AUGUST 6, 1863:
In a
letter, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the famed military organizer who eventually
accomplished the unification of Italy, offered superlative praise to Abraham
Lincoln for his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1862, Lincoln had offered Garibaldi a Major
General’s commission to fight for the Union, but Garibaldi had refused, busy at
the time leading an expedition toward Rome as part of the Italian
Risorgimento. A New York infantry
regiment, the 39th, was named the “Garibaldi Guard” in his honor:
“In the midst of your
titanic struggle, permit me, as another among the free children of Columbus, to
send you a word of greeting and admiration for the great work you have begun.
Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown
could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure. You are a true heir of
the teaching given us by Christ and by John Brown. If an entire race of human
beings, subjugated into slavery by human egoism, has been restored to human
dignity, to civilization and human love, this is by your doing and at the price
of the most noble lives in America.
It is America, the
same country which taught liberty to our forefathers, which now opens another
solemn epoch of human progress. And while your tremendous courage astonishes
the world, we are sadly reminded how this old Europe, which also can boast a
great cause of liberty to fight for, has not found the mind or heart to equal
you.”
