Page:Addresses in Memory of Carl Schurz.pdf/29

 in form and rational in substance. He could be severe, but he was never vituperative; bold, but never reckless; he was always firm, with a strength based on full inquiry and knowledge. On every subject which he treated before the public he took the utmost pains to be well informed, to acquaint himself with his adversaries' opinions and feelings, and to be prepared alike for direct advocacy and for rebuttal.

At twenty-seven years of age he was already making political speeches in German―speeches which contributed to carrying Wisconsin for Fremont. He was not thirty years old when he made his first political speech in English. He contributed to the first election of Lincoln by many speeches in German and in English―a service which brought him at thirty-two years of age the appointment as Minister to Spain. After his three years service in the army during the civil war he returned for a time to the calling of his youth―writing for the daily press, both in German and English, an occupation in which his gifts had full play. A new theatre for his oratorical powers was opened to him when he took his seat in the Senate of the United States in March, 1869, as Senator from Missouri. Here he proved his readiness as a debater as well as his power as an orator. Debate often brings out a fine quality which the oratorical monologue does not develop―namely, fairness combined with aggressiveness. The most persuasive debater is always the fairest debater, because the listener who is not already a partisan is only too apt to be unreasonably repelled from the side which manifests unfairness, and to be sympathetically attracted toward the other side. The ordinary defects of American speaking―bombast, excess in simile and metaphor, exaggeration, and playing to the gallery―Carl Schurz invariably shunned. His oratory was always high-minded and dignified, although it ranged through all human moods, and could be either forcible or gentle, plain and calm, or dramatic and passionate.

Schurz was always a leader of the people, because he was an independent thinker and a student, and because he himself faithfully followed ideals which had not yet become the ideals of the masses. In how true a sense he was a pioneer we shall