The Goths in New-England

As the exciting intelligence from Germany traveled through America, it encountered resistance, for America was a region where class lines were still elastic, based on accomplishment and worldly success, not upon guarantees cemented in blood. Yet the tide was running toward a different form of reckoning. Horace Bushnell, famous Congregationalist pastor of Hartford (where the city park is named for him) thundered from his pulpit in 1837 that noble Anglo-Saxon blood must be preserved against pollution. By 1843, the big book in Unitarian Boston was The Goths in New-England. German schooling seemed right for us because we were Germans! Germany held answers for the grandchildren of Englishmen, who had been Germans long ago.