For several years Kinkel and his family lived in London, where a large number of political refugees had gathered. It was a brilliant gathering, and in these many people of varied accomplishment Carl Schurz found much to interest him. Here, too, it was that Schurz found, in the daughter of another German exile, the young woman, Margaretha Meyer, who a few months later became his wife. The year 1852 was covered by a gloomy cloud. Throughout all Europe the Liberal movement seemed suppressed. In France, Louis Napoleon had made himself Emperor and was recognized by England; the French Republic was gone. In Italy, Mazzini had fought in vain for a united country under a free government. Kossuth had fought for the national independence of Hungary, but had gone into exile, a defeated man. In Germany, revolutionists had met a similar fate. To Carl Schurz there seemed but one direction in which he might turn. Far beyond the Atlantic the United States of America offered a republican government where the people ruled themselves by popular laws, free to live their lives and express their thoughts, free from the yokes of kings and princes. In August, 1852, Schurz and his young wife sailed for New York. The first task which Schurz set for himself on his arrival was to learn in the shortest possible time to speak, read, and write the English language. Chiefly by reading the newspapers this task was soon accomplished, and in a very few years there were not many Americans who could claim a more exact and fluent command of their own language than he. Schurz had come to the United States a poor man and an exile, but he was fortunate in possessing a number of friends who lived in the larger Eastern cities, and through them he obtained many valuable introductions and rapidly widened his acquaintanceship, particularly in political and literary circles. Since the founding of the Republic slavery had existed in the United States. Particularly in the Southern states thousands of negro slaves furnished practically the only labor on the vast plantations and in the homes of the owners. Against the slowly widening influence of slavery a small band of anti-slavery men were opposing by every means at their command the growth of this condition so utterly opposed to the laws of freedom and civilization. “I saw the decisive contest rapidly approaching,” wrote Schurz, “and I felt an irresistible impulse to prepare myself for usefulness, however modest, in the impending crisis: and to that end I pursued with increased assiduity my studies of the political history and the social workings of the Republic, and of the theory and practical workings of its institutions.”