Carl Schurz

He studied in the Jesuit Gymnasium of Cologne in 1840-1846, and then entered the University of Bonn, where he became a revolutionary, partly through his friendship with Gottfried Kinkel, professor of literature and art-history. He assisted Kinkel in editing the Bonner Zeitung, and on the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848 took the field, but when Rastatt surrendered he escaped to Zürich. In 1850 he returned secretly to Germany, rescued Kinkel from the prison at Spandau[?] and helped him to escape to Scotland. Schurz went to Paris, but the police forced him to leave France on the eve of the coup d'état, and until August 1852 he lived in London, making his living by teaching German. He married in July 1852 and removed to America, living for a time in Philadelphia.

In 1856 after a year in Europe he settled in Watertown, Wisconsin, and immediately became prominent in the Republican party of that state. In 1857 he was an unsuccessful candidate for lieuenant-governor on the Republican ticket. In the Illinois campaign of the next year between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas he took part as a speaker; and later in 1858 he was admitted to the Wisconsin bar and began to practise law in Milwaukee. In the state campaign of 1859 he made a speech attacking the Fugitive Slave Law and arguing for state's rights and thus injured his political standing in Wisconsin; and in April he delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, an oration on "True Americanism," which coming from an alien was intended to clear the Republican party of the charge of "nativism." The Germans of Wisconsin unsuccessfully urged his nomination for governor by the Republican party in 1859. In the Republican National Convention of 1861 Shurz was spokesman of the delegation from Wisconsin, which voted for WH Seward; he was on the committee which drew up the platform and served on the committee which announced his nomination to Abraham Lincoln.

In spite of Secretary Seward's objection, grounded on Schurz's European record as a revolutionary, Lincoln sent him in 1861 as minister to Spain. He returned to America in January 1862, resigned his post, was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers in April, and in June took command of a division under Frémont, and then in Sigel[?]'s corps, with which he took part in the second battle of Bull Run. He was promoted major-general of volunteers on March 14 and was a division commander at Chancellorsville of the Eleventh Corps, under General OO Howard, with whom he later had a bitter controversy over this battle. He was at Gettysburg and at Chattanooga[?]. After the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps were united as the Twentieth he was put in command of a Corps of Instruction at Nashville, and saw no more active service except in the last months of the war when he was with Sherman's army in North Carolina. He resigned from the army immediately after the close of hostilities.

In the summer of 1865 President Johnson[?] sent him through the South to study conditions; the President quarrelled with Schurz because the latter approved General HW Slocum's order forbidding the organization of militia in Mississippi, and Schurz's valuable report (afterwards published as an executive document), suggesting the readmission of the states with complete rights and the investigation of the need of further legislation by a Congressional committee, was not heeded by the President. In 1866-1867 he was chief editor of the Detroit Post and then became editor and joint proprietor with Emil Praetorius (1827-1905) of the Westliche Post of St Louis[?]. In the winter of 1867-1868 he travelled in Germany--the account of his interview with Bismarck is one of the most interesting chapters of his Reminiscences. He spoke against "repudiation" and for "honest money" during the Presidential campaign of 1868.

In 1869-1875 he was United States senator from Missouri, and made a great reputation (especially in 1873-1874) by his speeches on financial subjects. During this period he broke with the administration: he started the Liberal Republican movement in Missouri in 1870 which elected B. Gratz Brown[?] governor; and in 1872 he presided over the Liberal Republican convention which nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency (Schurz's own choice was Charles Francis Adams or Lyman Trumbull) and which did not in its platform represent Schurz's views on the tariff, or Greeleys. He opposed Grant's Santo Domingo policy--after Fessenden's death Schurz was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs,--his Southern policy, and the governments selling arms and making cartridges for the French army in the Franco-Prussian War. But in 1875 he campaigned for Hayes, as the representative of sound money, in the Ohio gubernatorial campaign. In 1876 he supported Hayes in the contest for the presidency, and Hayes made him in 1877 his secretary of the interior, and followed much of his advice in other cabinet appointments and in his inaugural address. In this department Schurz put in force his theories in regard to merit in the Civil Service, permitting no removals except for cause, and requiring competitive examinations for candidates for clerkships; he reformed the Indian Bureau and successfully opposed a bill transferring it to the War Department; and he prosecuted land thieves and attracted public attention to the necessity of forest preservation.

Upon his retirement in 1881 he removed to New York City, and from the summer of 1881 to the autumn of 1883 was editor-in-chief and one of the proprietors of the New York Evening Post. In 1884 he was a leader in the Independent (or Mugwump) movement against the nomination of James G Blaine for the presidency and for the election of Grover Cleveland. From 1888 to 1892 he was general American representative of the Hamburg American Steamship Company. In 1892 he succeeded George William Curtis as president of the National Civil Service Reform League and held this office until 1901. He succeeded Curtis as editorial writer for Harper's Weekly in 1892-1898, in which he did much for electoral reform. In 1895 he spoke for the Fusion anti-Tammany ticket in New York City. He opposed WJ Bryan for the presidency in 1896, speaking for sound money and not under the auspices of the Republican party; in 1900 on the anti-imperialism issue he supported Bryan; and in 1904 he supported AB Parker, the Democratic candidate. He died in New York City on the 14th of May 1906.

Schurz published a volume of Speeches (1885); Henry Clay (1887) in the "American Statesmen" series, a standard biography; Abraham Lincoln (1889), a remarkable essay; and Reminiscences (New York, 3 vols., 1907-1908), in the third volume of which is a sketch of his life and public services from 1869 to 1906 by Frederic Bancroft and William A Dunning.

During the last twenty years of his life Schurz was perhaps the most prominent Independent in American politics, and even more notable than his great abilities was his devotion to his high principles. He was the first German-born American to enter the United States Senate, and was an able debater; and his command of the English language, written and spoken, was remarkable. A sense of humour added much to his campaign speeches.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.