# The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (book)/Volume Two/Chapter 1

CHAPTER I
ON the 17th of September, 1852, my young wife and I entered the harbor of New York on board the fine packet-ship “City of London” after a voyage of twenty-eight days. There were at that period steamers—although only a few of them—regularly running between England and the United States. But a friend of ours who had visited this country several times had told us that a good, large sailing-ship was safer than a steamer, and more comfortable to persons liable to seasickness. Thus persuaded, we chose the packet “City of London,” a fine ship of about two thousand tons, magnificent to look at. And we did not repent of our choice. Our stateroom was large and commodious, the captain, although a thoroughly sea-bred man, polite and attentive, the table not bad, and the traveling company agreeable. There were several hundred emigrants in the steerage, but only about twenty passengers in the cabin, among them a Yale professor and several New York merchants. I was not yet able to converse in English; but as the Yale professor spoke some German, and two or three of the New York merchants some French, there was amusing and instructive entertainment enough.
Having determined to make the United States my permanent home, I was resolved to look at everything from the brightest side, and not to permit myself to be discouraged by any disappointment.
CARL SCHURZ
From a photograph made shortly after his arrival in America
​ I knew that my buoyant Rhenish blood would help me much. But I was not so sure as to whether my young wife, whose temperament was not so sanguine as mine and who had ​grown up in easier conditions and in constant contact with sympathetic people, would be able as readily and cheerfully as I to accept the vicissitudes of life in a new country and a strange social atmosphere. But we were young—I twenty-three years old, and my wife eighteen—and much might be hoped from the adaptability of youth. Still, I was anxious that the first impression of the new country should be bright and inspiring to her. And that wish was at once gratified in the highest degree. The day on which we arrived in New York harbor could not have been more glorious. The bay and the islands surrounding it were radiant with sunlit splendor. When we beheld this spectacle, so surprisingly entrancing after a four-weeks' journey over the waste of waters, our hearts fairly leaped with joy. We felt as if we were entering, through this gorgeous portal, a world of peace and happiness.
NEW YORK CITY IN 1854
​ As we skirted the shore of Staten Island, with its fine country houses and green lawns and massive clumps of shade trees, a delightful picture of comfort and contentment—Staten Island was then still a favorite summering place—I asked one of my fellow-passengers what kind of people lived in those charming dwellings. “Rich New Yorkers,” said he. “And how much must a man have to be called a rich New Yorker?” I asked. “Well,” he answered, “a man who has something like $150,000 or $200,000 or an assured income of $10,000 or $12,000 would be considered wealthy. Of course, there are men who have more than that—as much as a million or two, or even more.” “Are there many such in New York?” “Oh, no, not many; perhaps a dozen. But the number of people who might be called ‘well to do’ is large.” “And are there many poor people in New York?” “Yes, some; mostly new-comers, I think. But what is called poverty here would, in many cases, hardly be called poverty in London or Paris. There are ​scarcely any hopelessly poor here. It is generally thought here that nobody need be poor.”
In the changing course of time I have often remembered this conversation.
It was not easy to find a place of rest for our first night in the New World. We had heard of the Astor House as the best hostelry in New York. But the Astor House was full to overflowing, and so our carriage had laboriously to work its way from hotel to hotel, through the confusion of omnibuses and drays and other vehicles, up the thundering Broadway. But in none of them did we find a vacant room until finally we reached Fourteenth Street, where the Union Square Hotel, which has subsequently been turned into a theater and then into a hotel again, called the Morton House, offered to us a hospitable abode—a very plainly furnished room, but sufficient for our needs.
The recollection of our first dinner at the Union Square Hotel is still vivid in my mind. It was a table d'hôte, if I remember rightly, at five o'clock in the afternoon. Dinner-time was announced by the fierce beating of a gong, an instrument which I heard for the first time on that occasion. The guests then filed into a large, bare dining-room with one long row of tables. Some fifteen or twenty negroes, clad in white jackets, white aprons, and white cotton gloves, stood ready to conduct the guests to their seats, which they did with broad smiles and curiously elaborate bows and foot scrapings. A portly colored head-waiter in a dress coat and white necktie, whose manners were strikingly grand and patronizing, directed their movements. When the guests were seated, the head-waiter struck a loud bell; then the negroes rapidly filed out and soon reappeared carrying large soup tureens covered with bright silver covers. They planted themselves along the table at certain ​intervals, standing for a second motionless. At another clang of their commander's bell they lifted their tureens high up and then deposited them upon the table with a bump that made the chandeliers tremble and came near terrifying the ladies. But this was not the end of the ceremony. The negroes held fast with their right hands to the handles of the silver covers until another stroke of the bell resounded. Then they jerked off the covers, swung them high over their heads, and thus marched off as if carrying away their booty in triumph. So the dinner went on, with several repetitions of such proceedings, the negroes getting all the while more and more enthusiastic and bizarre in their performances. I was told that like customs existed at other hotels, but I have never seen them elsewhere executed with the same perfection as at our first dinner in America. It may well be believed that they then astonished us greatly.
I remember well our first walk to see the town:—the very noisy bustle on the principal streets; the men, old and young, mostly looking serious and preoccupied, and moving on with energetic rapidity; the women also appearing sober-minded and busy, although many of them were clothed in loud colors, red, green, yellow, or blue of a very pronounced glare; the people, although they must have belonged to very different stations in life, looking surprisingly alike in feature and expression as well as habit; no military sentinels at public buildings; no soldiers on the streets; no liveried coachmen or servants; no uniformed officials except the police. We observed huge banners stretched across the street, upon which were inscribed the names of Pierce and King as the Democratic, and Scott and Gorham as the Whig, candidates for the presidency and the vice-presidency—names which at that time had, to me, no meaning, except that they indicated the impending presidential election and the existence of competing political ​parties. As to the American politics of the day, I had received only some vague impressions through my conversations with various persons. My friend Kinkel, who had visited the United States in 1851 in the interest of the revolutionary movement in Europe, had been received by President Fillmore and had described him to me as a “freundlicher und wohlwollender Greis” (an amiable and benevolent old gentleman). Of the political parties he could tell me only that they both seemed to be dominated by the slave-holders, or at least to be afraid of the slavery question, and that most of the Germans in the United States were on the side of the Democrats, because they were attracted by the name of democracy and because they believed that the Democratic party could be more surely depended upon to protect the rights of the foreign-born citizens. The news articles about American politics which I had read in European papers had been, as they mostly have remained to the present day, well-nigh valueless to everyone not personally acquainted with American affairs, and my conversations with my fellow-passengers had given me little light on the then existing situation. It presented itself to me like a dense fog in which I saw shadowy figures indistinctly moving.
We spent two or three days in trying to see what “sights” there were in, the city, and we found that there were none in the line of museums, or picture galleries, or remarkable public or private buildings. Barnum's museum of curiosities, on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, opposite St. Paul's Church, was pointed out to us as a thing really worth seeing. In the shop-windows on Broadway we observed nothing extraordinary. The theaters we could not enjoy because I did not understand English. The busy crowds thronging the streets were always interesting, but strange: not a familiar face among them. A feeling of lonesomeness began to settle upon us.
​Then my young wife fell ill. I called in an old American doctor who lived in the hotel. He seemed to be a man of ability; he certainly was very genial and kind. He knew some French, and thus we could converse. As the illness of my wife became known in the hotel, a spirit of helpfulness manifested itself among the guests, which surprised and touched me deeply—that American helpfulness which was then, and, I trust, is now, one of the finest and most distinguishing characteristics of this people. Gentlemen and ladies, one after another, called upon us to ask whether they could be of any service. Some of the ladies, in fact, now and then relieved me from my watch at my wife's bedside to give me an hour's breathing time in the open air. I then walked up and down or sat on a bench in the little park of Union Square, which was surrounded by a high iron railing. Union Square was, at that period, far “up town.” There were above Fourteenth Street many blocks or clumps of houses with large gaps between them, but, as far as I can remember, no continuous, solidly built-up streets. Madison Square showed many vacant lots, there being a field partly planted with corn and enclosed by a picket fence where the Fifth Avenue Hotel now stands. Wandering circuses used to pitch their tents on that spot. But although far up town, Union Square had its share of noisy bustle.
There, then, in that little park, I had my breathing spells, usually in the dusk of evening. They were among the most melancholy hours of my life. There I was in the great Republic, the idol of my dreams, feeling myself utterly lonesome and forlorn. The future lay before me wrapped in an impenetrable cloud. What I had seen was not so different from Europe as I had vaguely expected, and yet it was strange and mysterious. Would my experiences here realize the ideal I had conceived, or would they destroy it? I had to struggle hard against these ​gloomy musings, and finally I roused myself to the thought that in order to get into sympathy with the busy life I saw around me, I must become active in it, become of it—and that, the sooner the better.
During my wife's illness, which lasted nearly a fortnight, I had exchanged letters with some of my German friends in Philadelphia, especially with my “chum” of former days, Adolph Strodtmann, who had established a small German book-shop there and published a little German weekly paper—Die Locomotive,—and with Dr. Heinrich Tiedemann, a brother of the unfortunate Colonel Tiedemann, the Governor of Rastatt, on whose staff I had served as aide-de-camp during the siege of that fortress. Dr. Tiedemann had settled down in Philadelphia as a physician and was in good practice. My wife and I longed for the face of a friend; and as there was nothing to hold us in New York, we resolved to visit Philadelphia, not with any purpose of permanent settlement, but thinking that it might be a good place for a beginning of systematic study. This it proved to be. We soon found among the recently immigrated Germans, and also among Americans, a sympathetic social intercourse, and with it that cheerfulness of mind which encourages interest in one's surroundings.
My first task was to learn English in the shortest possible time. I have, of late years, frequently had to answer inquiries addressed to me by educators and others concerning the methods by which I acquired such knowledge of the language and such facility in using it as I possess. That method was very simple. I did not use an English grammar. I do not think I ever had one in my library. I resolutely began to read—first my daily newspaper, which happened to be the Philadelphia Ledger. Regularly every day I worked through editorial articles, the news letters and despatches, and even as many of the ​advertisements as my time would allow. The Philadelphia Ledger, which has since become a very excellent, influential, and important organ of public opinion, was at that time a small and ill-printed sheet, rather colorless in politics, which entertained its readers largely with serious editorial dissertations on such innocent subjects as “The Joys of Spring,” “The Beauties of Friendship,” “The Blessings of a Virtuous Life,” and the like—sometimes a little insipid, but usually very respectable in point of style. Then I proceeded to read English novels. The first one I took up was “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Then followed Walter Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray; then Macaulay's historical essays, and, as I thought of preparing myself for the legal profession, Blackstone's “Commentaries,” the clear, terse and vigorous style of which I have always continued to regard as a very great model. Shakespeare's plays, the enormous vocabulary of which presented more difficulties than all the rest, came last. But I did my reading with the utmost conscientiousness. I never permitted myself to skip a word the meaning of which I did not clearly understand, and I never failed to consult the dictionary in every doubtful case.
At the same time I practiced an exercise which I found exceedingly effective. I had become acquainted with the “Letters of Junius” through a German translation, and was greatly fascinated by the brilliancy of this style of political discussion. As soon as I thought myself sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of the language, I procured an English edition of Junius and translated a considerable number of the letters from the English text into German in writing; then I translated, also in writing, my German translation back into English, and finally compared this re-translation with the English original. This was very laborious work, but, so to speak, I felt in my bones how it helped me. Together with my reading, it gave me what ​I might call a sense of the logic and also of the music of the language.
When I began to write in English—letters or other more pretentious compositions—it happened to me not infrequently that in reading over what I had written I stopped at certain forms of expression I had used, doubting whether they were grammatically correct. I then sometimes tried to substitute other forms; but almost invariably I found, upon consulting competent authority, that the phrase as I had, following my instinct, originally put it down, was better than the substitute. In less than six months after I had begun this course of study I was sufficiently advanced to carry on a conversation in English about subjects not requiring a wide knowledge of technical terms, with tolerable ease, and to write a decent letter.
Since becoming known as a speaker and writer in English as well as in German, I have often been asked by persons interested in linguistic studies or in psychological problems, whether while speaking or writing I was thinking in English or in German, and whether I was constantly translating from one language into the other. The answer was that, when speaking or writing in English, I was thinking in English; and, when speaking or writing in German, I was thinking in German; and when my mind followed a train of thought which did not require immediate expression in words, I was unconscious of what language I was thinking in.
I have also often been asked in which language I preferred to think and write. I always answered that this depended on the subject, the purpose, and the occasion. On the whole, I preferred the English language for public speaking, partly on account of the simplicity of its syntactic construction, and partly because the pronunciation of the consonants is mechanically easier and less fatiguing to the speaker. I have preferred ​it also for the discussion of political subjects and of business affairs because of its full and precise terminology. But for the discussion of philosophical matters, for poetry, and for familiar, intimate conversation I have preferred the German. And beyond this, I have found that about certain subjects, or with certain persons who understood both English and German equally well, I would rather speak in English or in German, as the ease might be, without clearly knowing the reason why. It was a matter of feeling which cannot be exactly defined.
Occasionally I have had to translate into German things that I had spoken or written in English, and vice versa. And my experience has been that I found translations, from my English into my German much easier than translations from my German into my English—in other words, my German vocabulary offered to me more readily an equivalent for what I had spoken or written in English than vice versa. I was puzzled by more untranslatable words or forms of speech in my German than in my English. It might be thought that, German being my native language, and the one in which I had been brought up, the German vocabulary would naturally be more at my command. But I have heard the same opinion expressed by other, and among them very competent, persons, who had been brought up in the English language, and had then acquired a very thorough knowledge of German. It is a remarkable fact that, although the German language seems to be stiff and obstinate in its syntactic construction, German literature possesses a far greater wealth of translations of the highest merit than any other, while translations from the German, especially translations of German poetry, into any other modern language are, with very few exceptions, exceedingly imperfect. There is hardly any great poet in any literature such as Homer, Hafis, Horace, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, ​Molière, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, that has not had a German translation or reproduction worthy of the original, and in most cases of astonishing fidelity and beauty. Nothing that has appeared in any other language can even in a remote degree be compared with the translation of Homer's “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” by Johann Heinrich Voss; and many German translations of Shakespeare's plays, which at first sight might seem fairly to defy the translator's art, have long been among the wonders of the world of letters. On the other hand, the translations into other languages of the masterpieces of German poetry have almost always been more or less dismal failures. Foremost among the exceptions I would place Bayard Taylor's translation of Goethe's “Faust,” and the translation by Mrs. Frances Hellman of Gottfried Kinkel's little epic, “Tanagra,” which is the most perfect reproduction of foreign poetry in English that I have ever seen. But these exceptions become all the more conspicuous by their rarity.
The extraordinary wealth of German literature in excellent translations—for those translations may well be called a part of German literature—make the study of the German language a matter of special interest to everyone seeking to acquire a truly liberal education. For German literature is not only exceedingly rich in original works in every branch of mental production, which, owing to the imperfection of the translation into other languages, cannot be fully enjoyed except when read in German, but it contains, in its superior translations, an almost complete treasury of all the literature of the world and of all ages, ancient as well as modern.
In Philadelphia I made my first acquaintances. At that period the Quaker, with his broad-brimmed hat, his straight coat, and his standing collar, and the Quakeress, with her gray dress, her white kerchief covering her shoulders, and her ​poke-bonnet, were still very familiar figures on the streets of that city. Foremost among them in public estimation at the time stood Lucretia Mott, a woman, as I was told, renowned for her high character, her culture, and the zeal and ability with which she advocated various progressive movements. To her I had the good fortune to be introduced by a German friend. I thought her the most beautiful old lady I had ever seen. Her features were of exquisite fineness. Not one of the wrinkles with which age had marked her face, would one have wished away. Her dark eyes beamed with intelligence and benignity. She received me with gentle grace, and in the course of our conversation, she expressed the hope that, as a citizen, I would never be indifferent to the slavery question as, to her great grief, many people at the time seemed to be.
Another acquaintance of interest we made was that of Mr. Jay Cooke and his family. We met them at Cape May, where at the beginning of the summer of 1853 we went with our first baby to escape from the oppressive heat of the city. Mr. Cooke was then not yet the great banker and financier he became during the Civil War, but he was easily recognized as a man of uncommon ability, energy, and public spirit. The attention of the Cookes was mainly attracted by the beauty, grace, and ingenuous conversation of my wife, in her naïve German-English, and as they were evidently good-hearted people of frank and simple manners, we soon became fast friends and remained so for many years. They were the first family of very strict and active church members we learned to know intimately. They had in their house their regular morning and evening prayers in which not only all the members of the family but also the servants took part, and in which the guests of the house were invited, and, I suppose, expected to join. But there was prevalent in the family an atmosphere of kindly ​toleration and of buoyant cheerfulness which made everybody feel comfortable and at home. When some years later I was, with many others, Mr. Cooke's guest at his country seat “Ogontz,” I saw him one morning in the large hall devoutly kneel down with his family and household to lead in prayer, and then, as soon as the prayer was over, jump up, clap his hands with boyish glee, and cry out in his most jovial tones: “Now let's be jolly!” There was a sort of rustic heartiness in his looks and his whole being which appeared quite genuine and endeared him much to his friends. It is generally recognized that, as a financier, he rendered very valuable service to the country during the Civil War, and I do not think anybody grudged him the fortune he gathered at the same time for himself. When, in 1873, he lost that fortune in consequence of his altogether too sanguine ventures in the Northern Pacific enterprise, and many others lost their money with him, he had much sympathy, and there was a widespread confidence that he would faithfully pay all his honest debts, which he did.
During our sojourn in Philadelphia our social intercourse was necessarily limited. But I availed myself of every opportunity of talking with people of various classes and of thus informing myself about their ways of thinking, their hopes and apprehensions, their prejudices and their sympathies. At the same time I industriously studied the political history and institutions of the country, and, as to current events and their significance, my newspaper reading soon went beyond the columns of the Ledger. The impressions I received were summed up in a letter which at that period I wrote to my friend, Miss Malwida von Meysenbug. I had long forgotten it when years afterwards it turned up in her “Memoirs of an Idealist,” an exceedingly interesting book which has so well held its place in literature that but recently, more than a quarter of ​a century after its first appearance, a new edition has been printed and widely read.
In that letter I described how the European revolutionary idealists, as I knew them in the old world, would at first be startled, if not shocked, by the aspect of a really free people,—a democracy in full operation on a large scale,—the most contradictory tendencies and antagonistic movements openly at work, side by side, or against one another, enlightenment and stupid bigotry, good citizenship and lawlessness, benevolent and open-handed public spirit and rapacious greed, democracy and slavery, independent spirit and subserviency to party despotism and to predominant public opinion—all this in bewildering confusion. The newly arrived European democrat, having lived in a world of theories and imaginings without having had any practical experience of a democracy at work, beholding it for the first time, ask himself: “Is this really a people living in freedom? Is this the realization of my ideal?” He is puzzled and perplexed, until it dawns upon him that, in a condition of real freedom, man manifests himself, not as he ought to be, but as he is, with all his bad as well as his good qualities, instincts, and impulses: with all his attributes of strength as well as all his weaknesses; that this, therefore, is not an ideal state, but simply a state in which the forces of good have a free field as against the forces of evil, and in which the victories of virtue, of enlightenment, and of progress are not achieved by some power or agency outside of the people, for their benefit, but by the people themselves.
Such victories of the forces of good may be slow in being accomplished, but they will be all the more thorough and durable in their effects, because they will be the product of the people's own thought and effort. The people may commit follies or mistakes ever so grievous, but having committed those ​follies or mistakes themselves and upon their own responsibility, they will be apt to profit by their own experience. If those mistakes were rectified by some superior authority, the people would be apt to run into the same mistakes again. If the people are left to correct the mistakes themselves, they will more surely progress in wisdom as well as in the sense of responsibility. Whatever stands upon the bottom of the popular intelligence, stands upon far firmer ground than that which rests merely upon superior authority.
“Here in America,” I wrote to my friend, “you can see daily how little a people needs to be governed. There are governments, but no masters; there are governors, but they are only commissioners, agents. What there is here of great institutions of learning, of churches, of great commercial institutions, lines of communication, etc., almost always owes its existence, not to official authority, but to the spontaneous co-operation of private citizens. Here you witness the productiveness of freedom. You see a magnificent church—a voluntary association of private persons has founded it; an orphan asylum built of marble—a wealthy citizen has erected it; a university—some rich men have left a large bequest for educational purposes, which serves as a capital stock, and the university then lives, so to speak, almost on subscriptions; and so on without end. We learn here how superfluous is the action of governments concerning a multitude of things in which in Europe it is deemed absolutely indispensable, and how the freedom to do something awakens the desire to do it.”
Although I am well aware of its crudities of expression, its inaccuracies of statement, and of the incompleteness of its presentation of American conditions, I quote this letter because it portrays fairly well the working of the mind of a ​young man who has been suddenly transplanted from the Old World—its ways of thinking, its traditional views of life, its struggles, illusions, and ideals—into a new world where he witnesses the operation of elementary forces in open daylight, and the realities of free government in undisguised exhibition. I endeavored to get at the essence of truly democratic life, and I still believe that, notwithstanding some errors in the detail of my observations, my general conclusions as to the vital element of democratic institutions were correct.
Some excursions into the interior of Pennsylvania, and to Connecticut, where a distant relative of ours conducted a manufacturing establishment, enlarged the range of my observation. On these occasions I made the acquaintance of a few specimens of the old Pennsylvania Germans, and of the Connecticut Yankees—two distinct elements of the population—both native, for several generations of those Pennsylvania Germans had lived in this country, but so different in language, in habits of thought, and in social traditions, customs, and notions, that the mere fact of their having lived, worked, and exercised the same political rights together in the Republic was to me a most instructive and encouraging illustration of the elasticity and the harmonizing power of democratic government.
What an astonishing spectacle these Pennsylvania Germans presented! Honest, pious, hardworking, prosperous people; good, law-abiding, patriotic American citizens; great-great-grandchildren of my own old Fatherland, who had for several generations tilled these acres and lived in these modest but comfortable houses and built these majestic barns, and preserved the German speech of their forefathers, only mixing it with some words and phrases of English origin. They call all English-speaking people “the Irish,” and kept alive many ​of their old German domestic customs and habits, though they had lost almost all memory of old Germany.
But far more was my political education furthered by a visit to the city of Washington in the early spring of 1854. The seeming apathy of the public conscience concerning the slavery question was at last broken by the introduction of Senator Douglas's Nebraska Bill, which was to overrule the Missouri Compromise and to open all the National Territories to the ingress of the “peculiar institution.” A sudden tremor shook the political atmosphere. While I could not take any interest in the perfunctory Democratic or Whig politics of the day, the slavery question, with all its social, political, and economic bearings, stirred me at once, and deeply. I could not resist the desire to go to Washington and witness the struggle in Congress. A student of medicine from Mississippi, Mr. Vaughn, whose acquaintance I had made in the Philadelphia boardinghouse, and whose intelligence and fine character had greatly attracted me, offered me a letter of introduction to a friend of his family, Mr. Jefferson Davis, who was then Secretary of War. I also obtained letters to Senator Brodhead of Pennsylvania, Senator Shields of Illinois, and Mr. Francis Grund, a journalist who furnished the Washington news to various newspapers.
THE CITY OF WASHINGTON IN 1852
​ My first impressions of the political capital of the great American Republic were rather dismal. Washington looked at that period like a big, sprawling village, consisting of scattered groups of houses which were overtopped by a few public buildings—the Capitol, only what is now the central part was occupied, as the two great wings in which the Senate and the House of Representatives now sit were still in process of construction; the Treasury, the two wings of which were still lacking; the White House; and the Patent Office, which also ​harbored the Department of the Interior. The departments of State, of War, and of the Navy were quartered in small, very insignificant-looking houses which might have been the dwellings of some well-to-do shopkeepers who did not care for show. There was not one solidly built-up street in the whole city—scarcely a block without gaps of dreary emptiness. The houses were not yet numbered. The way they were designated was by calling them “the first of the five” or the “fifth of the seven” on Pennsylvania Avenue, or on Seventh Street, as the case might be. Pennsylvania Avenue, not far from the Capitol, was crossed by a brook called Goosecreek, alias “the Tiber,” which was spanned by a wooden bridge; and I was told—perhaps falsely—that congressmen in a fuddled state, going home in the dark after an animated night-session, would sometimes miss the bridge and fall into the water, to be fished out with difficulty by the sergeants-at-arms and their assistants.
The hotel at which I stopped, the “National,” the same in which Henry Clay had died less than two years before, was dingy beyond description, and there were hardly half a dozen residences, if as many, in the whole town, that had the appearance of refined, elegant, and comfortable homes. The streets, ill-paved, if paved at all, were constantly covered with mud or dust. But very few of the members of Congress “kept house.” Most of them took their meals in “messes,” having clubbed together for that purpose. Washington was called “the city of magnificent distances.” But there was nothing at the ends of those distances, and, excepting the few public buildings, very little that was in any way interesting or pleasing. In many of the streets, geese, chickens, pigs, and cows had still a scarcely disputed right of way. The city had throughout a slouchy, unenterprising, unprogressive appearance, ​giving extremely little promise of becoming the beautiful capital it now is.
JEFFERSON DAVIS, 1853
​ The first call I made was at the War Department, to present my letter of introduction to the Secretary, Mr. Jefferson Davis. Being respectful, even reverential, by natural disposition, I had in my imagination formed a high idea of what a grand personage the War Minister of this great Republic must be. I was not disappointed. He received me graciously. His slender, tall, and erect figure, his spare face, keen eyes, and fine forehead, not broad, but high and well-shaped, presented the well-known strong American type. There was in his bearing a dignity which seemed entirely natural and unaffected—that kind of dignity which does not invite familiar approach, but will not render one uneasy by lofty assumption. His courtesy was without any condescending air. Our conversation confined itself to the conventional commonplace. A timid attempt on my part to elicit from him an opinion on the phase of the slavery question brought about by the introduction of the Nebraska Bill did not meet with the desired response. He simply hoped that everything would turn out for the best. Then he deftly resumed his polite inquiries about my experiences in America and my plans for the future, and expressed his good wishes. His conversation ran in easy, and, so far as I could judge, well-chosen and sometimes even elegant phrase, and the timbre of his voice had something peculiarly agreeable. A few years later I heard him deliver a speech in the Senate, and again I was struck by the dignity of his bearing, the grace of his diction, and the rare charm of his voice—things which greatly distinguished him from many of his colleagues.
In Senator Shields of Illinois I found a very different character—a jovial Irishman who had won his high position ​in politics mainly through the reputation achieved by him as a volunteer officer in the Mexican War. He lived in a modest boarding-house near the Capitol, and the only ornament of his room, in which he received me, consisted of a brace of pistols attached crosswise to the bare, whitewashed wall. He welcomed me with effusive cordiality as a sort of fellow revolutionist from Europe—he himself, as an enthusiastic Irish Nationalist, being in a state of perpetual belligerency against England, which, however, did not interfere with his sincerity, zeal, and self-sacrificing spirit as an American patriot.
In the Senate he was naturally overshadowed by his colleague from Illinois, Senator Douglas. He would have been so had he been a much abler man than he was. He seemed to be fully conscious of this, for when I tried to obtain information from him about the great question then pending, he could only repeat some things Douglas had said, and predict that Douglas, the great leader, would have the people behind him. He altogether preferred to talk with me about my adventures in Germany and about the prospects of the revolutionary movements in Europe.
The third letter of introduction I had was addressed to Senator Brodhead of Pennsylvania. As I came from Philadelphia he may have regarded me as a constituent who might, perhaps, in the course of time acquire some influence among his neighbors, and he granted me a quiet evening hour in his room. I may have formed a wrong estimate of this statesman, but I had to confess to myself that I found him rather dull. He sought to entertain me with a labored discourse on the greatness of this country, the magnificent resources of the State of Pennsylvania, the excellent character of the Pennsylvania Germans, the intelligence of the new immigrants who had been brought to this country by the revolutionary troubles in ​Europe, and the virtues of the Democratic party, to which he and, he was glad to know, all the adopted citizens belonged. When I asked him for his opinion as to the right and wrong involved in the slavery question in general and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in particular, he answered with the impressive solemnity of one who knows a great deal more than he feels at liberty to divulge, that the slavery question was a very important one, very important indeed; that it was also a very complicated and difficult one—indeed so difficult and complicated, that one must take great care not to be carried away by mere sentiment in forming one's judgment about it; and that the Abolitionists were very reckless and dangerous men, to whom good citizens should never listen. This did not satisfy me, and I continued my inquiries; whereupon he assured me that every good citizen must follow his party, and that, as to the Nebraska Bill, he, as a good Democrat and as an Administration man, would faithfully follow his party's lead. And then he wound up with this sentence: “On the whole, I do not take as much interest in measures and policies as in the management of men.” This sentence, every word of it, has stuck fast in my memory, for it puzzled me greatly to discover the meaning of it. I thought I noticed that the Senator did not wish to be pressed further, and so I took my leave with an unsolved riddle troubling my mind.
The next day I met Mr. Francis Grund, the “veteran journalist,” whose acquaintance I had made in the meantime. I asked him what Senator Brodhead might have meant when he said that he did not take as much interest in measures and policies as in the management of men. “Bless your innocent soul!” exclaimed Mr. Grund with a hearty laugh, “he meant that he does not care whether his party leads him this way or that way, but that his main business is to get post-offices ​and government clerkships and consulates and Indian agencies for the party hacks and his personal hangers-on. And he must keep on good terms with the Administration to get those things.”
I was astonished. “And there are statesmen in positions as high as that of a United States senator who consider that their principal business?” I asked. “Yes,” said Mr. Grund, “lots of them.” And he counted off by name a large number of senators and a much larger number of representatives, of whom he said that the distribution of the patronage, the “public plunder,” was the principal, if not the only occupation in which they took any real interest.
This was a shocking revelation to me. It was my first look into the depths of that great “American institution of government” which I subsequently learned to call by the name of “the spoils system.” That the Americans changed all the postmasters in the country with every change of party in power, I had already heard of before I came to this country, and it had struck me as something remarkably absurd. But that very nearly all the offices under the present government should treated as “public plunder,” and that statesmen who had been sent to Congress to make laws in the interest of the whole country, should spend all their time and working strength in procuring and distributing that public plunder, and that a free and intelligent people should permit this, fairly confounded my comprehension. My new friend, Mr. Francis Grund, helped me to understand it.
Mr. Grund had been for many years a newspaper correspondent in Washington. He was what would now be called the “dean” of the profession. A native of Germany, he had come to this country as a youth and had somehow soon drifted ​into journalistic work. He learned to speak and write English, and continued to speak and write German, commanding both languages, as I thought, equally well. His general ability and the faculty of quick perception made him a keen observer, and admirably fitted him for his work. He wrote a book on the United States full of that youthfully enthusiastic praise of American institutions which, at that period, was still sounded in perfect good faith by a large majority of the American people, to be re-echoed throughout the world—that exuberant optimistic fatalism which was quite sure that, in this republic, the future would right all wrongs, however threatening such wrongs might appear at present. At the same time, owing to his German education and to his continued intelligent interest in European conditions and affairs, he judged things American from a point of view not, indeed, less sympathetic, but a little different from that of the average American—a little more critical, perhaps—and he found that his reasoning and his conclusions were not always acceptable to his American friends. He therefore had ceased to express them as freely as he would have liked to do; and when I had become acquainted with him, he soon seemed to conceive a great liking for me, perhaps mainly for the reason that he expected the young immigrant recently arrived from Europe readily to understand him when he unbosomed himself.
He confided to me that while the distribution of the offices as public plunder among the members of the victorious party had become a firmly settled system, and it was entirely useless to talk against it, he himself had come to consider it an abuse fraught with very serious danger to our free institutions. He had been personally, and, as he said, even familiarly acquainted with the great political stars of the period just past: Clay, ​Calhoun, and Webster—indeed he prided himself on being able to pronounce the word “Constitution” exactly as the great Daniel Webster had pronounced it—and he knew how they abhorred the patronage system as an abomination. But the common run of politicians of either party loudly praised it as a thoroughly American practice based upon a democratic principle. Mr. Grund described to me in the liveliest colors the ravenous rush for office after the election of General Pierce to the presidency, the incredible humiliations some men would submit to, the incessant trouble Senators and Representatives had in trying to satisfy their hangers-on, the unscrupulous deceptions practiced by them upon constituents whom they had to disappoint, but whose friendship they wanted to keep, and so on. These things were distressing revelations to my untutored mind, which had to struggle hard to comprehend it all. What was it that made so many people so hungry for office? “Partly the distinction and influence which official position confers,” said Mr. Grund, “and partly the pecuniary emoluments.” I inquired about the salaries attached to various offices and found them rather low. “Well,” said my mentor, “but there are the pickings.”
“Pickings? What is that?”
“The money an office-holder can make through the use of his opportunities—sometimes, honestly, sometimes otherwise.”
“And that is permitted?”
“Not exactly officially permitted,” said Mr. Grund, “but it is treated with generous leniency. When an office-holder is caught in bad practices, the congressman who has recommended him for office usually tries to protect him to the best of his ability. In common talk, the value of an office is gauged according to the salary and the pickings. You hear ​that matter discussed among politicians with great frankness. It is when it comes to notorious scandal that the public talk becomes quite virtuous.”
Remembering the renown Prussian officialdom has always enjoyed for the severest kind of official honor, I was much startled.
“And how,” I asked, “is the public business done by such office-holders?” “Oh,” was the reply, “it might be done much better and much more economically, but we are jogging along. This great country can stand a good deal of hard usage.”
“Are there many corrupt men in Congress?”
“No,” said Mr. Grund, “there are few, very few men there who could be bought with money. But there are more, perhaps many, who would tolerate corrupt men around them and protect hangers-on.”
Later inquiries and a longer acquaintance with public men and things convinced me that the pictures Mr. Grund had drawn for my instruction were substantially correct. The spoils system was in full flower but had not yet brought forth its worst fruit as we now know it, though, in some respects, the state of public sentiment created by it was, indeed, worse than that which we now witness. The cool indifference, for instance, with which the matter of “pickings,” the use by office-holders of official opportunities for personal gain, were then spoken of among politicians, even politicians of the better sort, would now not be tolerated for a moment. The public mind has become much more sensitive to the character of such abuses. Neither was there any active opposition to the spoils system in general. A few of the older members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives would indeed occasionally express their disgust with it, and their misgivings as to the dangerous ​influences exercised by it; but, notwithstanding the criticism now and then called forth by the more scandalous excrescences of the system, it was, on the whole, accepted as a permanent thing which, in this country, could not be otherwise, and attempts to change which would be utterly vain. But it had at that period not yet evolved the “boss” and the “machine,” those perfect agencies of party despotism, as we now know them—although a sinister beginning in that direction was already made in the State of New York, where unscrupulous leadership found the most and the fittest material for a mercenary following, and where selfish personal politics had the most promising field of operation. But, inside of the political parties, the leadership of organization by means of the patronage had then not yet so largely superseded the leadership of opinion as the spoils system would enable it to do, unless checked in its development. Such were the impressions I received in a more or less vague way from my talks and observations at Washington, and I may say that I became then and there, unconsciously to be sure, a civil service reformer.
As to the slavery question, which interested me more than all else, Mr. Grund's moral nature did not seem to be as much wrought up as mine was. He had hoped that the Compromise of 1850 would keep that question in the background for a long period. But the introduction of the Nebraska Bill had disturbed him very seriously, and he now feared that a decisive crisis would ensue. I diligently visited the galleries of the Senate and of the House to listen to the debates. I cannot say that the appearance of either body struck me as very imposing. I had attended, as a spectator, a sitting of the German Parliament of 1848 at Frankfort, several sessions of the French National Assembly at Paris in 1850, and one of the British House of Commons in 1852. Of these parliamentary ​bodies the Frankfort Parliament seemed to me the most dignified and orderly, the French Assembly the most turbulent, the House Of Commons the most businesslike, and the American Congress I saw in 1854—and in succeeding years—the most representative. It was representative of its constituencies in average ability, character, culture, and manners. There was an air of genuine naturalness about the looks, the bearing, and the conduct of the members as well as of the proceedings—no artificially put-on dignity; commotion enough, but little affected furor, except with some Southerners, the business being done without much restraint of logic or method. The congressman with bushy chin-whiskers, wearing a black dress coat and a satin vest all day, a big quid of tobacco in his mouth, as in these days we sometimes see him as a comic figure on the stage, was then still a well-known type on the floor of the Senate and the House. There was much tobacco chewing with its accompaniments, and much lounging with tilting of chairs and elevation of feet on desks—much more than there is now in the same places; but then these things seemed more natural, and less offensive than they do now. There were also more evidences of a liberal consumption of intoxicants. I do not mean to say that there were not men of refined presence and bearing in the two Houses. There were, indeed, not a few; but the majority struck me as rather easy-going and careless of appearances.
Listening to running debates and to set speeches, I was astonished at the facility of expression which almost everybody seemed to command. The language may not always have been elegant or even grammatically correct, it may sometimes have been blunt and rough; but it ordinarily flowed on without any painful effort, and there was no hemming and hawing. Of the set speeches I heard, not a few were remarkable as ​specimens of “beautiful speaking,” of so-called “hifalutin,” so inflated with extravagant conceits and big, high-sounding words, that now they would only provoke laughter, while at that time they were taken quite seriously, or even admired as fine oratory. Now and then one would hear in the course of a speech an old-fashioned Latin quotation, usually coming from some Southern man or some New Englander. But I also heard several speeches which were not only rich in thought but in an eminent degree vigorous, sober, and elegant in language.
My most distinct recollections are of the Senate. The most conspicuous figure in that body was Douglas. He was a man of low stature, but broad-shouldered and big-chested. His head, sitting upon a stout, strong neck, was the very incarnation of forceful combativeness; a square jaw and broad chin; a rather large, firm-set mouth; the nose straight and somewhat broad; quick, piercing eyes with a deep, dark, scowling, menacing horizontal wrinkle between them; a broad forehead and an abundance of dark hair which at that period he wore rather long and which, when in excitement, he shook and tossed defiantly like a lion's mane. The whole figure was compact and strongly knit and muscular, as if made for constant fight. He was not inaptly called “the little giant” by his partisans. His manner of speech accorded exactly with his appearance. His sentences were clear-cut, direct, positive. They went straight to the mark like bullets, and sometimes like cannon-balls, tearing and crashing. There was nothing ornate, nothing imaginative in his language, no attempt at “beautiful speaking.” But it would be difficult to surpass his clearness and force of statement when his position was right; or his skill in twisting logic or in darkening the subject with extraneous, unessential matter, when he was wrong; or his defiant tenacity when he was driven to defend himself, or his keen ​and crafty alertness to turn his defense into attack, so that, even when overwhelmed with adverse argument, he would issue from the fray with the air of the conqueror. He was utterly unsparing of the feelings of his opponents. He would nag and nettle them with disdainful words of challenge, and insult them with such names as “dastards” and “traitors.” Nothing could equal the contemptuous scorn, the insolent curl of his lip with which, in the debates to which I listened, he denounced the anti-slavery men in Congress as “the Abolition confederates,” and at a subsequent time, after the formation of the Republican party, as “Black Republicans.” But worse than that: he would, with utter unscrupulousness, malign his opponents' motives, distort their sayings, and attribute to them all sorts of iniquitous deeds or purposes of which he must have known them to be guiltless. Indeed, Douglas's style of attack was sometimes so exasperatingly offensive, that it required, on the part of the anti-slavery men in the Senate, a very high degree of self-control to abstain from retaliating. But so far as I can remember, only Mr. Sumner yielded to the temptation to repay him in kind.
While for these reasons I should be very far from calling Douglas an ideal debater, it is certain that I have never seen a more formidable parliamentary pugilist. To call him so must not be thought unbecoming, since there was something in his manners which very strongly smacked of the bar-room. He was the idol of the rough element of his party, and his convivial association with that element left its unmistakable imprint upon his habits and his deportment. He would sometimes offend the dignity of the Senate by astonishing conduct. Once, at a night session of the Senate I saw him, after a boisterous speech, throw himself upon the lap of a brother senator and loll there, talking and laughing, for ten or fifteen minutes, ​with his arm around the neck of his friend, who seemed to be painfully embarrassed, but could or would not shake him off. It might be said in extenuation, however, that then the general tone of the Senate was not so sober and decorous as it is now. After he had married his second wife, a lady of beauty and culture, who not only presided over his household but also accompanied him on his electioneering journeys, he became more tidy and trim in his appearance, and more careful in his habits, although even then there were rumors of occasional excesses. The bullying notes in his speeches remained the same until after the election of 1860.
I must confess that when I first saw him and heard him speak, I conceived a very strong personal dislike for Senator Douglas. I could not understand how a man who represented in the Senate a Free State, and was not bound to the cause of slavery either by interest or tradition, but must, on the contrary, be presumed to be instinctively opposed to slavery and to wish for its ultimate extinction—how such a man could attempt to break down all legal barriers to the expansion of slavery by setting aside a solemn compromise—without any overruling necessity, and then be credited with pure and patriotic motives. And that, even in his own opinion, there was no such necessity appeared from the fact that only shortly before he had professedly recognized the validity and binding force of the Missouri Compromise as a matter of course; indeed he himself had offered a bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska under the Missouri Compromise excluding slavery, and, since that time, nothing had happened to change the situation. Although by no means inclined to attribute sinister motives to anyone differing from me in opinion or sentiment, I saw no way of escape from the conclusion that, when Senator Douglas was charged with seeking to wipe out the legal ​barriers to the extension of slavery over territories dedicated to freedom, not in obedience to any necessity, not for any purpose of public good, but to open to himself the road to the presidential chair by winning the favor of the slave power, thus wantonly jeopardizing the cause of freedom for personal ambition, that charge was sustained by overwhelming circumstantial evidence. And when then I saw him on the floor of the Senate plead his cause with the most daring sophistries and in a tone of most overbearing and almost ruffianly aggressiveness, and yet undeniably with very great force and consummate cunning, I thought I recognized in him the very embodiment of that unscrupulous, reckless demagogy which, as my study of history had told me, is so dangerous to republics. These impressions made me detest him profoundly. And when the time came for me to take an active part in anti-slavery campaigns, I thought that of all our opponents he was the one that could never be arraigned too severely. Of this, more hereafter.
No contrast could have been more striking than that between Douglas and the anti-slavery men in the Senate as I saw them and listened to them from the gallery. There was to me something mysterious in the slim, wiry figure, the thin, sallow face, the overhanging eyebrows, and the muffled voice of Seward. I had read some of his speeches, and admired especially those he had delivered on the Compromise of 1850. The broad sweep of philosophical reasoning and the boldness of statement and prediction I found in them, as well as the fine flow of their language, had greatly captivated my imagination. Before seeing him I had pictured him to myself, as one is apt to picture one's heroes, as an imposing personage of overawing mien and commanding presence. I was much disappointed when I first saw that quiet little man who, as he moved about on the floor of the Senate chamber, seemed to be ​on hardly less friendly terms with the Southern senators than with the Northern—his speeches were always personally polite to everybody—and whose elocution was of dull sound, scarcely distinct, and never sounding a resonant note of challenge or defiance. But he made upon me, as well as upon many others, the impression of a man who controlled hidden, occult powers which he could bring into play if he would. Indeed, I heard him spoken of as a sort of political wizard who knew all secrets and who commanded political forces unknown to all the world except himself and his bosom friend, Thurlow Weed, the most astute, skillful, and indefatigable political manager ever known. It is quite probable that the flavor of weirdness in his personal appearance and voice and the oracular tone of many of his utterances did much to strengthen that impression. I have to confess that he exercised a strong fascination over me until I came into personal contact with him.
Salmon P. Chase, the anti-slavery Senator from Ohio was one of the stateliest figures in the Senate. Tall, broad-shouldered, and proudly erect, his features strong and regular and his forehead broad, high and clear, he was a picture of intelligence, strength, courage, and dignity. He looked as you would wish a statesman to look. His speech did not borrow any charm from rhetorical decoration, but was clear a strong in argument, vigorous and determined in tone, elevated in sentiment, and of that frank ingenuousness which command respect and inspires confidence. He had drawn up an address to the country setting forth the true significance of the Nebraska Bill, which went forth signed by a few anti-slavery men in Congress, and, without being so intended, proved to be the first bugle call for the formation of a new party.
Douglas, who seemed instinctively to feel its importance, emptied all the vials of his wrath upon the author of the ​manifesto, and it was to me a most inspiring experience to see the majestic figure of Chase standing with serene tranquility under the hail of the “Little Giant's” furious vituperation.
I missed at that time hearing Charles Sumner speak, except once when he made a very few remarks in a calm tone to correct some misapprehension. The impression he made was that of a gentleman of refinement and self-respect, reminding me of some Englishmen of distinction I had seen. He was tall and well-built, his handsome but strong face shadowed by a wealth of dark locks. He was justly called “good-looking.” His smile had a peculiar charm. He was talked of as a man of great learning and culture, and of that kind of courage that is unconscious of difficulty or danger, and which was already then said to have made the Southern pro-slavery senators stare in angry wonder.
I was introduced to these anti-slavery champions by Senator Shields in the lobby of the Senate, but these introductions led only to the usual commonplace remarks and the customary shake of the hand. Only Sumner, who seemed interested in my European experiences, expressed a hope that he would see me again.
Of the Southern senators I observed from the gallery, I especially remember three who struck me as types. One was Senator Butler from South Carolina. His rubicund face, framed in long silver-white hair, the merry twinkle of his eye, and his mobile mouth marked him as a man of bubbling good-nature and a jovial companion. He was said to have had a liberal education and to be fond of quoting Horace. On the floor he frequently seemed to be engaged in gay and waggish conversation with his neighbors. But when slavery was attacked, he was apt to flare up fiercely, to assume the haughty ​air of the representative of a higher class, and, in fluent and high-sounding phrases to make the Northern man feel the superiority of the Cavalier over the Roundhead. This was what subsequently brought on his altercation with Sumner which had such deplorable consequences.
Of the more aggressive—I might say belligerent—type was Senator Toombs of Georgia, a large, strong-featured head upon a massive figure, his face constantly alive with high spirits, as capable of a hearty, genial laugh as of a mien of anger or menace; his speech rather boisterous, always fluent and resonant with vigorous utterances. Nobody could be more certain of the sanctity of slave property and of the higher civilization of the South. He would bring the North to its knees; he would drive the anti-slavery men out of public life; the righteous victory of the South was to him above doubt, and it would be so overwhelming that he would live to call the roll of his slaves in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument. He was, it seemed to me, the very picture, not of the Southern aristocrat, but of the overbearing and defiant Southern middle class allied with the rich slave-holding aristocracy. With all this there was, to me, something sympathetic in the man, as if I would have liked to know him personally.
Still another type was represented to me by Senator Mason of Virginia, a thick-set, heavily built man with a decided expression of dullness in his face. What he had to say appeared to me to come from a sluggish intellect spurred into activity by an overweening self-conceit. He, too, would constantly assert in manner, even more than in language, the superiority of the Southern slave-holder over the Northern people. But it was not the prancing pride of Senator Butler nor the cheery buoyancy of the fighting spirit of Toombs that ​animated him. It appeared rather to be the surly pretension of a naturally stupid person to be something better than other people, and the insistence that they must bow to his assumed aristocracy and all its claims. When I heard Senator Mason speak, I felt that if I were a member of the Senate, his supercilious attitude and his pompous utterances of dull commonplace, sometimes very offensive by their overbearing tone, would have been particularly exasperating to me.
After the Senate, on the morning of the 4th of March, 1854, had passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, I returned from Washington to Philadelphia. I took with me some very powerful impressions. I had seen the slave power officially represented by some of its foremost champions—overbearing, defiant, dictatorial, vehemently demanding a chance for unlimited expansion, and, to secure its own existence, threatening the most vital principle of free institutions, the right of free inquiry and of free utterance—aye, threatening the Union, the National Republic itself. I had seen in alliance with the slave power, not only far-reaching material interests and a sincere but easily intimidated conservatism, but a selfish party spirit and an artful and unscrupulous demagogy making a tremendous effort to obfuscate the moral sense of the North. I had seen standing against this tremendous array of forces a small band of anti-slavery men faithfully fighting the battle of freedom and civilization. I saw the decisive contest rapidly approaching, and I felt an irresistible impulse to prepare myself for usefulness, however modest, in the impending crisis; and to that end I pursued with increased assiduity my studies of the political history and the social conditions of the Republic, and of the theory and practical workings of its institutions. To the same end I thought it necessary to see more of the country ​and to get a larger experience of the character of the people. Especially did I long to breathe the fresh air of that part of the Union which I imagined to be the “real America,” the great West, where new States were growing up, and where I would have an opportunity for observing the formative process of new political communities working themselves out of the raw. I had some relatives and some German friends living in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, and I started out to visit them in the autumn of 1854.