his finger and besmearing her neck with it, tumbling her collar to his hearts content. But with all this he is indeed a very affectionate sweet boy, and the tear of pity is ready with him as with our staunch Hamilton. God bless them both. – And now Oscar, come my dearest I must not forget you. Dr Busse has been to see me since I wrote you last, he had received my very determined note and came to tell me that he has made up his mind to commence Latin with Oscar at Easter, he will write to you himself about it. If he had followed his own inclination he would have waited at least another half year, but he gives up to your judgement though he must own that he cannot follow up the study as devotedly as he would have done a little later, otherwise the boy would have too much to do, for at Easter he also takes an Latein English master for Oscar and his time will be very much taken up as he of course in all the other studies has to go on with the boys in his class. Still Busse hopes he will be able to accomplish it; he begins to work a little quicker and his teachers on the whole are satisfied with him. He speaks with warmth of his good qualities, his frankness and his confiding character & his love towards us which is ever ready to break forth. His quickness to forgive and forget if any one has offended him. Busse has also remarked to me, without my mentioning that we had already made the observation, how Oscars disposition to work well & quick often depends on the weather, on the brightness of the day. He often gets up & says immediately: Heute fühle ich wird es gut gehen Onkel, du sollst sehen! and then he is sure to have a happy day and frequently it is the reverse, he is lazy & drousy and Busse has not been able to ascribe this change to any thing external except the influence of the atmosphere. I have expressed my wish that he should write to you in English instead of German, which will be done. B. lets him learn some words to spell every day, orthography still remains his great trouble. His anxiety to become thoroughly acquainted with all surrounding objects, still remains, he does not rest till by means of untiring questions he has gained the information he desires. His master in his name asked for his magnifying glass. Oscar thinking that he could use it better in the country than in town. He has now his little garden in Eppendorf and Dr Busse told me how much it delighted him to work in it. The arrival of the storks too has gratified him so much, and he watches them constantly. I had the following little note from Oscar: Eppendorf April 9th 1840. My dear Mama. On the 4th Busse saw a stork, & I on the

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5th. They are beautiful birds, on the whole body white except on the edges of the wings, their beaks and legs are sealing wax thread, they spread their wings so magnificently in the air. Dear Mama the other day as I was going home a large kind of Falcon flew up as if he came from my feet, and all the birds were still at once; he was of a brown gray colour. Kiss all at home. Good bye Your affectionate son Oscar. The dear boy comes home on Saturday, to day is Wednesday, so I have not long to wait, then, it being Easter and he will remain at home until Thursday morning. Good Friday they still spend at school. The examination will be on the Sunday after Easter Sunday. Oscar has been there too short a time of course to expect much from him, but I shall like to present, to judge of the advance of the boys in general. If I am still here Caroline & I will go with Ludwig3 – I have had another letter from Züllichau, and one from your brother in Berlin,4 both praying that I should bring Oscar. They are terribly disappointed. Eduards Frau5 schreibt, von den übrigen unterstüzt: – Wir hoffen mit Gewissheit du wirst deinen lieben Eheherrn überzeugt haben, welche schmerzliche Stöhrung die Freude unseres Wiedersehens erlitte wenn wir keins Eurer Kinder an unser Herz drücken könnten? Es ist ja sehr schlimm genug daß wir unsere Wünsche so herabstimmen mussten nur eins Eurer Kinder zu umarmen, nur von Einem ein Bildnis unserem Leben zu bewahren, Ich war eben bei Karstens als der Brief dort geöffnet und deine theuren Schriftzüge mit allgemeiner Freude begrüßt wurden. Aber wie versteinert waren wir im ersten Augenblick nach Lesung dieser betäubenden Nachricht daß es vielleicht möglich wäre du kämest nun ganz ohne Kinder zu uns, u im nächsten Augenblick rief jeder von uns, nein! das darf nicht sein! Alle Geschwister haben mir aufgetragen dir es hiermit recht ans Herz zu legen und dich mit der innigsten Bitte zu bestürmen uns diese Freude nicht zu versagen. Karsten läßt dir auch noch besonders sagen wie er die ganze Verantwortlichkeit auf sich nehmen wolle, und stellt es dir zur Erwägung anheim wie flüchtig das Leben und wie ungewiß die Hoffnung für ein zweites dereinstiges Wiedersehen hienieden für uns ist“ – Am Ende des Briefes kommt dann wieder: Laß mich noch einmal meine Hoffnung auf Oskars Herkommen aussprechen, wäre Eduard6 nicht so sehr beschäftigt, so würde er mich unterstützen dir die Bitte unserer ganzen Familie eindringlichst ans Herz zu legen.“ – deine Schwester Dorothea erholte sich langsam nach ihrer sehr schweren Krankheit und sie freuen sich alle daß die Hochzeit 3 Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, Lübeck. 4 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. 5 Wilhelmine Charlotte Lieber née Baur, married to Francis Lieber’s brother Eduard Lieber, Züllichau. 6 Eduard Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Züllichau.

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aufgeschoben ist auch für Karsten der sehr angegriffen seyn soll und der wünscht Lottchen7 selbst zu trauen. Bliebe ich bei Lottchens Ehrentage aus ich würde sie alle sehr betrüben und das mögte ich um keinen Preis mehr als sie es schon sind durch den Gedanken daß Oskar nicht mitkommt. Unglücklicherweise erwähnst du in den beiden lezten Briefen die Sache gar nicht, und nur in dem einen in dem du nicht so freundlich warst, so das ich mir zuweilen vorstelle du würdest jezt anders darüber urtheilen, besonders wenn du die Briefe der deinen liest die so dringend sind. Gustav8 schreibt noch viel mehr darüber. Später bekömmst du die Briefe, doch vielleicht erst wenn du in Neu York bist. (14) Oh if I only had a letter again. I am so impatient, it is almost 4 weeks since your last dear ones arrived. How happy I shall be when I see your handwriting again, my own Frank. Now I do not feel in a writing humour. I am too uneasy, too anxious, and I fear [3] you will be displeased when this letter reaches you. My own dear Frank are you well. How do you pass your time? Alas that I am your wife and for the present I know so little about you. How trying it is to wait from day to day, in constant anxiety. – our darlings are much better and as gay as little larks, would you could see them. My poor boy, it must be a terrible sacrifice, to give up that pleasure for so long a time. Caroline gave some kind of tea to Norman, last night and told him: Take some Norman it’s very good: I don’t think so at all! said he after trying it. Hammy gave me the following story in German when I came to him this morning: Als ich schlafen in mein Bett eine Fliege auf mein Fuß kratzen mir und ich todt die Fliege! – At last I have seen Dr Wurm, on Saturday he called upon me, and on Sunday I dined at Uncle Haller9 and was his neighbor at dinner; he did not inquire so very much after you as I expected, but he seemed to be well acquainted with your situation as well as with every thing you have written. Your last work he has not read but has noticed it as he tells me he always does with books from which he expects information, to study whenever he occupies himself with the particular subject on which they treat. He is much pleased with his situation in Hamburg, would exchange it with no other or any condition; prefers his intercourse with merchants to that of the professors & other learned men; thinks that you would never be able to bear 7 Charlotte Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber, daughter of Dorothee and Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten, Züllichau. 8 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. 9 Martin Joseph Haller, uncle of Mathilde Lieber, father of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller.

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the life in a University-Town that there is no change for the better, nor does he believe there can until a complete revolution takes place, giving to each a proper position. He thinks that you have chosen the right & only profitable part for a stranger in America. He knows well that no German has been as successful in making his name esteemed as an author as you have and he also thinks that History is the very science for America. Talking of Beck he mentioned having seen a letter of his to Julius,10 in which he complains of the little he can do to forward the study of the ancient languages. These he considers quite unnecessary in the new world. We conversed a good deal and I found that he had made himself far better acquainted with every thing touching America than any one I have as yet had the opportunity of talking to here. American journals do not now find their way to Hamburg, at one time they did, it was out of my power therefore to direct his attention to that article of Legares which you mentioned in one of your earlier letters. I inquired of him which journal he would advise you to take. He thinks: die Halleschen Jahrbücher,11 which are a kind of opposition to the H. Literatur Zeitung.12 They are edited by two very clever young men, & their tendency is dissatisfaction with the existing arrangements. I have already spoken to Besser whether he could not procure me a few copies, merely to give you an insight into the character of the work that you may judge whether you would prefer it to the L.Z. – I only heard the other day that by waiting to the end of a ‘Jahrgang’, you may get it cheaper than by taking them as they come out, & Besser is now getting for you the volume of the H.L.Z. of 1839. Dr Wurm’s wife was not there being indisposed, but I hear she is a very charming woman, the sister of Spekter, a clever artist particularly Lithographer.13 Wurm has no children, lives in the country in the summer, and is I believe in comfortable circumstances – Chateauneuf has been with me again, he has taken a great fancy to Norman poor man, I think he wants a wife and a home sadly. 3 cousins, male ones & an uncle paid me great compliments about my looks on Sunday. Ferdinand said: Mathilda du sahst wunderschön aus. Du hast mich ganz erstaunt! – Soehle14 said: Sie sollten sich nur in dem Kleide mahlen lassen usw. These observations do me good on your account my own 10

11 12 13 14

Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius had met Harvard professor Charles Beck while Julius had travelled across the USA in the 1830s collecting material for his study on the political status of the USA. Hallische Jahrbücher, Halle 1838–1843, founded by Arnold Runge, Halle, and Theodor ­Echtermeyer, Organ of the so-called Junghegelianer. Hallesche Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, H.L.Z. 1785–1841. Hermine Wurm née Speckter, sister of the artists Otto and Erwin Speckter. Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller; Johann Christian Soehle.

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Frank, not only because they give you pleasure, but also because if people say so, I must still be pretty tollerable to look at, and I rejoice if I have still something to offer you which may satisfy your still so youthful feelings. You remember you always said that if I could have the advantages of a Parisian lady how well I should yet look. Those certainly I have not here but yet far more than I have had for several years past and they are not without their influence. I shall leave my measure with my dressmaker here and perhaps Carry will be able to refresh my wardrobe from time to time, for I shall not like to bring too much with me on account of the changing fashions. When you go to the North just inquire if short mantles are worn there, coming down about a quarter of a yard above the dress, of black silk trimmed all round with fringe or lace, not a mantilla but the regular shape of a cloak shortened. I think them pretty and very useful in our climate but should not like to be laughed at in Columbia should they not be worn at all in America. My dress the other day consisted of a light coloured changeable silk and a handsome white worked cape, becoming to the figure, fastened by a very handsome coral broche which dear sister Hart has given me, & long gold earrings. I have a great love for the latter ornament now and Harriet has supplied me with several; but for every day I always wear those pretty little ones, your first gift my dearest love, you do not know how I doat upon them. (16) I must go back again to last sunday. In the morning Hart & I called upon Adela, we chatted a while and then I went on alone to Matilda15 purposing to go to church with her; it was a beautiful warm spring day, and the ‘Wall’16 over which I have to walk when I go to see my friends was crowded with gayly clad cockneys of every rank and description, so that I preferred to go a little out of the road and down at the edge of the water where a sweet little winding path lead me to Matildas door. She was alone, well dressed as she almost always is, running to meet me with open arms, and pressing me to her heart, as none can do better than Matilda! We soon found out that we should like to have a nice talk rather than go to church, for the sun was hot and the trees yet uncovered give no shade, so I sat me down beside her little cosy window near her and most happily did we enjoy ourselves for two full hours. Did we talk of you my dearest love? can you doubt it? Matilda believes truly that in your feelings for her the Sinnlichkeit had no share. I did not agree with her persuaded that your nature glowing ardent, as it is, could not divest itself of

15 16

Mathilde Benecke. Name of a Hamburg Street, today Neuer Wall, in the heart of Hamburg close to the Town Hall designed by Martin Haller and the Rathausbaumeisterbund (1886–1897), son of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller.

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this one form any more than of another. Of course I do not believe that ever a wrong thought entered your mind, but I do believe that when you held her hand in yours, when your head rested upon her knee, you felt enjoyment such as lovers feels, without certainly even desiring more. Had Matilda not been a married woman, she surely would have been yours. To judge from all she tells me she most affectionately loved her husband. All her relations she tells me made her dreadful reproaches for allowing you to be so intimate with her, calling her Matilda, and so forth, but she was convinced that your real affection were not engaged, and that therefore there was nothing to fear for you; that she was safe herself she also knew and that Wilhelm should receive no wrong. And now she looks back to that part of her life with true happiness: Mein Leben ist so reich gewesen, sagt Matilda, und da ist so viel Poesie darin, daß ich noch glücklich die Erinnerung lebe und es wohl ertragen kann jezt so still für mich meine Tage hinziehen zu sehen. Es war ein schönes, schönes Leben! Erinnerst du dich eines Kusses den du ihr auf den Nacken drücktest als sie einmal über die Arbeit gebückt war? Erinnerst du dich als du bei der Abreise sie nicht küsstest und dir in einem Briefchen Lob dafür ausbatest daß du der Entsagung fähig warst? Du thatest es nicht weil Wilhelm17 nicht zugegen war. Oh! old times Frank! My boy I fear your Matilda can be but little comfort for you, when I remember all you have enjoyed in your life, all the blessings of animated intercourse, of gifted minds who were devoted to you – and for all that – what has your little wife? nothing but love, love. Oh, that this love could be formed into happiness for you, that it might give a charm to your existence, old as it is that you might still breathe from it enjoyment. My own dearest husband in hours of discontent, remember as Matilda does joyfully, that you have lived, that the past has not been without its glory, that the present gives you a loving wife and children. – and trust to Gods mercy for the future. – Matilda also told me much of her subsequent life. She has been engaged again and that for the space of two years, but she found out more & more that it would not do, and she has broken it off. The individual was a relation [4] of her sisters husband, he was much attached to her, and in an hour of surprise she gave her consent, but only to rue it almost immediately after, for she found upon considering all the sacrifices she would have to make him that she did 17

Wilhelm Benecke, husband of Mathilde Benecke.

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not really love him. They were seperated her letters naturally grew colder, he observed it and himself gave up the conexion. Their engagement has remained a secret. – She has had adventures besides in her widowhood, particularly with her physician though he was a married man, he suddenly on a visit without any precious conversation, suddenly embracing her in a desperate manner. – And now still Matilda is a woman who may fascinate most deeply. I have warned her with young Benecke18 who as she tells me passes a few hours every day with her. – Matilda accompanied me home, we walked again cross to the edge of the beautiful blue river and again we thought and we said: Oh wäre Franz nur hier. – And I have since thought to myself: to have Matilda19 living with us, what happiness. No I would not be jealous, indeed I would not nor would you be unjust to me. On Monday Carry & I took coffee at Matilda and then we went together to the church St Petri20 where an oratorium was performed. Händels Messias & a Requiem of Mozart, for the benefit of the poor sick.21 The coffee was fine, some of our brothers, of which Caroline had made a present to Matilda; the latter gave us a few fine stories to laugh at, she has such a number of anecdotes at her command which she understands well to illuminate; then we went off to the church delicious music but the performance not altogether as it might have been. The performers were amateurs and not much talent amongst them, as indeed Hamburg does not seem to abound in talent of any kind. – Why this continual whist playing: because the people do not know what to talk about? There are but very few ‘Geistreiche Menschen! – Now I must upstairs to our darlings and have a little play with them. Goodbye my dearest Frank. Alas we have constant East Winds, & the Great Western has brought me nothing. But God bless you never the less, I am not angry, only I hope & hope that soon I shall have one, & a regular comforter. – Will it be so? I trust it will, and that you are well and think of us with love & with joy at the thought of our approaching Union. Good Friday.22 Caroline & I went to church this morning, and so full was the church, that although we went long before the service commenced we had yet 18

19 20 21 22

Dr. iur. Otto Benecke, son of Ferdinand Benecke who against the approval of his mother was in love with Mathilde Benecke, widow of Wilhelm Benecke, former friend of Ferdinand Benecke. Mathilda Benecke. St Petri, one of the main churches within Hamburg. Messias/Messiah, oratory by Georg Friedrich Händel, first performance Dublin 1742; ­Requiem in d-flat, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, first performance Vienna 1791 or 1793. April Friday, 17 1840 = Karfreitag= Good Friday.

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to be satisfied with seats behind the pulpit, but I was not satisfied for I like to see the orator as well as hear him. To morrow Oscar comes home. Yesterday I saw Matilda again, she came to us with a toy for Normy: From Adela I have just received an invitation to come and dine with her it being Ferdinands particular request. Ferdinand says he is going to write to you but there is not much ­dependence to be placed in him. He is the funniest man in the world; he is a most social person, unwilling to do anything alone: ach Gott ich muß meine Hände waschen, bitte komm Einer mit mir! I wander how you two would agree. The children are almost well again, Carolines also and the beautiful weather will soon allow us to take them out again; but even now we have here pretty sharp easterly winds occasionally which must be guarded against. Adela is rather better and full of love and kindness to me. Adela you must love for my sake will you? Caroline and Harriet are both well [cross-writing, 1] and send you their most affectionate love they will write to you as soon as their time allows but they beg you not to wait; because you write with so much greater facility and does them so much good to see that you love them. They I assure you are very dotingly fond of you, very jealousifying for me – How I wish now that I had gone to Züllichau in the autumn before Oscar went to Busse, then I might have taken him I feel so distressed to have to disappoint your relations so will you my dear Frank not write to Karstens at the occasion of Lottchens marriage.23 Caroline has written an other pressing letter to Clara24 to beg her to come to us. I wish she would [cross-writing, 2] but I doubt it; – Just interrupted by a visit from George Hesse who is going to England to night & offered to take my letter; but I like the post office regulations better than the pocket of a giddy youth. – The children send their kisses to Papa and Rebecca her remembrance, she too is longing for you, I have had every reason to be satisfied with her while at Hamburg. She is very much attached to the children and attends to all her duties; Indeed I find I am much better off than

23 24

Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten, brother in law of Francis Lieber, and his daughter Charlotte Karsten, Züllichau. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England.

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[cross-writing, 4] Carry with her Heidelbergers,25 whom she has to treat with great delicacy and constant care not to offend them. They will go in May. Then too Carry moves into her new house.26 Good bye my own dearest best loved Frank, most tenderly do I press you in my arms, kiss you love you. God grant me a letter soon Your Tilly until – Oh far far beyond death. Pr Dampfboot Via Havre & New York Single Mr. Francis Lieber Columbia S.C. Franco Aux Etats Unis Stamp Hamburg 17 APR 1840 Stamp New York ship Jun 2 + sealing wax 25 26

Servants who had already been employed by Caroline Lomnitz’ parents while the family stayed in Heidelberg 1830/31–1838. Caroline Lomnitz moved with her family and guests from Esplanade No. 8 to Esplanade No. 13 within Hamburg-Neustadt. First she rented, then circumventing local law the rich widow bought the house No. 13 on her own account.

No. 55 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 17.04.-25.04.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 10, ALS, 4 pages XXX I am well – in body. Columbia S.C. April 25. 1840 There is the emblem of life – a ship! But is it of mine, such as the watermark stamp here is? The vessel sails with full canvass, swelled, appearantly with a fair wind, is this the emblem of my life? Do I plough through yielding waves, or plod through heavy ground, mire, sand? Perhaps you exclaim: Why you have become of late much worse! So it is, I own it. I feel heavier every day, because daily and hourly I feel more acutely that here is not, cannot be my sphere; That I am not made for them, they not for me; and hourly I feel more that my hope to return to more genial beings diminishes. The Rev. (oh reverend indeed!) Mr Thornwell, as conceited a theological puppy as ever barked from a pulpit, declined two weeks ago, taking a message for Dr. Ellet’s to the a u ­ nitarian Minister in Charleston who, by the way has no congregation but lives peacably for himself, without controversy or dispute whatever, on no other ground than that he is Unitarian. Yet this zelot is cried up as the greatest genius of the state, preached for a week every evening at Charleston to an overflowing audience.1 I donot speat from envy, but this is the state of feeling of those who are the leaders, and does show how I am utterly out of my sphere here. They would not acknowledge the most ardous endeavors of duty and the noblest enthusiasm, except it attaches itself to their wretched poor fanatism. On the other hand I see that that article on Girard College, in the N.Y. Review of which I spoke in my last letter, must have been written by a Philadelphia man, and one too to whom all the materials were furnished, in short one, I doubt not, who either is a trustee or very closely connected with them. Yet as I told you, not once even my name is mentioned; not once it is intimated that the Board of Trustees ever did such a thing as charging me with drawing up a report.2 In short it seems perfectly clear that at least among a number of men it is settled either to keep out a foreigner, or, if they are narrow-minded enough, a ­non-Pennsylvanian, 1 Perhaps he meant Reverend Samuel Gilman who since 1819 served as pastor of the Unitarian church at Charleston/SC; he was known as an active advocate of temperance movement and published widely on this behalf. Lieber who liked a nice sip of claret could not stand the reverend. 2 Lieber, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_057

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or, as I have heard, men of settled reputation and advanced in years and ­knowledge, so as to form the whole College most minutely upon the plan &c of Dr Bache’s, and that he shall form his professors, although this would be against the very words of the will,3 which provides that men of tried skill alone should be appointed. But what of that! Matilda, could I but kiss you once in my most heavy hours! When I feel at times how utterly barren my mind is, and and then remember how productive and active it can be, because I know it from experience I feel sad, very sad that lungs are given me, but air is denied to breathe; of what are are would be the swift feet to Achilles; if the ground, to try his swiftness were denied him? What use are sails and masts, and wind to a vessel, if she lies on oneside on the beach. – I hope I have soon some heart’s ease, that is a letter. Good God, what a happiness, luxury, glorious consciousness it is to live unter seines Gleichen! Welch ein Trübsal in der Fremde, nicht blos in fremdem Lande, sondern in der Fremde der Seele zu leben. # Did I not write to you that I had written on international copyright law in a letter to the Hon. W.C. Preston? I sent it to Preston to be forwarded to Prescott that they in Boston may have it printed if they choose;4 I will not pay for or toward the printing, thinking I have done quite enough in writing it, and besides not considering my composition important enough to pay for the publication. NY, publishers dont print publish pamphlets here, as in England, because no one buys pamphlets as in England. Preston writes me. Yours is decidedly the best argument I have seen and will tend to settle the public mind on the question.“ I write this as an item of my life and because pleasing to you, but I aver that I donot in the very least degree consider these things as you do, as evidences of acknowledgment, and all that. I assure you, I know, I have no influence. Look at that Philad. business. A fact, which it was incumbent to mention as a fact is the history of Girard College, that the Trustees had accepted, officially accepted my report (and even paid me $1000) is passed over as though it had never happened.5 You recollect that Tocqueville wrote me to send him my works, to present to the Institute, because he had resolved to propose me to be elected a member, in which the distinguished historian Mignet had engaged to second him. The elections were to have been in January, and not having had any letter from Paris, it is clear, it seems, that I have not been elected. Donot 3 Parts of Stephen Girard’s will from 1831 that refer to the founding of a college in Girard’s name are printed in Lieber’s, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College, pp. 5–20. 4 Lieber, On International Copyright: In a Letter to the Hon. W.C. Preston, Senator of the United States, Wiley and Putnam, Broadway, New York, and Paternoster Row, London 1840. 5 Lieber, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College.

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for a moment suppose, indeed you cannot, that I make the estimation of myself dependent upon actions like these. I know full well that elections of this sort depend upon a number of trifling considerations alien to the essential par point of the question, for instance there may have been many candidates of an old standing. Still it shows that I am not acknowledged as you with the fondness and vanity of a tenderly devoted wife imagine. In addition, I have not had any letters from Mittermaier6 for a very long time, especially not since I have sent him some of my works. It is possible that he is vexed, that I donot write my Penology, which he wished me so much to do, and for which he offered to write a preface; but I told him no bookseller would publish it, I was sure, that in Germany he no doubt could find a publisher, but having written as much for philanthropy’s sake and becau to satisfy an inmost urgency of my soul, e.g. the Ethics,7 cannot, must not write any more of that sort, for some time to come, because I have children, who, every year will cost more to educate. Still again, I seem to have lost him. You Know me, my sweet Matilda, and Know that I can firmly look upon myself independent upon audiences or opinions without; but these things, nevertheless, make one feel chill, especially when in a situation which cheers with no invigorating, animating breath. It forces the feeling of intellectual loneliness upon me in addition to the solitude of life. – You will comfort me, I know, I stand much in need of it. – You sometimes say, my Matilda, you see that all have their burthens &c. True, but you must never forget that mine is the consuming and burning fever of an active mind thrown into a totally wrong element. Do you think Raphael could have been happy had he been doomed to have his hand tied forever? With proportinate deduction this is my case. Is there one here who feels with me, who thinks with me, who tries to understand one solitary thaught of mine? In all that impels man’s soul most – religion, thaught, the love of the beautiful, friendship, poetry, tastes, desires our souls absolutely diverge. Hardly a young man is here who seems even to understand me after the most patient trouble, as I had this moment an instance when a young man came to read his speech to me. Such vulgar trash of ho clumpsy notions, after I had taken all possible pains to elevate his mind a little above the commonest views of religious utilitarianism. Oh let me 6 Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg; the correspondence between the famous and well connected professor of law at Heidelberg University and Lieber had started in 1832 thanks to the networking of Georg Oppenheimer in Heidelberg. Notwithstanding some interruptions it lasted for several decades and enriched both men’s libraries by transatlantic book exchanges, see Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 339–361. 7 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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be silent. Is there no thaught that gives ease? There is one, which brings peace for those who love and trust God, but it is a thaught I do not that which I once desired but donot now, because I love my wife and children, and know they would grieve were I removed to the land of peace, and because I fondly cling to these treasures, the free gift of God himself. Kiss the sorrow from [2] my brow. – Easter Eve.8 This day is always interesting to me – provided I remem think of its being this day, which is a matter of great car uncertainty, as you know, in einem festlosen, kahlen, calvinistischem Lande, wie diesem – for I returned at Easter eve, when all the bells were sounding from Greece and sailed into the harbor of Ancona.9 Oh it was a remarkable moment of my life. I meant to write cleverly to-day at a work, which occupies but does not interest me; but my mind twisting about this way and that way, came after all to the task which I know was lying at the bottom of it – to writing to you. The day before yester-day I recieved your letter, which reaches Feb. 28, therefore, as you see very quick. The letter contains the copy of Matilda’s10 Love message, and Caroline’s breathings of affection. Although I knew I should not see my Oscar again, although I had made up my mind to it, when Caroline thus spoke of it as a fixed matter, when I thus found distinctly before me, what I had until now shunned to read aloud from my own mind’s tablet, I was very, very deeply affected, I am so now, and must repeatedly stop, although I frequently thank Caroline for the promise of being a mother to him. Yes, Yes, I acknowledge it, yet it is so unspeakably bitter that it is necessary another should become his mother, that a boy in his tender years, and with his affectionate soul should become an orphan, while his parents are lively, and parents who love him dearly who have no treasures than their children’s souls, and all this with no reasonable hope of change, release, of delivery. – I come again to you after my eye’s declined for some minutes to aid me in tracing the letters. Since this subject has presented itself thus settled to me, my life likewise appears more settled, but it is the settledness of a nipped branch, the point, from whi the bud of which the best shoots start in spring, is broken off; sidelings may thrive yet. My soul is utterly unproductive. The work I have in hand is a mean thing; yet I can hardly get 8 9 10

Saturday, 18 April 1840. Eastern 1822 when Lieber had had to leave Greece and given up his illusions to become a great military hero in the Greeks’ fight for liberty. Mathilde Benecke.

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along with it. When I imagine your seperation from that beloved boy; when I imagine your arrival without him, when I think how Hammy and Norman will sit at dinner, and his chair will be empty – Good God I cannot write – again and again it overcomes me. – Had I but performed that last service, to write to him about it! Poor, poor boy, thus early torne from his brothers! I must now try to write about other things, and yet every thing is so insipid to me; instead of writing with such ease and abundance, which you know, when I feel free, I must now think what I may write about, and then I dont write with spirit. I shall write to Mat. Benecke, whom I feel truly grateful for her kind love to me. – With your letter I recieved one from Sally Newton, telling me that she is engaged to a Mr Oakey of N.Y., a merchant, who fell in love with her at the springs last year, and of whom she told me much, as a ver man of very refined feeling cultivated mind and handsome with all. If she will be happy I am truly glad, for such a veuve appétissante, blooming, fresh and buxom, is a social solecism, until united again to one she loves and who loves her. I remember her sisters who sing beautiful. She does not know yet when they will marry, but she will let me know. She will live of course at New-York, which I think, will be very hard for poor Mrs Sullivan11 and Miss Austin, one of the very cleverest women I know, kind, disintered, and who loses one of her friends after the other – Sally, Mary – Fanny12 of course will marry at no distant time, feeling lonely at home as she does. – My Matilda, what do you mean respecting Gossler.13 That he is the most misery fellow I know, and also that he has never done my slig trifling money concerns with any peculiar favor; but at least so I think. Pray settle by all means with Perthes14 – his bill seems to me very large indeed. It is not very foolish; in order to avoid their making me pay la high prices, for waiting long for my payment, I made the arrangement with Gossler to pay them always at once. Why he has not done so, I don’t know. Yet, I only Know that since that time I have repeatedly paid small drafts of Gossler’s only lately one for $50. I beg you therefore to speak to Gossler, you must excuse me; whether he has paid Perthes anything since Trapmann paid for me; and after you have seen that all is right or appears to you so, pay by all means, and make some arrangement or other with some one to pay always at once, and then tell him that 11 12 13 14

Sarah/Sally Webb Sullivan, widow of William Bont Sullivan, mother of Sally Newton née Sullivan. Sally Newton née Sullivan, Mary Appleton Mackintosh (since 1839) and her sister Fanny Appleton who would marry Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1843. Johann Heinrich Gossler, Hamburg. Perthes, Besser & Mauke, Hamburg.

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I expect the lowest prices. Moreover I would beg you to write to Mittermaier15 if you have no objection; if you have, pray one of your cousins to do so, namely this; whether the money I owed him for books (I believe it was 30 guilders) or rather to a Heidelberg bookseller has ever been paid; if not, to beg to draw for the amount upon such a person as your uncle16 will tell you. I wish this matter settled. His direction is Ghrath Mittermaier, Heidelberg; and I repeat the sum is very trifling. Speaking about many matters, there is one thing which troubles me a good deal. I have seen that a horse is of infinite value to me here; I live more, I am a better man, I take an interest in God’s creation, in the growth of trees, in the lovely perspective of the foliage, in the poesy of the forests, in the call of his birds – I breathe better; I am more a man, a gentleman withal. In addition I do not wish you and the children to live here in the hot clime without a horse and a vehicle. I do indeed not; you live penned up too much, and I never enjoy you and the children at real ease. Therefore I am anxious to keep a horse, yet if we do we must have a servant boy and the carriage with him will be a great expence. While I shall have to pay off a great sum during 1840/41, your expences, the sum we owe to Rebecca, the money we must have to go again to the North in 1841 when the boys17 are there, together with the expences of living at the North after your arrival, even if it be but for a fortnight (since we have no acquaintances there) and the going home will amount to so much that I doubt very much whether we shall be able to pay off the whole in 1841 even without the additional expence of a servant boy, carriage &c. For I hold it to be certain that without dear, sweet Oscar and grown as the children are, we might do without boy, if I keep no horse. Does not Rebecca think so herself; for I take it for granted that she will come back. Apropos Matilda, I think it would be but fair if in some conversation or other you stipulate that if she goes back with us, she will at least stay a year more, for it would not be fair for us to pay her travelling &c, while from N.Y. to Columb. she certainly is of little use, and she were to marry immediately after her arrival18 – Do you know that I have heard – to be sure 15 16 17 18

Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg. Jacob Oppenheimer. Brothers of Mathilde Lieber from Puerto Rico. Lieber was right; Rebecca McClelland soon after her return to the USA married the Bavarian shoemaker Michael Ehrlich and baptized her first born son Francis Norman. See Michael Ehrlich’s gravestone in Elmwood Memorial Gardens, Columbia/SC that shows the loving inscription: “An honest here lies at rest As ever GOD with his image blest”. Find A Grave Memorial # 85294952. Findagrave.com.

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[3] through Betsy19 only that a woman, with whom she became acquainted in the Presbyt. church, and whom she used to visit with the children, Nancy Crane20 I believe – not the “people in the wood” – is a bad woman? Elza sowed for her during last sommer, and says men used to sleep with her. For God’s sake let us adopt it as a most absolute principle that our children are nowhere to be taken – Absolutely nowhere – except where we allow it. – It seems to me to appear from your letters, what is but natural, and, I can say, what I always believed, that the interest your relations took in my letters, was not a hundredth part as great as you, as a fond wife imagined, and that which really existed was owing chiefly to the novelty, which of course is wearing away or has worne off. Donot torment your relations, therefore, with my Klöhnereien. Apart, however, of these letters &c, I hope the deep interest your uncle21 seemed to take in you is not dying away? You have write to me of late less of his visits. – Why does not Adele go to something clever but definite, a specific study, a specific occupation, which engrosses all attention and furnishes the great satisfaction and ease of soul, which success is something good always gives? Before all let her abstain from reading at random: Why is not Mat. Benecke acquainted with your family? The wheels of Hamburg society seem to move as slowly and clampsily as those of an old wall-clock, full of dust and thickened oil. – ­Something as characteristic of Southern American disposition as I know of. I found one of my shoemakers putting a piece of leather right on the span of the foot, and another a perfectly round piece in the side of another boot, although both perfectly new. I inquired and they told me that the moment an American felt a boot pressing in the least, though a new boot, he would take out his pien-knife and make at once stashes right and left. They then showed I believe at least six new pairs all cut in this way, and were sup surprized I did not this habit, because they had heard of it already in Germany. Now, although it shows, no doubt, the in this degree the recklessness of the Americans, and disregard of anything, for the mere idea that “it is a pity” to destroy a handsome piece of handywork of this rest, would prevent others, a pedantic German would allow his boot to fasten ten thousand cores upon him upon him before he would dare to get a new pair of boots. I cannot judge whether thus told the use whole 19 20

21

Betsy the slave in the Lieber household. Perhaps a member of the family of Sidney Crane who had moved from Newark/NJ to Columbia/SC to work as merchant. See documents in the New Jersey Historial society Mss group 422 Crane-Pierson Family. URL jersey.history org. (30.10.2016). Jacob Oppenheimer.

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appears so strikingly characteristic to you, but as in reality it is. – I have been reading Raumer’s Beiträge &c, from the French and English Archives, which you sent me.22 The book is of the greatest interest to me, although I am very far indeed of drawing always the same conclusions as Raumer, for instance respecting Frederic II. Raumer gets into a terrible pickle respecting the Partition of Poland,23 defending all the time Frederic, who played an infamous play, and yet all the time running down Engl. and other powers for not preventing it. Altogether it is very unworthy for a man like Raumer to stand up th not only as the unqualified Champion of Fred. II, but as the qualified one of Freder. Will. I, who was through and through a brute. The Prussians praising thinking render themselves ridiculous before all Europe, and have done already so; just as some stauch Tory Episcopalians blame Henry VIII very qualifiedly only. I highly esteem Raumer for having elevated himself above Den Beamten, and sometimes rising to the views of a statesman nay, what is more, approaching some times, though but from distance, to the opinions of a citizen, which considering that he has always lived in a Beamten-Polizeistaat wie Preußen is something indeed. Sometimes his views respecting statesmanship are positively wrong; sometimes his observations trifling, childish. But what has excedingly surprized me is this, that with very few exceptions indeed, he has cal translated the English, where he gives it, e.g. because a familiar phraze, or a peculiar turn, wrong, sometimes entirely so. I wonder that he does not Know more Engl. and sometimes he hangs observations to his wrong transl. which donot apply at all to the original. A reviewer might make a formidable string of these blunders. Ranke, whom Rahel24 in one of her letters calls (as author) voornehm, is still less of the substantial citizen, and no statesman indeed. Indeed he writes, I see it daily more, history like an excedingly clever professor, still a professor, not as a statesman or citizen! A great effect – I mean vast – whatever that be, elicits either his open or secret admiration. I can imagine Ranke to say, if some enormous operation of the inquisition had exturpated a heresy on a gigantic scale: Es war doch etwas Großartiges in dieser allgemeinen Vertilgung. These things are shallow, although it is this the Germans call great in a historian. I repeat it 22 Raumer, Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte. 23 Lieber referred to the numerous partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795 in favour of Russia, Prussia, and Austria; especially the first partition had been in favour of Prussia with King Friedrich II. playing a dubious part. 24 Rahel Varnhagen von Ense; Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation. ­Lieber had known Leopold von Ranke as well as his brothers in Berlin where they had met in Jahn’s Turncircle. Connected by the special networking and friendship of turner he called the Prussian historian by his first name.

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is but shallow. How different Niebuhr!25 Donot misunderstand me, that I call Ranke in general shallow, but this part of him, these blendende Voornehmigheit u Abwesenheit aller pracktischen Behandlung u Einsicht is very shallow. As to Leo, he is crazy, ludicrously crazy. The Germans, having no p ­ ractical public political life, allow any one to say pronounce any paradox, however ­rediculous. – Good gracious, where am I! Easter Sunday.26 You must not neglect the boys,27 indeed they have not deserved it at our hands those generous boys.– Send or bring no cow, my shoemakers tell me that they make in Germany gewalkte Stiefletten. As I like at present very much to wear English shoes, i.e. with very thick soles, but nicely made (as you see Walter Scott having them on pictures) I should like to try them, because they must fit admirably. Buy me therefore a pair of black ones. Of course the shirts you leave entirely alone. The handkerchiefs you sent I am sure I never could think of using – such wretched little rags they are. I hope you may use them, I cant. I really wonder at all these things. They are but trifles, still such things are baught with some degree of thaught. I beg you, by the way, not to stuff much things in the parcels by way of filling up, which pay duty, if you continue to send them as on the manifesto. I am very anxious to know whether all my late letters have arrived, since I have sent many through Preston. – Saturday. April 25. – I had made up my mind to finish at length a wearisome task before me, when, every thing being prepared for a long days work, I recieved your letter XIX of March 5. and all possibility of working is gone. My love, my true love, my dearest Matilda, first I was rather glad, when that sad letter arrived, for you mention in it the receipt of my XX and XXI, and that you had wept. I said to me, well then it is by this time over! For I believed it was an answer to my letter, ever since so often regretted, and to answer to which I had feared ever since I had sent that wrongful, inconsiderate, harsh and unkind letter. But upon consideration I find that alas! my most beloved wife. The worst letter was yet to come. May God only have granted that you have recieved the letter I wrote immediately after the bad and vicious one, and the one to dear Caroline soon after. What joy it would give me you had recieved both at the same time. – poison and antidote together! I repeat, my Matilda, yes I say from the fullness of my heart, my Matilda, my soul, I repeat, pardon your fretted, unjust and fretful husband. If only the whole is over if – oh God! I hope your health has not suffered in consequence, I will say, that, since I am as I am, for which I am try truly sorry and grieved, it

25 Barthold Georg Niebuhr. 26 19.04.1840. 27 Mathilde Lieber’s brothers in Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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[4] the whole sad occurrence shall at least be turned to good account. I have been obliged to work the whole of this bad buseness alone, digest it in my solitude, and give you, love, my assurance, that shall not be in vain; it shall be remembered during the whole rest of my life. Pray do not cease to confide in your Frank; he loves you, he loves you ardently, he will love you kindly too; trust, oh trust again in him. Your unmerited gentleness has overwhelmed me. I feel very, very ashamed. My life shall prove to you that I have felt this catastrophe deeply. I had a hundred little things to write to you, but they are gone now. I can think of naught but you. So I had a long fine letter to Oscar in my mind, but it is gone too, and again I can not write to him. Mr. Cogswell went with old Astor’s grandchild28 to Germ. to place him at that school at Dresden, about which I asked for information.29 But your information about his bying books may nevertheless be true. There may be the chance yet that Astor founds by his will a German professorship in the Columbia College, N.Y., and gives it to me, as he seems to have indicated in conversations to me; but – Would it not have been natural for him, a German, to place me at the head of the library? But it is natural too, “daß wer nicht da ist, dem wird der Kopf nicht gewaschen”. That is the additional evil of my double exile, that I am not on the spot, and who cares for people at a Patmos? How much I should have liked to see my love so well dressed! What do others care for it compared to my delight! – No, no my sweetest love donot regret having gone to Germany; no, no, it was well, it was even necessary. Your reasons respecting Oscar’s going have convinced me, and I hope still he has accompanied me you. I am very deeply grieved that the reports about Oscar remain always the same, that actually he excells in nothing, that even in drawing he recieves indifferent testimonials. I hope that Dr Busse’s reports read more gravely at a distance, than they are actually meant, but certain it is, such as they are, they are most dreary, cheerless things for me. Indeed I donot see in them one single point to cheer a distant father, not one, and I actually now fear them, while I ought to long for them. Oscar does not exert himself too sufficiently. He enjoys I am afraid his feelings too much. Kissing the books I gave him, and all that is very well if united with manly exertion, but it becomes simpering sentimentality if m if it alone. His study has not given me that pleasure I had a right to expect, ever since he left Columbia. We have it had here for the last 3 days 84–86° Fahrenheit in the house; and the flies are in their 28 29

Either John Jacob Astor III (1822–1890) or William Backhouse Astor Jr. (1830–1892), grandsons of John Jacob Astor and sons of William Backhouse Astor. Blochmann’s Gymnasium, Dresden.

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numberless horts about me. You Know. On the first of May begins my going to the Stewart’s Hall. Pray for me! – Charlotte30 is very ill; I donot believe she will live long. I believe her father’s strange engagement grieves her; perhaps she wrote to you about it. Mrs Ellet’s health is very bad; she has all the time fever. She goes to the North in the middle of May. I answer your letter probably tomorrow, but must conclude now, to say a word to Oscar. My angelic Matilda recieve a sorrowful husband. Your, yes your, your Frank. You wept at my letter, so I at yours. Tear for tear, and joy for joy. Alas! that I can give you so little of the one, and make you shed the others plentifully. – I have found a fine hickory for a walking stick on one of my rides. It must dry for several months, and when I mean to have it mounted for your Uncle.31 Does he carry a stick? My beloved Oscar, I had a long and perhaps fine letter for you in my mind, but I recieved a letter from your dearest Mama, a better than whom is not on earth. This letter required an immediate answer and the I was obliged to use the room, intended for you, for Mama. Mama so you must take these few lines to-day. Mama sent me a copy of Dr Busse’s testimonial of your application, of Feb. 29. My boy you donot sufficiently exert yourself, it seems that all the old faults against which your parents had to contend here, and which Dr Busse observed from the beginning, continue unmended. This will not do my boy. You excell in no single branch; even drawing does not recieve unqualified praize. Learn to work at will – Your parents ask it, your teachers ask it, your interest and wellfare demand it, God demands it. Let me hear no more of your distraction, of being an hour about a thing task which you might finish in 5 minutes. The question is not whether we do well, and quick what we like. Any man [cross-writing] collects fruits, which he is going to eat, if he be hungry & quick enough. The question is, whether we do what we donot like with alertness and vigor. Aye! The question is whether we learn to like what we dislike. Without it, all is child play, trifling – not worth mentioning. Be a man. I must say that in the drawings you have sent me from time to time I have seen little progress since you left. I must conclude. I kiss you, I bless you and – I believe I forgot – I thank you much for your Knife. Often do I think, if I but had a that knife now on my rides. I hope you did not stint yourself of any thing in saving the money for it; still, I  Know, that a good child like yourself has no greater pleasure than that of

30 31

Charlotte McCord Cheves. Jacob Oppenheimer.

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given pleasure to his parents and brothers. But this you must also remember respecting your ∆lication. Your loving father [cross-writing, 2+3] Before I forget it. That separation from Oscar as you propose it, does not seem to me good. It will break his heart to take leave alone. I think it would be best to let him take leave with all the others. The community of Grief, the very bustle of grief is some relief. Let him after that stay a day or two with his aunts and then go – poor boy – to his place. Think what he would feel if he were to go out alone immediately after taking leave. And I certainly would not advize to cheat him, to leave him without taking leave. Such cheat are very bitter. Tell him that I come to see him as soon as I possibly can, alas, and prepare him for the trial. Some days ago I was awoke in the morning by the loud sobbing. I went to the window, and found Stephen clinging to Mrs Richardson, who was departing for N.Y. Good God, how it cut my heart. His leave from you haunts me day and night. – What do you think of taking Oscar to Engl. if he has not gone to Züllichau? I merely mention this by the way. Single Paid Via New-York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York May 1 Stamp Paris 1 Juin Stamp Hamburg 5 Juni 40

No. 56 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 28.04.-10.05.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 10, ALS, 4 pages XXXI S.C.C. May 10. 1840. I donot wish to let so fine a space unused. Tell Matilda1 I can not write to her just now. My hea[r]t is too sad, but that my affection for her is not dead she may see from the fact that I cannot think of writing to her in Sie, because I have all the time thaught of her as Du. Good bye to ye both two Matildas. – Yesterday the 9th I had your steam boat letter of April 3d. Twice does the word physician occur in your last, and twice it is written phisician. Now let me boldly ask you, do you believe that Mary Appleton or Sally Newton and thousands, millions of other women would act do it, if they were told not to do it once, or twice. I spoke to you first about this foolish word in Phil. or N. York. But you have made up your mind not to write it correctly. Tell me, openly, do you think grammar does not exist for you, or is your mind incapable to learn this slight change, or it is not worth your while to pay the very slightest attention to what your friend says, not obstinately – no – he only says what is said in the lowest school room. As though you had absolutely closed the subscription book of Knowledge. Donot get over the ∆ by just saying: Oh, its a Trifle. A Trifle after having been mentioned a hundred Times is no longer a trifle – besides – permit me to say – spelling is for a Lady in your station no trifle at all. I think what I would say, were I to find such a word in the correspondence of Chatham, thus spelled by Lady Chatham. It is humiliating for me to consider that so little influence have I, that a remark of mine is not remembered beyond the hour of your life phisician, phisic, phisical science; I will say no more about it. – Here are 14 lines of a letter occupied with, what I most certainly would be ashamed of acknowledging to others to have written about. What With how very different things might this space be occupied! But that is not the worst; with what different things might my mind be occupied; perhaps, with what different feelings my heart! – [the lines in this section of the letter have been crisscrossed by Francis Lieber] – You Know my character, Matilda; I cannot, for my life, decieve myself purposely. It may be a misfortune; but I cannot help seeing things, feeling things, sharply, distinctly. Thus I could not but seeing the misspelling in your letter, and write to you, as I did yesterday! I will indeed say no more about it. I Know you could bring any great sacrifice for me; I feel fully and wholly convinced you could die for me. Why then not bring small sacrifices, or, rather, I ask there 1 Mathilde Benecke.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_058

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for no sacrifice. It is no matter of mine; I have not settled the Latin or English spelling, no more than I have settled our way of dressing. It is no whim of mine. Indeed, it is not. I think you must allow that. However, I will be just, and say that I remember you could not have had the letter in which I wrote already once about that word, which I must compare to one of the flies, which now plaque me so much, and trust I shall see no more about it. Let me now fully, though briefly, answer your letter XIX, of March 5. And first about your returning. And, of that, first about your welcome. Yes indeed I shall recieve you with a welcome of my utmost soul. It will be marred, the pleasure of our meeting by the absence of that beloved child of our soul; but that is not your, not my fault. It cannot be otherwise; still this although a man Knows that he must drink a bitter drug, it, nevertheless, remains bitter. My Stimmung has become of late very grave. The dropping of one flower after the other from the tree of our hope (that of returning) and the certainty of not beholding my Oscar again for a long time, with the great anxiety it entails, of directing his education from such a distance, and many other more or less weighty things have made mye cold, stiff, if I can express it thus. I think you must observe it in my letters. I am sorry for it, but I cannot help it. Thy heart does not pulsate with genial life, fresh, free, high. But enough of that, my dearest Matilda. Come, you and will see, whether the man whose name you bear, is the husband of your soul. As to your sailing, I can only say, try by all means to arrive here, at the latest, within the last ten days of September. Not at Charleston. Besides there would be no vessels for that city to be depended upon. But if there be a good vessel, truly good with a good and careful captain (I read yesterday of a great loss of life by two vessels running foul upon one another on the Brittish coast) for Baltimore, I have no objection indeed. But are there vessels from Hamb for Baltimore? The best, the safest and most certain I think still will be a Havre packet. You ought to sail from Havre 5 weeks before that last 10 days of Sept. But another, merchant vessel would require 6 weeks. Now although a merchant vessel would be cheeper, you must also consider that if it does not sail exactly at the time just specified, and you should arrive here say 3 perhaps 4 week before the time, the expenses in a hotel, you Know are very great, and our living there, after our first meeting would be very uncomfortable. Nay, we would be obliged probably to take a parlour. – 3$ a day at least. (By the way, I find that living at the Victoria Hotel2 in Paris, one of the first taverns, with 8 francs only p. day, with 3 meals and wine!). This however let be certain without fail, that I know precisely when you sail, by what vessel, for what port. Perhaps you write me that by Brit. steamboat. 2 Hotel Victoria, Rue St. Honoré, Paris.

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My heart is so heavy during the whole time I write this! I repeat that I think you had better allow Oscar to take leave with the whole family. The community of grief eases the heart of the afflicted. On no account decieve him by saying you will see him again, and then going off. No, no! These deceptions newer never fail to pour gall into the soul of the decieved. There is some comfort in drinking the cup of pain to the bottom. But you will judge for yourself. I for my part would advice to let the poor boy stay at once a day or two with his loving aunts. Will it not be a comfort to him to cling round their neck, and to weep freely; and if Caroline will allow that day or those two days her boy to stay at home too, I will shall feel very grateful to her. Perhaps, if you go in the morning, they take him out a little in the afternoon. Fresh air does good in sorrow and grief, for it invigorates, while the latter relax the nerves. – I cannot write any more about that heart breaking subject. Ah! And I think of your pain, and the lonely passage. For that reason too, I think a Havre packet would be better. You may find an acquaintance. – If you go to England you might inquire where Mary is. I suppose you might through some of your acquaintances direct a note to the Foreign office, inquiring where Mr Mackintosh of the British embassy at Washington is tarrying.3 Perhaps you might happen to be at the same time at London with them. # Let that above be unwritten. I will not harrass you. Let it drop. – Tuesday. My dearest Matilda, if I had was to mention the above at all, I ought to have done it in one word, and not so many lines, which I confess are very ungenerous after when you the mistake was in a letter, so gentle, kind and so endearingly good. But I cannot strike out the lines out without rendering the space they occupy on the other side unfit for use, which you would not like, so, pardon me; I love you, I do indeed from all my soul. – I hope the letter which shows you that your reasons, why Oscar might go, have convinced me, has arrived in time. I should not have spoken so positive on his not going had I not become by that time very anxious, finding no answers returning to any of my questions, I thaught you paid no regard to them, and that it was necessary to be positive. Besides I was in no good humor, as you have seen. [2] Last of April. To-morrow is the first of May, a happy day for Italy, a joyous one for many people in England, but for your Frank the beginning of – going to the Steward’s hall!4 Mephistoteles, you Know is called the Lord of the flies; 3 Mary Appleton Mackintosh and her husband James Robert Mackintosh. 4 Stewards Hall built in 1805–1806 was part of the campus of the College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC; the building on the current site of Harper College contained two stories and

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I have no doubt he is, for what is better instrument of plaguing has he, than rats, mice and flies? I dare say, the house of steward opposite must be some pet principality of his, for you can have no conception of the horts of flies there. This discomfort is very irksome to me just now, I mean the going 3 times a day to that nasty place. However! – I will continue to answer your letter my dear Matilda. I am exceedingly sorry that Dr. Busse is such as you describe him, and I have no doubt correctly. I had thought that after a few years – if that beloved boy must remain so long – the fruits of the enormous price, now paid should be reaped. For it cannot be denied that $450 for a boy of his age is enormous in any country, but in Germ. in particular. But what is more important, it is a pity for the boy; for the next best he could have, seperated as he must be from his parents, is a continued teacher. Hardly will Busse know him thoroughly and begin to take a parental interest in him, when he must be torn away again, and be sent to some one, whom it will take again a long while before he knows where the boy is strong, where weak. Nevertheless, I believe you are right. That Busse is no vivid, brilliant mind I have seen long. It may be well enough, so that he be earnest, conscientous and endr industrious with him. You assure me that Oscar is not stupid made stupid, dull – I am glad. Much as I desire that he be made steady, I should very much regret seeing that boy made ­humdrum. – I was interrupted this moment by a letter from Fanny about Mary5 & c. She says, she wrote to you, but not knowing her your direction she addressed to Messrs Oppenheimers, Hamb. I wonder whether you recieved the letter my dear Matilda. – I am very much obliged pleased with little Hammy’s letter. I believe I never wrote you that I was very much delighted that you had those little ear-rings – the first offering of my love – repaired and wear them. There’s poetry in that. – Fanny writes that she will be in Newport6 this summer. That letter of Oscar’s – I assure you Matilda I cannot pronounce or write his name without having that feeling of something rising in the heart and from below the eyes – to his brother Hammy was very sweet. I kiss the loving boy for it; the loving, dear boy! He must now and then write to his brother here. Oh God! – I was very much pleased by what you write me about Oscar’s purity and honesty. I am only sorry that it appears he excels in no single branch. A propos I read in

acommodated students, slaves, the steward and his family as well as the commons of the college on the Horseshoe. See The Buildings of South Carolina College URL library.sc.edu (13.12.2016). 5 Fanny Appleton about her sister Mary Appleton Mackintosh. 6 Newport/RI, upcoming holiday resort for the High Society in New England and the middle Atlantic States New York and Pennsylvania.

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the see by the Memoirs of Mad. Roland – pray read that book, will you?7 Pray do so – and since I think of it, get some 8 or 10 good books, which you feel it is worth your while to remember, for your passage – that she loved Plutarch beyond anything and when 9 years old took it into church, during lent, instead of a prayer-book. But donot conclude from this, that she like so many others doubted the existence of God &c &c. If you go to England, who will meet you at your landing? For God’s sake be careful as to these things, for Europe you know is in these things very different from America. I trust in to God that you take very particular care of this point. Fanny8 tells me she will spend the summer at Newport; perhaps the best we could do, would be to go there, in case that you arrive some time too early for proceeding to the South. Ed. Everett has gone to Europe for 3 years, with his family, and Mrs Brooks has taken his country house as well as his town-house. I say Mrs Brooks, because she alone is before one’s mind, when one thinks of both9 – if this is not a ball, I wonder what is. – I now fear, fear very much your letter. Ah! so inconsiderably have I acted. But I deserve it, I know. Would to God only I had the your letter af written after the receipt of my better letter. – I still hope you have recieved my letter in time to take Oscar. You are now – God knows where? I think I wrote to you already that it increases my discomfort in a considerable degree not to be able to think of you at a fixed place. – To-morrow night at de Saussure’s. No one, except yourself, and you hardly, can imagine my feeling of utter estrangement or absence, or whatever it may be called, when I am at such places. Wahrhaftig, ich wandle wie unter Larven. I have never believed that there could exist such utter and absolaute want of the very slightest interest for people you nevertheless know. Those that have never experienced this donot Know one of the dearest, bitterest things which can be meeted out to us in this life. Fanny writes that Fanny Calderon writes the most interesting letters about Mexican ladies who dress in white satin for breakfast and smoke cegars;10 diamonds and lepers &c, and her most hearty disgust at the life she is obt has and the country she lives in, I find that Sismondi, the famous historian is uncle to Mary’s husband. He must then 7

8 9 10

Jeanne-Marie Roland de La Platière alias Madame Roland, Memoires particuliers de Madame Roland suivis des notices historiques sur la revolution, du portrait et anecdotes et des derniers ecrits et dernieres pensees, par la meme, 1793. Fanny Appleton. While both Liebers admired Fanny Brooks, they harboured some doubts about the social qualities of her husband Sidney Brooks. Fanny Appleton informed her longtime friend Francis Lieber about the Mexican experiences of their mutual friend Fanny CalderÓn née Inglis; obviously the wife of the Spanish ambassadeur to Mexico used those impressions to author her study about Mexico: Life in Mexico, William Hickling Prescott Boston 1843.

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be the husband of Sir James Mackintosh’s sister.11 The sun shines so bright, so powerful, so profusely – oh that one ray, equal to these millions, would fall from the sun of hope upon a heart which at times sorely sad. I Kiss you my Matilda; I long for you. I beg you once more to pardon that beginning but I cannot now distroy the letter. My dear Matilda could I rest my weary head upon your shoulder! My soul longs for a soul. To chew down solitary and alone all one’s feelings, all ones thaughts, makes one taste the last bitterness of every bitter grain, without allowing one to taste all sweetness of the sweet grains. There was always some distant hope within me that sometime or other during this spell of solitude I should be enabled to write to you a letter beginning with the words: Victory, victory! When at length I should be able to communicate to you our delivery out of Egypt. The 9 months will soon be passed and – ah, let me not think of it. – I do hope your Uncle12 has not slackened his interest for Oscar. I wish I had the means of thousandfold increasing his and all others’ interest for the boy of our soul, now that the time of seperation ­approaches. – I wish you would see Mrs Öhlrichs in Potsdam, that awfullest of modern, mushroom, barrack creations of cities. Potsdam hat mich immer ganz beklommen gemacht. It has all the absence of history which an American place has without their absence of Zwang. Es ist ein rechtes Preußisches Soldatennest. New and yet not fresh. I do hope Eliza (Thornd.) will have childr. Without it, Potsd. will be sad work for her. Kiss Matilda from me, kiss Caroline from me, kiss Harriet from me, and press and kiss the children. Give my, I really donot know what, who to [3] Adele – for neither love nor respect will do. – I am very, very sorry at what you write about that school in Germ. literature.13 Again and again it is proved how a united public life is wanting in Germ. For although I Know that sometimes a public lif national life somewhat cramps wit or boldness, it is abso is nevertheless absolutely necessary for a manly, substantial character, for an absence of that silly and fatal love of paradoxe, and altogether for sound view. I assure you, that it does my heart good to read once upon a time a German author that calls black, black, and white, white. I lately read some accounts of the infamous 11 12 13

Lieber was mistaken; Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondis was married to the sister of James Robert Mackintosh’s mother. Jacob Oppenheimer. Mathilde Lieber had written about her perception of a fashionable literary trend called Young Germany= Junges Deutschland.

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courts of Russia under Anna, Elisabeth &c. And upon my soul the foulest crimes, the most disgusting lewdness, the most villanous profligacy, the most slavish shifting were talked of with hardly any tincture of disapproval, but rather as grand, large measures. You know me very well, and that I think that it a miserable way of writing history, when the author puts a moral under every page, like a fable writer. But that is very different from desiring the authors to be moral Waschlappen, with no other energy than that of inquiry and perhaps say, some foolish paradox, as for instance that writer, that Germany stands in the centre of civilisation! and a map circle may be drawn around this center. Good Heavens! But I must stop. Goodbye sweet love. – I ought to mention that yesterday, therefore April 29 I had my first Irish patatoes, of the garden, and they were very good. Mai 1. After breakfast a 7 o’clock at the common! Do you know my Matilda that I have been in the habit of breakfasting very early ever since I have been alone? I had again a letter from Carol. S. Trott. I think it impossible to take her into our house, for, besides all other gêne, what should we do with her during vacation. On my rides I see not unfrequently trees on the declivities of hills; the rain has washed from under them the earth, and mire of half their roots are exposed to the air, sun, dryness, they seem to long for ground; with one or two roots the tree is still attached to the earth, and scantily does it draw nourishment just sufficient to enable the tree to put forth a few leaves, a few little shoots. They indicate, indeed, what law and principle is working within; what tree it is, but, poor trees, that is all; all they can do is to indicate, not to unfold, not to rise up freely and nobly in their own character. to the an honor to their maker. The traveller stops and says what tree is it; and after some closer inquiry he is able to say whether it be such or such an oak. He wishes shade; but the crippled tree cannot afford it; he must go to happier ones. Oh, do not upread the tree; donot curse it! It is not its own fault. It had all the life within it, at least all laws of life, but, when a seed, it fell unfortunately; or else a storm, a violent rain, not to be controlled by the poor rain tree, robbed it of its own around and consider when God ordains a tree to spring up he has ordained from eternity that it must have ground, and rain, and dew. Go into the forest, that sylvan republic, and gladden thy heart by a sight of freely grown and happier citizens of the grove, but donot deride the dwarfish dweller near the road, on the precipice. Pity this one, and bestow upon it at least a compassionate: Poor, poor tree! Unfinished, undevelopped, stinted, crippled and cramped as thou art, thou too mightst have been a finer, nobler tree. poor tree, thou art as myself! – Saturday. Last night ball at de Saussure’s. By the way, said Mr de Saussure, when will be second volume out.14 This is the only time that 14 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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any solitary soul had spoken of the book (except the editor, I mentioned in a former letter); and this when it has been here 6 months, a trustee of the C ­ ollege! While all the world blabber about a pamphlet on Election & Predestination by Thornwell, a pamphlet which comes just 200 years too late!15 Encouraging that! I believe I am doing wrong in telling such things to my dear Matilda; for why do I torment her? Alas, it is, because there is an infinite luxury in communicating at least with one soul in this wide world. – Of something else. Sugar and coffee will last until I go away; coffee indeed longer, I believe. I donot write this that you should mention it to the boys.16 Do what you like. They are indeed so generous, so noble. They are fine boys. Their off-hand generosity is one of the joys of my life. I dont know whether I have written to you, how much the letter of Oscar to Hamy rejoiced me. God bless his soul! – Sunday. My dear Matilda, will you do me the favor of telling Messrs Perthes & Co that I have had 6 applications from collectors of autographs in this country – persons I believe all of them – for some writing or other of Niebuhr’s.17 I know that these collections are generally made with a silly pedantic spirit; still people might be employed worse, and if I had letters from Niebuhrs with which I could part, I would give them!”. Messr Perthes & co therefore would confer a favor upon me, if they would ask Md Hensler, whether she might politely provide me with some notes of Niebuhrs whose contents are not especially important to her.18 All this of course if it gives no trouble to either party. I have no farther interest in the matter, than that I am pleased to see they desire an autograph of my benefactor, if autographs they must collect. – Do you know, my Matilda, that not only do I long for those things which would comfort us, but positively long for the luxury of writing once more something happy, and happily to joy. I have become very grave of late; my mind feels stale, pointless. Ich wandle hier unter Larven. Unsere Leiber sehnen sich, unsere Seelen berühren sich auch nicht in einem Punkte. – May 6. Oh that the days would fly ten thousand times faster, so that this month be finished. This taking meals at the common was yet wanting! It interferes seriously with my rides, indeed I can take none of any consequence I am afraid Matilda, that you are not quite strict enough with Oscar; I have several times read over his last testimonial, and it is poor, very poor. He is lazy that is the gist of the whole testimonial. The only one and solitary thing that is 15 16 17 18

James Henley Thornwell, A Tract on the Doctrines of Election and Reprobation, Columbia, printed and published by Samuel Weir 1840. The brothers of Mathilde Lieber Barthold Georg Niebuhr. Dora Hensler, editor of the letters of her life long confidante Niebuhr, see Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten.

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favorably spoken of, is his skating! And of that his courage is praised! his grace in doing it is little! This is too bad! I am so sorry, I wished to write a long letter to him, I actually long for it, but that testimonial prevents it; it takes away a sprightliness of my mind. And what is worse, this month is worse than the last. What is all this? Instead of having at least the pleasure of looking confidentially forward to a good testimonial of my boy, I now actually shun recieving it, and fear the quarterly one. Even that pleasure I have not. I must not read about other people; for it always tells me, by comparision, how far back he is. Oscar must change, or he does not hear from me again until he has changed. – I had a letter to-day from Preston in which he tells me, that having to make his speech on international copyright law he sent again for “my admirably essay” on it, for reference, when the bill was passing.19 In the mean time he read the remarks of M. Renonard, a French writer, which staggered him in his former views a good deal, and he (Preston) begs me to give him my views on Renonard’s theory &c.20 I know you would like to hear it. Do not believe I make anything of it. What is all this? I dare say others have written similarly to Dr Cooper for instance upon the whole I am no bacon-eater of theirs, and that is enough. I know I have it in my power to make myself as popular as their corn-bread; in an instant I could do it. I know I have the power, but I despise it. – Biddle has not yet answered upon my letter in which I asked how all this is, that my Report is not even mentioned? Oscar’s testimonial has made me very sad. – I now eat always a little, but very little at dinner at the commons; and have a little something made for 8 o’clock when I return from my ride. – Möller21 fell overboard when in the Brocklyne ferry, but swam to the shore. I have to write the April reports of the students. A nice piece of work! – Sunday, May 10th. I recieved in brief succession your “Interloper between 19 & 20” and the other “which would be 21, deserved it to be numbered”, sent by the Gr. Western through Gossler.22 It was of April the first 3d. Thank you cordially for both, except for Phisician, again in the latter. Pray do no more use that word at all. It teazes me unnecessarily, and if you have such a hatred against the letter Y, [4] why then give up the word altogether, say medical advizer, for much as I love you, I cannot believe that you stand above the rules of language, as the c­ ourtiers 19 Lieber, On International Copyright. 20 Augustin-Charles Renouard, Traité des droits d’auteur dans la littérature, les sciences et les beaux arts, Paris 2 vols. 1838/39. 21 Nicholas D.E. Möller, partner of the brothers Oppenheimer. 22 Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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considered Louis XIV to do, and changed the gender of the word carosse, when one day, in haste, he had demanded le carosse instead of la carosse. – No 20, my dear Matilda I have not yet. I cannot answer your letter fully because I feel bound to write to poor Oscar. But I will write very soon again. With regard to Latin only this. You had never written me one solitary word about the reasons why Busse did not teach Oscar Latin, and I could, of course, not ascribe this omission to any other reason than neglect. You see to what mischief all this negligence in writing leads. Now I must say, that if Busse finds really and upon the maturest possible reflexion that it is still too early, I must yield, though I still cannot see why, because he has had Germ. now nearly a year, and if the letters of Oscar are actually word for word dictated by him, he really knows, in my opinion enough to begin Latin. Indeed these letters to me seem almost pedantically correct. It is a strange thing, Matilda, yet so it is, that German from that boy to me seems stiff, hard, unnatural; so am I accustomed to to recieve the effusions of love from him in English. – Before I forget it I again ask, where are the books of your dear father, which were destined for me.23 I have written from time to time about this, ever since I was last in Boston! I promise you this shall be the last time, and I would rather give them up, then again & again to call to my mind the fact, how little my little requests are heeded. I was rejoiced to find from your letter that I was mistaken that you had already my worst letter, and that I have to dread nothing more. But has Caroline never recieved a letter, which I wrote her after I sent you that bad, perhaps wicked letter, which, however, I wrote, when I was very unhappy indeed? Chancellor Harper told me yester-day that he saw my publisher in Lond. who told him that my Ethics24 were exceedingly highly spoken of by all the highest and most philosophical lawyers, but that the English Bar in general had the most horrid dread of every thing General and Philosophical, that books like mine could but very gradually get to sale, that if a Locke were to write now, his books would not sell immediately. Biddle has not yet answered? I am stanco, lasso, if you remember enough Italian to know what this is. Stanco di cuore, müden Herzens sagt Dante. Yes, indeed, Stanco, Lasso, is my name. See Matilda, when I read the debates in France or England, or some good work on some of my subjects, I cannot help thinking, oh, and feeling with the most pointed pain how I am doomed to live. Geistlos ist alles um mich hier. Oh God, I am not happy. My mind is fast losing all vigor. Good bye good bye. I kiss you with many tears. Your truly Stanco-lasso 23

Georg Oppenheimer had bequested his library of “historical as well as scientific books” to the scholar Francis Lieber, while his wife, Henriette and male grandchildren should choose from his books “agreeable and useful to them”. TNA PROB 11/1899/408 (October 1835 Handschuchheim near Heidelberg). 24 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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Do with the letter of to Oscar what you, think proper. – I can no longer write to him without my eyes brim full. Some times a very heavy, lowring, dark, thick cloud comes over me – a thought; Should I see him no more? – I pray that this state, as just now may not last long. It breaks my spirits. My most beloved boy, I beg Mama to copy these lines for you. Until you have brought home a truly good testimonial. The last was not cheering your father, for in no solitary branch does your teacher say that he is quite satisfied, or even satisfied, and what grieves me most is that there is no improvement spoken of in regard to any of your faults. They remain the same. Nay, what made me very sad, your teacher says that you did not do your lessons as well as the month before, and allowed your work to accumulate. This grieved me bitterly and instead of seeing forward with great pleasure for testimonials, to cheer your lonely father, I recieve non but dreary dull accounts of you. This is neither the way of becoming clever, nor of loving one’s parents, nor of loving God. And the more a father or a mother love their child – and God knows we love you. The more they feel the bitterness of their son’s want of exertion, want of recit real, active, true love. You write me in your letter indeed that you have not written me for so long a time because you had so much to do before you could go home to Mama, but you ought to have remembered in writing those words that it is owing to you alone that you could not go, because you would not exert yourself and do quick and well what you had to do. Thus your neglect of duty, you see, falls upon your father, who loved to hear from a boy, he doats upon and at whomse faults therefore he is deeply grieved. On the other hand I meant long ago to write to you some interesting observations and things which would please you, I know, but Mr Busse’s accounts always prevent me from doing it because they donot leave my mind easy, free, and in a communicative tone. One thing I was glad to hear, respecting your learning, and that was that you had made some progress in music; so Mama writes me, although even as to that Mr Busse’s account is not cheering. My sweet boy, for your own account I pray you, be more diligent, for I know what pleasure it gives you, when you feel you have given joy to your parents. And I know too how deeply you feel it having grieved the heart of so distant a parent. When I began to write this letter, I intended to speak of far different objects; because as I said, I meant to beg Mama to give it to you only after you had made some good exertion. But even upon this condition I could not bring myself to write talkingly to you, about this and that. I will however not leave upon my dear boy the expression as if I had had no good accounts from him at all. Mama writes that you are very loving to her, kind and affectionate to your brothers, and a good boy to all (except to yourself, for you will not properly learn). I kiss you for your love; I bless your heart. May God always fill it with pure and warm love, and, oh, my Oscar, never

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cease to cling with warm affection to your parents who love you children better than nought on earth. God bless you my darling; my heart is very, very full. Your father, your loving father. Single paid/ Via New-York & Havre à Madame Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York May 19 Stamp LeHavre Juin 10 Stamp Paris 19 Juin Stamp Hamburg 23 Juni 40

No. 57 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 12.05.-19.05.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Moritz Retzsch, 18.05.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 17.05.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 10, ALS, 4 pages No XXXII Well and Sad.  Columbia S.C. May 19. 1840. – May 12. I must begin already to calculate when my letters will reach Hamb., so that they donot arrive after your departure, or, that I write them so, that Caroline may open them, for I am anxious that our beloved boy should have a letter read to him soon after your departure, my dear Matilda. If we were not so straigtened in money matters I should certainly wish a small portrait – not miniature is not of Oscar, and one of you to be left with him, but to say the truth, our purse will be very slack next year, and perhaps even in 1842, So, had I sufficient funds I should sent my portrait to the dear boy, it would do his little bleeding heart good, “may be”, as they say here. Should you go in the Washington I beg your cousins first to inquire very carefully about the capt. and the vessel – not with the owners – about his seamanship, respectability &c &c. You have no idea how anxious I have become, and than poor dear Matilda, so long alone, fresh from the boy – ah! my Matilda, how totally different would everything be, did I recieve you at the North, to remain there. But I own, I now already think of that awful summer of 1841, when we actually shall not know, again what to do with ourselves. – Last night a Trustee told me that in one of the Letters which Mr Walsh writes at present, from Paris to the National Intelligencer, the best Washington paper you know,1 is stated that de Tocqueville in some public occasion – but he could not tell where it was, whether in the chamber or not, spoke in high terms of my Ethics and mentioned it as an evidence of the fact that persons might find deeply philosophical works in the U.S. differing in more than one case from the popular theories of the country, and yet not be tyrannized over, as some had stated &c.2 And that Walsh mentioned the whole as a new and striking evidence of the rizing esteem of American Literature. Now I have been asking to-day in several places, for the Intelligencer, but cannot find it. Of course it would be interesting to me, and besides I I should have liked to communicate it to you, my fond wife. But there is no getting along in such an out-of-the-way place. A man might almost as leaf live in one of the Fejee Islands. – Pray my sweet one, donot omit securing a 1 The National Intelligencer/Daily National Intelligencer, Washington/DC, whig newspaper published from 1800 until 1870. 2 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_059

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years stay of Rebecca, with us, after her return. Do you know that although it is no buseness of mine, I dislike the idea of her marrying in this country, where white men, not high in society are I think the meanest, poorest devils in the U.S., or liable to become such at any moment, unless they are as clever, steady fellows, as my shoe-makers. By the way, I wish one of them would marry her.3 – Speaking of them, makes me think of tailors; I had the summer coat you sent me changed – I would not wear it – and it fits now well, but I had to pay $2 for the change. So that matter is settled: no shirts, no coats, no handkerchiefs from beyond the sea any more. Buy hardly anything. I thaught of asking you to bring me a dozzen of Römer,4 for hock, classical ones, that is not elegantly int, but in native, ancient green simplicity, & Käufflichkeit, but upon the whole I said to myself – bah! for what! I live here but like a wandering Arab. No, no, SCRAPE MONEY together as much as possible, and flee a place where the body tarries, but the soul does not dwell. I was rejoiced when I found of late an opportunity of being, perhaps, of some service to Gustavus & Möller.5 There is a law to be revived which allows Government to settle with its insolvent debtors upon certain terms, which law extended to 1837, the time of its passage only. Gu Möller & O. you know owe large custom bounds to the U.S., and until theyse are paid, neither M. nor G. can own anything in the U.S. which is not, as a matter of course liable to be seized by the U.S. The bill has passed the Senate, but M. & O.6 wish to add amendments, important for them. I have written to 5 members of C.7 and to Preston, and will if Moller thinks proper, write to Clay, to whom I can write quite freely, to Calhoun, and perhaps to Webster.8 – You have no idea my sweet wife, how these unfortunate commons, tear up and break up my whole day – I can do nothing, I cannot ride – I cannot go to town. Well next Friday, a fortnight of this mean month is finished off. I am very desirous of having your letter, because I have the two travelleurs which cover the van and rear of this heavy body, but the main body has not yet arrived, and may not arrive this fortnight yet. – You have written me of late nothing of your uncle;9 of his 3 His wish came true: in 1842 Lieber’s Irish nanny Rebecca McClelland married the Bavarian shoemaker Michael Ehrlich. 4 Special type of wine glass with a strong green stern. 5 His brother in law Gustavus Oppenheimer and Oppenheimer’s business partner Nicholas D.E. Möller. 6 Möller & Oppenheimer. 7 Congress of the USA, Washington/DC. 8 Nicholas D.E. Möller, Gustavus Oppenheimer, W.C. Preston, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster. 9 Jacob Oppenheimer.

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visits. – As to Gossler,10 he ever was, is and ever will be the veriest stick, so let it him stand in the corner, the place for sticks. He is very mean by nature – a miser as ever lived. I shall hardly go and see him at the North. I must force myself to stop, for otherwise I fill the sheet without having before I have your paper letter. I wish, I had letters that that Berlin exped. was over. Somehow or other I dread it. – I kiss you, and, a propos when you write “I feel the spring of life in me yet!”, I like that infinitely better than talk about old age. # Mr Sill sent me the number of the Intelligencer which contains the passage I alluded to; but it is not precisely as I heard. I had better copy the passage. First Fanny Elssler is spoken of. You Know she comes to us. I certainly will go 300 miles out of the way. After the lovely danceuse comes your grave professor. Walsh says: “At the last sitting of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, M de Tocqueville made a verbal report – favourable in the main on Dr. Lieber’s Political Ethics.11 The historian of the proceedings observes (I suppose he means the newspaper reporter): “With regard to North America, we must not accept literally the remark of M. Dupin, that, in America, no one can be a philosopher or a moralist without being hung. Dr Lieber’s volume proves that philosophical studies are not entirely neglected there.”12 ‘Pon my word, I hardly can say whether that is something or not, as it stands here. Walsh you know never favored me in a literary way; he hates German science (because he does not Know it), and perhaps the report was not so bad. The passage is in the Intelligencer of May 5. The Academy of Moral Sciences is, you know a branch of the Institute. – I will tell you for once something pleasing. On Sunday Betsy came into my room, and told me with a long face, that Mr. Merant had told James13 he must go to Mississippi. They like each other, they love their boy, they he has just finished presses, bureaus &c, and made their room comfortable, and it seemed to me very hard. I felt it God knows, thinking of my Oscar, far more than they. I went into church and reflected, and resolved, highly inconvenient as it would be, as to money, and hateful as to this species of investment, to buy James, if I could possibly do so – I would not have minded a sacrifice on my part. James said he cost $1500; which wa is for my means enormous. Still the great difficulty in the matter was the idea of owning a mechanic. In going from church I told Elliott my embarrassment, and he answered thus: I understand you perfectly, you 10 Johann Heinrich Gossler. 11 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 12 Taken from “the Paris Correspondent of this Paper, and Globe. European Correspondence”, in: Daily National Intelligencer 5, May 1840, 19th Century US newspapers URL find. galegroup.com.proxy.nationallizenzen.de (15. Nov. 2016). 13 Partner of Lieber’s cook Betsy and slave of Mr. Merant/Mayrant, Columbia/SC.

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d­ islike increasing that species of property, I too do so; I never invest money in that way; This separation of families is an awful accompanient of this institution. They ought to be attached to the soil, than they would be serfs at least. How will this institution end! For it will end some day. – All these are nearly his words; I could have cried of joy. I told him, I did not mean them to give any general opinion; I could only say that it went against my grain to recieve the wages of mechanics, although I knew perfectly well that this is only doing it openly, what in other countries happens covertly, for the capitalist is always the one who makes the large profit, and the labourer the small profit. – He then offered me money in case I should buy James. On Monday when I went to see about the buseness, I [2] learnt from old Gignard14 that Merant is crazy, and there is no danger of his settling in Mississippi. Soon after he met me, and the spirit of the South showed itself remarkably, although I own he is a rude and rankish man. “Ah, Dr Lieber, how do you do.” I want to swap Susan for your Betsy; I must take James to Mississippi, and wont separate the folks; I swap Susan for it her; Susan has two children, and she will have one every year. I pay the difference. Let Clerk, or Dr Green say what your folks are worth, I’ll pay the difference.” He is deranged, no doubt, but still how characteristic. Good nature prompts him to desire Betsy, and yet the whole is a swapping. And, there is no doubt, I believe, that Susan’s two children are from him! – Shall I not feel sick when I must breathe such atmosphere? Oh my Matilda, I do not say, others with far less, are happy. I know it, but have they my desires, my longings, and am I to be blamed when an active soul and a gifted mind – for I know it is gifted – longs for its own atmosphere? So you might say to a man who is unhappy because he has a cold, disagreeable, miserly wife, “look at Gossler, he has such a wife and is happy.15 True, but he longs perhaps for no nobler one. Because a hog rejoices at the mire and wallows in delight in it, should an eagle with a lame wing and fallen into a morass feel happy? No Matilda, let Phidias stand before a marble block, with at chizel or mallet, and no possibility of obtaining them, and his unaltered creations would have rendered him as unhappy, as the activity of my soul, my mind, my feelings, pain and grieve me because I cannot enact them, not act them out. Because all I can do is – to talk to my wife? – Will you love me when you come? Will you coax me? For instance my Matilda, come sometimes when I return 14 15

The name is Guignard. Johann Heinrich Gossler and his illfamed wife Elizabeth, Hamburg.

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home, toward me, you never do it; yet it would not be lost upon me. How I always used to be delighted when Oscar & Hammy bounded toward me. # May 18. My most dear Matilda, I feel no longer happy if I donot send, not only write letters to you. Do you Know what very strikingly indicates my state of feelings? Two things: first I can no longer freely drink wine. Not that I am easily upset. I can stand a bottle or two of light wine. But a few glasses make me unspeakably melancholy; I could cry; formerly they made me feel well, in short, wine turns up the bottom – most ideas, and they are, I mean, sad, very sad, with me. Secondly, I cannot bear people inquiring after you. This would be very unjust, if it were the result of any reflexion, but it is feeling, I cannot help it. My mind is so totally away from here, that I take so little interest in matters and people here, that it touches me disagreeably if those whom I Know take none in me, pretend to do so. I dined yester-day at Hamptons;16 I all always like him again, but, good God, men like Clerk, Dr Gibbs,17 a fool and a ninny were the heros of the dinner. I hastened away at 6 o’clock, rode through the woods, thought of you and the children, and alas! how perhaps they might perhaps proudly look upon me had I been but a little less unfortunately placed, as to activity of mind and action of soul. I wrote yesterday to Oscar the long letter, at the end of this sheet. And now I mean to write to Retzsch a few lines, which I beg you will copy and send to him; add what you like, or nothing. – Columbia, S.C. den 18ten Mai 1840. Erst vor vier Wochen erhielt ich Ihren Brief vom 6ten April lezten Jahres, mein werther Freund, denn so glaub ich dass ich Sie anreden darf, nach Ihrem eignen Briefe, während ich schon lange eine Art Berechtigung dazu in meiner innigen Schöpfung Bewunderung Ihrer Schöpfungen dazu fühlte. Ich danke Ihnen recht herzlich für Ihre Schachspieler u die Studien. Es sind mir theure Angebinde. Sie wissen wie hoch ich den Schachspieler anschlage. Er scheint mir eine Schöpfung zu sein, die einem fühlenden Kenner nach Jahrhunderten, der ihn in die Hand nimmt, u wenn er auch sonst nichts von Ihnen oder viel von unserer Zeit gesehen hat, die Worte abnöthigen wird: Das muß doch eine recht tüchtige Zeit in der Kunst gewesen sein. Mein Liebling unter den hiesigen Studenten sah neulich mit mir Ihre Juliet and Romeo. Er ist wohl bewandert in Shakespeare. Ich sagte absichtlich nichts, er sah u schaute, u zulezt brach er aus: Why, thus I have never read Shakespeare!18 16 17 18

Wade Hampton II at his fancy mansion in todays 1615 Blanding Street, Columbia/SC. Dr. Robert Wilson Gibbes, College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. His favorite student was Haskell Rhett; Moritz Retzsch, Galerie zu Shakespeare’s dramatischen Werken, in Umrissen erfunden und gestochen von Moritz Retzsch, hrsg. von Ernst Fleischer, Leipzig, London und Paris 1836.

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Wenn ich Ihren Macbeth oder Hamlet, mich tiefer u tiefer hineinlesend, betrachte, wie ich so oft thue, kann ich mich nie des Wunsches enthalten eine tüchtige Geschichte eines tüchtigen Volkes mit einer Reihe Kupfer Ihrer Hand verse zu sehen. Leider ist die deutsche Geschichte so gränzenlos verzettelt, u der Wandel deutscher Institute u Geseze ist so groß gewesen, dass, was wir auch sagen mögen, oder wie schmerzlich es auch sein mag, sie kein nationales, kein lebendiges Volksinteresse hat. Sie ist nicht, wenigstens nicht lebendig u sichtbar u fühlbar mit dem Leben der Individuen verwachsen. Kaum daß der Gelehrte tief dabei fühlt; es bleibt bei ihm selbst etwas Gelehrtes, das heißt, Gelerntes. Wer fühlt der kann die Preußen fühlen, beim Namen Kanzler des Reichs; der Ausdruck Chancellor of England führt dem Engländer eine Reihe bildhaf hoher Bilder vor die Seele. In England giebt es große, alte Institute, jedes mit seiner but breiten Geschichte; die deutschen haben Offizianten mit Patenten von gestern. Der Engländer hats mit seiner Geschichte doch gut! fruehste Vergangenheit gehört ihm, dem Lebenden lebendig zu. So hats der Katholik mit seiner Kirche gut. Wenn Mackintosh19 seine treffliche Geschichte wenigstens bis zur Restauration Karls II hätte bringen können, würde ich gleich sagen: Warum nicht diese Geschichte wie ein Epos auffassen? Denken Sie einmal welche Masse symbolischer Scenen! Von der römischen Eroberung bis Cromwells Tod, dieses wunderbaren Mannes! Es könnte herrlich sein. Viel weiter könnten Sie freilich nicht gehen, denn dann kommen die verrückten Perücken, u malerisch wie so manches unter der hannöverschen Race sein könnte, man braucht nur des erhabenen Chatham’s zu gedenken – die Perücken u Zöpfe vertrieben jeden noch so willigen Genius. – Leider ist’s auch schlimm mit Amerika’s Geschichte, denn wie viel herrlich darstellbares aus den Perioden des Columbus, Cabot, Captain Smith, u selbst der strengen Puritaner mit Indianern gemischt, entlehnt werden könnte – der Künstler kann a­ llenthalben schaffen wo der Mensch ohne Zopf oder Halsbinde gehandelt hat – So bleibts doch wahr daß die heroische Periode der Amerikaner die Revolution ist, u das ist leider das classische Zeitalter des Puders u der Zöpfe zu gleicher Zeit. Ich weiß sehr wohl daß einige der größten Philosophen unter Perücken gedacht, u manche der besten Grenadiere mit langen u kurzen Zöphen gefochten haben, aber wie kann man es darstellen? Wie muss sich Vernet schon mit der Tracht napoleonischer Soldaten grämen, u die ist denn doch noch besser als die der Friedrich’schen Zeit. Es ist ein rechtes Elend. Wie könnten selbst Sie einen Washington mit kurzen Hosen, langer Weste, Zopf u hohen Stiefeln 19

Sir James Mackintosh, father in law of Mary Appleton Mackintosh had authored History of England, 3 vols. 1830 that covered English history until 1572; his History of the Revolution in England in 1688 was not completed.

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vorstellen? Wie fürchterlich ist das Bild der Declaration of Independance, als Kunstwerk,20 wo alle die kühnen Männer ihre Beine in kurzen Hosen u seidene Strümpfen u Beine anders kreuzen. ich weiß wohl, Sie könnten auch hier noch, wäre es die Aufgabe, Ihr tiefes Gemüth u plastischen G ­ enius zeigen, aber Sie würden es nicht zu freier u würdiger Schöpfung wählen! Sonst würde ich gewiß den Vorschlag machen, eine Bilderreihe Amerikanischer Geschichte zu geben; denn das weiß ich, daß Sie dadurch Geschmack in ungewöhnlichem Maße verbreiten könnten, währen ein Werk der Art 8 bloße Publikation’s Speculation vorzüglich sein würde. Wie gern wollte ich Ihnen die Geschichte dazu schreiben, aber es geht nicht. Glauben Sie aber nicht die brittische Geschichte wäre ein herrlich Feld für Sie? Es ist eine erhabene Geschichte voll der energischsten Scenen, u von fast allen großen Männern sind Portraits vorhanden. Denken Sie einmal, Raleigh oder Sir Thomas Moore, ein par Minuten vor Ihrer Hinrichtung, oder Katharina von Wolsey u Campeggio, wie Cavendish die ergreifende Scene beschreibt, u Wol Elisabeth, die alten Zeiten u wiederum die Revolution, dieses Getümmel von Puritanern, strengen eisenfesten Soldaten, Cavallieren, Lords u Londoner Lehrjungen, Strafford u Pym, u Hampden’s Tod – alle alle in darstellbarer Tracht. Eine Scene schon unter Karl dem Schändlichen, ich meine den Zweiten, sollte doch gegeben werden, u vielleicht die Reihe schließen – eine Scene aus den lezten Tagen Lord Russel’s, mit seinem erhabenen Weibe. O, es wird sehr schön sein; denken Sie einmal etwas darüber nach. Gern will ich Ihnen die Chroniken u andere Bücher angeben wie die verschiedenen Scenen beschrieben werden, wenn Sie nicht jemand bei sich finden, der dies ebenso gut kann. Ich denke mir daß es eine History, illustrated by Engravings &c viel mehr als blos eine Reihe erklärter Bilder sein sollte. Meine Frau, die dies abschreiben wird, u jezt zum Besuch in Hamb. ist, wird Ende Juli zu mir zurückkehren. Senden Sie ihr einen Brief für mich, durch die Herren Perthes & Besser, Buchhändler, Hamb. wenn Sie wollen. Von Dresden nach Hamb. muß ja oft Buchhändler-Gelegenheit sein. Leben Sie recht wohl, Ihr ergebenster Franz Lieber. – My dear Mat. his direction is: Moritz Retzsch, Dresden. – Donot scold me for having filled the sheet with letters to others, I write soon again when I have the letter via Havre, which has not yet arrived. Kiss Matilda21 for me; I cannot come to writing to her. Not that I have not time; but my heart is not free. – ­Charlotte is ill again. M’Cord’s marriage is to be the day after tomorrow; ­Charlotte ­remains

20 21

John Trumbull, Signing the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Capitol Washington/DC, oil on canvas 3,7 x 5,5 m, 1819. Mathilde Benecke.

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here, so Cheves.22 – May 19. Last night I met Judge Richardson, one of our Supreme judges, a worthy old man between 60 and 70. He spoke much of my Ethics, said he agreed fully with me in every thing I had said except one sentence; that he had said to some of his colleages, that it could be easily seen that I meant to stake my character in it, and meant intended the work to last beyond my life, “and so”, said he “it will do. It will ground your character and last long. It is a book which must last” &c &c.23 Still all this gives me no peculiar influence. You see that it seems to do me no good in Philad. If I were wealthy besides, or a native American, how my book would be cried up! Good by my best Matilda, Kiss the beloved children, kiss my poor Oscar warmly, kiss your sisters, and – kiss your poor Frank. [4] Columbia S.C. May 17. ‘40. My beloved and dearest Oscar, My dining and supping at the commons obliges me to take my rides at present late in the evening, and often, nay I must say, always when I see the sun setting, I think of you, sweet child, as you prayed for your father, who loves you from all his heart, when it was setting with you. We have now fine moon shine, and while the sun sets in the West, the silvery orb rises in the east, and I often think, if thou oh moon, now shinest into my ­Oscar’s window, oh that thou coudst carry send upon one of thy beams the message of love into his soul, as I think lovingly of him and his brothers, in looking up to thee. But it need not this; you love me; you will love always your dear mother and me, will you not? And your brothers and aunts and uncles, and all your many friends. God, my boy, loves loving souls. I was very much rejoiced, my Oscar, to hear that you can play a simple tune. I wrote you once about music, I think, how holy that art is. I should like to add, that it is one of my sweetest thaughts to imagine you one of these days playing to me, when I say: My Oscar, I am tired by writing, play some fine music. It will be delightful will it not? Let that thaught, among others, animate you and incite you to learn the more zealously to play. – There has arrived, my dear Oscar, in the harbour of N. York a man of war fr of the Imam of Muscat.24 Muscat is in that part of 22

Charlotte McCord Cheves, wedding of her father David McCord with his second wife Louise Cheves. 23 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 24 In April 1840 the Sultanah, a three-masted, 80 foot wooden sailing ship after a passage of three months from Oman had docked at New York harbor; see Susan L. Douglass, Aisa Martinez, The United States in global history-Nineteenth-Century American Merchants

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Arabia f which faces Persia; a city, but the Imam, a spiritual prince is a prince of the sword too – rules over a large territory. He is a great friend of our republic, has concluded a treaty of commerce with us,25 and treated one of our frigates, some years ago, with uncommon kindness, when she had run upon one of the many reefs near the Arabian coast, and was attacked by the sea-Bedouins. The newspapers say that the boat’s crew with the flowing garments, long beards, and turbans, and the intelligent Arabian faces, look exceedingly fine. This is probably the first Asiatic man of war which has crossed the Atlantic, if not Carthagenian vessels reached America in older times. You must look for Muscat in the Atlas, my boy, and read about it. I believe I told you already once that I beg you always to look for places when you hear or read of them, and to read about them. Thus you learn in a short time an immense deal of ancient and modern geography, in a manner that you hardly ever forget it. I have learned more geography since I adopted that manner than ever before. – Have you heard that the English and Chinese are aquarrelling now?26 I lately read an edict of the emperor in Peckin, in which he speaks of the immense kindness shown to the English by allowing them to trade with China, which is very foolish, for by trade both nations gain, nor would the Chinese allow it, if they did not know that they gained by it. However, the emperor wished to express the idea that the English return harm for the favour shown them, and says: “They are like the bird which pecks the hand that feeds it.” Now as is this not well said; so simple and so striking, that, I dare say, you will never forget it, since I mentioned it. Alas, bad children are thus to their parents; they peck, indeed, the hand that feeds them. – In feeding Nausicaa, by single blades, holding them far off from the mare’s mouth, I observed how very moveable the upper lip of a horses mouth is, how it can be pointed and reach much farther and catch something, than the horse otherwise could. When observed this I made her go near a tree, yet not quite close to it, and made her thus browse, and then I thaught how I had seen with my Oscar the giraffe here, and how this animal could stretch forth the upper lip much farther still – you recollect – than I thaught of the Tapir, whose upper-lip is a­ lready a regular instrument and lastly I thaught of the fully developped trunk of the elephant. And so my Oscar, it is always in nature – in God’s creation. There is nothing abrupt in it; one thing is always besides having its own meaning, the indication of something more perfect, as the horses-lip is

25 26

in the Indian Ocean: Voyage of the Peacock and the Treaty of Friendship with the Sultan of Muscat, 2009 Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center URL https://www.sqcc.org. (31.1.2017). Treaty of Amity and Commerce, Muscat 21.9.1833. Reference to the First Opium War that had started in 1839 between Great Britain and China.

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the fir indication of the elephant’s trunk. Perhaps, my boy, I am mistaken as to this particular, for I am very ignorant in natural history – I am sorry for it, very sorry, perhaps it is the hog’s trunk which is a prototype of the elephant’s pliable proboscis; but my idea is correct. Thus I think I told you already once that there are many animals without any eyes; some of them have certain spots, not outside but inside the head which indicate the eyes, of more perfect animals, and among the eyes with which God has endowed so many species of creatures, there is immense variety, until at last we reach man’s eyes, the most perfect. I repeat, there is nothing abrupt in God’s nature; transition leads to transition. And will all end with man, here on earth? Oh no, my beloved Oscar. As the lip of the horse is to the skillful trunk of the giant animal, so will be, I believe, the words we speak here, and in which we speak to a cherished son of God’s love, and wisdom and greatness, to the language in which we we shall commune with one another after this life, and praise God’s works, so will our prayer, we send to God from this globe, be to prayers addressed to God here – after our language will be better, truer, higher, deeper, our knowledge vaster, our feelings purer and intenser. I kiss you my boy. – Some weeks ago, my boy, I ate some peas which Mama has sent me, to compare them to fresh peas of our garden. You know those peas are done up, in France, at Nantes. Where is Nantes? Mrs Hayne told me that she and many others to-gether imported a great quantity, and a canester cost them, after they had paid the duty, which is 25 per cent, not more than 32 cents a canister. Now I thaught when she told me this that were my boy with me, I would explain something of very great importance to him; and I will do it although I cannot press him to my heart bodily, lip to lip, and heart to heart. How is it that these peas, raised in France, done up in ten canisters, shipped and carried many thousand miles across the sea, paing 25 percent duty, and when the gardner must be send for his trouble, the merchant [3] in Nantes, who ships them as well as the man who carries them from the country to Nantes, the cook who does them up, the tin-man, the ma captain and sailors who bring them over the water, and the ship-owner, whom belongs the vessel and the merchant in Charleston – all must be paid, for they must live and get food and clothing for their children – how is it, I say, that after all the peas raised in Europe can be sold for so cheap in America? If the peas for one canister were to be sown, tended and plucked separately, if a separate that gardener had also to do them up, and to make the canister, and to get a vessel for that canister alone, you see that it would cost perhaps a hundred thousand dollars before it reached Charleston. Nay, if all the gardner was to do all h ­ imself

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the peas could not get to a distance at all, for he could not obtain the tin from the mines, and then make the canister. But it is not thus in the world. Some people do one thing, others another, and by joining to-gether, the things become cheap, although all do it for profit. Only think how many people have been at work to bring those peas upon my table. The French gardner, the carrier to Nantes and the man who raised the ass that carried them, the cook, the tin-man, the miner who obtained the tin, and the manufacturer who made it into sheets; the manufacturer of the tin-man’s instrument; the miner who obtained the crow and the men who made it into steel, and the turner who made the handles; the shipping merchants at Nantes, and the carriers who carried the merchandize on board the vessel; the ships-carpenters, the sail-makers, rope-makers to build, caulk, and finish the vessel; the mechanian who made the compass, the architect who build the port of Nantes to make it secure, the sailors, captain, the paper-maker for the paper of the invoices – all, all these and many others have been at work to bring my peas. But how then is it, that a thing becomes cheaper instead of dearer, when, as I say, many instead of one, individual are employed F, when as I said, all must be paid for their trouble. The peas became so cheap, because all those people, did, indeed, contribute to bring my peas thither, but while they thus worked for me, they worked for thousands and millions of other at the same times. The gardner did not only plant the few peas, which I was to consume but a whole garden, and to cultivate a whole garden takes but very little more time and trouble than the cultivation of a small patch. The captain and sailors carried my canister of peas indeed, but at the same time the whole ships hold full of merchandize, and although they must be paid for their labor, if this expence comes to be distributed upon the whole cargo, that is if it comes finally to be charged to him who buys of that merchandize, it is but very little. And so with all the rest. If the miner had to dig search for one pound of iron alone, no earthly treasures could pay for it, in bringing to light much iron, it becomes so cheep that we can use it for nails and innumerable purposes – daily – hourly. Thus you see, each one of these men works not alone for what he wants himself for instance, the gardner does not only raise the peas which he and his family mean to eat, but also, and incalculably more; for others, to whom he gives (or sells) these peas, while they give him what they have produced in far too large a quantity for their own use; and this distribution of labor and occupations, according to which one makes but one or a few articles is called DIVISION OF LABOR by which things become infinitely cheaper and better, and may be carried to regions which otherwise could not enjoy them. This division of labor and exchange of which I wrote you some time ago, are the two great fundamental laws of God’s house-hold for his human family. The ruder a tribe, the less division of labor; the less d­ ivision

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of labor, the less enjoyment and industry and activity. Mark then for the present division of labor and exchange there are a thousands of important observations connected with it, of which you will learn more and more, the older and wiser you grow. In the mean time adore God also in these laws of human household, as in the law of household of nature; for they are all his laws. They are not invented by man; man could not help hitting upon them according to the nature God implanted in him, and they are acted upon, long, long before man discovers them. What a long letter. How you have robbed room for writing from your mother, whom you must kiss and ask to pardon us that I wrote to you so long an epistle to you. I shall hardly have room to say anything to her. God bless you my boy. I love you as ever pigeon did its infant brood. Your loving father. [cross-writing, 4] Here is room yet, what shall I say? Oh yes! Pray tell Mr Busse to let Oscar use daily small and light dumbbells (Armstärker), it will strengthen his back, and bring out the chest and contribute greatly to make him carry himself better. And that I am very anxious Oscar should eat little sugar, not only in coffee, but in all dishes. Eliott has been unanimously elected bishop of Georgia, but he has not decided yet whether he will accept. If he goes every one thinks with me that Barnwell will feel inclined to resign, than we shall have arrogant, and trifling Henry27 for president. Thornwell, the Calvinistic pulpit puppy for professor, and the college will be as disagreable as it can be made. I am resigned yet not without a sigh. Your loving Frank. Single Paid Via New York and Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York May 26 Stamp Outre Mer ∆ Stamp Paris 26 Juin Stamp Hamburg 30 Juni 40 27

Prof. Robert Henry, Columbia/SC.

No. 58 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 19.05.-25.05.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Moritz Retzsch, 19.05.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 10, ALS, 4 pages No XXXIII I cannot read over the letter to Oscar; it is enough to have written it; pray correct it. Columbia S.C. May 25.1840 May 19. This moment, I carried No 32 to the post-office and there found a letter from which Mr Sergeant, from which I copy forth with the following passage, my dearest Matilda: „The article you mention in the N. York Review, is understood to have been written by a young man who is a teacher in one of our public schools. I have not seen it, but have heard it is a presumptuous article, ­betraying some ignorance, and a great disposition to flatter and conciliate all who it is supposed will have power or influence in distributing the employments of the College, to some one which he aspires. This explanation will sufficiently account to you for no notice being taken of your work. Mean time, the College seems to advance but slowly, and no one Knows when it will be opened.1 Certainly, it will give me pleasure whenever the opportunity may be offered to do all in my power to advance your wishes. Yours very truly, John Sergeant.” So that thing was not so bad. – I send you to-day through Labat a number of the New-World, to be sent you by direct vessel. When you recieve it, my dear wife, open it and add a copy of the following to Retzsch, and give the whole to Perthes and Besser to be sent by Buchhändler Gelegenheit to Dresden. Columbia, S.C., den 19. Mai 1840. Als ich heut den Brief an meine Frau, welche einige Zeilen an Sie, mein theurer Freund, enthält, nach der Post trug, fand ich ein Exemplar der New-World, eine Zeitung die in Neu York erscheint. In dieser Zeitung werden ganze Englische Werke, ein Band in jeder Nummer, nachgedruckt. Die Redacteure haben die Zeitung unternommen, wie sie sagen, um die hiesigen Nachdrucker englischen Werke zu ruinieren. Sie finden in der Nummer die ich Ihnen sende ein ganzes Werk Ihrer königlichen Schriftstellerin, übersezt von Mrs. Jameson. Diese New-World wird jezt schon in 30 000 Exemplaren gedruckt, und wie schon dies Blatt, das eine englische Übersezung des Werks einer deutschen Prinzessin, in dreißigtausend Exemplaren in Amerika verbreitet, eine so eigenthümliche Erscheinung, daß ich nicht 1 The mentioned college probably was Girard College that took much time to build; Lieber still harboured hopes to become its president as he had drafted in his Girard Report the College’s concept. Lieber, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_060

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­anstehe Ihnen dasselbe zu senden.2 Vielleicht sehen Sie Ihre königliche Hoheit dann u wann – wer den König der Dichter so auffaßt wie Sie, hat ein Recht zum höchsten Umgange, denn er ist einer der Geniusgekrönten der Erde – u wenn so, so zeigen Sie wohl der Prinzessin dieses Blatt, was ihr doch nicht ohne alles Interesse sein kann. – Ich fand auch einen Brief von Herrn Cogswell auf der Post. Er spricht mit Entzücken von Ihrem Album, worin Sie, wie er schreibt, Originalzeichnungen für Ihre Gemalina sammeln. Wie schön ist das! Könnten nur einmal meine Augen diese Schöpfungen betrachten, die, wie herrlich auch Ihre Stiche sind, doch noch manche Zartheit mehr mit von der willigen Feder in Meisters Hand ausgedrücktes enthalten müssen, als Sie mit dem störrischem Griffel geben können. Ich liebe Dresden unendlich. Dort führte mich, als ich als Jenaer Student zum erstenmale nach Dresden wanderte, Raphael’s Bild in die Kunst ein.3 Ich sah es bald nachdem ich in die feierliche Gallerie getreten war; ich stand bezaubert mehrere Stunden, u mußte bitterlich weinen. Ich sah es wieder als ich aus Griechenland kam. Und nun, wenn ich Sie auch da fände! Du lieber Himmel; Raphael – anscheinend habe ich geweint; ich könnte leicht wieder weinen, daß ich ihn nicht anschaun kann. Ich glaube ich schrieb in meinem lezten Briefe, daß die Buchhändler, Herrn Perthes & Besser in Hamb. immer an mich senden können. – Wenn Sie nicht die ganze Englische Geschichte nehmen wollen, wie wärs wenn Sie einen Theil zb von Heinrich VIII bis zu Karl II nähmen. Denken Sie, die erhabenen Scenen unter dem blutigen Heinrich u die Revolution, die, welcher politischen Farbe auch jemand zugehören mag, doch als eine der höchsten Begebenheiten anerkannt werden muss; u dabei so dogmatisch, so symbolisch. Leben Sie recht wohl u schaffen Sie, sich u der Welt zur Freude u Erhebung. Ihr ergebenster Franz Lieber x x PS bitte sagen Sie mir wenn Sie mir zu schreiben die Freude machen, was Sie neues geschaffen. A Kiss to you, before I lay down my pen. And now, may I soon have the missing letter. Press the children, and the dumb sisters. Are they deaf too? Deaf to my affection? Oh no, they are not. I suppose you do me the favor of making a memorandum of the newspapers and this letter, and arrange things that it be properly sent even should the paper arrive after you. – Sunday, May 23. I have your No. 20 and how dear a letter it is! That’s a letter as I like it. Thousand thanks for your Kind, loving, considerate, sensible – dear, sweet letter. I will answer it step for step; so mine will not be very coherant. First let me copy a 2 Amalie von Sachsen, Pictures of the Social Life of Germany, as represented in the dramas of the princess Amelia of Saxony, 2 vols. London 1840, translated by Anna Jameson. 3 Sixtinische Madonna, painting by Raffaello Santi called Raphael, 1512/13, oil on canvas, 256 × 196 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

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passage of Judge Story’s late letters, because I might forget it, yet I Know it will please you. He says: „I have read the 2d. vol. of your P.E. with great pleasure.4 It is excellent, abounding in elevated morals, sound common sense, statesmanlike views and enlarged philosophy. I recommend it continually to my friends and especially to young men as leading them on the right track. It is too anti-­ transcendental to please some visionaries, but it will commend itself more and more to all sound thinkers and to all honest inquirers.” And speaking of Tocqueville’s work,5 he adds: “You Know ten times as much as he does of the actual workings of your system and of its true theory.” There is a sop for my girl’s vanity. And now for your letter, which I have perused, I donot Know how often. Thanks to the girls6 for the promise of another morning gown, but the delicious one they sent, has hardly been used. It was so fine, and the warm weather soon after set in. It is packed away with tabacco leaves. – Kiss again dear Matilda7 for me, plump on the lips. A trio would be too dangerous. In Turkey it might do very well. The celebration of her birthday was fine. It is a delight to give, a real benefit to the heart, when people are delighted at trifles. So you really love her? It does your heart infinite honor. In all these things you are unequalled. Your relation – both Matildas – is truly romantic, worth being depicted. As to her Berlin dish – heaven preserve me! Berlin cookery and Berlin sand are not for me. I am delighted you look so well. It makes me happy and – unhappy, for it shows that the true atmosphere is wanting here, I mean the atmosphere of the love of genial hearts. Oh! I could cry with Adela that fate severs us from all that most men have, some friends, some loving hearts, sound easy chat, some little bit of life’s inner comfort. As to Gossler’s8 I shall certainly act as my heart dictates me to act toward heartless sticks. They are not worth having any open demonstration with. But I have done with them. Above, a how-do-you-do, is just what suffices for such folks. How foolish at the same time he acts. Suppose I would talk out about his woeing her, his life. But, perhaps, he is not so foolish, for he Knows, he cannot do such things. I ask you whether as to this brutish prejudice Americans are not a thousand years ahead of Germans. Only consider. These Germans talk about the feeling of the Americans toward negroes, a race distinguished from ours by distinctions preceptable to the eye, the nose &c, and then a girl, as Miss Gossler9 – I suppose the 4 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics. 5 Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, 2 vols. Paris 1835/1840. 6 Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette Oppenheimer, sisters of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. 7 Mathilde Benecke née Schweder. 8 Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler, Hamburg. 9 Susanne Gossler had married Ami de Chapeaurouge.

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present Mrs Chaufepied10 will not go into a boat because Jews have just come out of it! Is not this the grossest possible brutality? However I believe that coarse and rough as all Hamb. is in this respect, I sup still the Gossler family is one of the worst. With the exception of Gustavus Gossler here, I think after all that what I have always heard, they are wahre Perückenstücke, the Senator11 at the head of all. – Matilda, when she12 speaks of my becoming a Privatdocent in Germ. forgets I am 40 years old.13 It would not be so easy as she thinks. – What you write about Caroline’s circumstances gives me infinite comfort. God bless her! It is so delightful to find wealth where it at the disposition of prudence, generosity, warm-heartedness and delicate feeling. God bless her, and her sister Harriet, I say again. By the way. To-day a week my abominable month at the commons is at an end, when I purpose to drink Caroline’s last little chaste champaign bottle. I shall ask Rhett to catch me a fine trout for that pa day. The other day he came in high glee to me at 10 o’clock in the evening, bringing ten brims, which he had caught. I asked him for breakfeast for the next morning, when we dispatched six portions, Betsy had done very well. – That Uncle Jacob is so kind to Oscar, and that Oscar feels and appreciates it so much, comforts [2] me greatly. I thank him as warmly as a grateful father can thank for his son. When your uncle14 asked you whether I did not consider him a grumbler, you ought to have asked at once, whether he alluded to his denial of lending me money, when you might have stated the simple truth, that I never said one word, but considered the denial in perfect order. I offered it by way of buseness, and he declined by way of buseness, and there was an end. Your letter also pleased me in that I saw his affection for you and Oscars is unaltered; I had feared a little, that, the charm of novelty being over; he felt not the same Keen affection, if I may so, as first, you not having mentioned anything particular of his doings towards you, for some time. – Oh, how I would employ Adela’s husband,15 to have a comfortable sopha made, were we to settle in the North, 10 11 12 13 14 15

Here Lieber erred; Susanne Gossler had married Ami de Chapeaurouge, not a member of the Chaufepie family. Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. Adele Haller had raved some plans how Lieber could get an employment in Hamburg or at a German university. Actually Lieber was already two years older, as he had been born in 1798. Jacob Oppenheimer. Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller.

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but I will bring nothing more thither. That stands firm. Scrape money, is the motto I now fight under. – So Oscarito is really handsome, bright and affectionate. Bless the boy. Only let him learn before all to fasten his attention, his will. It is all-important. – The parcel you sent by way Bremen, came via N.Y. and is now at the Trapmanns, but there it sticks. I am asking all the time whether no one is coming up. About the money James16 placed at your disposal, for God’s sake dont buy me a Schiller. I have one. It is the Göthe I gave away. You see, how necessary it is, to be exact. So you asked Perthes17 whether pocket editions were prohibited in Prussia. I never asked you such a thing. It was diamond editions, the smallest print I asked about. Think and understand distinctly, pray. But I beg you not to buy even a Göthe, for me we have him in Coll. Library, and I will add nothing to my stock here. If I were to buy an extra book for the money, it should be an Engl. edition in 12 or 18 vols. of Shakespeare, so that I could comfortably read it on the sopha, in the hammock. – I hope Caroline’s little girl18 is entirely recovered. Dorchen’s19 illness grieved me much. That Oscar can read my handwriting surprized and pleased me excedingly. I did not expect it. Prügeln sie sehr in der Schule? I wonder to how much your total expence will amount to; I think with awe of it. Not that I fear you have spent too much, oh no, but that it will draw the last drop out of my purse, as the needy housekeeper pulls and pulls the teats of the cow until they are as flabby as a German novel. What is the matter with Hammy domestic laziness? I am very sorry for it, for it will make all the education we can give him here very difficult. Can you not induce some young female relation of yours to come out with you, and assist you? – I hope you have politely yet strictly asked Busse never to allow Oscar to drink punch or any sort of drinking of the kind. And make a request of the same in your and my name to all relations. I beg them not to do it, besides Oscar has been written to by me, not drink any such thing. Wine and water is different. Tell Oscar always to mix water with his wine. Tell him the Romans and Greeks did it, so surely he can do it. – I wish myself Clara20 would come to Hamb. It would be too bad not to see her, and going to Engl. is so much out of your way. The time of sailing of the Cuxhaven would be the very thing, but 1. she will not sail for on the day for which she is advertised 2. The Cuxhaven is, if I remember right, the slowest driveller on the Atlantic 3. She is very old and rickety. At least I have the strongest impression about it. It would be unsafe, 16 17 18 19 20

James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Perthes, Besser & Mauke, Hamburg. Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. Lieber’s sister Dorothee Karsten, Züllichau. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England.

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therefore, to go in her; and you might arrive here too late. I think it is this very Cuxhaven which has made passages of 3 months from Hamb. to N.Y. So the Washington would be the best, if she be a good vessel, with experienced captain, and if you and uncle Jacob donot settle upon Havre. A fine vessel sailing in proper time from Hamb. would be the best. If you sail from Hamb. advertize me a day before sailing by Havre packet. Whatever you do, I am sure, you will miss James,21 for which I am very sorry. He is to be in N.Y. in July, according to what Möller writes me. What a pitty! It would have been so fine for you, him and myself, I am sure. We might have spent such an exquisite week at N. York! What talk, at last from you & him. As to myself, I have nothing to say for myself. I am very dull, I dont Know even to talk to a lady, and stand in parties near the door, like a Yankee, when, formerly, I could talk to a broomstick and make it animated and sprightly. Ces jours sont passés, and past sooner than according to nature’s common course it need have been. The South has parched my brains and dried my tongue. I am duller now than even the dullest here, and Mr Clark is a genius compared to me. It is the truth, I assure you. – I must dress for the commons, being yet in my négligé, not going as I do to the breakfast on Sundays. I Kiss to you, before my lips are greasy with bacon. I could wish you had gradually prepared our beloved Oscar for the separation. I donot say that you ought to have done it, for I Know full well that our eyes hearts shrink from this act as eye shrinks from the approaching instrument, but I only wish it fort the comfort of the beloved child. there is Gradual approach of an evil is like drawing the bow slowly, while suddden jerk makes it snap. We may gradually accustum our stomach to coarse food, and our heart to severe privations. Had we shown him the possibility of remaining, and than the certainty, yet but still far off, his heart would have had time to find out in the mean time the counter-doses of final re-union, of my fetching him &c. But indeed did I not tell him here that perhaps he might remain? At any rate, prepare his tender and young heart for it but I say again, dont steal away – I beg you not to do it. See before you go, Dr Busse, hand him over that treasure of ours in the most solemn manner, implore him to be kind and strict to him, most loving yet not indulging – Oh God! I cannot go on. # Do not forget my dear Matilda to write down on a piece of paper, to be pasted on a paste-board, certain days such as Christmass, New-Year, Easter, Witsontide,22 your, mine, Oscars, Hammy’s and Norman’s birthday, also Caroline’s and Harriet’s, and Gustavus’,23 Uncle Jacob’s, 21 22 23

James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Whitsunday, Pentecost, seventh Sunday after Easter in commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples. Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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and tell Oscar that we will always celebrate the days, and that he shall in particular think of us on these days at two, we will do it 7 o’clock, so we think Know that, we think of one another at the same day. Perhaps, you write a copy, and have it likewise pasted on board, for us. Add Washington’s birthday. February 22. Speak frequently of Gustavus and his uncles24 to him, how they are his real [3] benefactors. I think he ought to have written at least dictated a letter to them, thanking them for aiding in his education! They will greatly like it, I know. – why cannot some one come with you? The leave would be less trying! I wish you could Know that I am celebrating June 1, as my release from Babylonian captivity. I call it my manu mission.25 Only 3 weeks more and I go to the North. Yet with a very heavy heart. Heavenly Father! Can I not be delivered! I just heaved a sigh, which astonished myself for I have seen horses frightened at the whist of their own tail. Monday By a strange coincidence I just read for the first time in my life the accounts which Cornare,26 the great Temperance hero and prototype, gives of himself, and extracts of the Memoirs of Malibran, in the London Lit. Gazette.27 Cornare lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, weighed his food, never ate more than 12 ounces of solid food, and drank as much liquid – in short was the minutest temperanceman, probably one of your cold-water-soul Franklin – sort of men. The account is in George Herberts Remains.28 Malibran on the other hand was all unbridled ambition, unbridled enjoyment; nervously excited in flow of spirits that could not be sustained by the body; she knew it well, yet she could not help rumping and jumping over chaires when she returned from the most ardent performance; good, kind, frank, singing like a nighting gale – indeed when I finished reading these extracts I said, what a downright pity, that she did not actually die by bustling a vain in singing, since she died after all of singing unconcerned about 24 25

26 27 28

Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. Manu mission, manu mittere = to set free, to emancipate was the proper term for to be freed from slavery. In the Columbian society shaped by slavery Lieber by using this term expressed his strong dislike for his employment as secretary of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. Cornare i.e. Luigi Cornaro, Discorsi della Vida Sobria, ca. 1550, or the English translation: Discourses on a sober and temperate Life, New York 1833. I. Nathan, Memoirs of Madame Malibran de Beriot, 3rd edition London 1836. George Herberts, Herberts Remains, or Sundry Pieces of that sweet singer, Mr George H ­ erbert, ed. Barnabas Oley, 1652.

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the end. Cornare wrote his account when 83 years old, and ends it by declaring that he cannot die except by resolution, for his temperance having excluded all animulation of bad humours, what should become the cause of death? (Cornare, it must be owned, was a great physiologist). Malibran Knew she could not live long, that she was fast consuming the capital of her life; yet she went on. Who is the most amiable? For me, ten thousand times the lovely Malibran. – Möller wrote me a few days ago that Ahrends29 must soon be at N.Y. I should be very sorry if I should not see him. You I should like to have a talk about all the affairs with him. You know I consider him a very judicious young man indeed. I should wish to hear from him precisely about future plans & c. – That Emma – is she not the intended intended of James?30 – likes Oscar so much, pleases me greatly, I assure you, but beg her not to be selfish in her love to Oscar when you are gone, and to spoil him – how easily is a man spoiled where there is good ground for spoiling, for instance, real beauty, real talent! – She is young enough to be inconsiderate, and old enough to spoil thereby Oscar. I beg her to be his friend, tender-loving friend if she choses, but girls of 18 or 20 have it dreadfully in there their power to spoil boys, by taking their hands in their owns 3 seconds longer than they ought to do, by saying: “Let me kiss your pretty lips!” She giving way to a boys humours, when the boy knows perfectly well that the girl ought not to give way and that she gives way because he is handsome. On the other hand I know full well that the affection just of a girl just in that age – old enough to be above the boy, and young enough not to appear matroon-like to him can become highly developing to a boy. So, Mademoiselle Emma, soyez sage; je Vous en pris, and et considerez toujours, je vous en pris, que notre Oscar est un sujet trop precieu d’être gaté seulement pour vous donner de plaisir, quoiqu’en plaisir noble delicat, et parfaitement legitime dans son principle originaire. On the other hand, if she becomes our sister-inlaw (in the which case I stipulate a free and untrammeled kissing privilege for Oscar’s father) I wish that James’ house becomes a very resort for Oscar. – Do you know Matilda that I have lately read Raumer’s Geschichtliche Entwicklung der Begriffe von Recht, Staat u Politik, and this book as well as others lately perused, have immensily strengthen me in my own consciousness of knowing something very thourough on these subjects?31 I feel very firm.

29 30 31

Theodor Ahrens, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, and his bride to be Emma Oppenheimer. Friedrich von Raumer, Über die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Begriffe von Recht, Staat und Politik, Brockhaus Leipzig 1826.

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[4] My child, I donot wish you to have wrong imp notions, so I must correct what I said, sometime ago, about American pigeons. They do keep paired now, but all else I said is really so. Col. Hampton has about an hundred Dutch pigeons; as they call the Germ. pigeon here, and he says he observed the same difference of habit. The Germ. pigeon never flies far from its place, and hence does not leave it. My pigeons here have always eggs about 14 days certainly 18 days after the last broode left the shall eggs, so that for some time they hatch and feed young ones at the same time. The pigeons in our yard have now the forth couples of young ones this year. Is this so in Germany”. – You ask me whether I Know how to skate. I was a very good skater indeed my boy, Knowing how to holländern, eine Linie zu ziehen, rückwärts zu laufen, einen Zirkel zu machen, einen Zirkel rückwärts zu machen and all that. I was not a perfect master but a very fair skater. I feel as though I could skate again the moment I should have an opportunity; but I dont Know. – My sweet Oscar, when the other day I looked at the chicks in the yard, I thought how the hen knows no difference between the young ones of her own eggs, and those of eggs from the other hens, so that she have hatched all. And then I thought this: The insect, reptile, the fish know nothing of their young ones. The turtle, the aligator, frog, fly, trout, all deposit their eggs and abandon them. They donot hatch the sun or some other natural agent hat brings the little ones within the egg to maturity. There is no maternal feeling in the mother, no care, no anxiety. The bird lays eggs too, but itself hatches them, and when the young ones live, the mother takes care for some time. Still there is no certainty that the young one is the really the issue of the mother. If the egg of another bird is laid in the nest, the mother knows no difference. The coockoo, lays its eggs into the nest of other birds, and they dont know it, the she hen is a mother to all the young ones she has hatched, although the egg may not be hers, nay, she takes as good care of little ducks as of chicks. When we come to the mammalia we find that there is a close connexion with the young one. The mother Knows her real issue. Still the father stands in no connexion with the young one. The fawn follows the mother, bu so the lamb, but they know not their father. It is only with man, here as every where the last and highest link of all territorial creatures, where with whom father and mother both care for the child; where the child knows, loves, reverences both. And since I speak of this subject, let me add a very important point. The connection between parent and issue is with all animals is dissolved the moment that the young one does not stand any longer in want of sucking. So soon as the young one ceases to take milk as so soon it begins to shift for itself. With man alone the child wants the fostering care long, long after it has ceased to take milk; look at Normy, at Hammy, at yourself. This fact, that the child wants the

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fostering care long, long after its reason has become much more powerful than that of grown animals, and much long after it stands in want of milk, leads to the formation of families, to gratitude, reverence and love in the children, and to devoted affection in the parents – sentiments which outlast all physical dependance lead to the formation of tribes, states, to patriotism, and a thousand noble things. How great is God! Here too you see how man stands highest. The insect, fish and reptile must strive for itself the moment it is born. The bird receives attention from the mother, the quadrupide likewise and for longer time; but with man the child requires attention longest, and the relation of parents and children last to the grave. If you do not understand all I have said, beg Mr Busse to explain it. Good bye my dearest boy. – May 25.1840. My ever beloved Oscar, my dear and sweet child of my heart, when God gives a child to parents, he means them before all to make that child a good man, and to educate it well, that is in the best manner they can do it. This is a sacred duty of the parents and if they should neglect it, God would ask them some x [3] x day: What have you done with the child I granted you? Did you think I gave this child to you merely that you should satisfy your parental feelings, to fondle the babe or to doat upon the boy? I have created mankind for holy purposes, and that they may be obtained education, the best that each parent can give, is indispensible. Education is my holy Law. – So God will speak. Now my boy, whom I press to my heart with as lovingly as father ever pressed his son, you know Columbia is no good place for education, and it is necessary to seek for some other place. Of all none is so good for you as Hamburg. There you having loving aunts, uncles, cousins, and Mama and myself have resolved, my Oscar, with tears we have done so, to leave you for the present at in Hamburg. I promise you to fetch you myself as soon as I can, perhaps next year. I know that your loving heart will feel this separation bitterly, for you are a good and affectionate son, but you will consider two things, first that a good and sound education is necessary for all your life and in order to prove one of these days a real joy to your loving parents, and secondly that greater proof than this seperation for a time, your parents could not have given you. Oh, my son! I cannot nor would I if I could tell you what my heart feels. I bring a great sacrifice, a great one indeed, by then be careful then that this sacrifice be not braught in vain, and that when we see again one another – oh glorious day – Your mother and myself find a thousand rewards for our sacrifice, in finding you an improved, manly, good and pious boy, that loves God and his own. My boy, it is one of the great duties of man, which God has imposed upon him by endowing him with

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reason, that he must at times act against his own and dearest and holiest affections. This is such a case. An animal has to do no such thing. It follows blindly its affections; of man alone God demands to struggle often against it, I have struggled. I have bitterly struggled, the way from my heart to thine, beloved son, will be very far, but there is great comfort in knowing that there is one God above you, and me, an God who sees all and hears all. With tears have I written these lines, with tears will you read them; but let us be manly and do resolutely the bidding of God, our father. Greatly shall my heart rejoice if your letter shall show me that you have manly faught it through. We shall always pray for you, we shall will write you every fortnight, and believe my Oscar, that there is an advantage in such a correspondence, which oral communication lacks. So every thing, bitter as it may be, has its benefits too. That I know, that Sally Newton your godmother wrote the truth when she lately wrote to me that one of these days you will consider this step as the greatest proof of our love. Or do you see this already now? It would greatly rejoice me to hear it. The flower herb I sent you seems to have given you so much pleasure that I send you a flower which grew in our yard. I have kissed it. You see the paper is at an end. Good bye to you. God bless you. I shall come and see you soon. Your most loving father. [cross-writing, 4] May 25. the letter is written. Often had I, my dear Matilda to stop and whipe my tears; possibly for that very reason the letter to our beloved boy has become cold in appearance. I could not keep the connexion, which I nevertheless strove to do. I beg you, therefore, to speak to him, and to impress him with the fact that my heart overflows with love to him. Tell the child of our souls that in being able to read my writing – poor boy – has given me infinite pleasure: Tell him I shall send him books, which I will take from here to the North and pray make some arrangements respecting his birthday, before you go as to presents and that Busse knows it. I will write a letter which I wish Busse to deliver him on that day when he rises Good bye Your Fr. Single Via New-York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hamburg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp Paris 28 Juin 40 Stamp Hamburg 30 Juni 40

No. 59 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 26.05.-01.06.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Mathilde Benecke Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber, 31.05.1840 USC FLC Box 1, folder 10, ALS, 4 pages No. XXXIV Columbia June 1. 1840 The university of Michigan voted me two splendid – thanks for a letter &c Will you have the goodness, my dear Matilda, to beg Caroline, to let Oscar pray with her as he has done with you, so soon as you shall have left Hamburg? Since I wrote yesterday to our Oscar I feel calmer indeed, but it is a melancholy calmness. My bread has no salt. – Biddle has not yet answered. – It rains very hard and many books I have taken up one after the other, won’t do. – Our new Library1 is truly tasteful I must say that, and I only wish, that so long as we are condemned to live here, I wish to God, we could remain here in the summer. I could pass my time better, and more agreably here, than anywhere else. Were it only not for the children. To-day is Tuesday. Next Sunday is the last of May. I will clip the supper, and thus close my month after the dinner at commons, when I mean to find at home a decent dinner, the first for a long, long time. Friday May 29. I have written this moment a letter to Gustavus,2 begging him by all means to come and join us in Sept., for I had yester-day a letter from Möller and others from members of Congr. informing me that the desired bill with the very amendments, proposed to members of Congress by Möller &c has passed and is law of the land. Möller writes in the highest exaltation, as well he may, and says that it is absolutely necessary that Gust. now come to the U.S. I suppose of course to settle ultimately the old concern of all &c. He did not asks me to write to Gust. but I did it on our, his and Gustavus’ own account. It is highly desirable in an hundred different ways. That he will find you, with all the many details fresh from Hamb., which although they cannot or will not be written about, are nevertheless necessary important, is not a small reason. I too deserve perhaps a little favor after my Robinson-Crusoeade. However, my dearest wife, I feel my heart is blasted. I donot say for ever; but just now, that buseness respecting Oscars being settled, and another year past without one single alteration, one single vista opening itself, one single ray of hope breaking through, damps, cools, cramps me. I donot believe I have ever felt just so; 1 Newly built college library on the Horseshoe, campus of the College of South Carolina, today 910 Sumter St., University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, started in 1838 by college President Robert Woodward Barnwell. It took ca. $24000 to realize the design of Robert Mills. 2 Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_061

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I have felt keener pain; but alles ist Abschmackung. I cannot even find rest in books which treat subjects, around which my whole mind turns, soundly and well. I hope you will not find me an altered man within; but such is my present state of feeling that I hardly Know what to write to you. Everything seems to me pointless, tasteless, not worth a word. I beg you to be indulgent with me when you come back, and not to charge anything to a want of feeling toward you and your children. God knows I love you, God knows it is this love which makes me feel my situation thus; at least it is one of the two great causes. It would make you very happy to find Gustavus here; would it not? I trust Isabelita3 will not be foolish and prevent it in a childish way. I have not doubt whatever that it would be well for Gustavus, his health, affaires, every thing, it would be delightful for you, and I believe good for him to recieve many fresh family news; and I am sure it would be a true consolation to me. Perhaps he might go with us to this land of bacon and greens. But I really dont Know whether I have not written all this before. My sweet Matilda, you Know I honor, I revere the devotion of your soul. I am convinced that there is no heroic act of any wife recorded in history of which you would not be capable if called upon to perform it. The insinuating, caressing graces you have not in a high degree, and it would be folly to attempt unnatural things. I therefore donot beg for those petty yet endearing manifestations of affection, of which I can suppose for instance Sally4 richly to bestow upon the valued object of her heart. But there are certain things to which our natural disposition may indeed not lead us, and which nevertheless may be recognized as desirable, in consequence of reflexion and may be done, wh without either falling into unnaturalness or hypocricy. And it is to these I would beg you to direct a little your attention. I say this without [2] charging myself without unfairness; for I have reflected much upon myself and found much, very much to reproach myself with, resolving to do my utmost to do better. In your letters you are as I wou hinted it that in personal intercourse I should wish you to be. Much as I prize vivacity, moveable alacrity and quick sprightliness fused with a glow of feeling, I would never desire false vivacity. Indeed you Know how I abominate it in girls here, as it may be found not unfrequently in our Watering places – so odious to me. When they are full, they appear to me always to offer as much comfort as those Waggons, in which the Bonken people bring us poultry – crammed full with ducks, turkeys, hens and 3 Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, and his wife Isabella, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 4 Sally Newton = Sally Oakey.

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cocks, young and old, all in the closest contact, noisy, and yet not caring for one another. Perhaps I am too bitter. So much is certain I consider them destitute and barren of all composed comfort; it is opium brillancy. For what do I write about these things! How silly! – This is perhaps the last letter you recieve from me. I hope you will yet recieve it, if you take leave of Oscar. Saturday When I came yester-day to these last words they took me by surprize and I was overwhelmed I must not think of your leave from him; it unmans me. I have not yet attained to that state of mind that I can composedly think of the details of this separation, although my unfortunately active imagination sends continually thaughts connected with this subject, like darts, into all my mental occupation, whether I read, reflect or lecture. # I believe I ought to send this letter to-day, because we have had very serious freshets, which impede the transmission of the mail, and if I delay the letter it may reach N.Y. too late for the packet, and not get to Hamb. in time. Yet I assure you I donot Know what to write about. I can always easily fill a letter to those I love if I am in a talkative mood; but that is the thing. – I have not heard yet from Graffunder. I repeat my urgent prayer to settle with Mr Mittermaier,5 as I wrote you pray donot forget it – I was interrupted by a student, who “wanted a subject”, yesterday there was another one here for the same purpose. – I have sold Nausicaa: Habersham baught her, and will take her when vacations begin. I sold her, because she is not strong enough to pull you and me; and children. Poor thing! I assure you I feel quite bad about it; she is so gently, sprightly and intelligent. Never ill-humored, never malignant. I began to feel real affection for that animal. Once or twice I was rude to her, and I am sure she said to herself: “Well, you are my master, and it is all very well, but I donot think it fair that I get Kicked because the Freshmen are stupid.” Why do I feel this sort of affection for her, which I am sure, I dont for the negros? I tell you, for the same reason that the emperor Alexander of Russia used to show great affection for the Americans who came to Petersburg, and shook hands with them6 while he would have rapped ∆ a prince pretty severe one the Knuckles who should have presumed to stratch out his hand to him, or for the same reason that a prince or princess will go to peasants’ marriage and make merry, but would turn up their nose where they invited to the marring of 5 Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg. 6 Lieber referred to the diplomatic missions of Albert Gallatin, John Quincy Adams, and James Bayard to Czar Alexander I in 1813. Perhaps he knew about it by his studies, perhaps he had acquired special informations by his former guest in the Boston swimming pool John Quincy Adams, the Stieglitz family or George Parish in Ogdensburg. Parish brother David had been involved in financial arrangements via Albert Gallatin as well as Ludwig Stieglitz, banker in St. Petersburg and kin of Mathilde Lieber.

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a mere Herr von. I leave it perhaps until we see each other again, before I make up my mind as to a lad. We shall absolutely want one if I keep a horse for us all, and I wish to do this from all my heart. For it is not living like a human being, to be shut up as you ever always have been here. Still the expense will pinch – I paid my visit to Mrs McCord, I wish to per decency’s sake they would take away that picture of Mrs M’Cord, who looks from the wall down upon them in a manner that it actually shocks me.7 – Next week I shall be in possession of the little parcel you kindly sent me. I want something or other to stir me. # I was out and find that I cannot have the parcel before the end of next week, so pacienza, coraggio e philosofia. – Will you bring a few seeds for the garden? Only very few but fresh ones, I mean vegetables e.g. Kohlrabi, Saroine, Kohl, Kopfsalat &c &c. Variety in these things is healthy, and they cannot cost much. I would not spend more than half a dollar. They must be fresh seeds for we can sow them only in spring of 1841. Also onions of the finest sort. Pray my dearest love, impress, before you leave Oscar, that beloved boy with my love; oh try to eradicate and erase as far as you can every remembrance of unkindness on my part from his heart. God is my witness I love him from my soul. And then, try to forget, before you see me, all unkindness I ha may have shown in a fretful moment, even since you were separated from me. Come and love me, ah! and donot regret too much that you must return to this place. Engage your uncle’s8 good will for Oscar and let him consider how early that poor boy must shift for himself. Will Adela be Kind to him? At any rate your aunt Minna will be motherly to him. (I really regret that Labat joins your Hamb. circle. He seems to me in all unpleasant characteristics of the Jews, an out-and-out Jew.) – If James9 comes in proper time, before you, I shall propose [3] to him to go with me to Lake George. It is near N.Y. a lovely spot, fine hotels, good trout, and we might pass a week there very pleasantly; Sonntag der lezte Mai! Meine liebe Mathilde, NB. Math. Beneke, ich habe versucht dich in Sie anzusprechen, aber es geht nicht, wenigstens nicht ohne Zwang, u warum sollte ich mich zwingen? Wenn ich dich sehe, liebe Freundin – so will ich wenn dus befiehlst, dich in Sie anreden, oder vielmehr gar nicht. Jezt aber, in dieser Ferne, warum sollte ich nicht reden wie das Herz fühlt, u es fühlt in du. Erinnerst du 7 Louise Cheves McCord, second wife of David McCord whose first wife Emmeline had died the year before. 8 Jacob Oppenheimer. 9 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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dich noch wie ich mich in Wilmersdorf zuweilen vergaß u dich du anredete? Und als ich um Verzeihung bat sagte die Dame, “was kann ich verzeihen da nur Liebe Sie so sprechen machte?” Ich danke dir aus bester Seele für deinen Brief, liebes, treues, gutes Weib – ich meine woman nicht wife. Du sagst, “wie schön dass wir nichts zu bereuen haben.” Hm! Ich bereue dass ich nichts zu bereuen habe. Hast du je die Briefe gelesen die man der Heloise zuschreibt. In einem, sie sind an Abelard in Latein, sagt sie: Oh mein Abelard, wenn ich wiederkam um zu beichten u bereuen was ich begangen (commissa) so kann ich nur bereuen, was wir unterlassen (omissa). “Pfui”, schreien beide Mathilden. “Schämst du dich gar nicht?” Nicht sehr; ich küsse Frau Vieraugen, seid nur still. Liebe Mathilda10 ist nicht dein Verhältniß zu meiner Mathilda ein ungemeines u tief sehr liebliches? Stellt es nicht Mathilden in deinen Augen sehr hoch? Sage, wie viele Frauen könnten es, da es bei ihr nicht Schwachheit der Liebe ist, u wie sie dich liebt! Ich könnte u würde dir viel von ihr schreiben, da ja sie diese Zeilen abschreiben muß so thäte sie es am Ende gar nicht. Liebe Freundin, sei eine recht liebe Freundin meinem Oskar, wenn er fern von seinen Eltern ist, die er doch so liebt u die ihn brünstig lieben. Lehre ihn alles liebe u gute deiner treuen u lebhaft zufriedenen Seele; u lehre ihn nicht das berliner j für g, u scht für st, u i für u. Gestern wurde ich so plözlich an Berlin erinnert, daß es einen ganz eigenthümlichen Eindruck auf mich machte. Ich war bei deutschen Schustern u sprach etwas nachdem sie mir Maß genommen. Sie sprachen über schlechte Zeiten; ich sagte Geld sei nichts, worauf ein Schumacher sagt; Ja sehen Sie ein berliner Schumacher singt jeden Morgen: “Mein erst Gefühl sei preuß’sch Courant”. Du weißt natürlich daß eins von Gellert’s populärsten Gedichten mit den Worten anfängt: “Mein erst Gefühl sei Preis u Dank.”11 Seit langen Jahren hatte ich nichts so berlinisch berlinisches gehört, so exquisit “schnoddrich”, so gränzenlos impudent, u dadurch Wiz eregend; so schamlos u dabei doch so daß man sich eben wegen der Schamlosigkeit des Lachens nicht enthalten kann – kurz so recht berlinisch, denn das ist es doch was den sogenannten berliner Wiz characterisiert. Nun schiltst du wohl, daß ich auf Berlin losziehe. Bist du nicht eine Berlinerin, u bin ich dir nicht von Herzen zugethan? Aber ich gestehe es, Berlin im Ganzen bin ich nicht zugethan. Sei mir aber darum nicht böse. Liebe Mathilda, mein Herz ist in keiner Stimmung daß ich mir das böse sein denen die ich liebe irgend gut thun könnte. Schreibe mir mit Mathilda, ein par Zeilen von deiner Hand werden mich eben so freuen wie sie mich in Köpnick zu laben pflegten. Also du hast meine Briefe verbranndt?

10 Mathilde Benecke. 11 Gellert, Mein erst Gefühl sei Preis und Dank. Alltagslied, 1761.

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Ich habe die deinen noch. Kömmst du mit deinem Hermann12 nach Amerika? Lebe recht wohl, u grüße Etienne13 wenn du ihm schreibst. Dein treuer Freund. # My last meal in the commons is done, I am manumitted,14 from once more. I did go to the supper, to omit nothing. In 4 weeks, less one day I shall start from here, and when my own Matilda reads thise letters I am already in N.Y. so God will. Beg Caroline to write us by the first mail after you have left, via Havre, how Oscar is, how they all are. Poor souls, they too will feel a very painful void; they will miss you and the two children very much. Again and again I must exclaim: how happy and content we might live together! Yes, even living at the North would alter my feeling considerably. O God, is there no hope! – Monday Morning. I must write you something which is so characteristic all-round. On Saturday a fellow, sitting bef in front of an inn called to me: “Doctor! Doctor! Have you seen a country man of yours, who is here, a Doctor, a very fine gentleman; he cuts corn, shall I introduce you?” – When I have corns to cut I go to such a man, and pay for the labor; there is no introduction necessary. – “Well, I shall be happy to make you acquainted with him; he cuts admirably; he pulls out the root of the corn without any pain. By G -, he showed me the root of mine, a quarter of an inch long, quite prickly; I gave it to Gillian (the steward of the College, you know; what association of ideas for me, who h was on the way to take dinner with the students!) tell him to show it to you; and see how hard it is. – Disgusted I went away, but thinking that this would be a German Hühneraugenjude I went to him in the after-noon to have my feet &c &c. I found what I expected, a jew. He cut, he paired (I beg your pardon) and of himself began to tell me about the nonsense of the root; that if he does not make the people believe that he pulls out the root they will not come to him. That that, which he shows them as the root he first puts there, without any one elses” perceiving it, and than he takes it up with a pair of pincers “And of what said I, do you, make these roots?” “I cut small stripes of old corns, and they dry together.” Oh God! How beastly! How is it these itenerants have always so much confidence to me. You recollect the jew on board the steamboat between N.Y. and Albany, to whom I expressed my astonishment that he could make a living by his nonsence, because people must soon find it out (he sold types to mark linen!) and 12 13 14

Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke. Etienne Benecke, brother in law of Mathilde Benecke, former turner friend of Lieber in his Berlin times. Francis Lieber hated to do committee work at the College; to give an impression of his feelings he compared himself to a slave and used a well known term of southern society familiar with slavery, manumittere, to set free a slave, to describe the end of a meeting with his feeling of liberation and freed from slave work.

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who gave me the sage and weighty answer: Why Sir, fools there are acoming and fools there agoing. But my nasty story is not at an end. When the German jew was handling my feet – it was in the lowest story; a fellow, without a word of excuse, came to the window, leaned upon it, and looked at the operation with his nose close to it. I told the Jew to tell him he could not properly see, and that, the fellow ought to go away. The Jew thereupon told him, to go out of the light but he might come in!” The fellow came; the Jew instantly drew one of his roots out of my feet, showed it to the spectator sans gêne, and, of course, migh made him mightily astounded and resolve to submit to the operation after I had left. NB The impudent Jew tells the fools that that the root is grown to the bone! He makes a good deal of money. The sage ethical dictum of the Jew (of Königsberg) was: Ich sage nie eine Lüge, aber um im Geschäft zu verdienen, wissen Sie, ist eine Lüge erlaubt. Warum, weil ohne dies kein Mensch zu mir kommen würde. Warum, weil sie fragen immer gleich, können Sie die Hühneraugen so schneiden dass sie nie wiederkommen. Sage ich nein, so gehen sie fort, u ich verdiene nichts. He would not take from me any money, and said very appropriately: Wie kann ich Geld von Ihnen nehmen; Sie wissen ja mein Geheimnis. I obliged him however to take some – I have no letter from you today and think the best is to send this that it may not miss you. Pray bring me a pair of good wash leather riding gloves. Let them be strong, you know my hand is small. Is there such a thing as x [4] x strong, fine summer riding gloves; if there be bring me a pair. And now when I come to say what you shall say for me to the girls,15 thousand, thousand messages of love I find no room is left. Thank them for their love to you, the children and me a thousand times. Ahrends16 has arrived. Our Theod.17 wants to come to the States after Ahrends, in order to see you, and for his health. I do believe Theod. must leave the W.I. I have already written to Gustav.18 to come, and dont know how they will arrange matters. Theodore says he will take Dolores and chicks to Hamb. to reside there, in 1841 and that this will make it easier for Gustavus to getaway Isab. from P. Rico, in 42 likewise to go to Hamb. I hope to God Caroline & Harr. will not, in the long run find it troublesome or uncongenial. It is so difficult to tear ∆ little educated women from early associations 15 16 17 18

Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg. Theodor Ahrens/Ahrends, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Theodore Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber.

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because their minds have not been enlarged ∆ and they cannot well feel at home anywhere except just at home. Good bye. You see I canno more. Yours FL My own boy, Columbia S.C. May 31.1840 Can you find out whether there is any difference and if so, what difference between “This has been recopied” and “this has been copied again”? And could you tell me the difference between the words Stale, Old, Ancient and Antique? The best means to find out differences of this kind will be for you, to use the different words in the same place of a phrase successively. If you cannot do it alone, talk about it with your friends and teacher. You must write me my Oscar whether you have heard a nightingale and how its warbling compares with th our songster of the wood the lovely mocking bird. It sings now here most lovely, and frequently when I ride late I assure and all the other musicians of the forest are silent except the loud Whipper-will, which always begins at the very instant the sun sets, I assure myself by whistling various cadences, and the mocking bird imitates me so sweetly. How lovely would it be, I then, as so often in the course of the day, think, could my beloved boy ride by my side, and I could tell him child, all will come in due time. God will soon bring us again together. In the mean time, remember, my child, what unspeakable pleasure you will give us by being able to give good accounts of yourself, and by sending good testimonials of from your teacher. If you knew how how much that single fact, that you can read fluently my letters has delighted me, I am sure you would strive, might and main, to give me similar joy in all other branches. Consider always in the evening what you have done, what you have omitted in the course of the day, and impress it deeply upon your mind before you pray. When you begin Latin, be, I beg you, very deligently at it, for to say the truth, it is already very late for you. Next September you will be ten years old. I want you to become a very good Latin scholar. Latin – to read and to write – must become quite easy to you. Mark this will you! And if you once can read it a little, read a great deal. However, about this you will hear yet often from me. My boy always drink your wine with water, will you? And if some one says, never mind, take it without water, answer him, “I thank you but my father and my mother wish me not to do it. Pray do not urge me.” As to punch I beg you never to touch it, until I tell you you are old enough to do it. At least I think it will be better, much better if you so never take not touch it. – I shall soon go to the North, my boy, and there I hope to find uncle James, who will go thence to you. I shall give him a parcel for my boy. I am only sorry, he will miss your dear Mama, for I think they will cross or pass by each-other upon our old good ­Atlantic, the little pool that severs me from my beloved Ossy. I am now obliged to take a ride, for my health requires it, and it is already half past 6 o’clock. It was so very hot before the day. My boy snores already. Do you snore? I hope not.

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This moment was a Canadian begging here. He insisted upon showing me how dirty his shirt was; spoke terrible French; had faught for liberty, as he called it, and smelled horribly of whiskey. So I gave him a quarter of a dollar; not believing that he would do use it well; but I could not know. Good bye for the present, and donot forget to write me about the nighting gale. I donot know but I begin to believe the mocking bird carries the palm of victory. I should like to here einen Wettgesang [cross-writing, 3] of the two. On Saturday last I paid one dollar town tax for Timour, the rogue! The negroes have so many dogs here, and they make at night such shame noise that the town council put this tax upon each single dog, and much more for two and three. But I would not have my Oscar’s dog shot, so I have paid the tax. Timours father, old Jarvis, you recollect the white bull-terrier, has been poisoned and is dead. His master, Mr. M Lane is very sorry about it, and the whole town talks about poor Jarvis. Every one knew him. And now I must conclude, else I rob again too much from your dear mother. You see, you are already a trespasser upon her territory, having sneeked in through the back-door. So I kiss you and all of you and bid you good bye. Your loving father. Via Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne per packet Stamp Forwarded through Gilpins Exchange Reading Room and Foreign Letter office New York Stamp Paris 6 Jul Stamp Hamburg 10 Juli 40

No. 60 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 02.06.-07.06.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 10, ALS, 4 pages No XXXV Columbia, S.C. June 7. 1840. Tell Dr. Wurm about the errata in my book – style, sense, they affect all everything. I think I F F shall write some day or other to him. And so good bye. Come, come. I love you and the children. June 2 This moment I have finished writing the monthly testimonials of the students, which as you may imagine is a very stupid piece of labor. But it is the last, for I shall not write any for June, that month being but half; and as for the remaining 3 months of the secretariship I have you to assist me, and we will talk all the time. Dunque, as the Italian says, I shall celebrate this day in some sort or other. You see I try to make something out of every thing, so dull is our life. I see it very well, I am like a sick man that takes an interest in the placing of a chair or so in his room, because his world is reduced to that room. I talk about things, take notice of them, like an old woman, why? because it is my nature? Good God, no, no mortal can have a character that pushes more upward and out into “generality” as Bacon1 says, than myself. I could be happier, could I but be satisfied with less than a nation’s fate. But circumstances reduce me. If a Shakespeare had been bed ridden for months, he too would have taken an interest in the bending and entwined leaves of the paper-hanging of his room, and would have asked the nurse why she had put stockings upon this chair and not that chair. So do prisoners take an interest in spiders, and I am prisoner, to all intents and purposes. My mind is imprisoned. – I have written to Theod. to come with Gust.2 Theodore must leave the W. Indies, or he will have an ailing liver all his life. He owes it to his many children, existing and to come, likewise. I wish to God Gust. & Theod. could come and we could have a regular “protracted” family meeting and thourough talk. It would be a good thing I think. You ought to bring for that Congress your uncle.3 I vote for his presidency. I long for a letter from you, and wish I had accounts of your journey being finished. You know that the idea is unpleasant to me, I hardly know why? If something should have happened to you on the road! And is my deepseated disrelish for Berlin mixed up with it? I donot think so, yet it 1 Francis Bacon. 2 Theodore and Gustavus Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 3 Jacob Oppenheimer.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_062

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may be, for thinking of Berlin produces almost the same sensation as thinking of some strongly disagreable physic; except I think of something particular, for instance Mat. Beneke. The general thought of Berlin is caster-oilish to me. This is no affection. I feel it; I cannot help it, it has grown up within me; it must then be the effect of some substantial causes. The fact is Berlin is such police-soldier-poverty-arrogante place, so destitute of scenery, so destitude of anything like Bürgerthum, so schnoddrig – but really I can fill the paper with better things than my remeniscences of Berlin, unhappy as they are”. – I go to the post office, to see whether you I have a letter. # This instant, my Matilda, I found the following passage in the London Lit. Gazette of April 4 1840, in the Letter of its Paris corresp. under the head of Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (National Institute) sitting of March 28: “M. de Tocqueville read a report on an American work by M. Lieber, entitled ‘Political Ethics’, he passed a high encomium on it, and observed that it was a complete system of morals applied to politics, in which the peculiar social system of the new world was taken into account, and many valuable doctrines in social matters well developed.”4 This sounds very different from Walsh’s “verbal report, favorable in the main”. Since that reporter Knows nothing whatever of me, and I do know something of Walsh, I think I can fairly take the report in the Lit. Gazette as the more correct one. I know you will like it. – I wonder whether you will recieve this letter yet. Why am I a greater coward this time than when you went to Hamb? Perhaps my Oscar’s remaining behind makes me more nervous. I just read that the Poland, Havre packet, is was struck by lightning and the whole vessel & cargo burnt but no people being lost. They were picked up. Perhaps there was a letter of mine on board. I have written of late so frequently that it is even probable. If it is the one in which I write about vessels, I will repeat the substance, ’though it will be almost too late. The vessel which is to sail in at the end of August is bad and would probably be too late. I donot whish you to come too late here. there Besides since it is now highly probably that you find Theodore or Gustavus here, or both, it is even desirable that you should come a little sooner. Therefore come by the Washington if she be a good vessel or by via Havre, if some cousin or other will accompany you to Havre and see you safely lodged on board. So soon as I have your next letter, I dispatch this. May it be soon! I long for it, although it will be so far unsatisfactory as it will be just before and not after that Berlin journey. # Wednesday June 3. I had yesterday a Detroit (Michigan) paper in which a resolution of the Regents of the University of Michigan (alias Trustees of the College) is published voting me thanks &c for sundry lucid views &c. In the accompanying article of the 4 The Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres, vol. 24, London 1840, p. 217.

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editor I am called a ripe scholar, distinguished philosopher and moralist, a profound, learned and practical philosopher &c. Donot believe that I give one fig for all this, except that it serves by way of advertisement which in this vast country is necessary. But Heaven, when I see what others do and can do, because placed in the proper place! The French govern. has charged the Institute to make a report on the progress of the polit. and moral sciences from 1789 to 1840. Tocqueville is appointed for the to draw up the report on the morals. There is something. But here! Why, sometimes I meet with a in a midst of the forest here with a lonely dwarfish peach tree; one single fruit on it, and that one dry, shrivelled, for want of light, care, moisture, for want of civilisation’s genial touch – it is the very picture of your Frank. – Donot forget, my Matilda, to settle with Busse about pocket money. I wish Oscar to have something that he can now and then give pleasure to others, but that I desire Busse to have an eye that Oscar does not squander it away, and yet leave him upon the whole master over that money. – Pray write send that passage about Tocqueville’s report on my Ethics5 to my relations. It is far the most acceptable testimony which has yet come to my ears. – June 4. I had the idea of begging you to bring me various things, among others two pairs of the best Germ. pigeons. But I have concluded not to have any such things. Once settled at the North, and you will see what pleasure I shall take in stocking a yard with fine and rare beasts, and if I could ever bring it to having a country house with a small farm, besides a literary place, I should think it perfection [2] to ride between two fields from which your own wheat waves to & fro is delicious, that it is in a free country. Agriculture in a slave state is manufacturing buseness; and no more, you take no other interest in the laborer, than that of produces for you. Your personal sympathy is not alive for him, the success of his family, the schooling of his children & c. If the negro has good food and suff. clothing your interest is at an end. I mean to send this by the Havre p. of the 16th of June, and you may possibly get it yet. Perhaps I shall have yet a letter fr. you before this goes to the North. – Friday Yesterday I had the parcel it made me very happy and sad. I will not write much about it, so that the little space left, may remain for the answer of your letter, should I yet have one before this may be sent. There is one subject which troubles me not a little, namely how we shall have letters from our beloved boy. We cannot in decency beg poor Caroline or Hart to copy them; yet his originals are too volumnious; nor would 5 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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I by any means ask the boy to write a small hand, it would spoil his hand. – How is it that you wrote me Oscar’s bill will be $450, when on the card6 it is said that £60 is the price, which is not even $350? I began to read Tiek’s novelet in the Urania which you sent but I cannot get on.7 Was ist das für gehaltlose Faselei – Wischiwaschi ohne Leben. – […]. – You may, my Mat., bring with you two common portfolios, merely your postboard, cheep, but rather large, to put Oscar’s drawing’s in, and other things. – Sunday, June 7. I have recieved your No 21 this moment, my sweet love, and, so very little room being left, I shall write with studied brevity. You never wrote me, you know, the reasons why Busse did not begin Latin. I donot wish to confuse Oscar. But as he has by this time begun Latin it would be unwise I think to give it up again. Tell B.8 however, that all I wish, is that Latin be pushed as hard as it is consistent with Oscar’s real and general advancement; and that, if Oscar go should not be made to study it hard until next autumn, I depend th upon that then it will be pushed might & main, for it is late. Tell B. to write us when you have left Hamb. regularly and very fully every 3 months; hand him Oscar solemnly over, and tell him that the blessings of two doating parents will rest upon him and his house for all the affection, earnestness, kindness and zeal he will show in keeping Oscar’s soul pure & good, in developping his mind soundly and cultivating his heart. I wish you could yet show Oscar to Dr. Wurm. My wish is that Oscar freely moves among intelligent people. – From all accounts of the burning of the Havre packet Poland9 that I can see, I think the letter bags were burnt, and from the best calculation I can make, there was a letter of mine lost. If so it probably contained my first letter to Retch in Dresden. In sending him then my second, I would beg you to say that it refers to my first, which is lost, and that I will write the contents of the lost again as soon as I know that the first letter is really lost. Addresse: Moritz Retzsch, Dresden. – Of course I was downright in love with Matilda,10 which implies that I was sinnlich so likewise. Wax candles dont love. But I can say that I never had a sensual desire, or if I had, no desire to satisfy it. It would have been the 6 7 8 9 10

Mathilde Lieber had forwarded leaflets of Dr. phil. Andreas Busse advertising his school to her husband. Ludwig Tieck, Das Zauberschloss, in: Urania. Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1830, mit 7 Kupfern, Brockhaus Leipzig 1830. Dr. phil. Andreas Busse, Oscar Lieber’s teacher in Hamburg-Eppendorf. This accident occured in 1840 and caused the owners of the New York and Havre packets to provide their ships with life boats. Mathilde Benecke.

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basest thing in me toward William and her too. That she was scolded by her relations I now learn for the first time and makes her ten times dearer to me. But the sly woman! She tells you they scolded her for allowing me to call her Matilda, I suppose they never said a word to her about her calling me Franz? And – Madame, do you know that you called me first Franz? It was in speaking, in my presence, of me to William,11 in Wilmersdorf, near the table in the garden which stood near the house. Do you remember that; I do. I could wish Matilda could find, or rather be found by a fine, wealthy man at Hamb. whom she could love. She would yet make a man so happy, and has a rich found of elements for happiness within her. – Ferdinand’s – Oh Gott, ich muß mir die Hände waschen, komm doch einer mit mir, – is classical. You remember how I make you go with me to this, to do that. – All things you report about Norman are extremely cunning, but beware he does not become a Joseph. Sein Necken enchanted mich. – If only my letter in which I spoke of Oscar’s going has yet reached you in time. Tell Oscar the lost letter, for I think that it contained a long one to him. Why does Adela think ich mag Sie nicht? True, I was far from liking her letters in which she seemed to assume airs towards you, and treat me as though I did not existed, which offended me, because I it was treating you without affection. Personally to me, of course it cannot be anything. But your warm affection towards her, changes the matter very much or entirely. You are too vain when you say: “I must still look tollerable”, because you overload the “tollerable”, not being satisfied with tolerable with one L. Hush! Hush! I am delighted to hear of your good looks, and yet I feel sad, for it shows me how worrying your life here is, with your passionate husband. – I wish Mat would I send me of her own accord a purse, a this, a that; I would kiss it. – Bring us a Gurkenhobel! – I could have wished some one of your relations, who donot know me personally could have found that within him, which would have urged him to write me, having all mine there. – I was greatly pleased by Oscars note to you on storks; let him read about them in his Ménagerie, or whatever book. I hope I shall be able to send him for his birthday my new book “Great events by described by great historians”.12 Can you not cause Dr Wurm to insert that passage about de Tocqueville’s report in a Hamb. paper. – My dearest, best Mat. I am afraid the Spanish women13 wont like Hamb. and of course be unamiable. And then the want of means of communion! This If you were between 11 Wilhelm Benecke, late husband of Mathilde Benecke. 12 Lieber, Great Events. 13 Isabella and Dolores, wives of the Oppenheimer brothers Gustavus and Theodore in Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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the two parties I know, much might be made smooth. However, this is strictly entre nous. For if I should be right, time enough. – I do wish, I could live with Caroline; I Know we would march so interestingly upon that narrow, narrow line, where ought and ought not border upon one another; where no Berzelius or any other chemist is able to say whether a Kiss contains a millionth part of other than sisterly other. ‘Pon my soul Matilda, were I to live with Matilda and all the women my upper part would be most decidedly Turkish, however Christian all below the vest coat might be. “Frank, are you really not ashamed?” No, I a’nt. – May – Soehle, I forgot her Christian name – be presented with as sound an infant as her p.d.f.g.14 arrived sound with me. This is fervent wish of a keen gastronomer. You see, I now do remember her. Oh, I assure you, if all people would adopt the same system of memories, or the art of memory, I would most assuredly remember her. Apropos, I sent some of “Aunt Minna’s” vinegar prunes to old Mrs Nott, who was here, and sent for me. She was delighted, others did Dr Ellet good, who had a very serious attack of fever. – Your ginger cakes (no great matter, pardon!) frequently delight Henry & Elza.15 – Donot encumber yourself with too much. I hope your relations will not sink the vessel with dainties for you at sea. – In the lost letter I wrote you not to go by the Cuxhaven, for if I remember it is a very bad old box, slow and sails too late; besides I have asked both brothers to come, which they will, I am sure, if Isabel16 is not childishly-foolish. No knowing about these “plantation-raised” Spanish women, left from infancy to selfwill without any training. You have never written me whether you recieved 2 or 3 copies of vol 2 of Polly,17 and I suppose they are lost; for my publishers write me they sent them. I believe that Wurm is right about all he said. I saw in a Paris paper that the Allgem. Zeitung is prohib. in Hanover. Now, I could not stand such imprudence. To tell me or any one what he shall read or not? Why all roughness rather, than that. – Tell Adela that none on earth can desire more ardently to see you live with beloved ones; that one great cause of my deep grief is that we live without befriended souls, and that no one, at the same time, is more made for communication than myself, but! Still you ought in future more to write more to one another. – Pray instruct your relations not to send envelops &c. Dont forget that. There is now an end! And I should like to write so much yet. Tell Carry to open the letters which arrive from me to you after you are gone.

14 Lieber’s way to refer to goose liever pate, pâté de foie gras given to him by Auguste Soehle. 15 Slaves in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC. 16 Isabella Oppenheimer, wife of Gustavus Oppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 17 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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[4] Columbia S.C. When you recieve these lines, my ever dear boy, your beloved mother has perhaps already left you or will soon do so. I know and, what is far more, I feel all you feel at this separation; but let us at present not dwell upon the pain which both of us feel and of upon our longing to embrace one another again. The day will come, oh happy, blessed day of joy! Yes Oscar, my dear Oscar, it will be one of the very happiest days of our lives, provided you have done your duty in the mean time, and learned bravely. Although this separation is bitter, and, I own, you are very tender in years yet, still you must not forget, that God allows you to enjoy in this separation, blessings of the highest kind, such as many other poor boy he is denied to enjoy. You are separated from your parents, indeed, but you have near you two loving aunts, who doat upon you with an affectionate as though you were their very child. Aunt Caroline wrote to me long ago that should your education require that you must remain in Hamburgh, she would be a tender mother to you. God bless her for it.“ She is so loving and so good. Love demands love. If she loves you, love her from all your heart. But love is not vague, not empty, love is shown in actions. Let one of your actions to your aunts be that you speak of them about everything, when you have been good and when not. Never commit a fault in school without speaking to one of your aunts about it. It will make your heart easier and better, and will prevent you from committing the same fault. This I say because it is so far to us, nevertheless give us, sweetest boy, your whole heart in your letters to Mama and myself; tell us everything that concerns you, and, Oscar, if ever you commit wrong, make your parents your friends to whom you communicate it. I promise you, never shall you regret placing unlimited confidence in me, I will be your true and kind friend. As God sees all you think, feel and do, so because he is omniscient, so let your loving father see into your heart by communicating to him always freely; but I know you will do so. I know you love Mama and myself so ardently that your heart will prompt you to do so. My dear boy, when ever we wish to do something great and good, we must go steadily to work and for this reason I will mention now two things which I beg you to imprint clearly, deeply, and indelibly upon your mind, namely: Every time you go to work, especially once in the morning and once in the afternoon, ask yourself distinctly what you have to do, and in what succession you will do it, so that you best employ and economize your time. Whenever you have any task or have resolved to do something, do it at once and steadily, that is not hastily, but uninterruptedly. These are two rules, my boy of the last importance throughout life, in whatever sphere we may be ­active, high

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or low. I do the same, my Oscar, and let me add, whenever I have clearly laid out my days labor and allow myself to be uninterrupted, e.g. by happening to take up a book which interests me, and by reading on, I loose time and when the day is past I do not feel as happy, as when I have done something substantial. Nothing my boy gives contributes so much to making us feel happy and looking up to God with confidence, and to being kind to others, [3] and just and calm, not fretful, and to feeling content, and to loving ardently those we wish to love, as the being satisfied with ourselves, and nothing contributes more to the satisfaction with ourselves, as the consciousness that we have done, what we ought to have done, that we have performed. Something substantial, and the task before us. Nb When viewing the day, you can, before you say your evening prayer; say to yourself, “I did my task”, when in summing up the week on Saturday evening, you can say: „my teacher has been satisfied with me upon the whole when in closing the year on new year’s eve, you can look back without deep regret at lost time and the consciousness of having disappointed the most ardent hopes of your parents, whom you love so truly, it will give you a general contentment and manfulness of soul, which, believe me, who is so much older and knows what you cannot know yet, is one of the greatest blessings throughout life; while the consciousness of having lost months and years, time that no regret can ever bring back, makes many a man sad and discontented and unkind, although he frequently does not know, the reason himself. Follow then your friend and father, and act upon my advice just for one yea week resolutely and manfully, and you will see how happy it will make you. For you ought to know that God, the almighty and all-benevolent father, has laid it down as one of the fundamentals of his creation, that he who does right should feel happy and heiter. It is one of the greatest principles in his great order of things. Indeed, my love, I can give you no other advice, if you ask me: “My dearest father, how shall I console myself, in my separation?” then this: “Do always right and perform your duty with alacrity, for this will more comfort you more than un naught else.” And here let me add two other points, my dearest Oscar, which are necessary in order to do your duty: Be obedient, Be resolute in doing right. The first you know is one of the very greatest duties of a child, one of the greatest demands of God. The second is equally important. Obedience does not mean shy submission, if you have been told what is right, if you know what you ought to do, then stick to it resolutely and manfully. There will be some in

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a large school as yours, who perhaps will tell you to do something, which you know is wrong. Let them not persuade you; let no one ever older than you persuade you, but be firm. Never blush of doing right; never be ashamed because your conscience prevents you from doing a thing which you see others do, never feel humbled because others laugh at you for feeling scruples at doing or saying what you think wrong. But be bold and manful; being laughed at from without is nothing but being reproached from within is bitter; having bravely opposed scorn or persuasive language, because your conscience told you, you should, makes you feel so free, so strong, and so worthy of the love of your parents, your aunts, of all good people, but having yielded from fear at ridicule having blushed at doing what we know to be right, having regretted to have said what it was right to say, makes us feel feeble, mean, sacking, unworthy of the love of the good. You see my boy, I speak here from experience. I know how happy I felt before my conscience and my God for having on some important occasions done boldly done, what was right, in spite of sneer and jibe;18 and I recollect how humiliated and mean I have felt, when I feared ridicule more than my conscience. It was in school, and oh! how willingly would I afterwards have borne ten times the ridicule, instead of the consciousness of not having been a man, not having loved God as I ought to have done. Therefore listen to the experience of your father, that the wrong he has done may bear at least that one good fruit, that you profit by its communication and resolve to do better. I must mention one thing Oscar. German schoolboys have not that horror against informing, anzeigen, which English and American boys have. I charge you solemnly always to remember that you are an American, and never to inform against a schoolfellow. If you know that one of your fellows has done wrong and see that another is to be punished for it, step forward and pledge your word that you know that the suspected one is innocent. If you know that injury [2] is intended, speak manfully to those who intend it, and, if they will not obtain, you may inform the person the person of the intended injury, if it be serious enough. There is but one against whom I donot only allow you to inform, but pray you to do it always – yourself. A boy that is conscious of never having informed against whomsoever, but always quickly about himself, feels so strong, 18

At that point Lieber perhaps thought of his experience being grilled by Prussian police in 1824–1825 and 1825 on his terrorist connections when he refused to give in the names of his friends and confederates.

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and gains the esteem of all his fellows. Be true, my boy. Let your beloved soul be like the pellucid waters we saw in the tropic,19 so clear, so pure, so beautiful, that we could see deep, deep to the bottom; but not like the turbid, thickened freshet full of immundity, without transparency. But see on what page I am I must end. I hope you are every way kind to your cousin. Your loving, dearly loving father. P.S. My dear boy where is China, whither the Russians lately sent an expedition, and for what did they send it? Oh, if you could see the lovely flowers of the forest now. Have you seen hortensias in Germany. They grow much larger than those in German Gardens, wild in the low-country, those “swamps” so full of glorious plants and deadly fever. [cross-writing, 4] June 5. I have recieved the parcel. Which contained your drawings and the knife. This is just what I wanted, and I thank you many thousand times. I only will say this now, but I write you more about it in my next I donot whish to cross too much, so Good bye, sweet boy for today, Your loving father. thousand, thousand Kisses to my beloved Oscar. O thousand kisses!! There is no room left for to speak of the parcel. Hammy’s first writing book made me write these lines in it: Oh Hammy How slammy I feel when I look At this awfullest book! It is most aweful. The babes of witches I think write better with their mother’s broomsticks. – I trust that nothing has been actually said in presence of the children, although in mere fun, of that nonsense of which Gustavus20 speaks as to Clara and Oscar. Oscar is inflammable and there separation might keep up a thaught in Oscar, which I should deplore, on account of there near relationship, the tie in Germany, and all that. I cannot bear these silly talks they are so Berlinisch! If we were distant houses, there might be fun in the matter. I hope they have not tormented you, in Berlin, with loving intentions and at 19 20

In 1836 the Lieber family had travelled from South Carolina via Cuba to Puerto Rico to visit Mathilde Lieber’s siblings and their families. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. Clara Lieber, daughter of Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, Berlin; obviously Francis Lieber was angry about some ideas of his brother Gustav who seemed to have nourished some matchmaking between his daughter Clara and his nephew Oscar.

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the same time pinibler Übelnehmerei both so common in Germany, I mean in Berlin &c. To ∆ Hamb. people are much practical, not so woma[nly] ∆ the absence of all public life makes the large mass of people in Germ Prussia very small-minded Ich kann nicht weiter F.L Ich schreibe auch mit dem Dampfbote, wenn es sich nur irgend gut trifft. Ich werde keinen Mantel wie beschrieben kaufen. – Ich möchte wissen ob der Brief der mit dem verbrannten Havre packet21 verloren gegangen, die Absch. von Retsch’s22 Brief enthält. Vergiss nicht die nöthigen Arzneien gegen croup für die Kinder mit aufs Schiff zu nehmen. FL There is room yet. Let it be pasted over – never mind. – Beware of bring no large stone jars. They cost much – freight by weight what a eternal pity that there are no vessels from H. to Charleston which will Kisten allow us to ∆ [cross-writing, 1] sometimes. Will you ∆ send things to him, know ship-matters? I shall actually not know how to send a parcel ∆ Bless the boy in taking leave for me too. Oh God! – I am so sorry you have not written me that you have spoken to Osc. about his remaining; for the shock would not be so severe, if, when he heard the first time about it, the separation were yet far off. Tell him, it is love, sheer love that I force him to remain there. Beg Caroline to keep his heart open by constant love. Good bye. Single Paid Via New York & Havre à Madame François Lieber aux soins de Monsieur Jacob Oppenheimer à Hambourg en Allemagne Per packet Stamp New York June 15 Stamp Paris 6 Juli Stamp Hamburg ∆ li 40 21 22

Lieber asked after the Poland; the vessel had been destroyed on sea by fire in 1840. Moritz Retzsch.

No. 61 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 08.06.-21.06.1840 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Oscar Lieber USC FLC Box 1, folder 10, ALS, 4 pages No XXXVI

Columbia S.C. June 1840 Monday. June 8. 1840. I shall sent these lines yet with the steamboat; th if there be one fitting in; it makes me quite happy that I can yet go on writing to you, for not to commune with you would be too hard with all my other privations. In the letter I recieved yester-day you say, of yourself, May I have nothing omitted, when we see one another &c“. Come I say, my wife, my bride, in the freest fullest confidence. I have learned, during your absence, so elevated qualities of your noble soul, such incomparable disinterestedness, that often I feel deeply grieved at many things I have said. Besides, alas! What will be one of our chief thoughts when we see each other again? Oscar, Oscar! My dear Matilda, for fear that I have spoken of the leave from Oscar in the letter which may be lost, I repeat here, that I very decidedly advise by no means to steal from him, by no means to decieve him, by no means to tell him, you will see him again, and not do it. No, no, drink fai it is always infinitely better to pledge fairly one another in the bitter cup, and drink deep from it; except, perhaps, where actual illness prevents it. It is moreover far be easier to suffer together with others. Let Oscar come to town and take leave of him when you part from Caroline and Harriet; beg Caroline to have her son at home; let them both stay a day or two after in town, and then, if Dr Busse would confer a great favor upon me, he would fetch Oscar. The idea, that the boy should go out alone to Eppendorf with his heart filled with the deepest greaf he has ever yet suffered, is far too painful to me. Dr B. would greatly oblige me. If you go in the morning, I would beg Caroline to take a walk in the afternoon with the boys. Fresh air braces, and the varying objects excite, at least occupy first the eye and, by and bye, unconsciously the soul; while the air as well as the sameness of objects in the room deject or, at any rate, prevent that genia beneficial occupation of the mind, which is an antidote against the bitterest grief. I wish that the two first mornings after your departure, Oscar donot awake alone with his grief. I beg you once more, and again and again donot steal from him, donot decieve him. Deception of this sort, although Known to have been prompted by affection leaves a sting in the heart. Here let me add something else. I hope there is no danger in Oscar’s going from and to Eppendorf? I see from the map that he probably goes along the Alster, besides, are there not wicked people who might entice him in order to rob him? I have Known so many instances of the sort in Berlin, and still read

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_063

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so frequently in the papers of these things that I am quite anxious about it. I wish you would speak about it to Mr Busse. – I carry to-day letter XXXV to the post office. Still it might happen that this arrives before it. As to the mantle you ask me, I would suggest that you go out in winter here so little, and that the winter is so short, that I hardly think it will be worth your while to buy one, well provided with shawls as you are. If I Knew Mary Appleton’s direction in Engl. I would ask you to write to her while in Hamb. but I donot. – Why does Adela think I have “a most decided dislike to her”? This is strange and in truth not very kind. For if I had I should be more than a very whimsical person. Dislike a person for no reason? I did not feel attracted to her from by the few letters you used to recieve here from her; they appeared cold, stiff, maniriert, but this of course has changed since I know she treats you, my own heart’s blossom, with affection, with real love. And I feel truly grateful to her. Altogether, I own most willingly that my position to your relation is peculiar, because they love you intensely, and I stand so near you, yet they donot Know me. There is perhaps some degree of awkwardness in this position. Still sometimes I do think they might have been a little more offhand to me. Your cousins having been students, Knowing German literature and all that, and Knowing that I move and live in the pursuit of Knowledge, might, perhaps, have now and then shown me some slight attention in this line, but I demand, exact nothing. Believe me, I dont – Why do you mention hardly ever your cousin Louis,1 his wife never?2 You did once, you were pleased with her; that is all. I come back to Adela and your uncle.3 Strange, the one thinks I dislike her the other asks whether I donot believe him to be ein brummiger Alter. I see no reason, except they are conscious of what I donot know, of having harbored unkindly feelings to me. In regard to Adela’s wish to see us settled in Hamb. I only have to say that my answer to your question ev related only to a professorship in Hamb. else you remember well how often I have said, that where I to choose a residence in Germany, I believe that I should select Hamb. It would suit me, I believe best, accustomed as I am, to activity, to vast relations; to enlarged trade &c. However there is no use in talking about this, or even about a professorship, for none is offered, none vacant, and, indeed, I donot see, if there were one vacant, how I should get it. What chance should I have? I am unknown in Hamb. utterly unknown. Nor do I believe that Julius4 is over-partial to me, which can easily be 1 Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, brother of Adele Haller. 2 Emilie Oppenheimer née Buchholz; she died in confinement 1845 mourned by family and friends like Minna Benecke, sister of Dr. iur. Otto Benecke. 3 Jacob Oppenheimer. 4 Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius.

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conjectured from his almost total silence about me in his book;5 nor can I help suspecting that he has not spoken favorably of me to Mittermaier.6 However I may be totally mistaken in this. [cross-writing, 1] This first page was written just before the faculty meeting so good bye for to day, my love and my heart, my wife and my bride. [2] Tuesday, June 9. I passed yester-day the shop of the German shoemakers and found they did not work. Upon inquiry I learned that it was Whitsuntide monday.7 Good God! It affected me deeply. All Germany in burstling joy; and my Oscar probably or for certain with you! – At noon the wife of the one of the shoe makers sent me a very excellent dish of Kohlrabi with meatballs. Now, Matilda, when I rode out in the evening, with a very heavy heart, in my loneliness which has now always the additonal sting that I shall not see Oscar again, and when my life passed before my mind’s eye, as I passed the trees and shrubs, and when I felt perhaps certain things more deeply yet than usual, since the effects of your letter, which I had Sunday last and which, I verily believe I have read at the least a dozen times, and when the sun was setting, then, Matilda, my eyes began to fill, and remained so for a good while. I am not happy in this state. I am not where I ought to be! The day of my departure is fast approaching, yet I donot look forward to it with anxious expectation. Not that I am not glad to see you again. On the very contrary; I must say, I want you most sorely; the separation has lasted long enough, and I want at least one soul to with whom 5 Julius, Nordamerikas sittliche Zustände. 6 Lieber’s assumption was correct; Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius fostered not the best of opinion about Lieber’s abilities as scholar and prison reformer. In his letters from ­1837–1839 to his pal of student’s times, Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg, Dr. J­ ulius did not minced his words: see Lars Riemer, ed., Das Netzwerk der Gefängnisfreunde (1830–1872). Karl Josef Anton Mittermaiers Briefwechsel mit europäischen Strafvollzugsexperten (= Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte) 2 vols., Frankfurt/Main 2005, passim; Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 343–344. In the 1840s Dr. Julius changed, however, his mind and offered Lieber several options to publish in the journal he founded in 1844 with friends and colleagues Jahrbücher der Gefängniskunde und Besserungsanstalten. THL Box 15 LI 2467, Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, Berlin, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC 20.4.1842, Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 366–367. 7 Monday after pentecoste = Pfingstmontag, 8.6.1840.

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I can commune; one that can comfort me, one that can at times at least break the thread of grief. It is too lonely to think every thaught of pain through. Your cousin8 said, so you write me: “Ich muß mir die Hände waschen, bitte komm einer mit.” Now, imagine me on the other hand. The other day I had sunk into such a fit of heavy thaughts and feelings that for two whole days, Saturday and Sunday, I did not leave the house, hardly the room, saw no one, spoke not a word, until at last I saw that this was folly, for it took away my degestive power and all elasticity of action body. So I darted out early on Monday morning before faculty meeting and rode a good ride. Why then, you will ask, do I not gladly look for our meeting. Oh, I do, I do my wife; but I donot anxiously look for my departure from here, because between my arrival at N.Y. and yours will be that dreaded, comfortless life in an American inn – small room, no home &c &c. Sally9 will be in the country and purposes to see no body; of course I cannot plant myself close to the newly married buxom bride; Mary10 is gone – all birds are flown. There is no scientific body, where, in that line, I might move in my element. – God grant my most beloved wife, that this letter yet will arrive by steamboat before you go. I will spare no expense to send it thus, and merely for the purpose to unburthen your noble soul of any thaught, that there can be naught that can deminish my anxiety to see you, to kiss you, to have you again. With open arms, with open heart, with open soul do I recieve you. Remember what I believe I have written you several times, and you know me too well that, perhaps unfortunately for me, I cannot help seeing pretty clearly even where all my affections are engaged; do I not often speak to you of the faults of the Germans? I cannot help seeing them, yet do I love Germany from my inmost soul. The sacrifice of my life for Germany would be nothing for me. Remember then, I say, what I have said, that I consider, esteem, age, revere you as one of God’s noblest creatures; that your soul is far elevated, very far above mine. I could die, indeed, for Germany; what is that? Thausands, God be thanked, have been able to die for a noble idea. You can do more, you can live quietly, for one individual, myself and one, who in bitterness, I confess it, has not always treated you, as your devotion and disinterestedness, amply deserved. Let not I pray you, that thaught dwell on my mind; my life shall show you, that this separation was a fruitful one for us. When you take leave of all the beloved ones in Hamburgh, tell them that your Frank, with all his faults, of which there are alas! many, very many, he has a grateful heart, a heart, which, he knows from experience, and can vouch for it, takes delight in genuine gratitude, a heart that feels 8 9 10

Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller. Sally Oakey née Sullivan former Sally Newton. Mary Appleton Mackintosh.

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itself in one of its very elements, when it can be grateful, deeply grateful, and that therefore all the love shown you, is written in it, engraved, that no time can efface it. Aye, no time; that here or there, this side, if God grants an opportunity, of the grave, or the other side, where we shall see one another from soul to soul, they shall see that thanks are written in my soul. Your sisters, your uncle;11 Adela, Matilda,12 all have their share of my thanks. Tell Adela that a being, of whom you speak as you do, is in part mine, mine so far as in the realm of spirits, gratitude and affection establishes titles of possession. That in loving, in clinging to your heart, your soul, or I find there as an integrant part, her image, and that with joy I find and leave it there, in gratitude I will foster it there. This hour is a solemn one. Away with trifles; liking or disliking is not the question. When a man prays to God in the fervor of his soul, and sees his God’s all persuading power in all the creation around him, he does he then say: But the crimson of the pink is dearer to my eyes than the white of the lilly? I know her not; God gives for all wise purposes distinct individualistics, which attract or repel. I donot know how our personalities might seek or keep from one another, and bold is he, who would say he knows that before hand. But how ever that might be, I Know what I said in regard to her, is true, deeply true. Yet I think so much I can say, that should we see one another with the bodily eyes – we do I hope with our souls’ eyes – I believe we could not long remain at a distance, albeit that our personalities might very essentially differ. Let this satisfy you respecting your and consequently mine my relation to her. In writing this, it occurs to me that, perhaps, you tell her of this passage, perhaps read it to her. If you do, you must not forget to add that I never wrote a word to you, expressing any, the slightest dislike of her; without this addition she might perhaps suppose so. Yet all I have written about this point, has been done so only in consequence of your saying in your last, that she thinks I “have the most decided dislike to her”; she may then have found in my individuality, such as it stamps itself in my letters, that which indicates to a delicate female mind [3] that she would not like me, that there is that in my composition which she has a present would not be genial to hers. But as there are in chemistry bodies which can never unite of themselves, but quickly do so, so soon as you add a third element, so even so it is in the moral world. If we, as she seems to suppose, would repel one another, or remain unaffected by one another, you are 11 12

Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette Oppenheimer, and Jacob Oppenheimer, Hamburg. Mathilde Benecke.

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the third element, which could not but make us attract one another. So much as to our inmost soul; as to little forms and externals, e.g. manners, ways of views – all this falls to the ground in so solemn an hour as the present one is to me. # I wonder whether the letter, which I suppose was but in the Poland, was that which I wrote on the huge London paper, and in which there was, I remember, a paraphraze of the Lord’s prayer for Queen Victoria. – Practical reality mixes ever with our most intellectual life, or that of the purest sentiments. So when the devoutest being has knelt in prayer, he may find afterwards the dust of the pavement on his garment and must brush it off; and so I must now, even after having written the deeply felt lines above, go to the bank, to see whether I cannot obtain a bill discounted, which becomes due on the first of January next only. Good bye than for the present. – Lately a man of the name of Smith went to bed here with his wife, and when he rose in the morning he found her not only dead, but cold by his side. How awful! We have it now very cool here, and yet the country fever is severe in Charleston. A Miss Smith of 17 the greatest beauty of Charleston, and, all say, a most lovely being, was carried off, by having remained too late in the Country. The Death Dance indeed of the old pictures! I kiss you, and your dear, kindly and glowing hearted sisters. Forget not to give my warmest thanks to your dear and affectionate aunt Minna too. Thausand thanks for her kindness to Oscar; let her always be so. And now to the bank! – After dinner. I think you would greatly please Oscar by writing him a continuous letter, on board, with now and then a dictation from the children. These voices, I know, will do good to the heart of the lonesome and beloved boy. If, as I hope, you will not buy me anything for the money James sent you to buy me something, I think I may use it in having my Letter on copyrights printed,13 which, entre nous, I know be a well-reasoned thing, and would be much liked in France and England; but which, very naturally no bookseller will publish, because no one would like it care for it. Only I fear the money will not be sufficient. But stop! Pardon! I think I have always disposed of the money in favor of Oscar. I wonder whether you could get yourself painted for that money, yours & mine, about a foot high or so. That would be a fine disposal for Oscar. But I forget, this letter will be too late for that; what a pity I have not thaught of that before! Besides I should have liked so much to have know that there is a picture of you of this Hamb. period, since you look so well. If the Hamburghers find you looking well, the Zuellichau and Berlin people must find you une déesse, for beauty there is none, God nots in those parts. And how Berlin people used to dress. Yet Matilda est une Berlinoise after all. Bring me, please C.W. Bötticher Übersez. des Tacitus, 4 Bd. für 1Th 12, herabgesezter Preis. 13

James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber; Lieber, On international copyright.

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Vergiß es nicht; du sollst ihn lesen. Ich fand dies in Cetel herabgesezter Bücher. So Aeschylus Tragoedien, von Wolf, für 1 Thl 12 pf. – Natürlich gebunden.14 – In one letter, and it may have been the lost one, I urgently begged you to settle with Mittermaier,15 by begging him through a cousin to draw upon him or uncle Jacob for the amount I ow him – not more than 30 dollars at the highest. I am anxious this should be settled. I mean Ghrath Mittermaier, Heidelberg. # I shall not hear from my beloved ones again, in all probability, before I reach N.Y. for if I have written to Möller & Heckscher to return all letters which should arrive before after the the 18th of June, and have cannot in reason expect that you I shall have a letter before that time, and yet you have written me perhaps just before you set out for Berlin, where I trust you have past some days with Sally.16 I wish it. # Wednesday. Pray me Matilda, bring me a few silk handkerchiefs, coal-black, not blue black, of strong silk. I w not stocks, or anything fanciful, with fringes or the like, but strong, good simple silk handkerchiefs. I believe that this is almost all I shall bag you to bring me. My impulse is to write & write; yet this is the last, and I must let it lie until July 1. steamboat, and therefore ought to leave room for things that might come yet. Before I forget it however, I mention again that I wish you would properly inform yourself about your shares in that Pruss. Lottery. For I donot know yet precisely what it is! When it ends, &c. And if you will not bring the news, whom should I pester with the inquiry after so trifling a thing, as it must appear to others. # Let me depend upon your writing me either via Havre or by steamb. just before you sail. # Thursday. What do you think? Ought we not to leave the copy of Retzsch’s Chess player, which you took to Germany, with Oscar, since I have another? No doubt he will take of it. You may decide about it, as also whether you will leave it to him, framed or not. If you give it to him, give it as a gift from you and myself, and if write upon the cover, or if framed, upon the back, when you gave – and may he remember us by it, the blessed boy! My heart hangs within me like a heavy lump; I assure you! I can not think of my boy without actual writhing, and there is no end in sight. – You say of your uncle17 “What would he not give to see you happy.” Alas he might in a certain shape – but let that rest; it is not in my power; all that is, I will fight and strive, toil & labor for without any reference to honor, name – to ought else, to devr liberate us. That I should have 14

15 16 17

Wilhelm Bötticher, Des Cajus Cornelius Tacitus sämmtliche Werke, 4 vols. Verlag von Theod. Christ. Friedr. Enslin Berlin 1831–1834; perhaps he wanted a translation by Johann Heinrich Voß, Äschylos, Heidelberg 1839. Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg. Sally Jacobson, Berlin. Jacob Oppenheimer, Hamburg.

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been rejoiced to have a letter a spontaneous one from your cousin, you know, for any unexpected mark of feeling, of genuine life, delights me; but, mark, for that very reason it is necessary that be spontaneous. You will therefore not intimate anything whatever to her. You would poorly serve me in that way indeed. I desire to do nothing at present but to talk with you; I am unsettled; yet when I behold the scanty room I see that I am deprived of this gratification too, and of that to speak of my boy in the fullest of my heart. One thing, however, before I forget it. I conjure you to speak to Oscar before you go about me; tell him if I have been ever harsh to him, that he must excuse it by the circumstances in which I was placed, and several things which he cannot understand yet, but that, so true as there is a living God and as my eyes are now overflowing, I love him, I love him from my soul, and that so long as I live, I shall live in great part for him. I cannot # Friday pray ask before you go at Besser’s18 whether vol. II of the Wikingszüge by Strinnholm is not yet out, and bring it if possible, but bound, I dont wish it unbound because I have vol I bound.19 # Saturday. Yesterday I recieved a letter from Judge Tucker, one of the most honoured men in Virginia. The letter gave me very great pleasure, for it is one of the first indications, that I shall not have written entirely in vain, but that my work will aid in diffusing, however slowly, the conviction that liberty consists in something very different and higher than the mere repetition of a Rousseau is catechism. God knows I shall not copy the letter from vanity; for you cannot suspect me of it, at this time, but I thaught it might give you some pleasure though during the passage. Otherwise I debated long whether I should fill the place with the copy or not. Here it is: “Sir, I have long intended to offer you my acknowledgement for a work for which the public is made indepted to you, and no one more than myself. You are perhaps aware that I am engaged in the difficult and delicate task of lecturing on the subject of Government in a country where every youth, who comes to College, comes with a believe that of whatever else he may be ignorant, on that subject, at least, he has nothing to learn. His father (who is of course a politician) has taught him from his infancy, that the whole science is to be comprehended and expressed in a few short aphorisms as profound, as easily remembered, and as much to the purpose as Major Jack Downing’s ‘E pluribus unum’. ‘Sine qua non’. – the first buseness of the instruction is to clear the ground of the rank weeds engendered by this hot-bed cultivation. In other words he must unteach his pupil, and make him sensible, that that, which to 18 19

Perthes, Besser & Mauke, publishers and booksellers in Hamburg. Anders Magnus Strinnholm, Wikingszüge, Staatsverfassung und Sitten der alten Skandinavier, Bd. 1 Wikingszüge, Hamburg bei Friedrich Perthes 1839, Bd. 2 Staatsverfassung und Sitten, Hamburg bei Friedrich Perthes 1841.

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him has passed for knowledge, is but presumptuous ignorance”. Hoc opus. The rest of the task is easy in comparison with this. The mind, just convinced of error is not disposed rashly to adopt new opinions; and is thus perhaps in the best state of preparation for an investigation which promises few certain conclusions. Nothing, I think, can be more safely affirmed, than that “he who in the Science of Government, thinks he knows every thing, as yet knows nothing as he ought.” They who consider metaphysical science as abstruse, and that of free governm. as plain, have not yet discovered, that the very foundation of the latter are laid in the former. – Nothing therefore should be more acceptable to an instructor in the science than a work calculated to humble the mind of the student, in view of its perplexing difficulties. Such a work is yours on Pol. Ethics,20 abounding in propositions so strikingly and clearly presented, as to challenge the instant assert of the reader and, in the same moment, to let him see that such one of these does but open into a labyrinth through which he can never thread his way, but by cautiously following the delicate idea of experience- I have regretted that your work did not appear in time to be used as a textbook in my class during the present course. Hence you will not see it mentioned in our catalogue, which speaks only of things as they are. In an advertisement to be published in vacation, I shall announce it as forming a part of my course in future. – I have not yet seen the second volume (!!). Has it come out? As soon as I can, I purpose to read it attentively, and to endeavour to qualify myself to give a review of it worthy of the subject and the work. I have been wishing to do this with the first volume, but my engagements have rendered it impossible to execute the task in a proper [4] manner. – No review can be of any value to the author reviewed, or the public, which does not bear on its face something to commend respect for the opinions of the writer. Any one who will is free to censure what he disapproves. But he who damns with injurious praise inflicts an unauthorized and irremediable wound. I am not sure therefore that I have a perfect right to do as I propose without your approbation. In asking this I so as I would be done by. I have myself recieved the praises and censures of critics. if it were left to me to blot out the one or the other, I would let the censures remain. “Defend me from my friends”, in a prayer peculiarly appropriate for an author. – In conclusion, I beg to assure you of the very high respect and admiration of your obedt servt. B. Tucker“ Judge Tucker is a relation of Jefferson and author of Jefferson’s 20 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics.

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life from private papers,21 he is a Profess. of pol. philos. in William & Mary, Virginia. This letter in all its details has given me much pleasure; it shows respect, founded upon attentive perusal of my book, and is wholy unasked for; we have never corresponded with, or seen one another. Do you believe there is such a thing to be had as a little vessel to bring a coal from the kitchen to light cegars? It must hold ashes; quite simple and cheap. Bring a little cinnamon. You can get here nothing but cassia; even in N.Y. it is difficult to get it, Sill tells me. – June 20. I waited until to-day, hoping I might yet have a letter, but now I must close, for Dr. Ellet who goes this evening will take the letter to the North, where Adler will send it by steam. This morning I had a letter from Greenleaf, he says of my book: The work is adding to your well earned reputation among us. I have often heard it spoken of, and never unkindly. One friend only qualified his phrase by regretting that more time could not have been allowed for its ambition, remarking, however, that the next edition would be all he wished. But others thought that what it might gain in higher finish and elaborateness, it probably, like all other original works, would lose in freedom, and boldness and vigor of conception. My own opinion is that you have just cause to be entirely satisfied with the work, and with its reception. And now I must conclude; I have this moment examined the Seniors in Pol. Economy and come to finish this, in order to return. My heart is unspeakably heavy; the tears – Good bye, good bye – oh my beloved Oscar think not of your father’s harshness! – James does not come to the U.S. this too is hard for me; it is a blow. I have again written to Gust. & Theod.22 that both should come, and Theod. Ahr. says he does not see any reason why not. We will be very happy for a month or so. I should now that James does not come, remain a month here, but partly to have letters, partly to see people in Philad. (which has become very painful to me) maked me go. I hardly can tear myself from you. Good bye and come to comfort your unhappy Frank. Kiss the girls, kiss – Good God! my Oscar. – Sunday, June 21. Dr. Ellet goes only to-day. I waited therefore thinking I might yet have a letter. Elsa just returns from the P.O. with empty hands. So I bid you good bye, and say come to your longing Frank. 21

22

There is a problem: George Tucker published one of the first biographies of the American sphinx The Life of Thomas Jefferson: third President of the United States, 2 vols. Carey, Lea & Blanchard Philadelphia 1837, but he hold no professorship at his alma mater, the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg/VA as his namesake, the lawyer Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, but at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 the University of Virginia in Charlottesville/Va. James, Theodore, and Gustavus Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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My beloved son, I write in haste a few things which I wish you not to forget. Try to obtain a very clear image of the Alster the Elbe &c near Hamb. Some time during summer beg someone, to take you to the Vier-Lande,23 and than observe land, people and how they build the houses. Write me always where you go, for I have now the map of Hamb. and can follow you. Thank Mr. Busse that he took you up on steeple. – My dear Oscar, I find you fold all your notes wrong. Mama will show you how to fold them. The writing must begin on the first page, not on the 3d. – June 20. To-day I was wounded.24 Yesterday I went rode to Hiller to beg him to collect seeds of the sensitive plant for me, while I am absent; I wish to send it to you. You may try to raise it next spring in the room. It is no mimosa but called Schrankia uncinata. The flower is much handsomer when fresh. It is bright and dark pink. Good bye you beloved child, you dearly beloved child, be bright, be happy, be active. I delight to imagine you under the image of a mocking bird, for he is so active and happy, so beautiful. For he sings On the wings, And at rest, be he blest. Cloud or clear, Him you hear; And he quavers high at noon, And he wharbles shines the moon. Ever bright, Day and night, Hot or chill, Vale or hill – Full of song, Sweet and strong; Happiest songster of the wood Ever beautiful and good! 1. I add a little flower for each of your aunts – Caroline and Harriet. To-day a week – I write this on June 21 – I set out for N.Y. – There is room yet, I see, but my heart is so full, my beloved son, that I must leave it empty. 23

24

Vierlande, area on the banks of the River Elbe, in the Southeast parts of todays Hamburg, formed by the parishes Curslack, Kirchwerder, Neuengamme, and Altengamme, known already in Lieber’s times for its highly developed agriculture (fruits, vegetables, cereales and hops). Farmers from that region played an important role in supplying Hamburg’s consumers with fresh food. Wrong reference to his injury suffered in June 1815.

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My Oscar, always remember that your mother & your father love you most tenderly, and God will soon bring us all together again. Good bye, Good bye. Be a man when you take leave of your mother and your brothers, for God wants us to be master over our grief. Forwarded New York 1st July 1840 by your mo. obt hbl servt N.D.E. Moller P. Great Western To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Jacob Oppenheimer Esq Hamburg via England per steam-boat Stamp St P A 20 Jul 40 Stamp Bristol 16 Jul

No. 62 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 21.02.-29.02.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4791, ALS, 4 pages Queries to Sumner:1 What is the name of the radical lawyer, friend of Brougham, who liked my Ethics?2 Where does he live? How do I get easiest, and where, a furnished room with breakfast if wanted? Can you give or procure for me a letter to some one at Oxford? I shall go to ­Oxford before I go to London and indeed before I have seen anyone, yet I should most like to visit that place without Knowing a soul. Columbia, SC Febr 21, 1844. Do you not see your Frank, my dear Matilda – wie er leibt und lebt – paper miser as you know him? I found this paper and too stingy to throw it away, use it for a letter to you. There is no wind here, and I often think how you are still rocking idly near the shore. I find the thaught of you and the dear boys this time far more haunting, probably because the last time, I travelled after your departure; now I am quietly left to my thaughts, and when I read or write, but especially in the evening on the sopha or in bed, there is always a little ship dancing up and down in my mind, and I see, even while attending to my reading, the three dear ones in their berth, tossed and rolled – God protect you. I have not yet seen Mat Mr Hassel, though I have written ­duely almost. I have been very busy, and mean to keep so until through with all disagreable things. Ah! We forgot to leave the cegars out of the closet. I had a most amusing letter from Jane. I send it direct. It will amuse all of you. When you receive these lines I am already at sea. Every morning I strike out a number, and know the remaining days. There are 16 left. Yes I have learnt counting like the youngest boy before Christmass. But I must stop. February 29, My loved wife, where are you? I have counted and reckoned, and hope you are by this time from 12 to 13 hundred miles from me. It will be a glorious day as Oscar says in his letter, when I shall find news of your safe arrival in Lpool. I had a letter from affectionate Caroline and Hart, with a copy of Oscar’s. They all glow with fervour. I will send it to you, for those whatever has been spoken unreservedly by a fervant heart, reads well and as a living word even after centuries. Oscars’ letter is nothing but a gush, but such a gush! It is like the bursting forth and overflowing of our mockingbirds when the sun of spring

1 Charles Sumner. 2 Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics; the name was Joseph Parkes, London.

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[2] first pours a sea of delight around them. I am very thankfull for having received that letter yet. The impression of the last was so unpleasant. Dear Carry says: “es würde Dir sehr verdacht werden” namely if I let you go without me. Ah, sweet sisters since I cant help that; what I do, and we have done we have done after long consultation and with reference to many very difficult things and points no one else can Know and weigh. I am no inconsiderate man and love my wife and children most dearly. Carry also says, she ventures to say that by this time we know each others’ foibles, but upon my word I Know none of hers. I just stopt for a while whether I could not add an’except’ but I could find none. Of course she must have them but I dont know any, while I Know a good many of my own – and you, poor Matilda, Know them too. When I spoke yesterday with Mrs Hassell of the French novels for which she has such liking, she said: I Know they always leave a void, yet I feel drawn into them. How different a letter from Caroline. Every one of her letters makes me feel better and gives me surer resolutions. – I had a letter from Dr. Howe, dated Rome, January 22, speaking of our leave of absence. That is quick buseness. Berlin is mute. Some half dozen of letters will probably arrive just when I am gone. – I made the sale to Laborde for $ 725, which will please you. To-day Mary3 leaves me, and I am alone with Betsy4 – pray explain to your sisters, lest Carry become alarmed for I Know she considers me somewhat bordering on [3] or – what shall I say? Betsy, who was in my study this moment, told me to tell Mrs and the young masters – – you may just fill up the blanks: I have gone on here very well. The wind has always been gentle and ranging from South to North West. God grant you, my beloved being, had the same. Rebecca says she cannot hear boys talk without crying and I cannot meet a boy with the shirt collar turned over without hearing something thumping against my waistcoat. In a week I am off. You would praise me for my proper arrangement of everything. I feel I deserve your praise. Thornwell says he is going to remain here in summer. I like it and so will you. Preston is very familiar with me. I always now call him Preston and he me Lieber. I have begun to make ppc leaves. I wish to 3 Mary was a slave Lieber had just sold to his colleague at the College of South Carolina, ­Maximilian LaBorde. 4 Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

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do everything as you would like it – aye and Signora Caroline too. Pray Carry, give me a new morning gown; the one you sent me in 1840 falls in tatter from professorial carcass – I beg your pardon. The mocking birds have begun to sing; our willow is green, spring is there. Yet I shall travel up into winter, no matter I also travel into one of the springs of my life. – Could I but see you at least pressing your first Kiss on the brow of our firstborn. It will be a scene at which angels eyes will run over with emotion. And your sisters, and all who love you! Oh, if I had only the news of your arrival and housing. Kiss Oscar again and again, but, tell him also – for truth is truth, and though bitter must be told – you Know what. He has lessened the delight of Wiedersehen, it cannot be denied and, therefore, ought not to be denied. – Hooper asked me yesterday, have you had no letter from Mrs Lieber by a passing vessel! Dont you see the old man as he lives? Give my love to all your kin, especially to Uncle Jacob and tell him I am pleased that he approves of my trip. I will send you a list of all the letters I shall receive [4] They are fast dopping in. Have you dear Matilda written to Mrs C.T. Lowndes? Of course you have recieved my first letter, this being the second. I must conclude, for Mr North takes this to the North, and I have yet sundry things to attend to. Press my lovely Normy, and my good Hammy. A propos, Mrs Carry, the two boys are remarkably obedient. None of Frank 21 Feb 1844 sinister questions. Ah! Are they obedient indeed? My sweet wife, my beloved children, may God bless you. My dear sisters I love you all most affectionitely. Thank you Carry for your promise of coaxing. Oh I will will have a full journeys’ worth of coaxing out of Hart and Carry. Good bye. I am as well as a fish. But I often awake at night, partly because the little vessel is cloating before my mind’s eye, partly because I think intenser and intenser on the journey. My sweet boys Kiss your mother for me, my Matilde Kiss them for your Frank Via Havre à Madame F. Lieber aux soins de Madame E. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade à Hamburg en Allemagne per packet stamp HAMBURG 10 April + stamp faded + sealing wax

No. 63 Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 01.03.-17.03.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4793, ALS, 4 pages Peaches are in blossem. March 1. 44. As we give to those we love, sometimes a single fruit, a plum, even a strawberry, so I send you, beloved Matilda, this one. Mary1 had been sowing in the piazza and put the sheet and her work on a chair. I went, put it on the ground, to seat myself, and found in the sheet a spelling book. At dinner I asked her whether she could spell. Yes Sir. And how did you learn it? Master Norman taught me the ABC and spelling. When? When I was sowing in the nursery, he would come and teach me, when I begged him. Is this not to you as deeply touching as to me. It is a most lovely picture in my mind. I wish I could draw it. So Rebecca told weeping bitterly that two days before your departure the dear boy came with two large pieces of wood because said he: You seem always to be so cold here: I brought you some wood. May the great God who loves the blade as he loves the cedar tree, bless and preserve these good boys and their innocent souls. – I am becoming very restless. I have paid all visits and all debts except Dr. T.2 I am fast getting ready, and belive I shall run off on Thursday! This letter shall be dropped in N.Y. When I pass hastily through, to return again. Oh my dearest comfort of my life, I am very anxious to have news of you. Perhaps it will be less painful when I am travelling myself. I went also to the Hearts. Mrs Bell sends her best love. The operation has done no good. She is blind. She says she does not Know how she shall pass the summer without you. Yes, said Mrs Heart, Mrs Lieber completely spoiled mother. Dr. Ellet came and insisted on my writing a recommendation of him for the vacant professorship of chimistry in Philadelphia. I confess! – I paid Mrs Izard. On Monday I shall pay my Campus visits. What a moment it will be when I have packed my trunk and – nothing remains but to start. While my heart rejoices and feels that it is going into one of the springs of my life, there is yet the whole time an almost melancholy emotion surrounding it – it swims in sad joy.- Let me only have news of your arrival and I will jump, dance a jigger, anything you or the boys choose. – To-morrow I mean to go and see the Hassells. She sends strings of letters, in which she so blazingly depicts me that I shall feel sheepish to in delivering these despatches, which will make people acquainted with one of the first men of the age, of whom they never heard a word, nor any one else. Why the 1 Mary the slave Lieber had just “sold” to his colleague Maximilian LaBorde. 2 Dr. Trezvant, MD Columbia/SC.

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Age will be most happy to find it had in some corner of the breeches pockets a great man like some rusty nail or a piece of fuzzy thread, as we found that ∆ in dear Normans’ pocket abundance of them with stone, papers and what not! – To-morrow is Saturday, when you will have been floating a fortnight – precious charge of the Johann Friedrich. My ∆ hovers around you. We, here have hardly any wind, but the little ∆ there is, is favorable. Good bye, sweet ones, Good bye, I love you all most tenderly. [2] March 2. To day you have been floating a fortnight, and I trust that by the leagues calculation, at five Knots an hour, you are 1680 miles distant from Charleston. But no more of that at present. Last night Preston sent me letters to our Consul at Lpool, Mr Warden, a distinguished American in Paris and some American ministers, recommending me very cordially and pressingly as one of his best friends. In his letter to the minister at Vienna he says: besides his high claims to your favourable reception I Know of no one who can give you more various and accurate intelligence of whatever may interest you in our own country” &c Tell Uncle Jacob so, and who Preston is, aye, and if candour requires it that I asked you to tell him so. I own these lines flatter me. The following are other expressions in his letters: One of the most distinguished professors of our College, which is proud to call so distinguished a gentleman its own; A gentleman of the highest distinction in literature and of a social position with us, on a footing with his academic position; One of the most learned gentlemen of our country, and a real Encyclopedia Americana – and so on! Tuesday, March 5. I have decided it; I shall go from here Tuesday, the 15, I donot Know why, but the nearer the time comes the more my heart feels compressed. Probably because I feel the total want of news of you very severely. I just saw Mrs Hassel for the last time; last Saturday I we drove out and took lentils and wine. She does not give me letters to Hannover. How unwise, suppose it caused any suspicion in me, after she has talked so much of Fräulein von Schulten &c But she gave me many others letters. What a most fearful catastrophe that on board the Princeton. I, individually too, loose by this sudden death of Mr Upshur. This is the last lett time I shall write a line to you in from Columbia – this even. I had a letter from Knoblauch after the receipt of the joyous news.3 3 Probably the letter was from Lieber’s childhood friend Carl Knoblauch who reacted with pleasure to the news that Prussian King finally had pardonned Lieber in 1842, see Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, pp. 362–365. Carl Knoblauch and Wilhelm Keibel had stayed in contact with Lieber since his migration to England in 1826.

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Rebecca is very sad. In Washington I shall continue this letter, so God will. I love you most tenderly, and so the boys. Oh, that I could have a letter in Lpool. I’ll hug it. It will be so bright, so lofty and most joyous a beginning of my Europe Revisited.- New York, March 17. Sunday. My best Matilda, the anxious desire to Know of you again, has made me hurry my steps. I was but a few hours in Boston, and hastened back, so that I might sail in the Montezuma, the packet of the 16th But we had rain and east wind, and lie over until to-morrow. Just now the sun appears, and I trust we do sail to-morrow. The owner of this vessel is Cpt Marshall, with whom I came out 17 years ago, in the Britannia. He immediately recognized me reminded me of a shark, which appeared close by me when I had jumped into the sea to bathe, and said I must go in his vessel; he would wait two, three hours to accomodate me &c He got the captain to give me a state room for myself. I wish my dearest Matilda that I con you could read all the letters I have, for I Know it would give you pleasure. They speak of their pride to call me [3] there countrymen &c. Webster gave me letters to Lord Brougham, Hallam, and one to Everett; to give me one to Guizot. I have a letter to Morpeth, and indeed I believe too many for London. Ticknor4 has given me very valuable ones to the Continent. Gevers, the Netherlandish Chargé d’Affaires offered me excellent ones to Holland to and to two aids de camp to the King of Prussia. Medora braught me yesterday after dinner a box of cegars to smoke at sea. My dear Matilda – and this is a whisper unto your ears alone – I found in Washington that I am a distinguished man. In the Congress library, while looking at a picture of Columbus, a group collected at a distance to whom the Librarian pointed – ah, I cannot even write to you such things. Why I should be distinguished, I am sure, I donot know. – I shall send this by way of Havre. Possibly you will hear of my arrival ere you receive this but keep it still on account of the memoranda on the next page. Mary Sumner was working a purse for me – but not done; Lydia a pair of slippers, unfinished; Jane a kerchief, not finished – all had thaught I was to sail in April – owing to a letter of mine through Choate not having arrived! All these girls remind me of Carolines’ late letter, and that of her words on our separate voyage. I have written to her on the subject, but direct. You Although I Know that this was the only true way of proceeding for 4 George Ticknor, friend of Prescott, Hillard, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, and Charles Sumner, professor at Harvard University, taught Roman languages and literature.

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us under all our circumstances, and I cannot therefore regret it, her repeated speaking of it in the manner she does has rendered my last days here, and will render those on board the packet less pleasant. You know how highly I prize that woman for her judiciousness, wisdom, action and affection. Such words therefore are not pleasant, not soothing. Why judge so quickly? I shall see today Sally Oakey, dine at Heckschers5 and sup at Wards’. Medora is enceinte. Some one said last evening there: I think babies very ugly things. I whispered to him: present company always excepted, but she heard it and said with a beautiful smile, in which pride of anticipated maternity mixed with charme, prenez garde. Fanny6 had depoisted on a letter with a beautifully painted bouquet for me in Boston [4] in which she speaks very warmly of my poetry.- Her then the memoranda: To our property you have to add $ 800 invested to the N.Y. City Corporation stock, to the $ 500, which I mentioned in my last, so that you will have to add to my account of the stocks owned by us, as given in my paper for you $ 1300, but you must strike out ∆. As to Keys. Those of the store-rooms, Sideboard, and Closets in our bedroom, I put in the middle drawer of the my dressing looking glass, and the little Keys of that in the right hand drawer of the same. – Now I feel my conscience clear. Poor Rebecca yet came and helped me packing, tears actually dropping upon stockings and shirts, pants and drawers, as they were packed away – a pickle of affection. Do not scold me, I wrote this endicrous word merely because I told her so, and she laughed with flowing tears, as you remember her. I promised her the boys would write her. Let them do so, by a Bremen vessel for Charleston thus Mr M. Ehrlich, care of Messrs Bruns & co, Columbia S.C. She loves nothing on earth half as much as Norman. The dear boy I found, has taught Mary7 to spell. Oh, it touched me very much. My soul, oh Matilda believest, clings to your heart. Rebecca says she positively Know there was never a woman like you. Good bye – Kiss all – all – you receive letters and a little package direct ever your Frank Memoranda I see that you copied my late poems with some mistakes or I have made the changes since. If, therefore, you copy them, as you wished to do, at-

5 The family of Charles August Heckscher, New York City. 6 Fanny Appleton Longfellow. 7 Mary, the slave who had been in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC.

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tend to this: In the “Flüstert denn nicht oft die” after the line “Soll sie wirklich noch betreten” read Wo ich lernte, träumte, irrte, March 1st 1844 money Matters & keys. Wo ich liebte, litt und rang Wo ich früh mein &c nicht froh (und dann)  And what is more important than Wo mir Morgenblumen blühten  all these – in “Was sich liebt”, statt Diese beide Zeilen: Denen Drang und Kraft verliehen, “Die für hohe That entglom” Thatenlos sich abzumühen Via Havre Madame Lieber aux soins de Madame E. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade Per packet in Hamburg en Allemagne 3 stamps faded + stamp HAMBURG 13. Apr 44

No. 64 Mathilde Lieber, on sea on board the Johann Friedrich + Bremerhaven + Bremen + Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, London, 22.03.-09.04.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5088, ALS, 4 pages British channel 22d. of March 1844.

My own dearest Frank. You will I think be a little surprised that I only commence my letter to you now. I can give you a good reason for it, my spirits have been rather depressed and I would not greet you in Europe with anything doleful. Now we are so far advanced and we have fair and fine wind to go on with; I feel like a different being and thus I come to my own dearest boy. Frank, shall I tell you how I love you, how I long for my own dearest friend; alas, for these constant seperations, they are becoming very painful to me, my thoughts have been more with you than even with Oscar and our dear sisters. Dearest Frank may God – grant us a home where we may remain together to the end of our days. – But I will not speak of these matters now, for when this reaches you, I hope you will be in the midst of enjoyment and I would not damp your spirits by any regrets of my own. I wonder where you are now, – have you left New York? I am rather sorry that I tried to persuade you not to go with the steamer, you would have been so much more certain of a quick passage, and the captain1 tells me that easterly winds prevail very much in April. I have however a presentment that you will go with the steamer, then how delightful, I shall hear of your arrival soon after my own perhaps a fortnight, that would be glorious, then my mind would be easy at once. We have had thus far a very tollerable passage rather tedious but not as boisterous as might be expected at this season of the year. Of course we have not been without storms, lost two sails, broke our gib boom,2 but nothing serious after all. A storm is far more disagreable in our Columbia house than on the open Ocean. The boys have given me some trouble, but I expected that of course, the irregularity of sea life and the encouragement they receive in their naughtiness, the people laughing at them and so on, makes it very difficult for me. They were sick only once, and I too have been well in general only suffering in stormy weather. I am very much pleased with the captain who has been very attentive and kind and in whose seamanship I have great confidence. We have faired remarkably well on board far better than on our last voyage. The evening before last we first saw land, the Scilly Islands. oh, what a joyful night! Yesterday morning when I got up we were quite near cape Lizard, and remained near the land all day yesterday, as we were becalmed, it was a lovely day and we 1 Heinrich Wieting, captain of the Bremen bark Johann Friedrich. 2 Gib or jib-boom. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_066

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received several visits from fishermen, who brought us some delightful mackerel, upon which we have been feasting since. They told us that the weather has been very bad on the coast these last four or five weeks. I am afraid our friends will be uneasy, otherwise they have had a very mild winter. How these men begged, they would hardly leave the ship again, asking for gin beef, pork, rice, tobacco. The captain3 says, they are worse on this coast of England than anywhere else. We spoke but one vessel on our passage, an English ship with cotton from Charleston to Liverpool having left four days before us. I thought at the time that I would rather go with our heavy rice laden ship than with so light a cargo, she was a large vessel and seemed as if she were just swimming on the top of the water, nor could she carry much sail on account of her lightness. We have met with unusual few incidents, I have not even seen a porpoise on the passage, nothing to relieve the tedious monotony of five weeks at sea; You can immagine therefore how anxious I am. No more to day, the ship is beginning to role too much. Heaven guard my own dearest Frank. The children send you many kisses, and promise to be good boys. – Bremer Haven Dienstag 26 März – Thus far safe and sound, my own love, oh we are all so happy, so rejoiced. We came too late for the steamboat to Bremen, but the captain goes up [2] extra post, so I wrote immediately to Caroline and she will receive my letter a day before I am able to get there. We took a delicious tea, the bread and butter and the milk taste so delightfully. The children enjoyed themselves very much. I am now so anxious to get on. We had rather a tedious time of it in the North sea, particularly towards the last, it seemed as if we should never get there. We spoke a vessel from the coast of Africa, the children were delighted to see a negro on board. The Charlotte the vessel which left Charleston the same day with us, came in a day before; that is, we were at the mouth of the Weser only an hour later, but the tide was not in our favor. The captain was quite put out. – Bremen. 28th of March. Yesterday morning I had a terrible headache, so I took a good doze of salts and remained in bed until dinner time, Mrs Hermansen my travelling companion taking charge of the children, who were very attentive and sweet to me, and showed me at once that it was only the tediousness of sea life which caused them to be rather unruly. At 2 OClock we got into the steamboat, on board of we met Mr Gloystein, the gentleman to whom the ship belonged. He was very polite and I was glad to have the opportunity of

3 Heinrich Wieting.

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­praising our good captain,4 who was waiting for us and at the landing place of the steam boat in Bremen, took care of our luggage and made every thing so casy and comfortable for us; it was 10 OClock when we arrived here, he had been waiting two hours, for the boat was unusually late. The rooms were prepared for us at a very comfortable hotel where I am now writing this after having taken a delicious breakfast the captain introduced us to his two nice sisters, and then took leave of us as he had to return to Bremer Haven. Hamilton was in tears, and I too felt quite moved when I had to take leave of the good man. At 3 OClock to day we go on with the omnibus to Harburg where we arrive to morrow morning at 7 OClock. It takes an hour to cross over to Hamburg. Goodbye, my own dearest. God bless you. The children pray for you every night. Hamburg. 5th of April. Mein bester lieber Franz. Heute vor acht Tagen kamen wir ohne alle Unannehmlichkeiten glücklich hier an. In Harburg mussten wir eine Stunde warten. An dem Landungsplaze in Hamburg auf der Brücke5 standen zwei Knaben. Eduard6 erkannte ich schon in der Ferne, und ich wusste dass der Knabe der bei ihm stand Oscar sein musste, doch schien er mir sehr verändert; Eer sprang uns entgegen denn er hatte mich erkannt. ach, welch ein Wiedersehen, er ist noch immer ein prächtiger Junge, und die grosse Veränderung die ihn mir im ersten Augenblick so unkenntlich machte lag hauptsächlich in einer äusserst flachen Müze und einem ungeheuren schweren Oberrocke, worin er entsezlich dick aussah. Wir stiegen in einer Droschke, und da konnte ich meinen Jungen nach Herzenslust liebkosen, er war überaus glücklich. Die theuren Schwestern7 fand ich auch wohl, und du kannst dir unsere Freude denken. When they received my letter the day before they had not expected me so soon, for they had only received your letter a few days previous, but they made their preparations immediately and were quite ready to receive me: They sent word to Oscar who made several high capers in presence of the whole school when he heard the news. We were all so truly happy. Oscar in his appearance and his manner & his conversation must be called a fine boy. He takes a lively interest in all objects that surround him, is ready with his questions and seeks information in that way as much as ever. He is extremely lively, and so far can but make a pleasing impression, he reads too with attention, I have seen him most intent, while surrounded by the noise of all the children. The day after my arrival Dr Werner 4 Heinrich Wieting. 5 The landing stage, Landungsbrücken, on the waterfront of the City of Hamburg, had been built in 1839/40 and allowed seagoing vessels to transport their freight (goods and passengers) to town. 6 Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. 7 Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg, Esplanade No. 13.

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[3] called and I had a long conversation with him. He says Oscar has certainly improved lately but still that we must never expect that he will distinguish himself, for he seems to contend with many difficulties, his memory is not good, this I do not however believe, I think it is only because he does not impress things upon his mind, for he remembers most minutely circumstances, and events out of his earliest childhood. He frequently surprises me by his memory in this respect. Dr Werner says that he does not doubt he will make a useful man, but that his great fears have been, that you expected more than this from him, he repetedly told, for I asked him this question anxiously – that he is not behind boys of his own age. Natural history, mineralogy particularly interests him, and on this subject he reads with attention. He frequently expresses a striking idea, – but yet Dr Werner says he has not fulfilled the promises he gave five years ago when they first had him under their care. They thought him then a most promising boy and it is this disappointment, and the expectations which he thought you must have of Oscar calculating from his early promises, which caused his letters to be so desponding. When Oscar first came to him now, he found him much altered, he had lost much of his former, cheerful confidence, he seemed “unterdrückt.” this is very different now, he is unreserved and open in his manner and on a pleasant footing with his companions. From what I have now myself seen of Oscar, I am persuaded that his whole fault, is, Leichtsin, he does not fix his attention where he is not amused. I have spoken to him very seriously, and for the ∆ he was impressed with what I said, but he is too flighty. I have let him show me some of his books; of Mathematics and arithmetic I can not judge, in the writing of the others, there is a want of neatness, order and attention. I will give you a little sample of his exercises, it is one he has made now during the holidays, words are given them which they have to introduce into a story. The words he had were the following Schiff. Katze. Bär. Sonne. Aetna. durchsichtig. Eis auftauchen, plötzlich. schwellen. Grossvater. grau. spitzen. Wunder. Angesicht. Ufer. Donner. Dampf. verbergen. leuchten. Treppe. vergehen. – They need not put them in the same order but every word must be introduced, and the story must be very short. His was as followes. Reise von Marseille nach Corfu. – “So nun ist das Latein fertig” sprach E.W. seine Arbeit plötzlich fortwerfend. “Grossvater will die Reisebeschreibung beenden, er wird es ja wohl nicht vergessen haben; mir schien es als wenn selbst die Katze zuhörte.“ – Grossvater. “Na will erzählen: Die Segel schwellten, das Schiff durchschnitt pfeilschnell die See, manchmal in den Abgrund fahrend, manchmal wieder auftauchend; doch wie verklarte sich mein Angesicht, denn ich sah als die Sonne unterging das Meer leuchten. Am M ­ orgen war die Luft

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durchsichtig genug um uns die graue, mit Eis bedeckte Spitze Aetnas zu zeigen. Doch oh, Wunder, am Ufer prangten die schönsten Orangen und Olivengärten gleichsam des Berges Inneres verbergend.“ Ernst “Giebt es da auch Bären?“ Grossvater: “Nein mein Sohn, nun nicht mehr, ehemals vielleicht.“ Doch nun ward die Treppe angesetzt und einige stiegen aus. Ich fuhr mit fort bei Cap Spartivento, Cap die Leuca, Otranto, Cap Linquetto und Cap Cavallo nach Corfu, wo ich vom Donner der Ankunftskanone geweckt ward. Auf dem Decke gewahrte ich unser Reiseziel im Dampfe der von der Sonne aus der Erde gezogenen Feuchtigkeit liegen. Ich spitzte meine Bleifeder und schrieb dieses noch am Bord der Mediteranean – I only wish, dearest Frank you could see the boy soon. I think certainly it would have an effect upon him, yet to take him off from his school to meet you somewhere I do not think advisable, he who requires so much to steady his mind to the routine of school life, it will disturb him too much again. His testimony is the following, but it is of a half a year, it is determined by crosses and strokes through the whole which are so many signs of good or bad. – Sittliches Betragen recht gut. Ordnung und Regelmäßigkeit, bedarf darin noch zu sehr der Beaufsichtigung. – ­Nachdenken Ernst und Fleiss in den Stunden: noch nicht allgemein genug. Fleiss bei den aufgegebenen schriftlichen Arbeiten, auch dabei noch zu größerm Nachdenken zu ermuntern. – Fleiss beim Auswendiglernen nicht durch ein leichtes starkes Gedächtnis unterstützt. – Fortschritte: besonders bemerkbar im Rechnen, im Deutschen, Englischen und in der Geographie. Auch für Mineralogie hat er sich sehr interessiert und das Erlernte gut behalten. – It is on the whole [4] better, nothing shall be wanting with me to excite him. He has written a letter to you I will send it the next time. He is a fine fellow notwithstanding his flightiness and a general favorite; but it is necessary, he should not be seperated from you longer than this year. As for play he is as fond of it as ever; the children are delighted to be with him. We have the whole set at home now, and every day we sit down thirteen at dinner. They are all sweet dear and very handsome children, it is certainly a beautiful sight to see them all together, and dear Caroline presiding over the whole. Such a mother there never was, her activity her management are beyond every thing. You will be delighted with her. 9th April. my own Frank; Oscar is writing at my side, he wrote his letter down first and I pointed out to him a few faults which were only from carelessness for when I asked him how the words were spelt he could rectify them himself. He speaks English finely, and has a pleasant pronounciation. Hammy and Normy are in the other room drawing. Felix is practicing, we have the whole set about

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us. I have seen the schoolmaster to whom Carolines boys go and have arranged to send ours to him. He pleased me very much, the pleasantest schoolmaster I have ever seen. Hamilton will go as a day boarder together with Emil & Carlito, Normy comes home to dinner with Felix. The children are all very much more advanced here, but I trust a steady school life will soon bring ours on. There is a nice play ground at their school where between every lesson they have a quarter of an hour of play. Now we have them all at home for a week, and as there is no proper garden here of course we have a great noise about us. Poor Adele is very ill she has lost a sweet child this winter of four years old,8 my little God child the healthiest and handsomest of her children and her nerves are now in such a dreadful state that she is not allowed even to see her parents, I saw her twice before her illness, poor thing she is much changed! Uncle ­Jacob is the same as ever, kind and affectionate to me, on Sunday Caroline and I dined there Hart had to stay at home we can not all go out at once. We walk a great deal with the children during the holidays It is quite ridiculous to see us. Nine children going out of the house at once. Some of Carolines and Theodores are very handsome, even Normy does not look so pretty amongst them. I have been received [cross-writing, 4] with great affection by all my relations and they are all very anxious to make your acquaintance. Carolines Edward is a very excellent boy. Caroline is fortunate, [cross-writing, 1] what a happiness alone as she stands in the [world] without a husband. My Frank my heart longs for you. God grant your speedy arrival in England and that you may enjoy yourself thoroughly there and everywhere you go to, my sweet dear boy. – How happy I shall be when I get your first letter. I have written to Mrs Lowndes to Mrs Hassel, to Berlin, to our brothers in Ponce,9 to Jim10 as he will tell you. – Goodbye my own dearest one. Next post day I will send Oscars letter and write again myself. Our dear sisters are angels and love you, – they are expecting you anxiously and send you kisses. – Embrace for me our

8 9 10

Mathilde Haller. Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Victoria Park, Rusholme, Manchester.

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dear ones in England.11 The boys send you love and kisses and they want you to come and see what nice cousins they have got. Hamilton said to me the other day: Mama aunt Caroline is cross but she is rich isnt she. – He tries to speak german. God bless and protect my boy Your true and affectionate wife I have sent from here the money I took from the captain12 to pay my expenses to Hamburg [4] These are all 1844 Via Hull Messrs Lomnitz & Co CJ Hambro & Son For Francis Lieber Esq Manchester England London Stamp Hull SHIP-Letter A. 14. AP. 1844 Stamp Manchester AP 14 1844

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The families of Mathilde Lieber’s siblings, James and Emma Oppenheimer in Manchester, and Clara Woodhouse and her husband James Thomas Woodhouse in Leominster/ England. Heinrich Wieting, captain of the Bremen bark Johann Friedrich; see Jörn Bullerdiek and Daniel Tilgner, eds., ‘Was fernern vorkömmt werde ich prompt berichten’. Der AuswandererKapitän Heinrich Wieting Briefe 1847 bis 1856, Bremen 2008.

No. 65 Francis Lieber, on sea on board the Montezuma, Liverpool + Manchester, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 02.04.-08.04.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4796, 4 pages, autograph, not complete, neither signature, nor address Ship Montezuma April 2 Long 16° 15’ Latitude 48° 15’ Fifteenth day of our passage You see my love that I sailed earlier than I had anticipated. The Montezuma was to have sailed on the 16th of March, but she was detained by weather and sailed on the 18th My dearest Matilda, it is high time I hear at least of you. I feel at times very low, and shall not feel better until I know you and the loved boys are safely housed. It is impossible for me to express to you how I long to see you, to hear my boys again – a thousand times they have leaped into my arms, as they were wont to do in the entry – but it is only in my dream. Has Hamilton thaught of me? Has Norman thaught of his father? I kiss them fervently. In N.Y. I had a letter from the dear sisters1 with one from Oscar. It was older than the one a copy of which I yet received in Columbia and I was sorry, for it was again one of those hasty letters which have shown no improvement whatever for the last two or three years. I am very anxious to have a candid and full account of the boy from you, and yet I fear it. Oscar has me very materially lessened the joy and happiness I anticipate from my trip. – I wrote to you by Havre packet. But we sail faster and you, my loved wife, will have the present lines sooner. A fellow passenger of mine – Mr Schondorf will take it [2] the letter at once from Liverpool to Hull, and hence to Hamburg. I am writing them while we are going ten knots and a half, with the wind a little on our quarter, so that every now and then there is a regular sweep – besides to my sight they play piquet,2 to my left I have which and within me a Seidlitz ­powder.3 You cannot expect then anything of me – and now they have begun, overhead, to play shuffle board.4 However the mere fact that I have arrived, 1 Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg. 2 French game of cards. 3 Moll’s Seidlitz Pulver was produced in Vienna by Ignaz Moll; it was supposed to cure digestions problems. 4 Game in which players use cues to push small discs into a target.

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which the arrival of these times will prove to you, will be, I know it well, news enough for my loving wife and my scolding sisters. Yes they have scolded – at least Caroline, and, although I should indeed not have altered our plan even if I had known her opinion before hand still this repeated expression of dissatisfaction by one, whome you I love and honour so much, has not contributed to render my last days in America or those of the passage more agreable. I have written to her by a direct vessel. Some days we have had fine wind but also calms; yet you see we are far advanced and hope to be in Lpool by Friday or Saturday at the latest; which will make [3] only from seventeen to 19 days. I have not been able to do anything. This close companionship with people, who donot care for one another and only hope to be separated again as soon as possible, makes me always feel low, lazy, slack. Fanny Wright is on board – the very image of an old witch.5 Is it fair to write thus, when she sits close by me? I feel as if it were not. I received yet on Monday morning just before I sailed, a purse from Mary Sumner – the kind girl. Lydia and Jane were making things for me, but they were not ready. Medora gave me a box of cegars and an immense bottle of eau de Cologne. Was this not very kind? But perhaps I have written this already. I began the list of all my letters for you, I cannot well write it here. You shall have it from Manchester, whither I have now concluded to proceed at once, and then to return to Lpool. Of course I first stay a sufficient time to inquire for letters. I forgot to tell you that I have also written to you by direct vessel. If I find a letter from you in Liverpool, and all is well, I will, gorged with the sight of the sea and the glory of the gale, enjoy a sungy supper of sowls with shrimp sauce and a glass of half and half – that is half ale half porter – as if I were [4] a king. I conclude for to-day, but not without kissing you all most fervently.

5 His description of Fanny Wright is biased by Lieber’s feelings against emancipated women; when he first came to the USA in 1827 he had carried a letter of introduction on his behalf by Sarah Austin addressed to Fanny Wright. He never made use of it, however, he did not destroy that piece of paper either. USC FLC Box 1, folder 3, Sarah Austin, London, to Frances Wright, Nashoba/Tenn., 03.05.1827.

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Monday April 8th 1844 James’6 Counting House Last Friday – it was Good Friday – we received the pilot on board – 18 days after sailing – and saturday we stepped on shore. It was six o’clock, before I got through the Custom house. I sent to Keartleys7 yet, but the answer was that there was no letter for me. Now, the pilot had told me that there had been a great deal of tempestuous weather toward the end of February, and in the beginning of March, that vessels had been lost in the Channel &c, so that I felt very poorly; of course I wished to go on to Manchester, but how was I to find James’ dwelling, when the Counting house was closed. His private dwelling of course could not yet be in the directory. Thus I was obliged to spend the whole of Sunday at Liverpool and – on the bed, having very severe head-ache. What a beginning! What frightful images! At length I started at 7 and arrived here about 9 o’clock, when James showed me a letter he had just received from you. God be 6 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber. Like his father he and his growing family lived in a still rural enviroment of Manchester and worked in the City. Obviously he and his wife Emma had only recently moved to their residence in Rusholme, two miles south of the city centre of Manchester as his name was not yet enlisted in the current city business directory. 7 Probably he meant Lieutenant John Savell Keatley member of the coast guard.

No. 66 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, London, 14.04.-16.04.1844 Included: copy of a letter by Wilhelm Keibel to Francis Lieber, Berlin 06.04.1844 Included: letter of Caroline Lomnitz to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5089, ALS, 4 pages Hamburg 14ten April Briefe die für Franz aus Berlin angelangt sind, von Hitzig. Herrn Professor Dr Clemenz Perthes in Bonn. Herrn Dr Karl Simcois (unleserlicher Name) auch in Bonn.1 Herrn Ferdinand Freiligrath in St Jean (so glaubt wenigstens Hitzig, der Dr Karl S. in Bonn wird es wissen wo Freiligrath sich jezt aufhält). – Von ­Massmann Sn Excellenz dem K.B. Herrn Regierungs Präsidenten Reichsrath Freiherrn v. Zu Rhein Ritter &c zu Regensburg. – Herrn Dr Ernst Förster zu München. – Herrn Anton Schreibmaier. Zögling der Akademie der Künste. München. – Herrn Dr Franz Pfeiffer. Stuttgard. Dem K.R. Herrn Provinzial Schul und Regierungsrath Landhermann. Coblenz. Herrn Hofrath Prof Dr Fried. Thiersch. Akademiker u Ritter München. Die Briefe werde ich aufbewahren bis ich von dir höre was damitt zu thun ist. – Hitzigs unleserliche Schrift muss ich dir schicken weil ich sie eben nicht gut genug lesen kann um sie dir abzu­ schreiben. Massmans schicke ich auch wegen der vielen Namen. Abschrift von Keibels2 Brief. Berlin 6ten April. “Mein lieber Franz. Herzlich, herzlich willkommen in ­Europa! Dein Herz, ich kenne es, schlägt vor Freuden, den vaterländischen Welttheil zu begrüssen, wie wird dir erst sein, wenn du dein liebes Deutschland wieder betrittst! Möge dir die Heimath Heimath bleiben! Hierbei die für dich gesam­ melten Briefe. An Hitzig habe ich alles, was du mir schriebst mitgetheilt; An Mathilde Benecke habe ich deinen Brief vom 13. Jan. aus Columbia gesandt, wie er war. Sie sandte mir meinen Antheil sauber abgelöst zurück. ­Meine Frau lässt vielmals grüssen und dankt für die freundlichen Zeilen. Unsere Elise hat das schöne Gedicht aus dem Brief für M. Benecke abgeschrieben und ich habe es Hitzig übersandt. Unsere zweite Tochter Anna ist mit einem sehr ­lieben braven jungen Mann versprochen. Paul Langerhans, Sohn des Stadtbauraths.3 Mein Sohn Gustav hat sich auch verlobte, Hulda Stuhr ist seine Braut. Dass Knoblauch Mitglied und Hauptverwalter der Staatschulden und als solcher zum Geheimen Finanzrath erhoben ist weisst du wohl schon. Hitzig war selbst bei mir, und sehr besorgt ob du auch ohne Anfechtung den preussischen 1 Perhaps the name was Simrock and the letter’ writer had been Karl Simrock, poet, lawyer, and free-lanced scholar of German studies in Bonn. 2 Wilhelm Keibel, longtime friend of Francis Lieber, merchant and local politician in Berlin. 3 Friedrich Wilhelm Langerhans father of Paul August Hermann Langerhans, Berlin.

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Boden würdest betreten können. Da brachte ich ihm die Cabinetsordre von 42. welche mir Gustav4 gab, er war beruhigt, wollte sie aber doch noch dem Minister v Arrien zeigen. Du hast doch auch die Cabinetsordre bei dir, um dir, im Fall durch sie Eingang zu verschaffen.5 Theile uns doch mit wann wir dich bei uns erwarten können? Auch Ulrich der jezt Tribunalsrath in Königsberg ist, lässt dich vielmals grüssen, er wird an dich hieher schreiben, und sagt, dass es ihm schmerze dich, seinen grössten Wohlthäter nicht sehen zu können. Die Add. meinens Schwagers in Frankfurth ist: George Knoblauch, in Braunfels am Laubfrauenberg.“ – 16ten April. My dearest Frank. It has made my mind very uneasy that you had to pass a whole week in England without a letter from me, there is no excuse for it and I beg my dearest boy a thousand pardons. I could not it is true expect you quite as early and some unfortunate mistakes happened with my first letter, yet I am to be blamed, I know it and I must trust to your love for me, that you will not be angry. Since I wrote to you my dearest Frank, I received your darling letter of March 17th. It arrived therefore as you see several days later than you. What a nice quick passage you had. I am so anxious to hear from [2] you again, for my dearest Frank was not quite well when he wrote, and did not look well as he wrote to me himself, and of course I am anxious to have better news. Yesterday I had a letter from Clara,6 they were all in expectation of your arrival and had carefully preserved some Woodcocks for you. I am sure they have received you well. I was quite sorry that Clara had not postponed her letter, a few days later, when she could have told me something about you. Do write to me how you found them all, and also whether you were pleased with Emma. For I have but your first letter yet. I hope you equipped yourself nicely in Manchester that you treated yourself to a fine bath and that you look well now. – As Brougham is not in London now perhaps you decided upon going to Liverpool first and delivering your letters there, then, I fancy Lady Mc Neils letter will induce you to run up to Edinburg. At all events do not forget that they leave E. in June. Did you find James7 in good spirits. Caroline had a letter 4 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. 5 In January 1842 Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. propria manu had declared to pardon his American subject Franz Lieber; see Schnurmann, Brücken aus Papier, p. 364f; GStaPK 1 HA Rep 84 a Justizministerium 50175. 6 Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England. 7 James Oppenheimer, Manchester, and Theodore, Ponce/Puerto Rico, brothers of Mathilde Lieber.

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from Theodore last Sunday in which he speaks favourably of the expected crop, they have had fine rains; his health too was improving. But in my letter which was written later, though received earlier, he says nothing of either. Gustavus8 seems inclined to accept our offer with regard to his boy. He thinks it will less­ en our mutual expences. In fact he is otherwise entirely at a loss what to do with his child. Did you see Thayer? The direct letter which you mention has not yet arrived. – I believe our boys are in an excellent school, they certainly are to judge – from Carolines little set. You should see how happy the children all go to school together, how they love their master. Hamilton with Carlito and Emil are at school from 9 OClock to 7 in the evening. Norman comes home with Felix at 3 OClock. Between every lesson they have a ¼ of an hours recreation in Dr. Schleidens yard. They also take Turning lessons with which our boys are particularly pleased. On Sunday Oscar came too see me for a few hours, he was delighted to hear of your safe arrival in England, but is now more anxious than ever that you should come to us soon; and all the children, often ask when is Papa coming? Can you form any idea now about what time you will be here, I should like to know it for several reasons. First, because I want to know how long I must be deprived of my greatest happiness, that I may quiet my impa­ tience to press, my dearest one to my heart, and then – I believe Caroline ought to do something for her health this summer, she suffers more from headaches than I have ever seen any one suffer, indeed she is scarcely ever without it, and Hart & I are endeavouring to persuade her to go with her little Clara to the seashore, this is done here, in the month of August and September, which I suppose is about the time that you think to be with us. – Your brother Gustav seems quite offended at your not intending to live with him. He thinks in the evening and morning would be the only time he could have a chance of see­ ing you as you would be always out. Droschkes, he said would be sufficient to connect you with other parts of Berlin should his situation be too much out of the way. I had expected as much. He says that he has no kind of intercourse now. the few families with whom they associated have sich zurückgezogen von ihnen. [3] In Züllichau a whole family congress is to meet when you are there, and they will hear nothing of the children and myself not coming. You are to reside at Karstens. I have sent them the news of your arrival. – We have had but one day of rain since my arrival, to day the sun shines again beautifully I hope that you are as much favored with bye the weather. How is your foot, dearest Frank 8 Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico.

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and have you been able to equip it comfortably and genteely. – Our dear boy9 when he came to us on Sunday was sweet, he came back to me about fifty times, to take leave again over and over, he is a dear affectionate boy. I could not go out to Ham as I intended on Sunday as it rained, and afterwards I was glad, as ­Oscar came in. We dined that day at aunt Hesse, where I bragged nicely with my Frank, his fine letters, Webster, Brougham, Hallam, & so on. Let me know if ­Everett, gives you a letter to Guizot, and how they receive you in Lon­ don, whether repudiation is in the way. The people here are all very anxious to make your acquaintance and great are their expectations. I am asked con­ stantly when you are coming. That was sweet of dear Normy teaching Mary and not saying a word about it, and then carrying the word to Rebecca. I asked him about it, to see whether he remembered it, and he laughed one of his sweet laughs, and said yes, Rebecca never had a good fire. Normy is a general favourite with Carry, Hart and all the children. Every morning he awakes with some sweet thought, and always smiling. He doates upon Carolines Clara, who is a darling girl, not handsome, but with a sweet expression, that it is impos­ sible not to love her, very animated and all affection she is very fond of Normy and sie machen sich ungeheuer die Chur. Normy never enters the room but with his enchanting laugh. You will like all the children very much. Edward is an excellently disposed youth, loving and obedient to his mother, and with a cheerful disposition. I like him much. Felix is a promising b[oy] animated and childlike yet at the same time font of mental ex[ercise.] Emil, a little merry rogue, both of them handsome and so fond of their mother – The two little Spanish girls are most amusing, and very pretty, they are constantly saying the funniest things. Carlito is a darling boy, he has a lovely disposition. It is a perfect enjoyment to see our dear sisters with them all. It is quite impossible to find out which are Carry’s own children. You will be delighted with Carry, she has plenty of fun yet in her – and I expect you will be good companions together. As for the dear sisters kindness to me and mine, I need not speak of it, you know that such as they are they could not be otherwise. You must fight it out with Carry yourself yo she will not hear about our paying anything. I am glad dear Frank with regard to R. One care less on ones mind, though indeed if you do not think more of Columbia than I do, it is not much with the exception of Rebecca & Mrs Hassel, not many are in my recollection. – Dear Frank have you some of your Property and Labor with you.10 I am sorry that I have not one. Uncle Hesse would much like to see it. 9 10

Oscar Lieber. Francis Lieber, Essays on Property and Labour as connected with Natural Law and the Constitution of Society, New York Harper & Brothers 1842.

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He spoke the other day about your Girard.11 He never saw anything so well got over as that part with regard to the clergymen. – Altogether the old gentleman is highly disposed in your favor. – Uncle Jacob I have only seen hastily of late, he has been very busy, besides the family are much taken up with Ferdinands Senatorship,12 which considering the circumstances is certainly a great honor. Ferdinand behaved most funnily. There are some most ridiculous old customs connected with it. For instance as soon as it is was known 80 Lohnbediente made their appearance [4] of these 16 have to be kept to wait upon the new Senator for a week, each of the eighty receive four marks a piece. – The new Senator receives numerous presents, Portugaleser, wine tickets & so on. To day I must make calls. I shall go to see Adele too, whom I have not seen this last week, the house was always so crowded I did not want to go. I wander whether you wish me to call upon Mrs Gossler.13 You know it is customary for the newly arrived to call first. I will wait however until I hear what you say. Yesterday evening Carry treated me to the theatre, a townsman of yours, Komiker is the attraction now, and he certainly made us laugh very much, but the piece was thorough nonsense. – They tell me Fanny Elsler is expected here this summer. Her I shall see, certainly if she comes, Harriet speaking of her yesterday said, her dancing is so full of soul, that it made the tears come into her eyes, it is not as if it were dancing only. Carry comes in: Are you writing to Frank? ‘yes’. “give my love to him. If you leave me room I will write a few words underneath. – How kind all the lady friends were in parting from you. Carry is surprised at my sang froid. She does not know my Frank as I do! True, honest, good, loving Frank. Emma had written to Carry what kind of a kiss you had proposed. We are anx­ ious to hear from you after you had seen our sisters. Hamilton sends a kiss to Papa. He is just now the most difficult to manage of our little set but we do not think he will remain so. It is because he has been so long without regular occu­ pation school will do him a great deal of good, particularly such a school. Oscar too sends his affectionate love, I will let him dictate when he comes home. I have been very much delighted with your fine recommendations and proud

11 Lieber, Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College. 12 Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller had been elected to the Hamburg Senate, an unusual honor for the family whose members had been connected to the Jewish faith till the 1800–1810s. 13 Elizabeth Gossler née Bray.

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too, I mean, to go to Uncle Jacob now and brag. Soon I must write to Keibels14 and Mathilde Benecke, it seems to me I am always writing. Your own Matilda has left me but a small space my dear Frank, however much true warm love will go into a narrow compass. I hope you do not owe me a grudge for what I have said in those last letters of mine addressed to America, it appears you were much displeased, but my dear brother must excuse his ‘old sisters’ random, it may perhaps be a fault, but I cannot get the better of it, I always say what I think; at the time I wrote, my feelings were such as I then described them, now it is different; I have learned your reasons, our beloved Matilda with your dear fine boys has got safely over the wide ocean, yourself have had a beautiful passage, it is now only with feelings of joy, of deep felt Gratitude to our heavenly Father for having protected and brought you safe to the post of your best wishes that I think of you. But I now have a strange long­ ing to see you my dear Frank; and I hope you may not defer your trip over to us too long. Your dear Matilda looks herself again every one is delighted with her, finds her unaltered, still the same sweet amiable creature she ever was. Last week we had a noisy bustling time of it, with all the young ones at home since yesterday hat sich eine wohlthuende Ruhe eingestellt, [...]. We are anxious to see your next letter. My dear Frank how you were pleased with those members of the family you have got acquainted with farewell my dear Frank, if you love me as I do you I am satisfied Ever Yours, Caroline [cross-writing, 4] We did not find my dearest Uncle15 at home, I must see him soon however. You would love him, if you knew him as I do. His affection for Theodore16 is undiminished not withstanding the difficulties. Goodbye dearest Frank Your ever loving wife Francis Lieber Esqr care of Messrs C.J. Hambro & Son London + Sealing wax 14 15 16

Family of Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin. Jacob Oppenheimer. Theodore Oppenheimer; it seems that economic problems had hit the family enterprise in Ponce/Puerto Rico.

No. 67 Francis Lieber, London, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 19.04.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4797, ALS, 4 pages London, April 19th 1844 Yesterday I arrived here and hastened to old Hambro, where, my beloved ­Matilda, I found two letters from You, for which I thank You from the bottom of my heart. They did me so good. I had longed for them and besides I feel so lonely here, not having formed any acquaintances yet; and moreover my very visit to the city deeply moved me – I passed Finsbury square, South Street, when I was nearer weeping than laughing, while I feel the whole time fidgety, for I feel, I am conscious I am only 2 ½ days from You.1 I donot know my dearest wife how I shall manage it. I long so ardently to go over; yet loving is one thing and being wise also one, though not necessarily a different one, and this is the last chance I have of a journey and of seeing many things which I must see. If I follow my feelings I run over and surprise You; if I I am wise I donot do it. I am glad You give a somewhat better account of Oscar, though I cannot understand how Dr Werner can say that Osc. is not behind other boys, when – nearly 14 years old – he has not touched Latin & Greek yet! – All this gives me much care and haunts me. His letter was better. Kiss the boys from me I love them most ardently. I thaught I should have had a letter from Caroline. I stand in need of one in which she calls me once more, right from her soul, “my dear Frank.” I was very sorry to indeed to find that Carol. had suffered from Your being added to [2] to the house. Pray, befor rather than injure her health take lodgings. I am in earnest. Fully so. I delivered yesterday some of my letters but of course saw no one. Had I been here some days ago I might have had my dress ready and gone yester-day to the Queen’s drawing room. Give my complements to Ferd. Haller.2 I think in his case it must be peculiarly gratifying, considering to brutal prejudice of the Hamb. people against Jews. Old Hambro was uncommonly polite and kind to me, calling me all the time Liebert, no doubt thinking me 1 This remark gives an impression of changing time perceptions: today it takes 54 minutes on board of an Airbus A320,10 hours by car or one day by ship (390 sea miles) instead of 60 hours in Lieber’s life time to travel London-Hamburg. 2 Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, husband of Adele Haller and cousin of Mathilde Lieber, had been elected to the Hamburg Senate, a high honor to the sucessful lawyer.

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Jew. – This moment arrives an invitation from Dr Ferguson, for breakfast tomorrow morning. Lord Morpeth is at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, one of the oldest and most famous seats in Engl. I sent him the letter fr. Sumner.3 – I spent two very delightful days at Leominster4 and was truly sorry I could not remain longer. – the country is so beautiful and all which we have not; the girls so kind, and some of their mouths so kissable. I like Mary5 – and little Frederic is one of the genteelest pratlers I have ever heard – we became great friends. What an air of substantial comfort and sufficiency there is about the whole house. Woodh.6 is a clever fellow (though he positively [3] did not Know who Hallam was), and Clara7 and I would soon be grands causeurs. I think Augusta8 rather good looking, certainly quite so for Europ. style, for faces and dress seem horrid to me. I have not seen a fine face yet as You may see them by dozzen in Broadway – not even the public girls – every where the prettier faces, one meets in the street by quantity are good looking here, but they behave infinitely better than formerly. I must now conclude. I tell You my love, I donot yet enjoy my journey, for without love I feel very lonely. Greet all. Ever Ys [cross-writing, 1] I have not said a word about Emma.9 What shall I say? One cannot judge of a woman, either as to looks or being, when so mounstrously big! But George is a very fine boy indeed; very fine. James works too hard so long as Averdick is 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

The Harvard lawyer and Lieber’s friend Charles Sumner had been on a Grand Tour through Europe in the late 1830s and had won many friends, partly thanks to letters of introduction of Francis Lieber. By integrating Lieber in his personal network he returned the favour. Residence of Mathilde Lieber’s sister Clara Woodhouse and her family in Leominster/ England. Mary Woodhouse, daughter of Clara Woodhouse. He commented on members of Clara Woodhouse’s family, her children Mary, Frederik, or Augusta and her husband James Thomas Woodhouse, lawyer and estates agent in Leominster/England. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England. Augusta Woodhouse, daughter of Clara and James Thomas Woodhouse. Emma Oppenheimer, cousin and sister in law of Mathilde Lieber.

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ill.10 Indeed he does all and Emma may be glad she has Georgy. Why do You too begin to call her Eminchen – I think it sounds odd, nay ugly, while Emma is so fine a name. Good bye, my dearest, sweetest best of wives. This I mean, but when You call me best of husbands, You Know You say what You cannot defend. Ever Your affectionate Frank. I had intended to write to my boys, but it is too late now. Tell them I will write to them soon. [cross-writing, 3] Yesterday I had a letter from Charles Sumner, which contained yet the following letters: J. Arthur Roebuck M.P., Mrs Grote, wife to the disting Grote; Sir Robert H. Inglis, M.P., Henry Ledyard, Chargé d’ Af. at Paris; Fay, Secret. Leg. at Berlin. Also Prison introd’s fr. Philadelphia I kiss you, etc, with moistened eyes; why? Oh there is no room now. Write to C.J. Hambro & Son, London. You know it costs but little. At least I think so. Bendes money flies here out of my pocket at any rate. Tell the boys however that the little dwarf, we saw in Col. is here, and Queen Adelaide gave him a little beautiful dwarfish watch. Taking this letter to the City I found Yours of April 14th. Thank You many times. I write soon again. Mrs Francis Lieber care of Mrs E Lomnitz 13 Esplanade11 Hamburg p. steamer stamp LONDON 19 APR 1844 + stamp faded + sealing wax 10 11

James Oppenheimer and his partner Friedrich Averdieck; Georgy = George Oppenheimer, son of James and Emma Oppenheimer, Manchester. Esplanade No. 13, Hamburg-Neustadt. Accomodations in the broad alley in a newly developed quarter of Hamburg, the so-called Neustadt were in high demand; well to do citizens lived there and companies had established offices. The cities’ directory of 1844 lists names of several friends and relatives of the Oppenheimer family besides Caroline Lomnitz “13 Lomnitz, W.”: “Stadtseite” ; W. Hanbury (No. 6), Bieber (No.14), Dr. Schön (No. 18) and “Wallseite” Godeffroy (No. 36), Hesse (No. 37), Gossler (No. 41) or Lappenberg Dr. (No. 45). See Hamburger Adress-Buch für 1844, p. 297, Hamburger AdressbücherDokumentanzeige URL agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de (29.10.2016).

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[4] From the Netherl. Chargé d’Affaires in the US.12 to Prof. Siebold in Leiden “Bar. Roenne “ Berlin “W.A. Gevers “ Graven Hague Holl “D.T. Gevers, “ Hague  Councell of State From Heckscher13 “Joly de Lotbiniére – Paris “G.M. Heckscher Hamburg Fr. George Parish to Rich. Parish “ “Medora Ward to Madame Leman Paris Fr. Sally Oakey Dr Ferguson London Miss Tenno Taplow Lodge. Bucks Fr. Preston to James Hagerty, Am Cons. Lpool To Messr Huth, Lpool “ Otto Burkhardt Lpool Fr. Webster to Everett, Lond. to give me introd to Guizot “ “ to Hallam, London “ “ Lord Brougham ” Sumner Lord Morpeth ” “ John Kenyon London “ “ Joseph Parkes, Westminster “ ” R.M. Milnes M.P. Fr. Ticknor to Falkenstein, Librarian Dresden “ “ Count Arrivabene, Brussels Mr Inglis to Henry Inglis, Edinburgh Longfellow to Fl Freiligrath, St. Goar “ to Landrath Heiberger“ Trapmann “ Lemmé, London Hassell “ Chanoinesse von Lasperg, Han. Major Smith “ Col. Thayer, Paris Perdicaris “ Dr Hazoz, Phys. to Greek King 12 13

Johan Cornelis Baron Gevers. Charles August Heckscher.

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Wilde “ Mrs Lee Wilde Hassell Perdicaris “ “ Hassell “ “ “

“ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “

Powers, Sculp. Florence Carlyle, London Greenough, Florence Baronne de Hohenberg, Florence Lt. General Church, Athens Rev. Benjamin, Cons. Athens Londos, Minister of War, Athens Countess de Perthuis, Paris Majorin von Palzow, Berlin Frau Oberst Decken, Dresden Baronne de Senclair Mabg.

Hassell to Baronne de Holzendorf, Düsseld Dame D’honneur “ “ A. von Bornstedt, Paris “ “ Countess Egloffstein, Hildesheim Wilde “ Jenifer, Am. Minister, Vienna “ “ Hughes„ „Hague Hassell “ Major Brinkmann, Celle “ “ Marie de Bornstedt, dame d’hon. Anhalt Bernburg Preston “ Jennifer, Am. Min, Vienna ” “ Hughes„ „Hague ” “ Harden, Paris “ “ Hilliard, Chargé d’Aff. Brussels Ticknor “ Schlegel, Bonn “ “ Tieck, Berlin “ “ Count Circuitour, Paris Sumner “ Bushton, Lpool “ “ Bathburn, Mayor, Lpool Add to these, which I believe are all I have, that I know Bunsen, Pruss. Minister, London, de Tocqueville, de Beaumont, and several people in Paris, a general letter of introd by the Am. Nation. Institute, and that kind letter to all the World by the lamented Upshur, and that from London I can get as many as I want for Engl, besides that Sumner will yet send me more to London, and you will see that if I were as well provided with money as with letters I might travel like a duke. I might indeed have had any m number of letters, but I shall not make use of all these. I m write this in my neet room in at Emma’s, and will now go to town to see whether I have a fine letter from my darling Matty.

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James has assisted me in gentilifying me and I look now rather decent.14 ­Georgy15 is a darling. This morning he trumpeted into my room – I brought yester-day a trumpet – and I being busy with my trunk, he said: “Onkel Franz, dein Popo steckt heraus so weit.” Kisses to my boys, and our girls.16

14 15 16

Mathilde Lieber’s brother James Oppenheimer and his family, Manchester. George Oppenheimer, son of Emma and James Oppenheimer, Manchester. The boys were Lieber’s sons, Oscar, Hamilton, and Norman; the girls were his sisters in law Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer, Hamburg.

No. 68 Francis Lieber, London, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 19.04.-23.04.1844 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Caroline Lomnitz THL Box 34 LI 4798, ALS, 4 pages London, April 19th 44 It is late in the evening, but I must write yet to my dear Matilde, for I wish to answer several points of her dear 3d letter which I received this afternoon and invitations are coming in so rapidly that I may have no other time. – No, my own wife, I did not once grumble at not finding a letter when I arrived. I knew you would do all you could. This time I was really patient, however ardently I desired to see your beloved characters. You will receive my trunk. Pray keep the Key with the utmost care, for it is a patent lock. Do not mislay it, I pray you. In the trunk you will find my interleaved copy of Property and Labour.1 I send it because I was afraid I might lose it after all. There is a great deal of writing in it, and were I to lose that copy the loss would be absolutely irreparable. I could never restore all the extracts nor the thaughts, and it is that of my books to which I have added most of any value, besides that I lecture from it. Now if you think that you can entrust your uncle Hesse with it, you may give it to him, but he must not return it by a servant, nor keep it very long, nor lend it to any one else. Altogether you must decide whether you will give it to him. As to Mrs Gossler2 I hardly Know what to say after she has been so rude to me, although I donot like these small bickerings. Perhaps, the best will be to go after some time, a fortnight or so. But take it very coolly and stand your ground, should she talk nonsense. – You are right when you say the Germans take things very coolly. Compare Upshurs’ generous, frank, warm offer of a letter and then that letter on the one side, and Savigny’s heartless reply. The fact is, the Germans donot Know how to be gentlemen; when they mean to be polite, they are officious; when they mean to be busenesslike, they are corporallike. That letter of Massmann was like a German Handbuch, on the principle of the trunk – the more you can cram into it the better. It is a perfect labour and toil to go through. Hitzig however is Kind and practical. But how that anxiety about my not being admitted in Prussia reads for a man who has been accostumed to freedom. Fie upon it! So far Germany has not presented herself very amiably to me, I must confess. You will be obliged to send me all those letters, but are they sealed? I am afraid I shall not meet Freiligrath, for he wrote to Lfellow he would pass the summer at Ostende 1 Lieber, Essays on Property and Labour. 2 Elizabeth Gossler.

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[2] And so they really did not know at Berlin where he lives? He lives at St Goar on the Rhine. I have the greatest, greatest longing to see my and all the other children. I enjoyed the children so much at Clara’s.3 Pray mention to someone in Berlin, especially to Knob. or Keibel,4 to thank Hitzig very cordially for all the arrangements he has made. Did I write to you that Morpeth is not here but at Howard Castle? H. Castle is one of the most ancient domains of old England. The father of L. Morpeth is earl Carlisle, a branch of the old Howard family, the dukes of Northumberland, which branch was raised independantly to the peerage as earl Carlisle. Lord Brougham will return to London I dare say before I leave it. I am sorry to say that it is at present very difficult to admitted to the H. of Commons for the visitors must sit, in the present temporary house, among the members. By course I shall be admitted, but I wanted to have a permanent admission as long as I am here. I just received an invitation to breakfast on Sunday, from a Member of Parliament, but ill luck would have it, five minutes before I had accepted another. You ask how I found Emma. She was very Kind to me indeed and is certainly devoted to James.5 Poor thing, she must feel the separation much, yet she does by no means murmur.- Sunday Morning. Thank you Harriet for your tears at Fanny Ellsler’s dancing. People laughed when I said that her dancing had something priestlike and always made me feel solemn, as a picture of Raphael does, as I felt when I had spent a day at the Vatican. I saw last night Carlotta Grisi, but there is no comparison, except she is very graceful, but then it is only pleasing. Grisi’s voice pleased me very much, so truly birdlike, but the music of Semiramide left me wholly untouched. You heard the composer all the time.6 – Sumner in a letter he sent me yet for Sir Harry Inglis, Bart, M.P. an excellent man but stiff Tory, that [3] he, Sumner7 Knew no person in Eng. or the U.S. better acquainted with Brit. History, or anyone in the U.S. who enjoied so much the confidence of the leaders of all parties as Mr Lieber – This is saying too much, a great deal, but 3 4 5 6

Clara Woodhouse’s family in Leominster, England. Lieber’s longtime friends Carl Knoblauch and Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin. Emma and James Oppenheimer and their son George, Manchester. Semiramide, opera by Gioachino Rossini, lyrics by Gaetano Rossi, first performance Venice 1823. 7 Charles Sumner.

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then the train is agreable. You may mention this in a letter to Berlin. – Lord Brougham (Bromme, as they pronounce it, has come to town. April 20d I went yesterday to the City thinking I might have a letter, but not expecting one, indeed I Knew I should have none. Still affection drove me. This very moment I had a letter from L. Morpeth, whose father is on the point of death; but he still sends me a letter to his sister Her Grace the Duchess of Southerland, his brother and to some other person. Bunsen, I suppose I wrote you is out of town. But I shall write to-day to her.8 She lives some 12 miles out of town. Brougham has not yet called. I have written to Lady McNeill. My dearest wife you must excuse me if my letters look shabby, what with paying visits, seeing courts, pictures, breakfasting out, attending the Houses, writing the journal and the long distances of London – I assure you the day passes before I Know it. I wish to write to my beloved three boys a letter which I wish Hamilton to read to the others under the superintendance of Oscar. Believe me dearest Matilda, that this not being with you proves a damper to my enjoyment and clog to my movements far heavier than I had at anticipated. I love you dearly, sweetest Matilda Your Frank turn [4] My dearest Caroline, you say that I have been dissatisfied with you. I lay my hand on my heart and say no. I was greived that you should think ill of some of my actions, especially touching my relation affection to Matilde, that was all. I Knew you were not in the right; I had to reproach myself with nothing but that I sorrowed you should think harsh of me, because I truly love and respect you. I am so sorry you suffer more from Mat. And the childrens’ staying in your house. They ought to go somewhere else. My love to Harriet Ever your Frank My Mat. You ask how I look, better. A man of my age ought never to omit dressing well. Saturday I breakfast with at Hallam’s with Macaulay. My dinner coat is blue with plain quilt buttons and velvet collar – my tailor Jakson, Prince Alberts’ Taylor. I went to Gustavus’9 and James Woodhouses but he positively could not make me a waistcoat. Write me as often as you can do without ­fretting. That I wish 8 Fanny von Bunsen, wife of Christian von Bunsen. 9 So Gustavus Oppenheimer, the West Indian merchant-planter had still his posh taylor in London.

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[cross-writing, 4] by no means. What shall I do as to poor Gustavus10 in Berlin? Dont you see that it must be very painful to me if I am staying there and perhaps out every evening without their being invited? What do you think is the reason of people retaining from them as they call it. Is it she? But why should it be so? Is it brothers of hers? Gustavus, poor fellow was always wanting in common sense and tact. Good bye Your faithful Frank To Mrs Francis Lieber care of Mrs E. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade Hamburgh Pr Steamer Per J. Hambro & Sons Stamp LONDON 23 APR 1844 Stamp 26 Apr 44 10

Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin.

No. 69 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, London, 22.04.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5090, ALS, 4 pages Hamburg April 22.d 1844 Just now, my dearest Frank I received your first letter from London I had been thinking of you the whole morning, and felt so anxious to hear from you, for ten days had passed without my having heard from you, and I could not imagine why you left me so long without a line. I was afraid that you might be a little displeased with me. But never mind. I have your dear letter now, and you have promised me another one soon again, so I will not lament. Dearest Frank I can not imagine all you felt in passing through parts of London, indeed you could not be happy there before you made some interesting acquaintance and enter a little more into those scenes which will exite and animate you, and even then moments of melancholy reflection will return. I am almost more anxious for your second letter from London than I was for the first then you will already have formed some conexions and be a little more in the way of realizing my expectations. For I believe you will be well received, and your talents will be appreciated. This expectation and the conviction that you will enjoy a happiness of which until now you have but dreamed, gives me the power of bearing our seperation cheerfully. Yet dearest Frank, for your sake, not mine, although indeed I am sometimes a little selfish too, should you find that the images of your wife and children haunt you and that indeed they are in the way of your being gratified pleased, delighted with all objects of interest which surround you, you must consider whether it would indeed be loss of time to pay us a short visit first, whether you would not at the end gain by it in obtaining a state of mind more disposed for enjoyment, more ready to enter fully and warmly without any thing to disturb you on this journey from which we have expected so much happiness. If this be so, which I almost believe, to judge from your last letter then it would be wise for you to come. Without composure, with too ardent a longing for me and your boys, your judgement will be disturbed, your enjoyments very much lessened. I know my own Frank how short the time is for all you wish to do but I also know that your mind requires to be in its right tone or much will be lost to you which otherwise could give [2] hours of enjoyment. It may therefore, be quite wise to devote a fortnight to your little family, and ah! for selfishness! what does my heart say? Does it not wish, with all my vaunted selfdenial, that such a little trip might be required for

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wisdoms, for loves sake, for here they might very well go hand in hand. – Well no more of it, but dearest Frank one thing I beg of you, just point out to me the probable time of your being here, about what month would you think it likely that I may settle my mind a little. All our three boys brought home good testimonys last week. Oscar is a fine chap notwithstanding his faults and when you have him with you altogether I promise myself it will have a beneficial influence upon him, he will learn a great deal in the way of conversation, for things which interest him he remembers well, he remembers accurately circumstances from his earliest childhood. He will never distinguish himself as you have done, but nevertheless he is a fine bright lad and will – God grant it, make a good, a happy & a useful man. Talent of some kind he has and it will make its way too in some shape or other, his person is preposessing. All I fear is that he will be a man too soon, for even now and the boy is not yet fourteen you can see a little “Pflaum” above his lip. On the whole I do not think him as handsome as he was, there is I belive less of the intellectual, but at that age the features generally become a little coarser. I had intended he should dictate last sunday but as I went to church, and when I returned in addition to our own children, two young friends of Claras1 were invited and all the children played together, we did not find any time. Oscar comes home every fortnight on sunday about 11 OClock and returns to school on Monday morning early. In that short time he always finds a great deal to do drawing painting and amusing himself with all the treasures in his little closet. He and Hamilton were sitting together at a little table. Oscar drawing and teaching Hamilton to paint. – Oscar is obedient and most affectionate to me. He asks constantly when you are coming? A little touchy he is still and rather inclined to constantly excuse himself when he deserves to be blamed. From me he takes every remark as a loving son should do but not from every one; this does not trouble me though of course I shall endeavour to show him his folly. Yet we all have our faults and God be thanked, the boy is good at heart, loves us tenderly and has good sense. I am relieved of much anxiety since I have seen him, and so will you, of that I am convinced. Looking amongst his things I frequently find little marks of genius, sometimes in a drawing, sometimes in a word or two put down. Only to day [3] Carry gave me a sketch of his “der arme Philosoph”2 which I should have liked much to send you it is very good. – Our Hamilton has made himself 1 Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz. 2 Probably Mathilde Lieber mixed titles. Perhaps Oscar Lieber had tested his artistic skills by copying an oil painting by Carl Spitzweg, Der arme Poet, 36 × 45 cm, 1839.

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c­ onspicuous by his obstinacy of late. You know how difficult is always was to make him get up as early as Norman; I have urged the matter very much lately, for I can not bear him to be always the last at breakfast; so we have frequent scenes on the subject. Altogether he shows a most decided will of his own which can not be conquered by good words. At school he does very well and as he is there so much the greater part of his time, I hope he will be willing to be a good boy at home also. Little Norman, is very sweet again, and loved by all, he is so endearing, so affectionate to me, so willing to submit to every thing I wish. He has remained from school to day having a little cold, he is sitting near me at a low table cooking a Zwieback in a little kitchen belonging to one of the girls, and sends many kisses to dear Papa, he wishes you could taste some of his nice pudding. Do you remember what nice puddings they used to make for us sometimes on Sundays, so sehr appetitlich! I have again received a New York package with letters in it – no I believe the last was still from Columbia, no letter from you, but a note – awful! from Mrs Ellet to you; how shocking is that woman, I verily believe you are right in all you say of her. Several affectionate epistles also from Mrs Hassel, poor thing. I thank you Frank, my own Frank for your list of letters, I hope they will assist to all you desire. The letter about money concerns which you mentioned I have newer received. – Caroline I am sure will not be able to write to you to day though indeed she loves you very much, and is quite satisfied now. But she has always so much to do. To day she is writing letters for Sen. Arnings son who is going to study at Heidelberg. Caroline is full of fun when she is well – and she has been perfectly well these last days, she is a great teaze and when she has no better subject she takes your poor Matilda and plagues her about her husband and his probable doings. Harriet too has to bear her share, and also Edward who sheds tears all the time at his mothers nonsense. I hope she may be well when you are amongst us, because upon her health depends the much of comfort of the house. Have you received any letters from Sir John Mc Neil? I am very glad you were so comfortable at the Woodhouses and that you liked them all so well. I wrote to Clara3 yesterday – it is the 23d to day – and told her all you said which I am sure will give them pleasure. Of course you can scarcely judge of Emma in her present situation. Arnings oldest son is going in to the Manchester house as volunteer, he is a clever young man and will no doubt be able to assist James4 a good deal, of which I am glad, as he must have a great deal upon his hands when Averdieck is not there. Emma has written to me about you, she says: “You will be anxious to know, d. M. what I think about your dear spouse. – I agree with you that he

3 Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England. 4 Carl Edward Arning; James Oppenheimer and his wife Emma, Manchester.

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is a very nice fellow and a very pleasant and entertaining Gesellschafter, aber ich bin immer sehr ∆ [4] und so muss ich auch hinzufügen, that he is rather good for nothing and anything but ein ehrbarer Professor. He is a great teaze and my poor round about had to suffer a great deal during these last days whenever I get up he exclaims – is not it terrible to have such a figure or something of the kind. I wish he could have seen me at some other period denn es ist grade nicht vortheilhaft sich so zuerst zu zeigen aber es scheint sein Lieblingsthema zu seyn. – With James and him there is nothing but laughing. I generally go a little earlier to bed and then I think there are some pretty little stories told, in fact I dont know what they are doing together aber man hört nichts als Lachen. Wir werden uns ungern von ihm trennen his visit was quite an event in our solitary life and I am sorry it was for so short a time. I believe Osc. will be very like him. – But my dear M. your husband seems to have a great many female friends!! you should have seen him when I was playing the other day the Cachusha & Cracovienne5 – die Musik schien ihn gar lebhaft an Fanny Elsler zu erinnern, er sprang plözlich auf and was in the greatest rapture thinking of Fanny. Of the politeness of your Frank I must also tell you a little story, my dear. Ich liess neulich etwas fallen. James war nicht da, when he said: Nein wie schrecklich, nun können Sie das nicht aufnehmen und ich muss mich bücken. – He was on the point of calling Lena.6 – By the bye I heard him make a rather funny question to the latter? (what was it Frank?) but I will not repeat it again“ – At another part of the letter she says. “Franz hat uns gestern im besten Wohlseyn verlassen. James assisted him in packing and gives him credit for being the most tidy man he ever saw. His travelling costume I could not admire very much, a blue shirt, a green waistcoat and cheeked pantaloons, you must say that this is not very tasteful &c.” – But why my dear Frank, did you not make yourself look a little better when you first arrived in Manch. Jim writes “your most shabby looking husband, and that he had never seen you look so ungenteel; even if you wear out an extra suit pray make yourself appear well. First impressions go a great way all the world over, but appearance and dress is particularly noticed in England. I wish you always to dress well and look genteel in the car as well as

5 Cachusha= lively dance performed with castanets; Cracovienne=Polish dance that also inspired Frédéric Chopin’s op. 11, 3. 6 Servant in the Oppenheimer household in Manchester.

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[cross-writing, 4] in the drawing room. What a pity that you missed the queens drawing room. This evening we here the two famous violin players Millanolles, little girls of 12 & 11 years [cross-writing, 1] old who make a great noise here and have elsewhere.7 At least though the house is crowded I hear they are not satisfied with their reception comparing it to other places. – Have you found out Sievekings8 yet, I was at a party the other evening at Senator Arnings9 and sitting near old Miss Sieveking10 I inquired after her brothers family11 and heard they were still in London. I amused the old lady by telling her that I have some thing on my table every day which 17 years ago you as bachelor received from her sister in law.12 – Dr and Mrs Gossler also came up to me and had a long chat two very nice people, she a sweet woman.13 I have seen nothing of Heinrich Gossler but I hear he look wretched. Did you know that the old man is dead?14 Poor H.G. they say is terribly tormented by his wife.15 – Dr Benecke16 came to me several times also in the course of the evening. We spoke of Matilda.17 Did you see Herman18 in Manchester, I am afraid you forgot though I believe you put him down in your memorandum book? I should be sorry for Matildas sake. – Goodbye my dearest Frank. – what do my letters cost you. – what we have to give here is very trifling. How

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Teresa and Maria Milanollo, two talented Italian musicians who toured Europe. Hamburg merchant Eduard Heinrich Sieveking. Dr. iur. Johann Carl Gottlieb Arning married to Henriette Wilhelmine Oppenheimer, sister of Adele Haller, cousin of Mathilde Lieber. Amalie Sieveking. Eduard Heinrich Sieveking. Emerentia Louise Francisca Lorenz Meyer, wife of Eduard Heinrich Sieveking, brother of Amalie Sieveking. Dr. iur. Ernst Gossler and his wife Mathilde née Hüffel. Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. had died in 1842. Johann Heinrich Gossler and his wife Elizabeth née Bray. Dr. iur. Otto Benecke. Mathilde Benecke. Hermann Benecke, son of Mathilde Benecke.

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[cross-writing, 2] quick too. Your I sent my letter in tuesday and on the following Monday I got the answer 6 days only You could do wonders in a fortnight. My best dearest Frank I press you to my heart, think of me and love me. Your Matilda [cross-writing, 3] Caroline and Hart. send their true sisterly greetings. Carry will write soon too. [cross-writing, 1] Normans eyes are not better but also not worse. Herzfeld says, he will certainly outgrow it. Goodbye my dearest Frank Francis Lieber Esqr care of Messrs C.J. Hambro & Son London Stamp HAMBURG ∆ Stamp 26 APR 1844

No. 70 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, London, 03.05.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5092, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg May 3d 1844 I dare say I may receive a letter from my dearest Frank to day but I shall not be able to wait for its arrival before I write to you, for it is post day and my last was but a note, so that you will certainly be anxious to hear more from me. Yesterday I sent off a long letter to Theodore, telling him a great deal about his sweet children, so that I know it will give him pleasure. I wrote also to Gustavus1 giving him an account of your doings since your arrival in England at least all I myself know which is not much. Pray tell me dear Frank where you live for even that I do not yet know, and tell me too how long you expect to remain in England, and with whom you have become acquainted. It makes me feel uncomfortable to know so little about you. You know your letters are all carefully preserved and that if we bind them as we have done before they would fill out any blanks in your journal, supposing you have not the time to write things down twice. At all events my dearest Frank you must indeed let me know a little more about you, can you not imagine that it is rather painful to have such unsatisfactory accounts of a dear husband and he being so near. You who can write a letter with so much ease, write me a little more, not oftener that I do not expect, you have in general been so good to write to me once a week which is as much as I can expect, but I want to know more about yourself, how you pass your days what arrangements you have made, and occasionally some of your “impressions”. Just now a letter from your brother Gustavus arrives, I will inclose it to you, as I think you should write to him yourself. If you do it on the first page of a letter to me I will inclose it to him. I should think you could scarcely do otherwise than live at his house. When you consider his life, poor fellow, and how little he has to gratify him, I believe you should make him that sacrifice. He will not expect to be invited where you are, but you would wound him deeply by not accepting his invitation. You will see that Knoblauch has become Geheimer Finanz Rath. I have received no letter from him since I am here, but then I have not written to him either, which I will do one of these days if you send me any message for him. To Mathilde Benecke I wrote yesterday and if I have time yet I will write to Keibels to day for I have not yet wished them joy at the engagements of their son and daughter.2 I have not seen our dear Oscar since I wrote to you last but the day after to morrow he comes home. 1 Theodore and Gustavus Oppenheimer, brothers of Mathilde Lieber, Ponce/Puerto Rico. 2 Family of Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin.

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On Sunday I would have gone to Ham but Caroline Harriet Edward3 & I took the Sacrament together in the morning, and it became late before we could g think of going out, besides that the weather was most unpleasant and the expence was too great for the short time I could have remained. I have written to him and sent him your letter. Hamilton to whom I partly read it, and who partly read it himself made a great many questions about the tunnel, and was moved to tears in thinking of you, at the same time so little disposed to show his emotion that he almost appeared brusque and half angry. Harriet says Hamilton always seems to her like a full blooded horse, but perfectly unbroken, and there is some truth in it [2] he wants a strong hand to guide him and then he goes willingly. At school his teachers are satisfied with him, he brought home on saturday a good testimony and Dr Schleiden who generally speaks to the boys when he gives them their character books said to the class: daß Hamilton sich Mühe giebt und sich gut herausarbeitet. So Felix told me. I hope that he will also improve in his behaviour to me at home and show a greater willingness to give up his inclinations to mine. I am not however in the least distressed or uneasy about him. He will be a good boy. Our greatest battles are about the old red cloak which I insist upon his putting on in rainy weather. In order to make him quicker in the morning we let him now sleep in the same room with Felix and Emil which has had a wonderful effect for every morning he comes down washed and dressed early with the boys looking as bright as possible and ready for his morning walk which they take together when ever the weather is fine, coming in at 7 ½ to breakfast. Every thing goes on most regularly in Carolines house, and of her activity and energy you can form no idea without having witnessed it. Regularly before nine OClock she has had two of the children practising with her on the piano, and neither headache nor anything else is suffered to interfere. The interest she takes in all the children is the same whether her own or not, no one could perceive indeed which are hers by her manner towards them. I think Caroline a perfect model of a woman. Harriet assists her as much as it is in her power, is always ready but she has not the strength of mind and decision of character nor the insight which Caroline has, and which has so wonderfully increased during these last years. Caroline has a fond of benevolence and 3 Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg.

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generosity too which acts most beneficially upon all the children. Yesterday ­morning at breakfast she made a little collection for a poor woman amongst the children, which she sometimes does to exercise their generous feelings. Each child most willingly brought his share, Norman brought two shillings though he owned but three (Hamburg money of course) one however only was accepted. Little Tilly would have given eight but four were considered enough. ­Hamilton gave his shilling with a good heart but in his practical way he wanted to see the woman for whom it was intended. Norman did not go to school all last week, as he had a bad cold and fever during night, this week we have sent him again as he is quite recovered, he gives no trouble whatever, is as affectionate and dear a boy as ever and talks of you frequently particularly when he says his prayers at night. That will be a happy day for all the children when you come, how they will rejoice, and Oscar. Oh how great will be his delight. Do not think that Oscar has cooled in his love, he is a dear affectionate boy, how I long dear Frank, for you two to meet. you will find that his mind is still as exitable as it used to be, and that many things have a deep interest to him. Caroline tells me that it was remarkable to see him last summer, he would lye flat on the ground in the little garden, for hours together watching the insects. He took the greatest delight in observing every thing in nature, every stone, every plant had its history for him. He read books on mineralogy! In the zoological garden4 where Caroline once went with all the children at Oscars particular request, he could lead them about and give them all the information required by them. Oscar was very much pleased with the [3] crystals Mrs Hooper sent him, they are added to his collection. There is a most tender affection existing between Norman and Carolines Clara, he is perfectly devoted to her, and she would give him anything he asks for. Dear Frank tell me whether your foot troubles you at all and whether you are able to wear boots? Du vergissest doch nicht den B…t. Pray do not, it is so necessary and when you come here please manage to have done it shortly before. Ludwig5 inquires from Lubeck, when you are coming, all the world is constantly asking

4 In 1841 a pubowner had opened a “Thierpark” in Hamburg-Horn which had to close already in 1845. See Hamburger Adressbuch 1843, p. 424 URL http://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh -adress/digbib/view?did=c1:168355&p=464 (23.1.2017). 5 Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, brother of Adele Haller.

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me. It is just like they used to ask in Columbia: “when do you mean to bring Oscar home?” It worries me. My little letter sent by young Arning you must have received I should think as I have heard of his arrival in Manchester and Jim6 will have sent it to you. Caroline just returns from Uncle Jacob to whom she paid a visit. He had a letter from Ponce, or James communicated to him, his, I dont know which, but it contained bad news from Ponce with regard to sugars and prices, poor Gustavus too had lost several acres of his cane by a fire, but one thing which pays for all the bad news, dear Theodores health was still improving, so Gustavus had written I suppose I must indeavour to find an opportunity to send you those letters from Berlin to England, they are all sealed letters, or do you wish me to send them by the post. Have you any message to send to Mrs Hassel, I shall write soon. Have you heard from Lady McNeil? I read in the papers that the Emperor of Russia is expected in England I suppose that will cause a good many festivities. Shall you be presented at court? I thought it possible. You say nothing of Everett. Have you not yet seen him? Have you seen Mary Mackintosh? Have you heard where the Brooks are now? My poor Frank. I am sorry that I must torment you so much with my questions, but you cannot tell my feelings as the children used to say. Are you not my own dear husband and is it not right and fair that I should enjoy a little with you and be proud of you when ever I can. Oh my dearest dearest Frank; may you be happy and have only pleasant recollections, so that when we meet, you can make your little wife as happy as yourself and far far more proud. I brag a good deal with you dear Frank and the people say, how in the world will he be able to indure it with us when he comes, after having moved in such high circles. I shall not give your interlined copy of Property & Labour to Uncle Hesse for I should not consider it safe enough there.7 How was your trunk to be sent to me, I have heard nothing about it but when it comes I will take good care of the key. Caroline had a letter from Emilie Tieck who has invited herself to come and spend a fortnight with us. Caroline will make room for her but I do not know yet when. Ich hoffe dass ihr nicht zusammen eintreffen werdet. I called upon Mrs Gossler8 on Saturday She was not at home, so I left my card. On Monday they both called upon me together, and were very friendly. They had heard nothing of my being here. Poor things they still think of the poor child they lost three years ago it was their second daughter a girl of eight years old, she fell over the bannister, three pr of stairs high, of course dead on the spot.9 They were dining 6 Carl Edward Arning; James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Manchester. 7 Lieber, Essays on Property and Labour. 8 Elizabeth Gossler née Bray. 9 Mary Elizabeth Gossler, had died after a tragic accident on July 24, 1842.

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at Chaperouches,10 and were sent for. – I have thought since Frank that it was unkind you did not write to him at the time. Dont you think so. At the time of such a dreadful misfortune.[4] I will send your thanks to Hitzig in my letter to Keibel.11 – Can you get a permanent admission to the House of Commons while you remain in London? Are all the invitations you receive for breakfast? I like what Sumner12 writes of you to Sir H. Inglis. Have you seen the Duchesse of Southerland? Do you feel quite at home with all these people? and dearest Frank do you have enough sleep. Siehst du denn auch recht gesund aus, oh to have a little peep at you how I should like it. – I do not see much of Adele now, she has to pay an immense quantity of visits owing to the Senatorship, one evening last week she however came. She then saw Hamilton for the first time and thought him very much improved, quite handsome. Hamilton was very sociable too and went to shake hands with her. – Yesterday we dined at Uncle Morris, all alone, a good dinner, but Gabe Uncles son in law is really too silly, and yet Doctor der Rechte. He speaks like the veriest child. You will tell me if you please how I am to send the letters. – To day it is again quite chilly, so much so that I have put a shawl, round me, otherwise we have had fine weather lately and vegetation is going on nicely. I have not been to the theatre since I wrote you last nor done anything but staid quietly at home at work. As yet no letter has arrived from my dearest Frank, but perhaps the London mail is not in. Well if I dont receive any letters to day I shall on monday, that is a comfort. God bless my dearest Frank. Be happy, but take care [cross-writing, 4] of yourself I beseech you. Have you really been quite well, no headache Goodbye dearest best Frank. Carry & Hart send their best love to you. Caroline is just taking lessons in spinning, an occupation which suits her on account of her eyes. Ich drücke meinen Franz an mein Herz. Der Himmel segne dich. Es wäre doch besser wenn man keine Jungens erschafft hat dann wäre die Welt nicht so getümmelt said one of the little Spanish girls the other day. 10 11 12

Probably it was a social event organized by Johann Heinrich Gossler’s sister Susanne who was married to Ami de Chapeaurouge. Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin. Charles Sumner.

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No. 71 Francis Lieber, London, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 09.05.-13.05.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4801, ALS, 3 pages This morning I sent a letter to my dear wife, but I London yet, forgot to mention that I understand there are now at Copenhagen nearly all Thorwaldsons’ works, exhibiting: could we not make it possible to make an excursion thither from Hamb. With Carol. or H.1 perhaps even more? A steamboat goes to fr Kiel, and the whole might be fully accomplished within a week! Oh it would be fine! I should enjoy a trip with my own Matty? Just talk about it. I am no planmaker like Gustavus2 – God bless the excellent fellow – but this seems to me very sensible and would be admirable. Only take care Emilia3 be not there when I shall be with you. We would most assuredly not like each other. Yet I pity her. Only she seems to become furious at the imagination of others’ happiness. I wrote you I have given up going to Edinb. Now must hasten to Hamb. Niether do I go to Cambridge. Saturday, May 9 or 10th?4 I think I wrote you my dearest Matilda how the gout of Mr Hambro has marred my plans. On Monday I shall at length start for France and I should not have written to you this hasty note were it not I believe fair to send you the following memorandum, viz: If any accident should befell me in crossing the channel Know that I have a letter of credit on Paris with me to the amount of £ 500 (of which [2] £ 120 sterling belong to the College – at least $ 500) – and for the whole sum of which I have given a receipt to Messrs C.J. Hambro & son, as was necessary, but of which I cannot touch a cent until I am in Paris. I am sorry, I assure you to send you this letter which will not only be unsatisfactory, but unpleasant because it speaks of a possible event you donot like to hear of indeed I had almost resolved to write the whole to Uncle Jacob, but before people Know each other personally, they are apt to misunderstand each other. Please Keep the letter within until I shall arrive. I donot wish to carry it sealed about with me. The time approaches, and I leave 1 2 3 4

Henriette Oppenheimer, sister of Mathilde Lieber. Gustavus Oppenheimer and his sisters Caroline Lomnitz and Henriette Oppenheimer. Emilie Tieck, Göttingen. Neither nor: it was Saturday, 11th of May 1844. See Mack/Mack, eds., Like a Sponge, p. 18, on May 9, 1844 he mentioned in his travel diary having finished his letter to his wife.

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[3] London joyfully, though now indeed my acquaintances multiply. Kiss those silent lips of your sisters, Kiss them though they speak scoldingly of me I Kiss my boys Ever your Frank To Mrs Francis Lieber 13 Esplanade per steamer Hamburg Stamp LONDON 14 May Stamp 17 Mai 44

No. 72 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Paris, 15.05.-17.05.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5093, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg, 15th of May. 1844. My dearest Frank Since I last wrote four days ago, I received your dear letter of the 9th Inst. Thanks for it, my dear husband. I write so soon again because the letters to Paris will take longer travelling than to England, and you might feel anxious to hear from us. My last to England which you will not have received while there, I suppose will be forwarded to you. Is it your intention to return again to England for I suppose your stay there was too short to have been quite satisfactory? Ah, how anxious I am now to have a letter from Paris. Dearest Frank, it grieves me to see from your communications that certainly you are not enjoying this trip fully, as you anticipated. There is a constant melancholy evident. I hope that Paris may have a more cheering effect upon you than England has had. I fancy it will from the peculiarity of its elements. Try to be happy my own Frank, every expression of real enjoyment from you, is my delight and makes it so much easier for me to bear the seperation: but if I must suppose by a certain languor which I find in your letters that you are not truly enjoying yourself of course my anxiety to be with you again is very much increased, for it proves that what has been aimed iat is not gained; Therefore dearest, let me have, though it be but a short one, with half a dozen words in a line, in true English fashion, let me have one of your overflowing happy letters. Ah, you will hear some fine music in Paris, you will be charmed by elegance and taste and harmony. I think Paris will do you good, and God knows, that I wish you to enjoy fully, and not to be disturbed by any unpleasant thoughts; but yet dearest, you will allow me to calculate in my mind when perhaps, you will find your way to us? Only one thing you must not forget that Caroline will certainly go to the sea side from the middle of July to the end of August, and of course it would not do for you to come during her absence. I went to Ham on Sunday to see our dear boy, I took Felix, Hamilton and Norman with me. Oscar was delighted to see us and had a great deal to show me, but his first word was, “have you heard from Papa, when is he coming?” – The boys had a little pony in the garden belonging to one of the boys upon which they were alternately riding. Hamilton and Norman had their ride too and were delighted. I had a good talk with Dr Werner, he has been satisfied with Oscar latterly, he says there is an evident change in him, a sprightliness and a desire to do well. Altogether he has perceived a change since his heavy illness. Before that he was always very heavy and sleepy in the evenings, he grew extremely stout at the same time and he thinks his want of energy was very much caused by this bodily indisposition. He said: © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_074

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[2] in moralischer Hinsicht ist er ein sehr liebenswürdiger Knabe. Er ist sehr begierig dass du ihn zu sehn bekömmst. In den lezten Zeugnissen wird auch sein Fleiss gelobt, zwar fand ich einige Arbeiten die wiederholt werden mussten; ich erkundigte mich darüber bei Werner; er sagte: Wir nehmen es aber auch sehr genau. Werner hat eine recht angenehme Wohnung und dem Ansehen nach nette Knaben bei sich, es sind achzehn, darunter einige Engländer. Er sagte mir Oscars Empfindlichkeit hätte sehr abgenommen und er stände auf einen guten Fuss mit den Schulkameraden. Several boys came up to us as we were walking. “Onkel können wir das Pferd noch haben. Liebers Brüder wollen gern reiten.” – He is always called Lieber. He has grown amazingly since his sickness, none of his cloths fit him. Thank God he is a dear affectionate boy. You will love him. To morrow is a holiday and he comes home. That is also a reason why I write to day for when he is there I like to occupy myself with him, or at least to be near him. Hammy and Normy have always received good testimonies, whether Dr Schleiden is too lenient I do not know. Normy is quite well again. We have an unpleasant thing for the poor children in store to morrow. Michaelis Himmelsfahrt,1 the dentist is to come and review their teeth, Oscars and Hamiltons too shall be looked at. Uncle Jacob said he would have given anything to have heard that lank charter speech of Peels, he says it reads admirably.2 – I have your letter with the copy of Storys testimonial letter. I think I mentioned it; but I have not shown it to Uncle Jacob because I know him to be a man who would not put much value on an expectation depending on some ones death. He is practical in every way. He always wants some substantial cause for every movement one makes. Nevertheless he is all kindness, and I have great pleasure in communicating to him all that interests me. But I must not go with Caroline, for she perfectly absorbs the attention of the old gentleman, he is quite enamoured with Caroline, and she never enters but he makes some observation on her appearance, praising her. We have unfortunately an invitation for Pfingst Sontag3 out to Nienstädten, I say unfortunately for they are so many there, they do not invite our children and we dislike to seperate from them when they are at home. Yet, they do not like a refusal. We go out to make a call upon Matilde Capdeville to day, she has just arrived from 1 16.5.1844. 2 Lieber heard Sir Robert Peel’s first speech on Bank charter renewal in Parliament May 6, 1844; the following speeches on this topic on June 6, and June, 24 he missed. See Mack/Mack, eds., Like a Sponge, p. 16. 3 26.5.1844.

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Paris. Aunt Malchen is delighted, she has not been here since they married. Let me know where you live at Paris. Sumner I dare say will be of great service to you there owing to his long residence.4 Have you heard or seen anything of our Columbia travellers? – I am so happy my dearest Frank that you are quite well, Ah, be cheerful and enjoy yourself, but, do not forget your old wife in the midst of beauty and grace. But I know you love me. I know it. Goodbye for the present [3] no, not goodbye. Carry is not at all angry with you, nor does she think you a barbarien though she would have preferred your coming immediately with us, yet you will receive as warm a reception when ever you come. She has not written because I write so much, because she has been extremely busy, having a general house cleaning and clearing, because she has numberless other letters which she ought to write and does not write, and many other reasons, but not one having any reference to displeasure. She likes you very much, is anxious to see you, and gives you her hand in token of sisterly love, a kiss if you prefer it. – I have given you a list of the Berlin letters before, but I will do so again, as it might trouble you to look over the letters. Von Hitzig an Freiligrath. An Professor Clemens Perthes Bonn – Carl Simcoix (I can not read that name) Bonn. – Von Maasman5 an Reichsrath u.s.w. von Zu Rhein Regensburg. An Regierungsrath Landhermann Coblenz. An Dr Franz Pfeiffer Stuttgard. An Thiersch München. Dr Förster München. Herr Anton Scheibmaier. München. These are all. You had better enter them in your pocket book. – I have heard nothing of your trunk yet. James6 says he has written to you twice and received no word of answer. I wrote to Keibels and M. Benecke a few days ago.7 To Keibels a long letter telling a good deal about you for of course they have to depend upon me for all communication. Mrs Hassel shall not be forgotten either, poor thing. How anxious she will be to hear from you after your arrival in Germany. – I had a letter from Clara,8 she writes: “I must give you our candid opinion of your dear Frank, which I can assure you to be very favorable, we all liked him exceedingly. I never knew any one to gain so much on acquaintance, which we regretted extremely not to be able to cultivate for a longer period, 4 George Sumner, younger brother of Charles Sumner who was on his Grand Tour through Europe. 5 Massmann i.e. Maßmann. 6 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Manchester. 7 Family Wilhelm Keibel, Mathilde Benecke, Berlin. 8 Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England.

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short however as his stay has been am[ongst] us, he has left a universal good impression in our little circle. My dear husband wishes me to tell you expressly from him that he liked your Frank much, and regretted it was not in his power to remain longer with us. &c.” – 17th Dearest Frank after all my letter did not get off on Wednesday. Yesterday our boy was at home, he was very much pleased with your letter, the one containing a picture of the new Parliament house.9 He will write during the holidays the week after next, he was most affectionate to me, it is impossible not to love him, he falls round my neck again & again and of course in true Frank fashion so much the more if he finds that a colar is crushed by his embraces. I do not know how often he asked me, Mama when is Papa coming? – He hopes his master will give holidays at Johannis instead of every Monday during the hunde tage10 as is generally the custom, then, he hopes you will [4] be here during that time. He will write to me on the subject, in a few days. Then I will give you the exact time and perhaps it may suit your arrangements. Oscar still amuses himself by drawing when he is at home. I sat near my boy in ­Carolines sweet little gardenroom, I working at his side, it was a feast for me. – I am more pleased with him now than I was at first, he gains upon one. – When we go out he gives me his arm, he does not look older than he is, nor do I think he will be very tall. He has an inclination to drop his left shoulder of which I am constantly telling him. I also spoke to Dr Werner about it and desired him to let him use his left arm a good deal. He has a skittle ground and I advised him to let him throw the ball with his left hand, would not dumb bells be good for him also? He is quite straight, it is only from habit, of course; but it must be attended to. – The Capdevilles aunt Hesses daughter & her husband have just arrived from Paris, their first visit since she is married, she told me Paris was amazingly full, and terribly expensive, good lodgings were difficult to be met with. I hope my dearest Frank that you have however met with some comfortable ones. Yesterday we all took a walk, three aunts & nine children, Edward11 had taken his first ride out of the reitbahn in the morning and was too much

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10 11

Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin had designed the new Houses of Parliament or Palace of Westminster, London which were built in neo-Gothic style during the years 1840–1860. Johannis= 6.6.1844; Hundstage= dogs’days= hot summer days in July and August. Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz.

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bruised to accompany us, we walked towards Harvestehude on the Alster, a beautiful spot. [cross-writing, 4] Clara12 and Oscar were then dispatched to a baker to fetch four shillings worth of cakes while we sat on a bench near the river and the children threw stones into. When the two messengers returned we all enjoyed the good things and returned home. We frequently hear people remarking upon our number ­Emilie Tieck is coming soon now: Alas she drinks Kissinger13 and takes snuff!! We have just refused an invitation for the first Pfingstag14 at Uncle Jacobs. – We will not leave our children. Caroline & Hart send affectionate love so do your boys. Hamilton was remarking yesterday upon a picture of Mathilda Grahams that he thought it [cross-writing, 3] her a very ugly lady. Then you have got no taste, said aunt Harriet “I shall have taste when we go to dinner”, replied Hamilton. It was just before that happy event was to take place. – Goodbye my own dearest Frank. God bless you. take care of my treasure! Your Matilda [cross-writing, 1] Dearest Frank this minute I receive your dear sweet letter it would be if you did not speak of a possible accident, oh no, God will protect my own boy. Ah write to me soon dearest from Paris. – Oh your letter was so full of love and such a dear prospect it gives me of pressing you to my heart soon. Oh we will be so happy my Frank. To Copenhagen oh yes if it is possible. Glorious. – We will not write. I long to press you to my arms. I am happy. Your Matilda Monsieur Francis Lieber Pr Ad. Monsieur Rougemont de Loevenberg Paris Stamp HAMBURG 17 Mai 44 12 13 14

Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz. Mineralwater from Kissingen, fashionable Spa in Bavaria, Germany. Pentecoste, 26.5.1844.

No. 73 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Paris, 26.05.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5094, ALS, 4 pages   Hamburg May 26th 1844 My own dearest Frank I hope my love, you will not have been anxious on account of my not having written on my usual day, I have had a variety of interruptions which I ought indeed not to mention considering that you write to me regularly in the midst of the gay and fascinating world which surrounds you and all its numberless attractions, but then we two are so different, you know it is often a complete undertaking to me to write a letter, while you can shake them out of your sleeve without the least difficulty. To day is whitsuntide, we have had all our children at home since yesterday, Oscar also, he is now sitting at my side reading Holdens narrative, you remember, the book Pickering gave you, you had once given it to me for Hamilton to read, and I took it with me on the passage.1 Oscar has brought home good testimonies for the last three weeks, which was the time that I had not seen the book in which his weekly Zeugnisse are written. Hausfleiß, und Schulfleiß, was “brav”, Ordnung und Betragen, sehr zufrieden, und recht zufrieden, so that I have been able to receive him most cordially. His anxiety to see you again is increasing with every time he comes home. He hopes that he may know of your expected arrival the day before, so that he may come and meet you as he did us. He will not have his midsummer holidays all at once as he had hoped but an extra monday for six weeks running as it is the general custom in the schools here. To day we have kept Normans & Hamiltons [2] birthday, both together, as is generally done with the children here there being so many of them. They had a great many nice presents, and have had a happy day of it. They also brought home good testimonies I am really pleased with Hamiltons earnestness, he is extremely anxious to do what he has to do, and tries his best to do it well. The children are all well, Norman however is very susceptible and easily takes cold, I have to be very careful with him. Though Hamilton has only been at school six weeks he is able to do the works with 1 Horace Holden, A Narrative of the shipwreck, Captivity, and sufferings of Horace Holden and Benj. H. Nute: who were cast away in the American ship Mentor, on the Pelew Islands, in the year 1832, and for two years afterwards were subjected to unheard of sufferings among the barbarous inhabitants of Lord North’s Island, Russell, Shattuck & Co. Boston 1836.

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the older boys of course I do not mean to say that he is as far as Emil & Carlito in whose class he is, but he goes on regular with the same works though there must be more mistakes in his. School life is essentially what Hamilton needs. A few days ago there was Lämmermarkt here, the boys collected a few shillings from each of us. Their master had promised them to buy a little lamb for them to take out to Eimsbüttel, so on saturday afternoon, they went out there in high glee with their treasure, a sweet lamb which had lodged in Carolines garden for the night. The children are always asking me whether I can not tell you that they have been good so that they can be quite happy when you come. I can do so, for indeed they give me but little trouble now. Considering there are so many boys together it is really delightful to see their harmony and good temper. All the children here are sweetly disposed excellent children. To morrow we have a grand party in [3] anticipation. Two carriages full are going to Nienstädten to spend the morning, luncheon &c at Uncle Jacob, we had refused going there to day for dinner on account of then being obliged to leave all the children, so they gave us this more agreable invitation but Caroline has to pay for those two carriages, six dollars of our money. The day after the whole party goes over the Elbe to Wilhelmsburg to spend the day at the clergyman, pastor Busse with whom Caroline has placed her son George. This second expedition is quite an undertaking for us. On Wednesday Emilie Tieck is expected here to remain ten days with us, so that you need not fear meeting with her, we shall be safely rid of her again before you come. Ah Frank, how I rejoice at the thought of pressing you to my heart again, I can not tell you with what intensity I love you, I can feel it now, because I have all others with me to whom I am attached, and yet ah what a void without you, dearest best of husbands. It will be a glorious day, as Oscar says, when I shall have you again. Prächtig, prächtig, Franz, and – when we are alone and I can press you to my heart. I believe I long for you more than ever, dearest best Frank. How I thank God that he has given me a being whom I can love with all the arder of my soul, of whom I can be proud, and whose affection is to me, joy, happiness, hope. Gott erhalte dich mir. – Let me know when you will be at Waterloo, I should like to think of you when you are there, perhaps on the 18th of June? – Caroline sends you her warmest love she would have written to day, but it is quite out of her power, do not scold her for it, she loves you dearly but she can not always do as she would herself desire her time is not her own. She will receive you with open arms, and do all she can to make you comfortable

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[4] she begs you if it be possible not to be later than the end of June, on account of her bath. She is obliged to go there, much to her dissatisfaction. – Have I not thanked you yet for your dear letter from France. It was so welcome, a dear kind sweet letter. Indeed I have read all your letters over, I read them altogether to aunt Minna, and I thought to myself how wrong I had done not to have expressed my perfect satisfaction with them. They are indeed all, ah more than I could expect. Pardon me my dearest boy, for my pretensions. I am satisfied, happy, and thankful, and pray God to bless you for all your love and kindness to me. Sometimes I am not grateful enough for all that has been given me, My Frank what would life be without you. Indeed I love you, with every power of my soul. – That letter of Everett pleased me very much; how often have you lately received such proofs of Anerkennung from those where you least expected it. Webster for instance, Now Everett. It is a comfortable feeling. – Have you seen poor Malchen Goldschmidt? – I am writing this after all are gone to bed, and as I sleep in the same room [cross-writing] with the others must conclude lest I disturb them. Excuse my own boy the shortness of this letter. I have written it hastily but with a heart full of love. – Oscar is a dear affectionate boy, full of life & soul, love him Frank – and now Goodbye All in this house kiss you & love you and are willing to prove it when you come. Quäle dich nicht etwas mitzubringen. Du kannst hier den Kindern Kleinigkeiten kaufen. Caroline u Henriette werden nichts wünschen. Ich küsse, küsse meinen Franz. Monsieur Francois Lieber Aux soins de Monsieur Rougemont de Loevenberg Paris Hotel de l’Interieur 51 Veuve St Augustin Stamp HAMBURG 27. MAI Stamp 1 JUIN 44 + sealing wax

No. 74 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Brussels, 04.06.1844 Included: letter of Caroline Lomnitz to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5095, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg 4th of June 1844. What is the matter with my dearest boy, why do I receive no letter? It is the twelfth day, to day since I last heard from you, my dearest Frank, an unusual length of time for you to be silent when you are away from me, yet I am not uneasy for I think I shall have a letter soon, to comfort me and make me happy again. In the mean time I will write and tell my dearest one, how my thoughts have been with him during all these days. I believe I never have felt my love for you more truly and more forcibly, it is as if you were near me all the time. I cannot describe it to you, but whenever I have been alone I dwelt with such joy on your image, as if your breath surrounded me, and then it was a holy joy to think “Frank loves me, ah! and I love him. Sehnsucht fühlte ich und doch Befriedigung. My dearest friend I have felt all the freshness of a bride when I have thought of you, it is sometimes as if we had never yet been united, there is so ardent a longing in my soul and then again the consciousness of having enjoyed love in its fondest form with a being to whom I cling with fervour, gives me a confidence which I can not describe. Yes dearest Frank, you are dear to me, indiscribably dear, I dare not think of life without you; Du bist mir die Luft die ich einathme, du bist mein Gedanke, du bist das Licht wodurch ich sehe. Gott erhalte dich mir, mein höchstes Gut. – Well my Frank, and how are you going on, my run away; do you think of me? sometimes, just a little, so that you do not forget, that you have a wife, which might indeed be a dangerous thing, in a town like Paris. Have you seen Humboldt,1 Louis Philippe? I should be very much disappointed if you had not the opportunity of seeing him it would be provoking when so many Americans have been received in his family. There being no minister now in Paris must be so much in your way. I am anxious to hear about all these things, truly anxious to have you to enjoy yourself fully and undisturbed while you are in Paris. Does it not sometimes seem as another world to you? The operas the ballets, fine dress, extravagance; and have you had your bath Frank was it as beautiful as you expected? I think you must look very well, if indeed you allow yourself sufficient time for sleep. As for me, of 1 Alexander von Humboldt spent the summer of 1844 in Berlin, and Potsdam, meeting celebrities like Giacomo Meyerbeer, Hans Christian Andersen or Francis Lieber. He travelled only in December 1844/January 1845 to Paris. He stayed in Hôtel de Londres and met with King Louis Philippe. See Alexander von Humboldt Forschung, berlin-brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Chronologie 1841–1850, URL http://avh.bbaw.de/chronologie/1841-1850# 1844 (24.1.2017). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_076

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course I do not expect long letters, nor will I allow you to snatch the moments from your rest. No dear one, you can repay me afterwards, and tell me so much about every thing you have seen and all you have enjoyed, now only let me know that you are well, and for the sake of my pride with whom you have intercourse. – We are all well; just now I receive a little note from Oscar asking if he may come home next sunday? He has written the French letter to aunt Hesse, and sent it to her without my having seen it. Yesterday I met her at aunt Minnas and she told me she was very much pleased with it, and by all means she would now let him have the promised riding lessons. Caroline thinks I must first consult Doctor Herzfeld as they do not consider it good here for boys to ride before they have obtained a certain age. How is it Frank? Think of our boys at the South? Yet I do not know it may have an influence in maturing them too soon. I should like to know your opinion? – I will ask the doctor and then I must also speak to Dr Werner, for I do not wish it to interfere with Oscars studies. – More, by & bye dearest. I must go to Emilie Tieck now. [2] Just now, my dear husband, I received your letter of the 29th of May. It has made me feel sad for it is evident your expectations have not been realized what a pity it is that so many persons were absent to whom you had letters and that there is now no minister at Paris. All I have wished was that this journey might satisfy your longings. I knew it could not make you happy but I hoped the connections you would form would delight you and be of service to you even after your return to America. And now to find that you do not even enjoy the present moment, but that a vein of melancholy is always perceptable, grieves me very much. Remember your maxim Frank to enjoy the moment, thoroughly & fully, to let nothing disturb you. Dearest Frank, think not of what must follow afterwards. In the first place, so often matters turn out differently from what we suppose or expect, and secondly there is a great deal gained for life altogether if we receive with a joyous grasp the momentary delights which are offered to us. Therefore my Frank, be happy now. All seperation from you becomes more or less painful as I know you either pleased or discontented. I could put up with your remaining away yet much longer if I knew that you were indeed in a desirable situation. Do not forget that we have thanked God for granting this long hoped for return to Europe. We were aware knew we should have to return to Columbia, as the time approaches it will become very difficult, I am aware of that, yet; let us not give up, we have other hopes still and these too may be fulfilled. Never despair, let us hope to the last, and as we love each other we may, we will be happy. – Ah, and soon I may expect to

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have you here, what a welcome you will receive from us all, Carry & Hart are so pleased to see you, the children delighted; will it not be fine when you come, and so many arms will be open to receive you? I was very much surprised to find that this letter is already to be send to Brussels, it is much earlier than I expected, you will then I suppose remain some time in the Netherlands, I want you now to see some fine scenery, I think it would do you good after those busy towns. A few days ago I received a letter from Knoblauch2 informing me that he expected to be in Paris the 3d. or 4th of June and that he expected to see you there, his direction was Rothshild Brothers, where he wished you to inquire for him. I am very sorry that the news comes too late, but perhaps you can still give him a rendez vous. I can scarcely believe that this letter would not reach you still in Paris, but as you have requested I direct it to Brussels. Normans eyes have been better of late, as also his health, they are too much connected with that, not also at first to have shown the influence of the climate. I must tell you a little of our life. The day after I last wrote to you, we all of us in two carriages, aunt Minna with us went out to Uncle Jacob in Nienstädten where we met with a most hearty welcome, and an excellent luncheon. The day was fine we all an enormous family party went down to the beautiful beach, I wish you [3] had been with us. Towards evening we returned home again. They all found Oscar very much improved since they had seen him last; it seems he had a long time been very stout and short, and now he is growing taller. He won aunts heart, by – finding that she had great difficulty in mounting the hill again offering his service to push her on behind. Norman was much admired too. The next day our whole party went across the Elbe to Wilhelmburg to see George3 and the Pastor we went first in a steamer and afterwards in a little sailing boat encountering various difficulties, Carolines Felix, a dear child to whom I am very much attached gave us a great fright that by a sudden fainting. – The day after that while Caroline & I payed a visit at aunt Malchens (Hesse) Emilie Tieck arrived, and she has been with us ever since, in some things I find her improved, in others – awful, her vanity is ridiculous “Meine üppige Gestalt” – she is grown very fat and it is true looks young for her age. Of course she has found out that my feelings towards her are not what they were seventeen years ago. – She is satisfied now with her life in Göttingen, has a number of lessons and some good friends. The day after to morow she goes again after having 2 Carl Knoblauch, Berlin. 3 George Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz.

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remained nine days with us. Oscar returned to school on thursday after four days holidays; he wishes very much so aunt Hesse tells me he wrote to her in his french letter to take the riding lessons before you arrive. Have you formed any plan how long you think of remaining here? I hope at any rate you will remain long enough to feel at home with Carry, Hart and many of my other dear ones here. Uncle Jacob, Adele, Ferdinand, aunt Minna, Hesse, all of these I know you will like; Adele is again much improved. I am anxious for you two to meet. Hamilton Carlito & Emil had an invitation in the country last sunday at some of their friends, von 1 Uhr bis Thorsperre,4 they came home very happy, the same day we went with Emilie to a tea garden in Eppendorf also in a sailing boat to please Edward5 who was very much amused at the fears of the ladies when the boat went on one side and shed his tears as usual, Normy held his hand all the time in the water and was in high spirits, Oscar was not at home that sunday. Have you heard the news, that Emma has a fine little girl and is doing well. When James took little George in to see the baby, he kissed it and turning round to James said: ich danke lieber Vater.”6 Clara thinks the little boy very far, she says he speaks as a child of four years might. I wander what you will say to all our children here, I think them a very fine set. There come Felix and Norman from school they always come together at three OClock. Carry & Hart are out with Emilie Tieck in an open Droschke showing her the lions of Hamburg, the burnt down and newly built parts of the town,7 they wanted me to accompany them but I thought it would be better to remain at home and write to my dear husband. I have had a letter from Mrs Keibel a very nice one but no invitation to stay in their house. I have not heard a word of Mathilde Benecke. Goodbye, my dear I am going to leave the rest to Carry to fill up because she wants to write you. I will write again to Mrs Hassel when Emilie Tieck is gone

4 Thorsperre; originally closing of Hamburg’s gates within the town’s wall at sunset; this custom was in use until 1860 notwithstanding the fact that most gates and the wall had long been demolished. 5 Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. 6 James, Emma, and George Oppenheimer, Manchester. 7 The Great Hamburg Fire in May 5–8, 1842 destroyed large areas of the city. It started in the Deichstrasse close to the offices and store houses of many relatives, friends, and colleagues of the Oppenheimers and came to an end in the lane Kurze Mühren, now called “Brandsende”. 51 people were killed, ca. 1700 houses, three churches, the town hall and the municipal archive were destroyed. 20 000 people lost their accomodations. Oscar Lieber’s teacher Dr. Carl Schleiden paid his tribut to the desaster that had hit his hometown: Carl Heinrich Schleiden, Versuch einer Geschichte des großen Brandes in Hamburg vom 5. bis 8. Mai 1842, Hoffmann und Campe Hamburg 1843.

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to morrow we dine at Georgines8 yesterday we ate green peas at aunt Minnas. So time passes this evening I go to the theatre with Emilie; last saturday we were also at the theatre. Averdieck is here, on his way to Wisbaden he meant to go in the steamer to Holland, and by mistake got in to the Hamburg steamer, it was too late to go back and so came on here. [4 + 1] I embrace you my dearest Frank. “Dear Papa, come soon. Aunt Caroline has got a pretty hat and gave Mama one, the garden here is beautiful, Good bye dear Papa.Your affectionate Norman. You must be sure to let us know the time we may expect you. Your affectionate wife Matilda – I just now remember that you say this must be my last letter. Is it possible, dear Frank? Goodbye then until I see you again, or if you tell me where I may write again I will do it directly, adieu dearest M. Donot think my dearest Frank that my silence indicates want of love and affection for you, that I do not often think and talk of you with your loved Matilda; but chance would have it that whenever Matty dispatched a letter to you, something or other prevented me from adding a word of love. We feel rejoiced that the time is at last approaching when we shall see you Dearest Frank amongst us, it will be a glorious moment when I shall hear your voice and wellcome you in No 13. Many arms will be open to receive you and it will be my utmost endeavour to render you comfortable under my roof and I have no doubt you will be so dearest Frank once more united to your loving dear wife, surrounded by your loved Trio and many more besides who are happy in anticipation of being introduced to dear Uncle Frank. Matty bless her looks nicely, much better than when she first arrived I think you will find her vastly improved as well as your dear children. They are a fine noble set when all assembled together and a noisy one too, and all I dread is that my dear brother will find it rather too much of a good thing at times. Pray come soon dear Frank, young peas are just in perfection, but how will my frugal table suit you after all the luxuries of Paris! God bless you ever your affecte sister Carry A Monsieur François Lieber Poste restante Brussels Stamp Hamburg 4 June Stamp ∆ 8 Juin 1844 8 Georgiana Labatt.

No. 75 Francis Lieber, Wittenberge, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 17.07.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4806, ALS, 4 pages “12 o’clock Wittenberge 17th July 1844 I have to wait here an hour and a half and how can I employ my time better than by writing a line to my dear ones? I Know I have nothing to write, but what does it matter? the letter will give you pleasure, and, even if it did not, it gives me pleasure to write to you. Did I follow my feelings I should return to you all, to the loving wife, the affectionate sisters, the dear and good Cantoor,1 the rosealing Clara, the noisy boys and the no way less noisy girls. I was so happy in Hamburg! There – I was again obliged to repress a rising lump, which might have ended in a wet eye. What did Carry and Harriet think that I went away without thanking them? I meant to do so, but I was in a state in which could not trust myself. One touch – and the vessel would have run over. While writing this I am eating one of the fine Sandwiches and am drinking a glass of excellent beer. So far Prussia is well enough, but what [2] would you think? I asked a well dressed man in the Street where I might have a good glass of beer. Politely he took me to a tavern, said to the Keeper: Hier mein Junge ist ein Herr der ein gutes Gl Bier wünscht. Nu jieb’ en eins. Und nu Briederken gieb mir en Kuss, and he actually Kissed the smoking, unshaved dirty fellow of an inkeeper. It is too loath on me. My stomach rises I cannot help saying it, even while writing it. And such German they talked on board! Has there ever been a human being who felt such a disgust at approaching to his native city? What did my Emil say when he came home? And Hammy would not even look at me – no – he could not look at me, being too deeply touched. [3] Carrys’ p.book has already done me great service.- While I am writing these lines three wagoners are admiring my swift hand. A propos. I ought in justice to mention that the custom officers were very fair and polite and said 200 Zigarren ist ein wenig sehr viel, indess and the trunk was closed. My dear Matty, suppose my homesickness to Hamb Keeps on, would it be fair to trouble poor Carrie & Harry so much longer and to cause the former so much more expense? For, as she treats me, my presence must cause her greater expense, I am sure. Kiss my 1 Family nickname of Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz.

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three boys most heartily, and tell Oscar that his exercise were worse while I was at Hamb, which however was excusable. Tell all the children that I [4] love them heartily: Good bye dear Matilda, dear Carry and dear Hart Ever your Frank Mrs Fr Lieber 13 Esplanade Hamburg Stamp Wittenberge 17/7 Stamp HAMBURG 19/7

No. 76 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Berlin, 20.07.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5096, ALS, 4 pages Hamburg, Saturday Morning 20th July My dearest Franck, Every day since you left we intended writing to you, but something or other prevented us. Now however I am seated comfortably in our little gardenroom all alone and therefore not alone, for I can spirit you at my side, I can fancy you sitting near me on the nice little sopha and enjoying your cigar, the little rose tree and the pouring rain. For here it rains still. I hope you are more fortunate at Berlin. Thanks dearest Frank for your fine letter from Wittenberge. It arrived yesterday and it did us all good to hear from you, for that you have been in our thoughts all the time you well know. We were all very very sad when you left us and notwithstanding our crowd of youngsters the house seemed desolate for a long while after you left. I talked a little more with Oscar who was deeply touched and I am sure made firm resolves, he immediately went to work commencing a journal, in which he continued to write until the evening. Hamilton who was not as much moved as usual went to the preperation for his lessons, and I attended to him while so employed. When we three sisters met again it was to talk of dear Frank and oh, how you were regretted at our solitary tea and when I went into my lonely room I could not bear it, and then, and only then, I could have my cry out, & Carry tells me that she had the same, for you are a most amazing favorite with her. On Wednesday morning I took leave of Oscar again and he made me many promises which I hope he may keep faithfully; I was very low spirited for I could not bear to be seperated from you, my own Frank, and I thought of all your love, and there was a loneliness throughout the house, every where there was a void; Carry insisted we should go to see aunt Minna to cheer me up a little and to appologize for my husbands not saying goodbye, so we went and took our Luncheon there, and the kind old lady sent much love to you. Harriet remained there and Caroline and I returned to our reduced table. In the evening we made that long intended visit to Uncle Julius for I really felt that I owed him an appology for not having taken you to see him. That over we returned home again to feel our solitude. On Thursday I went back again into the other room, and made all things snug and comfortable in my old quarters, called out of the Steinthor where you rememerred we intended to go while you were with us, and afterwards at Gosslers1 who however had left before for Rügen, I therefore left our card. Friday to Uncle Jacob 1 Johann Heinrich Gossler’s family.

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where Carry and I read Theodores letters and talked them over. Then to Adele who has left [2] Hamburg since. She told me that she and her husband had called twice to see us, and our stupido Herman2 had not told us of it; they were sorry not to have seen you again before you left. Adele told me that Ferdinand had been to Senator Meier the evening previous and that they were all there extremely surprized you had not called upon Buck3 a school fellow and early friend and that poor Buck, who is by the bye a quiet unassuming excellent man was quite hurt about it. I declared that you had been and that there must have been some carelessness of servants in the case and begged Adele to have it communicated to Buck. You will hear from Mathilde Benecke what an excellent creature he is and I am sure you will be sorry – Perhaps it would be well to write him a line. Whether Sen. Meier called I do not know, There may be some stupidity of Herman there too. I have also met Wurms who enquired whether you were gone probably thinking you might have called again. Two letters of Sumners4 have arrived; one of them written before you went to Paris (I mean the Parisian Sumner) it was sent to Wily & Putnam, and so came here; the other from Paris now with an autograph of George Sands. A three fold double letter. I expect It would be better not to answer Sumner too soon. Brooks, Howe &c were going back, had already left Paris he calls Mrs Brooks your great admirer, and says how she regretted to have seen so little of you at Paris. He mentions having seen young Hayne5 who had hoped to meet with you in Paris. – Yesterday morning Oscar came for my birthday which had occupied our dear sisters for several days. I had a sweet greeting from every child before I left my room in the morning Oscar too came in after having left Ham at 5 in the morning. My dear sisters received me with open arms and an immense Kringel was standing on the table. Oh if Frank were but here was exclaimed by us all. The Kringel was excellent and after all the children had paid a neighborly visit we proceeded down in a train. Every child had a finger of mine to hold by – The little garden room door was opened and then indeed I was surprized by the sweetly arranged display on my table. First in the middle a beautiful cake and flowers in abundance 2 3 4 5

Hermann Renner, servant in the Lomnitz household. Franz Ludwig Buck. George Sumner, brother of Charles Sumner. Hayne, student of Francis Lieber at the College of South Carolina, son of the late gouvernor Hayne.

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[3] and such nice presents a beautiful mouseline de laine dress from Carry bought too with regard to neckhandkerchiefs for you when worn out, a handsome bonnet from dear sister Hart, colars, beautiful silk handkerchief box with work materials, fine inkstand from Contour6 and something sweet from every child, a nice drawing from Oscar a very neat Glückwunsch from Felix and a nice written verse from Hammy every body had something for me, and we were very happy but always Frank, Frank, ah without you no joy is complete. Hart & Carry say the same, and are all love for you, and when you return, you too are to have a nice birthday such a nice table you shall have. Thursday week Caroline goes away, and it will be still more lonely. Excuse the awful inkspot – It is Monday to day, every child at home and noise as you know it, all have had their teeth examined Oscars have been filed. On Saturday morning Caroline and I took Norman to the first eye doctor here a Dr Rubens, who by the bye remembers to have seen you 20 years ago but he seems to me to mix you and Gustav7 in his mind for it was a physician & yet one who went to America. He examined ­Normans eyes and says, we need be under no anxiety: es ist blos ein Verschiessen und kömmt wahrscheinlich von Würmern her, wird sich auch gewiß verlieren, he gave him something against worms. Dear Frank, we forgot all the letters of recommendation of Hitzig & Maasman we will send them with the Fahrende Post on Wednesday from here8 in a parcel I will send you Sumners too then. A [4] note arrived also from Brinkman requesting you to come to see him offering you a bed &c – Such a noise, such a noise dearest Frank excuse that I shall write again very soon and so will Caroline she is sitting by my side and says she has a strong longing for you more than you have a right to expect or than ought to be considering she is only a sister in law but she really declares she loves you 6 Nickname of Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. 7 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. 8 The name is Massmann; “Mittwochs Mittags 12 Uhr geht ab; Die fahrende Post nach Lübeck, über Wandsbeck, Schönberg u.s.w. Kommt an Donnerstags Morgens. Die Annahme der Gelder und Packete geschieht Vormittags von 8 bis 12 Uhr.” Hamburgischer Staats-­Kalender, auf das Schalt=Jahr 1844, von Johann Samuel Metz, Hamburg gedruckt und verlegt von Friedrich Hermann Nestler und Melle, p. 106. The main post office of Hamburg was on the ­Neuenwall Nr. 110 (todays Neuer Wall).

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with all her heart & soul (sie dictirt nämlich) and longs for the day that you will return she will boil and cook for you all that your heart desires; give you carasseau9 (a propos what did you do with the nice little bottle) Let us know how many beards have kissed you since you are in Berlin, and how many sweet lips Caroline wants to know, she is always telling me now he is sitting with Matilda Benecke and tries hard to make me jealous, being so herself all the time. We are just going to start off in a Stuhlwagen for Clara10 says Ach Gott da wird sein Herz ja weinen wenn du ihm das sagst. Carry kisses you Hart blesses you Clara blus her for you, Contour shakes hands with you, by the bye he was out riding from 6 OClock yesterday morning until 9 at night and is quite locker to day. You had worn his drawers and he had none but mine. Your boys embrace you the weather is fine goodbye Emil is often asking where you are now. Beim König? Herrn Professor Lieber Per add: Herrn Dr. Gustav Lieber No. 14 Münz Strasse in Berlin frei Stamp HAMBURG 22/7 Stamp 24/7 + sealing wax 9 Curaçao. 10 Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg.

No. 77 Francis Lieber, Berlin, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 22.07.-23.07.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4807, ALS, 4 pages “Berlin Mohren-Strasse. 56. 1844 My dearest Matilda, I donot know what to do. It urges me to write you, yet I thaught it would be best to wait until I have seen the King, who is in Potsd. and Mr Uhden is going there only this day. So that I may yet not be called to the King – if at all – before Monday or so. I have written this, although I am not yet resolved whether I shall send it before or after my audience with the King, simply because I cuso could no longer wait with speaking to my Matilda and all of you, to whom I bear the sincerest and warmest affection. I was so happy with all of you. I am conscious, I Know it, that the days I spent at 13 Esplan. were some of the very happiest of my life, and will be so to my end. There were so many and so various elements to make me truly happy, and, had I greeted in Oscar a boy who had firmly and cleverly advanced during our separation, I believe my Hamb days would be the happiest a man ever enjoyed. Oh my Matilda, I am not incapable of happiness or contentment. But, after all, a man must have at least a crust of bread before he can say, I am feel no craving. – I long to have a letter. Shall I not have one to-day? I have seen so far, Gustavus & Louisa, Matilda, Hitzig, Ernst,1 a fine young man, and now shall begin ma grande tour. Adieu, therefore, adieu to all. – Monday Morning. Yesterday my dearest Matilda was your birth-day. I thaught much of You, but this does indeed not distinguish any particular day with me; my thaughts are all the time with you. God bless you my good and faithful, true and loving, ever affectionate wife, who loves, I believe, more disinterestedly then ever woman did. We drank your health at Gustavus’.- I have been most anxiously expecting a letter from you, and indeed went yester-day to Keibel2 – Sunday – to see whether he had none. How does it happen that I donot hear a word? I On Saturday evening the King, who is now in Potsdam, sent me word that he was glad to Know me in Berlin, he wishes to see me and I might either come to Potsdam on Monday or Tuesday Morning at 8 to the Schloss, where he would see me before Vortrag (conseil des ministres). I have chosen the latter. After long debating with me I have concluded that it will be best to let this sheet lie until I have se can write to you of my interview with the King. I begin to regret that a Pruss. minister has

1 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber and his wife Louise, Mathilde Benecke, Julius Eduard Hitzig, Ernst Lieber, nephew of Francis Lieber and son of Eduard Lieber, Züllichau. 2 Wilhelm Keibel.

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been appointed for the U.S. because I see that they have really a good opinion of me here, and [2] think it might not have been impossible for me to get, now that they sincerely wish to extend the Germ. trade to U.S. and at the same time think I Know the States well. ”Wie könnten Sie uns doch nur wiedergegeben werden?” said the Geheime Cabinets Rath Uhden, who gave me the King’s message, on Saturday. (What I said to You, if I would conte qui conte, il n’ y-aurait le moindre doubt, and many would no doubt envy me with Bunsen. But You Know me) ­Wheaton the American minister said “Kamptz (who by the way has nothing to say now) is one of Your sincerest friends. he always talks of you and Julius3 told me that K. inquired immediately after me and said I was a noble representative of Prussia in the U.S. – I must go. Mat. Ben. sends her warmest affection to you. All have recieved me most Kindly; every one says I must stay. What would you think if I lead the King to-morrow to a Consulship-general of the German League4 in U.S. I mean to do it, that would bring us at least to the North and I could more calmly wait for Boston. Julius says, Sie müssen hier Prof. der Staatsökonomie wer an der Univ. werden. It shows people think not bad of me. Also Ja wenn wier Provinzial- dr Inspectoren der Gefängn bekommen sind Sie der Mann. – Oh Berlin stinks so! How is my love, how are my sister loves? Good bye. – M Tuesday morning. I just have been with the King. Although the ministers were waiting, he kept a whole hour and parting said: Ich danke Ihnen herzlich für die sehr, sehr, sehr lieben Augenblicke die Sie mir gegönnt haben. Könnte ich Sie doch nur noch einmal sehen. Es ist so Schade, aber es ist ganz unmöglich. Ich [3] habe dem Kaiser von Östreich versprochen mit der Königin nach Ischel zu kommen, und muß in einigen Tagen fort. Aber wo ich sie mich je treffen lassen Sie m sich melden. Several times he said: “das ist sehr geistreich; da machen 3 Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius. 4 The Deutsche Bund, a confederation of German states and former members of the German Empire (sovereign princes and free cities of Germany, Prussia, Denmark, Netherlands and the Emperor of Austria), 1815–1866, and successor reduced in scope, rights, and functions of the German empire, Heilige Römische Reich Deutscher Nation that been resolved in 1806.

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Sie mir etwas Klar was ich immer geahndet hatte.“ Or “Das freut mich dass wir darin ubereinstimmen“ “Ich bin ganz davon überzeugt (Pennsylv. System) aber Sie glauben nicht wie schwer mirs die Beamten machen. I said “Ich habe im in Amerika gefunden dass vor allen andern Nationen der Deutsche ein Schwierigkeitsfinder ist“. Also haben Sie das in Amerika gefunden; nun ich habe es hier das versichre ich Sie, und der Norddeutsche, wir Deutschen Preussen, sind noch ärger als die Suddeutschen. Und es nimmt alle Jahre zu.“ When I thanked him for the pardon, he said: Mir ist Kein Dank schuldig; Ich habe leider ausgefunden dass man Ihnen viel Unrecht gethan hat; ich habe nur gethan was recht war, meine Schuldigkeit, und es thut mir aufrichtig leid dass es so spät kam. Übrigens hatten sie ein Zeugnis bei mir was, nach dem Evangelium das größte war – Niebuhr.5 Wie schön erwähnt er Ihrer in seinen Briefen.6 Es hat mir sehr wohl gethan die Stellen über Sie zu lesen. &c.“ When I entered or rather he took me with him in passing through antichamber from the people who waited for him, he said: Also wollen Sie wieder weg, ich dachte wir hätten sie auf immer; nein Sie müssen bleiben I said: Ich habe Familie, eine Frau und muss leben. “Wie w viel Kinder haben Sie“ 3 Knaben “Nette, Gesunde tüchtige Knaben? &c“ – “Ich muss doch wirklich sehen dass man Sie im Gefängniswesen anstellt. &c (mark, it is unfortunately Known that he is overflowingly well disposed, but not firm in his impressions.) We talked of commerce, [4] emigration, prison and at last I said I wished to speak with him of a subject which is very important &c and which he must permit me to introduce; I meant public executions. There too he shared my views. You Know my dearest Matilda that I always Know whether I have been amiable, geistreich, or not. I was clever this morning and spoke ably. Matilda’s7 last word last night was: “Und nun süsser Franz sei recht geistreich, du kannst es so leicht sein.” – Hm! – Pour le reste, I was perfectly easy. That I Know no courtier could be more so; probably not half so. – And now, why have I not had a letter yet? It m almost troubles me, certainly is grieves me. Write to the care of Herrn Stadtrath Keibel, for I am always out. I have rooms – a fine parlour bed room and little entry for 4 ½ Prussian a week. – The entry to his rooms, horrid. A broken cane chair 5 Barthold Georg Niebuhr. 6 Hensler, ed., Lebensnachrichten, passim. 7 Mathilde Benecke.

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in the antichamber, and not to be compared to tidiness, luxe comfort of an Engl Lord. Kiss all, pray and write soon, all of you dear ones must write. Ever Yr Frank Mrs F. Lieber 13 Esplanade Hamburg Stamp Berlin 23 3–4 Stamp Hamburg 25 7–8 + two stamps ∆ + sealing wax

No. 78 Francis Lieber, Berlin, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 27.07.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4808, ALS, 4 pages Sunday Morning. July 27, 1844 My own and loved one, I thank You for Your letter, the first and yet only one I have received from Hamburg. My stay in Hamburg is not like many other events in my life, only more pleasant or more interesting, but it is of its own kind and has had a very deep and novel effect on my whole inner man. I swam in a sea of love, and although I have been in kind and good families before, here I was for the first time in among many children and loving sisters, not when I at the same time was father and husband. Can I than help longing for You all and continually thinking of You? It is not fine in Carry. My whole journey was more or less disturbed in England and France by my thoughts of You and wish to be with You; and now she must make matters worse and by her coaxing attention and constant desire to do something for me, and love and presents and this and that, so spoil matters in such a degree that I long still more to be back with the 3 sisters. God bless their loving hearts. As long as I live shall I remember the three da weeks of overflowing kindness in Hamburg. Is then Matilda B. nothing? You ask perhaps. Yes indeed she is all affection for me, scolds when I w donot see her at least every other day. and – indeed I donot know what to say – yes, she tries all the time to persuade me to remain here conte qui conte, which I will on no condition. If I remain here, it can only be in certain active spheres. Otherwise I am fully convinced that if my whole object were to remain, no matter how, I u might obtain it; for people I can see it plainly, indeed I see [2] it, have a good opinion of me. Ah! my Matilda I verily beleive that if the post of Prussian Minister in the U.S. were not yet given away, I might have obtained it, for they have the greatest respect for my Knowledge of America and my standing there. It is a thousand pity, for this is not only a place I should have rejoiced in, but to gain me for which they would have considered a great advantage. I say a thousand, thousand pity. – Today, I shall dine at Neander’s, who begins his note to me thus: “Mein theurer Herr Vetter, wie ich Sie wohl nennen darf.” I wrote back: “Mein lieber und innigst geehrter Vetter, (denn es macht mir große Freude dass Sie mich so nannten). His sister is an adorer of you. She speakes of you in unqualified terms, and says that one of her greatest pleasures is to talk of you with Dr Julius. The latter indeed said immediately at our revoir: “Was macht Ihre liebe Frau? Mein Gott was haben Sie für eine herrliche Frau.”

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So did yester-day Mrs. Keibel1 speak in the warmest terms of You, said that everyone does the same and praised your letters beyond all she “ever” sees or has read; that they were written in the most spirited and exquisite German and so lively &c &c. That she was sincere there is no doubt in my mind. Old Mrs Keibel2 spoke also of you, the other day, with great affection. In short my dear Matilda is loved wherever she goes, and you may imagine how much they regret that you are not with me. - That M.S. on so called public executions, which you remember having copied, arrived here when the Law-Reform-Committee was just discussing the punishment of death.3 Professor Heydemann, the right hand of the minister de Savigny, came yester-day to me to invite [3] me to dine with him, and told me that the paper, which was read before the Committee, presided over by Savigny,” fand N den grössten Anklang bei jedem der es hörte”. It will now be printed and I have already prepared the way for one copy getting to the King. – Roenne said to me: Gehn Sie doch zu Bunsen. Er hat mit mir sehr freundlich über Sie gesprochen. Wenn der Ihnen eine Professur wünscht so kann er Sie im Augenblick vom Könige erhalten.” But that, at least that alone is not what I desire, or where I would possibly live without “inneren Widerspruch”, for things stand here, in many many respects most deplorably and if I have a place in which teaching is the cheaf part and I cannot speak truth, I would rather be anywhere else. – I have seen a panorama and diorama here where I wished the children with me. I have never seen anything so beatiful, so exquisite, of the kind. The changing light of sunrise and sun-set, the illumination of St. Peter and a number of surprizing and beautiful changes are exhibited on great magnificent pictures. Yesterday I was in the palace4 of the Fräulein Waldenburg, daughter of prince Augustus and the Wiechmann – They are three excellent women, and have the most beautiful pictures. I remained I think near three hours. I was surprized that I was at last introduced in the bed-room of one of them. I hesitated; I said I would rather fore go the pleasure &c. Oh no, not the least. I was ushered in, and there were brushes, combs &c. I thought it very improper. But nothing has proved to me the low 1 Auguste Keibel née Caplick. 2 Henriette Sophie Keibel née Knoblauch. 3 It took a while till his manuscript was published: Franz Lieber, Ueber Hinrichtungen auf offenem Felde, oder über extramuran- und Intramuran-Hinrichtungen, in: Kritische Zeitschrift für Rechtswissenschaft und Gesetzgebung des Auslandes vol. 17, 1845, pp. 1–30. 4 Palais Waldenburg, Wilhelmstrasse 64, destroyed in 1944 during an air raid.

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standard of comfort or at least how mesquin every thing here is as this bedroom. No English fullness and completeness, which you find even in common English houses, for instance at Clara’s.5 The same nasty little bit of a wash bowl [4] at which feel disposed to get angry every morning; and which admits of no free and full ablution. The bedroom of the other Fraulein6 was at the end of a brilliant suit of room, open like all the other rooms and full of pictures, in short it formed a part of that suit. The bed was hid by a screen. Now you Know if a bed-room looks so fashionably neet, with all possible nicknacks as other showy rooms, the comfort and cleanliness must be fearfully reduced thereby. No abundance of sponges and towels and brushes and bottles. Everything on a small scale, in colored glass, quilt and fancifully formed, for show not for free and unreserved use of and English habits. Good bye sweet Matilda. If you write immediately, write here, if not to Zuellichau. The Berlin people say: “It Der König wollte nach Schlesien reisen, hatte kein Geld; und da hat ihm Tchech was vorgeschossen.”7 Dies ist an Haller8 zu berichten. I have a cousin here, of the name of Falkmann, whom I dont Know however. He is a great admirer of Mat. Beneckes and said [cross-writing] once: Ich weiss ich habe für viel im Himmel zu antworten, aber wenn ich einmal dort-oben zu Gericht gezogen werde so werde ich sagen: Hscht! Sagen Sie mir mal erst warum sies der Matilda Beneke so schlecht haben gehen lassen. Dann wird er zu viel thun kriegen dass er mich vergisst.“ Truly Berlin – ­schnoddrich. So is also the first although it cannot be denied in an so eminent a degree that one cannot help laughing. Good bye my love. Write me when Carry goes to bathing for I promised her a visit in the bath – I mean by letter. Matilda called me the other day “Du Herzensüberwinder”. Am I? Ah my dearest Matilda, could I but do something for Gustavus,9 but his individuality is so 5 Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England. 6 The Berlin palace was residence to three Misses of Waldenburg. 7 Heinrich Ludwig Tschech had made an attempt on the Prussian King’s life on July 26, 1844 by trying to shoot him, failed and was put to death. The Berlin vernacular joked about the double meaning of the German verb “vorschiessen” which means to shoot a pistol in front of somebody as well as to advance money. 8 Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg. 9 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin.

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unfortunate! Kiss all my children of the first class, and all my children of the second class. Forget not my Emil. And kiss my dear sisters. Mrs Fr. Lieber 13 Esplanade Hamburg Stamp BERLIN 29/7 7-8 M Stamp HAMBURG 30/7 + sealing wax

No. 79 Francis Lieber, Berlin, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 31.07.-02.08.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4809, ALS, 4 pages I do not know, my dearest Matilda, whether in reality You write so little, or whether my thaughts are so constantly with You that I feel the absence of letters more, certainly it appears to me as if I were left here very alone by all of You. But I suppose it is only the latter. I donot travel with perfect ease; I am all the time longing back to Hamburg. But you wish to hear things of me; so be it. Let me tell You that it is evident to me, people here have a very high opinion of me and, I say this to You, this journey has given much more confidence, for I have found that I am clear, penetrating in many cases where others, standing high in many certain branches are not. I see now that my eternal studying and reading, at Columbia, being all the time reduced to myself, has not been without fruit. Of course I donot mean to say that I donot find many superior in certain branches. The day before yester-day I was at “his Excellency’s”, minister de Savigny, who spoke in the highest terms of my treatiese on Extramural Executions,1 which you copied, and said that novel as it was all my chief ideas would be adopted by the Highcommittee of Law reform. He made me promise him to let him Know immediately when I return to Berlin (which I may do.) Yesterday I dined at GHRath2 Heydemann, who is Savigny’s right hand, professor &c &c. He had invited a great number of Rathe and such like and I thaught several times of You, when, the conversation being turning on some difficult half philosophical half metaphysical subject, Your Frank was able to solve it more thouroughly than any one else, and the people pressed round me after dinner and said, Prussia must Keep You. We had set down at 3 o’clock and rose at nine in the [2] with very little drinking. I mention this for this reason: I had always retained a certain respectful belief in Prussian superiority as to comprehensive learning and clearness at least in Government matters, which I had naturally carried away with me as a young man. But I assure You the thaught of lecturing here in the University, as many think I ought, is nothing appealing to me in the least. If You ask me, whether I found Prussia better than I thaught, I must distinctly 1 Lieber, Ueber Hinrichtungen auf offenem Felde, oder über extramuran- und IntramuranHinrichtungen. 2 Geheimrat i.e. privy councillor.

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answer no. Perhaps I ought to say, Prussia as it presents itself in Berlin; and, with all the faults of America, which I now acknowledge as I have ever done, it has risen in my mind. – I should remain here 3 or 4 days more when I come back from Zuellichau, but Louisa and Gusta.3 teaze me too much to stay with them which I Know would be time positively lost. Certain things cannot be forced, and Louisa is really nothing to me. – I am deeply sorry that I have convinced myself that it is impossible to help Gustavus. My poor brother has a most unfortunate Persönlichkeit, as they call it here. With our acquaintance, a certain degree of success at least, would have been sure to him, had were that Persönlichkeit otherwise. It grieves me most sincerely. Think, they have had the odd idea, that we should send Oscar to them!! - I am all the time busy as to a teacher, but I find far more difficulty than I had feared. It troubles me much. You must push the matter also as much as You possibly can. Of course I have implored Neander to assist us. He does all he can. But young men fear to leave their career for so long. – Friday. August 2. The above lines were written the day before yester-day. I now hasten to send You this letter my dear Matilda, because I have Your parcel of letters, for which I thank you much [3] and on Sunday we go to Zuellichau. Let me and reply to Your dear lines in great haste. First thank Oscar for his letter and tell him he shall have one for himself from Zuellichau. But I cannot refrain now already to express my delight at his fair testimony. Yes, I will most happily again pray at sunset, as he proposes and thank him for the proposal; only let it be something manly, true and firm, not sentimental. – Knoblauch4 is here – a regular G.H. rath all-over, who nevertheless loves me – it is the oddest thing – and me not my name or standing or so. Mrs. Keibel5 says that it is actually a well Known fact here that You are the first letter writer, whereupon they braught me all You have ever written to them, and certainly they are very fine. Who said it already once to me? Oh, yes, Miss Leo-Wolf. One of Your letters to Mrs Keib. was very fine indeed. – Last night the American minister6 took me to Baron Bulow’s soiree at Tegel. He is the son-inlaw of Humboldt and resides in Wm von H’s old beautiful villa, he is the present Prussian minister of foreign affaires,7 antiques, Thorwaldsons, Rauch’s Statues 3 4 5 6 7

Dr. med. Gustav and Louise Lieber, brother and sister in law of Francis Lieber, Berlin. Carl Knoblauch. Auguste Keibel, wife of Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin. Henry Wheaton. Heinrich von Bülow, married to Gabriele von Humboldt.

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and Rauch himself, Alexander von Humboldt, countesses and maidens – German, French, English &c all there. It is was fine and characteristic with the many embroidered servants who put my 25 000 miles cloack around Your Frank. Humboldt told me the King had talked told him of my interview and had been much pleased. He also told me that the King and Humb. studied the bor work on the Croton Aquaduct all through.8 – I have seen Kaulbach’s Hunnenschlacht.9 How great, how great; with the exception of one or two reminiscences of the Last Judgement by Michel Angelo,10 it is a master piece. – Oh no, my Matilda. Trust her. One evening when took leave of her11 and Kissed her, and again, and would do it a third th time, she lisped without repelling me: “Unsere theure, geliebte Matilda” and I clapped my hand against my mouth and went away. She wants to Know precisely, to what degree of Zärtlichkeit I went with Carry. – Savigny told me that [4] Kamptz once spoke of me to him mit tiefster Rührung. Do Hammy and Normy pretty much forget yo their loving father in their busy school life? I fear it is so. – But they ought not, for God Knows I love them dearly. – Thank Carry for her love. Yes she shall have a letter, whether long I cannot say. – Strange, strange, perhaps you say, unnatural, but I have a sort of avers repugnance to go to Zuellichau. I Describe the trebble birth-day to me, will You. Pray my sweet one, write instantly, the and send the letter to Zuellichau, will You. And write me exactly when Carry goes to her “Wasch mich aber mach mich nicht nass”. Every one turns up his nose at Travemünde; everyone thinks it madness to go alone. Pray Carry, You pretend to love me; well then do it me as a special favour, and take a servant. I will not argue, but merely ask it as a favour + a favour instead of the morning-gown You had so Kindly promised me. Can you not do me a favour if I beg? Surely you might. Do it, I say. – I have not yet had time to 8

9

10 11

Croton Aqueduct constructed between 1837 and 1842 to supply New York City with much needed fresh water; several epidemics in the 1830s and the unsanitary conditions of water supplies within the city had caused to build that master piece of 19th century engineering. Opened in 1842 the aqueduct transported water from the Croton River across 66 km to reservoirs in Manhattan just by making use of gravity. Hunnenschlacht, ceiling fresco by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, 1834–1837, in the Neue Museum, Berlin. The construction of the museum had been started in 1843 and was still in the making when Lieber visited in 1844. Das jüngste Gericht/Last Judgment, ceiling fresco by Michelangelo Buonarroti in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome, 1541. Mathilde Benecke.

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buy the things for the children, but daily I have thought of it. I find it difficult to find things within any reasonable price for so many. – I have given a gown to Louisa,12 and take 4 to Zuellichau. Matilda13 has baught them for me. Ernst14 is a very fine lad. I still am working for the envoyship in U.S. which every one says I ought to have, were it not for the appointment. But I have heard that the Mexican merchants have petitioned to retain Gerold, who was app. for the U.S. I love you dearly. My love to all F.L. ¾ Mad. Franz Lieber per Addresse Mad. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade Hamburg Stamp Berlin 2/8 11-12 Stamp Hamburg 5/8 7-8

12 13 14

Louisa Lieber, sister in law of Francis Lieber, Berlin. Mathilde Benecke. Ernst Lieber, nephew of Francis Lieber.

No. 80 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Berlin, 01.08.1844 Included: copy of a letter by Julia Ward Howe to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5097, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg, 1st of August Thursday My own sweet husband, I have a heart longing for you, my Frank how are you, well and happy? We are lonely here to day for Caroline and her two children left this morning all the others are at school and Hart and I wander about like two shadows of the past. We mutually try our best to keep up our spirits, and just now too we have had a long visit from Ludwig and his wife,1 & he is such a dear excellent man that – I mean to go to the theatre with him this evening, not to attend much to the play but to have a nice chat with him. You know he is Uncle Jacobs2 son. He has invited us to come and see him in Lubeck and if it can be done I should like much for you two to know each other, he is such a fine staunch excellent fellow. But Carry is gone, can you not imagine how dull it is here without her, dear soul, bustling about; but God grant it may do her good and then, all will be well, she wishes me very much to join her a little later in Travemünde, but I know not yet whether I shall do so, if I go it would be for Normans sake, as it might be of service to him, she has room enough to receive us. Your letter of sunday dearest, I received only on tuesday evening. Yesterday I could not write as Carry wanted my assistance in a good many little things, but I suppose this will still reach you at Berlin. It does our hearts good dearest Frank to know that you have been so happy with us, Caroline & Hart are so rejoiced at it and ask when you come now again, that all know you, how you will be received – by our dear sisters and the children, think of the happiness you will bring amongst us, oh, it is so glorious to love and to be loved. Talking of [2] love I have received two sweet love letters for you which I suppose I ought to copy on account of postage; they will do you good, the one from Julia Howe, the other from her sister Annie.3 I was touched by Julias “there is soul in it and 1 Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, and his wife Emilie who soon would die in confinement. 2 Jacob Oppenheimer. 3 Julia Ward Howe married to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe; Annie Ward Maillard married to Adolph Maillard.

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tears came to my eyes as I read it. It is peculiar that you should be so loved by women of whom I know nothing. “Blumen schickst du zu Annie,4 lieber Lieber, und mir wolltest du Dornen schicken – ganz richtig denn bin ich nicht eine kleine Wespe und habe dich immer und immer fort geplagt. Und doch bin ich dir von Herzen gut, und in meiner Gegenwart soll niemand von dir was unrechtes sagen, denn dein Bild ist, ich weiss nicht wie, mit der Erinnerung meiner alten, goldenen Tagen verknüpft. Damals, als ich dich zuerst kannte, lebte ich im Himmel, und hatte bei mir der liebe schöne Engel der nun zu sein eignen Paradies zurück geflogen ist. Ach Gott, wie nah bringt es dich zu mir, dass du Heinrich5 geliebt, dass du seinem Tod geweint hast. – Heinrich, war er nicht ein Engelseele, ein Wunderschönes Natur?? welche Stärke des Verstandes, welche Zarte des Gemüths. Und das alles musste sterben – warum? ich begreife es noch nicht. Gott hat mir vieles gegeben aber dieses nahm er weg und gab es nie wieder, und konnte es nicht ersetzen – ich versichre Dich, mein Bester, ich bin von Herzen verändert – was ich auch scheinen mag die alte Julie bin ich nicht mehr und werd es nie wieder. Einmal war ich stolz in meiner Seligkeit - auf der Erde ging ich nicht – Flügeln hat ich, und schwebte ins goldne Morgenlicht, und ward bis am höchsten Himmel getragen, - und nun möcht ich den Kopf hängen und meine Thränen verbergen. Damals sagte ich zu Allem “komm mir nicht zu nah – ich brauche deiner nicht – ich wohne allein mit meinen hohen Gedanken, und die Geister der unsichtbaren Welt bringen meiner Seele göttliche Nahrung” – und nun sagt mein Herz – “geh nicht so weit von mir, verlass mich nicht, spotte, necke nicht über mich – gieb mir eine Thräne, ein verständiges Wort, Mitleid und Mitgefühl, denn ich habe gelebt und gelitten.” – Doch wozu das alles. “ich weiss es wirklich nicht – geschieht es so bei Jederman? ich glaub’ es beinahe, denn was fehlt mir? hab’ ich nicht ja alles? Mein Mann schläft – mein guter Howe, denn es giebt kein besserer als er. Mein Kind schläft auch, und wie schön! die kleinen Händeschen sind allerliebst ausgestreckt – der Rosenmund liegt halb offen, als ob er einen Engelskuss empfangen sollte – auf der schönen Stirne herscht die tiefste Ruhe, in jede kleine Züge lese ich das dieses noch ein unverdorbener, ein glückliches Geschöpf sei. Gott sei Dank – mein Kind soll leben, und glücklich seyn, und alles schönes geniessen. Der Gedanke ist mir lieb. – Aber wir, müssen wir denn sterben? Adieu, mein guter Lieber – Könntest du mir ein vollkomnes

4 Lieber “had sent a flower of my Namur spot to Annie at her request” and both sisters Ward reacted to this touching gesture of the man who as a young adult had been injured in the Battle of Namur, see Mack/Mack, eds., Like a Sponge, p. 53. 5 Julia Ward Howe’s son Heinrich/Henry who had died young.

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[3] Herder kaufen? und noch dazu Kupferstiche von Luther und Gothe. Ich begehre auch ein oder zwei Kindesbücher, die ich ins englische übersetzen will – die müssen aber schöne sein. doch plagen Sie sich nicht damit wenn es Ihnen unbequem ist. Grüsse deine Frau für mich, und schreib mir – aber von Herzen – Gott sei mit dir – lebe wohl Julie Howe. – Annies note, I will copy the next time, it is unbedeutender, but also affectionate, Julia’s touches me and I feel as if I wished to write to her. – Yesterday I also had a letter from Mrs Hassel, all well in Columbia, her letter is of the 22d June. She is very satisfied has plenty to do Rebecca was well, Betsy6 selling cakes at a great rate; She wrote via Havre in order to tell you that Fr. Schulte was in Paris by the countess Perthuis, also that Brinkman had written was anxious to see you &c, that he would introduce you into the haute volie of Hanover. She has received letters of her sisters & brother again – People are very much after her in Columbia – She requests me to pay 20 RThaler to Consul Spitta for her, it being the easiest way for her to manage she would pay it again as soon as we return, she would have no difficulty in doing it as she has so many lessons now.7 – You must decide what I am to do. I think at all events wait until shortly before our return. - Yesterday Schleiden was here, to ask me particulars, as to what you would require of a tutor; he would write about it to Braunschweig, and thinks it high time, but he does not know exactly would you would require, what salary can be promised, and altogether your demands – it will be necessary that you write exactly on this topic, as soon as you can either to me or to Dr Schleiden himself. It was very kind of him to call upon me, merely about this matter, as his interest is rather against it. He seems himself very fortunate in the young men he gets, there fore his source must be good – What weather – it is dreadful. How I long for sunshine – How delightful it is to hear the childrens voices again. The two little girls are come home from school and our Norman too. Emil and Carlito have commenced swimming, Hammy had a cold just when they commenced and ever since the weather has been too bad. Dearest Frank, my heart is with you, we all love you so much. I have not seen

6 Betsy the cook in the Lieber household in Columbia/SC and Rebecca McClelland Ehrlich, their former nanny. 7 The German born Maria/Mary von/de Hassell was a music teacher and gave lessons for harp playing to the daughters of well-to-do South Carolinian families.

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[4] our Oscar since last sunday, I long for him too. I was glad that you went to Neander; how was it there? I am sure I am much obliged for all who have a good opinion of me – but Franks love is dearer to me then all, without that I can not exist. God bless my Frank. Remember me affectionately to all friends – I am right, am I not, you are not quite cheerful. my sweet boy, ah be happy, if you can, divert refresh yourself as much as it is possible, and what do the people say about your looks? Yours sisters brother friends. Give my warmest love to the Züllichauers. Have you received my parcel of letters, those of recommendation Ssent to Keibels? Haller I have not seen since you saw him, every body keeps away from every body in this rainy weather, I have bought each boy an umbrella. Poor Dr Herzfelds wife is very ill indeed, I am very much afraid for her. – It would be truly distressing. - Have you any mean of making any inquiry for Theodore? – Carolines direction is Madame L. Speisehaus Travemünde.8 She will like a little letter, she is very fond of you, so is Hart, you have won hearts here – and mine? – I thank God that he has blessed with such a husband! My own Frank, may he [cross-writing, 4 + 1] make you happy! I know it well that you can not accept indiscriminately what may be offered you, but my boy I fear you will not get what you desire. But still it was well that you came, and will be of service to you here after. But it will cost us many a pang to seperate again from the dear sisters and their young set Patience & Boston at last. Your own Mathilda Herrn Stadtrath Keibel für Prof. Franz Lieber in Berlin Frei Stamp HAMBURG 1 AUG Stamp 8/8 + sealing wax 8 Speisehaus or Kurhaus Travemünde, 1802–1912 Badegarten 178, today Außenallee 10.

No. 81 Francis Lieber, Züllichau, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 07.08.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4810, ALS, 4 pages Zuellichau, 7th Aug 1844 Wednesday My dearest Matilda, We arrived here on Monday,1 towards noon and until this very moment I have not found the least leasure to write to my dear and loving Matilda, nor to thank her for her letter which I received since I sent you my last Before I forget it tell Oscar that I really mean to write him a long letter, perhaps even to-morrow, but so far I have been prevented by love, by overflowing affection here I found all well, but of course grown old, as they no doubt found me, yet their hearts are as fresh and green in affection as ever. Indeed it is touching and, I will confess it humbling, to find how they love me and to what a degree they try by every possible means to show me the minutest attention. They beg me to give you their warmest love. We have already been in the Vinyards.2 The regret that they cannot see you nor the boys is universal. They would have been delighted to see Oscar again and become acquainted with the two younger boys. Julius3 I think pleases me most of all my brothers. He seems so modest yet so sterling. His children are very fine boys, and the girl, the youngest is also nice little thing. Edwards’ wife I think has kept her appearance best. Hermann’s wife is in the family way, we found them in Crossen waiting for us on Monday morning.4 Ernst5 accompanied us from Berlin; he will return to-morrow morning and take this letter to Mrs Franz, whom I saw last Sunday the first time ∆ her mother’s where we dined, and where she [2] received me so cordially and sincerely and begged me so candidly for a letter, which she wishes to take to you in Hamburg, that I am glad of having this opportunity to recommend her to your kindest reception, if indeed this not were necessary. You know the whole Keibels’ family somehow, or other, loves me truly and think much of me, Why I dont Know, but that is theire affair, not 1 August 5, 1844. 2 In the neighborhood of Züllichau and Crossen wine was produced since the Middle Ages; although the local grape was considered very dry Prussian princes and their courts enjoyed the local product’s earthy flavour from the 16th through to the early 20th century. See Helbig, Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft der Mark Brandenburg im Mittelalter, p. 116. 3 Dr. phil. Julius Lieber; Eduard Lieber, and Hermann Lieber, three brothers of Francis Lieber; Ernst Lieber, nephew of Francis Lieber. 4 Hermann and Jenny Lieber, brother and sister in law of Francis Lieber, Crossen. 5 Ernst Lieber, nephew of Francis Lieber. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_083

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mine. I think I wrote to you that the old Mrs Keibel6 gave me a dinner last Sunday, where I also found an very old school and Turn=fellow of mine, Professor Celle. The old lady, when I took leave of her, drew me to her and Kissed me with tears in her eyes yet to my shame I confess it, I scarcely remember having seen her in former days. That letter of Julia Ward’s has also touched me, with all ist high flight there is much true and deep nature in it. And when I consider that I never wrote to her, nor she to me, it moves the more, even though I believe that a slight touch of jealousy may be in those ones, because I had written a few lines words with that Waterloo flower to her sister Annie. My suspicion has been caused by some incidents which I remembered, which however are unconnected with myself. Still it is a remarkable letter, and shows certainly a feeling heart so that in your place I would ∆ not resist writ[e] ∆ [3] to her, if you feel the free impulse to do it, as you inducted in your last, my dear Matilda, the less so, since it may indeed be long before I answer it, My sweet love, I would beg to do all you can as to a tutor, the more so, since Neander tells me that only candidates he who have passed both examinations would be willing to go, but that he knew of none such at the moment. One, an excellent young man, regrets very much that he has not yet passed through both, die he would be delighted to go with us. I beg you to tell Dr Schledel7 that the ideal of a young man as I wish him would be briefly this: a moral and pious theologian who has made his examina, is a good Greek & Latin scholar, knows what all men of that class Know besides these branches, is fair in Mathematics and, if possible Knows the piano drawing cannot be expected, though it would be excellent. He ought to solemnly to promise to stay with us a number of years say 4. I beg Dr Schl to occupy himself seriously and immediately with in the subject. For it is necessary and he will infinitely oblige me, besides that he will especially promote the welfare of three good and sound boys. I have written on Sunday to Carry; you of course have heard of her. How is she? If I only knew how Norman could enjoy the seabaths! I feel sure it would do him good and if I look at Marcus Niebuhr, so fair and handsome [4] when child, and now so bitterly disfigured by squinting with one eye, I cannot help continually to think of our dear Norman. Do all and uninterruptedly what 6 The family of Wilhelm Keibel; old Mrs Keibel was Wilhelm Keibel’s mother. 7 The name is Dr. Schleiden, teacher of Oscar Lieber in Hamburg-Hamm.

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you can for that boy. I donot Know whether my suspicion is correct, but your saying that Hammy did not show so much feeling at my departure, as usually has weighed again and again on my mind, and caused me to think whether the cause of it was that I had been obliged to speak severe with him the day before. It would nt be well, if so young a child should show rancune. I trust I am mistaken.- Lottchen is here also. To day we dine at Edwards8 I have begun written this whole letter at noon and at 1 o’clock we sit down at Edwards, yet I will write a word at least to my Oscar I must conclude therefore with all possible love to all, all, to Harriet, to the children, to Hammy and Norman, to Emil and in short to all, to you however I donot send my love, but my very soul – to be sure, here is little in it worth sending, except love to you Your Frank 8 Charlotte Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber; Eduard Lieber, his elder brother.

No. 82 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Berlin, 12.08.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5098, ALS, 4 pages Montag Morgen 12ter August I think I must write to you my own loved Frank though I cannot say much to day, but I do not know where I am to write to you after you leave Berlin, and I would not that you should be too long without news from us. Mrs & Mr Franz and Elise Keibel came to me on saturday afternoon and brought me your dear letter and the copperplates which you had given to their charge. She was all kindness and friendliness, indeed. I do not believe she can be other, for she has a kind soul. I wished to show them some little attention so I asked them to take coffee with us and then we would go to the theatre together; they however declined and yesterday morning quite early I went to see them at their hotel but met them in the street. I shall go again directly after dinner there with Oscar whom Mrs Franz wished very much to see again having taken a great interest in him four years ago when we were there. You must have found it difficult to tear yourself away again from your family. I can imagine how they were anxious to keep you longer with them and in fact your visit there could scarcely have been a joyful one with seperation so constantly in the minds of all. You have not told me what you think would be a fair salary for a tutor, I write to Dr Schleiden this evening and communicate to him what you have written on the subject, and God grant that we meet with some elligible person. I also request you to tell me distinctly the time when he would be needed that when the inquiry is made I could give the necessary answer. – This has been a dull life since dear Carry is gone. Caroline has had a great deal of headache too so that as yet the bathing has been of no service to her. She is much rejoiced at the idea that we shall be with her soon. I shall certainly go next Saturday with Norman. I do not know whether Harriet will make up her mind to accompany, but I have done all I could to persuade and have arranged matters with [2] Dr Schleiden so that she might do it without any anxiety. He has promised to take charge of the three boys during our absence and I am sure they will be well taken care of. The two little girls are in school until three, and then must be left between the servants & aunt Minna & Auguste Harriet too need not stay long if she is uneasy. Edward1 I think will go with us. It is just on Carolines birthday the 17th an additional gratification, let us have a letter from you on 1 Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_084

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that day, my Dear boy. – Just interrupted by another visit from Franzens, I had intended going to see them at their hotel after dinner with Oscar, who is coming to dine with us to day, but they came to tell me they would not be at home. We must go a little later. Oscar I have not seen since last tuesday. This is not his week for coming home, but I wished to see him as I shall not be here next week, poor fellow I suppose he will not like it. Elise Keibel is very anxious to see him, you know how very kind they were all to him when he was in Berlin. I took all the boys to Herbstehude2 this morning, we passed along the Alster you remember where we went together, and when I was such a coward on the boat. They had taken a little boat with them and made it float and I sat on the bench and tried to keep them in order. Sad work! – Hamilton commenced bathing in the Alster yesterday morning, and when he has become a little accustomed to the water he will learn to swim, The water was only 12 degrees but he stood it well. Emil has been going some time, Hamilton could not as he had a slight cold. Contour3 takes them along and enjoys their wry faces. How could you imagine that Hammy had remembered your scoldly of the day before you left. The worst of it is [3] that scoldings dont make sufficient impression on the chicks, no fear of rancune in such a boy, but enough of carelessness. No, he loves you very much, but he had his works on his mind; and they absorbed him. I wish he were not so obstinate. The other day Mrs Schleiden4 when he came out to Eimsbüttel made him change his shoes & stockings for some of hers, thinking his were damp, that he did not like, so Dr S. told him he would get no soup if he did not do it directly, that vexed our young gentleman so much that he would neither eat soup nor any thing else there that whole day, he touched neither dinner nor supper; there is character in that, but it makes it very troublesome at all events for his Mama. – I had a letter from my captain5 asking if I would return with him in September (end) he has made another voyage to Charleston & back, and has delivered my letter to Mrs Lowndes. Franzens send their love to you they have seen a great deal of Hamburg, more than we. Where do you go to after the Rhein my Frank, do you think you will take a little run to Italy? 2 Contemporary term for Harvestehude, today part of Bezirk Eimsbüttel in the Free and ­Hanseatic City Hamburg. 3 Edward Lomnitz’s nickname. 4 Ida Schleiden née Speckter, wife of Oscar Lieber’s teacher Dr. Schleiden. 5 Heinrich Wieting, captain of the Bremen bark Johann Friedrich.

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Mrs Franz told me you would perhaps see her again in Berlin in October? They tell me they would not have known you, but that you made a very good impression amongst them all, and that I was certain of. All our family wish me to remember them kindly to you, Uncle Jacob was so nice and affectionate when I was there the last time, I think I must go again to morrow to be coaxed a little. Alas I have got no one else to coax me now, and my heart is so in want of it. Oh my Frank I want to lye on your breast again, to kiss your sweet lips I want love, love! – Did you not have plenty of toasts and laughing at the Züllichau dinners. A brother from America and absent 18 years and first having spoken to the King – all that is something – Just now comes our dear Oscar I was so glad to see him again, he looks well dear boy, and sends his love and thanks you very much for your letter. He will write soon, and asks me how he must direct his next letter to you as I shall [4] not then be here. Oscar asks what has become of your Laura Manuscript and whether you mean to publish it.6 He says that he read over some old letters to day which reminded him of it. He begs you to give his love to all his uncles aunts & cousins. – Poor Dr Herzfeld looks very miserable he has been to see us several times, so wretched and unhappy, yet he attends to his business. He seems to find his only comfort in his little girl. And now my Frank, God bless you, please excuse this hurried letter. Oscar has just let me feel his stomach, how thin it is, he is so hungry, poor boy. I have written very quickly and with the boys about me – Goodbye my dear one. Let me hear soon from you and may you be happy and enjoy yourself. Hart sends her best love, so all the children Your affectionate wife Matilda Herrn Stadtrath Keibel für Prof. Franz Lieber in Berlin Frei Stamp HAMBURG 12/8 6-7 + stamp 14/8 + sealing wax

6 Francis Lieber, A Paper on the Vocal Sounds of Laura Bridgeman, the Blind Deaf-mute at Boston, Compared with the Elements of Phonetic Language, Smithsonian Contributions to Know­ ledge, vol. 2, Washington/DC 1851.

708 [written in pencil] 6 shirts (one blue striped) 1 pair of drawers Bönnischen Posthaus 1 – socks Augustiner Plaz bei Thieles 1 white pock handkerchief Römischen Porthons. Augustiner Plaz bei Thiebus

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No. 83 Francis Lieber, Heidelberg, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 19.08.-20.08.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4812, ALS, 4 pages  Heidelberg 19th August 44 In rain and storm, dressed as warmly as I possibly could do in winter, and yet feeling cold, I arrived here this afternoon, my dearest Matilda, at two o’clock, went to Mittermaiers, found Mrs. M. and her daughter,1 but not him, went with the son2 yet to the Castle3 because it had ceased raining for a moment and am now writing to my beloved Matilda. I have already sent Harriet’s letter with my own request to Mr Hörner to be at home on Thursday when I mean to see him if the pouring rain we have now does not continue. Harriet told me that Weinheim is close to Heidelberg over the river, but it is 2 German miles and a half, and that too on the road from Frankfurt, so that I might have stopped at Weinheim coming from Frankf. remained a night and have then proceeded to Heidelberg. Oh ye women! Never mind, I mean now to go on horseback or in a gig, and give a day to it. – On Thursday morning You know I left Berlin. By 3 o’clock I was in Leipzig, through Dessau, Cöthen, Lei Halle. At seven I started in the ­Eilwagen for Frankfurt and that night, next day, the night again through, I arrived Saturday at 11 in the forenoon at Frankfurt. I passed many spots, trees, corners, stones, houses, which I recognized from my former pedestrian journeys, so that this journey seemed to me far more like a flight on a broad eg eagles wings, than far more rapid journeys I have made through countries in which I had not tarried and even toiled before. I went in Frankfurt to the Swan;4 shaved, changed linen, took a bath as hot as I could endure it, for I had travelled all the way by the postillion on the box and felt therefore very heated indeed from the cold night air and winds. After the bath good dinner, thence to Mr George Knoblauch who was kindness itself, with him to the Ariadne of Dannecker – what a heavenly work! I bless the stars that I have seen this master piece and felt my delight interrupted only be the constant thaught that You were not with me. The conception is wonderfully original and even bold, almost like Laocöon in this respect, and it leaves, as every true masterpiece must do, the feeling of calmness and repose in the beholder’s soul. From every side it is a wholly new 1 Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, his daughter Clara Kraft-Ebing and his wife Margarethe. 2 Franz or Karl Mittermaier. 3 Heidelberg castle or to be more precise its carefully conserved ruins were considered icons of the Romantic movement that celebrated the Pictoresque as sublime; the castle on the banks of the River Neckar had been destroyed by Louis XIV troups during King Williams War/Pfälzer Erbfolgekrieg 1689–1697. 4 The Hotel zum Schwan in Frankfurt/Main, Steinweg, was considered the place to be and object of several novels and short stories written in the 1820–1840s.

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thing, yet always graceful, delicate, voluptuously soft, swelling with life, almost throbbing.5 I concluded at once to go thither again and alone. Thence we went to Göthe’s Vaterhaus,6 thence to Bavarian beer, thence to the theatre to see or hear Spontini’s Cortes.7 But I could stand the two first acts only, and at last I went home, and to bed and slept most soundly. At ten on Sunday I went to my Ariadne, of which the modern times indeed have a right to be proud; then Mr Knoblauch fetched me to see the picture gallery; first however we went to Dr Varntrapp and talked crime, prison, a bit of politics and the like; after the p. gallery I dined at Mr Kn’s; saw the model of the famous [2] Irish air-railway, and the head over heal rail, which I will explain to Oscar.8 The evening I spent with Dr Varntrapp, who lives with his mother-in-law in a palace, talked prison and crime, crime and prison – to bed. At seven I started from Frankf. with an Englishm in the coupé who learned German phrases by heart the whole time we passed through the Bergstrasse even beautiful in this rain. Have I not given You a faithful account? When I took leave in Berlin of Marcus Niebuhr’s wife9 – who is not handsome but I like her very much – and said to her: “Sagen Sie Marcus wie froh ich bin dass er so wohl gewählt hat.” she clasped both my hands and said: “Ich kann es Ihnen nicht ausprechen wie unsäglich es mich freut Sie kennen gelernt zu haben”. I Know You would like her very much; she seems to be full of a soul flowing and glowing. I found the young wife hammering at Dante She was a Fräulein von Wollzogen, niece to Schiller’s wife.10 – I am very anxious to have a letter from you and make no doubt I shall have one in a day or two. In Frankfurt I learned that the papers there had spoken of my audience at the King’s, and said that the King had 5

6 7 8 9 10

Ariadne auf dem Panther, marble sculpture by Johann Heinrich Dannecker, in 1810 bought by Freiherr Simon Moritz von Bethmann, Frankfurt/Main and since 1816 accessible in the Museum Ariadneum. Laocoon, marble sculpture, 1st century B.C., Museum of the Vatican, Rome. Goethe-Haus, until 1795 residence of the Goethe family, Großer Hirschgraben 23–25, Frankfurt/Main. Fernand Cortez, ou la conquete du Mexique, opera by Gaspare Spontini, first performance Paris 1809. Siehe Dalkey Quarry Tramway/atmospheric Railway, Sandycove-Dalkey, 1843. Anna von Niebuhr née von Wolzogen. German poet Friedrich von Schiller was married to Charlotte Luise Antoinette von Lengefeld (Rudolstadt 1766–Bonn 1826), her sister Caroline married Wilhelm von Wolzogen (1762–1809).

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offered me an office!11 Good night my beloved wife and dear sisters! If You have weather as this here, alas! what will become of the sea bathing. I take a BadeKur by walking in the Streets. I think with horror of the next weeks when I shall hardly be able to hear from You. Wednesday, August 20st. Here I sit in Dr Posselt’s parlour writing to You. When I called yesterday, on him yesterday, he insisted on my initiating his Fremden-Zimmer, in his new fine, excellent house. He and, afterward, she received me so kindly that I could not refuse, went home, packed my trunk, and now am here. They as well as the Kaysers speak not only with affection but with a degree of enthusiastic attachment of Your father. Mittermaier spoke in the highest terms of him and said, I loved and honoured him highly; I hope he has written well of me to You. Kayser’s said that they owe him much, I donot Know how. Everyone speaks of him and the sisters with the warmest affection, and well can I imagine that they liked Heidelberg.12 It seems to be a dear place. I could chose it I believe sooner than any other small German place. And, Heaven! how much sooner than that unfortunate Berlin, against which I have the liveliest aversion. From the place I am writing, I see the house in which Your family lived, and the windows of the room in which Your excellent father died.13 Posselt read to me yesterday from his medical papers the [3] whole history of Your father’s illness. He says, he never loved any man so much as him, and wishes very much to see Harriet and Carry. When I went yesterday to the churchyard14 I found it locked. The grave-digger opened it. Do You Know, said I, the grave of Mr Oppenheimer? “Oh yes said he, I burried him; he rests here with his lady and a little nephew from England.”15 It was unspeakably painful to me. The grave is in best order. I found it full of fine flowers, which Posselt had given orders to plant. So the grave-digger told me. The leaves I send 11 12

13 14 15

Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Mathilde Lieber’s parents had lived and died in Heidelberg; they were buried on the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof; Caroline Lomnitz and her children as well as her sister Henriette Oppenheimer had lived with their parents in Heidelberg. Georg Oppenheimer had died in January 1838 and was buried beside his wife on the Bergfriedhof, Heidelberg. Bergfriedhof Heidelberg; when Lieber arrived there the grounds south of Heidelberg in former vinyards only recently had been used as a cemetery. George Woodhouse, son of Clara and James Thomas Woodhouse, Leominster/England, was buried beside his grandparents on the Bergfriedhof, Heidelberg.

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You are from the spot. Send one to Augusta;16 it is from her brothers grave. I gave the man some money, asking him to pay good attention to the grave. Not far from it lies young Mittermaier.17 See, how I have visited graves; in Zuellichau those of my parents;18 here that of yours;19 in Bonn I shall go to Niebuhr’s.20 – Varntrapp insisted upon my returning to Frankfurt and staying with him. – I cannot tell You whither to write to me; for it must depends upon a letter I expect every day from Paris; yet I will send off the letter, because it will seem long to my dear Matilda that she has not heard of me. – I donot think that I ought to propose the salary of a Tutor. Whatever is fair. I donot Know what would be expected. And how is it with Gustavus’ child?21 Has there anything been settled, I mean in his mind, as to sending it or not? Ah, dear Matilda, I think with horror of all this arrangement, of our broken in domesticity, of the anxiety about our Oscar. Oh God, is there no escape from Columbia! Many would say, well? Why not go to Prussia? Why not take a professorship? I answer, the inexperienced or unconscientious only can enter into situations which they Know to expose them to a constant inner contest – einem aufreibenden Zwiespalt – Ah Matilda, the whole present tendency of Prussia is a most melancholy one; it is at war with everything most noble in our time, and must therefore become worse and worse. You see therefore that an employment of a very peculiar kind [4] only could suit my soul, and than even I know, I shall always have grave days of it: Boston, Boston I say; God grant me Boston! Will You then never write to me: Frank Frank, happiness! A letter from Thayer22 informs me &c? This moment young Hesse, the oldest of the two here, called on me.23 He looks well and will 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

Augusta Woodhouse, daughter of Clara and James Thomas Woodhouse, Leominster/ England. Martin Philipp Joseph Mittermaier, a promising young lawyer had died in 1840 from tuberculosis. Francis Lieber’s parents had died in the 1830s; they were buried in Züllichau. Georg and Clara Recha Oppenheimer, Heidelberg Bergfriedhof. Barthold Georg Niebuhr, Bonn. He was buried on the Alte Friedhof, Bonn. The plain design of the grave did not find the approval of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. who adored his former teacher; the Prussian King ordered his master architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to create an adequate tomb while sculptor Rauch was responsible for the marble reliefs. Gustavus Oppenheimers’ son. Nathaniel Thayer, Jr. Friedrich and Wilhelm Hesse, sons of Heinrich Levin and Amalia Hesse, aunt of Mathilde Lieber, Altona.

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soon set out for Switzerland. He wi sends his best love to all cousins. I shall dine to-day at Mittermaier’s24 at ½ p. 12 o’clock. Last evening I spent there. Frau von Kraft was there. Miss Regner I saw at Kayser’s who just sent an invitation for tonight. But I cannot go. The weather yet the same. Pray, countenance Your poor Frank by writing with Engl letters. I have not yet found time to write to dear Oscar, for which I am very sorry indeed. I did wrong, I believe, to dear Harriet. Pastor Hörner lived formerly at Handschuhheim. which is but half a mile or so; To-morrow I shall go to Weinheim. Mrs Posselt sends her best love. Kiss all from me. Could I but unite travelling and or rather [cross-writing] seeing what I have to see and living in yonder circle, loved by children (God! what a reception in the morning) and waited by sisters and kissed at length in the evening by a wife. Ever your true Frank. An Madam E. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade /für Mad. L./ Hamburg Stamp Hamburg 24 AUG 44

24

Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier who lived in a large house/Palais Mittermaier in ­ eidelberg’s centre, Karlstrasse 8. H

No. 84 Mathilde Lieber, Travemünde, to Francis Lieber, Munich, 30.08.1844 Included: copy of a letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: copy of a letter of Auguste Lieber to Mathilde Lieber THL Box 54 Li 5099, ALS, 4 pages  Travemünde the 30th of August 1844. My own dearest Frank Just now Carry received your dear letter from Heidelberg and now I know at last where I can send a letter to you, which is a great comfort. I only trust it may arrive in time for you, but you do not mention at all when you expect to be in München nor where you were going to first after leaving ­Heidelberg. We have indeed had terrible weather here nevertheless I only omitted the bath one day with Norman and I think they have done him good already; he has taken his tenth bath to day and enjoys bathing very much. Yesterday the water was only ten degrees yet he jumped in again and again and dipped himself completely. To day the sun shines brightly and as we have North wind and a touch from the east all the people her hope the weather will continue fine, yet some already are returning home and we so shall return to morrow week when Normy will have taken eighteen baths which I hope may strengthen him for the winter. Although it is very delightful here and we feel the sea air does us all good yet we shall not wish to remain longer for are all anxious to see our dear children again. From Oscar I have frequent letters, he writes too in very good spirits and is always anxious to receive the last accounts from you, but he wishes me very much to return again, and particularly to be in Hamburg for his birthday,1 but that I cannot and we shall have to postpone the celebration a week later, so if there is any thing you would like to give him, any book which you can mention let me know in time, he is fond of travels. Hammy too has written twice; the boys at Dr Schleiden appear very happy, and I rather think they will be disappointed if we come home too early, for they have the fine garden to run about in and three playmates in Mr Schöns boys. Edward2 came down here on Saturday and remained with us until yesterday, thursday, when we all accompanied him to Lübeck and afterwards paid Fehlings and Ludwig Op.3 a visit on their pleasent country seats, and drove home accompanied by a splendid moon. I am so glad the weather is better on your account, my dearest Frank, for it must be so disagreable to travel about from place to place in

1 September 8, 1830. 2 Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. 3 Family of Johann and Emilie Fehling, Lubeck, sister of Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, Lubeck.

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pouring rain, besides what different impressions you receive when the world looks bright about you. I want my boy to be happy, to enjoy this trip fully and uninterruptedly and to feast upon it in after days. Carry & Hart are glad that you like Heidelberg so much, Caroline thinks she will some day return there, when her Felix is ready for the university. Those poor children of G’s,4 it makes one sad to think of them, and strange enough that the boy always still expects to see his father. We thank you for giving us such a minute account of them and will talk the matter over some other time. Caroline would write to you too but she has found it to disagree very much with her, the bathing exites her very much and if she writes after it the blood rushes to her head, but you need not fear you are loved very truly by her and those happy days in Hamburg will never be forgotten. My own Frank we all doat upon you, and delight to praise you and talk of you, ah! what a reception you will have when you come again, are you not our own dear one! God bless you!! Aug. 31st. Yesterday I was obliged to leave off because it was time to dress for dinner, a very tedious affair for we generally have to spend two hours at the table d’hote and to prepare ourselves an hour before. After dinner we made an excursion with Sally Jacobsen and her family to Niendorf a village situated on the sea shore where in a nice farmers house, coffee Landbrod and dicke Milch were enjoyed by us all. We thought how much pleasanter it would be to live in such a place than in this Travemünde, first of all there is a great deal more sea and then what one would avoid the tedium of constant company. By the bye dear Frank did not Mrs Hassel mention to us a Gräfin Bassewitz as one of her acquaintance, there is one here of the name, whose husband is said to be devoted to the Hahn Hahn5 or something of the kind, but I have not spoken to her. We have plenty of so called nobility here. Counts, barons & Herr vons in number. There are some persons here who really appear very pleasant but we have barracaded ourselves so with the Jacobsens that others keep away from us. It is always bad to be tied to one acquaintance. At any rate one gets very tired of such a kind of life, and I long to be back again to Hamburg, and to attend to those few duties which I have to perform now. Norman 4 Gustavus Oppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico; obviously something had happened to his wife; either the couple went through a breakup of their marriage or illness had forced his wife to part from her family. 5 Perhaps Mathilde Lieber thought of the popular author and object of rumours Ida HahnHahn, née Ida Marie Louise Sophie Friederike Gustave Gräfin von Hahn. In 1826–1829 Ida had been married to her cousin Friedrich Graf von Hahn, thereby she aquired the name Hahn Hahn before she became famous for authoring novels that notwithstanding their style and racism were translated since 1844 widely.

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[2] bathed beautifully this morning, and we could hardly persuade him to come out. I immagine you are now in Carlsruhe, from thence I suppose you will go to Stuttgard, then München and after that I fancy you will go to Vienna. I wish you had had such fine weather as we have now while you were in Heidelberg, how much more you would have enjoyed it. It is after breakfast and the others are all gone out to walk and to plan some little ‘partie’ for to morrow with the Wiedemans, three nice girls from Hamburg who have approached us here and with whom we have already spent some agreable afternoons, and had all kind of fun, you would have been delighted to have seen Carry play at a running game with the youngsters on one of these occasions, all together Carry has grown extremely enterprising and has exited great attention amongst the gentlemen here. One of her most devoted, who is at the same time her neighbor at dinner, is a Herr von Guntlack, who notwithstanding all the angry looks of his wife, could not be prevented from paying Carry the most decided attentions. We have plagued poor Hart too, for she has been always making some mistakes and going into other people’s rooms and we declare it is done purposely, she also has had rendevous in the Corridor and Caroline will tell you some wondrous tales when you return home to us. – There is constant music while I am writing and the smoking gentlemen are laughing and talking beneath the window, it is difficult to write; – A day or two ago I had a dear letter from your sister Auguste ah! how they love you Frank, shall I copy a little for you. “Meine geliebte Mathilde. Sehr lieb ist es mir dass ich gleich nach unsers theuren Franzens Abreise verhindert wurde an dich zu schreiben, wie ich es mir erst vorgenommen hatte denn da hättest du vielleicht nur Klagelieder gehört jezt wo ich schon mehr das Bittere der Trennung überwunden und wo uns schon der Brief von Staatsrath Uhle6 an Franz mitgetheilt ist; setze ich mich freudigeren Herzens, ja beinahe jubelnd hier her um dir recht viel von unsers ­geliebten Franz Aufenthalt hier zu erzählen, aber zuvor dir noch zu sagen, wie unendlich uns schon die ferne Hoffnung beglückt euch vielleicht hier in unserer Nähe heimisch zu sehen.“ then the good soul goes on talking of the king having acknowledged and all that, and what you have suffered, poor dear boy. Auguste says that Gustav7 had written you had said “Die Engländer verschlössen mehr ihre Gefühle als dass sie sie aussprächen, wir mögten deshalb ihn nicht für kalt halten, diese Mittheilung machte uns doch etwas befangen und als nun der Augenblick kam wo wir den über alles geliebten Bruder wieder 6 She meant Karl Alexander von Uhden. 7 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin.

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an unser Herz drücken konnten, waren wir doch im Stande unsere Gefühle zu mässigen und ihn nicht so stürmisch zu empfangen wie es sonst vielleicht geschehen wäre, und wir alle standen uns nun so ruhig gegenüber wie ich es kaum für möglich nach einer achzehnjährigen Trennung geglaubt hätte. Aber ehe noch ein halber Tag vergangen war erkannten wir unsern alten Franz wieder der auch immer mehr und mehr hervortrat und nach kurzer Zeit uns so ganz derselbe war wie früher dass wir alle die lange lange Zeit unserer Trennung fast ganz vergassen, und es uns war, als wären wir nie getrennt gewesen. Für uns alle waren diese fünf Tage, eine recht kurze Zeit, Tage wie wir sie wohl selten, ja fast nie hatten, aber ganz besonders schön waren sie für die fünf Brüder &c &c.8 Unsere Bekannte hätten alle gern den interessanten Amerikanischen Professor kennen gelernt, aber das ging nicht an. – Trotz dem dass Franz so sehr stark geworden ist, fanden wir alle ihn doch noch sehr hübsch. – Minchen says in her few lines. Wie sehr sehr glücklich hat uns der alte liebe Franz durch seine Gegenwart hier gemacht ja ja der alte, wir vergassen die achzehn Jahre der Trennung, denn er hat uns noch lieb, und necken kann er auch noch. Wir haben seelige Tage verlebt.“ – Dearest Frank is it not sweet to be loved. – I shall write to your sisters in a day or two and tell them all you have said about your happiness in Züllichau, it will do their hearts good. Oscar has written to you the following: “Dearest Papa I do not know in the least where you are whether in Berlin or on the way to Heidelberg, or in what part of the wide world, but still I write to you [3] for Mama will send the letter. I hope I shall get a letter from you while Mama is still in Travemünde. There is a bricklayer here, a Kosack, a very very funny fellow, I will copy from my journal what he told us to day. Johann Cosky was born 1788 at Statzwahr 300 leagues behind Moskau; in 1805 he became rifleman of the Cosacks he fought at Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg; in 1806 at Königsberg, Liebstadt, Gutslach & I think at Krallhes? He received six shots and twice twenty five lashes with the Knute. When I asked him about it he said: jar sehen Sie, en Mann de scheni (genius), hat de kunt da wohl en ordentliches Book drut mooken, […] ick heb kein Tiet; ick mut nun fort, in saying this he went. Your affect son Oscar. Hamilton gave me an account of an Eisbear which 8 Dr. med. Gustav, Dr. phil. Julius, Dr. phil. Franz, Hermann, and Eduard Lieber, Dorothee Karsten, Wilhelmine and Auguste Lieber spent five days, August 5–11, 1844 together in Züllichau.

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Dr Schleiden had taken the three boys to see, he says he sleeps beautifully out there. I hope Dr Schleiden may be able to procure us a teacher, I know of no other person to whom I could apply. Would you advise me to ask Dr Werner too? – We have had letters from Gustavus and Theodore since we are in Travemunde; they have had rains and good prospects for next crop. Dear Theodore had commenced a new cure advised by the English physician in Trinidad who is said to have made some cures.9 the Medecines he takes now is arsenic and Iodine together, God grant it be effectual. He writes very cheerfully, poor fellow, let us hope the best. – Adele has not yet returned from her Bade trip but I suppose by the time we are at home again they will also be there. – The post has just arrived, I wander if there is anything for us. Felix and Norman have just rode by, mounted on donkey back. Herr von Hähnlein, the prussian Minister is talking at a great rate beneath my window, it is difficult to gather ones thoughts on such a place. I shall deliver your message to our dear Uncle,10 indeed he deserves all our love. It would have done your heart good to have heard him talk of Carry the other day, tears in his eyes, he told me that he had the greatest respect and admiration for her, and how he rejoices in her love. – Just now the waiter brings me a letter from Mrs Hassel, also still from June, she says she has a great many lessons.11 Betsy is well, Henry12 has been sick but is well again and that the house is in good order. She13 repeats her request about the money to the consul in Bremen14 and also begs me to bring her some linen which Fr von Lasberg will get for her and to pay the Lasberg she is extremely grateful for a letter she received from you. “Carry says she is very much obliged to you for your friendly affectionate letter, she considers it particularly kind of you to think of her once more during your stay in Heidelberg, her feelings are of the strongest nature for you she says and would certainly have prompted her to sit down immediately upon receipt of your dear letter to tell you once more how dear you are to her heart and that she really loves you more than she has any business to love the husband of her sister, but writing is so injurious to her eyes and the blood rushes to the head that I would not allow her to do so. She sends 9

10 11

12 13 14

Gustavus and Theodore Oppenheimer. Perhaps Theodore Oppenheimer hoped to get cured by Thomas Anderson, MD Inspector of Health of Shipping, and member of the Medical Board, Port of Spain, Trinidad who had tried new medical methods and medicin. Jacob Oppenheimer. Maria von Hassell taught to play the harp to young ladies till she together with her husband established ca. 1847 a boarding school for girls and young women in Sumter Street, Columbia/SC. Henry, the son of Betsy the cook in the Lieber household in Columbia/SC. Maria von Hassell. Vice-consul Wilhelm Carl Georg Spitta, Bremen.

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you as many kisses as you may like to accept from her and trusts the weather may be more propitious and that you may henceforth enjoy your journey, and that it may not be too long before you turn your steps again to N. 13.15 where it will be her utmost endeavour to make you comfortable again. God bless you my dearest Frank, the smallest donation as token of love and affection from you comes ever wellcome to your ever loving Carry.” - So far Caroline who having just come in from her walk is gone with Hart to lie down, for this is the kind of life people have to lead here if the bathing is to do them good. – We have had an angelic little [4] boy her, who has been courted by every one and reminded me of our Oscar when we were at Nahant. Do you remember Frank, how much he was made of, every body running after him, and how sweet a child he was! a dear boy he is still, and I believe he will still give us pleasure. God grant it! – -. We have just received a letter from Edward16 who returned home safely and says all the children are well. – How the time will fly now until we have to prepare for our return, for I do not think we shall remain on this side of the Atlantic. Yes if one could choose one self but that can not be. I told our dear Uncle the Thayer business the other day, and he was pleased with it though I am sure it would delight him were you to get an elligible situation in Prussia. Every one is so plesed at the kind reception the king has given you. I have to mend my gown now, before I dress myself. Mrs Hassel says it is dreadfully hot, yet they are quite well and her little cottage looks beautifully green.17 I have not written to Julia Howe. I let the moment pass and now it has become more difficult yet I will do it when I return home, here it is more troublesome to write and I only write those letters which it is necessary and to which my heart prompts me. To you my own dearest love, I must write or I am sad: to communicate to you all that happens is a requisite of my heart, and I must say “Frank I love you, when I can not fall round your neck, and speak in that other language which all who love must understand. Heaven bless my boy. – How glorious, dearest Frank when you return to us again and when we all of us can coax you as much as we like, for we know you can bear much in that way and that you are not easily tired. Schleiden writes that he has been satisfied with all 15 16 17

Esplanade No. 13, Hamburg, living place of Caroline Lomnitz and her guests; at that time Mathilde Lieber. Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. Maria von Hassell, teacher in Columbia/SC, related to Hanoveranian nobility.

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the boys. Felix will be glad to get to school again. Norman likes his liberty so far. Adieu dearest love. Write soon to your Matilda [cross-writing] and let me know where I may write to you again. I hope the letters will not loose. Your own Matty Our dear Carry insists upon paying all Normans expences here is she not too kind? Dear creature [cross-writing] I have not thanked you for your dear letter containing the ivy from our dear parent Gräves.18 We thank you dearest Frank Hart sends love & kisses, so the d children Herrn Prof. Franz Lieber München Poste restante Bayern 208 Stamp Luebeck 31.08.1844 Stamp Nürnberg ∆ Stamp Magdeburg 2/9 Stamp München 5 SEP 1844 18

In Heidelberg Francis Lieber had collected ivy from the graves of Mathilde Lieber’s parents, who had been buried on the newly built Bergfriedhof in the hills above Heidelberg.

No. 85 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Vienna, 16.09.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5100, ALS, 4 pages, substantially damaged, large hole in the upper part of the pages  [Sep]tember 1844 My own Frank, Here we are once ∆ eceive you when ever you will come, with open arm ∆ us, ah may we have that pleasure soon. If you we ∆ I wonder what will become of you now, when sisters ∆ ll know you so well, poor Frank! But tell me dearest husb ∆ you coming; let me have some resting point when ∆ some time when I may hope to press you to my heart aga ∆ haps have made no certain plans yourself but still you s ∆ then or then I shall see my Matilda, my children, my loving ∆ you may as well comfort me by telling me your secret in tensi ∆ circumstances had you to change them, no matter; but I like ∆ [s]omething to look forwarded to, and I would rather be disappointed ∆ be totally ignorant of your intentions. – We came home on Sunday even ∆ the 8th having taken a travelling carriage to ourselves we had a very comfortable day of it and came home before dark; the boys were to come to us on Monday morning so we did not see them that night, but poor Contour,1 who had lived lonely days without us and the little girls gave us a most hearty welcome you can form an idea of the chatting and laughing and of all the happiness, and we grown ones were not the least of the happy ones, and I in particular when Clara2 who was running to every corner and looking at every thing again, exclaimed “Tante ein Brief von Onkel Franz!” Ah and it was a very nice letter, that dear though short one from Paris. A little surprised I was to find it dated from thence, but you fly about in such a manner that I should not wonder if one of these days I receive a letter from Rome. Well I have no objection, as long as it really so gratifies you that you feel you are doing yourself good for future days, even if for a time they must be spent in Columbia. How will that be, my beloved Frank, will it be worse than ever, or having thus refreshed yourself will it be easier – to bear that mode of life. Alas, I have no letter from Boston to communicate, if I had I think I would bring it to you myself where ever you are; but we have still the hope, you know, and Thayer must be kept warm. I told Uncle Jacob about it & he who likes to see realities not to feed upon hopes, was perfectly satisfied. as to your good expectations, still he would be highly gratified if you received an office from your own country. I mentioned to him that you were writing on Solitary confinement for the King and Thiele, he said, if you only could make 1 Nickname of Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. 2 Clara Lomnitz.

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an impression on the minister first he is anxious that you should see him and appears to consider him as of greater consequence with regard to any desired appointment than the King himself. – My Frank will know how to act, at any rate it is a great satisfaction to know that your merits are appreciated, my loved one. – While I was at Travemünde I received a letter from our dear Uncle3 telling me the [2] following: “Adele ∆ lezten Brief aus Driburg4 von einem Geheimrath Brand[es] ∆ [Bekanntsch]aft sie dort gemacht unter anderem folgendes – er ist einer der ∆ Verehrer Niebuhrs,5 und wünschte heute als ich Dr Liebers gedacht ∆ irgend möglich kennen zu lernen. Da Brandes 3 Jahre leg ∆ [Nie]buhrs war, hat er im dortigen Kreise Liebers häufig gedenken get ∆ bitte ich dich an Matilde gelangen zu lassen Vielleicht hegt auch ∆ Brandes kennen zu lernen, und da liesse es sich nur beide am ∆ leicht vermitteln. Brandes hat mich ersucht Lieber dies ∆ Mitte October muss er wieder in Bonn/ wo er Professo ∆ rd aber wohl weit früher in die dortige Gegend z ∆12th. I have not yet mentioned our own dear boys. Th ∆ me on Monday well and cheerful. Hammy as usual had h ∆ is eyes. Norman kissing him all the time. Oscar came ∆ rejoiced to see us all his testimonies have been good ∆ no brav in them, he had a cold but was otherwise well an ∆ cheerfully for school on Tuesday morn with the anticipat ∆ ving his and aunt Jettes birthday kept together on sund ∆ ext. Just now our little ones have set off over the Wall to their school it being a lovely morning we wished them to have the walk. Hamilton & Emil bathe early, and I hope they may be able to continue it a long time yet. How happy all the children will be to see you again, yours and the others too. Carry wishes very much that you do not take us by surprise again, it gives more trouble than when evry arrangement is made before, besides: man mag sich gern schon im voraus darauf freuen. We have seen Dr Schleiden since our return, he has been well satisfied with the boys and they have been very happy in Eimsbüttel. As yet his friend has not replied, and therefore knows of no person willing to undertake the charge. I think it would be well when you return to go yourself to Brunswick with Schleidens 3 Jacob Oppenheimer. 4 Spa near Höxter/Teutoburger Wald, today Bad Driburg in North Rhine Westfalia/Germany, because of its natural mineralsprings since the late 18th century the estates had become a fashionable resort. 5 Barthold Georg Niebuhr.

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recommendation and make the inquiries necessary. Your personal presence would assist very much in the for many might be induced to go with you when they have made your acquaintance. Indeed I do not know what else is to be done, all inquiries as yet have availed nothing. – Sometime ago I received for you a letter from Hillard of the 1st Aug. – He writes that Sumner6 has been dangerously ill, which perhaps you have heard from some other quarter. The physicians thought that the seat of the disease was the lungs but Hillard says he thought it was a nervous fever occasioned by over work, particularly at night. When H. wrote he was again out of danger. Have you written to your friends in Boston since you left. If you have not, pray write to Sumner now, he will think it so unkind if you do not. H. says: the prospects of your friend Clay are brightening every hour. The Longfellows are very well and very happy.7 Their little boy is a fine healthy child, and Fanny looks remarkably well. Sam Wards Medora has brought him a boy.8 The engagement of Crawford to Louisa9 does not please him nor the grim Uncle. Sally Sullivan with her fine boys had been in Boston, looking as young as ever. The Ticknors were travelling in the interior of New York & Pensylvania, and in extacy with the beautiful scenery they had met with; they were at the moment of writing with Miss Wadsworth in Genesee whose father has recently died.10 Such are about the contents of the letter. Mrs Hassel sends me a letter from Brinkman in which is the following: Ich freue mich sehr [3] auf die Bekanntschaft des Professors Lieber ∆ [K]ommen was ich hier für ihn thun kann werde ich mit ∆ [w]enn er mit einem single bed zufrieden ist, so soll er bei mir woh ∆ returned from the bath quite cheerful and well as I understand, ∆ seen her for they are out in Nienstädten. – Indeed I found you ∆ Paris rather odd, but I know how you enjoy the subject. When you ∆ ain we will give 6 7 8

9 10

Charles Sumner. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife Fanny. Samuel Cutler “Sam” Ward, brother of Julia Ward Howe, Annie Eliza Ward Maillard and Louisa Cutler Ward Crawford, had married in 1843 in second marriage a stunning beauty from New Orleans Maria Angelina Medora Grymes/Grimes. The birth mentioned in the letter was the birth of the couple’s first son Samuel “Wardie” in 1844. The sculptor Thomas Crawford married Louisa Cutler Ward, sister of Julia Ward Howe, Annie/Anne Eliza Ward Maillard and Samuel Cutler Ward. James Wadsworth; the daughter who was visited by George and Anna Ticknor was Elizabeth Wadsworth.

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you a room to yourself so that you can read ∆ few hours every day which is sure to make you feel more cont ∆ ow & then Carry and Hart see something they fancy you would like ∆ is bought and put away for Frank. Yes my dearest one we you when you come and Caroline says you need not fear to ∆ much feasting and feeding when you return because her good Margareth ∆ to be married, and she must take to herself another maiden ∆ a green hand and not know much of the art of cooking. ∆ is looking well and I am sure the bathing has done her good ∆ marked: how very young aunt Caroline looks. He asked me the other day: what is the reason that our masters wont let us read anything about love. There is no harm in love is there? – Norman was quite fascinated by a young lady who sat opposite to him at table d’hote: Mama what a sweet face, I have to look at her all the time; he remarked several others too whom he thought “sweet”. – Our little girls made us laugh all dinner time yesterday, by their funny talk, they are so very amusing. Clarita told us the story of Joseph and his brothers11 very nicely, at the end she said, und sie wurden alle zerquetscht, when Tilly corrected her: unterdrückt meint sie Tante”; then Tilly said of Edward: es ist doch eine grosse Freude für dich solch einen rechtschaffenent Sohn zu haben, aber wenn wir pye hatten während du weg warst, gab er uns nur ein kleines Stück zum zweiten mal und wenn wir uns den nächsten Tag nach dem pye erkundigten sagte er: der ist schon längst gezehrt. The little one heard we were going to the Theatre to hear the Huguenotten;12 ach die kenne ich die sind in der Naturgeschichte in Afrika: Tilly complained: ich höre von nichts was in der Welt vorgeht: Edward13 wird immer klüger, aber ich bin dumm und bleibe dumm. – There was a good deal more but I have forgotten; they are very sweet children, so full of life and talk. We have not heard again from the West Indies. – James has a good deal to do, Emma14 was on a visit to Clara15 with both her children and very much pleased with every thing there, the family the fine country, the good living, feasting upon partridges. She felt much better from the change. They all think George Sr.’16 very forward. Uncle Morris will probably pay them a visit in Manchester. – I can not say that I regret having gone to Travemünde, it has certainly done our boy good, he has more colour 11 12 13 14 15 16

Old Testament Joseph and his brethren, Genesis 37–47. Les Huguenots/Die Hugenotten, opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, first performance Paris 1836. Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. Emma Oppenheimer, married to James Oppenheimer, Manchester. Clara Woodhouse, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Leominster/England. George Sumner, brother of Charles Sumner, who was his on Grand Tour through Europe.

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and looks stronger than he did, his eyes these last few days have been better, but I do not think that his bathing has any connexion with that it is from some other cause, the condition of the stomach probably, though the strengthening of his system may have a good effect upon the eyes. The whole day that we travelled from Travemünde he looked perfectly straight. You know we often have remarked how well & how bright his eyes have looked when he is a little exited, while at dinner time, when he [4] is sitting stupidly, or ∆ been scolded and is out of humour it is invariably wor ∆ he is in active play, his eye is good; it is therefo ∆ weakness, which we may hope he will outgrow. At the ∆ it is certain he can not ∆ always command it – Osc ∆ much pleased with your letter, and will write ∆ soon. – He wished to take a ride with Edward ∆ [b]irthday but I have declined, for I am afraid and ∆ ised that you will ride with him when you come. ∆ [e]xpect you sometime next month it is true we are ∆ torized to do so, but it gives us pleasure to comfort ∆ in that way. – Oscar remembers having seen those ∆ you spoke of, in the Museum in Berlin. – I must ∆ dress myself to pay aunt Hesse a visit who will otherwise be offended for she called upon us already the day before yesterday when we were out. What did you think of her sons.17 I here they were enchanted with you and Professor Lewald, by the bye I hear you have been there too, Caroline once gave him six pieces of soap for a Christmas box, would it be a useful present still. - - I have returned home from the visit, it was rather a cold one though the walk was warm. Matilda Capdeville goes in a week. Capdeville dined with us in Travemünde without recognizing us or we him. Many kisses from all the dear ones here. They love you tenderly. God bless you, my dear husband return once more safe and sound and fat to your own Matilda [cross-writing] Die Herrn Arnstein u Eskeles werden ergebens ersucht diesen Brief bis zu Herrn Liebers Ankunft in Wien aufzuheben, falls er noch nicht dort seyn sollte

17

Friedrich and Wilhelm Hesse, cousins of Mathilde Lieber from Altona, were students in Heidelberg in 1844.

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[written in pencil] Clay. Cramergasse 831 zur Linken Consul Schwarz, am Graben Herrn Professor Lieber pr Adr. Herrn Arnstein & Eckeles Wien18 Frei stamp faded + sealing wax

18

Bankhaus Arnstein u. Eskeles, Vienna, founded 1773 by Bernhard von Eskeles; the founder of the Austrian Spar-Casse resided in a Palais, Dorotheergasse, Vienna that houses today the Jüdisches Museum Wien.

No. 86 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Dresden, 02.10.1844 Included: copy of a letter by Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen to Francis Lieber, London 27.09.1844 Included: letter of Caroline Lomnitz to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5101, ALS, 4 pages Hamburg den 2ten October  Thode is the name of C. friend. My dearest Frank. This minute I received your dear letter from Vienna, and I think I must try to let you have one in Dresden. I am going presently to Schleiden who has heard of a teacher and I shall ask him whether he knows how long the post goes to Dresden. I wrote you a second letter to Vienna which however you could not have received. There was nothing particular in it for I thought of the possibility of its not reaching you. I was delighted to hear from you again for it is a fortnight to day since I had my last letter; not quite the thing, I think but never mind, you are coming soon and so I will make it up. Before I go on I must tell you what letters I have received for you since I wrote last. From Bunsen of the 27 Sept. London. “Mein lieber Freund. Ich bin durch des Prinzen1Anwesenheit von allem Privat Briefwechsel abgehalten. Verzeihen Sie dass ich so spät schreibe. Ich kann Ihnen leider! nur sagen, dass die Idee welche Sie erwähnen mir ganz unausführbar scheint. In eine diplomatische Ministerstelle kann niemand einrücken der nicht seine Laufbahn gemacht. Es ist nicht grade unmöglich, dass Sie damit endigen können: allein jezt ist nicht daran zu denken. Eine Generalconsulatsstelle würde ich für möglich halten, wenn der König es entscheiden wollte. Allein in den V. St. haben wir kein Generalconsulat, so viel ich weiss. Ich sage Ihnen unverhohlen was ich denke, denn nur so kann ich Ihnen dienen. Immerhin, wenn Sie irgend etwas in Preussen erlangen wollen, müssen Sie es persönlich an Ort und Stelle durchsetzen. Also vor allem sich dem Min. der aus. Ang. Herrn v. Bulow vorstellen, falls Sie eine Consulatstelle wünschen und eine solche jezt irgendwo in Amerika offen ist. Unter allen Umständen rechnen Sie auf meine aufrichtige freundschaft. Es würde mir eine grosse Freude sein, Sie wiederzusehen. Gott geleite Sie! Herzlich der Ihrige B. Lesen Sie Dr Arnolds life.2 – Brief No 2 von Varrentrap. Frankfurth, went to Paris first and came back here. He wishes to know whether you think it desirable for him to meet you in Berlin and to stand by your side in the prison matters. He would not like to give up the time without he could be im Stande zu wirken. 1 Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig von Preußen, Prinz von Preußen. 2 Arthur P. Dean Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 2 vols., London 1844.

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I shall send his letter on to Knoblauch3 for you to find when you arrive in Berlin as it contains some notices you may desire to have. Brief N. 3. From Schaeffer4 in Antwerp saying that colonel Haight had left a packet for you with Books & Pam[2] phlets. Haight is gone to New York and Schaeffer wants to know what he is to do with the parcel. His address is Messrs Agie & Co. Antwerp.5 Letter N. 4 from Toqueville, very affectionate, anxious to keep you in Europe, la veritable patrie de votre esprit &c – wants you to write for “Le commerce and to get some one in Germany for the same purpose I will save the letter carefully, but cannot copy it to day at any rate if this is still to reach you at Dresden. I cannot imagine how you can possibly remain only remain two days in Dresden, you have much to see there too. However I suppose you feel there is still much to be done before you leave Europe. Indeed I think with dread of our winters journey. Clara6 says: Mich wundert daß Onkel Franz das Reisen noch nicht satt ist. – Just now I said loud, I dont think after all I will send this letter to Dresden Frank left me a whole fortnight without a line. “Pfui said Clara from her Piano where she is practicing, pfui Tante du musst keine Rache üben gegen deinen netten Mann, schreibe du nur nach Dresden. – Our boys have been at home for a few days and are all quite well and happy. I too am well but I am getting rather fidgetty and uneasy, as the time draws near that we must think of our departure. I see very little of Adele, as they are all still in the country. – I shall leave this on the table while I am away on my visit to Schleiden perhaps Carry will feel inclined to add a line of love. Why should she not says Carry, how could she feel otherwise than inclined when her heart overflows with love and affection for her now away brother in law. To say the truth I was rather angry with my dear brother for leaving us so long without a line, poor Matty was getting very fidgetty I endeavoured to compose her mind in my way, ich kenne das said I to her, so sind die Männer, aus den Augen aus den Sinn, dein Herzens Franz hat gewiss in der Fremde manch angenehme Zerstreuung gefunden, welche ihm die Zeit verkürzt, und darüber vergisst er sein treues Weib, vergisst die Schwestern daheim welche 3 Carl Knoblauch, Berlin. 4 Hermann Schaeffer, partner of Charles Agie in the Antwerp based house Agie & Co. 5 Agie & Co. Antwerp, Banking House in Belgium, till 1823 David Parish, Agie & Co., 1823–1828 Agie, J. Insinger. 6 Clara Lomnitz, Hamburg.

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mit so ­inniger Liebe ihm zugethan sind, und so wenig bis jetzt von ihm gehabt so sehr kurze Zeit seine Gesellschaft genoßen haben; eigentlich ist es eine Grausamkeit, die Zeit will so schnell vorüber, auch ich mag garnicht an die Trennung denken theurer Franz, die liegt mir Zentnerschwer aufs Herz, komm nur bald zu uns zurück there’s a dear creature, and let us spend some happy merry days together und lass uns die Gegenwart nicht durch trübe unfreundliche Gedanken für die Zukunft [3] stöhren. Could we but keep you all here, what a comfort it would be! It is such a sweet soothing consolation to have those who are nearest and dearest to us within reach of us! All is well with us thank God! We are grown famous pedestrians since our return home and take a great deal of exercise with the young ones; the weather has been very fine lately, but I fear there is an end to it, for today it is pouring with vengeance. There comes Matty with the boys, so I will bid adieu. God bless you my dear Frank, and conduct you soon and safe into our arms. Ever your loving Carry. – I am very much disappointed dearest Frank, for I can not get any young man; how that sounds; no but seriously. Dr Werne Schleiden had heard of his friend in Braunschweig Wolfenbüttel Herrn Collaborator R Koch in Wolfenbüttel is the address, he had spoken to five candidates in Braunschweig who had at first given hopes but afterwards declined, the last who had considered some time, a very fine young man, gave it up because his parents would not consent but recommended at the same time another of whom Mr Koch however knows nothing. this other person is Candidat Gravenhorst in Delligsen im Braunschweigischen. Now I think Frank you ought to write yourself to Mr Koch. Schleiden has promised to do his best but you cannot expect him to exert himself in a matter in which he has not the slightest interest and being himself so full of business. To day when I was there he could scarcely speak to me he had so much to do. Therefore pray write yourself. You could have the answer sent to Knoblauch.7 Braunschweig and Göttingen seem to be the two sources and you will have to put yourself in correspondence with people there and afterwards to go yourself for I do not see what I can do, knowing so few persons. I confess that I begin to feel very uneasy, for what are we to do if we do not find a suitable person. This friend of Dr. Schleiden interests himself only out of kindness to Schleiden and it being for a third person of course he will not take such pains. He said in his letter which Schleiden read to him me. That he is no longer quite 7 Carl Knoblauch, Berlin.

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as capable of finding the candidates, da er ihnen im Alter schon mehr entrückt ist. – I went in such good hope that some one had been found, and have returned home quite sad. – I will copy our boys testimonies in our next letter. This one I wish to send off at once, and I have no doubt you will get it yet in Dresden. – Do you make a point of telling all persons you meet with and who [4] might be supposed to know of individuals, suitable for us, how anxious we are? As you travel along, you should make your inquiries. If there is no other means you ought to have something inserted in the papers, for how little time now remains. My dear husband pardon me if I disturb you a little by my anxieties. I can not help it. – I send you my best best love, my thoughts are with you almost constantly. and I shall bless the hour when I may press you again to my heart, infact we all love you, wife sisters children and we shall be happy when we have you again amongst us. Fare well my love, and write soon to your own wife. – We have no news from the West Indies. Good news from England and – rain here. Adieu Towards the end of this month then we may see you [cross-writing] Caroline has excellent friends, very nice people in Dresden. Fritz Tode and family, dear friends from her Manchester days who will receive you very kindly if you merely say you are her brother in law & if you do call you must give Carolines best love to Mrs Tode & say she has long been wishing to hear from her. Adieu sweet love. Herrn Prof. Franz Lieber Poste restante Dresden Franco Stamp Hamburg 2. OCT Stamp 6 Oct + sealing wax

No. 87 Francis Lieber, Dresden, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 07.10.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4816, ALS, 4 pages Yester-day I sent a letter. I forgot to tell you that my friend Förster and myself did all we could in Munic to find a lithographer to have my portrait drawn at once on stone and printed, so that I might have left my phiz with my friends. He is acquainted with all artists and himself one. But all were out of town. He advises me to have it done in Hamb. but I fear it will be too dear there. I will see, Dresden, Monday, October 7(?) 1844 My dearest wife, last night at about 7 o’clock I arrived here from Prague by steamboat on the beautiful Elbe. I had not been able to leave Vienna as soon as I had hoped, the mail not going every day. This morning I went at once to the post office and found your letter for whh I thank you many times. I came here with a lighter heart, partly owing, I dare say, to the simple fact that I was conscious, I had left at last abominable Austria, that is to say, blessed Austria so far as God has made it, but as for the government, and the manner a person must live there! Ah, my God! How fearfully shocking, how rebellious against thy will! The people are Kind-hearted and I have become acquainted with officers and persons of character, to whom I had letters – as true hearted souls and nobleminded Germans as there live. I will tell you much. But I was saying that I felt lighter-hearted than usual. Your letter, dear and sweet Matilda has made me graver – sadder, for it is written in low spirits. My dear sweat heart, never forget, what you so well know that your courage, your hope, is indispensable for me. You know how many hopes been blasted, how I still have not that which is given to far, far the greater number before they have reached their thirtieth year – a future, a settled view before them, for their wives and children [2] you Know how this at times presses me down. But you must support – must cheer me. As to the teacher, you Know, that I have given up Italy and Scotland, on that account, to do all I can to get one. I have always feared to put anything in the papers, for one would get such a mass of worthless applications. Perhaps I must do it. I will see in Berlin. Strange I did not write to you in my last from Vienna that one of the chief reasons why I did not go Venice, was because I felt actually tired of enjoying alone, without you. How often I thaught of you in that amazing Munic. That would be indeed an enjoyment if one of these days we were ultimately settled and I would go through those temples of the arts with my beloved wife! Were it but here in Dresden! Ah, my Matilda, this

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morning I went through this gallery, in which you Know I was lead by Raphael into the gates of the fine arts, where I received die Weihe when a student at Jena, and so poor that I lived here in the suburbs and upon plumbs. I had never seen a good picture, never inspected the beautiful, born as I am even in a place, destitute even of all beauty of nature. I saw the Madonna di Sisto – I gazed, I stared, I wept and stood three hours before that picture. Think then how my heart beat to-day again, when I went to that same gallery, I found it and – shall I confess it? My eyes swam again. It remains the greatest picture I Know of.1 It I was pleased too, to find, that all the pictures [3] I than loved most and from which I received the deepest impression, are still to my mind the best, though I have since lived a year in Rome and have seen nearly all the best galleries, so that my preference, my attachment was not owing to any adventitions unessentials. Enough of the pictures. I shall remain here until the day after to-morrow or Thursday morning. Then to Berlin – then, oh! to you all. Do you Know what Bunsen means by: Lesen Sie das Leben Arnold’s? Dr. Arnold, a highly distinguished writer who lately died in England, but whom I have never Known, directly or indirectly, speaks in several of his letters very favorably of me. I Know it, because an Englishman, with whom I dined in Berlin, showed it to me.2 Tocqueville loves me really, I Know it. Tell Oscar that I count for certain upon some bav’s by the time I return. And tell ll the three boys, having taken them into room together, that I love them most ardently, and pray to God to make them good, clever and dear boys. And all and every one of them must give a good example to the others. Tell the other boys and girls that I anticipate the greatest pleasure of seeing them again. I thank Clara3 for having prevented you from taking Revenge upon me. She is a good and wise girl. Caroline I donot thank for having comforted you ‘in her own way’ as she calls it. I donot forget my Matilda. Hart could not have said this, could you Hart? Still, I cant help it, I love Carry dearly. But pray Matilda, let them not buy things for me. It embarrasses me. – I have seen here Frau von Decken, to whom I had a letter from Mrs Hassel. 1 Sixtinische Madonna/Sistine Madonna, painting by Raffaello Santi in 1512–1513, oil on canvas, 256 × 196 cm, originally part of an altar of the monastery San Sisto in Piacenza, since 1754 in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. 2 Mr. Ward, an English lawyer, Lieber had met in Berlin, August 2, 1844. See Mack/Mack, eds., Like a Sponge, p. 53. 3 Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz.

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[4] She too told me – of course unasked – that Hassel4 has committed bad things here. But, of course, this remains strictly entre nous. She told me also that the letter I once wrote to Retzsch, gave him the utmost joy. He read my letter to her. I shall see him to-morrow at her house. They Know Ticknors’ too. Good bye my love, good bye to all of you. You are right in sending Varrentrapps letter to Berlin! It is very important there for me. Let me find it by all means. It res rains so, that although but 4 o’clock it is so dark that I must conclude. Have you not often thought of our house,5 if we could but have it in a better country – oh that Slavery and Oscar! I love you fervently. I love all of you. Have you written to Fanny Longfellow? Ever your true Frank Mad. F. Lieber p. Addr. Mad. E. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade Hamburg Stamp faded + stamp DRESDEN 8. Oct 44 + sealing wax

4 Maria von Hassell and her husband, count of Hassell, Columbia/SC. 5 Their residence on the Horseshoe, campus of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC.

No. 88 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Berlin, 09.10.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5102, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg the 9th of October You did not then receive my second letter to Vienna it was directed as the first one to that merchant house I forget the name now. This moment my sweet Frank, I receive your letter from Dresden, it is a dear letter and has done my heart good for I have lattely wanted a little comfort. You know when one lives quietly without sufficient occupation, or diversion thoughts will sometimes come to torment one, but it is all over now, I am happy again, happy in the anticipation of seing my beloved one soon, and I should deeply regret if my last letter gave you uneasiness or disturbed you in your enjoyment. I believe this was not the case, to judge from your letter it was not for there was a tinge of delight and satisfaction through the whole, truly comforting to me. Ah, I can fancy your feelings in seeing again those lovely works of art which first made an impression on your soul never to be effaced. I am only surprised that you found three days sufficient for Dresden, or is it that you are now anxious to return to take those steps which are necessary to procure a teacher and that you could not do anything for it while travelling about? and also that you do sometimes long for your own wife a bit. Dear Frank, I thank you for your love, nor could I exist without it, I cannot tell you how unsatisfactory to me my days pass when I am seperated from you, though I am now with my dear sisters whom I love so tenderly and who are so constant in their kindness, I never the less feel a constant void; my days pass away and each one seems unfinished for my Franz does not seal it with a kiss, a blessing from his dear lips. I have not sufficient to exert myself for, I miss my own active life; Never mind all will soon be well again for I shall press my own one to my arms and tell him that he is my joy, my life, my glory! Heaven bless him. And never despond, we [2] shall be happy yet and have a peaceful home of our own, where we can finish our days, and see our boys succeed in the world. All will be bright and joyful. Let us trust and hope! Our Oscar though he is not quite what we expected is yet a fine boy with an affectionate excellent disposition and a sound understanding. Under his fathers eye his desire to apply himself will increase, for you will teach him how to connect. Your conversation will rouse him. Oscar has not been in good hands. Let him come to you and see if he will not be your boy again, with an active and intelligent mind. School is a good thing for boys,

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but not school alone; there must be the affection of the mother and the father besides to make a boy what he should be. Oscar with his disposition required this peculiarly. He requires it now, and he shall have it, with the help of God for whose blessing for our dear children I pray. - For Hamilton and Norman it is a great pity that they must be taken from school, for I see that they are in excellent hands and that the routine is just the thing for them. They explain so thoroughly everything, it is not mere getting by heart. - Master Hamilton has been rather naughty at home lately. A good deal of obstinacy has made its appearance and given me some hard work. He does not know how to submit patiently, and requires a strong hand and a strong mind to govern him. To day and yesterday he has been better and I hope now we shall get on together. Dear Norman has a cold again and does not look as well as when we first returned from Travemünde. Could you perhaps get a chance of speaking to Schönlein about his eyes. You could say that he sees equally with both eyes, that it is the right eye which is most desposed to fall and that it has [3] every appearance of a weakness probably in connection with the stomach. That his appetite, his spirits, his sleep, though light is generally good, that we think he has worms, and have given him medecine for it without however seeing any particular effect. That he has this weakness now about three years; that when he is very animated there is no idea of a squint, but when tired or uninterested it is almost always there. Sweet child, for that he is, he has a loveable disposition, would that he could be cured. Is it of any use to talk with a physician in Berlin about Theodores case. We can not immagine why we do not hear at all from that quarter; remittances ought to come but they do not, nor do they write. James has not heard either. James and Emma1 are quite well so are all friends here. Carry and I accompany the children every morning across the Wall to school, and we find the exercise very good for our health. Caroline & Hart andre well, the children have almost all colds, but not to prevent them from going to school. To night too there is a great pleasure in anticipation for them. We mean to take the whole of them to the Theatre and I have even allowed Oscar to come home and be of the party. They shall tell you how they have amused themselves, I expect it will be grand Oscar & Ned go in the pit, the rest of us together eight children what a hallo they will make, Mr Ripley from Philadelphia shows himself with his two little boys in wonderful feats of 1 James and Emma Oppenheimer, Manchester.

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strength and graceful agility Dr Julius2 leaves Hamburg for Berlin on Saturday the day after to morrow and will bring you a little parcel of letters such as I immagine you may wish to see, he has been very kind and called upon me several times and speaks very graciously of my lord and master; trusting that you may be kept in Prussia by the King. I have made more inquiries here about the tutor business, but they all tell me it will be difficult. Die Zahl der Theologie Studirenden hat sehr abgenommen, und darum haben Theologen bessere Aussichten. Hope for the best [4] And now goodbye my darling, I want to run to see Adele who has been in town several days without my having a peep at her, I wanted to give her time to get settled but now she will begin to wonder why I remain away – Carry and Hart send their very best love and look forward with delight to see you again – nice Frank. Carry got quite frightened your saying so much for her not to get you any thing, she has in fact only got a little trifle in Travemünde and one little thing here. I do not hurry you from Berlin, remain while it is of use to you. But glorious the day of our meeting again. glorious, glorious. There are no children at home now but they all love you. Kind remembrance to all dear friends Your affectionate wife [cross-writing, 4] I have not written to Fanny3 what can I write from here. You must write with all your fine subjects. Herrn Gh. Finanzrath Knoblauch für Herrn Franz Lieber Berlin Stamp HAMBURG 10. OCT Stamp 12/10 + sealing wax

2 Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius. 3 Fanny Appleton Longfellow.

No. 89 Francis Lieber, Berlin, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 15.10.1844 THL Box 34 LI 4817, ALS, 4 pages My loved Matilda Berlin, th. October 1844 Tuesday On Saturday noon I arrived here and found your kind letter. I thank You for it and for the few lines which Julius1 braught me. I have not yet seen Matilda B. I went there for the first time this noon after I had carried the last sheet of my Fragments, written on my journey, to the copyist, but she was out.2 The whole of Sunday I dictated to poor Ernst,3 whom I had prepared by letter. I had brougt Leipzic larks with me, which we had roasted. They and a bottle of Hock made a very good bachelor’s dinner. Gustavus4 dropped in and remained for dinner. Yesterday, Ernst came again at seven in the evening and wrote until midnight. This morning we began at ½ past six, but he could not remain later than 9 o’clock. A part still remained to be written, so I went to Knoblauch and dictated to Herman5 for an hour and a half. I then went to pay a few visits saw Marcus Niebuhr, went to Savigny and now write to my good and sweet wife. It is five o’clock and as I have taken nothing since six this morning I must soon leave her to get something to eat, for at seven I go to see Torquato Tasso, which is performed in the concert room of the theatre where I also saw on Sunday evening Tiek’s Gestiefelten Kater, which it was impossible for me to sit out.6 It was the merest bore. I also carried on Monday a note to Uden, the Gh Cabinetsrath when I was last here, and who was very friendly to me. He has become minister of Justice in the mean time. I found him out, but his wife promissed to hand him my lines. To-day he has gone to the King at Potsdam, and may bring me an order to-morrow. – Ach Jott Sie jlauben nich wie des Sie des Intresse [2] von alle von uns haben, von des Freilein un von jeden, said this moment the cook to me who lighted my candle. NB. she is about 45 years old with a depressed ridge of the saddle of the nose and “des Freilein” is about 55 or 60. But 1 Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius. 2 Franz Lieber, Bruchstücke über Gegenstände der Strafkunde, besonders über das Eremitensystem, von Franz Lieber, Professor in den Vereinigten Staaten, Johann Wichern Das Rauhe Haus, Hamburg Hamm 1845. 3 Ernst Lieber, son of Eduard Lieber in Züllichau, nephew of Francis Lieber, Berlin. 4 Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. 5 Hermann Knoblauch, son of Carl Knoblauch, Berlin. 6 Torquato Tasso, play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Der gestiefelte Kater, comedy by ­Ludwig Tieck, first performance Berlin 20.4.1844. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_091

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there is a very pretty house-maid, a Saxon girl; though she hardly ever comes into my room. I have this time a very fine room in a new house. Ernst got it for me. It is on the corner of the Gens’ d’armen Plaz.7 – I wish anxiously, to hear from Porto Rico. God grant I find news when I shall press You all to my beating heart. Tomorrow I shall go again to Neander to see whether I ought to put something in the papers. I have thaught of writing to Brandes too. I found here also a letter from my Russian Excellencies at Warsaw. Odd acquaintance that. Julius8 I have not yet seen. Anne Keibel’s deafness increases continually. It is very hard. So young and lively a girl, who feels it so bitterly thus to be shut out from society. I have read the passage of Your letter resp. Norman to Gustavus,9 who will yet speak with other physicians yet. He thinks an operation may be necessary, but one of the simplest kind. I donot fear it much, but I donot trust that operation either very much. He thinks however that it must be nervous weakness either of the muscle, when operation would do good, or of the whole system, when it would dono good. And my stomach says: stop, or rather my reason says thou oughtest to eat, for I feel no appetite. Good bye to all of You. Oh Caroline, You would have been jealous had you been my wife, would ­Harriet? Look at Matilda, who knows it not. Does she? – I had [3] a letter from Fräulein von Bornstädt,10 written by some one else and only signed by her, evedently fearing my coming, for I had written to her to let me find a note at Dresden, and if she were at Ballenstädt or Berenburg I would go to see her before I proceeded to Berlin. But I found the letter only here. It is a very strange thing and almost regret having made my offers. Good bye to all the dear children. Do they remember me? How is Oscar? Write me soon, pray; there is a good wife. – Be so kind to ask Cantoor11 what a sack of thick blonce cloth for me would cost at Hamb. I must have such things, also a double breasted waistcoat of some warm scottish stuff. Perhaps they are cheeper here. 7

8 9 10 11

Gendarmenmarkt, large square in Berlin Friedrichstadt, several times remodelled; Lieber knew the version of 1773 plus the addition of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The famous architect had added the Royal Theater in 1821. Lieber still used the name Gens’darmes that recalls the genuine usage of the place which had housed the stalls of the Royal infantry of Friedrich Wilhelm I. from 1736 onwards. Dr. phil. Julius Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Züllichau. Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, brother of Francis Lieber, Berlin. THL Box 3 LI 973, Marie von Bornstedt, Ballenstedt, to Francis Lieber, 11.10.1844. Nickname of Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz.

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But You ought to write me about this in Your next. Louisa12 has made me a pair of slippers; a pity I cannot have them made here for I left those Carry gave me at Vienna. Those, a nightshirt and a white kerchief is all I have lost. I beg Carry’s pardon. But have I not the cegar box, the pocket book and the dear girls pencil, which has served me as a most faithful friend during my whole journey. It is a dear token. But now I must really conclude. Good bye sweet love. Kiss my boys, but really. – Wednesday morning. I went to see Torquato Tasso. Old Mrs Crelinger played the princess finely. I will finish now this letter now, because before I go to Uden, because my whole day will be occupied brimful to the last minute, and I will not detain the lines beyond the day. In my next You will hear about Thiele, King &c. at least I think so. But I warn you not to be surprized if after all wh that has preceeded the whole should end in a very thin and insignificant thread. Not that I have any particular reason to say so, but I I am accustomed to these things. I am, at first abord, interesting, because coming from America, but that edge wears off. However we shall see. I have just written a line to Marcus Niebuhr’s wife,13 sending her a flower I braught from my benefactor’s grave at Bonn.14 Knoblauch will be here at [4] half past nine to take me to the Exhibition of Industry.15 – This moment S­ avigny sent his card and word that every evening after nine I should be most welcome in his family circle. There is a sensible invitation. Generally people here tell one they maybe seen at half past eight in the morning, or some such barbarous hour. I shall dine to-day with Bornemann – whom every one expected to be 12 13 14

15

Louisa Lieber, sister in law of Francis Lieber. Anna von Niebuhr née von Wolzogen. The grave of Barthold Georg Niebuhr; Niebuhr, the scholar and Prussian ambassador in Rome had come to the rescue of Francis Lieber, when the young freedom fighter in 1822 had arrived pennyless and hungry at his Roman doorsteps. Niebuhr had employed Lieber as tutor for his young son Marcus Niebuhr. Carl Knoblauch; probably they visited the Allgemeine Deutsche Gewerbe-Ausstellung. The exposition had openend on August 15, 1844 in Berlin in the Zeughaus, Unter den Linden. 3040 exhibitors attracted 260.000 visitors. The event was organized by the Prussian government to provide the members of the German Zollverein a stage, “um “dem gesammten deutschen Vaterland” “von den Fortschritten des Kunst- und Gewerbefleisses seiner Bewohner Rechenschaft zu geben.” See Leonore Koschnick, Die vaterländische’ GewerbeAusstellung (Berlin 1844), Auszug aus Ausstellungskatalog Gründerzeit 1848–1871. Industrie & Lebensträume zwischen Vormärz und Kaiserreich, Berlin 2008, S. 54–55, in: PressglasKorrespondenz 2008 URL pressglas-korrespondenz.de (25.2.2016).

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Minister of Justice instead of Uden, at Knoblauch’s, and an old Duzbruder of mine, at Knoblauchs.16 I really think I shall not be able to see Matilda17 to-day which seems very unkind, but surely only seems so. – A propos, I forgot to tell you that I find my Fragments on penologic subjects good, they fit close to the subject, in short I am conscious they are good, but – whether they are for a royal reader.18 – ­Knoblauch19 comes this moment and so I will conclude. Good bye dear ones of my heart. Your Frank This very moment Albert Baur brings me the direction of a young man who might go with us. Aus dem Brief Kasten Mad. F. Lieber durch Mad. E. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade Hamburg Stamp Berlin 16/10 1-2 Stamp Hamburg 18/10 7-8 M 16 Carl Knoblauch. 17 Mathilde Benecke. 18 Lieber, Bruchstücke über Gegenstände der Strafkunde. 19 Carl Knoblauch.

No. 90 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Berlin, 15.10.1844 Included: testimony on behalf of Heinrich Holbeck by A. Schlettwein, Bandelstorf July, 1844 Included: testimony on behalf of Heinrich Holbeck by Otto Crabbe, Rostock 05.10.1842 Included: testimony on behalf of Heinrich Holbeck by Dr. G. Wiggers, Rostock 14.08.1844 Included: copy of a letter by Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5103, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg the 15th of October 1844 I write again so soon my dearest Frank, because a young man has made himself known to me who wishes to go with us in the capacity of teacher to our boys. I like his appearance although he is not at all good looking, he is extremely small for instance, and diminutive, but he has a good expression kind and unassuming. Of his abilities of course I am unable to judge and indeed I have told him I could say nothing until you come. Uncle Jacob came to me on sunday and told me he believed he had found a person who would suit us. It was a young man who had been for a short time in the house of his son1 in Mecklenburg as teacher to his children. They however were too young and he thought he was not doing justice to himself if he continued to employ all his time to their education, the children were only 5 & 6 years old. He had therefore left and was willing to accept the proposal which Uncle made him in our name, provided we were satisfied with his capacities. It was a mere matter of chance that he came to Uncle, he had brought some books which he still had, belonging to the little boys. - Uncle told him he had better call upon me, which he did yesterday and this morning he returned for the sake of showing me some of his papers and testimonials. Before he went to Uncle’s son he had been the tutor of the three sons of a “Gutsbesitzer. Herr Schlettwein Bandelsdorf bei Rostock; who uncle tells me is a very trustworthy man. There he had been upwards of two years and when he left the eldest boy was thirteen years old and the father was going to place the children at a school. The testimony which he received from this man who has himself studied – he showed it to me in the original but gave me a copy – is the following. Der Cand. Theol. Herr Heinrich Holbeck aus Flensburg hat von Neujahr 1842 bis Ostern 1844 hieselbst als Hauslehrer bei meinen drei Söhnen fungiert, und der 1 Richard Moritz Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, Gross Wüstenfelde, Mecklenburg.

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[2] wissenschaftlichen Ausbildung derselben mit gutem Erfolge, so wie der sonstigen Aufsicht über sie mit musterhafter Gewissenhaftigkeit vorgestanden. Mit Vergnügen ertheile ich dieses der Wahrheit gemässe Zeugniss und wünsche dem Herrn Holbeck zu seinem weitern Fortkommen Glück und Segen. -­ Bandelsdorf bei Rostock im Juli, 1844. A Schlettwein. He has studied in Kiel & Rostock. His other testimonials are these from the Prof. of Theol. in Rostock. “Herr Heinrich Peter Holbeck, aus Flensburg gebürtig, trat um Michaelis 1841 in das homiletisch-katechetische Seminarium hiesiger Universität ein, aus welchem er um Neujahr 1842 ausschied, da er eine Hauslehrerstelle antrat. Gerne bezeuge ich ihm, dass er in der homiletischen Section des Seminars, welche ich leite, während dieser Zeit alle seine Obliegenheiten erfüllt hat. Otto Crabbe. Rostock den 5ten Oct. 1842. Doctor und ordentlicher Prof. der Theolo. sowie Universit. Prediger ---Dass der Cand. der Theol. Herr Heinrich P. Holbeck aus Flensburg von ­Michaelis 1841 bis Neujahr 1842 Mitglied des unter meiner Leitung stehenden Katechetischen Seminars gewesen sei, und an den Uebungen desselben mit gewissenhaftem Fleisse und gutem Erfolge, Theil genommen habe, bezeuge ich hiedurch, und wünsche diesem durch ernstes Streben und christlich religiöse Richtung ausgezeichneten Manne den reichsten Segen in seiner fernern Laufbahn. Dr G. Wiggers Rostock den 14 Aug. 1844 Grossherzogl. Mecklenburgischer Consistorialrath und Prof. der Theologie. As to his knowledge, he speaks with confidence of the ancient languages, French he knows gramatically but not to speak; he knows English a little but only what he has taught himself as he felt an interest to compare it with the Danish. Arithmetic, Geometrie & all that he undertakes confidently, Mathematics also, but he has never made these his principal studies – Religions Unterricht, history, geography, natural history, all that of course; drawing also a little, but no music. He has made no Examination yet: he had intended [3] to devote himself to the Schulwesen. He likes the occupation so fond of children, and appears to me strictly “gewissenhaft”. He is willing to subject himself to any examination you may wish. Has no relations, appears to stand alone in

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the world; I suppose him poor and therefore glad to better his prospects – This is all I can tell you of him, Caroline has seen him also and says he has a good face, but regretted too his very small stature fearing that it might have an influence in not gaining proper respect from the boys – On the whole I am favorably inclined for he has not any of that disagreable selfsufficiency which so many of the young men have; he is rather bashful but has not bad manners. I dont want a handsome one at any rate or a worldly man, to be ruined immediately and taken off from his duties by such as Mrs Ellet. - I believe that this man would devote himself to his occupation whether he has sufficient knowledge or routine of course I can not know. - He will wait until you come here which I told him I believed would be in about a fortnight. I also told him I would let him know immediately should you in the interval have made any engagement, therefore if this is the case write to me immediately that he may not be in an unnecessary suspense. - Shall I soon receive a letter from you my dear friend I suppose you have received the parcel of which Dr Julius took charge. - Children and wives all are anxious to embrace you again. Did you go to see the handsome ­Marie2 and her duchess or did you not hear from them and therefore go direct to B ­ erlin. - Nothing has happened here since I last wrote to you; Only that ­Oscar was at home on sunday and went with me to see his old schoolmaster Dr Busse, who found him very much grown since he had seen him [4] In the evening I took him to the play to see the little Philadelphians, as he had not received my invitations when we all went together and was disappointed, getting it when it was too late. Today he sent me a little note for you. “My dearest father, I was very glad to hear that you will soon be here, for in three weeks we hope to see you. I have also got something to surprise you with. - You know we act a play at our school, it is to be Czaar and Zimmerman. I am going to be general Lefort.3 – On the 29th of Sept. we received a new teacher, a very friendly man; it is true he is more like one of our mates than a master: we made an admirable change for the other one was not half so nice. Now it begins to be pretty cold and I can see my breath here where I am writing this – Give my love to all uncles and aunts. Your most loving son. Oscar. Oscars halbjährliche Censur. sittliches Betragen im Allgemeinen - : recht gut. 2 Marie von Bornstedt, Ballenstedt/Anhalt. 3 Zar und Zimmermann, opera by Albert Lortzing, first performance Leipzig 1837. General ­Lefort is the role of the Russian ambassador (Bass voice).

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Besondere Bemerkungen - : gegen die Mitschüler leicht empfindlich Ordnung u Regelmäßigkeit - : ziemlich Insbesondere in seinen Büchern - : ebenfalls Die Schule nicht besucht - : 6 Tage. Nachdenken, Ernst u Fleiss bei in den Stunden - : könnte oft regere Thätigkeit entwickeln Fleiß bei den schriftlichen Arbeiten - : sind merklich besser geworden Fleiß beim Auswendig lernen - : nicht immer gehörig fleißig Auszeichnungen für Fleiß - : 21 Zu wiederholende mangelhafte schriftl Arbeiten – 8 Fortschritte bis aufs französische gut. Auch fürs Latein zeigt er mehr Interesse. This is certainly a great deal better than last half year, and although there is a good deal still to be wished [cross-writing, 1] for yet I think we may be pleased for I believe they are strict – in the last half years testimony he had 40 mangelhafte Arbeiten to do over again in this one 8. Goodbye dearest write soon please to your own wife love to all Herrn Prof Franz Lieber pr. Ad. des Herrn Gh. Finanzrath Knoblauch In Berlin Stamp HAMBURG 16. OCT Stamp 18/10 + sealing wax

No. 91 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Berlin, 19.10.-22.10.1844 THL Box 54 LI 5104, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg the 19th of October Saturday Yesterday, my dearest soul, I received my-your first Berlin letter, second series and I liked it so much. It was the 18th of October and we had all our boys at home, Oscar excepted poor Carry had one of her bad headaches, and Sister Hart and I took all the boys out, Carry laid on the Sopha and I left her your letter to comfort her, but I do not know whether it had any effect. We in the mean time were cought in the rain, took refuge in a gentlemans summer house in one of those beautiful gardens on the Alster which you know from the day of our boat excursion. Seated there, Emil took out his pocketbook and wrote down the events of our walk. “Eicheln gesammelt, Magareth soll uns Eichelcaffé machen. Ein Knabe zu Pferde der sehr schön Englisch reitet, ein anderer zu Esel, - wir schüzen uns vor dem Regen in einem niedlichen Gartenhause; Tante Jette nimmt uns nacher zum Becker und kauft uns Kuchen, which he wrote and afterwards showed aunt Jette, endeavoring to obtain her sanction, but it would’nt do. - After a while we left our retreat, it rained harder, our bonnets fortunately had the advantage of parasols, Matildita and Clarita had a little umbrella between them, as I walked behind them I was entertained by the manner in which they took up their frocks merely in imitation of their elders, for theirs are made almost up to the knees originally, the boys each and all of them in their Düffels were guarded sufficiently.1 Apropos of Düffels or sacs whatever you may call them; you ask and indeed I would not have written today had I not wished to give you the necessary information – whether it would be better to procure such an article here or in Berlin, that I know not. Edward2 says from 15 to 20 Prussian dollars you can get a nice one made by Gross and as he suited you so well with your waitscoats Ned advises you to wait with that until you come here. Such a double breasted scotch winter waistcoat [2] would cost about 8 Prussian dollars. You must then do what you think proper, which I suppose you would at any rate; of course you must have such a sac, and I should think you must need it already for it is very cold morning and evening and your cloak must look pretty bad by this time. It depends also upon how 1 Düffel = Dufflecoat = duffel coat, cloak made of heavy woolen cloth with toggle locks. 2 Edward = Ned = Cantour= Edward Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_093

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long you will be detained in Berlin, and what kind of taylors you have there. Carry looked over my shoulder a little while ago and exclaimed: what exageration, calling him dearest soul! No Frank it is not exagerated, are you not my life, my soul, the dearest treasure of my heart? Ah, and how that heart longs for you. It is a long time since we parted, and yet not longer than I am doomed to be seperated from you almost every year. - Ah, when will the time come when we can live together, quietly and peaceable. - I have nothing new to tell you, we spent an evening with Adela – she was to have come here to day to walk out with us to aunt Minna, but she did not come. How very strange of Marie de Bornstedt; what can she mean by such conduct. - Saying of Matildita, begging aunt Caroline for something in which several of the children were interested. „Wir stehen hier wie arme Verbrecher und beten dir an. Ich beuge mich und berühre den Saum von dein Kleid, wie Joseph – das haben wir in der biblischen Geschichte gehabt. - Goodbye for to day lovy. - I wander whether you liked Albrecht Bauers3 recomendation. I fear you will think my little man rather too much of a green horn, though he may indeed be very good, and suit us. Heaven only knows. And do you really think we can be here yet in December. How to get out of the Elbe, supposing it to be frozen? I have no idea what you mean to do? – N’ importe, I shall know all in good time. I am curious to hear of your interview with Thiele and the King.4 – I know if there is anything agreable you will let me know directly. I am glad you are pleased with your Fragments on penologic subjects.5 – What a comfort for you to have had Ernst6 [3] at your side, so you did not miss your wife, who by the bye has been rather worthless in that way of late. A queer thing to write such an essay in the midst of a journay, Paris, Munchen, Vienna and I dare say having your mind occupied in that way increased your enjoyment everywhere. The boys are all anxious to give you the ‘lezten’ again and not a day passes that I am not asked when you are coming. Norman has said some sweet things about you lately. He poor little fellow will miss his playmates here very much, for he likes gentle play with the little girls. Hamilton’s rough and tumble can be satisfied in Columbia too and as for Oscar he requires his fathers companionship now more than any other, I will keep this letter until Monday, I may find something to add by that time. 3 The name of Lieber’s cousin is Albert Baur, not Albrecht Bauer. 4 Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. 5 Lieber, Bruchstücke über Gegenstände der Strafkunde. 6 Ernst Lieber, nephew of Francis Lieber, Berlin.

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The little wafer with which your letter was fastened was not sufficient to hold it! You should be more careful, my love. Isn’t Neander the last person in the world to give advice, he is, you know ridiculously unpractical. - 22d. of Oct. I have waited a few days, my dearest Frank, thinking that perhaps I might have some thing or other worth communicating, but nothing has happened,* so you must be satisfied with this empty letter as it is. My dear one, I have been thinking – just now Caroline wanting to look over my shoulder, and, I not allowing it, she is mean enough to take away the inkstand right before my nose; what do you think of that, I desire you will punish her for it when you come. – Caroline and I have at lunch this morning while we were eating potatoes, communicated to each other a disappointment which we have both had. I will tell you what it is by & bye, or Carry can herself. It is very unpleasant! – Caroline sends her affectionate love to you, and has some sour Zwetschen and sweet kisses in store for you; you may chose which you like best. - I am asked, tediously often, when you are coming; just as we were asked about Oscar in America. Dearest Frank I have been thinking a good deal of our affairs and I should like to know confidently that you will be careful in not accepting any thing, of which you are not persuaded that it will render you happy. Many things might combine to mistify your judgement, friends; flattery, and our present situation * except that Herman7 went yesterday in search for a Düffel or sack with his mother Mrs Renner our washerwoman who bye the bye offers her services to you in this or any other way you may wish (she is a very fine looking woman) and got a real splendid one lined comfortably throughout with a silk velvet collar fine buttons, ready made on the Hamburger Berg for the small cost of 28 Mark courant, about 8 dollars American money. [4] in Columbia. But pray be careful, and let not the idea of any preference which I might give to the one or the other situation influence you in the least for you may feel convinced that your own happiness is the very first requisite for mine. Wherevery you are happy there I certainly shall feel contended. But you must remember what you do now will be for life. All I wish is that your judgement remain clear and unbiassed. My dear Frank, may Heaven guide you! Our dear children are well. We went to see Oscar on Sunday but did not find him at home. The whole school had gone to Rheinbeck8 to spend the day. Next sunday he will be at home. I had a note from him yesterday asking: will Papa be 7 Hermann Renner, son of the janitors of the Lomnitz household, Hamburg. 8 Village east of Hamburg, today Kreis Stormarn, Schleswig-Holstein/Germany.

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at home next Sunday? I have answered him. “Certainly not. - Uncle is gone to Mecklenburg for 8 or 10 days.9 I see but little of Adele she teaches her children and I can not go near her in the day time and in the evenings, I could not without the help of a Droschke. When you are here it will be easier. Give my best love to all. On our walk on sunday Hammy said. Sieh, welchen grossen Raum hat dieser Baum! Normy said. Ein Baum kann keinen Raum haben, er nimmt Raum ein, Das ist was andres. - Die Erde ist ein grosser R ∆ Once more I press you to my heart You Matilda Pray do not have one of the real so called sacks with out any shape at all. I think them dreadfully ugly and they are already out of fashion here. Herrn Prof. Franz Lieber durch Herrn Gh. Finanzrath Knoblauch in Berlin Stamp HAMBURG 22 OCT. Stamp 24/10 N 2 + sealing wax 9 Like many of his class, wealthy Hamburg merchant Jacob Oppenheimer owned an estate in the countryside of Mecklenburg; together with his brother Morris Jacob Oppenheimer had finally bought in 1829 Gut Groß Wüstenfelde in the neighborhood of Gottin, where their friend and Nienstedten neighbor, merchant Richard Parish – brother and uncle of George Parish/Ogdensburg – owned a manor. Jacob Oppenheimer’s son Moritz, former student of Johann Heinrich von Thünen managed the estate.

No. 92 Francis Lieber, Bremen+ Osnabrück + Düsseldorf, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 08.01.1845 Included: letter of Francis Lieber to Caroline Lomnitz THL Box 34 LI 4818, ALS, 4 pages Bremen, den 8ten Januar 1845 At 9 o’clock I arrived here my dearest Matilda, and sisters, I immediately went about to enquire for vessels and now at ½ p. 12 at noon sit down to write to you. In a quarter of an hour I shall set out for Osnabruck, again with the Omnibus as I came for per mail. I should have to pay a peat deal of over-weight. The coaches are very good. I feel heavy for the ship-broker to whom I was sent told me, and indeed gave a printed paper which I included, to show me that there will be a vessel for Baltimore on Baltimore Friday morning, January 10th. My own, dear Matilda, I was interrupted by the coach agent and obliged to start since then I have travelled the whole time, until 7 ½ this morning when I arrived here. I went to bed but could not sleep, so I read Peter Schlemiehl,1 but it did not put me to bed sleep either. I rose, made a thorough Toilette which I sadly stood in need of, as you may well imagine and now sit down to write to my Matilda. I meant to have written a very long letter, but if I mean to see the pictures here, as I [2] I think I ought to do, and start at 4 o’clock again, but very little time remains. I shall therefore also resign for to-day, to write to all the boys and girls, as I had intended. I went by this place in order to go to Ostend and not to Schevelingen2 for Gloystein had told me at Bremen that the embarcation at the latter place was some times connected with great difficulty, the steamboat not being able to come near to shore, and that I ought by no means to take that route. For myself I should have preferred for I like a little out of the way fun, but I thaught of you and the promise I had made to you and thus you see me here. Probably I shall go this afternoon to Viersen, and therefore not the straight road to Aix la Chapelle, to visit one of the most extensive Crefeldt Manufacturers, who gave me an invitation at Berlin at the time of the Exposition.3 I wish to compare 1 Peter Schlemiehl i.e. Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, novel by Adelbert von Chamisso, Nürnberg 1814. 2 Scheveningen/Netherlands. 3 He was decided to visit the Viersen entrepreneur Friedrich Diergadt, he had met at a dinner of his friend Carl Knoblauch in Berlin the year before.

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such a German concern with those at Lowell and other American establishments. My dear Matilda the ship broker at Bremen4 told me that almost to a certainty there would be no vessel direct for Charleston before the first of May, but there will be one for Baltimore on the 15th of March. Gloystein did not Know whether his vessel will go direct, but he will let you Know. This makes me sad, but my own sweet wife let us think of our happy meeting. I leave the whole matter to your choice, but think the best would be to take that to Baltimore. In that case however you ought to enquire (through Söhle and Gossler, who promissed and no doubt will do all they can) whither there be no vessel direct for baltimore the from Hamburg, which would be preferable. Whatever you do through Söhle. If you go by way of Baltimore pray write in time by steamboat to Ahrens that he receive you; I will also see him and speak to Brune to give you the necessary money. From Baltimore you go through direct to Charleston and you shall find a letter from me at Baltimore, informing you to what Hotel you had best to go &c. I shall also speak to Mr Lowndes. Your things ought to be packed so that clothing &c you can take fr Balt with you, but the rest ought to go round by water to Charleston, and I will [3] write to Ahrends (whose name I beg you to write in your next) to whom they ought to be directed. On the box of books please writ have written F. Lieber (for S.C. College) Columbia. They must not pay duty. Beg Söhle to arrange the money matters, either to pay passage here, in which case he shall have the money promptly back, or to satisfy the shipowners that they will be paid in America, e.g. through Messrs Brune throug with whom I will arrange matters. Schould matters turn out that you must go to N. York, I beg you to address yourself to my friend Ed. Whitehouse, partner of the firm Cammann, Whitehouse & comp, Wallstreet, to whom you had best write a note from on board. I will speak to him too about it, though I think it will be unnecessary. My own best wife – so far I have written dryly about this matter, in order to say all that is necessary, but my heart almost breaks. Could I but change it with any sacrifice. Yet it is impossible. Take courage, as you have so often done. When we see each other again all will be forgotten, and oh, how happy we shall be. My own, my best Matilda! Pray tell the sisters that Messrs ‚Gloystein Söhne’ at Bremen will always send parcels &c to Charleston if they write to them to send them direct to Messrs Herkenrath & Lowndes, Charleston S.C. My love and my life, my forgiving wife, I shall probably write to you once more fr. the Europ. C ­ ontinent if 4 Bremen Shipbroker Heinke, see Mack/Mack, eds., Like a Sponge, p. 100.

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I stop a day at Brugges, which I ought to do. I trust you have written on your letter to Hambro that it shall remain, lest they might actually send it back to you, not through whence it comes. Kiss my boys for me, and all the bevy of happy and good children to whom my heart feels most truly attached. I must tear myself from you. Give the vignettes to Hammy or Felix, and let Oscar read the article Poland in the Americana.5 Good bye my dear wife. Your true & faithful Frank. My dearest Caroline, I must come back once more to my harshness. I Know I said no harsh things, but I said spoke in a harsh tone, and it has haunted me on the whole journey. I write not to excuse but simply to ask you not to entertain the idea that for one solitary moment, I could have forgotten all the Kindness which you and Harriet have showered upon me and are still showering upon me. Oh no! Even while I spoke so harsh I thaught lively of it, and when I went into Edwards’ room, and leaned on the piano, I taught, here but a few days ago have lain all the kindly gifts, and now I speak so, yet, I was not yet calm. I had run about that morning so much and so unpleasantly and when I returned I thaught I was received instead of compassionately, rather with disapproving looks, &c &c – I say this [4] not to excuse but at least to explain. I shall only feel quite at ease when I have once more from you & H. a kind affectionate letter. May I expect one at in London? I cannot write about other things, my heart is yet too sore. To tear one’s self from wife, children and such a loving circle and roll on in winter night and day in a coach – it would try any man’s heart. I am prefectly well. My best to remembrance to all your family, especially to uncle Jacob. My sincere love to Harriett. My thanks for all you have done, and which tears choked at the moment of parting, but which I could not & cannot pronounce at any rate. Ever your affectionate Frank An Madam E. Lomitz 13 Esplanade Hamburg Stamp DÜSSELDORF 10/1 Stamp HAMBURG 13. Jan. 45 5 “Poland”, in: Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 10, Philadelphia 1832, pp. 201–212.

No. 93 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 14.02.1845 Included: letter of Caroline Lomnitz to Francis Lieber Included: letter of Clara Lomnitz to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5105, ALS, 4 pages  Hamburg the 14th Feb. 1845 This day week I wrote to you my own loved husband, and sent my letter via Havre since then I have received your dearest last letter from England, and my heart longs for you, I must write. How sweet of you, my own Frank to send all those dear little letters. You cannot imagine what joy you have given. The children are all so proud. What a scampering there was, what exclamations until each one had received its own, and Carry and Hart & I, & Clara1 too, the very sight brought tears into our eyes. God bless him who caused them. God bless my Frank! Would that I could give you as much pleasure as you have given to us, and cheer you in your solitude. But to day the children will not be able to write to you and I do not know whether our dear sisters will have time, only your wife, and her mind is not always at ease, so that perhaps some troubling thoughts will find their way on this paper and then trouble you again instead of bringing peace and joy to your heart. – We have just despatched our children to school, and such a scene as it was. It is a complete snow storm this morning, so that the boys after breakfast, music and the other requisites had been attended to, to Carrys satisfaction, equiped themselves putting all their pantaloons into their boots, turning up their colars and went off merrily facing the snow. And there comes Hart with her broom, Carry bustling with her key basket, Clara replacing Felix at the Piano, and Matildita Clara, until it is time for the little girls to go too, & then there are overshoes to be got, handkerchiefs to be tied round the mouth, and in the midst of this new bustle Hanchen makes her appearance, or rather she is suddenly seen at her work on her seat without any one knowing how she got there. Ah now if our Frank were sitting yet at Felix desk, cigar, morning gown, never mind how unshaved, oh, what a day we would have of it. – Frank dearest, how we would coax, love you; why can it not be! – I was disturbed, first I dressed myself for fear the doctor should come and find me in my old brown gown, then my dressmaker came and tried me on a new merino dress which I believe will suit you, dear Frank, and now I return to you. I must tell you something of Caroline; she is very much tormented by two misterious visitors who the one or the other have been calling every day this last fortnight, asking after her and when the boy says, she is not at home, they run off in a most crazy manner, or when he says she is poorly they ex1 Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg.

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press their deep regret and promise to come again the next day, which they invariably do. They are dressed pretty genteely with quite a nice cloak, and to day the misterious stranger N. 2 told the boy that he supposed his mistress thought he was a beggar, but it was not so, he lived opposite and needs must talk to her, so he will come again to morrow. Carry is so sorry the gentlemen did not make their appearance when you were here, she thinks you would have known how to manage them. The next time Hart & I will go down together and see what can be done. Carry is very much annoyed at it. Oh, how it snows to day; we have had very severe weather lately, and yesterday evening coming home from Mrs Arning where we had spent the evening, it was really painfully cold. Herman2 led the way with the little dark lantern which I had seen last in your hands. We had but a sorry evening of it, so much talk of servants and house keepers and cheap purchases. My heart was too full to take any part in such topics, and when after a while Adela asked something about my concerns, out came some foolish tears. Say Frank is it not sad that I should cross the Atlantic five times3 and every time without you? The uncertainty, and at the same time the anxiety to be with you soon again, makes my mind extremely uneasy. I had [2] written a few lines to Gossler4 and on Saturday he came to see me in the evening, when I asked him many questions. He advises me strongly to go from here to New York in preference to from Bremen to Baltimore for I should get as quickly from New York to Baltimore as I should from here to Bremen besides its being more troublesome with the luggage, which can be sent on by water from N.Y. which would make it but one change therefore always preferable. The vessels from Bremen are allmost always filled with emigrants disagreable at any rate and particularly bad in case of any accident. The regular Packetships from Hamburg he tells me are comfortable, arranged for cabin passengers, and he strongly advises me to go with one of them if nothing offers direct to Charleston; but he will be on the look out for me all the time. He does not think I shall be able to get away until the end of March or the beginning of April, and that is what makes me so sad for we could scarcely be at home before the middle of May and then we have only six weeks before we must move again – and where are we to go to? It will give you a great deal of trouble to find suitable lodgings 2 Hermann Renner, servant in the Lomnitz household, Hamburg. 3 1829, 1839, 1840, 1844, and the fifth time on her return to the USA in 1845. 4 Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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for us, for we cannot do with less than three good rooms, and how hot it will be already for our poor teacher and the boys when we arrive, they have no time to become gradually used to the climate. Could we come earlier, all would be different. These thoughts make me uneasy, and therefore sometimes the idea of remaining at the North until October still enters my mind, particularly if we should have a very long passage. I see all the disadvantages plainly, but are there not serious ones also in returning to Columbia at an unreasonable time. I have thought, that should indeed this severe winter continue much longer and there be no chance of our getting away soon, and you feel the same anxiety which I feel, whether you could not through Mr Twiss procure some cheep lodging in Troy or the neighbourhood; it would only be a few weeks until you could join us, and you know it might easily happen that we are six weeks on the passage, that would be nothing uncommon. At any rate I shall expect a letter from you in New York at Mr Whitehouse should I arrive there, just to tell me exactly what I am to do. That my own wishes lead me to go away as soon as possible of that I need not assure you; dear kind sisters as I have, dearly as I doat upon them, and unmeasurably happy as I should be could we always live together, at present I am too unsettled, too uneasy my thoughts are too much with you, I have not peace of mind enough to be a good companion to the dear ones, and I think it will be better for them also when I am gone. Dearest Frank, I feel most painfully all the trouble which will fall upon you, should there be any possibility, or you think proper to retain us at the North. Under such circumstances would it not be better to give all the things even the chest of books to Mr Whitehouse until you come to New York and not to send them on to Columbia, as so small a share of them are for the College Library and they might get into wrong hands. – I shall look for your letter when I arrive. In N. York I should not stay longer than it would be necessary to clear our things at the Custom house. You sent me word through James5 that the passage money of the Steamers in March is only £ 25, Surely you did not intend we should come in that way. – Enough of all this and now a little other chat. - I had a letter from Mr Schulze a few days ago, he is in Berlin, making his “Mündliches Examen” with which he hopes [3] to get through in a month, a matter which generally takes as he tells me three quarters of a year but Neander is his friend, and he says he must try it “selbst wenn er durchfiele”. He returns to Liegnitz the beginning of March. I do not 5 James Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber, Manchester.

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think my dearest one, that any letter of yours has miscarried, I think I have them all, and dear kind sweet letters they are. I am glad you met with such a good reception from Sir John Mc Neill, you will have a great deal to tell me yet when we meet. Have you kept your journal all the time dearest Frank? I shall write to lady Mc Neill next post day. Yesterday I wrote to Fräulein von Lasberg, requesting her to send me the linen and asking her also whether she has heard of our friend Mrs Hassel, for I am anxious to know something about her. Grüsse sie aufs herzlichste von mir und sage ihr sie soll recht liebenswürdig gegen dich sein und dir helfen wo sie nur kann. Ach mein Franz, so allein bist du, wie verlangt meine Seele nach dir und wie quälen mich alle meine tausend Sorgen und Gedanken. Do you take care of yourself, my own dearest Frank? Does John sleep in the house? Have you no headache? have you got your pills. Does Betsy6 do every thing for you properly? – Aunt Malchen was quite pleased with your acquaintance of Sheriff Alison, they had been extremely kind to them when they were in Glascow, she said they must have a very sweet daughter by this time. – We were delighted at your description of little George,7 he must be a fine little fellow. We had a nice letter from Emma who tells me a great many pleasant things of my dear husband, that he looked well, God bless him, that he liked the comfortable sopha, played so sweetly with little George. Bester Franz du bist doch immer derselbe, gut, freundlich, liebevoll, and now that you can shake hands with people, what more can one expect. – But how do you stand the Columbians? Henry,8 Ellet. However I think you will make an effort because they have shown you kindness. How is poor Rebecca, I often think of her. – I have had a letter from your sister Auguste, all love as usual, but such paper I could hardly read it; nothing more about Julius.9 I have written and sent your letter, your parting words. How dear you have become to them all. The shaving soap you shall have and the razors too if I can get them. What a dear sweet affectionate parting letter you have written to me my own sweet Frank; yes you do love me, I know it, and therefore I will be happy, what ever else may be ordained. It will not last so very very long, and I shall rest in your dear arms again shall press you to my heart. You love me then I will be patient, thank God and bless my fate. Yes you are my faithful own husband, and you do not let me feel how far beneath you I am how little I am able to satisfy you in many things. I thank you for this. God bless you dearest dearest Frank. May He grant us a happy meeting. Sad will be my parting from my own loved sisters 6 7 8 9

Betsy the cook in the Lieber household in Columbia/SC. George Oppenheimer, son of James and Emma Oppenheimer, Manchester. His colleague Prof. Robert Henry. Dr. phil. Julius Lieber.

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and the sweet children, I shall need to think of you for support. – We shall all write again with the steamer I will try to get the young ones then too. Hamilton continues to be a very good boy, very affectionate, and gives me no manner of trouble. This will be a grand day for snow balls, it has fallen very thick, to day. – Ah I must tell you Caroline has taken a nice country house in Lockstedt, did I not write something about it in the last letter. Uncle10 was very angry for having written to the Bürgermaster and gave her an awful scolding. A house Makler was sent for and the whole matter put in his hands, and Carry has a nice house containing eight rooms and a good garden for 350 Mark Courant, hundred dollars exactly from Easter to Easter. Carry Hart the children all are delighted. They have to hire a coach now twice a day and then all will be right, Emil [4] and Carlito will give up the halfboard during summer and all go out together. It is particularly pleasant as Soehles live out there, and I am truly glad for them all. I hope Carolines ink will get blacker on the voyage for it is dreadfully pale just now. Oscar who was at home on sunday and very well, spent his day in packing up his stones, and writing down the names, Clara,11 Hamilton and afterwards Mama assisting him. In the evening we had dancing, Clara teaching Edward the Polka, for they are all going to dancing parties. – On Sunday too we had a disagreable visit; Uncle Julius came with his unfortunate son to see you, for he did not know that you were gone. The poor young man is quite out of his mind and made us all feel very sad, particularly when he opened the piano and played most touchingly, and when he went away he asked our pardon for having spoken so much nonsense. – The evening before last we three & Edward were in the Theatre where we were very much entertained. A very sweet little Opera Alessandro Stradella was given, and we were so sorry that it was not given when you were here.12 Oscar had a good testimony last week – I believe he is very anxious for the time to come for us all to join you. – Felix was delighted beyond measure at your letter to him. Clara has kissed her little one over and over again and she says her pocketbook will wear out, because she has to open it every minute. I have read Normy’s little letter over to him this morning, he loves it very much, it has a nice little corner in his desk, so has Hamiltons. No man but Frank would have thought of giving as much pleasure to all their little 10 11 12

Jacob Oppenheimer. Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. Alessadro Stradella, opera by Friedrich von Flotow, lyrics by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese, first performance Hamburg 30.12.1844.

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hearts. – Poor Clara is at the piano, Miss Kopperhold at her side; ah we are blessed with Music, Emil has begone to scratch and poor Hamilton would give the world if he could learn the flute. – Goodbye my own dearest husband. does the sun shine sweetly? Think of our snow! And do the mocking birds begin their song. Write to dear Carry and Hart, they will long for your letters, and require them too. I press my loved one to my heart. Ever, ever your Matilda Yes indeed my beloved Frank shall we long for your dear letters, and long painfully long will the time appear before we can receive the soothing news of your safe arrival in Columbia. God grant you may reach it safely and quickly and may keep up your spirits my dearest Frank in your solitude and take care of yourself. How often is our dear ever dear Frank the sweet topic of our conversation, How often will my heart long for you God bless you and many thanks for your dear sweet letter. Pray write soon as soon as you possibly can. Sister Harry sends her best best love. The children all a thousand kisses Your own Caroline Lieber Onkel! Da Tante M. so gnädig gewesen ist mir diesen kleinen Raum geschenkt hat, so muss ich es doch wirklich nehmen um dir noch für den allerliebsten kleinen Brief zu danken, und einen Dank bin ich dir gewiss schuldig denn er hat mir unbeschreiblich Freude gemacht. Ich kam gerade aus der Schule, und Lilly kam mir entgegen, u. sagte + [cross-writing] + mir da wären Briefe für uns Alle von dir liebster Onkel. Ich suchte u. suchte bis ich ihn endlich fand den süßen kleinen Brief, u. küsste ihn vor Freude über, u. über, u. konnte mich nicht genug darüber freuen. Wenn du diese Zeilen bekommst bist du doch hoffentlich gesund und wohl zu hause nicht wahr lieber Onkel Franz. Morgen bin ich auf einem Ball, bei Donnenbergs u. denke dir, ich bin schon zu allen Tänzen engagiert. doch mein Papier geht zu Ende darum sage ich dir für diesmal adieu. du bekommst bald einen ordentlichen Brief v. mir deine Clara Via Liverpool & New York single Francis Lieber Esqr Columbia S.C. Stamp Manchester MR 4 1845 + sealing wax

No. 94 Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, to Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC, 21.02.-22.02.1845 Included: letter of Oscar Lieber to Francis Lieber, 22.02.1845 Included: dictated letter of Hamilton Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: dictated letter of Guido Norman Lieber to Francis Lieber Included: letter of Clara Lomnitz to Francis Lieber THL Box 54 LI 5106, ALS, 4 pages, damaged on the edges Hamburg the 21st of Feb. 1844. All well! Carry is lying on the sopha and promises to beginn a letter to you next week & sends you love & kisses My own dearest Frank. I see you in my mind seated in your study, wrapt in your morning gown, smoking your cigar. I hope you have a good one – and anxiously expecting Johns return from the post office, whether there will be a letter from your wife and all the dear set in Hamburg. You shall not be disappointed and I write thus early for the Steamer because I am afraid were I to wait until next postday the shipping from Helgoland may again be entirely interrupted and then by way of Holland my letter might arrive too late for the Steamer and John come home with this provoking: Nothing to day Sir.” and grieve that being whom to render happy is the greatest wish I have on earth. Allready small skiffs have to carry the mail to Helgoland and as the weather is getting severer every day there is every chance of my fears being realized. It is but a week to day since I sent a letter from here via England to go with one of the New York packets, and the previous one I have sent via Havre, so that I hope you will be satisfied with your own wife. It happens unfortunately that Caroline has to day again her bad headache and cannot delight your heart by coaxing you as she would like and telling you a little of the affection she feels for you, which is realy quite sufficient I think. Altogether my Frank how you are loved here: there is dear Hart in her quiet way speak of Frank and you may see her cheeks glow with animation, and your sweet loving tender disposition is a favorite theme with her. Clara? Der süsse Onkel Franz! ja wenn Onkel hier wäre, mein Engels Onkel, and with this the picture is taken down and kissed, as niece never kissed her Uncle. Then Felix who takes out his pocketbook and says: In diesem Buche habe ich alles eingeschrieben von Onkel Franz, was er sagte, sang und dichtete, und den Tag seiner Abreise von hier, und von England. And Matildita: Und wenn Onkel Franz nicht da ist, ist es garnicht mehr lieblich hier; and all the other young ones with their happy faces! Nun kann man gar nicht mehr den lezten spielen, and your own children who pray for you every night that dear Papa may have a safe and happy voyage. Yesterday I went to Uncle Jacob and I read to him your last two letters, with which he seemed very much pleased

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and when I would stop at such places where you dearest one, were all affection and tenderness he said: glaubst du denn ich bin solch ein Brummer dass mir so etwas keine Freude macht? and I had to go through thick and thin. I am sure he has a very good opinion of you and when Carry & I went away he said: Dank Euch liebe Kinder für Euren netten Besuch; it was all because I had taken your letters with me, he likes that kind of confidence. I was gratified to see him looking so much better than the last time; he was on the point of going to Arnings where he had a visit of congratulation to pay it being one of the daughters birthday on which occasion he always carries his, two Louis d’ors with him. His greadchildren for he has thirty of them cost him 60 Louis d’ors in this way annually as he told us. – I have been obliged to change my quarters just now from the parlour downstairs, to Edwards little room, as Louise came with broom brush and duster. Here I am at the small round table, Felix Emil & Norman all with colds in the adjoining breakfast room, have not been able to go to school this morning and I am now under the influence of their occasional disturbances, and you well know what three such boys are capable of. Felix has just now gone through lessons with Norman, and gives a good account of him. On Sunday Oscar was at home and brought me a letter for you; the whole day he was steadily occupied making extracts from his two books on mineralogy. It is impossible to be more intent than that boy is when he is occupied in a manner he likes. If it were possible to choose his future carier so that there would be some connexion between his taste and his employment, I am sure he would do well, for he completely absorbs himself in those matters which interest him and requires no other relaxation than to be left unmolested at this occupation. I do not know how chemistry would do as a means of support, otherwise it would be the thing for him. You will see when he is with us how decidedly his mind turns to things of that kind. He is a good affectionate boy and I think we shall have no trouble with him for his dearest wish is to please us. You will find him again very much grown and developed when you see him; he has complete mustachoes and [2] his voice is becoming more and more unharmonious. I regret this early bodily development. It is a great disadvantage for him; God prosper the dear boy. I shall be glad to get him out of school and under your care. – On Sunday evening Hammy had his Schattenspiel and was very much pleased, though I think it is inferior to many I have se[en]. afterwards Harry, as you call her, brought some of the good things from the christmas tree, and Loterie was played for them, in which Oscar however did not join, he remained at his books, but kind

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Clara took pity upon him, and played for her dear cousin. I could not help noticing the good nature of the children. Felix had cards which had been lucky with him, and which were considered excellent by the whole set. Instead of keeping them as many boys would have done, he gave the lucky cards in turn to each of the other children who had not yet been as fortunate. There is a spirit of purity and justice and fairness amongst the set truly charming. Yesterday Felix came to Norman with a toy of Normys of which he thought he had broken something, at the same time bringing him one of his own little horses to make up, Norman said the thing was broken before and he would not accepted the gift, and a generous discussion followed, at last however Norman gave way and took the little horse. These things are delightful and do ones heart good. God bless the children all! – I told you my dearest Frank in my last that I am advised by every one in particular by Gossler1 to go from here to New York in preference to from Bremen to Baltimore, but this letter will reach you first and therefore I beg you to let me find a letter from you in New York at Mr Whitehouse to whom I shall immediately apply. Of course if I find any vessel direct to Charleston I shall take that, but otherwise, I am told the New York packetships are so much better arranged that certainly the difference being so small, I should prefer them to such utter discomfort as I encountered on my last passage. But of course you will yet hear from me several times. It is disheartening to see the weather again now, the snow has not left the ground for weeks and at the same time the severest frost. God knows how long it may last. Caroline has got all her Lockstedt affairs arranged, and has already engaged a coach for the children of a peasant out there who says: Madam Lomnitz Sie konnen auf mich bauen wie auf ein Haus. Of course Auguste Söhle is very much pleased, but Carry has still to engage Mr Rönner Senior to assist in guarding her country residence you know that dear sister of ours, is none of the boldest. By the bye I told you the other day of her misterious visitor, a person who had come already four times, and who had been sent away, as Herman had described him of most formidable appearance whith huge whiskers and Carry of course supposed he was a robber who wished to find out the secrets of her house. A few days since he came again when Hart with a brave resolve determined boldly to face the man. She went down and asked him into the little room to the right where he confessed himself to be a portrait painter living on the third story opposite and that he had only come to request Mrs Lomnitz to come over and see his pictures. Nur deswegen bin ich gekommen, das ist alles was ich wollte. Sie sind ihre Schwester? gut, bitten Sie sie dass Sie meinen Wunsch erfülle. Hart said, she thought her sister would not come, she did not go out much, to which he 1 Johann Heinrich Gossler.

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replied: ach ja, aus geht Mad. Lomnitz doch, und ich ersuche Sie ihr meine Bitte vorzutragen. With this he left the house and of course as Margreth says: Es ist doch sehr sonderbar dass er nur Madame allein gebeten hat und nicht Fräulein Oppenheimer2 und Frau Doktorin.3 There’s mistery in the matter and moreover he was a very handsome well dressed man, and nothing to be afraid of says Hart. Yesterday evening Charlotte Pömolles Uncle Jacobs housekeeper was here to arrange Carolines spinning wheel, Hamilton who came home from school said: I do not like to say good night to such an ugly woman; when I took him to bed he made me a confession: Mama ich habe heute als ich oben allein war, solch Einen losgelegt, dass der Schall durchs ganze Haus tönte. – He asks me every evening, whether he has not been good this time since you went away, whether he has not kept his word. And he is really quite a changed boy. No body can find fault with him, and he brought me also a very good testimony last week, mit besonderer Bemerkung. – “Fleiss in den Arbeitsstunden. – ­Oscars testimony also was [3] good. Little Norry was not in school on account of his cold. After Charlotte4 had left we chatted and waited for Neds return home, but lo, eleven struck & no Edward,5 the three ladies began to make their remarks. did not like it at all, Carry got the paper to see what places of amusements there were. At last at near twelve OClock our lad came home, but wisely went to bed at once, Carry however went down and received his confessions Alster Pavillon6 with fine music and afterwards supper at his friend von der Meden – So we all went to bed but poor Caroline got her headache. – The evening before Ned had been to see Pastor John, who had confirmed him, and he made us laugh very much by the account of his visit. He went with another friend and found Frau Pastorin with some old ladies tea & cake, of which he partook very freely because he thought it was polite though he never takes tea commonly. The pastor was engaged and he spent a most tedious hour waiting for him. At last he came 2 3 4 5 6

Henriette Oppenheimer, sister of Mathilde Lieber. Mathilde Lieber as wife of Dr. Francis Lieber was addressed as Mrs. Dr./Frau Doktorin. Charlotte Pömolle, housekeeper of Jacob Oppenheimer. Edward/Ned Lomnitz, son of Caroline Lomnitz, Hamburg. Cafe/restaurant on the banks of the Binnenalster in the Jungfernstieg, Hamburg. The first building had been erected in 1799 and was replaced by a more spacious building between 1835–1841. In 1874/75 Hamburg’s leading architect Martin Haller, son of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller designed a new version.

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and was very friendly, the old ladies gradually disappeared and supper was announced. Apple soup, of which Edward partook twice, because his friend did not take any at all and he thought it was not polite and Frau Pastorin would not like it, after that bread and butter was handed round and Mettwurst and cheese. Of course politeness required it and Edward pursued the course he had adopted. Then came apples and a great deal of cake, Ned remained true to the last and finished with two glasses of RheinWein which made him sleep sweetly and soundly. – Did you see that the Pensylvania system has been adopted in Carlsruh at the “Neuen Männer Zuchthaus”, it was carried against a minority of three. I will save the discussion for you as I read it in the ­Nachrichten. – At Soehles the other evening we spoke of the fair which is to be soon, the ladies all working for it, in favor & for the benefit the Temperance question. Auguste Söhle says. It is a sin how poor people are treated in this world. Those who suffer from it & drink their wine in comfort and call themselves the better class with their air of pro ∆ manage poor peoples affairs as if they were their natural guardians and had no will of their ow ∆ what do they do? persuade the poor mechanics employer to take only those in their service who sig ∆ pledge, making hypocrites and taking their little comfort from them without giving them the smallest equivalent. Auguste S. was quite poorly and we have been obliged to go to her two Tuesdays in succession. Söhle promised me & gave me his hand, that he does not forget my affairs; but at present nothing can done – Adele came to see me the day before yesterday, I had just returned from a painfully cold walk to Aunt M ∆ as I came home little Hanchen Muderich slipt by me, ketching hold of my hand en passant: Liebe Frau Docto[r…] gehen, ich habe solche Kopfschmerzen. Upstairs I found Adele; I saw her but a moment, but she made me pro[mise…] to go there to morrow evening. She looks very ill. Her little boy7 goes now to Schleiden and they are very much pleased. ­Ferdinand wears a little patch on his balded head I understand, but I have [not] yet seen him, since his acquisition – Aunt Hesse came in yesterday at dinner time and told us a […] deal of an immense fancy ball to take place at Gottlieb J­enisch, the one who married a Pruss[ian] countess. Mary H. in G ­ recian costume – the wedding will soon take place.8 – Carry would not ∆ up in aunts presance, because the large joint of veal of Sunday had become to be a veal ∆ – After dinner Carry engaged a housemaid, on which occasion to seal the contract, a drittel ∆

7 Martin Haller, son of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller. 8 Mary Hesse, Altona, cousin of Mathilde Lieber was going to marry the merchant Henry Louis Newman.

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the servants hand. In Hamburg there are particular days twice in the year for servants or their emp ∆ warning and the changes also only take place twice a year on fixed days. – And now my dear sweet Frank my own husband, I am not a foolish girl to write all these little things, do you take an interest in them? We used to say when we were all at home together, that the smaller the circumstances related the more it gave us an insight into of the life our dear ones were leading. And our Frank knows well he is not forgotten, our thoughts are uncontrouled and who can tell how often in the course of the twenty four hours each one of us thinks of theiris dearest husband father, brother Uncle and feeds the mind with memory of the past and hope for days to come. Yes beloved Frank, hope, hope. I shall see my dear husband soon again, press him to my heart. God grant it! Keep up your spirits dearest one. Time passes rapidly and spring a must come at last and with it a cheerful home for you. – I feel a little impatient & out of spirits some times, but it does not last long. All will be well! And now for the childrens letters or I shall have no room. Kiss me dearest Frank. Thank God you are mine! Hamb. Feb. 12. A little while ago, my dearest Papa Mamma wrote a letter to you and only coppied some lines from me, but to day I will write to you myself. I thank you excedingly for your dear letter of the 2d. and I will try, yes really really try to do as the contents of it have reminded me! – Have you dear Papa heard of the man in the iron mask?9 and can you please tell me what a sonambule is? I would look for it in the Encyclopedia10 but it is already packed: But dear me, I entirely forgot that you will in all probability not be able to answer me. Well then you may answer the penned question verbally, still better. Yes, when one thinks only thirty eight days and then is Easter! But now we have a terrible frost here and the Elbe is closed again, but I hope it will be open at Easter, so that we may not be kept from embracing one another. Your letters gave such pleasure at home and Clara11 put hers in her Nippschrank. The other day we packed my stones, but I think I shall not leave them untouched until we go. Lately a master of ours ran away. We were all in bed and he told ∆ a servant that he was going to the taylor, but he never came back again. We do not know ∆ he is for certain although we think he went to Adlaide in New Zeeland as a 9

10 11

Before Alexandre Dumas published Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou l’homme au masque de fer, in 1790 and 1792 a German and French version had been printed; perhaps Oscar ­Lieber thought of Jean Baptiste de Saint Mihiel, Le veritable homme dit au masque de fer, ­Strassbourg 1790. “Somnambulism”, in: Encyclopaedia Americana vol. 11, Philadelphia 1832, p. 486f. Clara Lomnitz, daughter of Caroline Lomnitz.

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ship with ∆ grants went off from Cuxhaven soon after. He took his leave in this queer manner on ∆ [4] debto. This honorable mans name was Friederich Käuner. Please do not forget the sunset prayers. Goodbye my own dearest father. Your most affectionate son Oscar. --Lieber Papa gestern ging Banks, oder der Syndicus wie du ihn nantest mit uns nach Hause. Carlito und ich fassten ihn beim Halstuch und spielten Pferd, da war es so glatt dass die beiden hinfielen und nachher lief ich gegen eine Frau an die einen Korb trug und fiel wieder vor ihren Füssen fast in den Rennstein. Wir gingen durch den Thorweg und Herman war der erste; dann ich u Carlito. Herman trat bei Versehen auf eine Katze und Carlito hielt mich beim Rock so fest dass ich gar nicht laufen konnte. Die Katzen machten ein gross Geschrei und wir auch. Herr Doctor, Herr Brinkmaier und wir Jungen haben einen grossen Schneemann gemacht, der hat tiefe Augen und eine Cigarre im Munde und wir schneeballen ihn. Nächsten Tag hat Herr Doktor ihn mit Rothstein gefärbt. Lebewohl lieber Vater. Dein Sohn Hamilton Lieber Papa. Da ich grade Zeit habe dir zu schreiben so will ich dir schreiben, und ich danke dir für den kleinen Brief. Ich sitze bei Felix grosse Pult und schreibe dir eine Kladde und die Kladde ist sehr schlecht geworden. Es schneit noch immer und unser Garten ist alle so weiss die ganze Erde! Die Fenster sind gefroren, die Dächer sind weiss wie Schnee. (Another time he wrote) Lieber Papa Jezt ist schon Tische fertig und es schmeckte mir gut. Wir haben Reiss Suppe gehabt und Erbsensuppe und Speckpfankuchen und Kalbsfleisch und einen schönen pudding. Eine Stunde später kitzelte ich Mama in die Nase herum mit ein langer dünner Stück Papier, bis es da steckte und sie lachte so und ich wie ich immer so schrecklich lachte, und Clarita und Tilly und Clara lachten alle. Clarita spielt mit ihrer Puppe und ihren kleinen Stuhl welches sie an Weinachten bekommen hat. Ich trinke jetzt ein bischen Caffee und das hat Tante Jette mir gegeben und ich habe Clarita von meinen etwas abgegeben und in ein kleines Gefäss um damit zu spielen mit ihrer kleinen Puppe. Dein Normy Engels Onkel. Eben sind wir von Tische aufgestanden, d. h. vor einer halben Stunde. Seitdem habe ich erst ein bischen dummes Zeug gemacht mit der süssen Tante die heute zuerst wieder in ihre heiter liebenswürdige Laune eingetreten ist – dann geskippt wobei ich immer denke, ach wenn du liebster lustiger Onkel doch hier wärst mich ein bischen zu loben, aber nun leider habe ich ­keine Anbeter mehr – dann habe ich mich ein wenig mit […], meinem

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k­ ünftigen kleinen Pflegesöhnchen herumgetummelt. Ich habe nämlich einen Contrakt mit Tante Mathilda geschloßen, daß ich ihn ganz zu mir nehmen werde, um besser auf die Erziehung zu setzen, denn ihre Erziehung taugt doch nichts, den ganzen lieben langen Tag schmeichelt und liebkost sie ihn; Sieh, solche Erziehung mußt du selbst sagen ist doch keinen Heller werth. Drum punktum, abgemacht, er ist mein, mein ist er! Übermorgen bin ich bei Arnings auf einen Ball und freue mich unmenschlich; ich bringe dir vielleicht etwas schönes mit für deinen Nippschrank. Gestern hatte ich Violin Begleitung und es ging ganz herlich. Er, Herr Ludwig Foers sass an meiner rechten Seite und fidelte und Mama auf der linken und klopfte den Takt erbärmlich auf meine Schultern. Den kleinen süssen Brief den du mir geschrieben hast, habe ich in der Schule gezeigt und sie haben alle gesagt er sei allerliebst. Siehst du wieviel Ehre du dabei eingelegt hast. Gestern hat Elisabeth Donnenberg gesagt, wenn ihr Onkel brummig ist was sehr oft der Fall wäre so sagt sie ihm: „Onkel Franz ist viel netter und lustiger als du, mit dem kann man viel mehr dumme ­Streiche machen!! Und ich habe ihr gesagt ich hätte nur diesen einen einzigen dem ich auf der Nase herum tanzen kann. Den kleinen süssen Brief der mir so viel Vergnügen gemacht hat, habe ich gestern auf in meinem Nippschrank auf einem der kleinen Blumengestelle gesteckt, den du dich wohl erinnerst, und auf der anderen Seite sizt der klein Engel, auch von dir, und lächelt ihm holdselig zu. Ach wenn ich nur auch Flügel hätte, dann könnte ich dich besuchen und kleine Spässe mit dir machen und meinen süssen Onkel umarmen und dann wenn ich genug hätte zu meiner lieben Mummi zurückkehren – doch das alles ist unmöglich. Ich sitze hier grade vor deinem Bilde und wenn ich es ansehe so bekomme ich unwilkühich eine zarte Zähre in meinem Auge. Ist das nicht poetisch ausgedrückt. Du kannst dir überhaupt [ni]cht denken wie ich jezt poetisch geworden bin. Ich glaube das hast du gethan. Nächstens will ich sehen ob nicht dichten kann, doch heute nur noch tausend Küsse und Grüsse die ich dir in Gedanken [cross-writing] gebe, und ich wünsche dir ein recht freudiges Wiedersehen mit Tante Mathilde Oscar Hamilton und mein Putchen. Lebewohl holder Onkel, deine dich noch immer am meisten liebende Nichte Clara. Dear Frank once more. God bless you, may you my own one be well when you receive this letter. Safe & happy. Your darling wife Matilde It is snowing desperately now as I close this letter. Neds Harts & all the children affect. love.

766 Pr Halifax Steamer Via Liverpool Francis Lieber Esqr Columbia S.C. United States Stamp L Fe 28 + Stamp faded + sealing wax

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No. 95 Francis Lieber, New York, to Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg, 25.02.1845 THL Box 34 LI 4824, ALS, 4 pages New York, February 25, 1845 My beloved, beloved Matilda, X That I could send to you and your affectionate sisters, by electro-magnetic telegraph, the news of my safe and speedy arrival at Boston! For I am much afraid that you have heard of the fearful storms and many losses which have occurred on the western side of the Atlantic during the past month, and, if so, you will have had many an anxious day. Yeh a more prosperous winter passage than ours was probably never performed. We had not even a severe gale, though it was blowing the whole time hard into our very teeth; but what did good Hibernia care for that? On she plew ploughed against swe breeze and through waves and, for some days, through ice, with her 500 horse power engines, which worked through wind and weather, and rolling and pitching, with noiseless steadiness and quiet ease, yes, almost grace, hardly ever less than seven Knots an hour and often from ten to twelve, so that she landed us, the faithful thing, after twelve days and some hours at Halifax and after 14 days and 20 hours after from the time we had left Liverpool, at the Boston wharf. Steam is a mighty thing! I pray to God that you, my dear ones, will have as least a proportionately favourable passage. Oh God what a Wiedersehen we shall celebrate. How I will cling to my wife and my boys! Poor Schultz, he will be obliged to pardon me for the first have half hour.- Whether I have thaught of you all on my journey? Always! In my passage began already what I now, since I put my foot on American land, completely feel, and what I knew before hand would be the case, namely the concentration of my whole [2] trip to Europe, into one rapid – yet distinct and lively dream, and in that dream appears with brightest colours the contending and striving affection of that morning cluster of boys and girls, and the closing of the mateline scene by the calmer expression of the equally still more fervent affection of your sisters. God bless you all for it. I depend upon having a letter by the first steamer. Indeed, although I Know you in Hamburg have to write to many different quarters which I would you have neglect for no consideration in the world. You must also consider that if prudence dictates not to leave off too suddenly a kind of food to which we may have been accustomed; Kindness should induce you to accustom my heart only gradually to my common portion of letters, after my soul has been fed so richly and abundantly with affection, stinted by no

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004344259_097

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reluctance and limited by no measure, but freely given as the gushing fountain gives from sto the never failing fullness of its bosom. I have read, my dearest Matilda, and am reading again and again your letters. They will be the code of my comfort until I have the original of which they, full as they are, are but poor copies after all – you my heart. – I cannot write you any details, but it will please you to hear that there is besides the affair in Boston, well Known to you, another less depending upon chance, for its realization and which may take us thither. – If you think it will please uncle Jacob, tell him that I had yesterday from a gentleman upon whose judgment and Knowledge I fully rely, that Heckscher1 is doing uncommonly well, and will do better every year.- I was received a Boston and here with great Kindness and real joy. S. Ward wrote on to Boston to come at once to his Howe house, and Medora [3] recieved me in a manner which did my heart god. She saw me going to their house, and run after me in the street welcoming me with a beaming eye, such as I had not seen for a long time. Morpeth had written to Sumner2 very kindly indeed about me, and Humboldt3 speaking of your Frank in a letter to Prescott used the words: il nous est trés chein chêr.” I mention all this because you like it, and – I too. So, between husband and wife, it may pass and will not be misunderstood, I feel sure, my sisters who will read these lines. Poor Sally Preston is dead. You she was a good girl, you Know, and I think you liked her best of all Columbia people, after Charlotte Cheves. I show myself as little as possible in order to offend as little as possible by not calling, which is impossible during these short stays, yet people find it out, and I have the old story – the old unfair ∆ Rudness.- How are the children, Ned included? I suppose you will bring me a whole budget of letters from them; six kisses to each of them before hand. Have they been good? Has dear Hammy been a good boy? Is sweet Normy quite well? Has my Oscar brought good testimonials? Were they glad to recieve the letters? Again I ask, who liked his letter best? I thaught of Felix the very hour of my arrival at Boston; for hardly had the sound of Sidow, which we heard so often of him, begun to vanish in my ears, when some one in this western hemisphere made some enquiries about Sidows’ maps. During Howe’s absence people had undertaken to instruct Laura Bridgman in the doctrine of Trinity 1 Charles August Heckscher, New York City, nephew and business partner of Jacob Oppenheimer. 2 Charles Sumner. 3 Alexander von Humboldt.

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and Salvation (to the idea of God she had come herself as the Heaven maker, as so many early tribes did), they told her that Christ lived long, long ago, and again that he is the Lamb of God, when she, who has hardly any idea of metaphorical language, quickly asked, why Christ had not become a sheep by this time. She is much grown, and hardly leaves upon you any more the impression of the being she is. [4] Indeed in her presence you must remind yourself that she is the deaf and dumb, blind and scentless girl, for she does not. But she continues to be proud of every new word and idea she acquires and brings them in for some days, whenever she possibly can. I have read a book I baught at Bruges, in which among others an account is given of a man who became deaf and blind and the discription of his ‚Loneliness’ is heart rending. Will you give my love to all Hamburg folks? Pray write to Zuellichau; tell them I am safely landed and that in coming back to Columbia spring will continually remind me of their flower gardens, later indeed, but so beautiful, so ­Jean-Paulisch, some how & other, but it will not require the spring to remind of the sweet flowers where I was surrounded by sweet blossoms and still sweeter love. I hope you have recei thanked Julius for his letter.4 Have they ever recieved there the copies of my little pamphlet I published in Hamburg?5 Julius does not mention it in the letter, yet he ought to have had it by that time. Good bye, and soon we meet again, goodbye dear Carry and Harriet. Your comfortable, Carry has done me the great [cross-writing] test ship service, but if I begin to thank you for your all you have lavished upon me I cannot stop! How often I am reminded of you by this thing and that and another, and always it gives me the greattest pleasure to be reminded of you. My love to all of you and may God lead us again together, I trust you have had good account from P.R. Remember me to Uncle Jacob and the Hallers, Adele & Fernando, I love you from me whole heart Your Frank

4 Dr. phil. Julius Lieber, Züllichau. 5 Lieber, Bruchstücke über Gegenstände der Strafkunde.

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[cross-writing, 1] This is very fine paper. I think you had better bring a little I bought it at Schachts,6 Perth Besser gave me the direction. Via Rotterdam Mrs Francis Lieber Care of Mrs E. Lomnitz 13 Esplanade Hamburg 3 faded stamps + sealing wax

6 Schacht, shop for stationery supplies, Hamburg, founded in 1826 by Conrad Schacht, since 1835 managed by Adolph Westerich.

Sources GStaPK Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dalhem GStaPK 1 HA Rep 77 GStaPK 1 HA Rep 84a GStaPK 1 HA Rep 89 StaHH Staatsarchiv der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg StaHH 622-1/121 Familie Beneke StaHH 622-1/9 Familie Berenberg StaHH 622-1/27 Familie Godeffroy StaHH 622-1/28 Familienarchiv Gossler StaHH 622-1/33 Familie Haller Stadtarchiv Freiburg/Breisgau L 4 Archiv der Freiherren Mayer von Fahnenberg, Archiv III Kasten 18, Briefe des Georg Oppenheimer SUB Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky SUB HH Nachlass Wurm THL The Huntington Library, San Marino/California Papers of Francis Lieber, 1815–1888 LI 1-5222, 67 Boxes TNA The National Archives, Kew Surrey/UK TNA C 13/2347/68 Murphy vs. George Oppenheimer and Johann Heinrich Burmester TNA HO 1/6/8 To the Kings most excellent Majesty, the humble petition of George Oppenheimer of Suffolk Lane, City of London merchant, 4 fols 5.8.1811 TNA HO 1/7/28 Denization Papers, John Nicholas from Hamburg, 22.6.1821 TNA PROB 11/1863/160 Edward Augustus Lomnitz TNA PROB 11/1899/408 George Oppenheimer USC South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia/SC Francis Lieber Collection FLC Universitätsarchiv Jena: Bestand M, Nr. 245 Jagiellonska Biblioteka Krakau Collection Varnhagen V 110

Bibliography 19th century British Library Newspapers, URL http://infotrac.galegroup.com. 19th century U.S. Newspapers, URL http://gdc.gale.com. A Classical Dictionary; containing a copious Account of all the Proper Names Mentioned in ancient authors; with the value of coins, weights, and measures, used among the Greeks and Romans; and a chronological Table. By J. Lempriere, DD, 16th edition corrected, London printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand 1831. A.E. Wright’s Boston, New York, Philadelphia & Baltimore Commercial Directory, and General Advertising Medium, New York 1840. Aalestad, Katherine B., Paying for War: experience of Napoleonic Rule in the Hanseatic Cities, in: Central European History 39, 2006a, pp. 641–675. Aalestad, Katherine B., Sitten und Mode. Fashion, Gender, and Public Identities in Hamburg at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century, in: Ulrike Gleixner and Marion W. Gray, eds., Gender in Transition. Discourse and Practice in German-Speaking Europe, 1750–1830, Ann Arbor/MI 2006, pp. 282–318. Adderley, Rosanne Marion, “New Negroes from Africa”: slave trade abolition and free African settlement in the Nineteenth-century Caribbean, London & Indianapolis/ Ind. 2006. Adelung, Johann Christoph, Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, 5 vols. Leipzig 1774–1786. Adressbuch Hamburg 1839 URL agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de. Adressbuch Hamburg 1840 URL agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de. Adressbuch Hamburg 1844 URL agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de. Adressbuch Hamburg 1847 URL http://forum.ahnenforschung.net. Albion, Robert Greenhaigh, Square-Riggers on schedule. The New York sailing Packets to England, France, and the Cotton Ports, Princeton/NJ 1965. Allgemeine, Schul-Zeitung, Vierzehnter Jahrgang 1837, Erster Band Januar bis Juni, Darmstadt Druck und Verlag von Karl Wilhelm Lesko URL http://www.google .book.de. Allgemeine Zeitung München 1841. American Almanac, New York Register and City Directory, for the sixty-fourth Year of American Independence, New York, published by Thomas Longworth, 118 NassauStreet 1839, URL https://archive.org/stream/longworthsameric00newy#page/n15/ mode/2up. Ananieva, Anna and Christiane Holm, Phänomenologie des Intimen. Die Neuformierung des Andenkens seit der Empfindsamkeit, in: Der Souvenir. Erinnerung in Dingen von der Reliquie zum Andenken, hg. vom Museum für angewandte Kunst Frankfurt, Cologne 2006, pp. 156–187.

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Index Frequently mentioned names of persons and places in the Lieber correspondence like Hamburg/Germany, Columbia/SC, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, London, Berlin/Germany, USA, Germany, Great Britain, America, Europe, Jacob Oppenheimer, Caroline Lomnitz, Oscar Lieber, Francis/Franz/Frank Lieber and Mathilde/Mathilda/ Matilda/Matty/Matti/Matz/Mattilina Lieber née Oppenheimer are not specified in the index. In the cases of “aunt Minna”, “Tante Minnchen”, and “aunt Emilie” sometimes identifications are not possible. Married women are listed under their husband’s last names. Aachen See Aix La Chapelle/Germany ABC-Strasse, Hamburg 40 Abelard, Pierre (Le Pallet 1079-Chalon-surSaône 1142), French philosopher, married to Heloisa 591 Achill/Achilles, Greek hero of the Ilias by Homer 177, 541 Adam/Adam and Eve (Old Testament) 334, 411 Adams, John Quincy (Braintree/Mass. 1767-Washington/DC 1848), politician, diplomat, 6th President of the USA 1825–1829 589 Adburton, May, heroine in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion. A Romance, Samuel Colman New York 1839 85 Addison, Mrs. Harriet née Inglis, married since 1838 to Dr. William Addison, Pittsburgh, sister of Fanny, Lydia, and Jane Inglis 83, 168, 210 Adela/Adele See Philippine Adele Haller Adelaide See Queen Adelaide Adelphi Hotel, New York City, opened in 1827 the six storied building was the honeymoon hotel of Francis and Mathilde Lieber in September 20, 1829 511 Adelung, Johann Christoph (Spantekow 1732-Dresden 1806), linguist, librarian, author of the dictionary Grammatischkritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart, Bauer Verlag, Vienna 1811 51 Adlaide/New Zealand 763 Adler, merchant NYC 1840 616 Aeolus, Greek god of winds, married to goddess Eos 164

Agie & Co. Antwerp (Belgium), banking house, till 1823 David Parish, Agie & Co., 1823–1828 Agie, J. Insinger 728 Ahrens, Auguste, daughter of Wilhelmine/ Minna Ahrens née Oppenheimer 226,  317, 705 Ahrens, Wilhelmine née Oppenheimer, sister of Emilie Hesse, Georg, Morris, Jacob and Julius Oppenheimer, married to N.N. Ahrens, Hamburg 10, 115, 125, 131, 136,  167, 201, 207, 214, 219, 223, 226, 244, 251, 257, 267, 317, 319, 325, 326, 330, 364, 384, 392, 420, 421, 443, 506, 507, 590, 601, 612, 674, 676, 677–679, 682, 705, 746 Ahrens/Ahrends, relatives of the ­Oppenheimer family in Hamburg, ­Baltimore, and Puerto Rico 35 Ahrens/Ahrends, Theodore, son of N.N. Ahrens and Wilhelmina Ahrens née Oppenheimer, engaged to Nicholine van Fleuren, merchant in cooperation with Theodore, Gustavus, and James Oppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico 251, 301, 361,  362, 583, 593, 750 Aix la Chapelle/Germany 749 Ajax, Greek hero in the Ilias by Homer 164 Akademisches Gymnasium, Hamburg 220,  274 Albany/NY 84–86, 101, 107, 110, 592 Albers, teacher, Hamburg 387, 441, 508 Albert, Prinz von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha/Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Coburg 1819-Windsor 1861), married February 2, 1840 in St. James’ Palace Victoria, Queen of Great Britain 464, 651

Index Alessandro Stradella, opera by Friedrich von Flotow, lyrics by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese, first performance Hamburg 30.12.1844 756 Alexander I Pawlowitsch Romanow (1777–1825), Russian Emperor 1801–1825 589 Alison, Archibald 1st Baronet (1792–1867), lawyer, historian, since 1834 sheriff of Lanarkshire 755 Allgemeine Zeitung, German daily newspaper founded in 1798 by Johann Friedrich Cotta in Tübingen, since 1807–1882 printed in Augsburg 362 Alster bassin See Alster Alster Lake See Alster Alster Pavillon, Hamburg 761 Alster 9, 41, 42, 115, 132, 266, 443, 476, 514, 607, 617, 671, 706, 745, 761 Alster, River See Alster Alte Stadt London, first class hotel in the Neue Jungfernstieg, Hamburg 107 Altona/Germany 1664–1866 Danish town west of Hamburg, until 1938 independent, today part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 9, 10, 38, 39, 42, 43, 134, 216,  217, 221, 222, 271, 291, 362, 364, 421, 448, 479, 712, 725, 762 Alvensleben, Albrecht Graf von (Halberstadt 1794-Berlin 1858), Minister of Finance in Prussia 1835–1842, Berlin 303 Amalie von Sachsen (Dresden 1794-Pillnitz 1870), composer and play writer 577 Amberg/Amburgh, Isaac A. van (Fishkill/NY 1811-Philadelphia 1865), dompteur 74 American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 463 Americana/Amerikana see Encyclopaedia Americana Amsinck, family, Hamburg 35 Amsterdam/Netherlands 110 Ancona/Italy 543 Andersen, Hans Christian (Odense 1805-­Copenhagen 1875), Danish poet, author, famous for his fairy tales 675 Anderson, Thomas (1793–1868), MD, ­Inspector of Health of Shipping, and member of the Medical Board, Port of Spain, Trinidad 718

809 Andover/Mass. 124 Anna (1693–1740), Empress of Russia 1730–1740 411, 558 Anna See Anna Benecke/Beneke Annie or Annie Ward see Anne Maillard Anonym. „A popular essay on subjects of penal law, and on uninterrupted solitary ­confinement at labour by day, in a letter to John Bacon, Esq by Francis Lieber, ­Philadelphia, 1838, in: Literarische ­Zeitung, in Verbindung mit m ­ ehreren ­Gelehrten, hrsg. von Karl ­Büchner, ­Duncker und Humblot Berlin 1839, p. 243–244 58 Anonym. „Lieber`s Manual of Political Ethics“, in: The Spectator. A weekly Journal of News, Politics, Literature, and Science, ed. F. C. Westley vol. 12, 1839, London, published by Joseph Clayton, at 9, Wellington Street, Strand, p. 280–282 58 Appleton, Fanny/Frances Elizabeth See Fanny Appleton Longfellow Appleton, Mary See Mary Appleton Mackintosh Appleton, Mrs Nathan née Harriot ­Coffin Sumner (1802–1867), second wife of ­Nathan Appleton 61, 433 Appleton, Nathan (New Ipswich/NH 1779-Boston 1861), merchant, ­entrepreneur, politician, in 1831–33 and 1842 representative of Massachusetts in the US-Federal Congress, father of Mary and Fanny Appleton, first married to Maria Theresa Gold (?-1833), second marriage to Harriot Coffin Sumner 54, 61, 132,  133, 485 Aretin, Johann Christoph Freiherr von (­Ingolstadt 1773-Munich 1824), author, historian, librarian 461, 462 Aretin, Johann Christoph Freiherr von, Carl Friedrich von Rotteck, Staatsrecht der ­constitutionellen Monarchie. Ein Handbuch für Geschäftsmänner, studirende Jünglinge und gebildete Bürger, 2 Bde. Literatur-Comptoir Altenburg 1824– 1828 461, 462 Ariadne auf dem Panther, marble sculpture (1814) Frankfurt/Main, by Johann Heinrich Dannecker, bought by Simon Moritz

810 von Bethmann who in 1816 financed the Ariadneum, the first public museum of Frankfurt/Main to exhibit that celebrated piece of art 709, 710 Aristotle/Aristoteles (384–322 BC), Greek philosopher 58, 105, 155, 462 Arning, Auguste, daughter of Wilhelmine and Dr. iur. Johann Carl Gottlieb Arning 244,  319, 443 Arning, Carl Edward/Eduard (1823–1906), son of Wilhelmine and Dr. iur. Johann Carl Gottlieb Arning, merchant in Manchester, partner of James Oppenheimer, married to Susanne Kämmerer 662 Arning, Christian Ludwig (Hamburg 1824–1909), son of Wilhelmine and Dr. iur. Johann Carl Gottlieb Arning, studied law in Heidelberg and Göttingen 655 Arning, Dr. iur. Johann Carl Gottlieb (Minden 1786-Hamburg 1862), lawyer, dissertation 1808, advocate in Hamburg, since 1835 member of the Hamburg Council, senator, married to Henriette Wilhelmine ­Oppenheimer, daughter of Jacob Amsel and Emilie Oppenheimer, sister of ­Philippine Adele Haller née ­Oppenheimer, Dr. iur. Georg Friedrich Ludwig ­Oppenheimer, Auguste Söhle, and Richard Moritz ­Oppenheimer 208, 249,  264, 366, 367, 381, 655, 657, 759, 765 Arning, Minna/Wilhelmine/Minchen née Henriette Wilhelmine Oppenheimer (Hamburg 1800–1884), daughter of Jacob Amsel Oppenheimer, sister of Philippine Adele Haller née Oppenheimer, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, married to Dr. iur. Johann Carl Gottlieb Arning, Hohe Bleichen 22, Hamburg 120, 125, 131, 144, 201, 218, 244,  249, 264, 265, 319, 328, 364, 366, 367, 381, 383, 443, 512, 590, 753, 759, 765 Arnold, Thomas (1795-Oxford 1842), ­English theologian, educator and headmaster of Rugby School, translated Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s Römische Geschichte, professor of Modern history in Oxford 732 Arnstein & Eskele, banking house in Vienna/ Austria 725, 726

Index Arnstein, Vienna/Austria 725, 726 Arrien, Minister von 638 Arrivabene Graf/count Jean/Giovanni de (Mantua 1786-Mantua 1881), Brussels, liberal politician 646 Aschenbrödel/La Cenerentola, opera by ­Gioachino Rossini, lyrics by ­Jacopo ­Ferretti, first performance Rome 1817 420 Ashbanham See Ashburnham, Colonel, Montreal Ashburnham, Colonel Earl 73 Asher, Julius Ludwig/Louis (Hamburg 1804-Hamburg 1878), artist, friend of the families Haller and Speckter, ­Hamburg 39, 219 Ashton See Francisco P./Francis Astorini Ashville/Asheville/NC 151 Assing, Dr. med. David (Königsberg 1787-Hamburg 1842), physician, author in Hamburg, married in 1816 Rosa Maria Varnhagen 417 Assing, Rosa Maria née Varnhagen (­Düsseldorf 1783-Hamburg 22.1.1840), governess in the family of Georg ­Oppenheimer, Auf dem Kamp/­ Valentinskamp Hamburg, 1807–1810, sister of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, married 1816 Dr. med. David Assur/Assing (Königsberg 1787-Hamburg 1842), friend of Amalie Schoppe, Heinrich Heine, Justinus Kerner, and Adelbert von Chamisso 9,  20, 37, 41, 417 Aster See Johann/John Jacob Astor Astor jr. See William Backhouse Astor Astor sen. See Johann/John Jacob Astor Astor, Enkel/grandson, William Backhouse Astor Jr. or John Jacob Astor III? 138,  447, 549 Astor, Johann/John Jacob (Walldorf/ Heidelberg 1763-New York 1848), married to Sarah Todd, merchant, entrepreneur, ­acquired wealth in fur trade and real estate, father of William Backhouse ­Astor 17, 78, 93, 120, 126, 138, 169, 216, 248,  340, 447, 465, 486, 549 Astor, John Jacob III (New York 1822-New York 1890), financier, philanthropist, ­married

811

Index to Charlotte Augusta Gibbes, son of ­William Backhouse Astor 549 Astor, Mrs John Jacob née Sarah Todd (1762–1843) 84 Astor, Mrs William Backhouse née Margaret Alida Rebecca Armstrong (1800–1872) 84 Astor, William Backhouse (New York ­1792-New York 1875), son of John Jacob Astor, married to Margaret Alida Rebecca Armstrong, student in Göttingen, tutored by Christian von Bunsen 17, 64, 78, 80,  83, 90, 126, 137, 169 Astor, William Backhouse Jr. (1829-Paris 1892), grandson of John Jacob Astor, son of ­William Backhouse Astor 549 Astorini, Francisco P./Francis, barber, ­Boston 382, 487 Asverus, Gustav (Jena 1798-Jena 1843), ­student, read law in Berlin, in 1819 ­prosecuted as demagogue, sentenced to jail in 1824 16 Atlantic Monthly 71 Attila, romance by George Payne Rainsford James, 1839 442 Auf dem Kamp See Valentinskamp 276/ Hamburg Augusta See Augusta Arning Augusta See Augusta Lieber Augusta See Augusta Woodhouse Augusta/GA 103 Aunt Adela/Adele See Philippine Adele Haller née Oppenheimer Aunt Amelia See Emilia Oppenheimer née Esther/Hester Heckscher Aunt Caroline See Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer Aunt Clara See Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer Aunt Emilie/Emilia See Emilie Oppenheimer née Esther/Hester Heckscher Aunt Emilie See Amalia Hesse née Oppenheimer Aunt Harriet See Henriette Oppenheimer Aunt Hesse See Amalia Hesse née Oppenheimer Aunt Jette See Henriette Oppenheimer Aunt Malchen/Minna/Minchen Hesse See Amalia Hesse née Oppenheimer

Aunt Minna See Wilhelmine Ahrens née Oppenheimer Aunt Minna/Minchen See Wilhelmine Arning née Oppenheimer Aunt South Carolina See Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer Aunt Yette See Henriette Oppenheimer Aurora Islands, phantom islands in the South Atlantic 197 Außenalster See Alster Austin, Miss, Boston, related to the family Sullivan 544 Austin, Sarah (Norwich 1793-Weybridge 1867), English author, translator of texts by ­German poet Heinrich Heine e.a. 635 Averdieck/Averdick, Friedrich/Frederick (Hamburg 1809-Manchester 1849), son of Georg Friedrich Averdieck, Manchester, married to Louisa Quest Edwards, until 1845 partner of Caroline Lomnitz in their enterprise Lomnitz & Co., Manchester that had been founded by Caroline Lomnitz’ husband Eduard A. Lomnitz together with A. Steinthal? in 1825/1826, since 1844 partner of James Oppenheimer in Manchester 644, 645, 655, 679 Axen, Miss von/van, niece of Dr. med. Robert Caesar Herzfeld, daughter of Otto ­Siegmund and Theodore von Axen 325, 326 Axen, Mrs. von/van Theodore von (Hamburg 1797-Gotha 1893), née Herzfeld, sister of Dr. med. Robert Caesar Herzfeld, daughter of theatre director Jacob Herzfeld and the actress Karoline Amalie née Stegmann, actress, married in 1821 to Hamburg ­merchant Otto Siegmund von Axen 265, 325 Axen, Otto Siegmund von (Hamburg 1791–1853), married since 1821 to Theodore Herzfeld, merchant in Hamburg, son of the Oberalten Otto von Axen, brother of Karoline Beneke née von Axen 35 B. See Dr. Busse B. See Mathilde Benecke/Beneke née Schweder Bache, Alexander Dallas (Philadelphia 1806-Newport/RI 1867), President of

812 Girard College in Philadelphia since 1836, Philadelphia 57, 371, 401, 524, 541 Bacon, Francis (London 1561-Highgate 1626), English philosopher, scholar, ­politician 258, 596 Bacon, John 57, 58 Baeyer, Eugenia née Hitzig (Berlin 1807-­Berlin 1843), married to Johann Jacob Baeyer (Müggelheim 1794-Berlin 1885), ­daughter of Julius Eduard Hitzig, Berlin, their ­children were Clara (1826–?), Georg ­(1829–?), Emma (1831–?), Eduard ­(1832–?), Adolf (1835–1917), Johanna (1839–?), Adelaide (1843–1843) 302, 314 Ballenstädt/Germany 738, 743 Baltimore/Md 59, 67, 149, 150, 153, 196, 232, 447, 460, 463, 553, 749, 750, 753, 760 Bankhaus Arnstein u. Eskeles, Vienna/­ Austria, founded in 1773 by Bernhard von Eskeles (Vienna 1753–1839); the founder of the Austrian Spar-Casse resided in a ­Palais, Dorotheergasse, Vienna, that houses today the Jüdisches Museum Wien 725, 726 Banks, Dr. iur. Edward (Hamburg 1795-­Veytaux 1851), since 1837 Syndikus of the City of Hamburg. His daughter Marietta married in 1845 Dr. iur. Otto Adalbert Benecke/Beneke 764 Bard, Eliza (1813–1902) married to Rufus King Delafield (1802–1874), daughter of William and Catherine Bard, New York City 123,  126, 137, 140, 205 Bard, Mrs Catherine née Cruger (1781-after 1839), married to William Bard, New York City 123, 126, 140, 205 Bard, Susan (1812–1838) married to Ferdinand Sands (1806-December 7, 1839), daughter of William and Catherine Bard, New York City 123 Bard, William (1778–1853) married to ­Catherine Cruger, New York City 123, 139,  140, 205 Barnwell, Robert (?- Beaufort/SC 1839), son of Robert Woodward Barnwell, Columbia/ SC 120 Barnwell, Robert Woodward (Beaufort/SC 1801-Columbia/SC 1882), President of the

Index College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, Professor of moral and political Philosophy, senator and congressman, member of the Confederate Senate 126, 137, 151, 160,  205, 434, 485, 575, 587 Barrytown/NY 83 Bassewitz, Gräfin 715 Bathburn, mayor Liverpool 647 Bauer, Albrecht See Albert Baur Baumeister, Dr. iur. Hermann ­(Hamburg 1806-Hamburg 1877), lawyer, judge at the Niedergericht Hamburg 1835–1859, 1848/49 president of the ­Konstituante, Constitutional Convention Hamburg 363 Baur, Albert (Berlin 1803-Belzig 1886), theologian, Lutheran pastor in Belzig, cousin and childhood friend of Francis Lieber 15, 17,  19, 304, 371, 740, 746 Baur, Franz Johannes (1825–1902), son of Georg Friedrich Baur and Marianne Heise, merchant, banker, and owner of the so-called Baurs’ Park in Blankenese/ Hamburg, schoolmate of Oscar Lieber in the school of Dr. phil. Andreas Busse, Hamburg Eppendorf 514 Bay, Mrs. Columbia/SC 432 Bayard, James Asheton Sen. (Philadelphia 1767-Wilmington/Del. 1815), politician, lawyer, diplomat 589 Bayard, Jean François Alfred (Charolles 1796-Paris 1853), author 199 Beacon Street, Boston 66 Beaufort/SC 126 Beaumont, Gustave Auguste de la Bonniniere (Beaumont-la-Chartre 1802-Tours 1866), French lawyer, friend, colleague, travel companion, and co-author of Alexis de Tocqueville; met Francis Lieber in 1831 during his trip to the USA accompanied by Alexis de Tocqueville 183, 647 Becca/Becka/Beccy See Rebecca McClelland Beck, Karl/Charles (Heidelberg 1798-Cambridge/Mass. 1866), turner friend of Franz Lieber in Berlin, had to take refuge first in Paris then in the USA in 1824, teacher at Round Hill School at Northampton/ Mass., in 1832 appointed professor of

Index Latin ­language and literature at Harvard ­University, Cambridge/Mass. 15, 22,  124, 534 Becket, Columbia/SC 139 Beethoven, Ludwig van (Bonn 1770-­Vienna 1827), composer, pianist, conductor 134, 209 Bell, Mrs, = John Bell née Jane Erwin ­Yeatman?, Columbia/SC Belzig/Germany 304 Benecke/Beneke, Anna (Berlin 18.7.1827–?), daughter of Mathilde and Johann Wilhelm Benecke/Beneke, married 1854 Wilhelm Zierold (1825-Berlin 1898), politician, ­landowner in Mietzelfelde/Soldin, ­Frankfurt/Oder 170, 215, 216, 246, 265,  301, 321, 322, 327, 358, 373, 385, 405, 496, 499, 509, 516, 519, 529 Benecke/Beneke, Dr. iur. Otto Adalbert (Hamburg 1812-Hamburg 1891), son of Ferdinand Benecke/Beneke, lawyer, historian, since 1840 employee in the municipal archives of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg, married in 1845 Marietta Beata Banks (Hamburg 1823–?), daughter of Edward Banks, he had met Franz Lieber in the 1820s in Hamburg 170, 210, 211, 216,  257, 385, 405, 479, 499, 519, 537, 608, 657 Benecke/Beneke, Dr. See Dr. iur. Otto Adalbert Benecke/Beneke Benecke/Beneke, Etienne see Stephan/Etienne Benecke/Beneke Benecke/Beneke, Ferdinand Christoph (Bremen 1774-Hamburg 1848), father of Alfred, Minna, and Dr. iur. Otto Adalbert Beneke, married to Maria Magdalena Caroline von Axen (Hamburg 1788-Hamburg 1865), mentor of the young turners Johann Wilhelm and Stephan/Etienne Benecke, Berlin, met Franz Lieber in 1825 and 1826 19, 210, 211, 216, 385, 405 Benecke/Beneke, Caroline née von Axen (Hamburg 1788-Hamburg 1865), married to Ferdinand Benecke 385 Benecke/Beneke, Hermann/Herman Otto (Berlin 1823-Hamburg 1866), son of Mathilde and Johann Wilhelm Benecke/ Beneke, education and employments in

813 Hamburg, Manchester, and Mexico, merchant 170, 211, 214, 215, 220, 228, 251, 265,  266, 322, 357, 358, 377, 385, 402, 425, 499, 500, 509, 519, 529, 592, 657 Benecke/Beneke, Johann Wilhelm/William (Berlin 19.9.1797- Schmiedeberg/ Silesia 9.12.1827), married 1822–1827 to Mathilde Fredericke Schweder, merchantbanker in cooperation with his brother Stephan/Etienne in Berlin Wilmersdorf, betrayed by his uncle and former guardian Wilhelm Christian Benecke/Beneke von Gröditzberg 18, 211, 405, 409, 425, 494,  496, 516, 536, 600 Benecke/Beneke, Mathilde Fredericke née Schweder (Mietzelfelde bei Soldin 1803-Frankfurt/Oder 1868/69), married 1822–1827 to Johann Wilhelm Benecke/ Beneke, daughter of Regierungsrat Matthias Schweder 13, 18, 26, 133, 170, 183, 196,  198, 205, 210, 211, 214–216, 220, 228, 234, 244, 246, 265, 266, 279, 301, 302, 310, 313, 316, 322, 327, 332, 357, 358, 367, 372, 373, 375, 377, 383, 385, 393, 399, 400, 402, 405, 408, 409, 416, 423, 425–427, 440, 442, 479, 482, 494, 496, 498, 499, 502, 507, 509, 516, 519, 529, 535–537, 543, 544, 546, 552, 570, 578, 587, 590–592, 597, 599, 600, 611, 637, 642, 657, 659, 669, 678, 683, 685, 686, 688, 692, 696, 697, 740 Benecke/Beneke, Minna (Hamburg 1810-Hamburg 1861), sister of Alfred, and Dr. iur. Otto Benecke/Beneke 382, 608 Benecke/Beneke, Rudolf Alfred (Hamburg 1822-Hamburg 1890), brother of Minna, and Dr. iur. Otto Benecke/Beneke, son of Ferdinand Benecke/Beneke, merchant in Havana/Cuba, New York, and Hamburg, married to Margot Louise Amsinck 382,  385, 402, 405 Benecke/Beneke, Stephan/Etienne (Berlin 1800-Mexiko City 1877), merchant, in 1830 left Europe for New Orleans, German ­consul in Mexico, brother in law and friend of Mathilde Benecke née ­Schweder 215, 385, 405, 499, 519, 592 Benecke/Beneke, Wilhelm Christian von Gröditzberg (Frankfurt/Oder ­

814 1779–Berlin 1860), merchant Berlin, warden of his nephews Johann Wilhelm/ William und Stephan/Etienne Benecke/ Beneke he ­betrayed and caused their ­bankruptcy 133, 385, 409 Benjamin, Rev. Athens/Greece 647 Beranger 452 Berenberg, Gossler & Co., merchants-bankers in Hamburg 64, 499 Berenburg, village 738 Bergedorf, village east of Hamburg 39, 364 Berliner Jahrbücher 386 Bernsdorff/Bernstorff, America Gräfin von née Freiin von Riedesel zu Eisenbach (New York 1780-Wedendorf 1856), ­daughter of Frederike von Riedesel and married to Ernst Graf von Bernstorff 143 Bernsdorff/Bernstorff, Arthur Friedrich Karl, Graf von (Berlin 1808-Wedendorf 1897), son of Ernst Graf von and America Gräfin von Bernstorff, pupil of Franz Lieber in the summer of 1825, Prussian diplomat, married 1835 Auguste Maria Crescentia von Miltitz (1815–1880) 143 Bernsdorff/Bernstorff, daughter of America Gräfin von Bernstorff 143 Bernsdorff/Bernstorff, Ernst Graf von (Gartow 1768-Gartow 1840), married to America Gräfin Freiin von Riedesel zu Eisenbach, Prussian politician 18, 143 Bertheau, Caroline (Hamburg 1811-­Monsheim 1892), student of Amalie Sieveking, directrice of the hospital Hamburg St. Georg 34 Berzelius, Jöns Jakob (Östergötland 1779– Stockholm 1848), one of the founders of modern chemistry 601 Besser, Rudolf B. (Hamburg 1811-Engelberg/ CH 1883), publisher and bookseller, partner of Perthes, Besser & Mauke Hamburg (1836–1853) 229, 268, 292, 297, 314, 353,  362, 381, 416, 420, 478, 490, 570, 576, 577, 614 Bethoven See Ludwig van Beethoven Betsy, slave, cook in the Lieber household, mother of Henry, partner of James, Columbia/SC 47, 98, 103, 151, 152, 156, 158,  163, 164, 166, 173, 174, 179, 189, 193, 209,

Index 211, 224, 268, 296, 320, 349, 367, 391, 392–394, 398, 402, 412, 433, 467, 517, 526, 546, 566, 567, 579, 620, 700, 718, 755 Biddle, Mrs Nicholas née Jane Margaret Craig (1792–1856), Philadelphia 140 Biddle, Nicholas (Philadelphia 1786–1844), banker, president of the Second Bank of the United States of America in ­Philadelphia, married in 1811 to Jane Margaret Craig, Philadelphia 296, 371, 524, 525, 560, 561, 587 Bille, rivulet in Hamburg 41 Binnenalster See Alster Bishop, drink, kind of punch, red wine flavoured with bitter oranges, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeat 323 Black, Mrs, Columbia/SC 389 Blanc, French-Reformed family, originally silk merchants in Berlin Breite Strasse 313 Blanc, Henriette Pauline (Berlin 1807–?), daughter of Pierre Henri Blanc, married since 1829 to Karl Friedrich August Schirmer (Berlin 1799-Prenzlau 1858), theologian, friend of Friedrich Schleier­ macher (Berlin 1799-Prenzlau 1858) 313 Blanding Street, Columbia/SC 47, 568 Blanding, Abram (Rehoboth/Mass. 1776-Charleston/SC 20.09.1839), lawyer, engineer, banker, abolitionist, promoter of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad, as designated president of the South Western Railroad Bank he moved from Columbia/SC to Charleston/SC where he died in 1839 of yellow fever, brother of William Blanding, married to Mary Caroline DeSaussure (1794–1862), daughter of Judge Henry William DeSaussure 138 Blanding, James Douglas (Columbia/SC 1821–1906), son of Abram Blanding 138 Blanding, S., MD dentist in Columbia/ SC 482 Blankenese, Danish village west of Hamburg, since 1866 Prussian, since 1938 part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 514 Blochmann/Blochman, Dresden, Progymnasium, headmaster Karl Justus Blochmann (1786–1855) 84, 169, 170, 257, 325, 549

Index Blondin, Mr, Blondin’s Kunstreitergesellschaft 247 Blücher-Altona, Conrad Daniel Graf von (Penzlin 1764-Altona 1845), Danish Oberpräsident der Stadt Altona, in 1839 he became knight of the Danish Order of the Elephant (Elefantenorden), Danish order of chivalry 222 Blucher, Graf See Conrad Daniel Graf von Blücher-Altona Boccaccio, Giovanni (Paris 1313-­Florence 1375), author of Decamerone (1348–1353) 334 Boeckh/Böckh/Boeck, August (Karlsruhe 1785-Berlin 1867), historian, teacher 314 Boekle/Böckl i.e. Willem Beukelszoon (?- Biervliet before 1474), Dutchman who invented the method of pickling heerings important to Dutch economy 488 Bonaparte, Joseph (Corte/France 1768-Florence 1844), brother of Napoleon, former King of Naples, Spain, Comte de Survilliers, lived since 1815 in exile in Bordentown/NJ 149, 150, 225 Bonaparte, Napoleon See Napoleon Bonn/Germany 209, 637, 647, 669, 710, 712,  722, 739 Borell, Robert, married to Sarah Langdon 138 Borell, Sarah née Langdon, daughter of Walter Langdon and his wife Dorothea née Astor, granddaughter of John Jacob Astor 138 Bornemann, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig (Berlin 1798-Berlin 1864), lawyer, turner friend of Franz Lieber in Berlin, Prussian civil servant, since 1842 member of the Staatsrat, president of the Oberzensurgericht, 1848 Minister of justice in the March government, the goverment of the Deutsche Bund 739 Bornstädt, Fräulein von See Marie von Bornstedt Bornstedt, A = Carl August Ulrich Adalbert von (Stendal 1807-Illenau 1851), journalist Paris, friend of Karl Marx 647 Bornstedt, Marie von/de (Ebstorf 1823-­Brunswick 1890), Ballenstedt,

815 Dame d’honneur of the Duchesse of Ballenstedt/Saxony-Anhalt, married 1856 Wilhelm Freiherr von Marenholtz (1819–1862) 738, 743, 746 Bötticher, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm (­Wormsdorf 1798-Berlin 1850), teacher, historian 612, 613 Bötticher, Wilhelm, Des Cajus Cornelius Tacitus sämmtliche Werke, 4 vols. Verlag von Theod. Christ. Friedr. Enslin Berlin 1831–1834 612, 613 Bowen, Nathaniel (Boston 1779-­Charleston/ SC 25.8.1839), Bishop of the South ­Carolinian Episcopal Church in the United States of America 156 Branchville, Orangeburgh District/SC 294, 350, 397 Brancker/Branker Madame/Mrs née Helene Godeffroy (Hamburg 1811–1894), in 1833 married to English merchant William Brancker (1797–1882), daughter of wealthy Hamburg merchant Johan Cesar V. Gode­ ffroy (Hamburg 1781–1845) and his wife Sophie Lucie Meyer (1786–1842), Brancker went bankrupt in 1836/37 and founded in 1837 with capital invested by his father in law the New York based house Brancker, Godeffroy & Co, Hamburg-New York City 138 Brandes See Christian August Brandis Brandis, Christian August (Holzminden ­1790-Bonn 1867), philosopher, 1816 secretary in the Prussian embassy in Rome, later professor at the University of Bonn 722, 738 Braunschweig/Brunswick/Germany 700, 722, 729 Breite Strasse, Berlin Alt Cölln/Germany 313 Bremen/Germany 39, 68, 134, 153, 154, 186, 208, 225, 226, 291, 295, 308, 426, 448, 460, 467, 478, 580, 625, 627–629, 633, 706, 718, 749, 750, 753, 760 Bremerhaven/Bremer Haven/Germany 627 Brewer, John S., The court of King James the First: to which are added letters illustrative of the personal history of the most distinguished characters in the court of that monarch and his predecessors. Now first

816 published from the original manuscripts, 2 vols. Richard Bentley London 1839 343 Brewster, Mr. Kaskaskia/Ill., married to Marianne Sullivan, Boston 67 Brewster, Marianne Appleton (Boston 1815–1874), née Sullivan, married to Mr. Brewster, Kaskaskia, Ill. 67, 68, 106 Bridgman/Bridgeman, Laura Dewey Lynn (Hanover/NH 1829-Boston 1889), blinddeaf, known as the first blind-deaf child in the USA who gained an education in the English language, she was educated in the Perkins Institution for the Blind of Samuel Gridley Howe, MD Boston; a meeting with Charles Dickens in 1842 made her known in Europe 71, 72, 116, 707, 768 Brinkm. See Fryer, Dean & Brinckman, NY Brinkmann, M. merchant New York City See Fryer, Dean & Brinckman, NY Brinkmann, major in Celle/Germany 647 Brockhaus, F. A., publisher Leipzig 1, 17, 22, 226, 387, 409, 475, 490, 583, 599 Brooklyn/Brooklyne NY 121 Brooks, Henry (Medford/Mass. 1807-New York City 1833), brother of Sidney Brooks, brother in law of Fanny Brooks née ­Dehon 68, 69 Brooks, Mrs Fanny/Frances née Dehon (1805-Newport/RI 1871), married to Sidney Brooks, related to Edward ­Everett, ­Boston 60, 67, 68, 69, 91, 480,  556, 662, 683 Brooks, Sidney (Boston 1799–1878), New York merchant, married to Fanny/Frances ­Dehon, son of Peter Chardon Brooks 91,  480, 556, 662, 683 Brougham, Henry Peter, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (Edinburgh 1778-Cannes 1868), British author, lawyer, whig politician, abolitionist, Lord Chancellor 619, 624,  638, 640, 646, 650, 651 Brougham, Lord See Henry Peter Brougham Brown, Mrs, Columbia/SC 151, 224 Brown, publisher 124 Brugges/Bruges, Belgium 751 Brune/Bruin/Bruen, Frederick W. (Bremen 1776–Baltimore/Md 1860), married Anne Henriette Clark (Dublin 1780–1859),

Index ­ igrated to Baltimore in 1799, partner m in the merchant house F. W. Brune & Sons 153, 196, 232, 750 Bruns, H., shoemaker, head of Bruns & Co., Columbia/SC 297, 311, 333, 625 Brüssel/Belgium See Brussels Brussels/Belgium 50, 420, 488, 646, 647, 675, 677, 679 Buck/Buek, Franz Ludwig, schoolmate of Franz Lieber, turner, merchant in Hamburg 215, 221, 270, 271, 357, 385, 489, 499,  683 Buddenbrook, Antonia, heroine in Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, 2 vols. Frankfurt/Main 1901 43 Bugenhagen, Johannes (Wollin 1485-­Wittenberg 1558), theologian, friend of Martin Luther, founder of the Johanneum, Hamburg 274 Bülow/Bulow, Heinrich Ulrich Wilhelm Freiherr von (Schwerin 1792-Berlin 1846), married to Gabriele von Humboldt (Berlin 1802–1887), daughter of Wilhelm von Humboldt, Tegel, Minister in Prussia, Prussian ambassador in London, Minister of Foreign Affairs 695, 727 Bunsen, Christian Carl Josias von (Korbach 1791-Bonn 1860), lawyer, scholar, diplomat, politician, Franz Lieber first met him as employee of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the Prussian ambassador in Rome 1822/23, married in 1817 Fanny/Frances Waddington, Prussian ambassador in London since 1841 17, 647, 651, 687, 691, 727, 732 Bunsen, Frau von née Fanny/Frances Waddington (Dunsten Park 1791–1876), in 1817 married to Christian von Bunsen 651 Buren, Martin van (Kinderhook/NY 1782-­Kinderhook/NY 1862) 8th president of the USA 360 Burge, William (1797–1850), British legal scholar, London Lincoln’s Inn 255 Burke, Edmund (Dublin 1729-Beaconsfield 1797), Irish-British author, philosopher and politician 58, 105 Burkhardt, Otto, Liverpool 646 Burleigh, 1st Baron, Lord William Cecil (1521-London 1598), politician, Lord High

Index Treasurer, confident of English Queen Elizabeth I 389 Burmeister/Burmeester/Burmester, Johann Heinrich, merchant in Wandsbeck and London, partner of Mathilde Lieber’s father Georg Oppenheimer, stepfather of Amalia Schoppe 9, 208, 446 Burmester, Herr, friend of Dr. phil. Andreas Busse, Langenhorn, Hamburg 476 Burmester, Mrs. Engel Catharina née Hammer, married first to Weise, second marriage with Johann Burmeister/Burmester/ Burmeester, merchant, mother of Amalia Schoppe née Weise, Lucie Burmester and Marianne Burmester 115, 208 Burmester, son 446 Büsch, Georg Hinrich (Hamburg 1799–1860), founded with his cousin Peter Franz Biancone (Hamburg 1797–1874) the house Biancone & Co specialized in coffee trade, visited Boston and Gossler & Knorre in 1829, 1840–1841 president of the Hamburg Chambers of Commerce, son of Georg Hinrich Büsch (1753–1823) and Catharina Margaretha née Luis (1768–1809), Hamburg senator, visited Heidelberg in 1844 where he met Francis Lieber, 1844/45 sent the bark New York to New York on board migrants 142, 501 Bushton, Liverpool 647 Busse, Dr. phil. Andreas Jacob Ludwig (Hamburg 1809–Ohlstedt 1887), teacher of Oscar Lieber in the Palm’ schen school in Hamburg Eppendorf 134, 135, 167,  171–173, 195, 199, 206, 207, 217, 221, 225, 226, 231, 239, 246, 253, 257, 261, 263, 264, 268, 269, 277, 287, 293, 307, 315, 318–321, 327, 329, 330, 342, 354, 358, 359, 367, 377, 380, 384, 386, 387, 416, 436, 439, 441, 443, 444, 452, 455, 475, 476, 481, 483, 491, 493, 506, 509, 514, 516, 519, 526, 527, 531, 538, 549, 550, 555, 561, 562, 575, 580, 581, 585, 586, 598, 599, 607, 608, 617, 743 Busse, Marie (? 1836–?), daughter of Dr. phil. Andreas Busse 319, 329 Busse, Mrs/Frau Dr. née Caroline Friederike Margarete Barries (Grabow 1812–Wellingsbüttel 1898), married to Dr. phil. Andreas

817 Busse, teacher in Hamburg Eppendorf 167, 230, 236, 268, 277, 300, 315,  317–319, 321, 329, 342, 367, 386, 478, 527 Busse, Pastor and teacher of George Lomnitz in Wilhelmsburg/Germany 673 Butler, Mrs., née Frances Anne Kemble (London 1809–1893), actress, author, and abolitionist, since 1834 married to Pierce Mease Butler (1810–1867) from Philadelphia, lived since 1832 in the USA, left her husband and returned to the stage, friend of Mary Appleton 85, 180, 272 Butler, Reuben See Reuben Butler Byron, Lord, George Gordon Noel Byron, 6. Baron Byron (London 1788-Messolongi/ Greece 1824), British poet 364, 384 Cabot, John/Giovanni Caboto (Genua 1450–1498), sailor and explorer, supplied in 1496 with a charter by English King Henry VII to discover a Northwest passage from Europe to Asia 569 Caboul/Cabool 436 Caecilia (Rome 200-Rome 230 AC), martyr, patron of church music, especially of the organ and the violin 465 Caillé, René (1799–1838), Reise nach Timbuktu 1824–1828, 1829; Journal d’un voyage a ­Temboctou et a Jenne, dans l’Afrique c­ entrale, ...Paris 1830 414 Calderón, Angel Marquis de la Barca y Belgrano (Buenos Aires 1790–1861), poet, politician, diplomat, married since 1838 to Fanny Inglis 556 Calderón, Fanny Marquise de la Barca, née Frances/Fanny Erskine Inglis (Edinburgh 1804-Madrid 1882), sister of Jane Inglis, Lydia Inglis, and Harriet Addison; she befriended the Appleton sisters, William Hickling Prescott, and the Liebers, married in 1838 the Spanish minister to the United States Angel Calderón de la Barca; she probably authored Scenes at the Fair and was object of devotion of Hamburg merchant George Parish (1807–1881) 168, 556 Calderón, Fanny, Life in Mexico, William ­Hickling Prescott Boston 1843 556

818 Calderón, Pedro de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (Madrid 1600–1681), Spanish poet 375 Calhoun, John C. (Abbeville/SC 1782-Washington/DC 1850), 7th vice-president of the USA, US-senator, secretary of state, and supporter of slavery 390, 565 Calvin, Jean (Noyon 1509-Geneva 1564), Founder of Calvinism, French theologian, creator of the Geneva Liturgy 94, 123,  156, 279, 349, 459, 516 Cambridge/England 333, 665 Cambridge/Mass. 21, 46, 61, 63, 124, 183, 333, 466, 485, 486 Cammans, Whitehouse & Co., merchants, Wallstreet New York City 750 Campe, Julius Johann Wilhelm (Deensen 1792-Hamburg 1867), publisher, since 1823 proprietor of the Hamburg based publishing house Hoffmann und Campe, nephew of Joachim Heinrich Campe 37,  363, 442, 678 Campeggio/Campeggi, Lorenzo (Milan ­1474-Rome 1539), lawyer, cardinal 570 Canada 5, 70, 73, 82, 87, 98, 100, 104, 138, 149 Caningham/Cuningham See William Cunningham Canton/China 39 Cantoor/Cantour See Edward Lomnitz Capdeville, Matilda/Mathilde née Sophie Mathilde Hesse (Altona 1818–?), Palmaille 37, Altona, daughter of Heinrich Levin and Amalia Hesse, married in 1840 to Pierre Henry Capdeville from Bordeaux 200,  210, 216, 241, 257, 271, 417, 421, 668, 670, 725 Capdeville, Pierre Henry, Bordeaux merchant, married in 1840 to Mathilde Hesse 417,  421, 670, 725 Cape Lizard 627 Carey & Lea; Carey & Hart; Carey, Lea & Blanchard, publishing house ­Philadelphia/ PA 1, 26, 35, 208, 213, 280, 616 Carey, Henry C. (Philadelphia 1793-­Philadelphia 1879), publisher in Philadelphia/PA 277 Carey, Mathew (Dublin 1760-Philadelphia 1839), publisher in Philadelphia/PA 143,  262

Index Carey, Mrs. Burlington/NJ, wife or mother of Henry C. Carey 136 Carlsruhe/Karlsruhe/Germany 716 Carlyle, Thomas (Dumfries 1795-London 1881), author, journalist, historian, The French Revolution: A History, 2 vols. ­London 1837 647 Caroline See Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer Carrie/Carry See Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer Carthago/ancient town in Tunesia 433 Castle Howard/Yorkshire, first barock castle in England 1699–1759 644, 650 Cato, Marcus Porcius (Tusculum 234-Rome 149 BC), Roman military man, politician, author, historian 433 Catskill/Katskill/NY 80, 84, 106, 169 Cavendish, George (1497–1562) English historian, authored Thomas Wolsey, Late Cardinall. His Lyffe and Deathe, 1557 570 Celle, Prof., turner friend of Franz Lieber in Berlin 703 Chamisso, Adelbert von (Ante/Chalons-enChampagne 1781-Berlin 1838), French poet in Berlin, friend, and son in law of Prussian lawyer and publisher Julius Eduard Hitzig 9, 18 Champollion, Jean-François (Figeac 1790-Paris 1832), French historian and linguist, founder of scientific egyptology, played a major role in deciphing the hieroglyphs 17, 336 Chapeaurouge, Mrs, Susanne Helene née Gossler 184, 501, 579, 663, 578, 663 Gossler, Miss See Susanne Helene Chapeaurouge Charles II = Karl der Schändliche (London 1630–1685), King of England, Scotland, and Ireland since 1660, counted the years of his reign not from 1660 or his coronation in 1661 but from the execution of his father Charles I in 1649 569, 570, 577 Charles V/Karl V. (Gent 1500-Monastery San Jerónimo de Yuste 1558), Spanish King Carlos I since 1516, Roman-German King since 1519, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire since 1520, abdictated in 1556 in favour of his son Philipp II (Spain,

Index ­ urgundy) and his brother Ferdinand B I (Germany, Italy) 488 Charleston/SC 46, 103, 112, 127, 134, 137, 138,  150, 151, 153, 156, 163, 174, 178, 182, 184, 186, 194, 205, 209, 211, 225, 237, 261, 294, 310, 313, 314, 332, 347, 348, 350–352, 367, 371, 373, 397, 415, 419, 429, 434, 447–449, 460, 463, 478, 486, 498, 509, 540, 553, 573, 606, 612, 623, 625, 628, 706, 750, 760 Charlotte See Charlotte Karsten Charlotte/Charlotte McC See Charlotte Lorain McCord Cheves Chateauneuf, Alexis de (Hamburg 1799-Hamburg 1853), architect, met Franz Lieber in Rome 1822/23, stepson of Hamburg’s municipal printer Johann August Meissner, son of Pierre Basile de Chateauneuf and Marie Elisabeth Schniebes, married in 1846 Norwegian Caspara Möller 1, 19, 20,  39, 40, 446, 474, 475, 483, 498, 534 Chateauneuf, Alexis de, Architectura domestica, London Ackermann & Co., Paris Brockhaus & Avenarius, Hamburg Meissner 1839 446, 475 Chatham, Lady née Hester Grenville 1st Baroness Chatham (1720–1803), married to William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, mother of William Pitt the Younger 338, 389, 552 Chatham, Lord, William Pitt 1st Earl of Chatham, Pitt the Elder (1708–1778), married to Hester Grenville, father of William Pitt the Younger, British statesman, whig 293, 338, 347, 389, 392, 399, 552, 569 Chaufepied, Miss 219, 364 Cheas, Mr. artist in Columbia/SC 383 Cheves, Capt. Langdon Jr. (1814-Battery Wagner/SC 1863), married in 1839 to Charlotte Lorain McCord, brother in law of his father in law David James McCord, brother of Louisa Susannah McCord née Cheves 354, 362, 571 Cheves, Louisa see Mrs. David James McCord Cheves, Mrs Langdon Jr. née Charlotte Lorain McCord (1819-Charleston/SC 1879), daughter of David James McCord, married on Christmas Eve 1839 to Capt. Langdon Cheves Jr., future brother in law of her father who married Louisa Susannah

819 Cheves in 1840 78, 134, 152, 160, 188, 190,  194, 202, 209, 226, 233, 235, 265, 285, 347, 354, 362, 363, 550, 570, 571, 768 China 66, 287, 296, 335, 359, 413, 431, 572, 605 Choate, Rufus (Essex Co./Mass. 1799-Halifax 1859), lawyer, orator, whig, senator from Massachusetts 624 Church, Lt General, Athens/Greece 647 Cid, El Cid, Kastilian knight (ca.1045–1099) 375 Cincinnati/OH 64 Clanders 246 Clara See Clara Kugler née Hitzig Clara See Clara Lieber Clara See Clara Lomnitz Clara See Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer Clark, Mr, Columbia/SC 411, 581 Clay, Henry (1777–1852) US-American politician, lived in Kentucky 64, 277, 565, 723 Clive, Colonel 100 Coates, school-master in Columbia/SC 154 Coblenz/Germany 637, 669 Coffee 11, 13, 39, 87, 97, 142, 182, 247, 249, 295, 318, 335, 487, 499, 537, 559, 575, 705, 715 Cogswell, Joseph Green (Ipswich/Mass. 1786–Cambridge/Mass. 1871), student enrolled at the Georgia Augusta U ­ niversity in Göttingen in company with George Bancroft 1816–1818, in 1823 established with Bancroft Round Hill School Northampton/MA, editor of the New York Review, arranged the Astor Library, friend of Hamburg archivist and historian Johann Martin Lappenberg 445, 447,  503, 549, 577 Colborne, jun, son of Sir John Colborne 104 Colborne, Sir John Generalgouverneur, 1st Baron Seaton (1778–1863) Sir John Colborne, since December 1839 1st Baron of Seaton, since 1828 vice-governor of Upper-Canada 104 College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 6,  8, 13, 14, 26, 44, 46, 137, 143, 152, 161, 182, 189, 190, 194, 202, 234, 235, 280, 291, 293, 297, 315, 341, 371, 406, 429, 434, 468, 493, 494, 516, 554, 555, 559, 568, 575, 576, 582, 587, 592, 620, 665, 683, 733, 750, 754

820 Cologne/Germany 635 Columbia Canal, Columbia/SC 46 Columbus, Christopher (Genua 1451-Valladolid 1506) 251, 259, 526, 569, 624 Congaree River/SC 8, 46, 48 Consul Spitta See Wilhelm Carl Georg Spitta Continental System 10, 37 Cooper, Thomas (London 1759-Columbia/SC 1839), lawyer, politician, chemist, 1821–1833 President of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 560 Copenhagen/Denmark 665, 671 Corfu/Greece 630, 631 Corinth/Greece 524 Cornare/Cornaro, Luigi (1467–1566), ­author 582, 583 Cornelius Nepos (110–25 BC) Roman historian 340 Correggio/Corregio, Antonio da (Correggio 1489-Correggio 1534), Italian painter 290 Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. by the executors of his son, John, Earl of Chatham, vol. 1, London John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1838 338 Coster, Gerard H. (?-New York 1880?), brother in law and partner of Charles August Heckscher, New York City, married to Matilda Prime 57, 80, 113, 119, 125, 173,  212, 227, 242, 252, 275, 286, 305, 314, 316, 331, 353, 355, 368, 446 Coster, John Gerard (Amsterdam 1762New York 1846), merchant, father of Gerard H. Coster and Georgiana Louisa ­Heckscher, New York City 125 Coster, Mrs. Gerard H. née Matilda Prime (?-Paris 19.4.1849), married to Gerard H. Coster, brother in law of Charles August Heckscher, New York City 125 Coteau du Lac/Canada 100 Cöthen/Germany 709 Cotta, Johann Friedrich von (Stuttgart 1764–1832), publisher, politician, trendsetter in German literature and industrial techniques 12, 21, 177, 229, 362 Crabbe, Otto 741, 742 Craig, Mrs. See Mrs. Nicholas Biddle Crane, Nancy, Columbia/SC, ­daughter of ­Sidney Crane (1791–1850), merchant? 546

Index Cranmer, Thomas (1489-Oxford 1556), archbishop of Canterbury, supported King Henry VIII in divorcing Catherine of Aragon and marrying Anne Boleyn in 1533 459 Crawford, Louisa Cutler Ward, married to Thomas Crawford, sculptor 723, 739 Crawford, Thomas (New York 1814-London 1857), US-American sculptor with Irish family background, student of Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1838 ­honorary member of the National ­Academy of ­Design, married to Louisa Cutler Ward and brother in law of Julia Ward Howe 723 Crefeldt/Germany 749 Creliner, Auguste née Düring (Berlin 1795-­Berlin 1865), actress in Berlin 739 Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658), British military man, politician, leading figure in the ­English Revolution of the 1640s, influential in the trial that condemned King Charles I to death 67, 88, 569 Cronkhite, J. P. , New York City 75 Crossen an der Oder/Germany, today Krosno Odrzanskie/Poland 250, 702 Cunningham, William (Westmoreland Co./ PA ?–Columbia/SC 1843) bookseller in Columbia/SC 61 Cuxhaven/Germany 200, 210, 764 Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph (Wismar 1785-Bonn 1860), liberal politician and historian, member of the so-called Göttinger Sieben and the Frankfurt Paulskirche 416 Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph, Geschichte von Dänemark, Perthes & Besser Hamburg 1840–1843, Bd. 1, 416 Daily Intelligencer 564, 566 Dallas, Trevanion/Trevanian Barlow (­Philadelphia 1801-Pittsburgh 1841), judge in Pittsburg/PA., uncle of ­Alexander Dallas Bache, Philadelphia 57 Dammtor, Hamburg 34, 48 Daniel (Old Testament) 158 Dannecker, Johann Heinrich (Stuttgart 1758–1841), sculptor 709, 710

Index Dante Alighieri (Florence 1265-Ravenna 1321), poet, philosopher, and author of the epic poem The Devine Comedy 311, 313, 414, 490, 503, 561, 710 Das jüngste Gericht/Last Judgment, ceiling fresco by Michelangelo Buonarroti in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome, 1541 696 Davout, Louis-Nicolas (Annoux 1770-Paris 1823), French General, Marechal d’ Empire 15 Decken, Frau von, wife of Oberst von Decken, Dresden 647, 732, 733 Decken, Oberst von, Dresden 647 Deichstrasse, Hamburg 678 Deichtor, Hamburg 48 Delaware River 178, 300 Demosthenes (384 BC-322 BC), famous Greek orator and statesman in ancient Athens/ Greece 259 Denmark 9, 38, 271, 364, 416, 687 Der Diplomat, comedy 365 Der Gefangene, comedy 365 Der gestiefelte Kater, comedy by ­Ludwig Tieck, first performance Berlin 20.4.1844 737 Der Postillon von Lonjuneau, music by Adolph Adam, lyrics by Adolphe de Leuven, first performance Paris 1836 172 Der Teufel ist los, oder die verwandelten Weiber, opera, lyrics by Minister Friedrich Wilhelm von Bork, based on a comedy by William Shakespeare, first performance 1743 or Leipzig 1766 440 Der Vampyr, novel by Lord Byron, 1819 and opera 364, 384 DeSaussure, Henry William de (1763-Columbia/SC 26.3.1839), lawyer, state legislator, supported the founding of and acted as one of the trustees of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 558 DeSaussure, William Ford (Charleston/ SC 1792-Columbia/SC 1870), lawyer, ­politician (Democratic party), curator of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/ SC 558 Dessau/Germany 709 Detroit/MI 64, 73, 78, 82, 313, 579 Deutsche Bund 15, 442, 687 Devout, Marshall See Louis-Nicolas Davout

821 Dew, Thomas Roderick (1802–1846) President of William & Mary College, Williamsburg/ Va 1836–1846 344, 349 Dickens, Charles (Portsmouth 1812-Gad’s Hill Place/Rochester 1870), leading British author, world famous celebrity in his time, Tale of Two Cities, Chapman & Hall London 1859 5 Die Stumme von Portici/La Muette de Portici, opera by Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber, first performance Paris 1828 420 Die/The Britannia, captain Charles H. ­Marshall, 1827, May-June 1827 LiverpoolNew York City 21, 410, 624 Die/The British Queen, steamer, a wood-paddler, 1850 GRT, operated by the British and American Steam Navigation Company in transatlantic service 1839–41, that was founded by American lawyer Junius Smith (1780–1853), in 1841 the ship was sold to the Belgian Government 57, 112, 120, 210,  322, 369, 370, 372, 375, 389, 390, 393, 400, 439, 493 Die/The Charlotte 628 Die/The Cuxhaven 58, 116, 191, 195, 202, 361,  506, 580, 581, 601 Die/The Daniel Webster 419 Die/The Diamond/Diamant, Captain Balleer 426 Die/The Franklin, wooden bark, ca. 250 BRT, built in 1835 by J. A. Meyer, Lübeck; ­belonged to Robert M. Sloman/J. L. ­Werlund, Hamburg, got lost in 1872 during a tour from Hamburg to Brazil 272, 299,  328, 485 Die/The Great Western = SS Great Western, oak-hulled paddle-wheel steamship ­designed by Isambard K. Brunel in 1836, 2300 tons, launched July 19, 1837, operated by the Great Western Steamship Company, maiden voyage April 8, 1838 BristolNew York, taken out of service December 1846 62, 65, 80, 82, 105, 120, 131, 167, 171,  464, 486, 507, 511, 537, 560, 618 Die/The Hibernia = SS Hibernia, steamer, 1422 burden, built in 1843 at Greenock by ­Robert Steele & Co, Cunard Line, maiden voyage 1843, 1845 route LiverpoolHalifax-Boston, 1849 grounded off Halifax,

822 1850 sold to Spanish navy, renamed Habanois 767 Die/The Howard, steamer 81, 82, 129, 134,  135, 172, 205, 211, 276 Die/The Isaac Newton, Captain Lyman Spaulding, captain J. Wendt 1839–1842, J. C. Wienholtz 1842–1844, P.B. Matzen 1845–1846, burthen 599 83/95 tons, owners Ichabod Goodwin Portsmouth/NH, Liverpool-Philadelphia 200, 222, 223,  245, 352, 353, 369 Die/The Johann Friedrich, bark, built 1840, owned by the Bremen based shipping company N. Gloystein & Söhne, route Bremerhaven-Charleston/SC-Bremerhaven, captains Friedrich Hederich and Heinrich Wieting, ran ashore off the British coast in 1850 623, 627, 633, 706 Die/The Lafayette 211 Die/The Lexington, paddlewheel steamboat, operated along the coast in 1835–1840, sunk in January 1840 due to fire, 139 people were killed, one of the victims was Charles Follen 351, 352, 394 Die/The Liverpool 72, 75, 78, 82, 114, 119, 130,  193, 213, 278, 362, 460 Die/The Louis Philippe 316, 346 Die/The Lpool See Die/The Liverpool Die/The Montezuma, owner Black Ball Line, Thompson, Wright & Marshall, sailing ship built by William H. Webb, New York in 1843, 3 masts, 924 grt tonnage, wrecked in May 18, 1854 off Jones Beach, Long Island on a trip from Liverpool to New York, all passengers (ca. 500 migrants) and the crew were rescued 624, 634 Die/The Pelaski/Pulaski, exploded and sunk off the coast of North Carolina 14.6.1838 351 Die/The Poland, LeHavre packet, destroyed by fire in 1839 on route LeHavre-New York, wrecked 597, 599, 606, 612 Die/The Princeton, sunk February 28, 1844 in the Potomac River, one of the casualties was Abel Parker Upshur 623 Die/The Sir Isaac Newton, built 1839 by J. Meyer in Lübeck, owner Robert Miles Sloman, Hamburg 110, 222, 225, 242, 397

Index Die/The Sophia/Sophie/Sophy, bark, Bremen ship, captain Johann L. Kuhlke, New YorkRotterdam, 1839 23, 68, 110 Die/The Sultanah, in April 1840 the Sultanah, a three-masted, 80 foot wooden sailing ship after a passage of three months from Oman had docked at New York harbor 571 Die/The Washington 165, 361, 506, 513, 581,  597 Die/The White-Hall 93 Diergardt, Friedrich (Moers 1795-Morsbroich 1869), entrepreneur in Viersen, owned a factory for the production of velvet in St. Tönis in 1813; he combined trade, and factory production with cottage industries to improve Rhenish industrialization 749 Dolores See Dolores Oppenheimer Dom, Christmas fair in Hamburg since the 11th century, first within the bounds of the Mariendom; in 1804 the Mariendom was demolished and the fair still called the Dom in remembrance of its origins took place on several sites within the City when from 1893 onwards it got its final location on the Heiligengeistfeld in Hamburg St. Pauli 300, 318, 320 Domeier, Lucy/Lucie née Esther Gad 20,  21, 28 Donaldson, Mrs. 84 Donnenberg, Elisabeth (Hamburg 1831– 1889) Hamburg, schoolmate of Clara Lomnitz 765 Donnenberg, family, lived Esplanade/ Hamburg 757 Donner, Conrad Hinrich (1774–1854), merchant-banker in Altona, owner of a large estate with an exhibition of sculptures by Berthil Thorvaldsen 476 Donner, Margarete Elisabeth (Altona 1821-Hamburg 1894), daughter of Johann Christoph Donner and Frederika Amalia Andrees, married 1840 Wilhelm Gossler 448 Dorchen See Dorothee Karsten née Lieber Doris See Dorothee Karsten née Lieber Dorothea See Dorothee Karsten née Lieber

Index Dorr, Mr., Boston, related to the Scottish ­family Inglis 60 Downing, Jack, Major 614 Dr. B. See Dr. phil. Andreas Busse Dr. Benecke/Beneke See Dr. iur. Otto Adalbert Benecke/Beneke Dr. Julius See Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius Dr. T See D. Trezevant MD Drain./Drayn. Mrs. See Mrs Draynard Draynard/Drainard, Mrs., Columbia/SC 158,  162, 163, 176, 250, 268, 409 Dresden/Germany 17, 84, 169, 170, 257, 325,  447, 503, 516, 521, 549, 570, 577, 599, 646, 647, 717, 727, 728, 730, 731, 732, 733, 734, 738 Driburg/Germany 722 Dryden, John (1631-London 1700), poet, author, fellow of the English Royal Society 393 Duchess of Buckingham, née Lady Katherine Manners (?-1649), married to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham 343 Duchess of Southerland/Sutherland, Harriet Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (London 1806-Trentham 1868), sister of Lord Morpeth, liberal, supported the whigs, Mistress of the Robes of Queen Victoria, her London townhouse Devonshire House became a meeting place of European celebrities 651, 663 Duden, Konrad (Wesel 1829-Wiesbaden 1911), teacher, author 51 Duisburg/Germany 220 Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers 1st (1592–1628) 343 Dunin, Martin von/Marcin Dunin (1774-Posen 1842), archbishop of Gnesen and Posen, Primas of Poland 304 Dupin, M. See George Sand DuPonceau, Peter Stephen (Saint Martin de Ré 1760-Philadelphia 1844), lawyer, linguist, philosopher 143 Durham, Lord, John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792–1840), in 1838 the whig, nicknamed Radical Jack was sent to Canada to investigate the cases of the rebellions of 1837–38; after his arrival in

823 Quebec and his appointment to Governor General he produced a Report on the Affairs of British North America that was confronted by exiled Louis-Joseph Papineau, Histoire de la resistance du Canada au gouvernement anglais, 1839 100 Düsseldorf/Germany 33, 266, 749, 751 Dutchess of Buckingham See Duchess of Buckingham E See Emma Oppenheimer née Oppenheimer Eckermann, Johann Peter (Winsen/Luhe 1792-Weimar 1854), author, close friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 409 Eckley, Mrs 124 Edinburg/Edinburgh/Great Britain 335, 638, 646 Edouart, Auguste (Dunkerque 1789-Argentina 1861), portrait artist 3 Eduard See Edward Lomnitz Edward See Eduard Lieber Edward See Edward Lomnitz Effie, figure in Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818 308 Eglington, Tournament of 1839 208 Egloffstein, Countess Hildesheim: Julie von Egloffstein (1792–1869), or Henriette (1773–1864)? 647 Ehrlich, Mr. M. i.e. Michael Ehrlich (Herlheim/Würzburg 1807-Columbia/SC 1882), shoemaker, married in 1842 the former nanny of Lieber’s sons Rebecca McClelland, owned a workshop in Main Street, Columbia/SC 445, 465, 625 Eimbüttel/Einbüttel See Eimsbüttel Eimsbüttel, Holstein/domaine of Kloster Herwardeshude, since 1894 part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg, site of summer houses of wealthy Hamburg merchants 38, 673, 706, 722 Elbchaussee, street 39 Elbe, river 5, 8, 19, 33, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 117, 263, 266, 362, 617, 673, 677, 731, 746, 763 Elisabeth (Moscow 1709-St. Petersburg 1762), Russian Empress 558 Eliza Thornd. See Eliza Thorndike Eliza See Eliza Bard Delafield, New York City

824 Elizabeth I/Elisabeth I. (Greenwich 1533-­Richmond 1603), Queen of England (1558–1603), daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn 373, 570 Ellen See Ellen Stuart, Columbia/SC Ellet, Dr. William Henry (1806–1859), Professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at the College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC, married to Elizabeth Fries Lummis, Columbia/SC 121, 122, 151, 160,  188, 280, 354, 461, 540, 601, 616, 622, 755 Ellet, Mrs née Elizabeth Fries Lummis (Sodus Point/NY 1818-New York City 1877), married since ca. 1835 to William Henry Ellet, Columbia/SC, professor of chemistry, mineralogy and geology at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC. She was an author, historian, journalist, object of scandals and gossips with regard to Edgar Allan Poe, in 1845 she left her husband and moved to New York City to earn her living as a journalist 139, 158, 233, 285,  374, 550, 655, 743 Elliott, Betsy/Betty, Columbia/SC, daughter of Dr. Stephen Elliott, Columbia/SC 309,  452, 463, 468 Elliot(t), Dr. Stephen (Beaufort/SC 1806–Savannah/Ga 1866), theologian, professor of Sacred Literature and Evidences of Christianity at the College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC, 1840 1st bishop of Georgia, 37th bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, married to his cousin Charlotte Bull ­Barnwell, Columbia/SC 151, 156, 179,  187, 190, 276, 309, 310, 336, 349, 371, 434, 452, 458, 459, 463, 468, 495, 517, 566 Elliot(t), Mrs Stephen née Charlotte Bull Barnwell (1810–1895), married to Dr. Stephen Elliott, Columbia/SC 151, 158, 162,  163, 309, 310, 463, 496 Elsa, slave in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC 95, 151, 158, 161, 162, 164, 174, 176,  179, 182, 189, 193, 225, 237, 254, 268, 278, 307, 314, 320, 335, 347, 367, 372, 412, 435, 445, 451, 546, 601, 616 Elssler/Eisler/Elsler/Ellsler, Fanny/Franziska (Vienna 1810-Vienna 1884), celebrated

Index ­ ustrian ballerina, mistress of Friedrich A von Gentz 1829–1832 566, 641, 650, 656 Elza/Elsy See Elsa Emil See Emil Lomnitz Emma See Emma Oppenheimer née Oppenheimer Ems See Bad Ems Encyclopaedia Americana. A popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics and Biography, brought down to the Present Time; including a copius collection of original articles in American Biography; on the basis of the seventh edition of the German Conversations-Lexicon, edited by Francis Lieber, assisted by E. Wigglesworth, 13 vols., Philadelphia Carey & Lea 1830–1833 1, 11, 22, 27, 34, 35, 59, 116,  182–184, 192, 199, 207, 284, 299, 317, 387, 453, 491, 623, 751, 763 Encyclopedia See Encyclopaedia Americana Epaminondas (Theben 418–362 BC), Greek politician and military leader who developed martial tactics 333 Eppendorf, village close to Hamburg, since 1832 governed by Hamburg, since 1894 part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 38, 39, 135, 167, 239, 243, 263, 301,  329, 357, 439, 440, 474–476, 504, 514, 528, 531, 599, 607, 678 Epsom/England 17, 19, 371 Erie Canal 86, 109 Ernst August I. (London 1771-Hanover 1851), King of Hanover, son of George III 38 Ernst, Heinrich Wilhelm (Brünn 1814–Nice 1865), violinist, composer 218, 223, 246 Eskeles, Bernhard von (Vienna 1753–1839), the founder of the Austrian Spar-Casse resided in a Palais, Dorotheergasse, Vienna, that houses today the Jüdisches Museum Wien 725, 726 Esplanade, Hamburg-Neustadt, boulevard in 1827–1830 planned by architect Carl Ludwig Wimmel (Berlin 1786-Hamburg 1845) 6, 20, 40, 41, 62, 81, 115, 184, 302, 332,  379, 539, 621, 626, 629, 645, 652, 666, 681, 689, 693, 697, 713, 719, 733, 740, 751, 770 Etienne See Etienne Benecke/Beneke Eugenia See Eugenia Baeyer née Hitzig

Index Eustace, Sir John Lieutenant Colonel 2d Batt. Grenadier Guards, Montreal Lower Canada 80 Everett, Edward (Boston/Mass. 1794–1865), first US-American who received in 1817 a PhD from the Georgia Augusta University in Göttingen, 1822 married Charlotte Gray Brooks (Medford/Mass. 1800-Boston 1859), Harvard professor, 1836–1839 Governor of Massachusetts, 1840–41 rest and travel, 1841–1845 US Minister to the Court of St. James’, London 19, 73, 451, 556, 624, 640,  646, 662, 674 Fabeln, von Christian Fürchtegott Gellert, Stettinische Buchhandlung Ulm 1823 317 Fahnenberg, Karl Heinrich von (Freiburg im Breisgau 1779-Baden-Baden 1840), organized in 1831–1832 committees for the help of Polish refugees in Badenia/ Germany 11 Falkenstein, Konstantin Karl (1801-Pirna 1855) librarian of the Royal Library Dresden, historian 646 Falkmann, Herr, Berlin, cousin of Francis Lieber 692 Fanny See Fanny Appleton Longfellow Fanny See Fanny Brooks Fanny See Frances Calderón née Inglis Fay, Theodore Sedgwick (New York City 1807-Berlin 1898), writer, diplomat, secretary of the US-American legation at Berlin 1837–1853 645 Fehling, Anna Emilie née Oppenheimer (Hamburg 1803-Lübeck 1885), sister of Philippine Adele Haller née Oppenheimer, married to Johannes Christoph Fehling, Lübeck 43, 182, 327, 714 Fehling, Hermann Wilhelm (Lübeck 1842– 1907), son of Johann Christoph and Emilie Fehling, merchant, local and national influential politician in Lübeck, rawmodel to the antihero Hermann Hagenström in Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, 1901 43, 327, 714 Fehling, daughter of Emilie and Johannes Christoph 327 Fehling, Johannes Christoph (Lübeck 1800–1882), married to Anna Emilie

825 ­ ppenheimer (Hamburg 1803–Lübeck O 1885), Lübeck 327, 714 Felix See Felix Lomnitz Fellau, Adolf Ludwig (Gießen 1794-Bern 1855), brother of Charles Follen, author and publisher, in 1821 migration for political reasons to Switzerland, married rich and lived in Zürich; during the German Revolution of 1848 his residence became a safety heaven to German refugees 17 Fellau, Karl See Charles Follen Ferdinand & Isabella/Isabela See William Hickling Prescott Ferdinand See Dr. iur. Nicolaus Ferdinand Haller Ferguson, Dr. MD Robert (India 1799-Winkfield/Windsor 1865), physician specialized in midwifery, germanophil, spent time in Heidelberg, got familiar with German literature, befriended Washington Irving, since 1840 physician accoucheur to Queen Victoria (1837–1901), London 644, 646 Fernand Cortez, ou la conquete du Mexique, opera by Gaspare Spontini, first performance Paris 1809 710 Fidelio, opera by Ludwig van Beethoven, first performance Vienna 1805 134 Fleming/Flemming, Paul, Figure in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion, 1839 85 Follen, Charles i.e. Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Fellau (Romrod 1796-Long Island Sund 1840), was prosecuted as a demagogue by the Prussian state, turner, friend of Franz Lieber, migrated in 1819 to France, with the help of Marquis de Lafayette in 1824 together with Karl Beck migrated to the USA; since 1825 at Harvard University professor of German language and ­modern German literature, in 1828 he married Eliza Lee Cabot (1787–1860), died in an accident of the steamer ­Lexington on his way from New York to Lexington/Mass. 17, 22, 183, 351, 352, 387,  393, 394 Follen, Mrs. Charles née Eliza Lee Cabot ­(Boston 1787-Brookline/Mass. 1860), ­author, abolitionist, Cambridge/ Mass. 351, 352

826 Follenius See Charles Follen Fontaine, Jean de la (Chateau-Thierry 1621-Paris 1695), French author 317 Förster, Dr. Ernst Joachim (1800-Munich 1885), art historian, poet, artist, son in law of Jean Paul Richter, friend of Franz Kugler/Berlin, and Peter von Cornelius 637,  669, 731 Forster, John (1812–1876), Life of Oliver Cromwell and John Pym and Thomas Peregrine Coutrtenay, Lives of eminent British Statesmen, in: The Cabinet Cyclopaedia, vol. 3, London 1837 67, 96, 107 Fould, Jeannette/Jette née Henriette Goldschmidt, (Hamburg ? 1800-Trouville-surMer 1870), married to Achille Marcus Fould (1800–1867) Paris, sister of Adolphe und Amalia Goldschmidt 224, 230 Fould, Achille Marcus (1800–1867), banker in Paris, married to Jeannette/Henriette Goldschmidt 10, 21 Fowler, phrenologist, either Orson Squire (1809–1887) or Lorenzo Niles (1811–1896)? 145 Frankfurt/Main, Germany 10, 250, 322–324,  364, 479, 526, 638, 709, 710, 712, 727 Franz, Mr. & Mrs, Berlin 702, 705, 706, 707 Fred. II See Friedrich II. Freder. I See Friedrich Wilhelm I. in Preußen Frederic the Great See Friedrich II. Frederic VI/Friedrich VI. (Copenhagen 1768-Copenhagen 3.12.1839), King of Denmark and Norway 1808–1839 271 Frederick/Friedrich, Friedrich der Grosse See Friedrich II. Freiburg/Breisgau 11 Freiligrath, Ferdinand (Detmold 1810-Cannstatt 1876), German poet, friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who translated Freiligrath’s poems into ­English 637, 646, 649 Friedrich II. = Friedrich der Große = Alte Fritz (Berlin 1712-Potsdam 1786), Prussian King 1772–1786 333, 338, 399, 464, 547,  569 Friedrich Wilhelm I. in Preußen (Berlin 1688-Potsdam 1740), Prussian King 1713–1740 547, 738

Index Friedrich Wilhelm III. von Preußen (Potsdam 1770-Berlin 1840), Prussian King 1797– 1840 17, 208, 220, 229, 303, 304, 366 Friedrich Wilhelm IV. von Preußen (Berlin 1795-Potsdam 1861), Prussian King 1840–1861 229, 304, 366 Fryer, Dean & Brinckman, Commission ­Merchants, 4 Hanover Street: William H. Fryer, Edward B. Dean & M. Brinckman, New York City 59, 294 Fuhlsbüttel, village north of Hamburg, today part of the Free and Hanseatic City ­Hamburg 38, 39, 476 Gabe, Bertha née Oppenheimer (?- 1866), married to Dr. iur. Johann Gabe, daughter of Christian Morris Oppenheimer, granddaughter of Salomon Heine, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, Hamburg 26, 419, 500 Gabe, Dr. iur. Johann (Hamburg 1811–1890), lawyer, doctorate in Jena 1833, married to Bertha Oppenheimer, daughter of Christian Moritz/Morris Oppenheimer, granddaughter of Salomon Heine, Hamburg 419, 500, 663 Galathee: Ein Roman, by Alexander Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung Stuttgart und Tübingen 1836 442 Galigniani = Galignani’s Weekly Repertory, or Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Paris published at Galignani’s French, English, Italian, German and Spanish Library, Rue Vivienne No. 18, 1818ff 175, 334 Gallatin, Albert (Geneva 1761-New York City 1849), politician and diplomat of the USA 589 Garson, Dr. See Dr. Georg Hartog Gerson Geijer, Erik Gustaf (Munkfors 1783-Stockholm 1847), Romantic author, composer, historian, professor of history at the University of Uppsala/Sweden 406 Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott (Hainichen 1715-Leipzig 1769), poet, author, philosopher 23, 24, 27, 317, 591 Gendarmenplatz/Gens d’armenplaz/Gendarmenmarkt, large square in the centre of Berlin 738

Index George III (1738-Windsor 1820), King of Great Britain 1760–1820, King of Hanover 1814–1820 38 George See George Lomnitz George See George Woodhouse Georgiana See Georgiana Labatt Georgiana See Georgiana Louisa Heckscher née Coster Georgy See George Oppenheimer, son of James and Emma Oppenheimer Gerold/Gerolt, Friedrich Joseph Karl Freiherr von (Bonn 1797-Linz am Rhein 1879), 1837 in Mexico, Prussian ambassador in Washington/DC 1844–1848, chosen by Alexander von Humboldt 697 Gerson, Dr. med. Georg Hartog (Hamburg 1788–1844), physician in England und Hamburg 366 Gervais Street, Columbia/SC 46 Gevers, Daniel Theodore van Endegeest (Rotterdam 1793-Oegstgeest 1877), member of the Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, The Hague 1838–1849 646 Gevers, Johan Cornelis Baron (Rotterdam 1806-Bonn 1872), 1844 Dutch diplomat, chargé d’ affaires in New York City, married to Catherine Mary Wright (Newark/ NJ 1823–?), brother of Wilhelm Abraham Gevers 624, 646 Gevers, Wilhelm Abraham Claudius (Rotterdam 1804-The Hague 1876), brother of John Cornelis Baron Gevers 646 Gibbes/Gibbs, Dr. Robert Wilson (Charleston/ SC 1809-Columbia/SC 1866), professor of geology and chemistry at the College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC 568 Gibbes/Gibbs, Mrs. Columbia/SC 162, 225 Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794), MP Great Britain, historian, published between 1776–1788 6 volumes on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 344 Gignard, Mr. See Guignard, Columbia/SC, huguenot Gillian, steward at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 592 Gilman, Samuel (Gloucester/Mass. 1791-Charleston/SC 1858) since 1819 served as pastor of the Unitarian church at

827 Charleston/SC; he was known as an active advocate of temperance movement and published widely on this behalf 540 Gilpin, Gilpin’s Exchange Reading Room & Foreign Letter Office, New York 140, 355,  376, 415, 438, 473, 595 Girard College, Philadelphia, built in 1833–1848 See Stephen Girard Girard Report See Francis Lieber, A Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College for orphans, with an introductory report, laid before the Board of Trustees, Philadelphia 1834 Girard, Stephen (Bordeaux 1750-Philadelphia 1831), merchant, banker, migrated in May 1776 to British North America, acquired the US-American citizenship in 1778, openend in 1811 his own bank in Philadelphia, together with Hamburg born David Parish in the War of 1812 he saved the US-American government from financial collapse, devoted to philanthropy, the wealthiest man of his time in the USA left large parts of his property to the founding and endowing of Girard College built in 1833–1848 in Philadelphia 57, 141, 204,  213, 299, 387, 400, 401, 407, 524, 525, 540, 541, 576, 641 Glascow/Glasgow/Great Britain 755 Gleim, Mrs, from Hamburg, married to O. F. Gleim, New York City 138 Gloystein, Nicolaus (1823–1859), shipowner, head of the shipping company N. Gloystein & Söhne, Bremen 628, 749, 750 Godeffroy, Hamburg family with several merchants and politicians important to the cities’ wellbeing, in contact with the families Oppenheimer, Haller, and Arning; Johan Cesar V. Godeffroy engaged Alexis de Chateauneuf in 1835 to construct his summerhouse in Dockenhuden 365, 645 Goeschen/Göschen, Adolf (Königsberg 1803–1898), theologian, 1831–1842 pastor of the prison in Celle, Generalsuperintendent Harburg 297 Goethe-Haus, Frankfurt/Main 710 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (Frankfurt/ Main 1749-Weimar 1832), lawyer, author, poet, politician, minister at the Court of

828 Herzog Carl August, together with his friend Friedrich von Schiller master mind of German literature 409, 737 Goldschmidt, Hamburg merchant family with connections to London and Paris 10,  21, 35 Goldschmidt, Adelaide/Adelheid née Edel Herz (Hamburg?-Paris 1839), married to Lion Abraham Goldschmidt (ca. 1775– 1826), mother of Jeannette Fould, Amalia Goldschmidt and Adolf Goldschmidt, London-Paris 20, 27, 28, 132, 224, 230, 324 Goldschmidt, Adolf/Adolphe (1798–?), married to Jeanette Jacobson, brother of Amalia Goldschmidt and Jeannette Fould née Goldschmidt, Hamburg 132, 172, 224, 230 Goldschmidt, Amalia/Amelia/Malchen ­(1801–?), single, sister of Adolf Goldschmidt and Jeannette Fould née Goldschmidt, friend of Mathilde Oppenheimer, London-Paris 224, 230, 524, 674 Goldschmidt, Henriette See Jeannette Fould Goldschmidt, Lion Abaham (ca. 1775-London 1826), merchant-banker, married to Adelaide Goldschmidt, London 20, 27 Goldschmidt, Mrs See Adelaide/Adelheid Goldschmidt née Herz Gordon, Lord Henry? 88 Görres, Johann Joseph von (Koblenz 1776-Munich 1848), teacher, journalist and authored Athanasius, Regensburg Verlag von G. Joseph Manz 1838 304 Gossler & Knorre, merchant house based in Hamburg with offices in Boston and New York City 60, 62, 64, 142, 523 Gossler, Antonie Therese (Hamburg 30.10.1839–07.04.1847), daughter of Dr. iur. Ernst and Mathilde Gossler 200 Gossler, August Mrs. 266 Gossler, Dr. iur. Ernst (Hamburg 1806-Hamburg 1889), lawyer, since 1843 judge of the Hamburg Niedergericht, married since 1837 to Mathilde Hüffel (1814–?), brother of Johann Heinrich, Gustav, Wilhelm, and Susanne Gossler, father of Ernst Gossler, born 1838 69, 184, 200, 364, 365, 657 Gossler, Frances Eliot (Hamburg 1832-­Hamburg 1859), daughter of Johann

Index Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler, married to Hermann Ludwig Behn 266 Gossler, Gustav Ludwig (30.10.1839– 02.05.1840), son of Dr. iur. Ernst and Mathilde Gossler 200 Gossler, Gustav/Gustavus (Hamburg 1813-Boston 1844), merchant in Boston, represented the firm Gossler & Knorre, brother of Johann Heinrich, Wilhelm, Ernst, and Susanne Gossler, died in Boston shortly before his planned return to his beloved hometown Hamburg 60, 62, 64, 67, 69,  83, 133, 184, 372, 579 Gossler, Henry See Johann/John Heinrich/ Henry Gossler Gossler, Johann Nicolaus (Hamburg 16.2.1774-Berlin 22.1.1848), brother of ­Johann Heinrich Gossler sen., father of Julia Gossler, merchant in New York City 410 Gossler, Johann von Berenberg (Hamburg 13.2.1839–1913), son of Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler, married to Juliane Amalie Donner (Altona 1843-Wiesbaden 1916) 218, 266 Gossler, Johann/John Heinrich/Henry (Hamburg 1805-Hamburg 1879), merchant, banker, 1827–1830 in Boston, Berenberg, Gossler & Co, and Gossler & Knorre, Boston, lived since 1833 Esplanade No 41/ Hamburg, married since 1829 to Mary Elizabeth Bray (Boston 1810–1886), brother of Ernst, Wilhelm, Gustav, and Susanne Gossler, co-owner of Berenberg-Bank, consul-general of Hawaii 12, 35, 62, 69,  81, 127, 129, 133, 134, 153, 182, 184, 187, 205, 218, 221, 229, 230, 244, 266, 282, 315, 327, 329, 334, 362, 364, 372, 381, 382, 389, 402, 410, 416, 447, 460, 479, 490, 499, 500, 501, 507, 511, 512, 515, 518, 544, 560, 566, 567, 578, 645, 657, 662, 663, 682, 750, 753, 760 Gossler, Julia, daughter of Johann Nikolaus Gossler, married circa 1827 to an English merchant in the West Indies 410 Gossler, Marianne (Hamburg 1830–1908), daughter of Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler, married Friedrich Wilhelm Burchard (1824–1892) 218, 266

Index Gossler, Mary Elizabeth (Hamburg 1834-­Hamburg 24.7.1842), daughter of Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler, died in an accident in her parent’s home; Mary Elizabeth (Hamburg 1845-Hamburg 1927), daughter of Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler, married to Eduard Friedrich Weber, was named in her memory 266, 662 Gossler, Mrs Ernst née Mathilde Hüffel (London 1814–?), married since 1837 to Dr. iur. Ernst Gossler 69, 200, 364, 657 Gossler, Mrs Johann/John Heinrich/Henry née Mary Elizabeth Bray (Boston 1810-Hamburg 1886), married since 1829 to Johann Heinrich Gossler, granddaughter of Samuel Eliot, related to Anna Ticknor, wife of George Ticknor 69, 205, 218, 221,  226, 230, 266, 282, 315, 334, 364, 381, 389, 410, 447, 479, 490, 500, 501, 507, 511, 512, 518, 567, 578, 641, 649, 657, 662 Gossler, Old/sen./senior, Johann Heinrich (Hamburg 1775-Hamburg 1842), Senator, father of Johann/John Heinrich/Henry, Gustav, Ernst, Wilhelm, and Susanne Gossler, married to Marianne Schramm (1777–1824), merchant in Hamburg 218,  372, 382, 410, 579, 657 Gossler See Johann/John Heinrich/Henry Gossler Gossler, Susanna Katharina (Hamburg 1835–1901), daughter of Johann Heinrich and Elizabeth Gossler, married to Martin Garlieb Amsinck (1831–1905) 218, 266 Gossler, Susanne Helene (Hamburg 1808– 1893), married to Senator Ami de Chapeaurouge (1800–1860), sister of Johann Heinrich, Wilhelm, Ernst, and Gustav Gossler, Hamburg See Susanne Helene Chapeaurouge Gossler, Wilhelm (Hamburg 1811-Niendorf 1895), merchant, partner in the trading and banking house Berenberg, Gossler & Co. till 1857 when he started his own ­company, brother of Johann Heinrich, Gustav, Ernst, and Susanne Gossler, ­married in 1840 Margarete Elisabeth ­Donner from Altona 184, 218, 366, 372,  448, 479, 501

829 Gothe/Göthe See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Göttingen/Germany 9, 33, 39, 133, 334, 665,  677, 729 Graffunder, Alfred (1801–1875), friend of Franz Lieber in Berlin, teacher, educator, Erfurt 297, 306, 310, 313, 333, 589 Grahams, Mathilda 671 Grattan, Thomas Colley (Dublin 1792-London 1864), British consul 1839–1842 in Boston, author, politician, merchant, visited in 1831 Heidelberg, friend of Mathilde Lieber’s ­father Georg Oppenheimer in London 73, 116 Gravenhorst, stud. cand Delligsen/ Germany 729 Great Fire of 1842, Hamburg, May 5–8, 1842, large areas within Hamburg’s inner city were destroyed: 51 people were killed, ca. 1800 buildings were destroyed and ca. 20 000 people became homeless 20, 36, 37,  39, 40, 678 Greece 17, 161, 276, 309, 312, 543, 577 Green, Dr. Columbia/SC 567 Greenleaf, Prof. Simon (Newburyport/Mass. 1783–1853), lawyer, honorary Doctor of Law degree by Harvard University in 1834, in 1846 succeeded Judge Joseph Story as Dane professor of law at Harvard University, Cambridge/Mass., created standard textbooks of US-American law and drafted the Constitution of Liberia based on the model of the US-American constitution of 1787 63, 486, 616 Greenough, Florence 647 Greenville,Texas? 46 Gregg, Maxcy Col. (Columbia/SC 1814-­Fredericksburg/Va 1862), lawyer, ­soldier in the United States Army, and in the ­Confederate Army, resident of Columbia/SC 389 Griechenland See Greece Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Karl (Hanau 1785-­Berlin 1863), lawyer, linguist, ­lexicograph, collector of fairy tales 34, 51 Grimm, Wilhelm Carl (Hanau 1786-Berlin 1859), linguist, lexicograph, collector of fairy tales 34, 51

830 Grimm, Wilhelm und Jacob, Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm, 2 vols. Realschulbuchhandlung Berlin 1812–1815 34 Grimm, Wilhelm und Jacob, Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. Leipzig 1854–1961 55 Griselda, novel by Friedrich Harm, 1835 203,  334 Grisi, Carlotta (1819–1899), Italian ballerina; inspired her partner Jules Perrot to create in 1841 the ballet Giselle with her in the leading role; while in London in 1844 she performed the title role in the ballet La Esmeralda 650 Gross, taylor in Hamburg 745 Grote, George (1794–1871), British historian, married since 1820 to Harriet Lewin 645 Grote, Mrs. George née Harriet Lewin (1792–1878), writer 645 Guerson, Dr. See Georg Hartog Gerson Guignard, Mr. sen. Columbia/SC, owner of Guignard Brick works, Cayce Lexington County 567 Guizot, Francois Pierre Guillaume (1787– 1874), French lawyer, politician, supporter of King Louis-Philippe 111, 624, 640, 646 Guntlack, Herr von 716 Gusta. See Dr. med. Gustav Lieber Gustav II Adolf (Stockholm 1594-Lützen 1632), King of Sweden 1611–1632, military leader during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) 303 Gustav/Gustavus See Dr. med. Gustav Lieber Gustav/Gustavus See Gustav/Gustavus Gossler Gustav/Gustavus See Wilhelm Gustav/Gustavus Oppenheimer Gustav von Aschenbach, figure in Thomas Mann, Tod in Venedig, Frankfurt/Main 1913 43 Gutzkow, Karl (Berlin 1811-Frankfurt/Main 1878), writer, journalist, promoter of ‚Junges Deutschland’ 34, 421 H. Gossler See Johann/John Heinrich/Henry Gossler Habersham, Columbia/SC student? 589 Hagerty, James (Staunton/Va? 1794-Liverpool 1844), US-American Consul in Liverpool since 1841 646

Index Hahn-Hahn, Ida, née Ida Marie Louise Sophie Friederike Gustave Gräfin von Hahn (Tressow 1805-Mainz 1880). For a short while 1826–1829 married to her cousin Friedrich Graf von Hahn, thereby she aquired the name Hahn Hahn, author of several novels 715 Haight, colonel 728 Hallam, Henry (Windsor 1777-London 1859), acclaimed English historian, fellow of the English Royal Society, trustee of the British Museum London 624, 640, 644,  646, 651 Halle/Saale/Germany 17, 18, 231, 334, 709 Haller, Adele Josephine (Hamburg 1832–1912), daughter of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller 34, 170, 504 Haller, Caroline Mathilde (Hamburg 1839– 1843), daughter of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller, godmother was Mathilde Lieber 170, 201, 225, 240, 244, 249, 251,  504, 632 Haller, Dr. iur. Nicolaus Ferdinand (Hamburg 1805-Hamburg 1876), son of Martin Joseph Haller and Elisabeth née GottschalckDüsseldorf, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, read law in Göttingen and Heidelberg, Promotion 1826, advocate since 1827 in Hamburg, politician, 1844 Senator in Hamburg, married since 1832 to Philippine Adele ­Oppenheimer, lived since 1838 on Ferdinandstrasse, Hamburg, 1863–1873 Erster and Zweiter Bürgermeister in Hamburg 10, 25, 31, 39, 42, 106, 132, 182,  200–202, 206, 219, 240, 247, 249, 264, 271, 323, 359, 364–366, 382, 417, 441, 497, 504, 529, 530, 533–535, 538, 579, 600, 610, 641, 643, 678, 683, 692, 761, 762, 769 Haller, Elisabeth née Gottschalck-Düsseldorf (Hanover 1770-Hamburg 1816), married to Martin Joseph Haller, sister of Clara Recha Oppenheimer née Gottschalck-­ Düsseldorf mother of Mathilde ­Lieber 10, 12, 247, 712 Haller, Emma Auguste (Hamburg 1837–?), daughter of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller 170 Haller, Martin Emil Ferdinand (Hamburg 1835–1925), son of Dr. iur. Ferdinand and Adele Haller, leading architect in

Index ­ amburg (designed the Hamburg townH hall, Laeizshalle, townhouses, office houses, and manors on the Elbchausee, Nienstedten), married Louise Antonie Schramm 33, 170, 535, 761 Haller, Martin Joseph = Onkel/Uncle Haller, né Mendel Joseph Haller (Halle 1770-Hamburg 1852), father of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, Deichstrasse 35, Hamburg, married to Elisabeth Gottschalck-Düsseldorf, aunt of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer, merchant, temporary business partner of his friends Jacob Oppenheimer, Heinrich Hesse, and Salomon Heine 182, 208, 247,  249, 267, 323, 359, 365, 505, 533 Haller, Philippine Adela/Adele née Oppenheimer (Hamburg 1807-Hamburg 1873), married since 1832 to Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, 1838ff resident in the Ferdinandstrasse, Hamburg, daughter of Jacob and Emilie Oppenheimer, cousin and friend of Mathilde Lieber 10, 24–26, 31, 39, 42,  71, 101, 106, 118–120, 132, 144, 168, 170, 171, 200–202, 205, 208, 210, 211, 214, 216, 217, 219, 220, 225, 239–241, 243, 244, 247, 249, 251, 257, 264, 268, 269, 271–273, 301, 317, 322, 328, 336, 364, 378, 382, 384, 407, 417, 419, 435, 441–443, 455, 460, 461, 473, 481, 482, 489, 501–504, 516, 529, 530, 535, 538, 546, 557, 578, 579, 590, 600, 601, 608, 611, 632, 641, 643, 645, 657, 661, 663, 678, 683, 718, 722, 728, 736, 746, 748, 753, 761, 762, 769 Hallesche/Hallische Literatur Zeitung i.e. Hallesche Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, 1785–1841 534 Hallischen Jahrbücher i.e. Hallische Jahrbücher, Halle 1838–1843, founded by Arnold Runge, Halle, and Theodor Echtermeyer, journal of the Junghegelianer 534 Ham/Hamm, today part of the Free and ­Hanseatic City Hamburg 38, 39, 667,  703, 737 Hambro, C. J. & Son, = C. J. Hambro & Co. London, owner Carl Joachim Hambro (1807–1877), trading house founded in 1839 633, 642, 643, 645, 652, 658, 664,  665, 751 Hamburg Neustadt 6, 9, 40, 41, 115, 379,  539, 645

831 Hamburg-Bergedorf Railway Company, 1838ff 39, 364 Hamburger Aalsuppe/eelsoup 107 Hamburger Berg, Hamburg 747 Hamburger Steam Navigation Company/ Hanseatische DampfschifffahrtsGesellschaft zu Hamburg, founded in 1840 by shipowner Robert Miles ­Sloman 39, 360 Hamburgischer Staats-Kalender, auf das Schalt=Jahr 1844, von Johann Samuel Metz, Hamburg gedruckt und verlegt von Friedrich Hermann Nestler und Melle 1844 684 Hamilton, James Jr. (Charleston/SC 1786-Gulf of Mexico 1857), lawyer, entrepreneur, ­politician, governor of South Carolina 1830–1832, director of the Louisville, ­Cincinnati & Charleston Railroad, ­promoter of Texas, died in a ship’s ­accident in the Gulf of Mexico, married to Elisabeth Heyward (1795–1862) 162, 211,  235, 315, 463, 485, 486 Hamilton See Hamilton Lieber Hamilton See James Hamilton Jr. J. Hamilton Son & Co., Charleston/SC see James Hamilton Jr. Hamlet, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, tragedy by William Shakespeare, ca. 1594, printed 1603 376,  433, 569 Hammonia, lyrics Georg Nikolaus Bärmann, music by Albert Methfessel, first performance Hamburg 1828 34 Hammonia=Hamburg 8, 34 Hammy See Hamilton Lieber Hampden, John (ca. 1594–1643), English politician 67, 88, 570 Hampton, Miss See Miss Hampton, Columbia/SC Hampton, Mr Wade II (Issaquena County/ Miss. 1791-Issaquena County/Miss. 1858), Woodlands Plantation, Columbia/SC ­married to Anne FitzSimmons, owned plantations and slaves, politician, in 1840 one of South Carolinians tycoons 46, 47,  463, 568, 584 Hanchen/Hanchen Muderich, seamstress in the Lomnitz household, ­Hamburg 752, 762

832 Händel, Georg Friedrich (Halle/Saale 1685-London 1759), leading composer at the British court, created 42 operas and 25 oratories 537 Handschuhheim/Germany 713 Hänlein/Hähnlein/Haenlein, Johann Ludwig von (1790–1849) Prussian minister in Hamburg 718 Hanover/Hannover/Germany 18, 38, 46,  297, 601, 623, 700, 719 HAPAG = Hamburg-Amerikanische ­Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft, ­established in 1847 by Hamburg merchants 39 Har. See Henriette Oppenheimer Harburg, town opposite Hamburg across the river Elbe, since 1938 part of ­Hamburg 39, 629 Harden, Paris/France 647 Harper, William Joseph (Antigua 1790-­Fairfield District/SC 1847), lawyer, politician, US-senator, Chancellor of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, pro-slavery 561 Harriet See Henriette Oppenheimer Harry See Henriette Oppenheimer Hart See Henriette Oppenheimer H(e)arty See Henriette Oppenheimer Harvard College/University, Cambridge/ Mass. 21, 22, 46, 63, 394, 534, 624, 644 Harvestehude/Herbestehude, village east of Hamburg, today part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 38, 39, 671, 706 Hassel(l), Mrs/Frau, Mary/Maria/Marie von (Hanover?, Germany 1806–?), Columbia/ SC, teacher of music especially the harp, neighbor of the family Lieber in Columbia/SC 46, 95, 620, 622, 623, 632, 640,  646, 647, 655, 662, 669, 678, 700, 718, 719, 723, 732, 733, 755 Hassell, Jeremiah von/de, Count of (­Hanover? 1805-Columbia/SC ?), teacher ­Columbia/ SC, he and his wife Mary/Marie in 1847 founded a boarding school for young ladies in downtown Columbia/SC opposite Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and ­advertised their enterprise widely throughout the South 46, 619, 622, 733

Index Hastrop/Hastrup, (1779–?) merchant, London 482 Havre See LeHavre/France Hawes, tutor at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 394, 402 Hayne, General Robert Young (1791-Asheville/ NC 24.9.1839), Attorney General, governor of South Carolina 1832–1834, mayor of Charleston/SC 1836–1837, president of the Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston Railroad 1836–1839 137, 151, 163, 224, 235,  251, 268 Hayne, Mrs Robert née Rebecca Brewton Mott Alston, married in 1820 to Robert Young Hayne, Columbia/SC 137, 151, 194,  224, 268, 517, 573 Hayne, students at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, sons of Robert Young Hayne 151, 194, 268, 683 Hazoz, Dr. physician to Greek King 646 Hearts, Mrs Columbia/SC 622 Hebel, Johann Peter (Basel 1760-Schwetzingen 1826), German author, educator and theologian, authored Allemannische Gedichte, Philip Macklot Karlsruhe 1803 347 Heckscher, Coster & Matfeld/Matfield, 45 South/539 Broadway New York City: trading house of Charles August and Edward Heckscher, Gerard H. Coster and Gustav Matfeld, 1837–1843 57, 80, 113, 119, 173,  212, 227, 242, 252, 275, 286, 305, 314, 316, 331, 355, 368, 446 Heckscher, Dr. iur. Johann Gustav Wilhelm Moritz Heckscher (Hamburg 1797-Vienna 1865), studied law in Heidelberg and Göttingen, doctorate Göttingen 1820, lawyer in Hamburg till 1853, 1848/49 elected representative of Hamburg in the ­Frankfurter Nationalversammlung, ­1853– 1865 hamburgischer ­Ministerresident in Vienna, converted in 1808 from Judaisme to Lutheran Protestantism, brother of Charles, Eduard/Edward, and Leo Heckscher, married to actress Antoinette Bräutigam 324, 364, 365, 646 Heckscher, Eduard/Edward (Paris 1808–1888), brother of Charles, Moritz, and Leopold

Index Heckscher, merchant and partner in his brothers’ US-American business 182 Heckscher, Friedrich Leo/Leopold Wilhelm (1794–1863), brother of Charles, Moritz, Eduard/Edward Heckscher, son of Martin Anton Heckscher (Altona 1763-Paris 1823) and Eva Schlesinger, Hamburg, merchant 324 Heckscher, Mrs Charles née Georgiana Louisa Coster (New York 1815–?), daughter of Johann G. Coster and Catherine Margaret née Holsman, New York City, married to Charles Heckscher, New York City-New Orange/NJ 125, 625 Heckscher, Mrs. Moritz née Marie Antonie/ Antoinette Bräutigam (1824–1906), actress, Hamburg, daughter of Johann Bernhard and Sybille Bräutigam, married to Dr. iur. Moritz Heckscher, Hamburg 324 Heckscher, Peter Friedrich Wilhelm, son of Dr. iur. Moritz and Antoinette Heckscher, merchant in New York City, Kiel, and Hamburg 211, 324 Heckscher/Hecksher, Carl/Charles August (Paris 1806-New York City 1866), merchant, entrepreneur in New York City and Hecksherville/PA, married to Georgiana Louisa Coster, office and trading house in New York City, resident of New Orange/NJ, cousin of Mathilde Lieber, partner in the New York trading house Heckscher, Coster & Matfeld 57,  68, 80, 110–113, 119, 120, 125, 173, 178, 212, 227, 242, 252, 275, 286, 291, 305, 314, 316, 324, 331, 353, 355, 368, 446, 453, 487, 613, 625, 646, 768 Heckscher/Hecksher See Carl/Charles August Heckscher Heckschers, the  See Carl/Charles August Heckscher and his wife Georgiana née Coster, New York City625 Heiberger, Landrath 646 Heidelberg/Germany 8, 9, 11, 12, 68, 90, 133, 176, 185, 190, 192, 229, 297, 302, 364, 385, 419, 437, 446, 461, 539, 542, 545, 561, 589, 609, 613, 655, 709, 711–718, 720, 725 Heine, Heinrich (Düsseldorf 1797-Paris 1856), nephew of Salomon Heine, poet, author,

833 journalist, friend of Rahel Varnhagen, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, Rosa Maria Assing, and Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller 9,  33, 34, 223, 232, 442 Heine, Heinrich, Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, 1844 34 Heine, Heinrich, Erlauschtes, in: Nachgelesene Gedichte, 1845–1856 33 Heine, Salomon (Hanover 1767-Hamburg 1844), merchant in Hamburg, uncle of Heinrich Heine, married to Betty Goldschmidt (1777–1837), sister of Lion Abraham Goldschmidt?, father in law of Morris Oppenheimer and grandfather of Emma Oppenheimer who married her cousin, a brother of Mathilde Lieber, James Oppenheimer 33, 223, 232 Heise, Dr., Hamburg 155 Helene B See Helene Brancker Helgoland/Heligoland, island in the North Sea, 1807–1890 British property, since 1826 sea resort 758 Hellevoetsluis/Netherlands 138, 165 Heloise (1095–1164), wife of Pierre Abaelard/ Abaillard (1079–1142) 591 Henry (ca. 1835?-after 1862), son of Betsy, slave in the Lieber household, and James, slave in the household of Mr. Merant  See Mayrant, Columbia/SC47, 152, 163,  166, 367, 391–393, 433, 525, 601, 718 Henry IV of Bourbon, de Navarra (Pau 1553-Paris 1610), French King 1589–1610, survived the Bartholomew night in August 1572, when French Royal forces slaughtered the Huguenots who had attended his wedding to Margarete de Valois, famous for his religious tolerance politics 150, 464, 471 Henry the Navigator/Heinrich der Seefahrer (Porto 1394-Sagres 1460) 462 Henry VIII/Heinrich VIII. (Greenwich 1491-London 1547), English King 1509– 1547, since 1541 King of Ireland, caused by his problems to father a male heir he ­opposed the papal power that did not permit his divorce and created in 1531 the Church of England with him as Supreme

834 head, to legally marry pregnant Anne Boleyn 547 Henry, Caleb Sprague (Rutland/Mass. 1804– 1884), founded the New York Review in 1837 together with Francis L. Hawks, Episcopal clergyman, author, graduated from Dartmouth College, professor of moral and intellectual philosophy in Bristol College/ PA 1835–1838, professor of history and philosophy at NYU 1839–1852 155 Henry, Robert (Charleston/SC 1792-Columbia/SC 1856), MA of the University of Edinburgh in 1814, minister of the French Huguenot Protestant Church in Charleston/SC, 1816–1818, Reverend, Prof. of Metaphysics, Logic, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres since 1839 and from 1841–1845 President of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/ SC 137, 156, 235, 434, 575, 755 Henry See Johann Heinrich/Henry Gossler Hensler, Dora, ed. Lebensnachrichten über Barthold Georg Niebuhr aus Briefen desselben und aus Erinnerungen einiger seiner nächsten Freunde, 3 vols., Verlag von Friedrich Perthes Hamburg 1838–39 304, 375,  398, 400, 403, 407, 408, 409, 559, 688 Hensler, Dora, ed., Life and letters of ­Barthold George Niebuhr, 3 vols. New York 1854 304 Hensler, Mrs., Dora née Beate Wibke Dorothea/Dora Behrens (1770–1860), married to Dr. med. Philipp Gabriel Hensler (1733-Kiel 1805), he was a protege of Johann Hartwig Ernst Graf von Bernstoff, became the sucessor of Johann Friedrich Struensee, friend of Matthias Claudius and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, she was the sister of Amalie Behrens, first wife of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, and aunt of his second wife Margarete Luise Hensler, for many decades she was his pensister and confidante 304, 375, 398, 400, 403,  407–409, 559, 688 Herbert, George (1593–1633), Herberts ­Remains, or sundry Pieces of that sweet singer, Mr George Herbert, ed. Barnabas Oley, 1652 582 Herbstehude See Harvestehude

Index Herder, Johann Gottfried (Mohrungen 1744-Weimar 1803), author 700 Herefordshire/England 11 Herkenrath & Lowndes, Charleston/SC, trading house 750 Herlgate/Hellgate, NYC 120 Herm See Hermann Benecke/Beneke Herman/Hermann See Hermann Benecke/ Beneke Herman/Hermann See Hermann Renner Hermann See Hermann Lieber Hermann See Karl Hermann Knoblauch Hermann Hagenström, figure in Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, 2 vols. Frankfurt/Main 1901 43 Hermansen, Mrs. 628 Hermeneutics See Francis Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics Hermy See Francis Lieber, Legal and Political Hermeneutics Herodot (490/480–424 BC), Greek historian, geographer, and author 288 Hershel, Isaac (1707–1767), musician? 191 Herz See Henriette Herz Herz/Hertz, Henriette née de Lemos (Berlin 1764-Berlin 1847), author, married to physician and author Marcus Herz (Berlin 1747-Berlin 1803), friend of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rahel Varnhagen née Levin, Berliner Salonniere, supported Franz Lieber, gave him letter of introduction in 1826 to Edward Everett in Boston 18, 19, 20, 314 Herzfeld Dr., Mrs, (?-1844?), married to Dr. med. Robert Caesar Herzfeld, Hamburg 701 Herzfeld, Dr. med. Robert Caesar (1809–?), physician, Kleine Theaterstrasse 3, Hamburg, friend of Robert Schumann, son of Jacob Herzfeld (Dessau 1769-Hamburg 1826), director of the Hamburg theatre, and the actress Karoline Louise Amalie née Stegemann (1766–1812) 191, 203, 216,  218, 265, 319, 325, 326, 328, 366, 421, 439, 512, 658, 676, 701, 707 Hesse, Dr. iur. Wilhelm/William, son of ­Heinrich Levin and Amalia Hesse, ­Senator in Altona, married to N. Kindt

Index from Copenhagen, student in Heidelberg 1844 419, 712, 725 Hesse, Friedrich, son of Heinrich Levin and Amalia Hesse, Altona, student in Heidelberg 1838–1844 712, 725 Hesse, Georg/George Heinrich (Altona 1815-Altona 1907), son of Heinrich Levin and Amalia Hesse, Altona, married to Elisabeth/Lizzy Sara Willink (St. Thomas 1838–1925), merchant, since 1842 partner of his brother in law Henry Louis Newman in Hesse, Newman & Co. 366, 538 Hesse, Hartwig (Hamburg 1778–1849), son of Isaac Hesse and Esther Hesse née Delbanco, brother of Heinrich Levin Hesse, merchant, partner in Hesse, Newman & Co., in 1823 converted from Judaisme to Lutheran Protestantism, 1824 Hamburger citizenship, owner of the house Esplanade No. 37 Wallseite, Hamburg, philanthrop, supported Johann Hinrich Wichern, and the Rauhe Haus; financed the journey of Dr. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius to the USA in 1834, founded in 1824 the still existing Hartwig-Hesse-Witwenstift (HartwigHesse-Stiftung, Hamburg) 11, 182, 207,  216, 453, 645 Hesse, Heinrich Levin (Hamburg 1777-­Hamburg 1861), Palmaille 17, Altona, merchant-banker, owner of the trading house H. L. Hesse, 1839–1841 and Hesse, Newman & Co, Senator in Altona (-1861), brother of Hartwig Hesse, ­married to Mathilde A ­ malia Oppenheimer, ­sister of Georg, Jacob, Julius, and Morris ­Oppenheimer 126, 134, 216, 222, 264, 271, 327, 364, 502, 649, 662, 678, 712 Hesse, Mary Julie (Altona 1825-Hamburg 1913), daughter of Heinrich Levin and Amalia Hesse, Altona, married to Henry Louis Newman (1813–1887), partner in the trading house Hesse, Newman & Co together with his brother in law Georg Heinrich Hesse, Altona 325, 326, 762 Hesse, Mathilde Amalia/Emilie/Minna/ Minchen/Malchen née Oppenheimer (?-1868), married to Heinrich Levin Hesse, Palmaille 17, Altona, sister of Jacob,

835 Georg, Morris, Julius Oppenheimer, and Wilhelmina Ahrens, Hamburg, aunt of Mathilde Lieber 10, 118, 125, 136, 167, 201,  207, 214, 219, 221–223, 226, 241, 244, 251, 257, 264, 267, 268, 271, 317, 319, 325–327, 330, 364, 384, 392, 420, 421, 446, 447, 479, 502, 507, 590, 640, 669, 670, 676, 677, 678, 682, 712, 725, 755, 762 Hesse, Sophie Matilda, daughter of ­Heinrich Levin and Amalia Hesse, Altona See Mathilda Capdeville Heydemann, Ludwig Eduard (Berlin 1805-­Berlin 1874), lawyer, mentee of Friedrich von Savigny, professor at Berlin University, Berlin 691, 694 Heyne See Salomon Heine Hillar See Mr. Hiller Hillard, George Stillman (Machias/Mass. 1808-Boston 1879), Boston lawyer, publisher, politician, and friend of Francis Lieber 60, 65, 75, 92, 100, 114, 118, 124, 133,  185, 191, 236, 238, 522, 523, 624, 723 Hiller, Mr. Columbia/SC 166, 320, 617 Hilliard, Henry Washington (Fayetteville/ NC 1808-Atlanta/Ga. 1892), professor in Alabama, US-diplomat in Brussels (1842–1844) 647 Hitzig, Clara See Clara Kugler née Hitzig Hitzig, Eugenia See Eugenie Baeyer née Hitzig Hitzig, Julius Eduard né Isaac Elias Itzig (Berlin 1780-Berlin 1849), lawyer, publisher, author, friend and patron of Franz Lieber in 1819–1826, friend of Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius and Adelbert de Chamisso who married Hitzig’s foster child Antonie Piaste (1800–1837), Berlin ­Friedrichstrasse 15, 18, 20, 60, 143, 229,  314, 637, 649, 650, 663, 669, 684, 686 Hitzig, Julius Eduard, Das königl. Preußische Gesetz vom 11. Juni 1837 zum Schutze des E­ igenthums an Werken der ­Wissenschaft und Kunst gegen Nachdruck und N ­ achbildung, Berlin 1838 60 Hitzig, Julius Eduard, ed., Verzeichnis im Jahre 1825 in Berlin lebender ­Schriftsteller und ihrer Werke. Aus den von ihnen selbst ­entworfenen oder revidirten Artikeln zusammengestellt und zu einem milden

836 Zwecke herausgegeben, Berlin bei Ferdinand Dümmler und Duncker und Humblot 1826 18 Hitzig See Julius Eduard Hitzig Hoboken/NJ 74, 126, 202 Hoffmann, E. T. A., Märchen vom Nußknacker und Mausekönig, in: Die Serapionsbrüder, Berlin 1816 18 Hoffmann, E. T. A., Meister Floh. Ein Märchen in sieben Abenteuern zweier Freunde, Friedrich Willmans, Frankfurt/Main 1822 16 Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus (Königsberg 1776-Berlin 1822), lawyer, author, investigating coroner in the case of the Prussian King vs Franz Lieber, 1819 16, 18, 85 Hohenberg, Baronne de Florence 647 Holbeck, Heinrich Peter (Flensburg 1819?–?), cand. theol. Flensburg, 1839/1840 student in Rostock, private tutor 741, 742 Holden, Horace, A Narrative of the shipwreck, Captivity, and sufferings of Horace Holden and Benj. H. Nute: who were cast away in the American ship Mentor, on the Pelew Islands, in the year 1832, and for two years afterwards were subjected to unheard of sufferings among the barbarous ­inhabitants of Lord North’s Island, Russell, Shattuck & Co. Boston 1836 672 Holzendorf, baronne de Düsseldorf 647 Homer, legendary Greek author of the Ilias and Odysee who is supposed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC 109, 164, 176,  177, 193, 197, 517 Homer, Odysee, in der Übersetzung von Johann Heinrich Voß, 4 Bde. Altona/Hamburg 1781, 1793 197 Hooper, Mrs., née Frances Pollock Jones, married to William Hooper 661 Hooper, William (Hillsborough/NC 1792-­Chapel Hill/NC 1876) professor at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, theologian and professor of Roman literature, 1840–1846 371, 373, 467, 494, 621 Hörner, Johann Ludwig (1801–1848), pastor in Weinheim/Badenia, brother in law of Luise Landfermann née Winter, married

Index to Amalie Winter, his children’s names were Mathilde and Georg 709, 713 Hotel Zum Schwan, Frankfurt/Main 709 Howe, Heinrich, son of Dr. Samuel Gridley and Julia Ward Howe 699 Howe, Julia née Ward (New York City 1819-Portsmouth/RI 1910), married to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Boston, poet, author, abolitionist, fought for women’s rights 71, 698, 699, 700, 703, 719, 723, 768 Howe, Samuel Gridley (Boston 1801-Boston 1876), MD, married to Julia Ward, director of the Perkins School for the Blind founded in 1832 in Boston 71 Hudson River 23, 64, 80, 83, 86, 107, 109, 169, 202 Hudson/NY 84 Hudtwalcker, Martin Hieronymus (Hamburg 1787–1865), lawyer, Senator in Hamburg, interessed in the international movement in favor of prison reform, favored the religious awakening movement, friend of Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Johann Hinrich Wichern, and Christian von ­Bunsen etc. 40 Hughes, Christopher (Baltimore 1786-Baltimore 1849), US-American diplomat at The Hague/Netherlands 647 Hull/England 360, 633, 634 Humboldt, Caroline von née Carolina Friederica von Dacheröden (Minden 1766-Berlin 1829), married in 1791 to Wilhelm von Humboldt 17 Humboldt, Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Carl Ferdinand von (Potsdam 1767-Tegel 1835), scholar, politician, author, creator of a new type of university true to new concepts of humanism, brother of Alexander von Humboldt, married in 1791 to Carolina Friederica von Dacheröden 17, 695 Humboldt, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von (Berlin 1769-Berlin 1859), international science broker, travellor, explorer, scholar, author, politician, brother of Wilhelm von Humboldt 1, 209, 675,  696, 768 Humboldt, Gabriele von (Berlin 1802–1887), daughter of Wilhelm and Caroline von

Index Humboldt, married to Heinrich von Bülow 695 Hunnenschlacht, ceiling fresco by Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805–1874), 1834–1837, in the Neue Museum, Berlin that started in 1843 was still in the making on the Museumsinsel, Berlin 696 Huth, Gruning & Co. Liverpool 646 Hyperion, prose romance by Henry ­Wadsworth Longfellow, New York 1839 85, 169 Ingersoll, Charles Jared (Philadelphia 1782–1862), brother of Joseph Reed, lawyer, representative of Pennsylvania in the ­US-Congress 57, 140, 371 Ingersoll, Joseph Reed (Philadelphia 1786– 1868), brother of Charles Jared, lawyer, statesman, representative of Pennsylvania in the US-Congress 5, 140, 371 Ingersoll, Miss, perhaps a daughter of Charles Jared Ingersoll? 141 Inglis, Frances/Fanny See Marquise de Calderón de la Barca Inglis, Henry/Harry, Edinburgh, ­banker? 646, 650, 663 Inglis, Jane, sister of Fanny Calderón, Lydia, and Harriet Addison née Inglis 83, 168,  619, 624, 635 Inglis, Lydia, sister of Fanny Calderón, Jane, and Harriet Addison née Inglis 83, 168,  624, 635 Inglis, Sir H/Robert Harry (1786–1855), British politician, abolitionist 646, 650, 663 Inglis/Mr. Inglis, the, Scottish family in ­Boston/Mass. 83, 168, 646 Iphigenie auf Tauris, tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first performance Weimar 1779 179 Ireton, Henry (1611–1651), friend and son in law of Oliver Cromwell, general of the revolutionary army in the English Civil War, fought in the battle of Edgehill 1642 and of Gainsborough in 1643 67 Irving, Mrs, New York City 145, 269 Irving, Wash. See Washington Irving Irving, Washington (New York 1783-­Tarrytown/NY 1859), US-American

837 author, biographer, journalist, achieved ­international fame with his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon Gent, in 1819–20, stayed single, politician, executor of the will of John Jacob Astor, first chairman of the Astor library, a forerunner of the New York Public Library, friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who paid tribute to Washington Irving with the poem The churchyard at Tarrytown, 1876 1, 12,  78, 451 Irving, Washington, The Life and voyages of Christopher Columbus, 3rd edition New York 1829 251 Isab./Isabela See Isabelle Oppenheimer Ischel/Ischgl/Austria 687 Italien/Italy 17, 20, 132, 161, 302, 311, 313, 414,  458, 468, 521, 554, 706, 731 Izard, Mrs. Columbia/SC 622 Jackson, Andrew (1767-The Hermitage, ­Nashville/Tenn. 1845), soldier, statesman, 7th President of the USA 1829–1837 62 Jacobsen, family Berlin 171 Jacobsen/Jacobson, Sally, childhood friend of Mathilde Lieber, Berlin 133, 171, 195, 208,  274, 392, 401, 445, 452, 453, 456, 613, 715 Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig (Lanz 1778-Freyburg/ Unstrut 1852), educator, founded the so-called Turnbewegung, established the first Turnplatz in 1811 on the Hasenheide in the southern outskirts of Berlin, related by marriage to the Lieber family, taught gymnastics to Franz, Eduard, Adolf, and ­Gustav Lieber 15, 16, 21, 22, 24, 124,  215, 547 Jakson, London taylor of Royal Consort Prince Albert 651 James I (Edinburgh 1566-Theobalds Park 1625), King James VI of Scotland ­1567–1625, King James I of England 1603–1625 112, 343 James II (London 1633-Saint-Germainen-Laye 1701), King James VII of Scotland, King James II of England 1685–1688/89 165 James See James Oppenheimer James See James Thomas Woodhouse

838 James, slave of Mr. Merant/Mayrant, Columbia/SC; father of Henry and partner of Betsy the cook in the Lieber household, he claimed to be worth $ 1500 47, 152, 156,  566, 567 Jameson, Anna (Dublin 1797-London 1860), authoress and translator 472, 576, 577 Jameson, Anna, Visits and Sketches at Home and abroad, London 1834 472 Jane See Jane Inglis Japan 295 Jarvis, family dog, bull-terrier of the Liebers, Columbia/SC 595 Jean Paul See Jean Paul Richter Jeannie Deans, heroine in Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818 308, 309, 426 Jefferson, Thomas (Shadwell/Va 1743-Monticello/Va 1826), 3rd President of the USA 1801–1809 615, 616 Jena/Germany 16, 524, 577, 732 Jenifer, Daniel (1791–1855), politician from Maryland, US-American minister in Vienna/Austria 1837–1845 647 Jenisch, Gottlieb (1797–1875), married to Caroline, Gräfin von Westphalen-Fürstenberg, née Freiin von Lützow, brother of Martin Johann Jenisch, owner of the Jenisch Haus in Nienstedten; Gottlieb Jenisch lived in Jungfernstieg 19, Hamburg and in the Elbchaussee, Nienstedten/Altona 39, 762 Jessonda, opera by Louis Spohr, lyrics by Eduard Heinrich Gehe, first performance Kassel 1823 130 Jim Blue, slave in Columbia/SC 337 Jim See James Oppenheimer Johanneum, High School in Hamburg, founded in the 16th century 217, 220, 274 John, slave in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC 758 Johnston, A.S., publisher of the weekly Columbia Telescope (1828–1839) 390 Johnston, Side, student in the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 517 Joly de Lotbiniere, Pierre Gustave (Frauenfeld/CH 1798-Paris 1865), businessman, daguerreotypist 646 Jone or Juno, Roman goddess responsible for giving birth, maternity, and marriage 164

Index Juhaneum See Johanneum Juliet Capulet, heroine in the tragedy Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare, 1597 210,  308, 358, 522, 568 Julius, Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich (Altona 1783–Hamburg 1862), MD, physician, penologist, publisher, author, translator of George Ticknor, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont, friend of Carl Anton Joseph Mittermaier 24, 124, 133,  170, 182, 183, 192, 257, 271, 292, 325, 361, 445, 461, 534, 608, 609, 624, 687, 690, 736, 737, 743 Julius, Nikolaus Heinrich, Amerika’s Besserungs-System und dessen Anwendung auf Europa. Mit einem Anhange über StrafAnsiedelungen und zwei und zwanzig Beilagen. Aus dem Französischen der ­Herren G. von Beaumont und A. v. ­Tocqueville, nebst Erweiterungen und Zusätzen von N. H. Julius, Berlin 1833 183 Julius, Nikolaus Heinrich, Nordamerikas si­tt­ liche Zustände: nach eigenen Anschauungen in den Jahren 1834, 1835 und 1836, 2 vols. Leipzig 1839 25, 182, 192, 609 Julius See Dr. phil. Julius Lieber Julius See Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius Jungfernstieg, Neuer, Hamburg 41, 115, 132,  170, 244, 761 Junius 105 K See Karl Christoph Albert Heinrich von Kamptz Kaiser von Österreich, i.e. Ferdinand I. (­Vienna 1793-Prague 1875), 1835–1848 687 Kaiserin von Österreich, i.e. Maria Anna (1803–1884) 687 Kamptz, Karl Albert Christoph Heinrich, Baron von (Schwerin 1769-Berlin 1849) lawyer, judge, Prussian legislator, minister, diplomat, responsible in the 1810–1820s for the prosecution of so-called demagogues like Franz Lieber, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, Karl Beck etc. 17, 143, 229, 687, 696 Kant, Immanuel (Königsberg 1724–1804), one of the most influential philosophers of German Enlightement 295, 313

Index Karl der Schändliche See Charles II Karl II. See Charles II Karl XIV. Johann, born as Jean Baptiste ­Bernadotte (Pau 1763-Stockholm 1844), French Marechal d’Empire, fought ­Napoleon, adopted by the Swedish king and his sucessor in 1818 he founded the dynasty Bernadotte on the Swedish throne 303 Karl-Theodor von der Pfalz (1724–1799) 363 Karlsbader Beschlüsse 1819 15 Karsten, Charlotte/Lotte/Lottchen, Züllichau, daughter of Johann Heinrich Gottfried and Dorothee Karsten, niece of Francis Lieber, married in May 1840 a theologian from Brandenburg 192, 250, 274, 323, 431,  455, 509, 513, 532, 533, 538, 704 Karsten, Dorothea/Dorothee/Doris/Dorchen née Lieber (Berlin 1790–?), sister of Francis Lieber, married to Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten Züllichau 250, 323, 431,  509, 513, 532, 580, 717 Karsten, Johann Heinrich Gottfried (1793–1865), known to the Lieber family since their turner period, Superintendent ­Züllichau, married to Dorothea ­Lieber 250, 274, 323, 431, 444, 509, 532,  533, 538, 580, 639 Karsten See Johann Heinrich Gottfried Karsten Kaskask(i)a/Ill. 67 Katskill See Catskills Kaulbach, Wilhelm von (Arolsen 1805-­Munich 1874), painter 696 Käuner, Friederich, teacher Hamburg 764 Kayser, Heidelberg 711, 713 Kean, Charles John (ca. Waterford/Ireland 1811-Liverpool 1868), Irish-British actor who was specialized on roles in plays by William Shakespeare, several ­US-engagements, 1839 in New York City, famous for his interpretation of prince Hamlet 126 Keibel, Anna/Anne Luise Caroline (Berlin 1824-Berlin 1853), daughter of Wilhelm and Auguste Keibel, Berlin, married May 22, 1845 to Paul August Hermann ­Langerhans 637, 659, 738

839 Keibel, Carl Gottlieb (Pasewalk 1763-­Berlin 1838), married to Sophie Henriette ­Knoblauch, producer of silk ribbons in Berlin, father of Wilhelm Keibel 302 Keibel, Carl Heinrich Wilhelm (Berlin 1792-Berlin 1860), merchant, entrepreneur, lawyer, Geheimer Oberjustizrat, Stadtrat, childhood friend of Francis Lieber, married in 1818 to Auguste Luise Caplick, Berlin 18, 143, 245, 274, 299, 303, 304, 370,  385, 445, 456, 623, 637, 642, 650, 659, 663, 669, 686, 701, 702, 703, 707 Keibel, Elise/Elsa (Berlin 1822-Berlin 1855), daughter of Wilhelm and Auguste Keibel, married in 1854 to Wilhelm Schwartz, Berlin 705, 706 Keibel, Karl Johann Gustav (Berlin 1820-Berlin 1888), son of Wilhelm and Auguste Keibel, married December 5, 1844 to Hulda Luise Stuhr, merchant, Berlin 220, 270, 302,  385, 637, 659 Keibel, Louis/Ludwig Siegfried Wilhelm (1830–1894), son of Wilhelm and Auguste Keibel, Berlin 302 Keibel, Martin Heinrich Wilhelm (Berlin 1819–1879), son of Wilhelm and Auguste Keibel, married in 1853 Alexandra von Unruh, Berlin 302 Keibel, Mathilde Charlotte Amalie (Berlin 1828-Berlin 1832), daughter of Wilhelm and Auguste Keibel, Berlin 143 Keibel, Mrs. Auguste Luise née Caplick (Berlin 1799–1877), married in 1818 to Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin 143, 245, 270, 274, 302, 370,  445, 456, 642, 659, 669, 678, 691, 695, 701, 702, 703 Keibel, Mrs. Old, Henriette Sophie née Knob­ lauch, married to Carl Gottlieb Keibel, mother of Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin 302,  323, 691, 703 Kendal, Amos (1789–1869), lawyer, ­journalist, politician, supporter of US-American presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin van Buren, supported Samuel Morse’ invention, the telegraph, US Postmaster General 1835–1840 375 Kent, James (Patterson/NY 1763-Kent/NY 1847), lawyer, judge at the New York

840 Court of Chancery, 1793 professor of law at ­Columbia College, NYC, published Commentaries on American Law, 4 vols. O. Halsted New York 1826–1830 = Old Kent 255, 486 Kenyon, John (Jamaica 1784–1856), ­British poet, philanthropist, the heir of a Jamaican planter was patron of the arts, friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who honored his friend with the poem Dorchester 646 Kerner, Justinus (Ludwigsburg 1786-Weinsberg 1862), poet, physician, friend of Rosa Maria and Dr. med. David Assing, and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, married to Friederike Ehmann (1786–1854) 9, 264 Kiesewetter, Christian Gottfried ­(Ansbach 1777–London 1827), violinist, composer 218 King = Danish King See Frederic VI Kingston/Kingstown/Canada 97, 99 Kirkpatrick & co., trading house ­Charleston/ SC; Kirkpatrick & son, Charleston/ SC 352 Kissingen/Germany 671 Kleinstädter See August von Kotzebue Kn, Mr. See Georg Knoblauch Knoblauch, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm (Berlin 1793-Wittekind/Halle, Saale 1859), ­married in 1818 to Emilie Henriette Keibel, Geheimer Finanzrat, entrepreneur, partner of Eduard Lieber in producing silk in Züllichau, politician, Abgeordneter des Kurmärkischen Landtags, since 1832 Stadtältester in Berlin, friend of Francis Lieber since their childhood 18, 303, 323,  380, 623, 637, 650, 659, 677, 695, 728, 729, 736, 737, 739, 740, 744, 748, 749 Knoblauch, Johann Georg (Frankfurt/ Main 1795-Frankfurt/Main 1871), ­married in 1821 to Johanna Auguste Keibel (Berlin 1803-Frankfurt/Main 1837), brother in law of Wilhelm Keibel, Berlin 638,  709, 710 Knoblauch, Karl Hermann (Berlin 1820-Baden-Baden 1895), son of Carl ­Knoblauch (1793–1859), pupil of the Paedagogium in Züllichau and lived there with the family of Eduard Lieber, later

Index Professor for physic at the universities of Bonn, Marburg, and Halle 323, 737 Knorre, Boston See Charles Knorre Knorre, Carl/Charles (1804–1848), son of the Oberalten Georg Knorre, merchant, partner of Berenberg & Gossler, Hamburg consul in Boston, formerly engaged to Susanne Gossler 60, 62, 64, 523 Koch, R. Lehrer (Collaborator) in ­Wolfenbüttel 1844 729 Königin Victoria See Queen Victoria Königstrasse 61, Berlin today Rathausstrasse, 1822–26 residence of Wilhelm and Mathilde Benecke/Beneke 425 Köpnick/Köpenick, village east of Berlin, location of Prussian state prison 18, 20,  228, 494, 591 Kopperhold, Miss 757 Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand von (Weimar 1761-Mannheim 1819), author, Russian consul, assassinated in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a follower of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Karl Fellau/Charles ­Follen; this crime caused the prosecution of the so-called demagogues on the basis of the Karlsbader Beschlüsse 15, 34, 466 Kotzebue, August von, Die deutschen K ­ leinstädter, comedy, first performance Vienna 1802 466 Kraft/Krafft-Ebing, Clara Antonia Carolina von née Mittermaier (1820–1855), daughter of Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, married to Friedrich von Krafft-Ebing (1807–1889), Heidelberg 709, 713 Krähwinkel 34 Kraut, Dr., Hamburg 364, 365 Krutisch, Karl (Berlin 1797-Hamburg 1832), son of Berlin merchant Philipp Krutisch, since 1815 merchant in Hamburg, cofounder of the Hamburg Turnerschaft in 1816, married to Benedicta Klünder 19, 221,  271, 385 Kugler, Clara née Hitzig (1812–1873), daughter of Julius Eduard Hitzig, married to art historian Franz Kugler, Berlin 314 Labat(t), Eduard, partner of Elias Warburg, office in Herrengraben 29; lived GrindelAllee 28, Hamburg + Hoboken/NJ, married

Index to Georgiana, daughter of a close friend of Mathilde Lieber 74, 178, 199, 202, 254,  576, 590 Labat(t), Mrs Georgi(a)na, Hamburg + Hoboken/NJ, married to Hamburg merchant Eduard Labat(t), daughter of a close friend of Mathilde Lieber 111, 125,  126, 138, 199, 202, 434, 679 Labatt & Warburg, importers 97 Maiden-lane upstairs, NYC 202 LaBorde, Maximilian Leon de (1804–1874), professor of metaphysics, logic, and rhetoric at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, married to Sophia (Edgefield/SC ?-Columbia/SC 1841), published in 1859 History of the South Carolina College, that acknowledged the merits of former faculty member Francis Lieber 491, 620, 622 LaBorde, Maximilian Leon de, Journey through Arabia Petraea, to Mount Sinai, John Murray London 1836 491 Lachine/Canada 99 Lady of the Lake. A Poem, Walter Scott, ­Edinburgh 1810 317 Lady Russell, Rachel née Wriothesley (1636–1723) 62, 126 Lafayette, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch du Motier, Marquis de (Chavaniac 1757-Paris 1834), French general, politician, friend of George Washington, took part in the American War of Independence, had strong impact on the French Revolution; Hamburg merchant and US-American consul John Parish had a hand in Lafayette’s release from Austrian prisons in 1797 149, 150 Lake Champlain/VT 84, 86, 93, 94 Lake George/NY 590 Lake Ontario/Canada+NY 80, 99,  105, 109 Lake St Francis/Canada 100 Landfermann, Dietrich Wilhelm (Soest 1800-Weinheim 1882), Turner, friend of Franz Lieber, imprisoned in Köpenick 1824/25, in 1835–1841, headmaster of a high school in Duisburg, married to Luise Winter, a friend of Henriette Oppenheimer 220

841 Landfermann, Luise née Winter (1818–?), daughter of Heidelberg publisher ­Christian Friedrich Winter, married in 1833 Dietrich Wilhelm Landfermann, sister in law of Reverend Hörner, friend of Henriette Oppenheimer 220 Landgraf/Landgrave von Hessen, Philipp I. (1504–1567) 459 Lane, Mr M., Columbia/SC 595 Langenhorn, in the 19th century village north of Hamburg 38, 39, 476 Langerhans, Friedrich Wilhelm, Stadtbaurat, politician, Berlin 637 Langerhans, Paul August Hermann (­Berlin 1811–?), married Anna Keibel 637 Laocöon/Laokoon, sculpture 709, 710 Lappenberg, Johann Martin (Hamburg 1794-Hamburg 1865), historian, archivist, friend of Dr. iur. Otto Benecke, met Cogswell and corresponded with Francis Lieber, married to Marianne Louise Baur (?-1849) 385, 645 LaPrairie 87 Las Cases, Emmanuel de (1766–1842), French navy officer, accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena 373 Lassberg/Lasperg, Fräulein/Chanoinesse/ canoness/Stiftsdame Charlotte von (­1794–?), in 1830 she had found the ­Ebstorfer world map in a storeroom of the monastery Ebstorf, Lüneburger Heide, lived in Lüneburg/Germany where Francis and Oscar Lieber in July 12, 1844 paid her a visit, 1846 she wrote Lieber from Ebstorf/ Hanover 646 Laura See Laura Bridg(e)man Le Commerce, journal edited by Alexis de Tocqueville, Paris 1844 728 Le Havre/France 57, 59, 67, 69, 89, 95, 102, 119, 125, 128, 137, 140, 144, 148, 151, 153, 154, 165, 166, 173, 175, 177, 178, 179, 184, 186, 191, 193, 198, 200, 209, 212, 235, 238, 245, 252, 253, 262, 275, 286, 290, 298, 304, 314, 316, 326, 331, 345, 349, 350, 354, 355, 362, 367–369, 376, 388, 396, 405, 415, 428, 435, 438, 449, 457, 460, 473, 481, 484, 497, 510, 513, 527, 539, 551, 553, 554, 563, 570, 575, 581, 586, 592, 595,

842 597–599, 606, 613, 621, 624, 626, 634, 700, 752, 758 Lebrun, Carl (1792-Hamburg 1847), Ich irre mich nie oder der Räuberhauptmann, comedy, first performance Weimar 1839 199 Ledyard, Henry (New York City 1812-London 1880), politician, lawyer, Chargé d’Affaires in Paris 645 Lee, Mrs 647 Legaré, Hugh Swinton (Charleston/SC 1797-Boston 1843), scholar, lawyer, publisher, diplomat, Chargé d’Affaires in Brussels 1832–1836, Attorney General in the Tyler-administration 1841–1843, secretary of state 1843 155, 534 Leipzig/Leipsic/Germany 1, 22, 199, 303, 304, 709, 717 Lekain, Boston 646 Leman, Mad., Paris 646 Lemmé, London 646 Lena, servant in the household of James and Emma Oppenheimer, Manchester 656 Leo-Wolf, Dr. med. Morris/Moritz (ca. Hamburg or Altona 1803?-New York 1887), Dr. of medicine in Heidelberg in 1828, migrated from Hamburg to Philadelphia in 1829, married to Rachel Salomon (1823–1865) 131 Leo-Wolf, Dr. Mrs, Hamburg 131 Leo-Wolf, Miss Sophie? 695 Leominster/England, home of James Thomas and Clara Woodhouse and their family See Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer sister of Mathilde Lieber 11, 12, 111, 116, 191,  213, 273, 280, 362, 405, 446, 459, 509, 513, 538, 580, 633, 638, 644, 650, 655, 669, 692, 711, 712, 724 Les Huguenots/Die Hugenotten, opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, lyrics Eugene Scribe and Emile Deschamps, first performance Paris 1836 724 Les Liaisons dangereuses, novel by ­Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos, 1782 103 Letters of Junius, in: Public Advertiser, London 21.1.1769–12.5.1772 105 Lewald, Ernst Anton, Prof. (Hanover 1790-­Heidelberg 1848), theologian at the University Heidelberg 725

Index Lfellow See Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Lieber Code See Francis Lieber, Instructions for Governments Lieber, Adolf (Berlin 1795–1838), brother of Francis Lieber, turner, Prussian officer, economist, died of tuberculosis 13 Lieber, Alfred Hamilton/Hammy/Tom, Tommy Stout, Calvin (Philadelphia 7.6.1835-Baden-Baden 18.10.1876), second son of Francis Lieber und Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer, married to Harriett Wood, joined the Union forces and got injured in the Civil War, Colonel, died of liver cancer while in treatment in BadenBaden/Germany 14, 23, 63, 70, 74, 94, 95,  101, 106, 117, 123, 127, 137, 138, 140, 143, 148, 157, 161, 162, 167, 173, 181, 182, 188, 191, 193, 201, 202, 207, 211, 217, 222, 223, 226, 228, 235, 239, 241, 243, 244, 249–251, 256, 263, 265, 270, 273, 277, 285, 289, 290, 300, 301, 306, 310, 316, 318, 325, 327, 328, 329, 342, 343, 354, 361, 370, 375, 379, 381, 383, 388, 393, 403, 405, 420, 424, 427, 439, 445, 446, 457, 463, 480, 481, 483, 485, 486, 488, 497, 506, 507, 509, 512, 513, 524, 525, 528, 529–531, 533, 544, 555, 568, 580, 581, 584, 605, 621, 629, 631–634, 639, 641, 648, 651, 654, 660, 661, 663, 667, 668, 671–673, 678, 680, 682, 684, 696, 700, 704, 706, 714, 717, 722, 735, 746, 748, 751, 756–759, 761, 764, 765, 768 Lieber, Augusta/Auguste (Berlin 1787– 1862), sister of Francis Lieber, single, ­Züllichau 249, 250, 714, 716, 717, 755 Lieber, Carl, brother of Francis Lieber 13 Lieber, Charlotte Barbara née Baur (Berlin/ Alt Cölln 1763- Züllichau 1838), mother of Francis Lieber, married to Friedrich Wilhelm Lieber, Berlin 21, 712 Lieber, Clara, daughter of Dr. med. ­Gustav ­Lieber, Berlin, niece of Francis ­Lieber 434, 456, 605 Lieber, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes; ‚­Ramshorn’s Latin Synonymes‛, in: The North American Review vol. 49/105, October 1839, p. 467–478 157 Lieber, Dr. phil. Julius (Berlin 1805–1881), theologian, teacher, 1845 headmaster of the Paedagogium Züllichau, brother

Index of Francis Lieber 13, 79, 322, 702, 717,  755, 769 Lieber, Dr. med. Gustav (Berlin 1796–1865), married to Louisa Kaufmann, physician in Berlin, brother of Francis Lieber 13, 131,  136, 195, 229, 233, 274, 367, 434, 455, 456, 513, 521, 532, 533, 605, 638, 652, 684–686, 692, 695, 716, 717, 737, 738 Lieber, Eduard/Edward D. (Berlin 1791-Züllichau 1867), brother of Francis Lieber, merchant and manufacturer, business partner of Carl Knoblauch, in 1848 member of the Paulskirche, married his cousin Charlotte Baur 13, 19, 322, 323,  380, 532, 686, 702, 704, 717, 737 Lieber, Ernst Arnold (1821–?), Berlin, son of Eduard Lieber, nephew of Francis Lieber, merchant, apprenticeship in Frankfurt/ Main – Berlin 322, 323, 686, 697, 702,  737, 738, 746 Lieber, Francis, „Africa“, in: Encyclopaedia Americana, vol. 1, Philadelphia 1830, p. 87–92 207 Lieber, Francis, A Brief and practical German grammar on a new plan with particular reference to the grammatical affinities of the German and English idioms together with a copious collection of extracts from some of the best German writers, Ms. 1835 78 Lieber, Francis, A Constitution and Plan of Education for Girard College for orphans, with an Introductory Report, laid before the board of Trustees, Carey, Lea and Blanchard Philadelphia 1834 213, 400,  401, 407, 524, 525, 540, 541, 576 Lieber, Francis, A paper on the vocal sounds of Laura Bridgeman, the blind deaf-mute at Boston, compared with the elements of ­Phonetic Language, Smithsonian ­contributions to knowledge, vol. 2, ­Washington/DC 1851 707 Lieber, Francis, A popular essay on subjects of penal law, and on uninterrupted solitary confinement at labor, as contradistinguished to solitary confinement at night and joint labor by day, in a letter to John Bacon, esquire, Philadelphia published by order of the Society 1838 57, 58, 140, 193,  340, 490

843 Lieber, Francis, Dictionary of Latin Synonymes, for the Use of schools and private students, with a complete Index. By Lewis Ramshorn, from the German, by Francis Lieber, Boston, Charles C. Little and James Brown 1839 61, 77, 98, 111, 124, 134, 156,  157, 185, 190, 192, 202, 238 Lieber, Francis, Encyclopaedia Americana. A popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics and Biography, brought down to the Present Time; including a copius collection of original articles in American Biography; on the basis of the seventh edition of the German Conversations-Lexicon, edited by Francis Lieber, assisted by E. Wigglesworth, 13 vols., Philadelphia Carey & Lea 1830–1833 See Encyclopaedia Americana Lieber, Francis, Essays on Property and Labour as connected with Natural Law and the Constitution of Society, New York Harper & Brothers 1842 640, 649, 662 Lieber, Francis, Great Events, described by distinguished historians, chroniclers, and other writers, published under the sanction of the Board of Education of the State of Massachusetts, (= School Library, vol. 17) Boston Marsh, Capen, Lyon & Webb 1840 430, 451, 600 Lieber, Francis, Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, prepared by Francis Lieber, promulgated as General Orders No. 100 by President Lincoln, 24 April 1863  See Lieber-Code or Code 100 Lieber, Francis, Legal and Political ­Hermeneutics, or, principles of ­interpretation and construction in law and politics: with remarks on precedents and authorities, C.C. Little and J. Brown Boston 1839 28, 30, 111, 118, 185, 192, 255, 315, 328,  372, 490 Lieber, Francis, Letter to His Excellency Patrick Noble, Governor of South Carolina, on the penitentiary system, 1838 176, 190, 229,  238 Lieber, Francis, Manual of Political Ethics, designed chiefly for the use of colleges and students at law, 2 vols., C. C. Little &

844 J. Brown Boston 1838–1839 and London William Smith, 113, Fleet Street, 1839 28,  58, 61–66, 69, 70, 75, 76, 94, 98, 107, 116, 118, 134, 139, 141, 148, 152, 159, 180, 190, 191, 238, 254, 255, 277, 279, 284, 298, 311, 312, 315, 337, 340, 344, 347, 350, 371, 405, 449, 458, 492, 527, 542, 558, 561, 564, 566, 571, 578, 598, 601, 615, 619 Lieber, Francis, On International Copyright: in a Letter to the Hon. William C. Preston, Senator of the United States, Wiley and Putnam, Broadway, New York, and Paternoster Row, London 1840 60, 463, 472,  473, 511, 541, 560, 612 Lieber, Francis, On the penitentiary system in the United States and its application in France, with an appendix on penal colonies, and also Statistical notes by G. D. De Beaumont and A. De Tocqueville, councellors in the Royal Court of Paris, and members of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, translated from the French, with an introduction, notes and addition by Francis Lieber, Philadelphia 1833 183 Lieber, Francis, Remarks on the relation between education and crime in a letter to the Right Rev. William White, president of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons by Francis Lieber LL D member of the Society, to which are added some observations by N. H. Julius, MD of Hamburg, a corresponding member of the society, Philadelphia 1835 183 Lieber, Francis, Reminiscences of an intercourse with George Berthhold Niebuhr the historian of Rome. By Francis Lieber, Professor of History and Political Economy in South Carolina College, author of ‚The Stranger in America’, London Richard Bentley 1835 26, 28, 90 Lieber, Francis, Reminiscences of an Intercourse with Mr. Niebuhr, the Historian, during a residence with him in Rome, in the years 1822 and 1823, by Francis Lieber, professor of history and political economy in South Carolina College, Carey, Lea & Blanchard Philadelphia 1835 26,  28, 90

Index Lieber, Francis, The Stranger in America: or, letters to a gentleman in Germany, ­comprising sketches of the manners, society, and national peculiarities of the United States, Carey, Lea & Blanchard ­Philadelphia 1835 26, 35 Lieber, Franz = Arnold Franz, Vierzehn Weinund Wonnelieder, T. H. Riemann Berlin 1826 18 Lieber, Franz, Adelbert, unpublished MS ca. 1826 220 Lieber, Franz, Bruchstücke über Gegenstände der Strafkunde, besonders über das Eremitensystem, von Franz Lieber, Professor in den Vereinigten Staaten, Johann Wichern Das Rauhe Haus, Hamburg Hamm 1845 737, 740, 746, 769 Lieber, Franz, Erinnerungen aus meinem Zusammenleben mit Georg Berthold Niebuhr, dem Geschichtschreiber Roms, von Franz Lieber, Professor der Geschichte und politischen Oekonomie in Columbia (Süd=Carolina), Verfasser des Stranger in America u. a. aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Dr. Karl Thibaut, Heidelberg in der Universitäts=Buchhandlung von C. J. Winter 1837 26, 28, 90 Lieber, Franz, Tagebuch meines Aufenthalts in Griechenland während der Monate Januar, Februar und März im Jahre 1822, F. A. Brockhaus Leipzig 1823 [1822] 17 Lieber, Franz, Ueber Hinrichtungen auf offenem Felde, oder über extramuran- und Intramuran-Hinrichtungen, in: Kritische Zeitschrift für Rechtswissenschaft und Gesetzgebung des Auslandes vol. 17, 1845, p. 1–30 691, 694 Lieber, Frau Eduard/Edward, née Wilhelmine Johanna Charlotte Sophie Baur, Züllichau, cousin of her husband Eduard Lieber 322, 323, 528, 532, 702 Lieber, Friedrich Wilhelm (Berlin/Alt Cölln 10.11.1760?-Züllichau 1833), father of Francis Lieber, married to Charlotte Barbara Baur 21, 112, 712 Lieber, Guido Norman/Normy/Norry (Columbia/SC 21.5.1837-Washington/DC 25.4.1923), third son of Francis and Mathil-

Index de Lieber, lawyer, professor of law at the US Military Academy 1878–1882, Judge Advocate General 1895–1901, married to Bettie Alexander 14, 23, 54, 63, 69,  70, 94, 95, 117, 124, 127, 140, 143, 157, 167, 173, 181, 182, 191, 199, 201, 202, 207, 217, 222, 228, 239, 240, 241, 247, 249, 250, 257, 264, 265, 269, 273, 290, 300, 301, 306, 310, 317, 319, 324–330, 338, 339, 342, 356, 361, 363, 370, 375, 379, 388, 391, 393, 405, 418, 412, 418, 421, 424, 427, 439, 440, 445, 446, 457, 480, 483, 487, 488, 492, 506, 507, 509, 512, 513, 528–531, 533, 534, 538, 544, 545, 581, 584, 600, 621–623, 625, 631, 632, 634, 639, 640, 648, 655, 658, 661, 667, 668, 672, 677–679, 684, 696, 700, 703–705, 714, 715, 718, 720, 722, 724, 735, 738, 746, 748, 756, 758–761, 764, 768 Lieber, Hermann (Berlin 1808–?), theologian, brother of Francis Lieber, married to Jenny? with children, in 1844 he was living in Crossen/Germany 250, 702, 717 Lieber, Joseph Oscar/Oskar/Ossy/Oscarlito Montgomery (Boston 8.9.1830-Richmond/ Va 27.6.1862), firstborn son of Francis and Mathilde Lieber, state geologian of South Carolina, joined in 1861 the Confederate army, died from a heavy injury he had suffered in the Civil War in May 1862, 468 entries Lieber, Laura (Boston 1832-Manhattanville/NY 1833), daughter of Francis and Mathilde Lieber 12, 83 Lieber, Louise née Kaufmann, married to Dr. med. Gustav Lieber, Berlin 686 Lieber, Mathilde/Mathilda/Matilde/ Matilda/Matty/Matz née Oppenheimer (Hamburg 21.7.1805-Newport/ RI 26.2.1890), fourth daughter of Georg and Clara Recha ­Oppenheimer née ­Gottschalck-Düsseldorf, married since 1829 to Francis Lieber, mother of Oscar, Laura, Hamilton, and Guido Norman Lieber, cousin of Adele Haller, Ferdinand Haller, Ludwig ­Oppenheimer, and Charles August Heckscher, sister of Clara Woodhouse, Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette Oppenheimer, James, Gustavus, and

845 Theodore Oppenheimer, niece of Jacob, Moritz/Morris, and Julius Oppenheimer, ca. 620 entries Lieber, Wilhelmine/Minchen, sister of Francis Lieber, Züllichau, single 717 Liegnitz/Germany, todays Legnica/ Poland 754 Lima/Peru 39 Lincoln, Abraham (LaRue County/Ky 1809-Washington/DC 1865), 16th ­US­President 1861–1865, defended the US-American Union in the Civil War, ­supported Lieber’s code 100, 1 Lindley, William (London 1808–1900), ­British engineer, had a strong impact on the ­modernization of Hamburg’s water supply and sewage system as well as on ­Hamburg’s development of infrastructure (1838 Hamburg-Bergedorf Railway Company) and reconstruction of the City after the Great Fire of 1842 364 Linnee, i.e. Linné, Carl (1707-Uppsala 1778), Swedish botanist, created a system of plants 24 Lion, Mr See Henry Lyons Liszt/List, Franz (Raiding/Austria 1811-Bayreuth 1886), pianist, composer, conductor, author 209, 334 Liverpool/England 21, 141, 628, 634, 635, 636,  638, 757, 766, 767 Lloyds/Loyds list 98 Lockstedt/Lokstedt, village north of Hamburg, today part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 7, 37, 38, 39 Lomnitz, Caroline/Carry/Carrie/aunt South Carolina née Oppenheimer (Hamburg 17.8.1800-Hamburg after 1874), in 1825–1835 married to the merchant Eduard/Edward Augustus Lomnitz (Wandsbeck ?-Siegen 1835), grew up in Hamburg and London, moved with her husband to Manchester in 1825/1826, after her husband’s death she moved in with her parents 1836–1838 in Heidelberg, from 1838 in Hamburg– Neustadt, Esplanade No. 8, 1840 till 1870 Esplanade No. 13, sister of Mathilde Lieber, Henriette Oppenheimer, Clara Woodhouse, Gustavus, Theodore, and James

846 ­Oppenheimer, she held the trading company of her late husband Lomnitz & Co, as trustee for her son Eduard, supported her single sister Henriette and took care of her brothers’ children from Puerto Rico, ca. 460 entries Lomnitz, Clara (1831–?), daughter of Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer, married her cousin Gustavito Oppenheimer, son of Gustavus Oppenheimer 12, 49, 199, 207,  208, 358, 379, 445, 507, 511, 512, 528, 529, 580, 639, 640, 654, 661, 671, 680, 685, 721, 728, 732, 752, 756, 757, 758, 760, 763, 764, 765 Lomnitz, Eduard/Edward August (Wandsbeck ?–Siegen 1835), merchant, married in 1825 to Caroline Oppenheimer, daughter of his employer Georg Oppenheimer 11, 12, 202 Lomnitz, Edward/Eduard/Ned, nickname Cantour/Cantoor (London 1826–?), son of Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer 12,  199, 207, 221, 222, 243, 247, 319, 327, 378, 379, 446, 483, 503, 514, 629, 632, 640, 655, 660, 670, 678, 680, 684, 705, 706, 714, 719, 721, 724, 725, 738, 745, 751, 756, 759, 761, 762 Lomnitz, Emil/Aemil (Manchester 1835–?), son of Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer 12, 117, 168, 199, 202, 207, 211, 240,  273, 326, 327, 361, 374, 418, 440, 445, 507, 632, 639, 640, 660, 673, 678, 680, 685, 693, 700, 704, 706, 722, 745, 756, 757, 759 Lomnitz, Felix (Manchester 1834–?), son of Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer 12,  117, 168, 202, 207, 211, 240, 326, 327, 374, 439, 445, 509, 529, 631, 632, 639, 640, 660, 667, 677, 678, 684, 715, 718, 720, 751, 752, 756, 758, 759, 760, 764, 768 Lomnitz, George (Manchester 1828–?), son of Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer 12,  199, 378, 440, 514, 667 Long Island Sund/NY 352 Longfellow, Frances/Fanny Elizabeth Appleton née Fanny Appleton (Boston 1817-Cambridge/Mass. 1861), sister of Mary Appleton Mackintosh, since 1843 married to poet and former Harvard

Index scholar Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the couple lived in Craigie House Cambridge/ Mass., a wedding gift of her father Nathan ­Appleton 61, 80, 85, 131, 169, 348, 433,  473, 487, 544, 555, 556, 625, 723, 733, 736 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (Portland/ Maine 1807-Cambridge/Mass. 1882), poet, author, professor at Harvard University, since 1843 married to his second wife Fanny Appleton; his first marriage had ended in 1835 with the death of his wife Mary Storer Potter (Cambridge/Mass. 1812-Rotterdam 1835) who had suffered a miscarriage 12, 54, 85, 169, 544, 624, 646,  649, 723 Lorain/Lorrain, Claude (Chamagne ­1600-Rome 1682), French painter 290 Lord Chatham see William Pitt the Elder (1708–1778) Lottchen See Charlotte Karsten Louis C. Jacob, restaurant in Nienstedten, west of Hamburg founded in 1791 39 Louis Philippe I. (Paris 1773-Claremont House/Surrey 1850), official title King of the French or Roi Citoyen 1830–1848, exile in England 149, 675 Louis XIV (Saint Germain-en-Laye 1638-­Versailles 1715), King of France 1643–1715 561, 709 Louis XVI (Versailles 1754-Paris 1793), King of France 1774–1791, King of the French 1791–1792, executed 99, 150 Louis See Dr. iur. Georg Ludwig Oppenheimer Louisa See Louisa Lieber née Kaufmann Lowndes, C. T. & Co, cotton merchants, Charleston/SC 621 Lowndes, Mrs. C. T., Charleston/SC 621, 632,  706, 750 Lpool See Die/The Liverpool Lubeck/Lübeck/Germany 20, 43, 182, 352,  532, 661, 684, 698, 714 Ludwig Op See Dr. iur. Georg Ludwig Oppenheimer Ludwig See Dr. iur. Georg Ludwig Oppenheimer Lummis, William Maxwell (1809–1869), brother of Elizabeth Fries Lummis Ellet 634

Index Luther, Martin (Eisleben 1483-Eisleben 1546), theologian, monk, seminal figure in the reformation movement of the Catholic Church, translated the Bible from Latin into the German vernacular 111, 112, 220,  274, 458, 459, 700 Lützen/Germany 303 Lycurgus (800 BC-730 BC) legendary lawgiver of Sparta 476 Lydia See Lydia Inglis Lyons, Henry (1805–1858) merchant, had his shop Richardson/Main-Gervais Street, Columbia/SC, in 1850 he became mayor of Columbia/SC 140 M. B. See Mathilde Benecke/Beneke née Schweder Maasman See Hans Ferdinand Massmann Macaulay, Thomas Babington 1st Baron Macaulay of Rothley (1800-London 1859), British historian, whig politician 651 Macbeth, i.e. The tragedy of Macbeth, by ­William Shakespeare, first performance Globe Theatre London 1611 569 Machiavelli/Macchiavelli, Niccolò di Bernardo die (Florence 1496-Florence 1527), Italian philosopher, politician, and author 312 Machiavelli, Niccolo, Der Fürst/Il Principe, 1532 312 Mackintosh, Mary née Appleton (Boston 1813–1889), married since December 26, 1839 to Robert James Mackintosh, sister of Fanny Longfellow née Appleton, daughter of Nathan Appleton 54, 61, 80, 85, 97, 131,  169, 180, 236, 254, 269, 290, 324, 337, 348, 353, 360, 386, 433, 459, 473, 480, 522, 523, 524, 525, 544, 552, 554, 555, 556, 569, 608, 610, 662 Mackintosh, Robert James (1806–1864), British diplomat, married since 1839 to Mary Appleton 54, 236, 254, 348, 360, 386, 480,  523, 554, 556 Mackintosh, Sir James (Alldowry 1765–1832), father of Robert James Mackintosh, Jurist, politician, famous orator in the Houses of Parliament, historian, married to

847 ­ atherine Allen, sister in law of JeanC Charles de Sismondi 236, 254, 557, 569 Mackintosh, Sir James, History of England, 3 vols. 1830–1832 569 Mackintosh, Sir James, History of the Revolution in England in 1688, 1834 569 Mad E. Lomnitz/Lomitz See Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer Madrid/Spain 104, 328 Maillard, Anne/Annie Eliza Ward married to Adolph Maillard (Point Breeze/NJ 1819–?), son of Louis Mailliard who was secretary of Joseph Bonaparte, sister of Julia Ward Howe 698, 699, 700, 703, 723 Main Street, Columbia/SC 311 Malibran, Maria Garcia de la Felicidad (Paris 1808–Manchester 1836), opera singer, composer, piano player 582, 583 Manchester/England 11, 29, 503, 632, 633, 634, 635, 636, 638, 645, 648, 650, 655, 656, 657, 662, 669, 678, 724, 730, 735, 754, 755, 757 Manhattanville/NY 6, 83 Mann, Thomas, Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie, 2 vols. Frankfurt/Main 1901 43 Mann, Thomas, Tod in Venedig, Frankfurt/ Main 1913 43 Männeke Pis = der Manniken Piss/Petit Julien, bronce statue in Brussels since 1619 488 Mansfield, Lord, William Murray 1st Earl of (1705–1793), British lawyer, politician, best known for his judgement in Somersett vs. Steward, 1772, when he declared slavery had no basis in English Common Law 276, 401 Mantell, Gideon Algernon (Lewes 1790-Clapham 1852), English physician, palaeontologist, geologist, The wonders of geology, or a familiar exposition of geological phenomena,being the substance of a course of lectures delivered at Brighton by Gideon Mantell, LL D, FRS... from notes taken by G.F. Richardson, curator of the Mantellian Museum, London Relfe and Fletcher, Cornhill 1838 66 Margareth, servant in the Lomnitz household, Hamburg 724

848 Marianne See Marianne Sullivan Brewster Marie, cook in the Lomnitz household, Hamburg 528 Marryat, Frederick (London 1792 –Langham 1848), English navy officer and author, A Diary in America: with remarks on its institutions, 2 vols. Carey & Hart Philadelphia 1839 208, 316 Marseille/Marseilles/France 17, 630 Marshall, Charles H. Capt., co-owner of the Montezuma and the Black Ball Line, captain on the Britannia that first took Franz Lieber from England to the USA in 1827 624 Martineau, Harriet (Norwich 1802-Ambleside 1876), British author, sociologist 183 Mary H. See Mary Newman née Hesse Mary See Mary Appleton Mackintosh Mary See Mary Sumner Mary, slave in the Lieber household, Columbia/SC, sold in 1844 by Francis Lieber for $ 750 to Maximilian LaBorde, Norman Lieber taught her writing 620, 622, 625 Massmann/Maßmann, Hans Ferdinand (Berlin 1797-Bad Muskau 1874), turner friend of Franz Lieber, professor of German ­Philology 16, 637, 649, 669, 684 Mat./Matilda B. See Mathilde Benecke/ Beneke née Schweder Mathilde See Mathilde Benecke/Beneke née Schweder Mathilde See Mathilde Lieber Mathilde See Mathilde Willing née Lee Mauke, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm/William (Schleiz 1791-Hamburg 1859), married to Auguste Wilhelmine Charlotte Besser, since 1826 owner of Perthes, Besser & Mauke, Hamburg 292, 544, 580, 640 Mayaguez/Puerto Rico 222, 374 Mayrant/Merant, Robert Pringle (1808–1870), married to his cousin Frances A. M. H. Guignard, Columbia/SC 156, 566 McClelland, John, brother of Rebecca ­McClelland, handyman in Charleston/ SC 153, 367, 515 McClelland, Rebecca/Becca/Becky (Ireland 1817-Columbia/SC 1889), nanny in the family Lieber in Columbia/SC and Hamburg c. 1839–1841, sister of

Index John McClelland, married in 1842 the Franconian shoemaker Michael Ehrlich (Herlheim bei Würzburg 1807-Columbia/ SC 1882), her children’s names reflect her sympathies for her former employers: they were baptized Matilda (1843–?), and Francis/Franklin Norman (1845–?) 41, 59,  101, 123, 131, 153, 173, 188, 202, 225, 228, 265, 285, 289, 308, 310, 326, 363, 367, 379, 388, 404, 418, 445, 446, 481, 483, 487, 488, 513, 514, 517, 528, 531, 538, 545, 565, 620, 622, 624, 625, 640, 700, 755 McCord, Charlotte Lorain Columbia/SC see Mrs Langdon Cheves Jr., daughter of David James McCord McCord, David James (1797-Columbia/SC 12.5.1855), Jurist, President of the State Bank, editor of the South Carolina Law Journal, politician, planter, father of Charlotte Lorain Cheves née McCord, married first to Emmeline George Wagner (1803–1839), after her death married in 1840 to Louisa Susannah Cheves, ­Columbia/SC. 46, 78, 134, 152,  233, 354, 376, 433, 481, 518, 570, 571, 590 McCord, Mrs David James née Emmeline George Wagner (1803-Columbia/SC 7.8.1839), mother of Charlotte Lorain Cheves née McCord, buried First Presbyterian Churchyard, Columbia/ SC, the mother of 11 children died in ­childbed 78, 433, 590 McCord, Mrs David James née Louisa/Louise Susannah Cheves (1810–1880), married May 20, 1840 to David James McCord, sister of Captain Langdon Cheves Jr., who had married Charlotte McCord, daughter of her husband, poet 354, 376,  433, 571, 590 McCord/M’Cord See David James McCord McNeill, Mrs Eliza née Wilson (?–1868), married to Sir John McNeill, Edinburg, childhood friend of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer 335, 651 McNeill, Sir John (Colonsay 1793-Cannes 1883), MD, surgeon, diplomat, British ambassador to Persia, married to Eliza Wilson, his second wife – his first wife died in 1816, Edinburg 335

Index Meden, von der, friend of Edward Lomnitz in Hamburg 761 Medora See Medora Ward Meissner, Johann August, stepfather of Alexis de Chateauneuf, married in 1805 the widow Marie Elisabeth Chateauneuf née Schniebes, printer, Hamburg 19, 211, 475 Meister Floh See E. T. A. Hoffmann Mendelsohn/Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix (Hamburg 1809-Leipzig 1847), composer 266 Mephistoteles, figure in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust 554 Merant, Mr. Columbia/SC See Robert Pringle Mayrant Merchants Hotel, Philadelphia Fourth Street between Market and Arch Street 139 Merck, Ernst Freiherr von (Hamburg 1811– 1863), merchant, H. J. Merck & Co, since 1839 married to Johanna Anna Borgnis from Frankfurt/Main (1820–1906) 264,  364, 365, 479 Merck, Johanna Anna née Borgnis (Frankfurt/ Main 1820–1906), married to Hamburg merchant Ernst Merck, daughter of banker Carlo Hieronymus Borgnis (Mayence 1795-Frankfurt/Main 1861) 364, 479 Merck, Senator See Ernst Freiherr von Merck Messias, oratory by Georg Friedrich Händel, first performance Dublin 1742 537 Meyer, Ludwig 132, 210 Meyer, Ludwig widow 132, 210 Meyer, Rieke 132 Meyer, Senator 1833–1839 Cuxhaven, Georg Christian Lorenz Meyer? (1787–1866) 210 Meyerbeer, Giacomo né Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer (Tasdorf 1791-Paris 1864), composer 675, 724 Michaud, André Michaud, Histoire des chênes de l’Amerique septentrionale, Paris 1801 437 Michaud, André, Flora boreali-americana, 2 vols. 1803 437 Michaud, André, Histoire des arbres forestiers de l’Amerique septentrionale, Paris 1810 437 Michaud/Michaux, André/Andrew (Versailles 1746-Madagascar 1802), French botanist

849 who classified American, European, and African specimens 437 Michelangelo Buonarotti (Caprese 1475-Rome 1564), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, poet 696 Mignet, François (1796–1884), French journalist, historian 111, 541 Milanollo, Maria ( 1828–1848), Italian violin player 657 Milanollo, Teresa (1827–1904), Italian violin player and composer 657 Millanollo See Milanollo Millerntor, former gate and streetname in Hamburg-St. Pauli 48 Mills, Robert (Charleston/SC 1781-Washington/DC 1855), architect, cartographer, student of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, designed since 1836 the Washington Monument, Washington/ DC, designed town houses and public buildings in Columbia/SC like the Library of the College of South Carolina on the Horseshoe and the so-called Robert Mills House, 1616 Blanding Street, Columbia/SC built in 1823 46, 156, 587 Milnes, Richard Monckton 1st Baron ­Houghton (1809–1885), British poet, MP 646 Misegaes & Gleim, merchant house from ­Bremen, New York City 75 Miss Benecke/Beneke See Anna Benecke/ Beneke Miss Cheves See Louisa Cheves McCord Miss Hampton, daughter of Wade Hampton II, Columbia/SC, a.) Anne M. (1814– 1926), b.) Catherine P. (1824–1926) or c.) Harriet F. (1823–1848)?, Columbia/ SC 464 Mitchell, Captain Hew A. R.?, Grenadier Guards, Montreal/Canada 86, 89 Mittermaier, Franz (1826–1891), son of Carl ­Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg 709 Mittermaier, Karl (1823–1891), son of Carl ­Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg 709 Mittermaier, Margarethe née von Walther (1786–?), married to Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg 709

850 Mittermaier, Martin Philipp Joseph (1813– 1840), lawyer, son of Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier, Heidelberg 712 Mittermaier/Mittermeier, Prof. Carl Joseph Anton (Munich 1787-Heidelberg 1867), professor of law, politician, author, editor, correspondent of Francis Lieber, married to Margarethe Walther, godfather of Hamilton Lieber, friend of Julius Eduard Hitzig, Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, and Martin Hieronymus Hudtwalcker 35, 185, 192, 229, 297, 315,  328, 372, 381, 461, 542, 545, 589, 609, 613, 709, 711, 713 Mobile/Ala. 125, 162, 205, 253, 285 Moehring, Dr. med. Gotthilf (Hamburg 1802–1881), migrated to Philadelphia around 1828, married to Sophia Leo-Wolf, sister of Dr. med. Morris/Moritz Leo-Wolf from Hamburg 142, 148 Moehring, Mrs. née Sophia Leo-Wolf 142 Möhring, Dr. See Dr. med. Gotthilf Moehring Möller & Oppenheimer, trading house New York City owned by Nicholas D. E. Möller and James, Theodore, and Gustavus Oppenheimer in 1833–1839 74, 111, 178, 431,  453, 560, 565, 581, 583, 587, 613 Moller, Mexico 385 Möller/Moller, Nicholas D. E. (Holstein 1800-Summit/NJ 1874) married since 1827 in LaGuyara/Venezuela to Juana from ­Caracas, moved in 1830 with his family to the USA, in Manhattan 1831–1838, 1838– 1844 in Brooklyn, 1835–1839 Venezolanian consul in New York City, partner of James, Theodore, und Gustavus Oppenheimer in their company Möller & Oppenheimer in 1833–1839, 1839–1844 partner of B. Aymar & Co, in 1844 he moved to Cincinnati/ OH, in 1854 moved to Summit/NJ where he bought Kent Place, formerly owned by James Kent 74, 111, 112, 137, 178, 431, 453,  560, 565, 581, 583, 587, 613, 618 Monarch, stud was bred ca. 1834 in England, property of Col. Wade Hampton II, Columbia/SC 463 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede de (1689-Paris

Index 1755), French author, philosopher, historian 255 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis, De l’esprit des loix, 1748 255 Montreal/Canada 33, 73, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87,  89, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 138, 140, 168, 169, 174, 236 Moore, Thomas (1478–1535), English statesman and Cardinal 570 Morpeth, Lord, George William Frederick Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle (Westminster 1802-Castle Howard 1864, Viscount of Morpeth (1825–1848), politician, orator, author 624, 644, 646, 650, 651, 768 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (Salzburg 1756-Vienna 1791), Austrian musician and composer 104, 537 Mr. Heine See Salomon Heine Mrs. M See Margarethe Mittermaier née Walther Muderich, Hanchen See Hanchen Mühlenfels, Ludwig von (Groß Kordshagen 1793-Greifswald 1861), former ‚demagogue’, imprisoned in Prussia, in May 1821 he fled from jail, professor of German and Nordic languages and literature at the University of London 1828–1831 10 Mühler, Heinrich Gottlob (von) (Silesia 1780-Berlin 1857), lawyer, Prussian minister of justice 1832–1844, supported the adoption of Rhenish law in the Prussian state in 1839, opposed reform plans of Friedrich von Savigny in April 1844 303 München/Munich/Germany 50, 474, 637,  669, 714, 716, 720, 746 Münzstrasse, Berlin 274 Murat, Lucien Charles Joseph Napoleon ­(Milano 1803-Paris 1878), married to ­Caroline Georgina Fraser 150 Murat, Mrs née Caroline Georgina Fraser (Charleston/SC 1810- Paris 1879) 150 Murillo/Morillo, Bartolome Esteban (Seville 1618–1682), Spanish painter, famous for his genre scenes 418 Muscat/Oman 571, 572 N.Y. Review See The New York Review Nabob Heyne See Salomon Heine

Index Nahant/Mass., sea resort 43, 62, 64, 73, 90,  124, 131, 719 Nantes/France 573, 574 Nantucket/Mass. 295 Napierville/Canada 99 Napoleon/Napoleon Bonaparte (Ajaccio 1769St. Helena 1821), French general, statesman, First Consul of the French ­Republic 1799–1804, Emperor of the French 1804–1814/15 10, 15, 91, 101, 145, 149, 192,  199, 200, 329, 373 Napoleonic Wars 14, 22, 37 Napoleons Mutter/mother, Maria Laetitia Ramolino (1750–1836) 192, 329 National Intelligencer i.e. Daily National Intelligencer, Washington/DC 564, 566 Nausicaa/Nausikaa/Nassy, mare, saddle horse of Francis Lieber, Columbia/SC 236,  254, 260, 283, 297, 306, 307, 308, 341, 342, 395, 404, 413, 414, 427, 437, 440, 502, 516, 572, 589 Neander, August Johann Wilhelm né David Mendel (Göttingen 1789-Berlin 1850), theologian at Berlin University, friend of Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, cousin of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer, his mother was a sister of Mathilde Lieber’s mother 133, 142, 247, 445, 690, 695, 703,  738, 747, 754 Neander, Johanna née Mendel (Göttingen 1782-Berlin 1854), sister of August Johann Wilhelm Neander and cousin of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer 133, 445 Ned See Edward Lomnitz Nero, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37 - 68 a. Chr.), Roman imperator with a rather bad reputation because he suppressed the Christians 397 Jungfernstieg, Neuer, Hamburg 41, 115, 132,  170, 244, 761 Neufer/Neuffer, John, butcher from ­Wurttemberg/Germany, Blanding Street, Columbia/SC 297, 344 Neukomm, Sigismund von (Salzburg 1778-­Paris 1858), Austrian diplomat, m­usician, composer, author 10 Neustadt See Hamburg Neustadt New Orleans/LA 39, 133, 723

851 New York Courier and Enquirer, i.e. Morning Courier and New York Enquirer, daily newspaper published by James Watson Webb, New York City, 1829–1861, promoting the Whigs 337 Newman, Henry Louis (Nantes 1813–1887), married to Mary Hesse, merchant in Hamburg-Nienstedten 762 Newman, Mary née Hesse (1825–1913), ­married to Henry Louis Newman 762 Newport/RI 2, 178, 555, 556 Newton Mrs. S., or Sally Newton or Sally Sullivan see Sally Oakey Newton, Mr. Gilbert Stuart (Halifax, Nova Scotia 1795-Wimbledon 1835), British painter, married to Sarah/Sally Williams Sullivan 480 Newton, Sarah/Sally, or Sally Sullivan see Sally Oakey Niagara, NY 73, 80, 85, 88, 98, 99, 102, 103,  105, 107, 114 Niebuhr, Anna von née von Wolzogen (1824ca. 1890), married to Marcus von Niebuhr, Berlin 710, 739 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg von (Copenhagen 1776-Bonn 1831), historian, politician, Prussian ambassador in Rome, employer of Franz Lieber in Rome 1822/23, tutor of crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm, professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität Bonn 17, 18, 25, 26, 90, 143, 153, 155,  259, 271, 290, 304, 311, 313, 347, 375, 387, 398–400, 403, 406–409, 458, 548, 559, 688, 712, 722, 737 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, Demosthenis erste philippische Rede (Übersetzung), Hamburg 1805, 2nd. ed. Hamburg 1831 406 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, Kleine historische und philologische Schriften, Bonn 1828 406 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, Römische G ­ eschichte, 3 vols. Berlin 1811–1832 406 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, Über geheime Verbindungen im preussischen Staat und deren Denunciation, Berlin 1815 406 Niebuhr, Marcus Carsten Nicolaus (von) (Rome 1817- Oberweiler/Badenweiler 1860), son of Barthold Georg von Niebuhr,

852 pupil of Franz Lieber while Franz Lieber lived in Rome 1822/23, close to the Royal Court in Prussia, married to Anna von Wolzogen, Berlin 17, 703, 710, 737, 739 Niendorf Travemünde/Germany 715 Niendorf, today part of the Free and ­Hanseatic City Hamburg 476 Nienstedten/Nienstädten, Danish village west of Hamburg, now part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg, site of the estates of Jacob Oppenheimer, the Parish and Gossler families on the banks of the River Elbe 19, 38, 42, 501, 668, 673, 677,  723, 748 Niobe, figure of Greek mythology, daughter of Tantalos 192 Noah, Old Testament, favorite of God, saved from the flood 391 Norderney, Eastfriesian island in the North Sea 43 Norman See Guido Norman Lieber Normito See Guido Norman Lieber Normy See Guido Norman Lieber Norris, Philadelphian company owned by William Norris (1802–1867) and Stephen H. Long (1784–1864), dominant locomotive producers between 1832–1866 selling engines to Europe and South America 304 Norry See Guido Norman Lieber North, Mr. 429, 430, 621 Nott, Old Mrs., mother of Henry Junius (1798– 1837)?, professor of elements of criticism, logic and philosophy of language at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 1824–1834, died in a ship’s accident off Cape Hatteras/NC 601 O. See Joseph Oscar Montgomery Lieber O’Connell, Daniel (1775–1847), Irish MP 99, 485 Oakey, Sally née Sarah Williams Sullivan (Boston 1818?–?)= Sally Newton, since 1835 widow of British painter Gilbert Stuart Newton she married in 1840 rich New York merchant William Francis Oakey, godmother of Oscar Lieber 60, 66–70,  72, 77, 82, 83, 85, 105, 106, 108, 114, 129,

Index 133, 160, 164, 169, 180, 191, 234, 269, 280, 315, 324, 347, 348, 373, 375, 456, 457, 459, 473, 480, 544, 552, 586, 588, 610, 625, 646, 723 Oakey, William Francis (1807-New York 1888), second husband of Sally Newton née Sullivan, merchant in New York City 544 Oehlrich, merchants in Bremen 426 Oehlrich, Mrs née Eliza Thorndyke, Potsdam  291? Oehlrich, Sarah 205 Oehlrich, Potsdam, Prussian officer, married to Sophia Mason 205, 448 Oehlrich, Sophia née Mason, Potsdam 448 Oehlrich/Öhlrich/Oelrich, Potsdam, Mrs = married to Karl Theodor Oelrichs (Bremen 1804–1871), lawyer, liberal author and publisher, founded 1831 the TVB Turnverein zu Bremen, married to Karoline Henriette Albertine Buch 291,  448 Oehlrichs/Oelrichs, Mr & Mrs, Bremen ­merchant house 426 Ogdensburg/NY, home of George Parish (1807–1881) who had inheritated the residence and estates in upstate New York on the banks of St. Lawrence of his uncles David Parish and George Parish 33, 61,  80, 95, 96, 99, 103, 104, 105, 255, 589, 748 Old Astor See John Jacob Astor Old Benecke/Beneke See Wilhelm Christian Benecke/Beneke von Gröditzberg Old Calvin See Jean Calvin Old Coster, Coster sen. See John G. Coster Old Gignard See Giguard Old Giguard See Giguard Old Gossler See Johann Heinrich Gossler sen. Old Hambro See Carl Joachim Hambro, son of Joseph Hambro (1780–1840) and Marianne von Halle (1786–1838) Old Hastrop 482 Old Heyne See Salomon Heine Old Jackson See Andrew Jackson Old Kent See James Kent Old Klenda 221, 246 Old Krutisch, Hamburg 221, 271 Old Lions/Lyons See Henry Lyons Old Pickering See John Pickering

Index Old Prime, father in law of Gerard H. Coster who had married Matilda Prime 125 Old Sykes See Robert Sykes Olivia See Olivia Ward née Sullivan Onkel Hesse See Heinrich Levin Hesse Onkel See Dr. phil. Andreas Busse Ontario, River 99, 105 Oppenheimer, Anna Emilie See Anna Emilie Fehling née Oppenheimer Oppenheimer, Bertha See Bertha Gabe née Oppenheimer Oppenheimer, Carl Theodor/ Theodore/Theodorus (Hamburg 1808–?), merchant-planter in company with his brothers Gustavus and James Oppenheimer, married to Dolores Medina, Ponce/Puerto Rico, brother of Clara Woodhouse, Caroline Lomnitz, Mathilde Lieber, and Henriette Oppenheimer, brother in law of Francis Lieber 10, 11, 12,  35, 36, 54, 74, 104, 107, 111, 112, 120, 161, 208, 223, 245, 291, 301, 328, 339, 361, 382, 401, 402, 412, 414, 430, 490, 521, 582, 593, 596, 597, 600, 616, 632, 638, 639, 642, 659, 662, 683, 701, 718, 735 Oppenheimer, Carlito, son of Gustavus and Isabella Oppenheimer 632, 639, 640, 673,  678, 700, 756, 764 Oppenheimer, Christian Moritz/Morris/ Mauritz (1788-Hamburg 1877) = Uncle/ Onkel Morris, married since 1815 to Friederike Heine (1795–1823), daughter of Salomon and Betty Heine, father of Bertha Gabe, Emma Oppenheimer, father in law of his nephew James Oppenheimer, and father of Mathilde who married Hermann Berend, an estate owner in Brandenburg, merchant in company with his ­brothers 10, 33, 118, 134, 201, 213, 217, 223,  232, 244, 249, 265, 274, 291, 317, 419, 420, 500, 501, 505, 663, 724, 748 Oppenheimer, Clara Recha née GottschalckDüsseldorf (Hanover 1776-Heidelberg 1836), married to Georg Oppenheimer, mother of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer, Clara Woodhouse, Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette, Gustavus, Theodore, and James Oppenheimer 9, 10, 12, 711, 712

853 Oppenheimer, Clarita (1837-), daughter of Gustavus and Isabella Oppenheimer, married to a member of the Schlesinger family 640, 663, 724, 745, 764 Oppenheimer, Dolores née Medina (St. Thomas ?–?), married to Theodore ­Oppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico 11, 36,  593, 600 Oppenheimer, Dr. iur. Georg Friedrich Ludwig (Hamburg 1805–Lübeck 1884), son of Jacob Oppenheimer, brother of Philippine Adele Haller née Oppenheimer, read law in Heidelberg together with his future brother in law Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, where he got his doctorate, married since 1833 to Emilie Johanne Elise Buchholz 132, 134, 170, 172, 214, 222, 249,  267, 269, 300, 347, 363, 364, 382, 416, 479, 482, 532, 608, 661, 698, 714 Oppenheimer, Emilie = Tante Minna See Wilhelmine Ahrens Oppenheimer, Emilie Johanne Elise née Buchholz (1815?-Lübeck 1845), daughter of Lübeck Ratssyndicus Carl August Buchholz, married in 1833 to Dr. iur. Georg Friedrich Ludwig Oppenheimer, brother of Adele Haller née Oppenheimer 249,  267, 382, 608, 698 Oppenheimer, Emilie/Emilia/Amalia/ Amelia née Esther/Hester Heckscher (?-1851), married to Jacob Oppenheimer, mother of Adele Haller, Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, Richard Moritz Oppenheimer, Auguste Söhle, and Emilie Fehling 167, 213, 218, 219, 243, 249, 257,  264, 317, 326, 383, 418 Oppenheimer, Emma Frederike née Oppenheimer, married in 1842 to her cousin James Oppenheimer brother of Mathilde Lieber, daughter of Morris Oppenheimer, granddaughter of Salomon Heine 134, 201, 214, 217, 222, 223, 265,  291, 374, 420, 500, 505, 583, 633, 636, 638, 641, 644, 645, 647, 648, 650, 655, 678, 724, 735, 755 Oppenheimer, Georg (Hamburg 1777-Heidelberg 1838), father of Clara Woodhouse, Caroline Lomnitz, Henriette

854 Oppenheimer, Mathilde Lieber, Gustavus, Theodore and James Oppenheimer, husband of Clara Recha GottschalckDüsseldorf, brother of Jacob, Moritz/ Morris and Julius Oppenheimer, Amalie Hesse und Wilhelmine Ahrens, merchant in Hamburg und London, spent his last years 1830–1838 in Heidelberg 9, 10, 11,  12, 21, 27, 33, 74, 116, 291, 294, 409, 410, 446, 542, 561, 711, 712 Oppenheimer, George/Georgy (Manchester ca. 1841–?), son of James und Emma ­Oppenheimer, Manchester 645, 648,  650, 687, 755 Oppenheimer, Hannah née Leman (Amsterdam ?-Hamburg 1838), grandmother of Mathilde Lieber, mother of Georg, Jacob, Julius, and Moritz Oppenheimer 10, 317 Oppenheimer, Henriette/Harriet/Haert/Hart/ Harry/Har/Jette/Yette (Hamburg 1802–?), single, sister of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer, lived together with her sister Caroline Lomnitz née Oppenheimer since 1838 in Hamburg, Esplanade 8 and since 1840 Esplanade 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 36, 54,  63, 68, 71, 83, 101, 104, 111, 112, 116, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 131, 132, 133, 136, 144, 155, 161, 162, 165, 168, 170, 171, 173, 180, 184, 187, 190, 194, 196, 201, 202, 206, 211, 214, 218, 219, 220, 222, 225, 228, 232, 235, 238, 241, 247, 251, 262, 265, 268, 281, 282, 291, 300, 308, 315, 321, 323, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 332, 334, 354, 356, 357, 364, 366, 367, 368, 375, 380, 384, 386, 392, 393, 399, 402, 415, 420, 421, 426, 432, 434, 440, 445, 446, 452, 463, 483, 498, 500, 506, 507, 510, 513, 516, 529, 535, 538, 557, 561, 578, 579, 581, 593, 598, 607, 611, 617, 619, 621, 629, 632, 634, 639, 640, 641, 648, 650, 651, 655, 658, 660, 663, 665, 671, 674, 677, 678, 680, 681, 682, 684, 685, 698, 701, 704, 705, 707, 709, 711, 713, 715, 716, 719, 720, 722, 724, 732, 735, 736, 738, 745, 751, 752, 753, 756, 757, 758, 759, 760, 761, 764, 765, 769 Oppenheimer, Isabel/Isabelita Antonia, daughter of Theodore and Dolores

Index ­ ppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico, married O her cousin Dr. med. Felix Lomnitz 414,  663, 640 Oppenheimer, Isabella/Elizabeth née Bettini (St. Thomas 1817-), daughter of Italian merchant Paolo Giovanni Battista Bettini, since 1835 married with Gustavus Oppenheimer, brother of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer, Ponce/Puerto Rico 11,  339, 434, 588, 600, 601 Oppenheimer, Jacob Amsel/Amschel (Altona 26.10.1778–Hamburg 12.12.1845), married to Emilie/Esther/Hester Heckscher, resided in Dammthorstrasse 30, owned a summer house in Nienstedten and the manor Gut Groß Wüstenfeld close to Gottin/Mecklenburg, brother of Georg, Morris and Julius Oppenheimer, Amalia Hesse and Wilhelmine Ahrens née Oppenheimer, father of Dr. iur. Ludwig Oppenheimer, Auguste Söhle, Emilie Fehling, Adele Haller and Richard Moritz Oppenheimer, close friend of Martin Joseph Haller and Salomon Heine, 196 entries Oppenheimer, James/Jacob/Jim (London 1811/12–after 1886), merchant in Puerto Rico, in New York in company with his brothers Gustavus und Theodore Oppenheimer, moved to Manchester, merchant in company with Carl Arning and Friedrich Averdieck, he spent his last years in splendid style in Wiesbaden, Sonnenbergallee, he married his cousin Emma Oppenheimer, daughter of Morris Oppenheimer, granddaughter of Salomon Heine 11, 12, 54, 74, 104, 107, 111, 127, 134,  152, 186, 214, 222, 223, 232, 245, 265, 291, 292, 301, 317, 326, 328, 329, 339, 361, 374, 401, 402, 414, 420, 430, 461, 506, 513, 580, 581, 582, 583, 590, 612, 616, 632, 633, 636, 638, 644, 645, 648, 650, 655, 656, 662, 669, 678, 724, 735, 754, 755 Oppenheimer, Julius, brother of Jacob, Georg und Christian Moritz/Morris Oppenheimer, Hamburg 263, 266, 283,  358, 364, 682, 756

855

Index Oppenheimer, Mathilde, daughter of Moritz/Morris Oppenheimer, married to Hermann Berend, Lord of the manor in Brandenburg 274, 419 Oppenheimer, Matildita/Tilly, daughter of Theodore and Dolores Oppenheimer 661, 724, 745, 746, 752,  764, 758 Oppenheimer, NN, (1822–?), son of ­Julius ­Oppenheimer, Hamburg 263, 283,  756 Oppenheimer, Richard Moritz, son of Jacob Oppenheimer, brother of Adele Haller, estate manager of Groß Wüstenfelde/ Mecklenburg 741, 748 Oppenheimer, Wilhelm/Guillermo Gustav/ Gustavus (Hamburg 1805-Ponce/Puerto Rico 1859), brother of Mathilde Lieber née Oppenheimer, married to Isabella Bettini, merchant-planter in company with his brothers Theodore and James and Nicholas D. E. Möller/NYC, 1852 Mayor in Ponce/ Puerto Rico 11, 12, 35, 54, 58, 74,  104, 107, 111, 112, 161, 165, 208, 223, 251, 271, 291, 301, 328, 339, 361, 401, 402, 412, 414, 430, 431, 434, 436, 453, 496, 565, 581, 582, 587, 588, 593, 596, 597, 600, 601, 616, 632, 639, 651, 659, 662, 665, 712, 715, 718 Orpheus & Erispie 311 OSC/Osc. See Joseph Oscar Montgomery Lieber Oscar/Oskar See Joseph Oscar Montgomery Lieber Oscarito See Joseph Oscar Montgomery Lieber Osnabruck/Germany 749 Ossy See Joseph Oscar Montgomery Lieber Ostende/Belgium 649, 749 Oswego/NY 107, 109 Otis, James 70 Otis, Mrs James 70, 504 Otis, Mrs née Eliza Henderson Bordman (1796–1873), married to Harrison Gray Otis Jun. 504 Otis, Sally, daughter of James Otis, Boston 70 Otranto/Italien 631 Otranto, count 417

Ottawa/Ottowa, river 97 Oxford/England 619 P. Rico See Puerto Rico Paganini, Niccolo (Genua 1782-Nice 1840), violinist, composer 218 Palenque/Mexico 491 Palfrey, John O. Gorham (1796–1881), ­Unitarian clergyman, historian, US Representative from Massachusetts, editor of the North American Review 1835–1843, author, since 1823 married to Mary Ann Hammond (1800–1897) 486 Palisade/NY 83 Pallas Athene, Greek goddess, daughter of Zeus 177 Palm, Dr. phil. Johann Georg (Hamburg 1807–1852), teacher and founder of a private boarding school in HamburgEppendorf attended by Oscar Lieber in 1839–1840 134, 135, 171, 199, 318, 319, 330,  358, 380, 392, 416, 440, 444, 506, 514 Palzow, Majorin von, Berlin 647 Papineau, Louis (1786–1839), leader of a fight against the Confederation of North ­America for independent Quebec 86 Paramaribo/Surinam 39 Parish, Charles (Hamburg 1781–1856), son of John Parish (Leith 1742-Bath 1829) and Henrietta Parish née Todd (Edinburgh 1745-Bath 1810), merchant in Hamburg 447 Parish, David (Hamburg 1778–Vienna 1826), son of John Parish (Leith 1742-Bath 1829) and Henrietta Parish née Todd (Edinburgh 1745-Bath 1810), merchant, entrepreneur, banker, owned large estates in up-state New York, founded settlement on these estates and lived in a large villa in ­Ogdensburg/NY that houses today the Frederic Remington Art Museum, 303 Washington St. Ogdensburg/NY 589, 728 Parish, George (Hamburg 1780-Paris 1839), son of John Parish (Leith 1742-Bath 1829) and Henrietta Parish née Todd (Edinburgh 1745-Bath 1810) 61, 748 Parish, George (Hamburg 1807-Venice 1881), son of Richard Parish (Hamburg

856 1776–1860) and Susanne/Suzette Parish née Godeffroy (Bahrenfeld/Hamburg 1785-Nienstedten/Hamburg 1855), ­grandson of John Parish (Leith 1742-Bath 1829) and Henrietta Parish née Todd (­Edinburgh 1745-Bath 1810), Ogdensburg/ NY, well-known for his attraction to extravagant women like Camille Pleyel, Ameriga Vespucci, and Fanny Inglis; inherited the estates of his uncles 61,  80, 99–101, 103–109, 120, 162, 172, 255, 589, 646, 748 Parish, John (Leith 1742-Bath 1829) merchant in Hamburg, business partner of US-Americans, 1st US-American consul in Hamburg, admirer of Marquis Lafayette, fled Hamburg and his estate in Nienstedten when French troups occupied northern Germany in 1806, he found exile in fancy Bath 61 Parish, Richard (Hamburg 1776–1860), married to Susanne/Suzette Godeffroy (Bahrenfeld/Hamburg 1785-Nienstedten/ Hamburg 1855), son of John Parish (Leith 1742-Bath 1829) and Henrietta Parish née Todd (Edinburgh 1745-Bath 1810), Hamburg-Nienstedten, manor and estates in Gottin, Mecklenburg 646, 748 Parker, Joseph see Joseph Parkes Parkes, Joseph (1796–1865), British solicitor and reformer, Great George Street ­Westminster, introduced to Francis Lieber by Charles Sumner 619, 646 Pastor Busse, Wilhelmsburg 673 Pastor John, Hamburg= Diakonus, St Petri? 761 Patroclus 177 Paulus, oratory by Felix MendelssohnBartholdy, first performance Düsseldorf 1836 266 Peckin/Pecking/Beijing, China 572 Peel, Sir Robert (1788-London 1850), prime minister of Great Britain 1834–1835, 1841–1846 668 Pelham, Charles P. (Marlboro/SC 1816-Columbia/SC ?), AB, graduate of the class of 1838, Tutor in Greek and Latin, College of South Carolina, as professor

Index of Roman literature at the College of South Carolina, in Columbia/SC, in 1848 he married Jane W. Dunlap, Lancaster District 127, 138, 309 Perdicaris 646, 647 Persepolis/Persia 491 Perthes, Besser & Mauke, publishing house in Hamburg, although Friedrich Christoph Perthes had left the house in 1836 that henceforth was headed by Wilhelm Mauke and his brother in law Rudolf Besser the name Perthes still was part of the companies’ label 229, 268, 292, 297,  304, 314, 329, 348, 353, 362, 367, 381, 406, 416, 420, 460, 478, 490, 496, 544, 559, 570, 576, 577, 580, 614 Perthes, Clemens Theodor (Hamburg ­1809-Bonn 1867), son of Friedrich ­Christoph Perthes, lawyer, since 1842 professor of law at the Universität Bonn 637, 669 Perthes, Friedrich Christoph (Rudolstadt 1772-Gotha 1843), booktrader and publisher in Hamburg, son in law of Matthias Claudius (1740–1815) whose daughter Caroline Ilsabe (1774–1821) Perthes married in 1797 496, 544 Perthuis, Countess/Comtesse Élise de née Elisabeth Auguste Sophie Caroline von Grote (Hanover 1800-Paris 1880), married to Amable de Perthuis de Laillevault (1795–1877) The Countess was patron of artists in Paris, friend of Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin who dedicated to her his sonata h-flat op 58, first performance at a dinner in the Perthuis’ residence December 23, 1845 647, 700 Peter Schlemiehl, i.e. Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, novel by Adelbert von Chamisso, Nuremberg 1814 749 Peters, teacher of geography, Hamburg 506,  508 Petit, Judge 139 Petit, Mrs 139 Petra/Jordania 491 Pfeiffer, Dr. Franz (Solothurn/CH 1815-­Vienna 1868), physician, German studies, 1846–1857 librarian at the Königliche

Index Öffentliche Bibliothek = Royal Public Library Stuttgart 637, 669 Pfuel, Ernst von (Gut Jahnsfelde 1779-Berlin 1866), Prussian general, administrator, turner, close friend of Heinrich von Kleist 15, 19 Phidias (500/490 BC-430/420 BC), ­celebrated Greek sculptor whose master pieces like the statue of Zeus have been destroyed 567 Picca(l)lilly, minced pickles, savory mixture of vegetables in a mustard-vinegarsauce 396, 399, 402, 498 Pickering, John (Salem/Mass. 1777-Boston 1846), lawyer, linguist, studied, published, and authored several essays, lexica, and textbooks on ancient European and American languages 67, 157, 183, 486, 672 Pindar (520–446 BC), Greek poet 233 Piquet, game 634 Pitt the Elder See Lord Chatham i.e. William Pitt Pitt, William the Younger (1759–1806), British politician, Prime Minister 1783–1801, 1804–1806, son of William Pitt the Elder, Lord Chatham 293, 338 Pittsburgh/PA 57 Pleil, Mde. See Camilla Pleyel Pleyel, Camilla née Marie Felicite Denise Moke (Paris 1811-Brussels 1875), mistress of George Parish (1807–1881), virtuoso pianist, married Camille Pleyel ­(1788– 1855), pianist, composer, and head of Pleyel & Co., French piano manufacturers, the couple separated in 1835; shortly after Marie/Camilla Pleyel moved to Hamburg and became mother of a daughter named Marie (Hamburg 1836–1869?), illegitimate daughter of George Parish, merchant and member of the rich Parish family of Scottish descent based in Hamburg 108, 172 Plutarch (ca. 45–125), Greek author and ­philosopher 259, 287, 288, 444, 556 Poel, Emma Sophie Cäcilie Wilhelmine (­Altona 1811–1891), in 1832 she was a founding member of Weiblicher Verein für Armen- und Krankenpflege, Altona,

857 friend of Amalie Sieveking and Adele Haller 269 Poel, Emma, Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben von Amalie Sieveking in deren Auftrage von einer Freundin derselben verfaßt. Mit einem Vorwort von Dr. Wichern, Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, Hamburg 1860 259 Poland 547, 751 Polly See Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics Pömolles, Charlotte, housekeeper in the household of Jacob Oppenheimer 761 Ponce/Puerto Rico 12, 58, 104, 107, 111, 148,  161, 208, 245, 251, 265, 301, 328, 338, 339, 361, 362, 401, 412, 421, 431, 434, 436, 490, 494, 518, 548, 582, 583, 587, 588, 596, 600, 601, 616, 632, 638, 639, 642, 659, 662, 715 Porteus, figure in Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818 308 Porto Rico See Puerto Rico Portsmouth/England 493 Portugal 462 Posselt, Dr. med. Christian Wilhelm Heinrich (1806–1877), physician in Heidelberg, Haspelgasse, attending physician of fatally ill Georg Oppenheimer 1837–1838 711 Posselt, Mrs Dr. med., née Barbara Landfried (1812–1867) married to Dr. med. Christian Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt, Haspelgasse Heidelberg 711, 713 Potsdam/Prussia 14, 303, 304, 448, 557, 675,  686, 737 Powers, Hiram (Woodstock/VT 1805–1873) US American neoclassical sculptor, famous for the statue The Greek Slave from 1843, teacher at the Florence Academy 647 Preciosa, opera by Carl Maria von Weber, lyrics by Pius Alexander Wolff, first ­performance Berlin 1821 320, 328, 378,  387 Prescott, William Hickling (Salem/Mass. 1796-Boston 1859), historian, married since 1820 to Susan Amory 58, 62, 64, 73, 91,  100, 104, 118, 254, 259, 412, 426, 486, 541, 556, 624, 768 Prescott, William Hickling, History of the Conquest of Peru: with a preliminary view

858 of the Civilization of the Incas, New York A. L. Burt Company and William Bentley London 1847 104 Prescott, William Hickling, The History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a preliminary view of ancient Mexican Civilization, and the Life of the Conqueror, Hernando Cortes, 3 vols. Harper and Brothers New York 1843 104, 556 Prescott, William Hickling, The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, American Stationery Company Boston 1837 and Richard Bentley London 1837–1838 58, 62, 73, 91, 259, 412 Prescott/Canada 101 Preston, Sally, daughter of W. C. Preston (?- Columbia/SC 1845) 768 Preston, William Campbell (Philadelphia 1794-Columbia/SC 1860), US-senator, democrat, nullifier party, whig, until 1842 member of the US-Senate, 1845–1851 President of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 60, 179, 181, 235, 261, 390,  435, 457, 463, 468, 472, 473, 541, 548, 560, 565, 620, 623, 646, 647 Preteaix/Prioleau, i.e. Samuel Prioleau, son of James Hamilton Jr. 315 Preussen See Prussia Priestley, superintendent public works Columbia/SC 285 Prime = Nathaniel Prime Mansion, Hell Gate/ NY, 5th Av./90th St, owned by Nathaniel Prime (1768–1840), father in law of Gerard H. Coster 125 Prince Augustus, i.e. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich August von Preussen (1779–1843) 691 Princeton/NJ 156 Pringle, jun, son of William Bull Pringle, Charleston/SC, at that moment there were six sons 163 Pringle, William Bull (Charleston/ SC 1800-Charleston/SC 1881), plantation owner, representative of South Carolina, lived on 25 King Street Charleston/SC, married to Mary Motte Alston (Georgetown/SC 1803–1884) 163

Index Prinz von Preußen, since 1871 German Emperor Wilhelm I. (Berlin 1797-Berlin 1888) 727 Prinzessin See Amalie von Sachsen Prof. Lewald See Ernst Anton Lewald Ptolemy, Claudius Ptolemy (ca 100-160 AC) 160, 462 Puerto Rico/ P. R. 11, 12, 13, 36, 58, 104, 107,  111, 112, 148, 161, 182, 208, 214, 245, 251, 301, 328, 338, 339, 361, 362, 374, 401, 412, 421, 431, 434, 436, 490, 494, 518, 545, 548, 582, 583, 587, 588, 596, 600, 601, 605, 616, 632, 638, 639, 642, 659, 715, 769 Pym, John (Brymore/Somerset 1584-London 1643), English politician, leader of the Long Parliament, opponent of King James I and King Charles I he tried to arrest in 1642 67, 96, 107, 202, 570 Quebec/Canada 52, 73, 80, 89, 97 Queen Adelaide née Adelheid von SachsenMeiningen (1792–1849), married to King William IV 645 Queen Caroline, figure in Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818 308 Queen Elizabeth I See Elizabeth I Queen Victoria (London 1819-Isle of Wight 1901), Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1837–1901, married her cousin Prince Albert of SaxeCoburg and Gotha in 1840 209, 464, 468,  470, 471, 612 R See Rebecca McClelland Rabelais, François (ca. 1494-Paris 1553), French author and theologian 452 Raffael/Raffaello/Raphael = Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Urbino 1483-Rome 1520), Italian painter, architect 104, 290, 468, 521,  542, 577, 650, 732 Rahel See Rahel Varnhagen née Levin Rainville, restaurant on the Elbe, west of Hamburg, founded in 1798 39 Raleigh, Sir Walter (ca. 1553-London 1618), seafarer, explorer, author, politician, and favorite of Queen Elizabeth 570 Ramée, Joseph (Givet 1764-Noyon 1842), French architect, designed houses, parks,

Index and interior decoration in Europe and the USA 39, 80 Ramshorn, Lewis/Johann Gottlob ­Ludwig (Reust 1768-Altenburg 1837), ­German teacher, linguist, editor of a Latin ­Grammar, Lateinische Synonymik, Baumgärtner Leipzig 1833 61, 157 Ranke, Ernst Constantin (Wiehe 1814-Bertrich 1888), German theologian 547 Ranke, Leopold (von) (Wiehe 1795-Berlin 1886), German historian, scholar, Prussian Wirklicher Geheimer Rat 251, 353, 406,  547, 548 Ranke, Leopold, Deutsche Geschichte im ­Zeitalter der Reformation, 3 Bde., Duncker und Humblot, Berlin 1834–1839 226, 251,  353, 406, 547 Ranke, Philipp Friedrich Heinrich (Wiehe 1798-Munich 1876), German theologian 547 Ranselaer Mrs. See Rensselaer Rauch, Christian Daniel (Bad Arolsen 1777-Dresden 1857), celebrated sculptor in Berlin, student of Johann Gottfried Schadow 695, 696, 712 Raumer, Friedrich Heinrich von (1798– 1876) 226, 251, 353, 406, 496, 547, 583 Raumer, Friedrich Heinrich von, Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte aus dem britischen Museum und Reichsarchive. Europa vom Ende des siebenjährigen bis zum Ende des amerikanischen Kriegs (1763–1783), 3 Bde., Leipzig Brockhaus 1839 226, 251, 353,  406, 496, 547 Raumer, Friedrich Heinrich von, Über die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Begriffe von Recht, Staat und Politik, Brockhaus Leipzig 1826 583 Raupach, Ernst Benjamin Salomo (Liegnitz 1784-Berlin 1852), author and ­playwriter 216, 223 Raupach, Ernst Benjamin Salomo, Lasst die Toten ruhen (1829), in: Dramatische Werke komischer Gattung, Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1828–1835 216 Raupach, Ernst Benjamin Salomo, Der z­ erbrochene Krug 223 Rebecca See Rebecca McClelland

859 Regensburg/Germany 637, 669 Regner, Miss, Heidelberg 713 Reimer, Georg Andreas (Greifswald 1776-­Berlin 1842) publisher, opposed the French occupation of Prussia and the restoration of the Prussian monarchy after the Napoleonic Wars, prosecuted by ­Prussian authorities 15, 16 Rembrandt See Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn Renner, Hermann, Hamburg, servant in the Hamburg household of Caroline ­Lomnitz 683, 747, 753, 760, 764 Renner, Mrs, mother of Hermann Renner, servant in the Hamburg household of Caroline Lomnitz 747 Renner/Rönner, senior, servant in the ­Lomnitz household, Hamburg 760 Renonard/Renouard, Augustin Charles (1794–1878), lawyer, author 560 Rensselaer/Ranselaer Mrs, married to Henry Bell van Rensselaer née Elizabeth Ray King 103 Renwick, Prof. James (Liverpool 1790–1863), English-American scientist, engineer, ­married to Margaret Brevoort, wrote about the Aurora borealias 138 Requiem in d-minor, KV 626, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, first performance Vienna 1791 or 1793 537 Retch See Moritz Retzsch Retzsch, Friedrich August Moritz (Dresden 1779-Radebeul 1857), painter 472, 503,  516, 521, 522, 525, 564, 568, 570, 576, 599, 606, 613, 733 Retzsch, Friedrich Moritz August, Die Schachspieler/The Chessplayers, etching and painting, oil on panel, 1831 472, 503,  521, 568, 613 Retzsch, Moritz, Galerie zu Shakespeare’s ­dramatischen Werken, in Umrissen erfunden und gestochen von Moritz Retzsch, hrsg. von Ernst Fleischer, Leipzig, London und Paris 1836 568 Retzsch, Moritz, Dante 503 Retzsch, Moritz, Romeo und Julia 522, 568 Reuben Butler, figure in Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian, 1818 308

860 Rhein/Rhine, River 220, 260, 332, 468, 496, 637, 650, 706 Rheinbeck/Rheinbek, village east of Hamburg 747 Rhinebeck on the Hudson/NY 83 Rhett, Haskell/Haskil Smith (Charleston/SC 1818-Smiley Plantation/SC 1868), 1839/40 student in the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, salutatory at the College in 1840, served 1862/63 in the 11th Regiment, South Carolina Reserves 307, 341, 347,  393, 402, 517, 525, 568, 579 Rhone/Rone, River in France 260 Richardson, John S. (1777–1850), judge at the Court of Appeals, Columbia/SC 571 Richardson, Mrs John S., Columbia/SC 228, 367, 515, 551 Richardson, Stephen, son of judge John S. Richardson, Columbia/SC 551 Richland County/SC 44, 463 Richter, Jean/Johann Paul Friedrich (­Wunsiedel 1763-Bayreuth 1825), author celebrated in Germany as well as in the USA, father in law of Ernst Förster, ­Munich 34, 437, 769 Rideau canal, canal covering 202 km of the Ottawa River to Kingston on Lake Ontario, built in 1826–1831 for strategic military purposes and to secure the Canadian ­border against US-American attacks. Today the site is inscribed on the List of World Heritage in danger 97, 99 Rijn, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van (Leiden 1606-Amsterdam 1669) famous Dutch painter, printmaker in the Dutch Golden Age 290 Rio de Janeiro/Brazil 197 Ripley, Philadelphia 735 Robert le diable/Robert der Teufel, opera by ­Giacomo Meyerbeer, lyrics by Eugene Scribe and Germain Delavigne, first ­performance Paris 1831 134 Robinson Crusoe, hero of the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner; who lived eight and twenty Years, all alone in an ­un-inhabited island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River

Index of Oronoque; having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With an Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pirates. Written by Himself, 1719 148, 412, 587 Rochow, Gustav von (1792–1847), since 1834 Minister of the Interior and Police in Prussia, married to Caroline von der Marwitz 303 Roebuck, John Arthur (1802–1879), British politician, MP for Bath 1832–1847 645 Roenne, Baron See Friedrich Ludwig von Rönne Roland, Jeanne-Marie Roland de La Platière alias Madame Roland, Memoires particuliers de Madame Roland suivis des notices historiques sur la revolution, du portrait et anecdotes et des derniers ecrits et dernieres pensees, par la meme, 1793 556 Roland, Madame i.e. Jeanne-Marie ­Roland (Paris 1754-Paris 1793), admirer of Plutarch, salonniere, important member of the Gironde in revolutionary France 1792–1793 556 Rome/Italy 17, 19, 20, 25, 26, 336, 375, 412,  420, 458, 467, 475, 485, 620, 696, 710, 721, 732, 739 Romeo & Juliet, opera by Hector Berlioz, first performance 1839 after the play by ­William Shakespeare 210, 358, 522, 568 Rönne, Friedrich Ludwig von (Seestermühe 1798-Berlin 1865), lawyer, diplomat and politician, Prussian ambassador/­minister resident of HM the King of Prussia in Washington/DC 1834–1844, moderator in the US-American conflict with Mexico 1839 136, 167, 170, 646 Rosa von Tannenberg. Eine Geschichte des Alterthums für Aeltern und Kinder, von Christoph von Schmid, Reutlingen J. R. Enßlin’sche Buchhandlung 1826 505 Rosseline/Rossellini, Dr. Ippolito (Pisa 1800– 1843), egyptologist, friend of Jean-François Champollion 261 Rossellini, Ippolito, I Monumenti dell’ Egitto e della Nubia, disegnati dalla spedizione scientifico-letteraria Toscana in Egitto, 1832–1844 261

Index Rothmaler, Bodo F., (Berlin ?–Jersey City/ NJ 1855), merchant 203, 212 Rothschild Brothers, Paris & London & Frankfurt/Main 10, 21 Rothshild brothers See Rothschild Brothers Rotteck, Carl von (Freiburg im Breisgau ­1775– 1840), historian, liberal politician 461 Rotterdam/Netherlands 70, 108, 110, 112, 120, 196, 210, 770 Rougemont, Denis Marie de Lowenberg (1791–1863), banker in Paris 671, 674 Rousseau/Jean-Jacques (Geneve 1712–1778), author, educator, scholar, composer 614 Rubens, Dr., Augenarzt Hamburg 684 Rudelbach, Andreas Gottlob, ed., Hieronymus Savonarola und seine Zeit. Aus den Quellen dargestellt, Verlag Friedrich Perthes ­Hamburg 1835 229, 367, 381 Ruffin, Jim, Columbia/SC 450 Rügen/Germany 682 Rumford, Count, Benjamin Thompson ­(1753–1814), the American had served as loyalist in the King’s American Dragoons; later he moved to England and then to Bavaria where he was employed by Prince Elector Carl Philipp Theodor (1724–1799) 363 Rumfordsche Suppe/Rumford soup, cheap but nutritious soup made from peas, barley and vinegar first used in Bavarian workhouses, jails, and military institutions by its inventor Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford 363 Salem/Mass. 61 Sally/Sally Newton née Sullivan See Sally Oakey Sally See Sally Jacobsen Saluda Factory, Columbia/SC 46 Saluda River/SC 46, 152 Sand(s), George i.e. Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin de Francueil (Paris 1804-Nohant-Vic 1876), French author with the pen name Dupin, 1838–1847 in relationship with Frédéric Chopin 566, 683 Sand, Karl Ludwig (Wunsiedel 1795-Mannheim 1820), German radical, murdered in 1819 August von Kotzebue 15

861 Sanderson, John P. (Lebanon/Pa. 1818–1864), lawyer, author 139 Sanderson, John, The American in Paris, vol. 1, Carey & Hart Philadelphia 1838 139, 280 Sanderson, printer, Philadelphia 139 Sands, Mr. Ferdinand (1806–1839), married to Susan Bard, daughter of William and Catherine Bard, New York City 123 Santee Canal/SC 46 Santee River/SC 46 Saratoga/Saratoga Springs/NY 68, 80, 82 Savanarola See Girolamo Savonarola Savigny, Friedrich Carl von (Frankfurt/Main 1779-Berlin 1861), lawyer, Berlin 649, 691,  694, 696, 737, 739 Savonarola, Girolamo (Ferrara 1452-Florence 1498), Italian theologian, preacher of repentance 229, 367, 381 Schacht, shop for stationery supplies, Hamburg, founded in 1826 by Conrad Schacht, since 1835 managed by Adolph Westerich 770 Schaeffer, Hermann, partner of Charles Agie in the Antwerp based house Agie & Co. 728 Scharnhorst/Sharnhorst, Gerhard von (Neustadt am Rübenberge 1755-Prague 1813), Prussian General, organized reforms of the Prussian army 111, 112 Schaufpie See Chaufepie, Miss Scheibmaier, Anton Wilhelm (1818–1893), artist in Munich, director of the first public turnsite in Munich 669 Scheveningen/Schevelingen/ Netherlands 749 Schill, Ferdinand Baptista von (Wilmsdorf/ Dresden 1776-Stralsund 1809), Prussian military 15 Schiller, Friedrich von (Marbach 1759-Weimar 1805), author, poet, philosopher, historian, friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 111, 112, 507, 580, 710 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich (Neuruppin 1781-Berlin 1841), architect, artist, master of Berlin classisisme, founder of the so-called Schinkel school 73, 712, 738 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von (Hanover 1767-Bonn 1847), author, scholar, Bonn 647

862 Schleiden, Carl Heinrich, Versuch einer Geschichte des großen Brandes in Hamburg vom 5. bis 8. Mai 1842, Hoffmann und Campe Hamburg 1843 37, 678 Schleiden, Dr. Carl Heinrich (Hamburg 1809-Hamburg 1890), theologian, teacher, founder of the Schleidensche Schule („Privatschule für Knaben höherer Stände“) in Hamm/Ham bei Hamburg, married to Ida Speckter (1809–1894), sister of Otto und Erwin Speckter und the wife of Dr. Christian Friedrich Wurm, Hermine Wurm née Speckter 6, 37, 639, 660, 668,  678, 700, 703, 705, 706, 714, 718, 719, 722, 727, 728, 729, 762 Schleiden, Mrs. Ida née Speckter 706 Schleiermacher, Friedrich (Breslau 1768Berlin 1834), theologian, philosopher, ­leading scholar of his age 10, 15, 133, 313 Schlettwein, August Carl Johann (Dahlen 1801-Rostock 1877), landowner in Bandelstorf /Rostock, 1848 member of the Vorparlament, married to Henriette Levenhagen (1807–1874) 741, 742 Schlumpf, Miss, teacher and owner of a ­private school in Hamburg which ­Hamilton Lieber in 1839–1840 attended 361, 379, 439, 488, 509, 529 Schnorr, Julius Veit Hans von Carolsfeld (Leipzig 1794-Dresden 1872), artist, Franz Lieber met the painter 1822–1823 in Rome 17 Schön, Hamm 133, 645, 714 Schondorf, Mr. 634 Schonen, Adalbert von See Amalia/Amelie Schoppe Schönlein, physician 735 Schoppe, Amalia/Amalie née Weise (Fehmarn 1791-Schenectady/NY 1858), stepdaughter of a partner of Georg Oppenheimer, father of Mathilde Lieber; the author of many children books and advisors for letter writing was a close friend of Rosa Maria Varnhagen, the former nanny in the Oppenheimer family 1807–1810 9, 34, 37, 446 Schulte(n), Christine Sophie Julie Luise Caroline von née von Wangenheim (1789–?) 623, 700

Index Schultz/Schultze/Schulze, student of August Neander in Berlin, private tutor to the children of Francis and Mathilde Lieber since 1845 in Columbia/SC, Liegnitz 754, 767 Schumann, Clara née Wieck (Leipzig 1819-Frankfurt/Main 1896), pianist, prodigy, since 1840 married to composer Robert Schumann (Zwickau 1810-Bonn 1856) 108 Schumann, Robert (Zwickau 1810-Bonn 1856), composer 209 Schütt(e), Dr, companion of Gustavus Oppenheimer while travelling in Germany, Berlin 1828 271 Schütte, Mr., Hamburg 479 Scilly Islands/England 627 Scott See Walter Scott Scott, Walter, 1st Baronet of Abbotsford (Edinburgh 1771-Abbotsford 1832), celebrated author already in his lifetime 308, 309, 548 Seidlitz Salz 634 Sellwood, Thomas, Letters of Lady Rachel Russell, from the Ms in the Library at Wooburn Abbey, 1801 62, 126 Semiramide, opera by Gioachino Rossini, lyrics by Gaetano Rossi, first performance Venice 1823 650 Senclair, Baronne de Magdeburg 647 Sergeant, John (Philadelphia 1779–1852), lawyer, politician, National Republican Party, friend and follower of Henry Clay 140, 371, 576 Shakespeare, William (Stratford-upon-Avon 1564-Stratford-upon-Avon 1616), famous English poet of the Tudor period 105,  126, 193, 288, 302, 313, 358, 368, 580, 596 Shand, Reverend Peter Johns(t)on (Charleston/SC 1800–1886), lawyer, lay reader, ordained in 1834, deacon/rector of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Columbia/ SC 434, 517, 518 Shuffle board, game on board of a ship 634 Siebold, Philipp Franz von (Würzburg 1796-Munich 1866), created japanology in Europe, published about Japanese flora and fauna, founded ethnological

Index collections of Japan at the University of Leiden 646 Sieveking, Amalie Wilhelmine (Hamburg 1794-Hamburg 1859), friend of Adele Haller née Oppenheimer and Johann Wichern, cofounder of the Diakonie, philanthropist, sister of Eduard Heinrich Sieveking 268, 269, 458, 657 Sieveking, Dr. iur. Friedrich (Hamburg 1798-Hamburg 1872), lawyer, friend of Franz Lieber in Berlin, 1861/1862 Erster Bürgermeister in Hamburg, married since 1824 to Louise von Hennings, son of Georg Heinrich Sieveking, friend and partner of Caspar Voght 209, 273 Sieveking, Eduard Heinrich (Hamburg 1790-London 1868) brother of Amalia Sieveking, merchant in London, married to Emerentia Louise Francisca Lorenz Meyer 21, 209, 657 Sieveking, Karl (Hamburg 1787–1847), lawyer, studied law in Heidelberg and Göttingen, syndicus of the Hamburg Senate, friend of August Neander, responsible for the Hanseatic-Brazilian trade treaty of 1827, cousin of Amalie and Eduard Heinrich Sieveking, married to Caroline Henriette de Chapeaurouge (1797–1858) 142, 209 Sieveking, Miss See Amalie Wilhelmine Sieveking Sieveking, Mrs née Emerentia Louise Francisca Lorenz Meyer, (1789-London 1861), wife of Eduard Heinrich Sieveking 657 Sill, Dr. Edward (1809–1872), editor of The Telegraph, Columbia/SC, married to Carolina M. Greenwood 151, 158, 163, 225,  320, 337, 556, 566, 616 Sillem & Benecke, merchant-house, London 21 Sillem, Hermann (Hamburg 1788-London 1849), merchant, married to Wilhelmine Henriette Catharina Louise Waitz 75,  112, 113 Simcoix, Carl See Karl Simrock, Bonn Simon, Fräulein, member of the Hamburg Godeffroy family 364, 365

863 Simrock, Dr. Karl Joseph (Bonn 1802–1876) German studies, poet, publisher, scholar, Bonn 637 Sismondi, Jean Charles Leonard de (Geneva 1773–1842), historian, married to Jessie Allen, aunt of James Robert Mackintosh 556, 557 Siveking See Sieveking Sixtinische Madonna/Sistine Madonna, painting by Raffaello Santi in 1512–1513, oil on canvas, 256x196 cm, originally part of an altar of the monastery San Sisto in Piacenza/Italy, since 1754 in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden 577, 732 Smith, John Captain (Alford 1580-London 1631), soldier, adventurer, took part in the founding of Jamestown/Va in 1607; cartographer and author of texts important to historians of North American colonial history, known, too, for his stories about his rescue thanks to Pocahontas 569 Smith, Major 646 Socrates (?-399 BC), Greek philosopher 158 Soehle/Söhle/Söehle, Auguste née Haller, (Hamburg 1799–1883) sister of Dr. iur. Ferdinand Haller, married to Hamburg merchant Johann Christian Soehle/ Söhle 214, 217, 247, 249, 251, 267, 323, 416,  451, 455, 465, 499, 530, 601, 760, 756, 762 Soehle/Söhle, Johann Christian (Hamburg 1801–1871), merchant, banker, politician, head of Haller, Söhle & Co., Adolphsplatz 4, Hamburg, married to Auguste Haller 217, 249, 499, 534, 750,  756, 762 Sophia Mason see Sophia Oehlich, Potsdam Sophocles/Sophokles(497 BC-406 BC), Greek poet 193 Spain 150, 462 Spandau prison 16 Sparks, Jared (Willington/CT 1789–­Cambridge/Mass. 1866), historian, professor of history at Harvard University, editor of the North American Review, ­married to Mary Crowninshield Silsby 61, 485

864 Sparks, Mrs Jared, née Mary Crowninshield Silsby/Silsbee (Salem/Mass. 1809– 1887) 61, 485 Speckter, Erwin (Hamburg 1806-Hamburg 1835), artist, friend of Alexis de Chateauneuf, Hamburg 20, 39,   474, 534 Speckter/Spekter, Otto (Hamburg 1807-Hamburg 1871), artist, Hamburg 7, 39,   40, 534 Spitta, Wilhelm Carl Georg (Bremen 1794–1846), merchant, Vice Consul of Mexico in Bremen (1831–1846), married to Cornelia Petronella Hachez (Bremen 1801–1836) 700, 718 Spitzweg, Carl (Munich 1808-Munich 1885), Der arme Poet, 36x45 cm, 1839 654 Spohr, Louis (Brunswick 1784-Cassel 1859), German composer, conductor, violinist 130 Spontini, Gaspare Luigi Pacifico (Jesi 1774-Jesi 1851), Italian composer, and conductor 710 Sprengel, Kurt (Boldekow/Anklam 1766Halle/Saale 1833), botanist, professor in Halle/Saale, uncle of Matthias Christian Sprengel 334 Sprengel, Matthias Christian (Rostock 1746-Halle/Saale 1803), professor in Göttingen and Halle, one of the first historians interested in American studies in Germany 334 St. Austin i.e. Augustinus, saint 459 St. Goar/Germany 650 St. John, Lake Champlain, i.e. Saint Jean-sur-Richelieu/Canada 86 St. Lawrence, border river between Canada and USA 80, 86, 87, 99, 100, 105, 109 St. Mat(t)hews/SC 236, 285 St. Petri, parish and church in Hamburg 537 St. Thomas, Danish West Indies 11 Stark, Mr. Columbia/SC 411 Steinthor, Hamburg 682 Sternberg See Alexander von Ungern-­ Sternberg, Galathee, Cotta Stuttgart 1836 Stewards Hall (1806–1847), Building on the campus of the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 46, 554 Stieglitz, Amalie, née Gottschalck-Düsseldorf 247

Index Stieglitz, Ludwig (Arolsen 1779-St. Petersburg 1843), banker, founder of Stieglitz & Co. in St. Petersburg, married to a sister of Mathilde Lieber’s mother, Amalie Angelica Christina Gottschalck-Düsseldorf (1777–1838); brother in law of Martin Joseph Haller and Georg Oppenheimer, who was married to Clara Recha GottschalckDüsseldorf 247, 589 Stockbridge/Mass. 61, 80, 84, 85 Story, Joseph (Marblehead/Mass. 1779-Cambridge/Mass. 1845), judge at the US-Supreme Court, mentor of Charles Sumner 1, 60, 62, 63, 159, 255, 312, 486,  578, 668 Stout, nickname see Hamilton Lieber Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Strafford (1594–1641), English statesman and major figure in the English Civil War  570 Strinnholm, Anders Magnus, Wikingszüge, Staatsverfassung und Sitten der alten Skandinavier, Bd. 1 Wikingszüge, Hamburg bei Friedrich Perthes 1839, Bd. 2 Staatsverfassung und Sitten, Hamburg bei Friedrich Perthes 1841 614 Stuart, Ellen, Columbia/SC, daughter of Isaac William Stuart 202, 285 Stuart, Isaac William (New Haven/Conn. 1809-Hartford/Conn. 1861), lawyer, professor of Greek and Roman Literature at the College of South Carolina in Columbia/SC 1835–1840, in 1840 he moved to Hartford/ Conn., published widely on local history, he was the son of the theologian in Amhurst College Moses Stuart, a former correspondent of Francis Lieber 151, 158,  163, 190, 202, 235, 280, 285, 293, 434, 467, 494 Stuart, Mrs Isaac William née Caroline Bulkely, Columbia/SC 202 Stuttgart/Stuttgard/Germany 12, 21, 637, 669, 716 Marianne/Marianne Sullivan See Brewster, Marianne Sullivan, Mrs née Sarah/Sally Webb (Boston 1782-Philadelphia 1851), married to William Bont Sullivan 106, 544 Sullivan, Olivia See Olivia Buckminster Ward

Index Sullivan, William Bont (1774-Boston 1839), Boston, lawyer, author, son of James Sullivan (1744–1808), father of Sarah/Sally Newton/Oakey, Olivia Buckminster Ward, and Marianne Appleton Brewster 68,  106, 544 Sumner, Charles (Boston 1811-Washington/DC 1874) lawyer, scholar, orator, leader of the Radical republicans 1, 12, 37, 62, 100, 185,  361, 397, 433, 486, 619, 624, 644, 645, 646, 647, 650, 663, 669, 683, 684, 723, 724, 768 Sumner, George (1817–1863), journalist, brother of Charles Sumner 669, 683,  684, 724 Sumner, Mary, sister of Charles and George Sumner 624, 635 Sumter Street, Columbia/SC 587, 718 Swaim, William (1781–1846) of Philadelphia, created Swaim’s panacea to cure various diseases from syphilis to scrofula, Swaim started to sell his odd mixture of mercuric chloride, oil of wintergreen and sarsaparilla from 1820 onwards 187 Swaim’s Panacea See William Swaim Switzerland 17, 527, 713 Sykes, Robert C., merchant in Manchester, partner and managing director in the trading house Lomnitz & Co. Manchester 503 Syracruse/NY 107, 109 Taglioni/Tagliane/Taglione, Marie (Stockholm 1804-Marseilles 1884), celebrated Italian ballerina, created her very own dancing style, sister of Paul Taglioni 138, 139 Taglioni/Taglione, Paul Nikolaus/Paolo Nikola (Vienna 1808-Berlin 1884), Italian dancer, ballet master of the Royal ballet Berlin, brother of Marie Taglioni 138, 139 Tante Hester See Emilie Oppenheimer née Heckscher Tante Minna See Emilie Hesse née Oppenheimer Tante Minna See Wilhelmine Ahrens née Oppenheimer Taylor, Mrs Columbia/SC 485 Tchech See Heinrich Ludwig Tschech Tegel, Berlin/Germany 695

865 Ten(n)iers, David sen., (Antwerp 1582 – Antwerp 1649), Flemish painter 290 Ten(n)iers, David jun, (Antwerp 1610- Brussels 1690), Flemish painter 290 Tenno, Miss, Taplow Lodge, Buckinghamshire/England 646 Thayer, Col, Paris/France 639, 646 Thayer, Nathaniel (Lancaster/Mass. 1808-Boston 1883), financier, philanthropist, supported Harvard University and sponsored scientific endeavours like Louis Agassiz’s expedition to South America in 1865–1866 712, 719, 721 The American Jurist and Law Magazine, Boston 185 The Army and Navy Chronicle, and Scientific Repository, Washington City, 1832ff. 269 The Globe Hotel, New York City 339 The American Jurist and Law Magazine, Boston, Freeman & Bolles, founded ca. 1826, ed. by Charles Sumner and George S. Hillard 185 The Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres 309, 582, 597 Literarische Zeitung in Verbindung mit mehreren Gelehrten ed. Karl Büchner, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1839 58 The London Literary Gazette See The Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres The National Intelligencer, Washington/ DC 564, 566 The New World, New York 1840–1845 576 The New York Review, New York 78, 155, 349, 576 The Penny Magazine, London-New YorkBoston, 31.3.1832–31.10.1845, editor Charles Knight, journal of the Society for the Diffusion of useful knowledge 139, 185,  198, 209, 217 The Spectator, conservative weekly printed since 1828 in London 58, 67 The tragedy of King Richard III, tragedy by William Shakespeare, 1592, first performance 1633 126 Theod. Ahr See Theodor Ahrens Theodor/Theodore/Theodorus See Theodore Oppenheimer

866 Thetis, goddess of water in Greek mythology 177 Thibaut, Dr. Karl (1808–1882) librarian, scholar, Heidelberg 26, 419 Thiele/Thile, Ludwig Gustav von (1781–1852), Minister Berlin 1844 721, 739, 746 Thiersch, Friedrich Wilhelm von (1784-­Munich 1860) teacher, educator, ­author, ‚Praeceptor Bavariae’, Munich 637, 669 Thode See Fritz Tode Thorndyke/Thorndike, Elisabeth married to Oehlrich, Potsdam 557 Thornwell, James Hentley (1812–1862), theologian at the College of South Carolina, pro slavery, teacher at the Columbia Theological Seminary in Columbia/SC 46, 156, 190, 235, 434, 540,  559, 575, 620 Thorvaldsen/Thorwaldson, Bertel (1770– 1844), Danish sculptor 17, 665, 695 Thünen, Johan Heinrich von (Canarienhausen 1783-Tellow 1850), agrarian reformer 748 Ticknor, Anna née Eliot (1800–1885), married to George Ticknor 723, 733 Ticknor, George (Boston 1791–1871), Harvard professor of Roman languages, friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, married to Anna Eliot 624, 646, 647, 723, 733 Tieck, Emilie, Göttingen, childhood friend of Mathilde Lieber and her sisters 143, 662,  665, 671, 673, 676, 677, 678 Tieck, Johann Ludwig (Berlin 1773-Berlin 1853), poet, author, editor and translator 108, 599, 647, 737 Timm, C. (1769-Potsdam 1839), Geheimer Kämmerer of Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. 303 Timo/Timor/Timour/Timoor/Timer/Timur, Bullterrier, family dog in the Lieber household in Columbia/SC 116, 198, 237,  239, 244, 320, 363, 367, 383, 437, 440, 516, 595 Timoleon, hero by Herodot, Historien 288 Timophanus, antihero by Herodot, Historien 288

Index Tocquevielle See Charles Alexis Henri Maurice Clerel de Tocqueville Tocqueville, Charles Alexis Henri Maurice Clerel de (Verneuil-sur-Seine 1805-Cannes 1859), French lawyer, author, politician, historian 1, 111, 183, 541, 564, 566, 578, 597,  598, 600, 647, 728, 732 Tode/Thode, Fritz, merchant, friend of Caroline Lomnitz from her time in Manchester, Dresden 727, 730 Tom Stout = Figure taken from a nursery rhyme See Hamilton Lieber Tomlin, George Pretyman (1750–1827), bishop, friend of William Pitt the Younger 293 Tommy Stout = Figure taken from a nursery rhyme See Hamilton Lieber Toqueville See Charles Alexis Henri Maurice Cierel de Tocqueville Torquato Tasso, play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first performance Weimar 1807 737, 739 Trapm. See Louis/Ludwig Trapmann Trapmann, Johann Peter Ludwig/Louis/Lewis (Frankfurt/Main 1786–1855) Prussian consul of the Hanse Towns, 96 ­Wentworth St., Counting House, 79 E. Bay St. in Charleston/SC 112, 137, 145, 154, 314,  348, 350, 352, 426, 448, 466, 544, 580, 646 Trapmann, Miss, daughter of Ludwig and Mary Trapmann, Charleston/ SC 466 Trapmann, Mrs Lewis née Mary Bowen (1799–1845), married to Ludwig Trapmann 466 Travemünde, resort on the Baltic Sea/­ Germany 43, 696, 701, 714, 715, 717, 722,  724, 725, 735, 736 Trezevant/Trezvant, Dr. Daniel Heyward (Charleston/SC 1796-Columbia/SC 1873), MD, 1841 married to Epps Goodwyn Howell (1819–1862) 152, 160, 162, 233,  285, 622 Trezevant/Trezvant, Mrs, née Epps Goodwyn Howell (1819–1862)1841 married to Dr. Daniel Heyward Trezvant, Columbia/ SC 78 Trinidad 431, 436, 718

Index Tristam/Trystam Shandy, novel by Laurence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman, 9 vols. 1759–1767 332,  488 Trott, Carol S. 558 Troy/NY 754 Trumbull, John, Signing the Declaration of Independence, US-Capitol Washington/ DC oil on canvas 1819 570 Tschech, Heinrich Ludwig (Klein-Kniegnitz 1789-Spandau 1844), tried to shoot Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. on July 26, 1844 in front of the Berlin Stadtschloss where the King was ready to depart for Silesia; the assassination failed; Tschech was put to death in December 1844 in Spandau prison 692 Tucker, George (1775–1861) published one of the first biographies of the American sphinx The Life of Thomas Jefferson: third President of the United States, 2 vols. Carey, Lea & Blanchard Philadelphia 1837 616 Tucker, Nathaniel Beverley (Williamsburg/Va. 1784-Winchester/Va. 1851), judge, author in Virginia, since 1834 professor of law at William & Mary College, Williamsburg/ Va. 614, 615, 616 Twiss, Thomas S. (Troy/NY 1804–1871), professor of Mathematics at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC, resigned in 1846, worked as an Indian agent for the US-American government during the Civil War 188, 754 Uden/Uhden, Karl Albrecht Alexander (1798–1878), Prussian minister of Justice 686, 687, 716, 737, 739, 740 Uhden, Frau née Juliane Friderike Auguste Schlüsser (Berlin 1802–1869) 737 Uhland, Ludwig (1787–1808), Swabian poet and author 264 Ulrich, Karl? Lawyer, turner?, Calbe/Saale, Königsberg 304, 338 Uncle Busse See Dr. phil. Andreas Busse Uncle Gustavus See Wilhelm Gustav/Gustavus Oppenheimer Uncle Haller See Dr. iur. Nicholaus Ferdinand Haller

867 Uncle Haller See Martin Joseph Haller Uncle Hardy, slave at the College of South Carolina, Columbia/SC 164 Uncle Hesse See Heinrich Levin Hesse Uncle Jacob See Jacob Amsel Oppenheimer Uncle Julius See Julius Oppenheimer Uncle Ludwig See Dr. iur. Georg Ludwig Oppenheimer Uncle Morris See Christian Morris/Moritz Oppenheimer Uncle P. See George Parish (1780–1839) Uncle Palm See Dr. phil. Palm Uncle Woodhouse See James Thomas Woodhouse Uncle See Dr. phil. Andreas Busse Uncle See Jacob Oppenheimer Unter den Linden, boulevard, Berlin/ Germany 41 Upshur, Abel Parker (Northampton County/ Va. 1790-on board the USS Princeton 28.2.1844), lawyer, Whig, US secretary of state and of the navy 623, 647, 649 Urgroßmutter See Hannah Oppenheimer Valparadiso/Valparaiso, Chile 39 Varnhagen, Karl August von Ense (Düsseldorf 1785-Berlin 1858), friend of August Neander, brother of Rosa Maria Assing, married to Rahel Levin 9, 18, 28, 133, 224 Varnhagen, Rachel von née Levin (Berlin 1771-Berlin 1833), married to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (Düsseldorf 1785Berlin 1858) 9, 20, 28, 224, 547 Varnhagen, Rosa Maria Antonetta Paulina See Rosa Maria Assing Varntrapp/Varrentrapp/Varrentrap, Dr. med. Johann Georg (Frankfurt/Main 1809–1886), penologist in Frankfurt/ Main, reformer of public hygienics, promoted a progressive concept of Public health (water supply, housing, stock yards), friend and coeditor of Dr. med. Nikolaus Heinrich Julius; together since 1842 they published the Jahrbücher für Gefängniskunde, married to Mathilde Charlotte Alexandrine née Lutteroth (Leipzig 1817- Frankfurt/Main 1890), his mother in law was Marianne Charlotte

868 Lutteroth née Gontard (1798–1871), widow of Gottfried August Lutteroth (1781–1839) 710, 712, 727, 733 Vaughan, Sir Charles (1774–1849), British ­minister to the USA 1825–1831, 1833–1835 143 Vaux, Roberts (Philadelphia 1786–1836), Philadelphian lawyer, philanthropist, abolitionist, eldest son of a well-known Quaker family, took part in several benevolent societies within Pennsylvania, penologist, promoted the Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia 190 Vernet, Horace Emile Jean (Paris 1789-Paris 1863), French painter of battle scenes and soldiers he depicted not idealized but in a vernacular manner 569 Vick See Queen Victoria Victoria See Queen Victoria Vienna/Austria 50, 134, 209, 360, 384, 466,  537, 623, 634, 647, 716, 721, 725, 726, 727, 731, 734, 739, 746 Vierlande/Hamburg 39, 117, 617 Viersen/Germany 749 Vom Nußknacker und Mäusekönig, novel by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Berlin 1816 18 Voß, Johann Heinrich, Galland, Antoine, Les mille et une nuit, tausend und eine Nacht, in der Übersetzung von Johann Heinrich Voss, 6 Bde., 1781–1785 197 Voß, Johann Heinrich (1751–1826), poet, translator 177, 197, 613 Voß, Johann Heinrich, Äschylos, Heidelberg 1839 613 Voß, Johann Heinrich, Homers Odysee, Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung 1814 177, 197 W. I./W.Y. = West Indies Wadsworth, James (Durham/Conn. 1768-Genesee/NY 1844), land speculator, businessman, whose daughter Elizabeth Wadsworth was visited by the Ticknors 64, 723 Wadsworth, Miss Elizabeth (Genesee/NY 1815–1851) who in 1850 married British author and diplomat Sir Charles Augustus Murray (1806–1895) 723

Index Waldenburg, Fräulein von, Eveline, Emilie or Mathilde, daughters of Prinz August and Friederike Wichmann von Waldenburg, Palais Wilhelmsstrasse 64, Berlin 691, 692 Wallenstein, Albrecht Wenzel von (1583–1634), Herzog von Friedland und Sagan, 1628–1631 Duke of Mecklenburg, General of the Imperial Army in the Thirty Years War 303 Waln, Miss, Philadelphia 139, 140 Walsh, Robert (Baltimore 1784-Paris 1859), Paris correspondent of the National Intelligencer, journalist, historian, diplomat, US-Consul General in Paris 1844–1851, proslavery 564, 566, 597 Wandsbeck, till 1864 Danish, today Wandsbek, part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 9, 11, 39, 115, 202, 446, 684 Warburg, Hamburg merchant and banker family, friends of Georg, Jacob, and Morris Oppenheimer, London Hamburg 131, 202 Warburg, Moses Marcus (1763–1831) 131 Ward, Annie See Anne Maillard Ward, John Elliott (1814–1902) lawyer, Savannah/GA, attended Amherst College, studied law at Harvard, commenced practicing law in Savannah/GA and soon headed a lucrative law firm, married in 1839 to Olivia Buckminster Sullivan Ward, Julia See Julia Ward Howe Ward, John Elliott, husband of Olivia, née Sullivan, from Savannah/GA 67, 74 Ward, Medora Grymes (New Orleans 1824–?), married to Samuel Cutler Ward 624, 625,  635, 646, 723, 768 Ward, Mr. See John Elliott Ward Ward, Olivia, née Olivia Buckminster Sullivan (Boston 1819-Morristown/NJ), married since 1839 to John Elliott Ward, Savannah/GA, sister of Sally Sullivan/Newton/ Oakey 67, 74, 106, 114, 392 Ward, Samuel (1844–?) 723 Ward, Samuel Cutler „Sam“ (1814–1884), brother of Julia Ward Howe, Annie Ward Maillard, and Louisa Cutler Ward ­Crawford, married in 1843 in second marriage a stunning beauty from New

Index Orleans Maria Angelina Medora Grymes/ Grimes 625, 723, 768 Washington, George (Westmoreland County/ Va. 1732-Mount Vernon/Va. 1799), 1st President of the USA 223, 318, 326, 413,  415, 429, 569, 582 Washington/DC 3, 14, 140, 150, 236, 254, 269,  348, 353, 459, 554, 564, 565, 570, 624, 707 Waterloo, in the 19th century Waterloo was on Dutch territory, today Belgium, site of the crucial battle that decided the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte on July 18, 1815 in the battle of Belle-Alliance 15, 88, 91, 96, 101,  673, 703 Weber, Carl Maria von (Eutin 1786 – London 1826), composer, conducter, pianist 320,  328, 378, 387 Webster, Daniel (Salisburg/NH 1782-Marshfield/Mass. 1852), US-American politician 66, 565, 624, 640, 646, 674 Wedendorf/Germany 18 Weinheim/Germany 713 Wellesley, Lord Charles Wellesley (Dublin 1808-London 1858), second son of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington and his wife Kitty 87, 171 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of (Dublin 1769-Deal 1852), military hero and winner over Napoleon in the Battle of Belle-Alliance/Waterloo 1815 87, 99, 171 Werner oder Herz und Welt, play by Karl Gutzkow 1840 421 Werner, Dr. Lehrer Hamburg Hamm Schleidensche Schule 116, 117, 136, 139,  195, 198, 330, 380, 506, 629, 630, 643, 667, 668, 670, 676, 718 Werner, Mrs. married to Dr. Werner, teacher of Oscar Lieber 181 Weser, river, Germany 39, 628 Westpoint/NY 83, 188 Wheaton, Henry (Providence/RI 1785-Dorchester/Mass. 1848), lawyer and US-diplomat, US-minister in Berlin (1835–1846) 687, 695 Whist, game of cards 208, 217, 221, 247, 479,  537 Whitehall/NY 84, 85, 86, 93, 94

869 Whitehouse, merchant in NYC 750, 754 Whitehouse/NY 121, 750 Wiechmann/Wichmann, Karoline Friederike, mistress of Prince Augustus (1781–1844) 691 Wien See Vienna Wieting, Heinrich (Rönnebeck 1815-Charleston/SC 1868), commandant/ captain of the Bremen bark Johann Friedrich, took care of migrants from Bremerhaven to Charleston/ SC and acquired fame as „father of migrants“ 627, 628, 629, 633, 706 Wiggers, Dr. G. Großherzogl. Mecklenburgischer Consistorialrath and professor of theology, Rostock 741, 742 Wigglesworth, Edward (1804–1876) 1 Wilde 647 Wilhelmsburg, village 1814–1866 kingdom of Hanover, now part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 38, 39 Willem van Oranje See William III William & Mary College, Williamsburg/ Va. founded in 1693 344, 349, 616 William I of Orange, Willem van Oranje (Dillenburg 1533-Delft 1584), leader in the Dutch War of Independence 333 William III (The Hague 1650-Kensington 1702), Dutch stadholder, 1689–1702 King of England, Scotland and Ireland, married his cousin Mary Stuart (London 1662–1694) = Mary II, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland 1689–1694, main actor of the Glorious Revolution 1688/89 88, 165, 709 William IV (1765–1837), King of the United Kingdom and King of Hanover 1830–1837, son of George III, succeeded his brother George IV 99, 463 Willing, Mathilda/Matilda née Matilda Lee Carter (Westmoreland County/Va. 1811– 1850), daughter of Bernard Moore Carter and Lucy Grymes, married since 1831 to Thomas M. Willing (Philadelphia 1809-Isle of Wight 1850), Philadelphia 140, 141, 178,  248, 269, 373, 480 Wilmersdorf/Berlin, Germany, residence of Johann Wilhelm/William and Mathilde

870 Benecke/Beneke née Schweder 133, 591,  600 Wilmington/Del. 149, 150 Wil(e)y & Putnam, publisher in London and New York City 683 Wimmel, Carl Ludwig (Berlin 1786-Hamburg 1845), architect, had strong impact on the architectural appearance of Hamburg’s cityscape (outlay of the Esplanade, ­hospital in St. Georg, Hamburg’s exchange, monuments) 41 Winter, Luise, See Luise Landfermann  Winterhude, village in the neighborhood of Hamburg, today part of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg 39, 456 Wirth, Col. See Colonel William Jenkins Worth Wittenberge/Germany 36, 680, 681, 682 Wolsey, Thomas (Ipswich 1475–Leicester 1530), Cardinal, Archbishop of York, Lord Chancellor 570 Woodhouse, Auguste/Augusta, daughter of Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer, Leominster/England 644, 712 Woodhouse, Clara née Oppenheimer (Hamburg 1799-Leominster/England 1880), married since 1817 to James Thomas Woodhouse, Leominster/England 12, 111,  116, 191, 273, 280, 362, 405, 436, 446, 459, 509, 513, 538, 580, 633, 638, 644, 650, 655, 669, 692, 712, 724 Woodhouse, Edward, son of Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer, Leominster/ England 431, 436 Woodhouse, Frederic, son of Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer Leominster/ England 644 Woodhouse, George ( Leominster/England ?-Heidelberg 1838?) son of Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer 711 Woodhouse, James Thomas (ca. 1795–1866), lawyer, gentry, married since 1817 to Clara Oppenheimer, Leominster/England 10,  116, 633, 644, 651, 670, 711, 712 Woodhouse, Mary, daughter of Clara Woodhouse née Oppenheimer Leominster/England 644 Woodland/Woodlands Plantation/SC belonged to the family of Wade Hampton II (1791–1858) 463

Index Worth, Wirth, Colonel William Jenkins (1794–1849), US-officer, fought in several wars since 1812 101 Wright, Fanny/Frances (Dundee 1795-Cincinnati/OH 1852), journalist, abolitionist, social reformer, undertook in 1825 with Nashoba Community/Tenn. a model of social life that created a scandal 635 Wright, Grenadier Guards, Montreal, Canada 87 Wurm, Dr. Mrs née Hermine Speckter (1801–1852), sister of Erwin, Otto Speckter and Ida Schleiden née Speckter, married to Dr. Christian Wurm 534, 683 Wurm, Dr., Christian Friedrich (Blaubeuren 1803–Reinbeck/Hamburg 1859), teacher, historian, writer, politician, since 1832 married to Hermine Speckter, Hamburg 17, 19, 155, 274, 371, 483, 533, 534,  596, 599, 600, 601, 683 Ximene, Jimena Diaz, wife of El Cid (1046–1115) 375, 376 Z. See Züllichau Zahn, Mr. 139 Zell See Celle/Germany Züllichau/Zuellichau/Germany = Sulechów/ Poland, residence of members of the Lieber family, their brother in law Karsten and friends like Hermann Knoblauch, son of Eduard Liebers business partner Carl Knoblauch; together with his friend from childhood Carl Knoblauch Francis Lieber elder brother Eduard Lieber headed a silk manufactury in Züllichau; his brother Julius and their brother in law Karsten were teachers in the local Paedagogium founded on the principles of the Franckeschen Anstalten in Halle/Saale 13, 23, 79,  143, 192, 208, 213, 231, 250, 271, 274, 299, 302, 322, 323, 332, 336, 353, 354, 370, 371, 380, 394, 431, 432, 445, 449, 455, 505, 513, 523, 528, 532, 533, 538, 580, 612, 639, 686, 692, 695, 696, 697, 701, 702, 707, 712, 717, 737, 738, 769