Harper's Weekly Editorials on Carl Schurz/Colonel Watterson on Carl Schurz

by Harper's Weekly

PERSONAL AND PERTINENT.

...

At last accounts Colonel Watterson was still absorbing ozone and wearing summer clothes at Naples-on-the-Gulf, Florida. He continues to give frequent evidence in the Courier Journal of being in remarkable health and spirits. The editorial page of the Courier Journal is of an old-fashioned size, but the evergreen colonel garrallops up and down its long columns with all the energy of youth and a thousand times its knowledge. He has been reading Schurz's Memoirs, and talks nearly three delightful columns about him. He says of Mr. Schurz: “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 enduring affection one might have for an ardent, aspiring, and lovable boy. He was repellent to Grant, who could not, and perhaps did not, desire to understand him. To him the Southerners were always the red-faced, swashbuckling slavedrivers he had fancied and pictured them in the days of his Abolition oratory. More and more he lived in a rut of his own high and noble fancies, wise in books and counsels, affectionate in his relations with the few who enjoyed his confidence; to the last a most captivating personality. Though fastidious, Schurz was not intolerant. But he was very hard to convince — tenacious of his opinions — very courteous, but very insistent in debate. He was a German; a German Herr Doctor; of music, of letters, and of common law. During an intimacy of more than thirty years we scarcely ever agreed about any public matter, differing even about the civil service and the tariff; but I admired him hugely and loved him heartily.”