THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
applied for a hearing before the Congressional “Committee on the conduct of the War.”
But when this application, too, remained without a response, I found myself driven to the conclusion that there was, in all the official circles concerned, a powerful influence systematically seeking to prevent the disclosure of the truth; that a scapegoat was wanted for the remarkable blunders which had caused the failure of the Chancellorsville campaign, and that the Eleventh Corps could plausibly be used as such a scapegoat—the Eleventh Corps, which had always been looked at askance by the Army of the Potomac as not properly belonging to it, and which could, on account of the number of its German regiments and officers, easily be misrepresented as a corps of “foreigners,” a “Dutch corps,” which had few friends, and which might be abused, and slandered, and kicked with impunity. But for this, why was my demand for a court of inquiry ignored? General McDowell had been granted a court of inquiry on the ground of a hasty letter written shortly before his death by a colonel of cavalry whose name was never publicly disclosed—a letter which probably never would have become known to the public but for that court of inquiry. Not for my own sake, but in the name of thousands of my comrades I asked for nothing but a mere opportunity by a fair investigation of the facts to defend their honor, not against a mere anonymous letter, but against the most infamous slanders and insults circulated from mouth to mouth in the army, and throughout the whole country by the press; when that opportunity was denied me, was there not ample reason for the conclusion that there was a powerful influence working to suppress the truth, and that the Eleventh Army Corps, and especially the German part of it, was to be systematically sacrificed as the scapegoat?
It might have been expected that one general, at least,
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