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Schurz

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

CARL, an American statesman; born in Liblar, near Cologne, Prus- , 1829; he was a student at sia, March 2 CARL SCHURZ Bonn in 1847-1848. In the early part of 1848 he participated in the revolutionary movements in the Palatinate and at Baden, and on the defeat of the insurrection fled to Switzerland to escape arrest. SCHÜTT, two islands in the river Danube. They are situated in Hungary , partly in the districts of Komorn and Pressburg. GREAT SCHÜTT ISLAND is 58 miles long and from 10 to 20 miles wide, LITTLE SCHÜTT and is fertile, being called the Golden Garden of Hungary. ISLAND is 28 miles borders the former on the south and the latter on the north. About 1852 he came to the United States, and settled in Madison, Wis. He soon identified himself with the Republican party. He advocated the election of Frémont in 1856 by public speeches in the German language. He afterward made political speeches in English , and achieved a high reputation as an orator. In 1860 he addressed the people of various States advocating the election of Abraham Lincoln. In 1861 he was appointed minister to Spain, but when the Civil War broke out he resigned that he might ght return and join the Union army. He took part in the second battle of Bull Run, and commanded a division at Chancellorsville, May, 1863, and a corps at Gettysburg, July 1-3 of that year. He resigned from the army in 1865, and in 1866 became editor of the Detroit " Post." In 1868 he went to St. Louis, and in 1869 was elected United States Senator from Missouri. He supported Mr. Greeley for President in 1872, and Mr. Hayes in 1876, and was Secretary of the Interior , under the latter, from 1877 to 1881. In 1881-1884 he was editor of the New York "Evening Post," and was conspicuous in the "Mugwump" movement of 1884. In 1892 he became president of the National Civil Service Reform League. He afterward wrote several books, among them a "Life of Henry Clay." He died May 14, 1906.

What Has Changed in the Last Century

The bare facts of Carl Schurz's life were settled long before Collier's set them down in 1921, and the outline here — Liblar 1829, the 1848 risings, Madison, Gettysburg, the Senate, Hayes's Interior Department, the Evening Post, death in 1906 — still stands. What has moved is the judgement. Collier's lists his term as Secretary of the Interior, 1877-1881, without comment; historians now weigh it against the forced assimilation policy of those years, including the Carlisle Indian Industrial School founded in 1879 and the Ponca removal that made Schurz the target of Helen Hunt Jackson and the Standing Bear campaign. Equally, the entry omits his late anti-imperialism — his loud opposition to annexing the Philippines after 1898 — which is now among the things he is best remembered for, along with his 1872 line "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; if wrong, to be set right." (The stray paragraph on the Schütt islands is a printing accident; and Great Schütt, which Collier's places in Hungary, had already passed to Czechoslovakia in 1920 and is today Slovakia's Žitný ostrov.)

Written for this edition, 2026.