The New York Times/1906/5/15/Carl Schurz (obituary comment)

CARL SCHURZ.

Carl Schurz was a born lover of liberty. Heine spoke of himself as a “soldier in the war of liberation,” but that was the liberation of the mind, the enfranchisement of thought and utterance. Mr. Schurz contended for the liberty to live, to have, and to enjoy, for civil freedom under equal laws. He had, too, the courage to fight for the beliefs that were in him. But for the accident of having been born before destiny had struck the hour for a successful war of liberation in Prussia, it can hardly be doubted that his life would have been passed in struggles and triumphs and constructive statesmanship in his native land. It was not so to be. Not even his high soul and youthful ardor, fired as he was by the courage to dare everything, could make headway either in disturbing the dull content of the mass of his countrymen or in getting a sense of the rights of man into the dense heads of his country's rulers. In Prussia, he would have beat out his brains against the immense, immovable weight of autocracy, just as Matthew Arnold said Byron would have beat his out against the beetling cliffs of British Philistinism — and the world would have been no better for it. The cause of freedom was even more desperate and hopeless in Bonn and Berlin in 1847 than it is to-day in Russia. Political conditions and the disposition of the Sovereign were indeed what we now witness in St. Petersburg. Frederick William IV., addressing the United Diet which he had convoked, declared that “the Crown must reign and govern according to the laws of God and of the country, and according to the King's own resolutions.” Nothing but compelling force can let the light of heaven in upon a mind set in that mold and wandering in that dense darkness. Moreover, the hot fever of unrest that burned in the bosom of Schurz and the other revolutionists left the Prussian mass cold and unmoved. Finally, when Louis Napoleon had played to its end the game of republican Government with which he had tricked the French people, the pall of reaction settled down over Europe again, and the fires of revolution were everywhere quenched. Then young Schurz came to America.

In the half century and more of his life in the United States Mr. Schurz has been not only the most conspicuous figure among Americans of German birth, but he has been one of the chief of our American statesmen. He was in truth of statesmanlike capacity and amplitude. His part in our public affairs during the last half century has been large, helpful, and creative. Taking into account the frequency and the volume of his public utterances, especially from 1856 to the year 1900, we must conclude that his influence in shaping and guiding public opinion has been immeasurable. The good he did lives after him and will be a continuing force in our National life, unconsciously moving the minds of men long after all personal recollection of his exhortations and of his ideals has faded. His work here was not the task he had set himself to do in Prussia, but the principles that impelled and controlled him were the same. He had an unconquerable propensity for the right side in morals and in politics. It was born in him that he should fight for the liberation of the slave; it was inevitable that he should enter with all the abilities of his mind and all the sincerity of his heart into the struggle for the reform of the civil service; that he should strive against the tendency to political degeneration that became so marked during the two Administrations of President Grant was predestined; his clear mind and his instinctive rejection of whatever was unsound in principle and practice made him an effective advocate of a sound currency — it could not have been otherwise. In the Senate and in campaign oratory he was at his best, he was in his very element; there he was engaged in labors that delighted his soul and for which his mind was preëminently equipped. Wide historical knowledge, an acquaintance with the literatures of several tongues, a profound understanding of political institutions, and a skilled aptitude for clear and effective presentation made him one of the great public speakers of his time. There was no trumpery in his utterances, no tricks either of the demagogue or of the rhetorician. The speech that opened the Mugwump campaign against Mr. Blaine in 1884, made by Mr. Schurz in Brooklyn, was undoubtedly the most effective and convincing argument made in any Presidential campaign since 1860. It was a speech that made votes.

Mr. Schurz once said that he had never known the American people to go wrong upon a moral issue that had once been made plain to their understanding. We have no doubt he felt in his later years that they had failed him in respect to anti-imperialism, a cause of which he was a devoted adherent. There he misjudged a question of National duty and international responsibility. That the people did not go with him simply enforced his own view of their sure judgment upon questions of right that had been made clear to them. But even this controversy in which Mr. Schurz took extreme ground served to illustrate some of the inborn qualities of his extraordinary mind. Mr. Schurz was always best and strongest in opposition. But for the sound work he found to do in reforming the administration of the public lands and the Indian Bureau and in cudgeling off the spoilsmen, we have no doubt that the four years during which he was Secretary of the Interior would have been among the most uncomfortable of his life. He was not by habit, temper, or liking designed and indicated to be a part of any President's Administration. The large freedom and open field of the private station suited him better.

His fellow-citizens of German blood have a right to be proud of his career. We are all proud of it. He had adorned American public life, he has been a faithful guide and instructor of American public opinion. We are a better people for his having lived and toiled among us. The Nation mourns his death, and its respect will follow him to the grave.

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