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New York, June 12, '60.
...People are scarcely occupied with anything beside politics here. Who
will be nominated? Who will be the lucky one to be elected? Those are the questions of the
day. In a week part of the great secret will be revealed.
But a violent movement of dissolution has started in the United States.
Whatever the result of the struggle may be, the malcontents will secede and will try to
take along with them a section of the states. A rupture is thus imminent between the North
and the South. Despite assurances to the contrary which I receive on all sides, and
despite the smiles of incredulity on the faces of all my friends, I am sure that within a
very short time America will be divided into Northern states and Southern states, which
will soon be handed over to some adventurers such as we know in Europe.
It is probable that I shall go to Baltimore for a few days next week to
attend that political chaos called a nomination, that great struggle where all ambitions
and all intrigues battle, where all means are used, honest or otherwise, where
corruptions, threats, and influence join in battle, and prove to the whole world that this
country, despite its apparent greatness, despite its youth, despite its vigor, is like a
fruit rotting before it has a chance to ripen. I'll stop right here, for if you let
yourself go too far in your thoughts, you would become a misanthrope. I shall go at once
and renew my strength by taking a shower bath under one of the falls of Niagara, and I
shall see if the homeland of the Mohicans has changed any in appearance and in nature
since it was described by [James Fennimore] Cooper.
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