Carl Schurz

Carl Christian Schurz (German: [ʃʊɐ̯ts]; March 2, 1829 – May 14, 1906) was a German revolutionary and an American statesman, journalist, and reformer. He emigrated to the United States after the German revolutions of 1848–49 and became a prominent member of the new Republican Party. After serving as a Union general in the American Civil War, he helped found the short-lived Liberal Republican Party and became a prominent advocate of civil service reform. Schurz represented Missouri in the United States Senate and was the 13th United States Secretary of the Interior.

Carl Schurz
13th United States Secretary of the Interior
In office
March 12, 1877  March 7, 1881
PresidentRutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield
Preceded byZachariah Chandler
Succeeded bySamuel J. Kirkwood
United States Senator
from Missouri
In office
March 4, 1869  March 3, 1875
Preceded byJohn B. Henderson
Succeeded byFrancis Cockrell
United States Minister to Spain
In office
July 13, 1861  December 18, 1861
PresidentAbraham Lincoln
Preceded byWilliam Preston
Succeeded byGustav Körner
Personal details
Born
Carl Christian Schurz

(1829-03-02)March 2, 1829
Liblar, Province of Westphalia, Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation (now Erftstadt)
DiedMay 14, 1906(1906-05-14) (aged 77)
New York City, U.S.
Political partyRepublican
Liberal Republican (1870-1872)
Spouse(s)Margarethe Meyer
EducationUniversity of Bonn (BA)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance Forty-Eighters
 United States
Branch/serviceUnited States Volunteers
(Union Army)
Years of service1848
1862–1865
Rank Major General
Battles/warsGerman revolutions of 1848–49
American Civil War (1861-1865)

Born in the Kingdom of Prussia's Rhine Province, Schurz fought for democratic reforms in the German revolutions of 1848–49 as a member of the academic fraternity association Deutsche Burschenschaft.[1] After Prussia suppressed the revolution Schurz fled to France. When police forced him to leave France he migrated to London. Like many other "Forty-Eighters," he then emigrated to the United States, settling in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1852. After being admitted to the Wisconsin bar, he established a legal practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He also became a strong advocate for the anti-slavery movement and joined the newly organized Republican Party, unsuccessfully running for Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin. After briefly representing the United States as Minister (ambassador) to Spain, Schurz served as a general in the American Civil War, fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg and other major battles.

After the war, Schurz established a newspaper in St. Louis, Missouri, and won election to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first German-born American elected to that body.[2] Breaking with Republican President Ulysses S. Grant, Schurz helped establish the Liberal Republican Party. The party advocated civil service reform and opposed Grant's efforts to protect African-American civil rights in the Southern United States during Reconstruction. Schurz chaired the 1872 Liberal Republican convention, which nominated a ticket that unsuccessfully challenged President Grant in the 1872 presidential election. Schurz lost his own 1874 re-election bid and resumed his career as a newspaper editor.

After Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the 1876 presidential election, he appointed Schurz as his Secretary of the Interior. Schurz sought to make civil service based on merit rather than political and party connections and helped prevent the transfer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the War Department. Schurz moved to New York City after Hayes left office in 1881 and briefly served as the editor of the New York Evening Post and The Nation and later became the editorial writer for Harper's Weekly. He remained active in politics and led the "Mugwump" movement, which opposed nominating James G. Blaine in the 1884 presidential election. Schurz opposed William Jennings Bryan's bimetallism in the 1896 presidential election but supported Bryan's anti-imperialist campaign in the 1900 presidential election. Schurz died in New York City in 1906.

Early life

Carl Christian Schurz was born on March 2, 1829 in Liblar (now part of Erftstadt), in Rhenish Prussia, the son of Marianne (née Jussen), a public speaker and journalist, and Christian Schurz, a schoolteacher.[3] He studied at the Jesuit Gymnasium of Cologne, and learned piano under private instructors. Financial problems in his family obligated him to leave school a year early, without graduating. Later he graduated from the gymnasium by passing a special examination and then entered the University of Bonn.[4]

Revolution of 1848

Carl Schurz as a young man

At Bonn, he developed a friendship with one of his professors, Gottfried Kinkel. He joined the nationalistic Studentenverbindung Burschenschaft Franconia at Bonn, which at the time included among its members Friedrich von Spielhagen, Johannes Overbeck, Julius Schmidt, Carl Otto Weber, Ludwig Meyer and Adolf Strodtmann.[5][6] In response to the early events of the revolutions of 1848, Schurz and Kinkel founded the Bonner Zeitung, a paper advocating democratic reforms. At first Kinkel was the editor and Schurz a regular contributor.

These roles were reversed when Kinkel left for Berlin to become a member of the Prussian Constitutional Convention.[7] When the Frankfurt rump parliament called for people to take up arms in defense of the new German constitution, Schurz, Kinkel, and others from the University of Bonn community did so. During this struggle, Schurz became acquainted with Franz Sigel, Alexander Schimmelfennig, Fritz Anneke, Friedrich Beust, Ludwig Blenker and others, many of whom he would meet again in the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War.

During the 1849 military campaign in Palatinate and Baden, he joined the revolutionary army, fighting in several battles against the Prussian Army.[4] Schurz was adjunct officer of the commander of the artillery, Fritz Anneke, who was accompanied on the campaign by his wife, Mathilde Franziska Anneke. The Annekes would later move to the U.S., where each became Republican Party supporters. Anneke's brother, Emil Anneke, was a founder of the Republican party in Michigan.[8] Fritz Anneke achieved the rank of colonel and became the commanding officer of the 34th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War; Mathilde Anneke contributed to both the abolitionist and suffrage movements of the United States.

When the revolutionary army was defeated at the fortress of Rastatt in 1849, Schurz was inside. Knowing that the Prussians intended to kill their prisoners, Schurz managed to escape and travelled to Zürich. In 1850, he returned secretly to Prussia, rescued Kinkel from prison at Spandau and helped him to escape to Edinburgh, Scotland.[4] Schurz then went to Paris, but the police forced him to leave France on the eve of the coup d'état of 1851, and he migrated to London. Remaining there until August 1852, he made his living by teaching the German language.

Emigration to America

While in London, Schurz married fellow revolutionary Johannes Ronge's sister-in-law, Margarethe Meyer, in July 1852 and then, like many other Forty-Eighters, emigrated to the United States.[4] Living initially in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Schurzes moved to Watertown, Wisconsin, where Carl nurtured his interests in politics and Margarethe began her seminal work in early childhood education.

In Wisconsin, Schurz soon became immersed in the anti-slavery movement and in politics, joining the Republican Party. In 1857, he ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for lieutenant governor. In the Illinois campaign of the next year between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, he took part as a speaker on behalf of Lincoln—mostly in German—which raised Lincoln's popularity among German-American voters. In 1858, Schurz was admitted to the Wisconsin bar and began to practice law in Milwaukee. In the state campaign of 1859, he made a speech attacking the Fugitive Slave Law, arguing for states' rights. In Faneuil Hall, Boston, on April 18, 1859,[9] he delivered an oration on "True Americanism," which, coming from an alien, was intended to clear the Republican party of the charge of "nativism." Wisconsin Germans unsuccessfully urged his nomination for governor in 1859. In the 1860 Republican National Convention, Schurz was spokesman of the delegation from Wisconsin, which voted for William H. Seward. Despite this, Schurz was on the committee which brought Lincoln the news of his nomination.

After Lincoln's election and in spite of Seward's objection, Lincoln sent Schurz as minister to Spain in 1861,[10] in part because of Schurz's European record as a revolutionary. While there Schurz succeeded in quietly dissuading Spain from supporting the South.

American Civil War

"For freedom in Germany and America": West German commemorative stamp featuring Schurz for the United States Bicentennial, 1976

During the American Civil War, Schurz served with distinction as a general in the Union Army. Persuading Lincoln to grant him a commission in the Union army, Schurz was commissioned brigadier general of Union volunteers in April 1862. In June, he took command of a division, first under John C. Frémont, and then in Franz Sigel's corps, with which he took part in the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862. He was promoted to major general in 1863 and was assigned to lead a division in the XI Corps at the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, both under General Oliver O. Howard. A bitter controversy began between Schurz and Howard over the strategy employed at Chancellorsville, resulting in the routing of the XI Corps by the Confederate corps led by Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. Two months later, the XI Corps again broke during the first day of Gettysburg. Containing several German-American units, the XI Corps performance during both battles was heavily criticized by the press, fueling anti-immigrant sentiments.

Carl Schurz as Major General of Volunteers during the Civil War.

Following Gettysburg, Schurz's division was deployed to Tennessee and participated in the Battle of Chattanooga. There he served with the future Senator Joseph B. Foraker, John Patterson Rea, and Luther Morris Buchwalter, brother to Morris Lyon Buchwalter. Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) was a Congressional observer during the Chattanooga Campaign. Later, he was put in command of a Corps of Instruction at Nashville. He briefly returned to active service, where in the last months of the war he was with Sherman's army in North Carolina as chief of staff of Henry Slocum's Army of Georgia. He resigned from the army after the war ended in April 1865.

In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson sent Schurz through the South to study conditions. They then quarreled because Schurz supported General Slocum's order forbidding the organization of militia in Mississippi. Schurz's report, which suggested the readmission of the states with complete rights and the investigation of the need of further legislation by a Congressional committee, was ignored by the President.

Newspaper career

In 1866, Schurz moved to Detroit, where he was chief editor of the Detroit Post. The following year, he moved to St. Louis, becoming editor and joint proprietor with Emil Preetorius of the German-language Westliche Post (Western Post), where he hired Joseph Pulitzer as a cub reporter. In the winter of 18671868, he traveled in Germany; his account of his interview with Otto von Bismarck is one of the most interesting chapters of his Reminiscences. He spoke against "repudiation" of war debts and for "honest money"code for going back on the gold standardduring the Presidential campaign of 1868.

U.S. Senator

Carl Schurz is Don Quixote in this cartoon by Thomas Nast from Harper's Weekly of April 6, 1872

In 1868, he was elected to the United States Senate from Missouri, becoming the first German American in that body. He earned a reputation for his speeches, which advocated fiscal responsibility, anti-imperialism, and integrity in government. During this period, he broke with the Grant administration, starting the Liberal Republican movement in Missouri, which in 1870 elected B. Gratz Brown governor.

After Fessenden's death, Schurz became a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs where Schurz opposed Grant's Southern policy as well as his bid to annex Santo Domingo. Schurz was identified with the committee's investigation of arms sales to and cartridge manufacture for the French army by the United States government during the Franco-Prussian War.

In 1869, he became the first U.S. Senator to offer a Civil Service Reform bill to Congress. During Reconstruction, Schurz was opposed to federal military enforcement and protection of African American civil rights, and held nineteenth century ideas of European superiority and fears of miscegenation.[11][12]

In 1870, Schurz helped form the Liberal Republican Party, which opposed President Ulysses S. Grant's annexation of Santo Domingo and his use of the military to destroy the Ku Klux Klan in the South under the Enforcement Acts.

In 1872, he presided over the Liberal Republican Party convention, which nominated Horace Greeley for President. Schurz's own choice was Charles Francis Adams or Lyman Trumbull, and the convention did not represent Schurz's views on the tariff. Schurz campaigned for Greeley anyway. Especially in this campaign, and throughout his career as a Senator and afterwards, he was a target for the pen of Harper's Weekly artist Thomas Nast, usually in an unfavorable way.[13] The election was a debacle for the Greeley supporters. Grant won by a landslide, and Greeley died shortly after the election.

Schurz lost the 1874 Senatorial election to Democratic Party challenger and former Confederate Francis Cockrell. After leaving office, he worked as an editor for various newspapers. In 1875, he assisted in the successful campaign of Rutherford B. Hayes to regain the office of Governor of Ohio. In 1877, Schurz was appointed United States Secretary of the Interior by Hayes, who had been by then been elected President of the United States. Although Schurz honestly attempted to reduce the effects of racism toward Native Americans and was partially successful at cleaning up corruption, his recommended actions towards American Indians "in light of late twentieth-century developments" were repressive.[14] Indians were forced to move into low-quality reservation lands that were unsuitable for tribal economic and cultural advancement.[14] Promises made to Indian chiefs at White House meetings with President Rutherford B. Hayes and Schurz were often broken.[14]

Secretary of the Interior

Carl Schurz and James Blaine in a Puck political cartoon of c. 1878 by J. Keppler

In 1876, he supported Hayes for President, and Hayes named him Secretary of the Interior, following much of his advice in other cabinet appointments and in his inaugural address. In this department, Schurz put into force his belief that merit should be the principal consideration in appointing civil servants to jobs in the Civil Service. He was not in favor of permitting removals except for cause, and supported requiring competitive examinations for candidates for clerkships. His efforts to remove political patronage met with only limited success, however. As an early conservationist, he prosecuted land thieves and attracted public attention to the necessity of forest preservation.

Delegation of Ute Indians in Washington, D.C. in 1880. Background: Woretsiz and general Charles Adams (Colorado Indian agent) are standing. Front from left to right: Chief Ignatio of the Southern Utes; Carl Schurz US Secretary of the Interior; Chief Ouray and his wife Chipeta.

During Schurz's tenure as Secretary of the Interior, a movement to transfer the Office of Indian Affairs to the control of the War Department began, assisted by the strong support of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.[15] Restoration of the Indian Office to the War Department, which was anxious to regain control in order to continue its "pacification" program, was opposed by Schurz, and ultimately the Indian Office remained in the Interior Department. The Indian Office had been the most corrupt office in the Interior Department. Positions in it were based on political patronage and were seen as granting license to use the reservations for personal enrichment. Because Schurz realized that the service would have to be cleansed of such corruption before anything positive could be accomplished, he instituted a wide-scale inspection of the service, dismissed several officials, and began civil service reforms whereby positions and promotions were to be based on merit not political patronage.[16]

Schurz's leadership of the Indian Affairs Office was at times controversial. While certainly not an architect of forced displacement of Native Americans, he continued the practice. In response to several nineteenth-century reformers, however, he later changed his mind and promoted an assimilationist policy.[17][18]

Later life

When a statuary tribute to German poet Heinrich Heine was resisted because of anti-Semitic opponents in Germany, Schurz's activism aided in its relocation across the Atlantic to New York.[19]

Upon leaving the Interior Department in 1881, Schurz moved to New York City. That year German-born Henry Villard, president of the Northern Pacific Railway, acquired the New York Evening Post and The Nation and turned the management over to Schurz, Horace White and Edwin L. Godkin.[20] Schurz left the Post in the autumn of 1883 because of differences over editorial policies regarding corporations and their employees.[21]

In 1884, he was a leader in the Independent (or Mugwump) movement against the nomination of James Blaine for president 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 also succeeded Curtis as editorial writer for Harper's Weekly in 1892 and held this position until 1898. In 1895 he spoke for the Fusion anti-Tammany Hall ticket in New York City. He opposed William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896, speaking for sound money and not under the auspices of the Republican party; he supported Bryan four years later because of anti-imperialism beliefs, which also led to his membership in the American Anti-Imperialist League.

True to his anti-imperialist convictions, Schurz exhorted McKinley to resist the urge to annex land following the Spanish–American War.[22] In the 1904 election he supported Alton B. Parker, the Democratic candidate. Carl Schurz lived in a summer cottage in Northwest Bay on Lake George, New York which was built by his good friend Abraham Jacobi.

Death and legacy

Schurz died at age 77 on May 14, 1906 in New York City and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York.[23]

Schurz's wife, Margarethe Schurz, was instrumental in establishing the kindergarten system in the United States.[24]

Schurz is famous for saying: "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."[25]

Portrayed by Edward G. Robinson as a friend of the surviving Cheyenne Indians in John Ford's 1964 film Cheyenne Autumn.

Works

Schurz published a volume of speeches (1865), a two-volume biography of Henry Clay (1887), essays on Abraham Lincoln (1899) and Charles Sumner (posthumous, 1951), and his Reminiscences (posthumous, 1907–09). His later years were spent writing the memoirs recorded in his Reminiscences which he was not able to finish, reaching only the beginnings of his U.S. Senate career. Schurz was a member of the Literary Society of Washington from 1879 to 1880.[26]

Memorials

Schurz monument in New York City
Carl Schurz Park, Upper East Side Manhattan, New York City
Carl Schurz grave, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

Schurz is commemorated in numerous places around the United States:

Several memorials in Germany also commemorate the life and work of Schurz, including:

See also

Notes

  1. Helge Dvorak (2002). "Schurz, Carl Christian". Biographisches Lexikon der Deutschen Burschenschaft (in German). Band I: Politiker Teilband 5: R-S. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter. pp. 372–376. ISBN 3-8253-1256-9.
  2. "404 Error: File Not Found - Wisconsin Historical Society". Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  3. Greasley, Philip A. (30 May 2001). Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume 1: The Authors. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253108411. Retrieved 2 November 2016 via Google Books.
  4. Dictionary Of American Biography (1935), Carl Schurz, p. 466.
  5. Schurz, Carl. Reminiscences, Vol. 1, pp. 93–94.
  6. Van Cleve, Charles L. (1902). Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity From Its Foundation In 1852 To Its Fiftieth Anniversary. p. 209: Philadelphia: Franklin Printing Company.
  7. Schurz, Reminiscences, Vol. 1, Chap. 6, pp. 159.
  8. W. R. Mc Cormick: BAY COUNTY Memorial Report: Emil Anneke: in: Report of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, Vol. XIV, 1890, Lansing, Michigan, W. S. George & Co., State Printers & Binders, Page 57–58 Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
  9. Hirschhorn, p. 1713.
  10. Dictionary Of American Biography (1935), Carl Schurz, p. 467
  11. Mejías-López (2009), The Inverted Conquest, p. 132.
  12. Brands (2012), The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses S. Grant in War and Peace, p. 489.
  13. This story, and the conflict between Nast and Harper's editorial writer George William Curtis, is related by Albert Bigelow Paine in Thomas Nast: His Period and His Pictures, 1904.
  14. Fishel-Spragens (1988), Popular Images of American Presidents, p. 121
  15. "Army charges answered". The New York Times: 5. December 7, 1878. ARMY CHARGES ANSWERED; THE INDIAN SERVICE UPHELD BY MR. SCHURZ. WHY IT WOULD BE UNWISE TO TRANSFER THE INDIAN BUREAU TO THE WAR DEPARTMENT--INCONSISTENT AND INACCURATE STATEMENTS BY MILITARY OFFICERS--LOOSE MANAGEMENT UNDER THE ARMY. INCONSISTENT AND INACCURATE STATEMENTS BY ARMY OFFICERS. ALLEGED ARMY DISHONESTY. MEASURES OF IMPORTANCE. MR. SCHURZ CROSS-EXAMINED. OTHER WITNESSES
  16. Trefousse, Hans L., Carl Schurz: A Biography, (U. of Tenn. Press, 1982)
  17. Hoxie, Frederick E. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.
  18. "Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior, November 1, 1880," In Prucha, Francis Paul, ed., Documents of United States Indian Policy, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. See Google Books.
  19. Sturm und Drang Over a Memorial to Heinrich Heine. The New York Times, May 27, 2007.
  20. Villard, Oswald Garrison (1936). "White, Horace". Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
  21. "No Longer an Editor; Carl Schurz Severs his Connection with the 'Evening Post'." The New York Times, December 11, 1883
  22. Tucker (1998), p. 114.
  23. German Monuments in the Americas
  24. "404 Error: File Not Found - Wisconsin Historical Society". Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  25. Schurz, Carl, remarks in the Senate, February 29, 1872, The Congressional Globe, vol. 45, p. 1287. See Wikisource for the complete speech.
  26. Spauling, Thomas M. (1947). The Literary Society in Peace and War. Washington, D.C.: George Banta Publishing Company.
  27. "Schurz Monument - Postcard - Wisconsin Historical Society". Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  28. Federal Writers' Project (1941). Origin of Place Names: Nevada (PDF). W.P.A. p. 53.
  29. "Schurz Bridge". Retrieved 2 November 2016.

References

Further reading

  • Schurz, Carl. The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (three volumes), New York: McClure Publ. Co., 1907–08. Schurz covered the years 1829–1870 in his Reminiscences. He died in the midst of writing them. The third volume is rounded out with A Sketch of Carl Schurz's Political Career 1869–1906 by Frederic Bancroft and William A. Dunning. Portions of these Reminiscences were serialized in McClure's Magazine about the time the books were published and included illustrations not found in the books.
  • Bancroft, Frederic, ed. Speeches, Correspondence, and Political Papers of Carl Schurz (six volumes), New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913.
  • Brown, Dee, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 1971
  • Donner, Barbara. "Carl Schurz as Office Seeker," Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 20, no.2 (December 1936), pp. 127–142.
  • Donner, Barbara. "Carl Schurz the Diplomat," Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 20, no. 3 (March 1937), pp. 291–309.
  • Fish, Carl Russell. "Carl Schurz-The American," Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 12, no. 4 (June 1929), pp. 346–368.
  • Fuess, Claude Moore Carl Schurz, Reformer, (NY, Dodd Mead, 1932)
  • Nagel, Daniel. Von republikanischen Deutschen zu deutsch-amerikanischen Republikanern. Ein Beitrag zum Identitätswandel der deutschen Achtundvierziger in den Vereinigten Staaten 1850-1861. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 2012.
  • Schafer, Joseph. "Carl Schurz, Immigrant Statesman," Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 11, no. 4 (June 1928), pp. 373–394.
  • Schurz, Carl. Intimate Letters of Carl Schurz 1841-1869, Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1928.
  • Trefousse, Hans L. Carl Schurz: A Biography, (1st ed. Knoxville: U. of Tenn. Press, 1982; 2nd ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998)
  • Twain, Mark, "Carl Schurz, Pilot," Harper's Weekly, May 26, 1906.
Diplomatic posts
Preceded by
William Preston
United States Minister to Spain
1861
Succeeded by
Gustav Körner
U.S. Senate
Preceded by
John B. Henderson
U.S. Senator (Class 1) from Missouri
1869–1875
Served alongside: Charles D. Drake, Daniel T. Jewett, Francis Blair, Lewis V. Bogy
Succeeded by
Francis Cockrell
Political offices
Preceded by
Zachariah Chandler
United States Secretary of the Interior
1877–1881
Succeeded by
Samuel J. Kirkwood
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