The New York Times/1913/6/29/The True Americanism
THE TRUE AMERICANISM.
Attitude and Teachings of Carl Schurz as
Shown in His Letters, Speeches, and in
the Leading Events of His Career
SPEECHES, CORRESPONDENCE AND POLITICAL PAPERS OF CARL SCHURZ. Selected and edited by Frederic Bancroft on behalf of the Carl Schurz Memorial Committee. Vols. I. to VI. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York and London. The Knickerbocker Press. 1913.
IT is probably within bounds to say that no
single man in the last sixty years, with the
exception of Lincoln, had a more effective
influence on popular political action in the United
States than Carl Schurz. This was not due to the
fact that he held high position in the Government,
or in the organization of any party, though
he was a Senator for six years and a member of
the Cabinet for four, and he was always active
in any party that he supported. It was due to the
fact that he early established and firmly
maintained a position of independence of judgment and
of action, and held himself wholly free to follow
the dictates of his conscience and to pursue what
he believed, on mature reflection, to be the best
policy for the public good. Of course this
independence, fine as it was in itself, would have been
of little avail had it not been accompanied, on the
one hand, by generally sound and intelligent judgment
in forming his opinions, and, on the other,
by very great powers in persuading and convincing
the minds of men. Both these he had in an
extraordinary degree, and he exercised both with
an energy, a patient persistence, with an amount
and kind of skill and penetration and a fervor of
advocacy that, on the whole, have not been
surpassed in the political history of our country in
the latter half of the nineteenth century,
momentous as that period was and rich as was its
product of able men.
Mr. Schurz came to the United States in 1852, a lad of 23, with a record of heroic devotion to his own standard of civic duty of which a mature man might be proud. He settled in Wisconsin. Within four years he had mastered the English tongue, studied law, been admitted to the bar, and had undertaken an active part in the first campaign of the Republican Party against the extension of slavery, a part so active that the leaders of the party credited him with a large share in the progress made in the Western States. Within the next four years he had attained an influence in the councils of the party and with the voters, especially the Germans, that made his rôle in the struggle of 1860 extremely important and, in the reckoning of shrewd observers, well-nigh decisive. During the trying period preceding Lincoln's inauguration he strongly opposed the various schemes of compromise and was in frequent conference with the President-elect and the Republican leaders. During the far more trying period of the war he was at times a too severe critic of the Administration, but the mutually confiding relations between him and Lincoln were never broken.
Mr. Schurz's report, made by the request of President Johnson, on conditions in the South in 1865 undoubtedly was the basis of the reconstruction policy adopted by Congress, so far as the impression made on the country was concerned, but that policy was far more severe than he could approve. During his term as Senator from Missouri, he steadily pressed the enactment of general amnesty and of impartial conditional suffrage. He was deeply outraged by the corruption and demoralization that crept into the Government, and opposed with untiring energy the reign of the spoils system and the extension, sometimes amounting to usurpation, of the executive power by President Grant. In 1872, with much hesitation, the grounds of which he frankly stated, he supported Greeley against Grant, and, though the immediate result was a crushing defeat, the ultimate outcome was the reversal of Republican control in Congress and the election, in the person of Mr. Hayes, of an upright and determined enemy of the spoils system and of the generally bad influences that had undermined honest administration. Entering the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior, he applied, for the first time in the history of any department, the strict principles of the merit system and gave to them the immense advantage of a wholly successful practical test.
As early as 1869 Mr. Schurz showed that he understood the grave peril involved in paper money and in the mad tendency toward inflation that was already manifesting itself. From that time until the substantial triumph of sound money in the election of 1896, and during the revival of the inflation spirit in the second term of Cleveland, he devoted his efforts with the utmost fidelity to the exposure of inflation fallacies and the exposition of the basic principles of sound currency. It was, perhaps, the greatest service he rendered to his country. For this scholarly statesman, this idealist in politics, this campaign orator, brought to this difficult task resources of a sort that no other public man of his time, so far as we are aware, could command. His sure, broad generalization, his acute and penetrating analysis, his wide knowledge of history, and especially his wonderful aptitude in applying general truths to concrete and familiar facts, made his addresses on this subject singularly effective. He had, moreover, more than any other man of his time, the gift of presenting the moral issue involved in his argument. Indeed, all his argument, on whatever subject, was saturated with the ethical spirit.
We have pointed out that Mr. Schurz contributed substantially to the surprising strength shown by the Republican Party in 1856, and still more so to the success of the party in 1860. He may be said to have determined the election of Hayes in 1872. He was yet to exercise a like influence on the election of Cleveland in 1884 and to bring sorely needed support to McKinley in 1896. On these facts can be rested fairly the opinion we have ventured that no other single man in public life, except Lincoln, exercised so effective an influence on popular political action during the fifty years of his career. We have mentioned his untiring labors in the cause of honest finances as the greatest service he rendered to his country. Next to that, if not even of greater permanent value, was his work for the merit system in the public service. This, indeed, was but a part of his work for honesty, decency, good sense and fair dealing in all public life. He had learned his first lesson in the insidious and dangerous influence of the spoils system from Lincoln, and his dread and detestation of it grew with every year. He fought it with the determination, the intelligence, and the patience with which he would have fought infection in his home. Not very many men in this day know the extent and the difficulty and the value of his labors in this long contest. They will find these recounted to some extent in the speeches and correspondence under review, but by no means adequately; not that the editor has neglected the matter or viewed it in a defective perspective but Schurz's life was too varied and too rich to permit entire justice to be done to any one branch of it.
The six volumes of speeches and correspondence, with the three volumes of reminiscences, constitute one of the most valuable contributions to American history made in the period covered. They constitute, also, as the memorial committee has justly decided, a proper portion of the memorial with which that committee was charged. They are edited with the candor and absolute respect for the truth which Schurz would have desired and which, amid all the distractions and temptations of a strenuous public-career, he practiced. To our mind, this chapter in American biography and history has its chief value in the shining light it throws on the true nature of Americanism. Schurz, born in Germany, was as truly and wholly an American as any direct descendant of the immigrants of Plymouth or of Jamestown. He fought for America with the same devotion he had shown in battle for what he deemed the essentials of free government in Germany. Not only did he labor with all the rich resources of his extraordinary intellect to maintain what he believed to be the essentials of free government, but he used that intellect with exhaustless patience and with scrupulous honesty to ascertain what those essentials were and exactly in what way the questions of the day were related to them. He was as earnest and laborious in trying to make sure that he was right as he was resolute in pursuing the right as he finally saw it.
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