Schurz, Carl, 1829-1906

President Roosevelt tells William Dudley Foulke that when Maria Longworth Storer wrote to him saying that Francis Augustus MacNutt must be received at the White House in order to be reinstated in the Papal Service, Roosevelt “strongly objected to being used in such a manner,” and refused to do so. He does not see why this conversation should require him to investigate MacNutt’s removal, which happened more than twelve years ago. Besides which, he now distrusts any information that came from Mrs. Storer. Roosevelt has also been reading Life of Morton, and is impressed. He compares the work of various authors of history.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-01-04

William Dudley Foulke discusses the press coverage written by Carl Schurz during the recent presidential campaign. Foulke sees Schurz’ literary style in a speech of a Democratic candidate, Judge Parker. Foulke has enclosed a clipping of the speech. Foulke is outraged that the New York Post, which did not endorse President Roosevelt, is now praising him since he has won.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-11-14

President Roosevelt is glad Joseph Bucklin Bishop is involved in the campaign. He discusses various factors that would sway public support for him. Roosevelt mentions press coverage of an inflammatory speech by Alabama Congressman Heflin in the Washington Post. Roosevelt also comments on his relationship with Carl Schurz of the Evening Post and writes that his opposition to Roosevelt has a long history.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1904-10-05

William Bourke Cockran supports American involvement in the Philippines, to the dismay of Anti-Imperialists.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-08-12

A statue labeled “Thomas Jefferson The Father of Expansion” stands at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, Missouri, with Puck directing the attention of George Frisbie Hoar and other anti-expansionists Edward Atkinson, Carl Schurz, and Charles Francis Adams, who look on in disbelief.

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Comments and Context

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was planned for 1904 to commemorate the centennial of President Jefferson’s acceptance of Napoleon’s offer to sell vast Western lands — actually French claims to lands — on the American continent. It was planned for St. Louis, the “Gateway To the West,” then one of the largest cities in the United States.

Anti-imperialists George Frisbie Hoar, Carl Schurz, Edward Atkinson, Charles Francis Adams, and Andrew Carnegie are drowning in “Quicksand of Public Opinion,” with the U.S. Capitol building in the background.

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Comments and Context

The underlying issues of America’s anti-imperialists (the men depicted here, as well as Mark Twain and several other prominent figures) remained in 1902. Those included the constitutionality and moral implications of empire, but as Spain’s surrendered territories accommodated themselves to new flags and occupiers, the problems receded from headlines. A month before this cartoon’s publication, President Roosevelt formally (though not entirely cleanly) ended armed conflict in the Philippines. Rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo and other insurgents surrendered, military atrocity charges were addressed, and a general amnesty for rebels was declared. Anti-imperialists back in America might have felt subsumed by the quicksand of irrelevance.

George F. Hoar, Carl Schurz, David B. Hill, and former Massachusetts Governor George S. Boutwell place their “Anti-Expansion Speech” at the feet of a huge American soldier holding a rifle and the American flag, while opposite them Filipinos place guns and swords at the soldier’s feet. Caption: The American Filipinos and the Native Filipinos will have to submit.

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Comments and Context

Pughe’s cartoon is a diplomatic portrayal of a rather diplomatic cessation of hostilities and American military withdrawal from the Philippines, where insurrection had raged, with brutality on the “Filipino” and American sides almost from the moment of Spanish surrender in 1898. Senator George Frisbie Hoar (R-MA), the most prominent Congressional opponent of the “pacification” by American troops, had demanded investigation of American atrocities. In 1902 an American Marine was tried for the murder of 11 Filipinos; and an American general was convicted of ordering the death of all males over 10 years old on one of the Philippine islands (he was verbally reprimanded, returned to the United States, and discharged). On July 4, 1902, President Roosevelt ordered the full and complete pardon and amnesty to all Philippine citizens and rebels. This cartoon appeared between the surrender of the last rebel leader and the announcement of United States troop withdrawal.

William Jennings Bryan is a large spider labeled “Free Silver” with three flies labeled “White, Schurz, [and] Godkin” caught in his web labeled “16 to 1,” “Anti-expansion,” “Chicago Platform,” and “Bryanism.”

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Comments and Context

The radical economic policies and agrarian roots of William Jennings Bryan kept many Eastern, aristocratic liberals from making alliance with his Populist-based campaigns. The old-line liberal reformers Horace White, Carl Schurz, and Edwin Godkin — all on the staffs of the New York Post and The Nation magazine — were tempted to support Bryan in his presidential candidacy of 1900 on the issues of Expansionism and anti-Imperialist views. The cartoon’s layout and labels indicate that cartoonist Pughe saw Imperialism as an issue that would lead to their doom.

William Jennings Bryan stands in the stirrups of his mount, a donkey labeled “Democracy,” directing the honor guard led by Adlai E. Stevenson, and including Henry R. Towne, Joseph Pulitzer, and Carl Schurz carrying a large flag with a portrait of Emilio Aguinaldo under the heading “The George Washington of the Philippines.” Also included are Oswald Ottendorfer, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, William Bourke Cockran, John Peter Altgeld, and William Sulzer.

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Comments and Context

Emilio Aguinaldo’s revolutionary campaigns for Filipino independence from Spain began in the 1890s, variously as a guerilla and conventional armed insurrection, through the Spanish-American War, ultimately with and against the victorious American liberators. As a rebel leader his forces sustained and committed atrocities. He was captured and then released by President Theodore Roosevelt as part of the United States’ general amnesty, a putative end of hostilities. Aguinaldo became a hero to his countrymen and a symbol for the cause of American anti-imperialists. Of William Jennings Bryan’s ragtag “army” on this political issue, their professions provide a hint of the American movement’s constituents: Stevenson was Bryan’s running mate, committed to the Democrat party plank; Pulitzer, Schurz, Ottendorfer, and Godkin were editors and publishers; Towne was an industrialst (Yale locks); Bouke Cochran a politician and orator of unorthodox consistency; Altgeld the radical Governor of Illinois (famous for partiality to the Haymarket bombers); Sulzer a New York politcian who eventually became Governor, only to be impeached. Cartoonist Pughe clearly considered the leadership of Bryan (on an undersized donkey) and the number and prowess of the “guard” to be targets of ridicule.

Illustration shows two views of William Jennings Bryan sitting at a desk working on his campaign principles. The lower scene shows Bryan preparing for the 1896 presidential election. To the right are Carl Schurz, Henry Watterson, William Bourke Cockran, Richard Olney, and David B. Hill, all in disagreement with Bryan, each holding a sheet of paper disclaiming his principles. In the upper scene, Bryan has crossed out 1896 and replaced it with 1900, adhering to, and remaining consistent with, his earlier principles. To the right are the same five disclaimers. This time they bow to Bryan and offer only one comment: “We do not believe you will do what you promise to do, and we admire you because we think you are insincere. Hill, Olney, Cockran, Watterson, Schurz.”

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Comments and Context

Cartoonist Dalrymple engages in hyperbole — the mother’s milk of many political cartoonists — in characterizing the positions of William Jennings Bryan as presidential candidate in 1896 (e.g., “Down with the Supreme Court”). Yet he was right to depict that fact that Bryan had changed few of his positions four years later when he was re-nominated. His in-house Democratic dissenters of 1896 indeed supported him in 1900 when this cartoon was published week before the election. In fact, three factors had changed: Bryan adopted a severe anti-Imperialist stance that attracted new adherents, his “radical” prescriptions of 1896 slowly were becoming palatable to voters, and four years out of office (“in the wilderness”) had Democrats yearning to support the only candidate in the race. Beyond the characterization of Bryan’s positions, the cartoonist’s point of view is reinforced by his caricature of the candidate — scruffy hair, needing a shave, a rough farmer’s hat.

William Jennings Bryan holds a large bellows labeled “Bryanism,” which he is using to fan the flames of a small campfire labeled “Imperialism.” On the left side of the fire is Carl Schurz and on the right, kneeling on the ground, is Adlai E. Stevenson. They blow on the fire as well, to no effect.

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Comments and Context

Published days before the 1900 presidential election, this cartoon depicts the frustration of Democratic candidate Bryan, his running mate Adlai Stevenson, and the prominent German-American reformer Carl Schurz. At first glance, per the label, they might be thought to attempt a revival of imperialism, but imperialism fails to catch fire as a hot issue. In fact the opposition to the new territorial possessions of the United States, after the Spanish-American War, was the only important new plank in Bryan’s platform since 1896. And the public proved either indifferent to the objections… or quite in favor of America’s new place in the world.

A German American man stands in front of a banner showing bust portraits of President William McKinley and Governor Theodore Roosevelt. As he casts his vote, he uses his left hand, holding papers labeled “Naturalization,” to brush aside the German Emperor, William II, and Carl Schurz. Caption: He does his own thinking, and will do his own voting.

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Comments and Context

This cartoon, published on the eve of the 1900 presidential election, has several subtexts. Puck paid special attention to German voters and German-American affairs. It published a weekly German-language edition and had a large German following; its founder, the cartoonist’s father Joseph Keppler, Sr. was born in Vienna. Carl Schurz was also a German immigrant, a politically active reformer who served as one of Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War generals, had served as United States Senator and in the presidential cabinets of Hayes and Garfield as Secretary of the Interior, and was an opponent of Imperialism. The inclusion of the German Kaiser is significant. The German Empire coveted overseas possessions, too, and subtlety tried to foment American opposition to the retention of new colonies won from Spain.

A huge Uncle Sam gets a new outfit made at the “McKinley and Company National Tailors” with President William McKinley taking the measurements. Carl Schurz, Joseph Pulitzer, and Oswald Ottendorfer stand inside the entrance to the shop and Schurz is offering Uncle Sam a spoonful of “Anti-Expansion Policy” medicine, a bottle of which each is carrying. On the right are bolts of cloth labeled “Enlightened Foreign Policy” and “Rational Expansion.” The strips on Uncle Sam’s trousers are labeled “Texas, Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, Florida, California, Hawaii, [and] Porto Rico.” Caption: The Antis. — Here, take a dose of this anti-fat and get slim again! Uncle Sam. — No, Sonny!, I never did take any of that stuff, and I’m too old to begin!

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Comments and Context

Lose weight or be measured for new clothes? The three men offering Uncle Sam reducing serums are Carl Schurz, a liberal Republican who moved to the United States in 1848, was named a Union General by Lincoln, and supported Horace Greeley, Grover Cleveland, and other reformers; Oswald Ottendorfer of the German-language New York Staats-Zeitung newspaper and head of the Anti-Imperialist League, and Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World.

President William McKinley stands on the steps to the U.S. Capitol, holding up two flags, one labeled “Expansion” and the other labeled “Sound Money.” Tiny figures at the foot of the steps show William Jennings Bryan and his “Anti-Expansion” and “16 to 1” followers trying to dislodge the flag poles.

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Comments and Context

Puck never shed its Democratic roots more than in campaigns where William Jennings Bryan was its party’s nominee, especially in 1900. The portrait of McKinley virtually is hagiographic. Even with two major issues, the Democrats found scarce traction with voters. The Anti-Expansion “pigmies” include Carl Schurz, left; and Joseph Pulitzer, right. Two of the “16 to 1” (free silver) opponents are Senator George Frisbie Hoar, left; Adlai E. Stevenson, with the straw hat; and Bryan, with the banner.

President Roosevelt sends Carl L. Schurz his sympathies on the recent death of Schurz’s father, Carl Schurz.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-05-14

Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary asks Frederic Bancroft to send a copy of the proof of a letter so that it can be shown to Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt will then see whether or not his replies to Mr. Schurz are printed correctly.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-08-12

Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary informs Frederic Bancroft that Roosevelt does not have any of the letters by Mr. Schurz. He suggests Bancroft might be able to obtain them from the White House.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-07-01

Theodore Roosevelt objects to Frederic Bancroft publishing one of Roosevelt’s letters to Carl Schurz, as it would be a discourtesy to Czar Nicholas II. Bancroft may publish the other.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1912-11-19

President Roosevelt praises General Winkler for his conduct while attending a state visit by Prince Heinrich of Prussia. Roosevelt had invited several prominent German Americans to meet Prince Heinrich and especially wanted Winkler to attend. Roosevelt criticized other attendees, including Carl Schurz, for showing too much deference to the Prince and speaking to him only in German. Winkler, however, spoke in English and treated him as he would any prominent foreigner regardless of royal birth. Roosevelt considered this an example to all Americans.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1909-03-01

President Roosevelt wishes he could be present at a meeting where Harry Rubens is scheduled to speak in honor of the late Carl Schurz. As he cannot, he writes to Rubens to tell him of his own appreciation of Schurz’s memory, saying that Schurz upheld the policies of Abraham Lincoln in every arena he was in, and that he was a champion of civil service reform and sound money.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-06-28