From Carl Schurz, Lebenserinnerungen, Edward Manley, ed., Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1913, pp. vii-xvii. “[This] biographical Introduction is taken with a few minor changes from the New York Nation [May 17, 1906], of which Schurz was for a while editor-in-chief.”
The patriot, orator, journalist, statesman, soldier, reformer, who died in this city on Mondayl morning, was born March 2, 1829, in the village of Liblar, near Cologne; in 1840 he entered the Catholic Gymnasium of Cologne, and in 1846 proceeded to the University of Bonn with the intention of studying philosophy and history. Like many other ardent and generous-minded young students, he fell under the influence of Professor Johann Gottfried Kinkel, who threw himself unreservedly into the revolutionary movement of 1848, and served as a private among the insurgents in the spring of 1849. Schurz, following the example of his friend and teacher, served as adjutant to Gen.2 Tiedemann, and, when the latter surrendered the fortress of Rastatt with forty-five hundred revolutionary troops on July 21, 1849, made an almost miraculous escape from it through the sewer connecting with the Rhine, and fled to Switzerland. In the following summer he returned to Berlin, under an assumed name, for the purpose of liberating Kinkel, who had been taken prisoner, tried for treason, and sentenced to imprisonment for life. With the aid of wealthy sympathizers, this daring and romantic project was carried to a successful conclusion in November, 1850, and created a sensation throughout Europe. In fact, a more remarkable instance of self-sacrifice and heroism for friendship’s sake has seldom been recorded, and it demonstrated the singular nobility of Schurz’s character. Schurz and Kinkel escaped on a Mecklenburg vessel to Leith in Scotland.
Schurz spent about two years in London and Paris, supporting himself by giving music lessons and by acting as correspondent of German newspapers. In July, 1852, he married Margaret Meyer, the daughter of a well-known Hamburg merchant. The match was a romantic one, the acquaintance being traceable to the fame of Schurz’s exploit in liberating Kinkel, and was the beginning of a long and happy union, broken only by the death of the wife in March, 1876. In September, 1852, Schurz crossed the ocean and took up his abode in Philadelphia, where he remained for three years, removing then to Watertown, Wis. He attached himself at once to the newly formed Republican party, and in the following year, 1856, made German speeches which contributed so materially to carrying Wisconsin for Frémont by a majority of more than 13,000 votes, that in 1857, although he had just become a citizen, he was nominated Republican candidate for lieutenant-governor, and came within one hundred and seven votes of an election. Two years later he was offered the same nomination and declined it. His first English speech, made in 1858, during the senatorial contest in Illinois between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, attracted general attention, and was widely circulated under the title of “The Irrepressible Conflict.”
In the following year he began the practice of the law in Milwaukee. The National Republican Convention of May, 1860, which he attended as chairman of the Wisconsin delegation, upon his motion incorporated in the fourteenth paragraph of the party platform a declaration unequivocally pledging the Republican party against all legislation by which the existing political rights of immigrants could be impaired or abridged. Moreover, he supported George William Curtis in his successful appeal for the insertion in the platform of the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, which had been denied to Mr. Giddings. Although he steadily cast the vote of his whole delegation for William H. Seward, Schurz was appointed a member of the committee to notify Lincoln of his nomination, a member of the National Republican Committee, consisting of one representative from each State; and also a member of the Executive Committee, which then consisted of only seven members. During the ensuing canvass he made many brilliant speeches in German and in English, which were an important factor in bringing about the election of Lincoln, who, after his inauguration, recognized the valuable services of Schurz by appointing him United States Minister to Spain. Schurz presented his credentials to Queen Isabella on July 16, 1861, but in December resigned his post, and, after a brief visit to his native land, returned to his adopted country in January, 1862, to take service in the Union army.
He was commissioned brigadier-general in April, and on June 17 took command of a division in the corps of Gen. Franz Sigel, participating in the second battle of Bull Run (August 29 and 30). He was appointed major-general on March 14, 1863, and on May 2 commanded a division of Gen. Oliver O. Howard's Eleventh Army Corps, at the battle of Chancellorsville. With the same corps he participated in the battles of Gettysburg and Chattanooga, and served under Sherman in the Georgia campaigns. The surrender of Gen. Johnston to Gen. Sherman on April 26, 1865, terminated the war; and Schurz, having obtained leave of absence, proceeded at once to Washington and resigned his commission as general. His resignation was filed May 5, and was the first one received by the War Department, with the sole exception of Gen. Sigel's, which was filed May 4.
In the summer of 1865 Schurz was commissioned by President Johnson to make a tour of the Southern States and prepare a report on their condition and the state of public sentiment. He made a careful and conscientious study of the subject, and embodied the result of his investigations in a candid and judicial-minded report, in which he recommended that, before readmitting the rebellious States to full political rights, a Congressional Committee be sent there to make a thorough survey of the ground and suggest appropriate legislation. In 1866, he removed to Michigan and became editor of the Detroit Post; in 1867, to St. Louis to become editor and, with Emil Pretorius, joint proprietor of the Westliche Post. Even during the war, and while in active service in the field, Schurz had not intermitted his activity as a political orator, but had occasionally taken leave of absence when it seemed necessary to rouse public sentiment to support the Administration, and in 1864 had made some notable speeches in the second Lincoln canvass. As a matter of course he was one of the most effective speakers in the campaign of 1868, which resulted in the first election of Grant. On January 19, 1869, the Legislature of Missouri elected him Senator, and he took his seat at the special session beginning March 4, being the first German-born citizen who had ever been a member of the upper house of Congress.
The career of Carl Schurz in the Senate would have been sufficiently remarkable if regarded merely as a demonstration of his great gifts as a parliamentary orator and of his readiness as a debater. The course of events has taken his part in nearly all the controversies which put him at odds with his party in the Senate. He was in advance of public sentiment, not so much by reason of any superior foresight or political sagacity, as because of his fidelity to his ideals, and his conviction that, in the long run, truth was bound to prevail. He was the original Independent in politics, and the whole political faith of the Independent can be educed from his utterances. He was a warm advocate of civil-service reform, of tariff reform, of currency reform, at a time when the friends of any kind of reform were few and far between, and had nothing to expect from either party but obloquy and sneers. Perhaps the greatest practical service he rendered at this time was by his unwavering advocacy of correct principles on the currency question. He was among the few public men who never made any concession on this point to ignorant public clamor, and his mastery of the subject was equal to the honesty and courage with which he stood for the right. The two speeches against inflation and in favor of a return to specie payments which he made in the Senate on January 14 and February 24, 1874, were models of sound doctrine. Of the second of them, Prof. Bonamy Price of Oxford said that it was the ablest speech ever made on banking in any parliament, that its range and solidity were wonderful, and that it offered a body of detailed doctrine which almost throughout will bear the test of the closest examination.
A complimentary dinner was given to Schurz on April 27, 1875, to mark the regret which honest men of all parties felt at his retirement from the Senate, failing a reëlection -- at his being (in the words of one of them) “exiled from one party by his independence and principles, and repelled by the other apparently because it is too ignorant to recognize his value in public life.” Banqueted a few weeks later in Berlin, a more signal vindication awaited him on his return from Europe. Although he had broken with and defied the Republican party by taking sides against it in the Louisiana question, in the matter of the Ku-Klux laws, in advocating a general amnesty; although he had opposed the Administration in the San Domingo discussion, in the debates on the sale of arms to France and on abuses in the New York Custom House; although he had originated the Liberal Republican movement in Missouri in 1870, and had thereby given the first impetus to the current of independence in politics which afterwards swept the country; although he had presided over the Liberal convention of May, 1872, which nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency, and had advocated (with much reluctance, it is true) the election of Greeley; although he had done all these things, and many others that equally demonstrated how little amenable he was to the ordinary canons of party discipline, and how much he placed the cause above the party -- no sooner, nevertheless, had he returned home than he was appealed to by the Ohio Republican Committee to stump that State in favor of Hayes and honest money, as against Allen and inflation. Within a week he was in harness, and resumed, with all his wonted boldness and brilliancy, the good fight against financial folly, quackery, and knavishness which he had fought in the Senate, and which he was to fight over again for many years to come. His appointment by Hayes to the Secretaryship of the Interior was only a just recognition of the importance of his services, and at the same time a partial redemption of the pledge, if a pledge there was, in regard to civil-service reform, of which it was on all sides admitted that Schurz was a sincere and ardent advocate. So well was this understood by the enemies of the reform that, while his nomination was pending, they spread a report that his confirmation would be opposed by some Republicans from a “dispassionate belief” that he did not possess business experience and administrative ability enough for the proper discharge of the multifarious duties of the office.
The duties of the office were, indeed, multifarious, but Schurz was soon to convince the country that an idealist can be a very practical man in any business which is compatible with honesty, industry, intelligence, and courage. He was confirmed on March 11, and before a week had expired he assured the clerks that no removals would be made except for cause, unless the force had to be reduced, in which case the least competent would be removed; that no promotions would be made except for merit; and that, as there were no vacancies, no recommendations to office would be entertained. This was not empty declamation, for Schurz did not even bring a new private secretary with him. On April 6 he promulgated an order providing for the investigation and practical determination of questions connected with appointments, removals, and promotions by means of a board of inquiry composed of three clerks of the highest class; and his subsequent actions demonstrated that there was no sham about this measure, but that it was meant in sober earnest. Clerical reform, however, was but a small part of his task. He found the service in a deplorable condition, particularly the Indian Bureau. The Secretary of the Interior, and even the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, were kept in ignorance of what was going on, and contractors and Indian agents were allowed full swing. As fast as Schurz could fasten the responsibility for wrong-doing or negligence or even mere carelessness, he made changes and removals right and left, regardless, as he had ever been, of the enemies he made. His efforts to check the timber thieves brought him into conflict with powerful corporations and with his old Republican antagonists in the Senate, while his intelligent and well-considered Indian policy was attacked not only by a noisy company of traders who had a vested interest in corruption, but by army officers on the one hand, and by well-meaning, sentimental philanthropists on the other. All of these foes he faced undismayed, and did not allow clamor or vituperation to swerve him from what he considered the straight path of duty. He put an end to the swindling of Indians by agents who were appointed to protect them, and in four years gave the wards of the nation a better start towards civilization than they had ever had before. In other departments he displayed the same capacity for practical business.
Returning to private life when his term of office had expired, and making his home in New York, Schurz became one of the editors of the Evening Post, when that journal changed ownership in July, 1881, and retained the position until December 9, 1883. In 1884 he took a prominent part in the independent movement which was called into being as a revolt against tendencies in the Republican party that represented the antipodes of everything he stood for. He had himself helped materially by example and by precept to create the public feeling which made such a movement possible, and he contributed no less to its culmination in the election of Grover Cleveland, with whom he had, indeed, much in common. The leisure afforded him by his release from public duties he employed to good purpose in writing his “Life of Henry Clay,” which appeared in 1887, and at once secured him a high rank as a man of letters. Repeatedly chosen president of the National Civil Service Reform Association, his speeches and activities in that behalf were notable. In the elections of 1888 and 1892 he again effectively supported Cleveland, although in the latter year his health did not permit him to take as active a part as he had been accustomed to do. His latest literary effort was devoted to his autobiography.
Mr. Bryce has expressed surprise at the want of influence upon American politics of the great German infusion, and it is certain that no one of the refugees of ’48 attained anything like the distinction of Carl Schurz, or had either so conspicuous or so happy a share in repaying his debt to his adopted country. As a whole, it may be said of the Germans as of the Irish that, deceived by the name of “Democracy,” they cast their weight -- at least during the years of moral agitation -- against the anti-slavery party. In this particular Schurz shines by contrast, since he at once saw things as they were, and divined the essential unity between the Slave Power and the despots of the Old World. He differed again from many of his countrymen in making a complete surrender to his new nationality, desiring and aiming to be only a high-minded American citizen. Unlike his noble compatriot, Friedrich Kapp, he was not tempted by the conquest of German unity to return to his Fatherland. In the end, he came to think in English rather than in German, though both languages were constantly on his lips. The late Professor Price of Columbia -- the most competent of judges -- once said that Schurz’s mastery of English was the most astonishing intellectual feat that he had ever known. It was not simply that this German had learned to speak English without mistake or accent, nor that he had acquired a rich and varied vocabulary. The amazing thing was that he appeared to have penetrated the very spirit of the alien speech. Its idioms seemed native to him. Among its living growths he moved with ease and certainty. His crisp pronunciation, his flexible handling of phrase and instinctive building up of sentence and climax, made listening to him a blending of delight and wonder. We hear frequent boasts of bi-lingual achievements, but they relate ordinarily to the restricted speech of travel or social intercourse or diplomacy. Schurz could in either tongue be playful or powerfully argue, soar or thunder, and do it with the facility and grace of one to the vernacular born. It was, however, the moral force residing in the man that set him apart in strength. His eloquence was of the kind that is a virtue. His rare intellectual gifts, his ready bonhomie, his power as an orator, might all have gone for naught had they not clothed a conscientious judgment and inner purpose which nothing could shake. This, after all, was the main theatre of Schurz’s idealism. He early formed noble political conceptions, and clung to them through evil as through good report. The tasks which he had willed in hours of insight, he fulfilled through hours of gloom.
In the multifariousness of his talent and his experiences in public and in private life, it was not to be expected that he should be equally surpassing. His military career was certainly less brilliant, though not less creditable, than his civilian. As a journalist, too, he was less successful than as an orator, and, in fact, the world has seldom seen these two functions combined (in the first order) in the same person. The speaker’s rhetoric is opposed to the directness and terseness demanded of the daily writer for the press, and as a speaker it is to be observed that Schurz was accustomed to elaborate his weightier deliverances by a careful preparation in his closet. The journalist has not time for this, and pays the penalty in an ephemeral fame. It would be unjust to close this imperfect appreciation without a word as to Carl Schurz’s private character, which was both pure and amiable in a singular degree. He was very companionable, very warm and kind hearted, most affectionate in his family relations; passionately fond of music; absolutely simple and unaffected in his manner, and happy to escape from the observation of the world and the exactions of society to be at home with his books and engaged in literary pursuits. Like Lowell and like Curtis, he learned that the possession of these virtues, superadded to abundant examples of public spirit, patriotism, and self-abnegation, was no security against the most vulgar and odious aspersions on the part of his political adversaries. Yet the fullest appreciation came, too.