Letter from Joseph Walker Barnwell, Gottingen, Germany, to mother, Catherine Osborn Barnwell. Barnwell discusses South Carolina Reconstruction politics and the dissatisfaction with Governor Robert Scott, and details a day trip with fellow students to explore castle ruins along the Werre River southwest of Gottingen.
Record of David Henry Mordecai's illnesses and schooling, mostly in Heidelberg, Germany, with some notations at Ems. With sporadic notations of weather, and mentions of South Carolinians Albert Rhett, William, John & Alfred Preston, Charles Boyd, Hammond, Legare, D.C. Seixas & others. References to museums, artwork and plays seen. Mentions of health and cures, the need for an operation (p. 73); stupidity of peasants vs. slaves (18); lynching (21), political situation in Kansas (30); doomed nature of American slavery (31); inevitability of Civil War (31-2); state support of SC College (56-57); women who "paint" their faces (111). With constant references to family, and some financial jottings. Some entries in German.
Joseph Walker Barnwell writes to sister, Esther Hutson Barnwell, from Germany, where he is matriculating at the university in Gottingen. Barnwell describes the difficulty of learning the language, the bathing habits of the Germans and his views on German servants, and comments that the Americans he has met abroad do not distinguish between Northerners and Southerners. October 24, 1869.
