Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/321

Rh their idealism, even if they did succumb in the struggle. It has been our fate—a not uncommon fate—to see the seed sown by us bloom and ripen otherwise than we had hoped. The unprejudiced know full well and recognize the fact, that without the national spirit awakened by the commotions of 1848, the great national development which later created the great German Empire would not have been possible.

Thus have many things for which we then strove, although in unforeseen fashion, since become realities; and many others, still more nearly approaching our ideals, will doubtless become realities in the future. Truly, the men of 1848, who fought for high ends, have not fought in vain.

And among those fighters I saw—it is now fifty-three years since—Franz Sigel as one of the leaders on the field. He was in the very bloom of youth. His liberal sentiments had driven him to abandon his lieutenant's place in the regular army, and with all the ardor of his nature he had thrown himself into the movement for national unity and free government. In spite of his youth his recognized military ability soon lifted him to high places of command—and even to the highest, when all hope of victory was gone. With the most praiseworthy self-sacrifice he undertook to lead his hopeless battalions, pressed on all sides by the victorious enemy, to a place of security on foreign soil; and the defeat of his cause left to him the name of a faithful, brave and uncommonly able soldier.

One of the German Forty-eighters, he came to America, not merely to seek for himself as a fugitive a place of refuge, but also because, with many others, he hoped to find here the realization of the ideals which in the old world had inspired him to fight for nationality and freedom. But few years elapsed when the peril of the Republic, brought on by the secession of the slave States, again put the sword in his hand. And that sword he wielded