Description

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTin the form of an open letter to General Cavaignac.
Presumably a first draft with erasures and corrections (the last paragraph of the text, in particular, has been reworked at length); there are a few formal differences with the text selected for publication in the Republican letters (Paris, Amyot, 1848), then republished in Moral and political sketches (Paris, Pagnerre, 1849).

Marie d'Agoult, on behalf of the wives, mothers and sisters of the workers repressed following the days of insurrection in June 1848, pleaded for clemency from General Cavaignac, the Minister of War who had crushed the popular uprising. Opposing the deportations and executions, she suggested: "the defeated of june [...] would be invaluable settlers for the land of Algeria. They would find, at the price of work, in these fertile campaigns, with the esteem of their fellow citizens regained, that restorative well-being which pacifies rebellious instincts and disordered desires. They would draw from the permanent chances of a perilous war the hope of shedding atoning blood for their country.".
In 1850, Marie d'Agoult published a History of the 1848 Revolution. Socially and politically committed, she, like her contemporary George Sand, published most of her writings under a male pseudonym, Daniel Stern.
Quérard, in France Littérairedescribes the Comtesse d'Agoult as a "a fallen woman transformed into a socialist shrew" !