C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Critical and Biographical Introduction by James Ford Rhodes (1848–1927)
By Carl Schurz (1829–1906)
I
Late in 1861 he returned to the United States, and served with credit as a general in the field. After the war he became a journalist. For a while he was the Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune; then founded a newspaper in Detroit, and later became the editor of a St. Louis journal. In 1869 Missouri sent him to the United States Senate, where his service was both solid and brilliant. He favored universal amnesty to the men of the South; he opposed President Grant’s scheme for the annexation of San Domingo, and was one of the senators and leaders of public opinion who gave expression to the profound disappointment and dissatisfaction of many Republicans with the general drift of Grant’s administration. Thus he became more than any other one man the head and front of the movement of Liberal Republicans of 1872, whose convention at Cincinnati, under the influence of some manipulation and a wave of curious enthusiasm, nominated Horace Greeley for President. Schurz’s choice was Charles Francis Adams, who represented logically the opposition to Grant, and whose candidature, whether defeat or victory came, would have been dignified, and might have laid the foundations for a new party capable of enduring good.
During the financial crisis of 1873, the popular remedy for the distress, which had able and powerful advocates in Congress, was the issue of more greenbacks. Schurz fought in the Senate a bill providing for such an inflation of the currency. In 1875 the contest was transferred to Ohio. Meanwhile the Republicans in Congress had committed themselves to the resumption of specie payments; and Hayes, who was nominated for governor of Ohio, advocated unequivocally the doctrine of sound money. The Democrats put forward William Allen, and demanded that “the volume of currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade,”—a declaration satisfactory to the generality of Democrats, and to many Republicans in financial straits. Then ensued a wholesome and momentous canvass. Schurz was called from a well-earned rest in Switzerland to take part in it. He spoke constantly all over the State in English and in German; with a power never before equaled, I think, of placing cogently before men who labored with their hands, the elementary truths of sound finance. It is unquestionably true that Schurz’s and John Sherman’s speeches, their campaign of education, carried the State for the Republicans; though so hard fought was the contest that Hayes’s plurality was but 5,544. That Ohio election made Hayes President, and Schurz Secretary of the Interior. As Secretary he served with honor, and he had an opportunity to put into practice his principles of reform in the civil service. He supported Cleveland in 1884, 1888, and 1892. In 1896 he canvassed the principal cities of the middle West; opposing the election of Bryan, speaking for sound finance in this great educational campaign as he had spoken in 1875, and being so persuasive a teacher that the sagacious chairman of the Republican National Committee distributed 1,500,000 pamphlet copies of his principal speech, besides a large quantity of so-called “Schurz Nuggets.”
Such is a brief account of an active life. With George William Curtis, Mr. Schurz stands as the representative of the Independent in politics. No other man in this country, outside of a few who hold high office, has the political influence which he possesses. Wherever intelligent business men, college professors, advanced students, and political reformers gather together, there will you find the seed germinating which through many years and under different party banners he has sown. The eagerness with which his work on the stump is at different times sought for alike by Republican and Democratic campaign managers, is proof of his large influence with the mass of voters. Many well-meaning men accuse him of inconsistency, for the reason that he has changed so frequently his party associations; but if consistency means adherence through the years to the same principles, he may challenge comparison on this ground with the strongest partisan in the land. He has also been accused of unsteadiness, from his frequent change of residence and occupation. We all know the benefit of attachment to family and location, which we see so clearly in Virginia and Massachusetts: such a feeling causes men to take root in the soil, and redounds to the safety of the State. But in our great republic, there is room for the cosmopolitan, for the citizen who has no attachment to any State, whose love is for the nation. Mr. Schurz, while pre-eminently a citizen of the world in society, literature, and art, is as true an American as any man born on American soil.
It is a remark of Bagehot that the men who know most, rarely have the time or the training to write books. Let it be noted then in the calendar, when a man of Mr. Schurz’s varied life becomes a distinguished member of the republic of letters. His ‘Life of Henry Clay’ is one of the best biographies ever written. The view is purely objective. He had no manuscript material, no imprinted private letters which would of themselves present his hero in a new light. His material was books and speeches accessible to every one. The merit of the biography lies in the thorough assimilation of the facts, the power of telling a story, the bringing to bear upon the subject the wealth of his experiences, and the fusion of the whole into a form grateful to literary art. It seemed strange perhaps that the editor of the ‘American Statesmen’ series selected him who was a strenuous advocate of a tariff for revenue only, to write the life of Clay, the father of the principle of protection to home industries. But John T. Morse, Jr., the editor, chose wisely. Mr. Schurz treats the tariff question and Clay’s relation to it with absolute candor. In truth, had he been in public life contemporary with Clay, he would probably have taken the opposite side, on nearly every public question, from his hero; yet such is his impartiality and sympathy that all who read the book must end it with loving Henry Clay. The historical part is of great value, and I question whether one who had not been Senator and Cabinet minister could have given to it such animation.
Mr. Schurz wrote an essay on Abraham Lincoln, originally published in the Atlantic Monthly. More has been written about Lincoln than about any other man in our history; but our author, by his power of generalization, and his presentment of the orderly unfolding of this great life, has thrown new light on the character and work of the martyr President. To say that the essay is a classic is praise none too high.
After his retirement from public life, Mr. Schurz was one of the editors of the Evening Post, in association with E. L. Godkin and Horace White. On the death of George William Curtis, he became the writer of the leading political article of Harper’s Weekly. At first his contributions appeared unsigned, but in 1897 they began to be printed over his own signature. He discusses, for his audience of several hundred thousand, domestic and foreign politics, with an intelligence, acumen, and incisive literary style that certainly are not surpassed in America or in England. He writes English with accuracy, clearness, and vigor, and is never dull. A French writer has said: “To acquire a few tongues is the task of a few years. To be eloquent in one is the labor of a life.” In language the work of Mr. Schurz is that of two lives, for he is eloquent in both English and German.