37 Facts About Carl Schurz

1.

Carl Schurz was a German revolutionary and an American statesman, journalist, and reformer.

2.

Carl Schurz became a strong advocate for the anti-slavery movement and joined the newly organized Republican Party, unsuccessfully running for Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin.

3.

Carl Schurz chaired the 1872 Liberal Republican convention, which nominated a ticket that unsuccessfully challenged President Grant in the 1872 presidential election.

4.

Carl Schurz lost his own 1874 re-election bid and resumed his career as a newspaper editor.

5.

Carl Schurz was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1878.

6.

Carl Schurz sought to make civil service based on merit rather than political and party connections and helped prevent the transfer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the War Department.

7.

Carl Schurz moved to New York City after Hayes left office in 1881 and briefly served as the editor of the New York Evening Post and The Nation and later became the editorial writer for Harper's Weekly.

8.

Carl Schurz remained active in politics and led the "Mugwump" movement, which opposed nominating James G Blaine in the 1884 presidential election.

9.

Carl Schurz opposed William Jennings Bryan's bimetallism in the 1896 presidential election but supported Bryan's anti-imperialist campaign in the 1900 presidential election.

10.

Carl Christian Schurz was born on March 2,1829, in Liblar, in Rhenish Prussia, the son of Marianne, a public speaker and journalist, and Christian Schurz, a schoolteacher.

11.

Carl Schurz studied at the Jesuit Gymnasium of Cologne, and learned piano under private instructors.

12.

Carl Schurz joined the nationalistic Studentenverbindung Burschenschaft Franconia at Bonn, which at the time included among its members Friedrich von Spielhagen, Johannes Overbeck, Julius Schmidt, Carl Otto Weber, Ludwig Meyer and Adolf Strodtmann.

13.

Carl Schurz was adjunct officer of the commander of the artillery, Fritz Anneke, who was accompanied on the campaign by his wife, Mathilde Franziska Anneke.

14.

Carl Schurz then went to Paris, but the police forced him to leave France on the eve of the coup d'etat of 1851, and he migrated to London.

15.

In Wisconsin, Carl Schurz soon became immersed in the anti-slavery movement and in politics, joining the Republican Party.

16.

In 1858, Carl Schurz was admitted to the Wisconsin bar and began to practice law in Milwaukee.

17.

Carl Schurz briefly returned to active service, where in the last months of the war he was with Sherman's army in North Carolina as chief of staff of Henry Slocum's Army of Georgia.

18.

Carl Schurz resigned from the army after the war ended in April 1865.

19.

Carl Schurz delivered a report to the US Senate documenting conditions in the South which concluded that Reconstruction had succeeded in restoring the basic functioning of government but failed in restoring the loyalty of the people and protecting the rights of the newly legally emancipated who were still considered the slaves of society.

20.

In 1866, Carl Schurz moved to Detroit, where he was chief editor of the Detroit Post.

21.

Carl Schurz earned a reputation for his speeches, which advocated fiscal responsibility, anti-imperialism, and integrity in government.

22.

Carl Schurz was identified with the committee's investigation of arms sales to and cartridge manufacture for the French army by the United States government during the Franco-Prussian War.

23.

In 1870, Schurz helped form the Liberal Republican Party, which opposed President Ulysses S Grant's annexation of Santo Domingo and his use of the military to destroy the Ku Klux Klan in the South under the Enforcement Acts.

24.

Carl Schurz lost the 1874 Senatorial election to Democratic Party challenger and former Confederate Francis Cockrell.

25.

In 1877, Carl Schurz was appointed United States Secretary of the Interior by Hayes, who had been by then been elected President of the United States.

26.

Promises made to Indian chiefs at White House meetings with President Rutherford B Hayes and Schurz were often broken.

27.

Carl Schurz was not in favor of permitting removals except for cause, and supported requiring competitive examinations for candidates for clerkships.

28.

Carl Schurz left the Post in the autumn of 1883 because of differences over editorial policies regarding corporations and their employees.

29.

Carl Schurz succeeded Curtis as editorial writer for Harper's Weekly in 1892 and held this position until 1898.

30.

Carl Schurz opposed William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896, speaking for sound money and not under the auspices of the Republican party; he supported Bryan four years later because of anti-imperialism beliefs, which led to his membership in the American Anti-Imperialist League.

31.

Carl Schurz lived in a summer cottage in Northwest Bay on Lake George, New York which was built by his good friend Abraham Jacobi.

32.

Carl Schurz died at age 77 on May 14,1906, in New York City, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, New York.

33.

Carl Schurz was portrayed by Edward G Robinson as a friend of the surviving Cheyenne Indians in John Ford's 1964 film Cheyenne Autumn.

34.

Carl Schurz published a volume of speeches, a two-volume biography of Henry Clay, essays on Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner, and his Reminiscences.

35.

Carl Schurz was a member of the Literary Society of Washington from 1879 to 1880.

36.

Carl Schurz is commemorated in numerous places around the United States:.

37.

Carl Schurz is depicted as a carpetbagger - November 9,1872.