Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/471

Rh his life extolled him still more after his death as the demigod whose greatness put all his motives and acts above criticism, and whose genius excused all human frailties. Others, still feeling the smart of the disappointment which that fatal 7th of March had given them, would see in him nothing but rare gifts and great opportunities prostituted by vulgar appetites and a selfish ambition. The present generation, remote from the struggles and passions of those days, will be more impartial in its judgment. Looking back upon the time in which he lived, it beholds his statuesque form towering with strange grandeur among his contemporaries—huge in his strength, and huge also in his weaknesses and faults; not, indeed, an originator of policies or measures, but a marvelous expounder of principles, laws and facts, who illumined every topic of public concern he touched with the light of a sovereign intelligence and vast knowledge; who by overpowering argument riveted around the Union unbreakable bonds of Constitutional doctrine; who awakened to new life and animated with invincible vigor the National spirit; who left to his countrymen and to the world invaluable lessons of statesmanship, right and patriotism, in language of grand simplicity and prodigiously forceful clearness; and who might stand as its greatest man in the political history of America had he been a master-character as he was a master-mind. 



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If the proceedings of the annual meeting of the National Civil Service Reform League [at Cincinnati, Dec. 16th and 17th] have come to your notice, you will have observed that your resistance to the urgency of the office-hunters