He was a German. He was an artist. By nature a doctrinaire, he had become
a philosopher. He could never wholly adjust himself to his environment.
He lectured Lincoln, and Lincoln, perceiving his earnest truthfulness and
genuine qualities, forgave him his impertinence, nor ceased to regard him
with the enduring affection one might have for an ardent, aspiring and
lovable boy. He was repellant to Grant, who could not and perhaps did
not desire to understand him.... To him the Southerners were always the
red-faced, swashbuckling slave-drivers he had fancied and pictured them in
the days of his abolition oratory. More and more he lived in a rut of his
own fancies, wise in books and counsels, gentle in his relations with the
few who enjoyed his confidence; to the last a most captivating personality.
Though fastidious, Schurz was not intolerant. Yet he was hard to
convince--tenacious of his opinions--courteous but insistent in debate. He
was a German; a German Herr Doktor of Music, of Letters and of Common Law.
During an intimacy of more than thirty years we scarcely ever wholly agreed
about any public matter; differing about even the civil service and the
tariff. But I admired him hugely and loved him heartily.
I had once a rather amusing encounter with him. There was a dinner at
Delmonico's, from whose program of post-prandial oratory I had purposely
caused my own name to be omitted. Indeed, I had had with a lady a wager I
very much wished to win that I would not speak. General Grant and I went in
together, and during the repast he said that the only five human beings in
the world whom he detested were actually here at table.
Of course, Schurz was one of these. He was the last on the list of speakers
and, curiously enough--the occasion being the consideration of certain
ways and means for the development of the South--and many leading
Southerners present--he composed his speech out of an editorial tour de
force he was making in the Evening Post on The Homicidal Side of Southern
Life. Before he had proceeded half through General Grant, who knew of my
wager, said, "You'll lose your bet," and, it being one o'clock in the
morning, I thought so too, and did not care whether I won or lost it. When
he finished, the call on me was spontaneous and universal. "Now give it to
him good," said General Grant.
And I did; I declared--the reporters were long since gone--that there had
not been a man killed amiss in Kentucky since the war; that where one had
been killed two should have been; and, amid roars of laughter which gave me
time to frame some fresh absurdity, I delivered a prose paean to murder.
Nobody seemed more pleased than Schurz himself, and as we came
away--General Grant having disappeared--he put his arm about me like a
schoolboy and said: "Well, well, I had no idea you were so bloody-minded."