Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/66

42 The first dates back to my childhood, when I went to school in my native village in the Rhineland. One winter evening my father showed me in an illustrated work a portrait of George Washington, and read with me the short biography which accompanied it. He explained to me why he thought that George Washington was one of the noblest, wisest and greatest men that had ever lived. From that conversation I drew my first conception of what a true patriot was, and that conception I have never lost. From that time I read everything about George Washington that I could find, and my admiration of that great man deepened as I read on, and it is now deeper than ever. When later I read about the history and the institutions of the United States, and began to understand what a modern Republic was, I remember that two things greatly startled me. One was, that in a republic, the embodiment of human freedom, there should be human beings held in slavery; and the other was, that in a republic, where citizens were presumed to govern themselves intelligently, all the postmasters in the land were changed whenever a new President came in. This seemed to me so utterly absurd, that for a long time I absolutely refused to believe it, until finally I found it, and more of the same kind, to be actually true. I was eventually to learn more about it.

About four years after those melancholy cogitations on that bench in Union Square, I found myself as an active private in the ranks of that great host of anti-slavery men, who, obeying an overpowering moral impulse, strove to deliver the Republic of the baneful anachronism. Then came service on various fields on which I could join efforts for the advancement of principles and methods of good government and of sound lines of policy. There was here no danger of dungeons or exile for the frankest expression of opinion, or even for the