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38 Dupré lawyer in the state of Wisconsin, where he was very successful, and he’s now one of the most celebrated speakers in the United States [35 ll.: enormous torch-lit march before the election of the Republican candidate for governor , Andrew Curtin, with clubs wearing uniforms, fire brigade; paid for by contributions and ‘‘the big moneybags’’; the losing party is not doing well]. The Democratic Party, likewise, spent several million dollars this time to buy votes in New York, a rich man named Astor alone gave one million. He has several hundred millions, and you can be sure he wouldn’t part with anything unless he believed he could make 10 times more out of it; but this time the Democratic slaveholders with all their millions were soundly thrashed. The Republicans have elected Abraham Lincoln president; he will take office next March the 4th. This man shows how far you can get here: his father was a farmer and he himself worked on his father’s farm until he was twenty, splitting logs that were used to build fences around the fields, which is why he now has the nickname rail splitter, used either in honor or in mockery, depending on the party. Then he studied law on his own and established himself as an attorney in the state of Illinois, where he soon gained a reputation for his genius and his upright nature. Later he got involved in politics, and now he’s arrived at the position of the greatest honor here or anywhere else in the whole world. We’ll see what his administration will be like in the next 4 years. ab. Lincoln is supposed to have the ugliest physiognomy to be found in the entire United States [14 ll.: correspondence; greetings]. Embracing you in spirit, Otto 2. Private Alexander Dupré, Emile Dupré, and Lottie Dupré Emile Dupré (1833–66) did not leave Germany due to economic hardship, but the twenty-three-year-old may well have been dissatisfied because of his limited prossource note: The letters of the Dupré brothers are similar in a number of ways. Both Emile and Alexander write grammatically correct German without a trace of local dialect (the Hanover and Braunschweig area is usually considered the place where High German and the local dialect are the same, or where ‘‘the best German is spoken’’); both of them spell accurately, and both know how to express themselves clearly. But here the similarity ends. Emile writes more elegantly, has obviously more practice writing, and expresses himself in a measured, careful way; Alexander is more given to exaggeration and emotions. Whereas Emile’s handwriting is mostly very small, extremely regular, and never changes, his younger brother’s is rather erratic, sometimes changes within one letter, and looks different in different letters. Not included here are the letters in the series from the time before 1860 (five) and after 1865 (one), as well as several letters written in 1860 (six), 1861 (eight), 1862 (three), and 1864 (four). Dupré 39 pects at home: he was a merchant with no capital to start a business of his own. He also grew up in a family that did not regard national borders as insurmountable barriers.1 His father, Franz Christian Dupré (1792–1862), ended his career as one of the top revenue officials in the Duchy of Braunschweig, and his salary allowed the family a comfortable middle-class life. With seven children, however, luxury was out of the question.2 At the age of fifteen, Emile was sent to Mönchen-Gladbach to a secondary school that specialized in commercial training. Instead of Latin and Greek, the curriculum featured French and later English but above all mathematics and commercial calculation, and ‘‘continuous activity’’ was demanded of the students. Emile only stayed a little more than a year at the school and left shortly before he would have moved up into the graduating class. Immediately afterward, starting on April 1, 1850, he did one year of voluntary military service, which he completed as a sergeant in the Braunschweig militia. On September 1, 1851, Dupré started training as an apprentice with Lösener & Schoch, merchants in Magdeburg, a city some forty miles east of Braunschweig (annual fee 100 talers*).3 In the fall of 1854 he returned to Braunschweig, but despite intensive efforts, he was unable to find a position. The following spring he was working as an unpaid trainee for a company...

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