When the pitiful collapse came, Henningsen was one of the chieftains who were outlawed and had a price set upon their heads. He narrowly escaped capture and its inevitable consequence, death. Once he was saved by the tact of a lady, a relative of Kossuth, who, when the police were searching for a likeness of the fugitive, allowed them to find a portrait of some stranger, upon which she had hastily written the words, "From your friend, C. F. Henningsen." Being questioned, she averred that the likeness was not Henningsen's, but with so much apparent confusion as to make them disbelieve her. Copies of it were accordingly printed and distributed with the hue and cry, to the manifest benefit of the fugitive. Again, upon the very border of Turkey, he was chased so closely by a party of Haynau's bloodhound troops that capture seemed inevitable, and he had prepared a dose of poison, which he always carried with him, to be swallowed at the moment of arrest. His Caucasian experience had taught him that mercy was not to be expected of Cossack victors. More fortunate than many of his comrades, he managed to elude his foes and escape across the boundary, to join Kossuth. With him he crossed the Atlantic, never to return. In the United States he shared the social and political distinction of his leader. Henningsen at this period was thirty years old, tall and strikingly handsome, with the polish and breeding of a man of the world and a scholar. In Washington he met and loved a Southern belle, at the time when Southern society ruled in the national capital. The lady, who was a widow, was a niece of Senator Berrien of Georgia. She returned his affection, and they were married after a brief courtship. It was a critical period in American politics. It was the reign of King Pierce the Irresolute, to be followed shortly by that of King Buchanan the Unready. Henningsen by his matrimonial alliance was thrown into the society of those who favoured slavery, wherein he imbibed opinions in harmony with the upholders of that institution. The adherents of slavery felt that in the political field they were fighting a losing battle. The more farsighted saw that the success of their cause could be promoted only by "extending the area of freedom," as they phrased it. Thus the filibusters acquired new importance in the eyes of friend and of foe at home.