Page:Visit of the Hon. Carl Schurz to Boston, March 1881.pdf/68

Rh dent of all political science from the start, and not forced to cram for some new question or current of opinion; matching senators in debate, and instructing with marvellous skill popular audiences on abstruse subjects of political economy; and, with all this, energetic and practical in the management of public business?

There is not time this evening to review in detail the services of Mr. Schurz on the platform, in the field, the senate, and the cabinet; but some leading points in his career may be recalled. In 1858 he was active in the senatorial canvass in Illinois which gave Mr. Lincoln a national reputation, and led to his nomination two years later for the Presidency; and in the same year he aided effectively in a Republican success in Wisconsin. No man in 1860 did so much as he to carry the German vote,—a vote which was essential to Mr. Lincoln's election; and in that most important canvass of our history he was the peer, before audiences of English-speaking citizens, of Seward, Sumner, and Chase. In our civil war, months before the issue of the proclamation of emancipation, at a time when our Government disowned an Antislavery policy, he sought a discharge from our diplomatic service in Spain, unwilling to remain longer a distant spectator of the struggle; and on his return he forecasted the future in his remarkable speech in March, 1862, at the Cooper Institute, entitled “Reconciliation by Emancipation,”—maintaining that a mere victory of arms would