And Forever Free...

4/5 ( ratings)

Martin Herter, a fifteen year old immigrant from Berlin, arrived in New York with ideals of freedom inherited from his late father, a martyr to Germany's nineteenth century suppression of political rights. It was the eve of the Civil War and Martin steps into an aspect of the period seldom encountered in books for younger readers. The heavy' German and Irish immigration of the time left the Eastern seaboard with a heavy concentration of population not only indifferent to the issues of slavery and secession but actively hostile toward taking any part in it. After the meeting of a German musical society, one of the activities his all-work-no-play uncle would approve, Martin found a runaway slave boy who had crept in drawn by the music. From this point on, Martin is involved and so is his reluctant uncle, with the safety of the irritatingly unapproachable Negro, whose presence led to death and destruction when the Conscription riots ran their course. It's a good picture of the temper of New York at the time. Martin's first job on one of his uncle's delivery trucks and his later engagement on Horace Greeley's paper allow him to take the reader into many hidden parts of the city on his adventurous trip. He reaches a more mature understanding of himself in relation to the people around him.