JUNE 1928 VOLUME XI NUMBER 4 PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BYTHE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN is a state- aided corporation whose function is the cultivation and en- couragement of the historical interests of the State. To this end it invites your cooperation; membership is open to all, whether residents of Wisconsin or elsewhere. The dues of annual mem- bers are two dollars, payable in advance; of life members, twenty dollars, payable once only. Subject to certain exceptions, mem- bers receive the publications of the Society, the cost of producing which far exceeds the membership fee. This is rendered possible by reason of the aid accorded the Society by the State. Of the work and ideals of the Society this magazine affords, it is be- lieved, a fair example. With limited means, much has already been accomplished; with ampler funds more might be achieved. So far as is known, not a penny entrusted to the Society has ever been lost or misapplied. Property may be willed to the Society in entire confidence that any trust it assumrs will be scrupulously executed. The WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OP HISTORY is published quarterly by the Society, at 116 E. Main St., Evansville, Wisconsin, in September, Decem- ber, March, and June, and is distributed to its members and exchanges; others who so desire may receive it for the annual subscription of two dollars, payable in advance; single numbers may be had for fifty cents. All correspondence concerning the magazine should be addressed to 116 E. Main St., Evansville, Wisconsin, or the office (of the State Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin. Entered as second-class matter, January 1, 1927, at the post office at Evans- ville, Wisconsin, under the act of August 24, 1912. VOL. XI 1927-1928 THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY PUBLICATIONS OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCON- SIN. JOSEPH SCHAFER, Superintendent and Editor CONTENTS OF VOLUME XI ARTICLES: PAGE WILLIAM JAMES LEONARD—The Chicago Fire: An Experience 3 EDGAR P. HouGHTOisr—History of Company I, Fourteenth Wisconsin Infantry, from October 15, 1861 to October 9, 1865 26 ALBERT O. BARTON—Some Experiences of a Sol- dier Railroader 50 W. A. TITUS—Historic Spots in Wisconsin ... 58, 320 WILLIAM B. FLOYD—The burning of the Sultana 70 NILS P. HAUGEN—Pioneer and Political Remin- iscences 121, 269, 395 FLORENCE GRATIOT BALE—A Packet of Old Letters 153 GENERAL RUEUS KING—Milwaukee to St. Paul in 1855 ......... 169 THEODORE A. BOERNER—A Pioneer Educator of Ozaukee County 190 JOSEPH CARMAN COVER—Memories of a Pioneer County Editor 247 ANGIE KUMLIEN MAIN—Annals of a Wisconsin Thresherman 301 JOHN G. GREGORY—The Parkman* Club 309 JOSEPH SCHAFER—Carl Schurz, Immigrant Statesman 373 DOCUMENTS: Letters of the Reverend Adelbert Inama, O. Praem . 77, 197, 328, 437 EDITORIAL COMMENT: Great Fires of Seventy-one 96 Washington and His Biographers 218 COMMUNICATIONS: Corrections 229 Superior Marks Historic Spot 355 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE 107, 230, 358, 459 BOOK NOTES 116, 241, 368, 467 VOL. XI, No. 4 June, 1928 THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY PUBLICATIONS OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCON- SIN. JOSEPH SCHAFER, Superintendent and Editor CONTENTS CARL SCHURZ^ IMMIGRANT STATESMAN Joseph Schafer 373 PIONEER AND POLITICAL REMINISCENCES Nils P. Haugen 395 DOCUMENTS: Letters Descriptive of Western Trip 1844 437 THE SOCIETY AND THE STATE. .Louise Phelps Kellogg 459 BOOK NOTES 467 The Society as a body is not responsible for statements or opinions advanced in the following pages by contributors. COPYRIGHT, 1928; BY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN Paid for out of the Maria L. and Simeon Mills Editorial Fund Income CARL SCHURZ, IMMIGRANT STATESMAN1 JOSEPH SCHAFER The war-time portrait of Carl Sehurz as major-general, while not well suited to illustrate our theme, is in some re- spects the best ocular key to his personality. The dominant note is virility. It expresses also restless activity, empha- sized by the pose of the body, the folds and rumples of the military cloak, the advanced right foot, and the way the hands are grasping, one the sword, the other the riding-whip. The countenance evinces determination, confidence, wariness, and a solemnity verging toward grimness. Energy and steadfastness were fundamental traits of Schurz's character, and of these his family background yields a complete explanation. The engaging story of his maternal grandfather, Heribert Jiissen, the giant "Burghalfen" of Count Wolf Metternich's seigniory, as Carl Sehurz presents it, renders superfluous a further quest for the sources of his own extraordinary endowment of vital force. His school- master father, Christian Sehurz, gave early direction to his eager and sensitive mind. At an age when the average boy is still callow and unformed, Carl Sehurz was a budding scholar, earnestly devoted to the classics, to literature, philos- ophy, and history. In earliest boyhood he had been inducted into the entrancing mysteries of music, becoming an ac- 1 This paper, in more extended form, will constitute the introduction to a volume entitled Carl Sehurz: The Stressful Period, which the State Historical Society is about to send to press under the Superintendent's editorship. This volume will contain Doctor Schafer's translations of more than three hundred letters written by Carl Sehurz to his family and friends prior to August, 1869. Typewritten copies of the original letters were secured from Miss Marianne Sehurz, of New York, the sole survivor of Carl Schurz's immediate family. 874 Joseph Schafer complished performer on piano and organ. That means of cultural development and spiritual solace he never relin- quished. The revolutionary movement in the German states, which interrupted Schurz's university studies in the midst of his third year at Bonn, might have produced a violent change of direction and character in his training. Yet the outcome was wholesome. It gave him a profound emotional experi- ence, strangely unrelated to the cloistered calm of lecture room and club. Apart from this, the dramatic episodes "of flood and field" could be reckoned as the laboratory phase of his social studies, making them infinitely more intensive and more real. The maturing of character, in this period, was inevitably hastened. Schurz's exile in Switzerland, Paris, and London; his active journalistic propaganda in behalf of a liberal over- turn in Germany; his careful investigation of the French Revolution as the nursery of political reform; and a study of advanced political thinkers among other European peoples, fitted him ideally for public service in a republic. When he appeared on the American scene, it was not merely as a brilliant young revolutionist of high attainments and valuable journalistic experience. He was heralded as the hero of the Kinkel rescue, a dramatic aftermath of the German Revolution of 1848 which, in its publicity value to Schurz, was worth years of normally developing prestige. Americans of every shade of thought were curious about him, and all liberals received him with acclaim. The Forty-eight- ers already in the country were predisposed to accept his leadership, which made possible the winning of an ever- widening influence among Americans of German birth. De- spite the element of luck which entered into his oppor- tunity, and notwithstanding a liability to the mistakes of in- experience, Schurz successfully conserved his initial advan- MAJOR-GENERAL CARL SCHURZ Courtesy of Doubleday, Doran and Company Carl Schurz, Immigrant Statesman 375 tages and grew steadily in the esteem and confidence of both native Germans and native Americans. II It was the knell of European liberalism, sounding in the news of the December (1851) reaction in France, that turned Schurz's thoughts toward America. He agreed with Louis Blanc, whom he accidentally discovered brooding on the same bench with himself in Hyde Park, that Louis Na- poleon's coup d'etat "finished" reform for years to come. "The Fatherland was closed to me," he says. "England was to me a foreign country, and would always remain so. Where then? 'To America,' I said to myself. 'The ideals of which I have dreamed and for which I have fought, I shall find there, not fully realized, but hopefully struggling for full realization. In that great struggle I shall perhaps be able to take some part. It is a new world, a free world, a world of great ideas and aims. In that world there is per- haps for me a new home. Ubi Libertas—ibi patria—1 formed my resolution on the spot. I would remain only a short time longer in England to make some necessary prep- arations, and then—off for America.' " The preparation in- cluded his marriage in London, July 6,1852, to the daughter of a Hamburg merchant. They sailed in August from Portsmouth and "on a bright September morning [Sep- tember 17], with the bouyant hopefulness of young hearts, saluted the New World." Schurz soon discovered that, hopeful as general condi- tions were, America was still far from his ideal of a free na- tion. By shrewd inquiry from all and sundry; by assiduous study of the newspapers; by conferring with government officials and listening to debates in Congress; by a somewhat thorough study of American history—lie arrived within a very few months at a clear-eyed view of the character of 376 Joseph Schafer American democracy. How it looked to him is revealed in his reciprocal views of the New and the Old World, with both of which his letters of the period concern themselves. "Every glance into the political life of America," he wrote, "strengthens my conviction that the aim of a revolution can be nothing else than to make room for the will of the people— in other words, to break every authority which has its organi- zation in the life of the state and, as far as possible, to over- turn the barriers to individual liberty.