March 2 - Carl Schurz born

On March 2, 1829 the German revolutionary and American politician Carl Schurz was born in Erftstadt, near Cologne.

During his studies at Bonn university, the young Schurz first came in contact with the revolutionary-democratic ideas that demanded a liberal reform of the German states' autocratic monarchies that had been restored after the end of the Napoleonic wars.
Schurz participated in the 1848 revolution that had swept through Germany, as it had in other European countries, but neither the National assembly in Frankfurt or the various armed uprisings succeeded to establish a united and democratic Germany. Schurz had served as lieutenant in the revolutionary troops in Baden, one of the centers of the rebellion in the South-West of Germany, and after the collapse of the uprising he went into exile, first to Switzerland and later to Paris and London, the two safe havens for the many German and European political refuges that had to leave their countries after 1848.

In 1852 Schurz emigrated to the USA, like many other veterans of 1848, being convinced that there was no chance of a fundamental political change in Germany for the foreseeable future.
Immediately after his arrival Schurz became involved in American politics, he joined the newly founded Republican Party and made his name as a fervent advocate for the emancipation of slaves. Having become a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, Schurz was sent as US ambassador to Madrid by the American president in 1861, but he returned a year later to serve as Major General of a Union volunteer corps in the American Civil War.
After the end of the war Schurz concentrated on his journalistic career, and in 1869 was elected as member of the US senate for Missouri, representing the Republican party, being the first American of German origin to hold such a position. He established himself quickly as the leader of the radical-liberal faction of his party, that fought against the increasing corruption and nepotism in the federal administration. Schurz was appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Hayes in 1876, but somehow failed to implement drastic reforms both in the US bureaucracy or in the �Indian Bureau� that administered the US dealings with the Native Americans, and that was a notorious hot bed of corruption.
Disillusioned with official politics, Schurz retired in 1881, and returned to journalism, editing a number of influential newspapers in the US and pursuing to advocate his liberal convictions.
Carl Schurz has become a symbol for the integrational abilities of the early USA, that would allow immigrants to play a significant role in the political and social life, and a symbol for the often observed tendency that such immigrants sometimes become more patriotic than longstanding residents of a country.



Carl Schurz


What else happened on this day?

1807 US Congress banned slave trade . The further importation of slaves was abolished but an inter-American slave trade continued.




Complete list of events:


�Wikipedia

Edited by Komnenos