On this day: May 14
1906 - Civil War General Carl Schurz Died
On this date Wisconsin abolitionist, politician, and Civil War general Carl Schurz died. He was born on March 2, 1829, near Cologne, Germany, and as a student at the age of 19 began public speaking at liberal political gatherings. Caught up in the revolution of March 1848, he was imprisoned, escaped, made a daring rescue of a comrade, and in November 1850 emigrated to England where he married Margaretha Meyer in November 1852.Later that year they both emigrated to the United States, settling in Watertown, Wisconsin, where Margaretha established the first American kindergarten. In 1855, Schurz was admitted to the bar in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and began his political career. A supporter of the fledgling Republican Party, in 1857 he was a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, an election he lost by only two hundred votes. In 1860, Schurz joined the Lincoln campaign and was credited with delivering the radical German vote to the Republicans that fall.
Lincoln appointed Schurz U.S. Minister to Spain, but he returned to the U.S. after the Union defeat at Bull Run, when Lincoln made him a Brigadier General. The troops that Schurz commanded included the German immigrant solders of the Wisconsin 26th Infantry. After the war, Schurz worked as a correspondent for the New York Tribune before becoming editor and part owner of the Westliche Post in St. Louis, Missouri. During the 1870s he served in the U.S. Senate from Missouri, as Secretary of the Interior, and as a journalist. [Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress]