The New York Times/1899/3/3/Carl Schurz

CARL SCHURZ.

The honor paid to Mr. Schurz in this city last evening on his seventieth birthday must not be taken as marking the close of his career. Nothing in his physical or metal bearing indicates that, and and we may hope from him yet much useful service. The demonstration only testifies to the extreme value of that he has already rendered.

The eminence of Mr. Schurz lies in the work he has done as a citizen, the standard he has maintained, the influence he has exerted upon his fellow-citizens. He has held offices of trust and honor, and performed their duties with high indelligence and entire fidelity. As Minister at Madrid, as a brigade commander in the war for the Union, as Senator from Missouri, as Secretary of the Interior in the Cabinet of Mr. Hayes, his service was in every case creditable, but the total would come far short of winning the profound respect, the enlightened gratitude of his countrymen, of which the tribute last evening was a brilliant but partial manifestation.

There are three great questions in the life of the Republic during the last forty years in the discussion of which the influence of Mr. Schurz has been very important, and, so far as the influence of one can be, may fairly be regarded as having been decisive. The first is the question of slavery. In the contest over this, culminating in the election of Lincoln, the labors of Mr. Schurz in the Northwest, where they were constant, and where the German element was so strong as to be the deciding force, were recognized by the leaders of the Republican Party as indispensable to the great victory. He was second only to Lincoln himself in penetration, in insight, in grasp of the essentials of the mighty debate, and in the vigor, clearness, and persuasiveness of his popular argument and appeal. It is a matter of history now, and few men living realize the tremendous difficulties and anxious vicissitudes of that conflict of free thought and free speech with the organized interests and prejudices and passions of the slave power. To those who took part in it, and shared its toils and dangers, the figure of the gallant young German-American, always in the van where the fight was hottest, courageous, cool, confident, and incessantly active, remains as a glorious and inspiring memory.

The second question as to which the influence of Mr. Schurz has been of great effect is that of sound finance. To this he brought the firmness and mastery gained by wide and intimate knowledge of the history of our own and of other nations. When, in 1875, he led in the fight for honest money in Ohio — the first serious engagement of the long struggle, in which defeat would have been disastrous — he laid down the principles that have slowly been gaining ground ever since, and by which each new advance has been guided. His work twenty years later, in the great discussion of 1896, was but the development and application of the same fundamental truths. It is a striking illustration of the plane on which the mind of Mr. Schurz works that the powerful addresses of which millions of copies were issued in that campaign discussed neither parties nor candidates, but were devoted to the policies proposed and the principles by which they should be judged. His was wholly an appeal to reason and conscience.

The third question to which we have alluded, as to which the influence of Mr. Schurz has been peculiarly powerful, is one that is always with us. We shall venture to call it the question of civic conscience, the right and duty of every citizen to act on the issues of the day as he “sees the right,” to use the undying words of Lincoln, without regard to the party ties that he may previously have formed. In the exercise of this right and in the performance of this duty, Mr. Schurz has made many changes in party associations, and in some of the most important of them The Times has not been able to agree with him. In some it has felt obliged very vigorously to oppose him. But we hold it far more important that a man in a free country shall be guided by his own conscience and his intelligence than that he shall always be on the side that in the end turns out to be the better. It is by such action and by the free discussion that must go with it that the course of public affairs is determined on the whole for the best. If party association is treated as a means to an end and not as an end in itself, it must be changed when in the deliberate judgment of the citizen it ceases to serve that end. If it is not to be so treated, the party passes from the control of the conscience and intelligence of its members and becomes an instrument for selfish and unworthy purposes. Against the hastening ills to which this use of party would make the land a prey, Mr. Schurz has opposed the influence of his rare powers and his high character. It is the immense service that he has thus rendered that was recognized, and justly recognized, by those who have agreed and those who have differed with him, in the tribute paid to him last evening.

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