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The year 1873 marked the start of the decline of John Forsyth’s editorial prominence. His health, which troubled him in the latter part of the previous year, never completely recovered. The ailing journalist increasingly found himself away from his beloved post. At the advice of his doctor, Forsyth, in the late spring, embarked on a trip to Europe. This journey, his ¤rst trip across the Atlantic since he had traveled as a boy with his father, was designed to get Forsyth away from the stress of the daily operation of the newspaper. In the editor’s own words the respite would “give rest to a pate that has been used as a football so many years in the Register of¤ce.” Apparently his physician had given him strict orders as to what he should and should not do while away. In one of his ¤rst letters home, he noted that while on the trip, he was “forbidden to think as well as to smoke.”1 Forsyth sent home a series of reports while on his European tour. His accounts were to be done “without strenuous effort,” which would have defeated the trip’s purpose. Thus the Register subscribers read about the style of dress in Liverpool (“Few Americans and certainly no Frenchmen would fail to observe the bad taste of women’s dressing”), various public and private events, landscapes, and architecture. The vacationing journalist also gave his opinions on various aspects of life in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Try as he might, Forsyth was not one who found it easy to relax. At every stop he seemed to be reminded of some issue or controversy he had left behind on the other side of the Atlantic. When he observed the neatly paved streets of even the smallest European towns, he could not resist a dig at Mobile: “I have not seen a town, great or small, since I left home that is unpaved. I am inclined to think that there is no town or city the size of Mobile in the civilized world that has not had the enterprise and good sense to consider health and comfort and beauty in covering its streets with some kind of pavement.” When he saw the prevalence of industrial development between Paris and Berlin, he noted, Conclusion “We Never Doubted Where John Forsyth Stood” “I begin to entertain even a lively hope that somewhere within the next ten centuries our own slow little gulf city may feel the impulse of the steam genius of our age, and take step with the march of its generation.”2 Certainly Reconstruction politics were never far from Forsyth’s mind. While listening to a patriotic rendition in a London opera house, he could not help but ponder his own “political disabilities.” He remorsefully noted that “It was not a little troubling to a poor devil to whom ®ag and country had been deprived by an act of a Radical Congress.” While in Europe, he periodically received copies of the Register. Often, after such deliveries, he would go off on a tirade in reaction to what he had read. One such issue contained a call for immigrants to come to the South. Forsyth penned a response in which he stated he felt immigration “contains the germ of Southern rehabilitation in prosperity and power.” Of course by immigration he, in effect, meant white, northern Europeans, who would “assure the preservation of the White civilization of our state, and to stay the tendency, backed by the force of Federal in®uences, to a enervated and accursed mongrelism.” One illustration seems to perfectly typify Forsyth’s futile attempt to unwind while on the grand tour. In September, he was on a train en route to Vienna. As the sun came up, he got his ¤rst glimpse of the beauty of the Austrian Alps. At about the same time, someone informed him that a fellow passenger in the next car had a fairly recent edition of the New Orleans Picayune. Forsyth jumped from his seat and literally ran to ¤nd the gentleman. For the next couple of hours, he “devoured the ‘Pic’ and left the Alps for a more convenient season.” Forsyth began the return voyage on 18 October 1873. He was reported to be in New York on the last day of the month. He pronounced a somewhat ambivalent benediction on the entire experience: “I have seen a good deal, and learned some things, I hope, and having come, I...

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