Table Of Content

THE REMINISCENCES O F CARL SCHURZ VOLUME ONE 1829-1852 ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS AND ORIGINAL DRAWINGS NEW YORK THE McCLURE COMPANY MCM VII , ^ / Copyright 19079 by The McClure Company Published, October, 1907 Copyright 1906, 1907, by Carl L. Schurz. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE in 1,906 .Frontispiece sen and Frau Jussen.12 iurz, Father op Carl Sciiurz—Born 1796, Died 1876 ... 22 diiurz—Born 1798, Died 1877 .24 ? Bonn and Rathaus at Bonn. 92 rED Kinjcel.98 [LLIAM III.104 [LLIAM IV AND LoUIB PlIILIPPE.118 ion in Berlin, 1848.122 at Nineteen . . •.128 .170 as a Student.196 EDEMANN AND HeNSEL.204 Officer, under a Flag op Truce, with a Summons to Surrender” 212 :nkel in Chains.246 mc the painting by Edouard Dubufe.278 DEEPER AT SpANDAU AND HERR LeDDIHN.286 APE.310 Portrait op Schukz.338 [NKEL AND CARL ScHURZ.374 and His Wife.402 DHE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ CHAPTER I NY years ago I began at the desire of my children to down what follows. In the domestic circle, partly from f and partly from relatives and old friends, they had much about the surroundings and conditions in which I rown up, as well as about the strange and stirring adven- f my youth, and they asked me to put that which they ;ard, and as much more of the same kind as I could give into the shape of a connected narrative which they might is a family memorial. This I did, without originally con- ating a general publication. ’he circumstance that this narrative was first intended ’or a small number of persons who might be assumed to i special interest in everything concerning the subject, explain the breadth and copiousness of detail in the ptions of situations and events, which perhaps will occa- ly try the reader’s patience. To soften his judgment he L imagine an old man telling the story of his life to a of intimates who constantly interrupt him with questions this and that of which they wish to know more, thus g him to expand his tale. Lowever, I have to confess also that while I was writing, arm of story-telling, the joy of literary production, came ae, and no doubt seduced me into diffusenesses which I isk the kind reader to pardon. Fntil recently it was my intent not to publish these remi- ces during my lifetime, but to leave it to my children to [ ] 8 THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ decide after my death how much of them should be given to the general reading public. It appeared to me that such a publi¬ cation during the lifetime of the author might easily acquire the character of self-advertisement, especially in the case of a man who had been active in public life, and might, perhaps, continue to be so. But after ample consultation with judicious friends I have concluded that in consideration of my advanced age and of my retirement, which manifestly exclude all political ambition, I could not be suspected of such designs. It is hardly necessary to say that in telling the story of my youth I had to depend largely upon memory. I am well aware that memory not seldom plays treacherous pranks with us in making us believe that we have actually witnessed things which we have only heard spoken of, or which have only vividly occupied our imagination. Of this I have myself had some strange experiences. I have therefore been careful not to trust my own recollections too much, but, whenever possible, to com¬ pare them with the recollections of relatives or friends, and to consult old letters and contemporary publications concerning the occurrences to he described. It may be indeed that in spite of such precautions some errors have slipped into my narrative, but I venture to hope that they are few and not important. When I began to write these reminiscences of my youth, I attempted to do so in English; but as I proceeded I became conscious of not being myself satisfied with the work; and it occurred to me that I might describe things that happened in Germany, among Germans, and under German conditions, with greater ease, freedom, and fullness of expression if I used the German language as a medium. I did so, and thus this story of my youth was originally written in German. It was translated by my friend, Mrs. Eleonora Kinnicutt, and I [ ] 4 THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ cannot too strongly express my obligation to her, who not only did for me the more or less dry work of turning German phrases into English, hut was in a large sense my eoworker, aiding me throughout with most valuable counsel as to the tone of the narrative, and as to passages to be shortened or struck out, and others to he more amply elaborated. I was born in a castle. This, however, does not mean that I am of aristocratic ancestry. My father was, at the time of my birth, a schoolmaster in Liblar, a village of about eight hundred inhabitants, on the left bank of the Rhine, three hours’ walk from Cologne. His native place was Duisdorf, near Bonn. Losing his parents in early childhood, he was adopted into the home of his grandfather, a man belonging to the peasant class, who possessed a small holding of land upon which he raised some grain, potatoes and a little wine. Thus my father grew up a true peasant boy. At the period of his birth, in 1797, the left bank of the Rhine was in the possession of the French Republic. The years of my father’s youth thus fell in what the Rhine folk called “ The French Time,” and later in life he had much to tell me of those stirring days; how he had seen the great Napoleon, before the Russian campaign, passing in review a body of troops in the neighborhood of Bonn; how, in the autumn of 1813, the French army, after the battle of Leipzig, defeated and shattered, had come back to the Rhine; how, while standing in the market-place at Bonn, he had seen General Sebastiani dash out of his headquarters in the “ Hotel Zum Stern,” leap upon his horse and gallop around with his staff, the trumpeters sounding the alarm and the drums beating the long roll, be¬ cause of the news that a band of .Cossacks had crossed the Rhine between Bonn and Coblenz; how the French troops, stationed [ ] 5