Sch-Scu: Schaff through Scuddy

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


SCHAFF, J. S., founding charter member of the American Colonization Society, Washington, DC, December 1816. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 258n14)


SCHENCK, Robert Cumming, 1809-1890, diplomat, Union general.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  Three-term Whig Representative to Congress, December 1843-March 1851.  Re-elected December 1863, 1864, 1866, 1868.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 417-418; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 427; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 370; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 427-428:

SCHENCK, ROBERT CUMMING (October 4, 1809-March 23, 1890), congressman, soldier, diplomat, was a son of General William Cortenus Schenck and his wife, Elizabeth Rogers. The father, a descendant of Roelof Martense Schenck who came to New Amsterdam probably about 1650, had migrated from New Jersey to Ohio, where he served in the legislature and is said to have founded the town of Franklin. Here Robert was born. His father died in 1821, leaving the boy under the guardianship of General James Findlay [q.v.] of Cincinnati. Robert graduated from Miami University in 1827, remained there three years longer studying and teaching, was subsequently admitted to the bar, and commenced practising law in Dayton. On August 21, 1834, he married Rennelche W. Smith, whose sister was the wife of his brother James Findlay Schenck [q.v.].

Robert Schenck's political career began in 1838 with a fruitless campaign for election to the legislature on the Whig ticket. More successful later, he assumed the leadership of his party in the Ohio House during the terms of 1841-43. In the national House of Representatives, 1843-51, he proved himself a vigorous Whig partisan, and upon the expiration of his fourth term in 1851 he was named by President Fillmore as minister to Brazil. Here he served until October 1853, acting with John S. Pendleton [q.v.], charge d'affaires of the United States to the Argentine Confederation, in negotiating commercial treaties with Uruguay (1852) and Paraguay (1853), which were never proclaimed, and two treaties with the Argentine Confederation, signed July 10 and 27, 1853. He failed, however, to secure from Brazil a treaty providing for the free navigation of the Amazon.

A strong anti-slavery man, Schenck was one of the first to urge Lincoln's nomination and was an active Republican campaigner in 1860. Appointed brigadier-general of volunteers May 17, 1861, he took part in the first battle of Bull Run, served under Rosecrans and Fremont in West Virginia, and was wounded at Second Bull Run in August 1862, his right wrist being permanently injured. On August 30 he was promoted major-general of volunteers. Eliminated from active fighting, he was assigned in December 1862 to the command in Baltimore, where his measures were not always popular (Richard H. Jackson, To Robert E. [sic] Schenck, pamphlet, 1867, p. 3). In December of the following year he resigned his commission in order to sit once more in Congress.

In the House he disapproved strongly of Lincoln's moderation as shown in the Hampton Roads Conference (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States, volume V, 1904, pp. 51-52, note). A master of invective and vituperation, he distinguished himself for the violence of his attack on such "Copperheads" as Fernando Wood, whom he called "a specimen of the snake family" (No Compromise with Treason; Remarks of Mr. Schenk ... April 11, 1864, 1864) and for his opposition to President Johnson. He was chairman of the House committee on military affairs and later of the Ways and Means committee. He was an advocate of the contraction of the currency at the end of the war (Public Credit-Gold Contracts: Speech ... February 22, 1869, 1869).

Failing of reelection to Congress in 1870, Schenck turned again to diplomacy. He was appointed, February 10, 1871, a member of the Joint High Commission between the United States and Great Britain and in that capacity signed the Treaty of Washington, May 8, 1871. On December 22 preceding he had been designated to succeed the discredited John Lothrop Motley [q.v.] as minister to Great Britain, and he traveled to his post in May 1871. Here he was called upon to conduct much of the routine business arising out of the Treaty of Washington and the arbitration of the Alabama claims. In spite of his failure to conclude a consular convention with Great Britain and to persuade Derby to support the United States in its demands on Spain for concessions in its Cuban policy (S. F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State, volume VII, 1928, pp. 194-200), his record in London seems creditable, but in February 1876 he resigned under a cloud. He had allowed himself to be made a director of the "Emma" silver mine in Utah which in 1871 used his name in the sale of stock in Great Britain. He was reproved by the Secretary of State at that time, and the failure of the Emma Mine brought his resignation, which Grant reluctantly accepted. The committee on foreign affairs of the House, which investigated the incident, found no cause to impugn Schenck's integrity, but condemned such transactions by American diplomats (House Report No. 579, 44 Congress, I Sess., 1876). After Schenck's resignation he returned to Washington to practise law, achieved a reputation as an authority on draw poker (he published Draw Poker in 1880), and died in that city in 1890. He was survived by three of his six daughters.

[A. D. Schenck, The Reverend Wm. Schenck, His Ancestry and His Descendants (1883); Robt. C. Schenck, U.S. A. (n.d.), pub. by order of Union Central Com., 3rd Congress District, Ohio; In Memoriam, General Robt. C. Schenck (n.d.), proceedings at memorial service in Dayton; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Beckles Wilson, America's Ambassadors to England (1928); W. A. Taylor, Hundred-Year Book and Official Register of the State of Ohio (1891); Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S., 1871-76; L. E. Chittenden, The Emma Mine (1876); War Department records; instructions and dispatches to and from Brazil and Great Britain, in Department of State; Washington Post, March 24, 1890.]

E.W.S.  

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 417-418:

SCHENCK, Robert Cumming, diplomatist, born in Franklin, Ohio, 4 October, 1809, was graduated at Miami university in 1827, and remained as a resident graduate and tutor for three years longer, then studied law with Thomas Corwin, was admitted to the bar, and established himself in practice at Dayton, Ohio. He was a member of the legislature in 1841-'2, displaying practical knowledge and pungent wit in the debates, and was then elected as a Whig to congress, and thrice re-elected, serving from 4 December, 1843, till 3 March, 1851. He was a member of important committees, and during his third term was the chairman of that on roads and canals. On 12 March, 1851, he was commissioned as minister to Brazil. In 1852, with John S. Pendleton, who was accredited to the Argentine Republic as chargé d'affaires, he arranged a treaty of friendship and commerce with the government of that country and one for the free navigation of the river La Plata and its great tributaries. They also negotiated treaties with the governments of Uruguay and Paraguay. He left Rio Janeiro on 8 October, 1853, and after his return to Ohio engaged in the railroad business. He offered his services to the government when the civil war began, and was one of the first brigadier-generals appointed by President Lincoln, his commission bearing the date of 17 May, 1861. He was attached to the military department of Washington, and on 17 June moved forward by railroad with a regiment to dislodge the Confederates at Vienna, but was surprised by a masked battery, and forced to retreat. On meeting re-enforcements, he changed front, and the enemy retired. His brigade formed a part of General Daniel Tyler's division at the first Bull Run battle, and was on the point of crossing the Stone Bridge to make secure the occupation of the plateau, when the arrival of Confederate re-enforcements turned the tide of battle. He next served in West Virginia under General William S. Rosecrans, and was ordered to the Shenandoah valley with the force that was sent to oppose General Thomas J. Jackson. Pushing forward by a forced march to the relief of General Robert H. Milroy, he had a sharp and brilliant engagement with the enemy at McDowell. At Cross Keys he led the Ohio troops in a charge on the right, and maintained the ground that he won until he was ordered to retire. General John C. Frémont then intrusted him with the command of a division. At the second battle of Bull Run he led the first division of General Franz Sigel's corps. He was wounded in that action by a musket-ball, which shattered his right arm, incapacitating him for active service till 16 December, 1862, when he took command of the middle department and eighth corps at Baltimore, having been promoted major-general on 18 September After performing effective services in the Gettysburg campaign, he resigned his commission on 3 December, 1863, in order to take his place in the house of representatives, in which he served as chairman of the committee on military affairs. He was re-elected in 1864, and was placed at the head of the same committee, where he procured the establishment of the National military and naval asylum. In 1865 he was president of the board of visitors to the U. S. military academy, and was one of the committee of congress on the death of President Lincoln, serving also on the committee on retrenchment. In 1866 he attended the Loyalists' convention at Philadelphia and the soldiers' convention at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He was re-elected to congress in 1866 and in 1868, when his opponent was Clement L. Vallandigham, serving as chairman of the committee of ways and means and of the ordnance committee. On 22 December, 1870, he received the appointment of minister to Great Britain. In 1871 he was one of the “Alabama” commission. He resigned his post in 1876 in consequence of the failure of the Emma silver mine company, in which he had permitted himself to be chosen a director, and resumed the practice of law in Washington, D. C. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 417-418.


SCHMUCKER, Simon Samuel, 1799-1873.  Theologian.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume V, pp. 421-422)

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 421-422:

SCHMUCKER, Samuel Simon, theologian, born in Hagerstown, Maryland, 28 February, 1799; died in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 26 July, 1873, spent two years in the University of Pennsylvania, and then taught in York in 1816. He began theological studies under the direction of his father, but in 1818 entered Princeton seminary, where he was graduated in 1820. Among his fellow-students at Princeton were Bishops McIlvaine and Johns, and Dr. Robert Baird. After being licensed, he was his father's assistant for a few months, and then followed a call to New Market, Virginia. He was ordained at Frederick, Maryland, 5 September, 1821, and served his first charge in 1820-'6. He interested himself at once in the preparation of young men for the ministry, took an active part in the organization of the general synod in 1821, and was throughout his life one of the leaders of that body. He was the author of the formula for the government and discipline of the Evangelical Lutheran church, which, adopted by the general synod in 1827, has become the ground-plan of the organization of that body. From its establishment in 1826 till his resignation in 1864 he was chairman of the faculty of the theological seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and for four years he was the only instructor. The degree of D. D. was conferred on him in 1830 by Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1846 he took an active part in the establishment of an ecclesiastical connection between the Lutheran church in Europe and America, and was a delegate to the Evangelical alliance which met in London during that year. He aided much in preparing the way for the latter by his “Fraternal Appeal” to the American churches, with a plan for union (1838), which was circulated extensively in England and the United States. His published works number more than one hundred. Among them are “Biblical Theology of Storr and Flott,” translated from the German (2 vols., Andover, 1826; reprinted in England, 1845); “Elements of Popular Theology” (1834); “Kurzgefasste Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche, auf der Grundlage der Busch'en Werke” (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1834); “Fraternal Appeal to the American Churches on Christian Union” (Andover, 1838); “Portraiture of Lutheranism” (Baltimore, 1840); “Retrospect of Lutheranism” (1841); “Psychology, or Elements of Mental Philosophy” (New York, 1842); “Dissertation on Capital Punishment” (Philadelphia, 1845); “The American Lutheran Church, Historically, Doctrinally, and Practically Delineated” (1851); “Lutheran Manual” (1855); “American Lutheranism Vindicated” (Baltimore, 1856); “Appeal on Behalf of the Christian Sabbath” (Philadelphia, 1857); “Evangelical Lutheran Catechism” (Baltimore, 1859); “The Church of the Redeemer” (1867); “The Unity of Christ's Church” (New York, 1870); and a large number of discourses and addresses, and articles in the “Evangelical Review” and other periodicals. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 421-422.



SCHNAUFFER, Carl Heinrich (July 4, 1823-September 4, 1854), poet, soldier, editor, was a German political refugee in America after the Revolution of 1848. Founded, in October 1851, a German daily, Baltimore Wecker, which stood for popular education, freedom, and enlightenment, and opposed the current "Know-Nothingism."  After his death his widow continued the Wecker in his in his spirit. No English language paper in Maryland was anti-slavery and on the outburst of the Civil War a mob stormed the Wecker office, smashing its windows.

(L. P. Henninghausen, "Reminiscences of the Political Life of the German-Americans in Baltimore during 1850-1860," Seventh Annual Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1892-93; J. T. Scharf, History of Baltimore City (1881).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 444-445:

SCHNAUFFER, CARL HEINRICH (July 4, 1823-September 4, 1854), poet, soldier, editor, was a German political refugee in America after the Revolution of 1848. He was born in Heimsheim, near Stuttgart, Germany, the son of a dyer, Johann Heinrich Schnauffer, and Karoline (Hasenmaier) Schnauffer. Owing to the early death of his father Schnauffer's schooling was cut short and, after serving an apprenticeship in Grossbottwar, he entered the employ of a Mannheim merchant. His employer recognized his literary ability and gave him the necessary time for study. At this time Schnauffer met two men whose ideals influenced the whole course of his life, Gustav Struve and Friedrich Karl Franz Hecker [qq.v.], revolutionary leaders in Baden and emigrants to America after 1848. In 1846 he entered the university at Heidelberg, where he associated with the liberal student groups, and published his first volume of verse, strongly influenced by Pierre-Jean de Beranger and Ferdinand Freiligrath. In the next year he joined the staff of the liberal Mannheimer A bendzeitung, and in 1848 followed Hecker into the field and fought in a number of engagements of the ill-starred uprising of the South-German liberals. He fled to Switzerland, but in 1849 he joined in the renewed fighting, and on June 22 he was taken prisoner at Mannheim and transported to Prussia. He escaped from prison disguised as a locksmith, and once more took refuge in Switzerland where he wrote his Todtenkranze, inspired probably by a work of the same title by Christian von Zedlitz. But instead of the Austrian poet's resignation, Schnauffer sounds a ringing call to battle for freedom in the name of those executed by the reactionaries. In April 1850 he was seized by the Swiss government and forced to leave for London along with other revolutionary leaders. In London he met Struve and together they went to the estate of Thomas Fothergill, a friend from Heidelberg days who offered them asylum. He performed manual labor for his keep, among other things training race horses, and also began a five-act drama in the style of Schiller, Koenig Karl I oder Cromwell und die englische Revolution, which was privately printed in Baltimore in 1854. Characteristically the play ends with the death of the tyrant and the establishment of the British republic.

In Mannheim he had become engaged to Elise Wilhelmine Moos who had, however, emigrated to Baltimore, Maryland, with her family in 1847. For several years Schnauffer had no news of her but, in 1850, correspondence was renewed and in May of the following year he joined her in Baltimore where they were married. He identified himself enthusiastically with the "Turner" movement and founded, in October 1851, a German daily, Baltimore Wecker, which stood for popular education, freedom, and enlightenment, and opposed the current "Know-Nothingism." Unlike some other "Forty-eighters" Schnauffer never preached economic revolution, but in his lyrics he continually elaborated on the theme that the noble man should at all times be ready to fight and die for freedom. The best works by Schnauffer are poems in the style of Arndt or Herwegh, which expressed the ideals of the "Turner" so well that they became their favorite songs. His collected poems w ere published in 1879 under the title, Lieder imd Gedichte aus dem Nachlass van Carl Heinrich Schnaiiffer. He died at the age of thirty-one from typhoid fever, just before news reached him that one of his lyrics had won the first prize at the "Turner" convention in Philadelphia. His widow continued the Wecker in his memory and in his spirit. No English language paper in Maryland was anti-slavery and on the outburst of the Civil War a mob stormed the Wecker office, smashing its windows. At this moment Mrs. Schnauffer, with the smaller of her two children in her arms, stepped out of the building to face the mob and successfully appealed to them to abandon further destruction. Schnauffer was quite short in stature but military in bearing, and he had a personality that inspired enthusiastic devotion in his friends.

[Jahrbucher der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Turnerei, April 1891; L. P. Henninghausen, "Reminiscences of the Political Life of the German-Americans in Baltimore during 1850-1860," Seventh Annual Report of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1892-93; J. T. Scharf, History of Baltimore City (1881); Baltimore Sun, September 5, 1854; reminiscences and unpublished letters furnished by his grandson, John Dickinson.]

A.E.Z.


SCHNEIDER, George (December 13, 1823- September 16, 1905), journalist and banker.  In St. Louis he founded the Neue Zeit, a paper which soon became conspicuous for its opposition to the extension of slavery. In 1851 the home of the Neue Zeit was destroyed by fire, and in August of the same year Schneider became managing editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a conservative weekly paper. Although more conservative than the Neue Zeit, the Staats-Zeitung bitterly opposed the Douglas program and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

(Who's Who in America, 1903-05; Trans. Illinois State Historical Society, no. 35 (1928); Encyclopedia of Biography of Illinois, volume I (1892).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 446-447:

SCHNEIDER, GEORGE (December 13, 1823- September 16, 1905), journalist and banker, was born in Pirmasens, Rhenish Bavaria, the son of Ludwig and Josephine (Schlick) Schneider. He obtained his early education at the Latin school of his native town. Upon reaching his majority he became engaged in journalism. Keenly interested in public affairs, he denounced the arbitrary government of his native state and in 1848 joined an insurrection against it. Having eventually to leave the country because of his political views, he went first to France and thence to the United States. Arriving in New York in July 1849, he was attracted by the glamorous stories of the new West. Within a few months he had reached St. Louis and founded the Neue Zeit, a paper which soon became conspicuous for its opposition to the extension of slavery. In 1851 the home of the Neue Zeit was destroyed by fire, and in August of the same year Schneider became managing editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, a conservative weekly paper which he soon transformed into a thriving daily with a Sunday edition, the first in Chicago. Although more conservative than the Neue Zeit, the Staats-Zeitung bitterly opposed the Douglas program and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. On January 29, 1854, Schneider convoked a public meeting, perhaps the first of its kind in the United States, to draft resolutions against the Nebraska Bill, and on March 16 at a mass meeting of German citizens in which Schneider was an active participant, Douglas was branded as "an ambitious and dangerous demagogue." On February 22, 1856, Schneider was one of a group of anti-Nebraska editors who assembled at Decatur, Illinois, and issued a call for the first Republican state convention in Illinois, to be held at Bloomington in the following May. At the Bloomington convention, with Lincoln's assistance, he managed to get a plank adopted which was a clear-cut pronouncement against Know-Nothing policies hostile to naturalized citizens, especially Germans, who were antislavery men. He also was chiefly responsible for the adoption of the tenth plank of the Philadelphia platform of 1856 which invited the "affiliation and cooperation of the men of all parties." He actively espoused Lincoln's candidacy for the presidency after his nomination in 1860, and the nation-wide circulation of the Staats-Zeitung, one of the most influential German papers in the Northwest, did much to consolidate the great foreign-born vote without which Lincoln would have failed of election (D. V. Smith, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, September 1932).

In 1861 he was appointed consul at Elsinore, Denmark, primarily to influence the public opinion of northern Europe in favor of the Union cause. Resigning from this office in 1862, he returned to the United States and in 1863 became collector of internal revenue for the Chicago district, having in the meantime (1862) disposed of his interest in the Staats-Zeitung. After four years in the internal revenue service, he became chief executive of the State Savings Institution at Chicago, and in 1871 he was chosen the first president of the newly organized National Bank of Illinois, a position that he held until 1897. Although he was now primarily interested in banking, he continued to be active in public life in Illinois. Declining to accept a diplomatic appointment to Switzerland in 1877, he became the treasurer of the Chicago South Park Board in the following year, serving in this capacity until 1882. As a director of the Chicago Festival Association, he was instrumental in 1885 in bringing excellent musical talent to Chicago. He was intensely interested in the formation of relief societies for German immigrants, and he served for many years as a director of the Illinois Humane Society, which through his efforts in 1879 established a separate department for helpless children. On June 6, 1853, he married Matilda Schloetzer, by whom he had seven children, all daughters. He died in Colorado Springs, Colo.

[Who's Who in America, 1903-05; Trans. Illinois State Historical Society, no. 35 (1928); Encyclopedia of Biography of Illinois, volume I (1892); John Moses and Joseph Kirkland, eds., History of Chicago (1895), volumes I, II; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois (1900); A. C. Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 (1919); "Meeting ... Commemorative of the Convention of May 29, 1856," Trans. McLean County Historical Society, volume III (Bloomington, Illinois, 1900); Chicago Daily Tribune, September 18, 1905; information from Chicago Public Library]

A.L.P.


SCHOELCHER, Victor, born 1804, French statesman, prominent abolitionist leader.  Traveled extensively throughout the world (including the USA) to study slavery and advocated emancipation.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 423)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 423:

SCHOELCHER, Victor (shel'-ker), French statesman, born in Paris, 21 July, 1804. He is the son of a wealthy merchant, studied at the College Louis le Grand, and became a journalist, bitterly opposing the government of Louis Philippe and making a reputation as a pamphleteer. After 1826 he devoted himself almost exclusively to advocacy of the abolition of slavery throughout the world, contributing a part of his large fortune to establish and promote societies for the benefit of the negro race. In 1829-'31 he made a journey to the United States, Mexico, and Cuba to study slavery, in 1840-'2 he visited for the same purpose the West Indies, and in 1845-'7 Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and the west coast of Africa. On 3 March, 1848, he was appointed under-secretary of the navy, and caused a decree to be issued by the provisional government which acknowledged the principle of the enfranchisement of the slaves through the French possessions. As president of a commission, Schoelcher prepared and wrote the decree of 27 April, 1848, which enfranchised the slaves forever. He was elected to the legislative assembly in 1848 and 1849 for Martinique, and introduced a bill for the abolition of the death-penalty, which was to be discussed on the day on which Prince Napoléon made his coup d’état. After 2 December he emigrated to London, and, refusing to take advantage of the amnesties of 1856 and 1869, returned to France only after the declaration of war with Prussia in 1870. Organizing a legion of artillery, he took part in the defence of Paris, and in 1871 he was returned to the national assembly for Martinique. In 1875 he was elected senator for life. His works include “De l’esclavage des noirs et de la législation colonial” (Paris, 1833); “Abolition de l’esclavage” (1840); “Les colonies françaises de l’Amérique” (1842); “Les colonies étrangères dans l’Amérique et Hayti” (2 vols., 1843); “Histoire de l’esclavage pendant les deux dernières années” (2 vols., 1847); “La vérité aux ouvriers et cultivateurs de la Martinique” (1850); “Protestation des citoyens frarnçais negres et mulatres contre des accusations calomnieuses” (1851); “Le procès de la colonie de Marie-Galante” (1851); and “La grande conspiration du pillage et du meurtre à la Martinique” (1875).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 423.  


SCHURZ, Carl, 1829-1906, abolitionist leader, political leader, journalist, lawyer, Union general, Secretary of the Interior. In 1856 having espoused the anti-slavery cause with all the ardor and enthusiasm he gave to the German revolution of 1849, Schurz was immediately drawn into Republican politics. Speaking in German, he campaigned for Fremont. The next year he was sent as a delegate to the Republican state convention which promptly nominated him for lieutenant-governor although he was not yet a citizen of the United States. In the campaign of 1858 Schurz campaigned in Illinois for Abraham Lincoln and against Stephen A. Douglas.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 466; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 726-729). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 466-470:

SCHURZ, CARL (March 2, 1829-May 14, 1906), minister to Spain, Union soldier, senator from Missouri, and secretary of the interior, was born in the little town of Liblar on the Rhine, near Cologne. He attended the gymnasium at Cologne (1839-46) and became a candidate for the doctorate at the University of Bonn in 1847. His father, Christian Schurz, was first a village schoolmaster and then embarked in business; his mother, Marianne Jussen, the daughter of a tenant farmer, was a woman of unusual force of character. Both made every sacrifice to help their son to the career of which he dreamed-a professorship of history. Fate in the form of the German revolutionary movement of 1848-49 intervened and altered Schurz's life as it marred or made the lives of many thousands of young Germans who beheld in the United States their ideal of popular government. Of these none was more ardent or more eloquent, and certainly none was more daring, than Schurz. At nineteen he was a leader of the student movement in his university, and was preaching its gospel to the peasants in his neighborhood through the columns of a democratic newspaper, and by word of mouth. His rare gift of oratory he discovered when he suddenly addressed, to great applause, a meeting in the university hall at Bonn to which he came without the slightest intention of speaking.

Profoundly influenced by Prof. Gottfried Kinkel of Bonn, one of the intellectual leaders of the struggle for democratic institutions, Schurz followed him in the abortive revolutionary movement upon Siegburg; on May 11, 1849. Thereafter he became a lieutenant and staff officer of the revolutionary army taking part in the final battles of the united rebel forces of Baden and the Palatinate at Ubstadt and Bruchsal, and those on the line of the Murg River in Baden on June 28-30, 1849. Sent by order into the fortress of Rastatt, just before it was surrendered, he was one of its defenders until the surrender more than three weeks later. Rightly expecting to be s hot if captured, Schurz declined to deliver himself up to the conquering Prussians. With two companions he concealed himself for four days, finally escaping through an unused sewer which was their first place of refuge. (See Schurz's account, "The Surrender of Rastatt," Wisconsin Magazine of History, March 1929.) They crossed the Rhine and entered French territory, Schurz finally joining the large colony of German refugees in Switzerland.

There he might have stayed indefinitely had it not been for the plight of his beloved teacher, Kinkel, who h ad been captured, put on trial for his life, and sentenced to life imprisonment. After being treated as a common felon, Kinkel was at length transferred to the prison at Spandau, a fortified town near Berlin. In response to Frau Kinkel's appeals, Schurz undertook the liberation of her husband. Twice, with the aid of a false passport, he reentered Germany, where he was himself on the proscribed list. The necessary funds were furnished by friends of the Professor. After nine months of preparation and plotting with the complicity of a turnkey, Kinkel was lowered to the street from an unbarred attic window of the prison in the night of November 6-7, 1850. In a waiting carriage Kinkel and Schurz left the city by the Hamburg road, only to alter their course and drive straight to Mecklenburg. They were successfully concealed in Rostock until a tiny schooner conveyed them to England. To this day no single incident of the Revolution is better known in Germany; no other has in it more elements of romantic daring and unselfish personal heroism. Schurz went to Paris in December 1850, but in the summer of 1851 was expelled from France by the police as a dangerous foreigner. He resided in England until after his marriage there to Margarethe (or Margaretha) Meyer, of Hamburg, July 6, 1852. During this period he won the friendship of Mazzini and Kossuth and other great leaders of the democratic movement in Europe. America beckoned him, however. In August he set sail for the United States, following in the footsteps of many of his associates-in-arms of the brief campaign of 1849. He and his wife lived in Philadelphia until 1855.

Before definitely settling, Schurz spent months in traveling through the Eastern and Middle-Western portion of the United States, and set about acquiring that remarkable mastery of the English language which made it possible for him to make campaign speeches in English within five years after his arrival. In 1856 he purchased a small farm in Watertown, Wisconsin, where an uncle's family had settled. Having espoused the anti-slavery cause with all the ardor and enthusiasm he gave to the revolution of 1849, Schurz was immediately drawn into Republican politics. Speaking in German, he campaigned for Fremont. The next year he was sent as a delegate to the Republican state convention which promptly nominated him for lieutenant-governor although he was not yet a citizen of the United States, a point that did not become pressing because he was defeated by 107 votes despite wide campaigning in both English and German. A year later, the campaign of 1858 found him speaking in Illinois for Abraham Lincoln and against Stephen A. Douglas. From that time on he was in demand for one campaign after another; in April 1859 he aided, by request, Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts in his fight against the Know-Nothing movement in that state, delivering one of his most famous speeches, "True Americanism" (Speeches, 1865, pp. 51- 76), which helped to defeat a proposal to deny the ballot to foreign-born voters in Massachusetts for two years after federal naturalization.

Schurz was next put forward for the governorship of Wisconsin; the prize went, however, to another. He was then admitted to the bar and entered into a law partnership, but the anti-slavery cause and politics absorbed most of his time. Chairman of the Wisconsin delegation to the Chicago Republican convention of 1860 which nominated Abraham Lincoln, he and his fellow-delegates voted for Seward until the end. One of the committee which notified Lincoln of his nomination, Schurz spoke for him in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York with great effectiveness among both natives and foreign-born. His greatest forensic effort-he considered it the greatest success of his oratorical career-was his speech in Cooper Union, September 13, 1860 (Ibid., pp. 162-221), which was devoted to a merciless critique of Stephen A. Douglas and was marked by sarcasm, humor, and his unusual power of clear exposition. It lasted for three hours and was received with the greatest enthusiasm. For all of these services, Lincoln, who had written to him on June 18, 1860, that "to the. extent of our limited acquaintance, no man stands nearer my heart than yourself" (Speeches, Correspondence, I, 119), appointed Schurz minister to Spain, although he was in the midst of raising the 1st New York ("Lincoln") Cavalry of which he expected to be colonel.

Arriving at Madrid in July 1861, Schurz devoted himself, like Charles Francis Adams and other American representatives in Europe, to advancing and safeguarding the Union cause abroad, and gave all his leisure time to military campaigns and tactics which he had studied ever since his brief military experience in Germany. Finding, however, that the Northern cause was greatly weakened by the failure of the government to become clearly anti-slavery, and receiving no encouragement in this matter from Secretary Seward, Schurz returned to the United States in January 1862, to put his views before Lincoln. The latter received him kindly, but persisted in his policy of awaiting a more favorable public opinion at home. Schurz then sought to rouse the public for immediate emancipation and to that end delivered an address, previously read and approved by Lincoln, at Cooper Union in March 1862 (Speeches, 1865, pp. 24o-68), which coincided with the President's request to Congress for authority to cooperate with any state which might adopt gradual emancipation. Schurz resigned as minister in April, was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, and was given not a brigade, but a division, in Fremont's army on June 10, 1862, thus being placed in command of troops some of whom were veterans of a year's standing.

That Schurz took his military duties seriously, and soon won the respect of his officers and men for his ability and personal courage is beyond question. He was frequently complimented in dispatches, and on one occasion after his troops passed in review with the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln confirmed the press reports that "the division commanded by General Schurz impressed the Presidential party as the best drilled and most soldierly of the troops that passed before them" (Schurz, Reminiscences, II, 407). At the second battle of Bull Run, August 30, 1862, the new brigadier of two months' service and his division won high praise in one of the bloodiest and bitterest defeats of the Army of the Potomac, whose final withdrawal they covered. It was, however, the misfortune of this division and the corps to bear the brunt of Jackson's sudden attack at Chancellorsville. Badly placed by the corps commander, General O. O. Howard-despite repeated protests and warnings by Schurz-the division broke and retired in disorder before the overwhelming Confederate onrush, but was finally rallied in part to aid in preventing what threatened to be a complete disaster. For this the XI Corps, and especially its German regiments, was violently abused and charged with cowardice in the press of the entire country. There resulted a long controversy between Schurz and Howard, but the farmer's efforts to obtain a court of inquiry and justice for his troops failed. Again at Gettysburg, where, because of the killing of General Reynolds and the consequent advancement of General Howard, Schurz took command of the XI Corps, his troops bore the brunt of the Confederate attack upon the right wing. After heavy losses they retired in some disorder through the town to Cemetery Ridge, again in obedience to orders from Howard. Once more there were unwarranted charges that the Germans had failed to stand their ground.

That Schurz was himself not held responsible for the Chancellorsville disaster appears from the fact that on March 14, 1863, he was promoted to major-general. After Gettysburg, the corps was transferred to the western field. Here Schurz again became involved in a controversy, this time with General Hooker. A court of inquiry subsequently found that his conduct had been entirely correct and proper. After Chattanooga the depleted XI and XII Corps were merged into a new XX Corps, and Schurz was appointed to command a corps of instruction at Nashville. Unable to brook the prospect of inaction, Schurz, after some months, asked to be relieved of his command, conferred with Lincoln, and then made many speeches on behalf of the President's reelection. The end of the war found him chief of staff to Major-General Slocum in Sherman's army. He resigned immediately after the surrender of Lee. Throughout his military service Schurz corresponded irregularly with Lincoln, a most unwise procedure but one welcomed by the President except on one occasion when he found it necessary to rebuke the General, which event, however,- did not interrupt their warm friendship (Schurz, Speeches, Correspondence, I, 2n-13, 219--21). At best it was an anomalous situation; a political campaigner and intimate of the President had been put into a most responsible military command and was known to be in direct relations with the Commander-in-Chief. Had not Schurz displayed real soldierly capacity, and much discretion, the situation might easily have become an impossible one. Instead, he won the regard of Sherman, Hancock, and many others who ranked among the best of the Northern generals.

Before Schurz could decide upon his next course of action, President Johnson asked him, to visit the Southern states and to report at length to him upon conditions there. Schurz traveled from July to September 1865, and wrote a lengthy report that had extraordinary historical value to this day, because of its detailed analysis of the situation, its clarity of statement, and its vision (Speeches, Correspondence, I, 279-374). Since, however, Schurz thought the extension of the franchise to the colored people should be a condition precedent to the readmission of the Confederate states, his report was unwelcome to Johnson, who neither acknowledged its receipt nor allowed it to be published until Congress demanded it (Senate Executive Document No. 2, 39 Congress, 1 Sess.).

With this task accomplished, Schurz accepted an invitation from Horace Greeley to represent the New York Tribune as its Washington correspondent, in which capacity he observed the beginning of the struggle between Congress and the President over reconstruction. Resigning in the spring of 1866, Schurz next became editor-in-chief of the Detroit Post, then just established by leading Michigan Republicans. Here he remained only a year, when he became joint editor, with Emil Preetorius [q.v.], of the St. Louis Westliche Post, and one of the proprietors of this German-language daily. This third chapter in his journalistic career was also destined to be a short one. A delegate to the Republican National Convention which met to nominate Grant for the presidency in 1868, Schurz was at once chosen temporary chairman of the convention, and made the keynote address. He drew up the resolution in the platform calling for the removal of disqualifications upon "the late rebels" (Reminiscences, III, 284-85). As usual, he made many speeches in the campaign which followed. After a bitter contest between the Radicals and Liberals in the party, he was himself nominated for the United States Senate from Missouri, and duly elected by the legislature (Ross, post, p. 29). On March 4, 1869, two days after his fortieth birthday, he took his seat in Washington.

He speedily found himself in the group of anti-Grant senators, joining Sumner in the defeat of Grant's plan to annex Santo Domingo, and opposing at many points the "spoils-loving and domineering partisans" of the President. On December 20, 1869, years before the policy it outlined was adopted, Schurz introduced a bill to create a permanent civil-service merit system (Congressional Globe, 41 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 236-38). William A. Dunning and Frederic Bancroft have written in their addenda to Schurz's unfinished memoirs that his "whole conception of public policy was far above the play of merely personal and party interests"; and that his senatorial career was accordingly one of "exceptional seriousness and dignity" (Reminiscences, III, 317-18). He was at his best in his incessant attacks upon public corruption. The news that he would speak at a given hour usually crowded the public galleries. But the high rank he took and held in the Senate, and his national reputation as an orator and a leader, did not assure him reelection in 1875, for, because of the Republican split, the Democrats had gained control of the Missouri legislature. He was again compelled to turn to journalism and the lecture platform for support.

Schurz, who was disgusted with Grant and distrustful of the Democrats, had probably done more than any other leader to promote the Liberal Republican movement (Ross, pp. 44-50; Schurz, Speeches, Correspondence, II, 5g-69, 254-60). He was the permanent president of the Cincinnati convention of 1872 that organized the new party and, although profoundly disappointed by the nomination of Horace Greeley and without hope of success, was active in the campaign. His speeches "were naturally against Grant rather than for Greeley" (Reminiscences, III, 352). In 1876, to the dismay and anger of many of his Liberal Republican associates, he supported Hayes, being assured that the latter was sound on the money question, would restore the South, and would promote civil-service reform (Speeches, Correspondence, III, 249-59; Reminiscences, III, 368). On March 4, 1877, Schurz entered the cabinet of Hayes as secretary of the interior. His secretaryship is still remembered because of his enlightened treatment of the Indians (much misunderstood at the time), his installing a merit promotion system in his department, his preservation of the public domain, and the beginning of the development of national parks.

On leaving the cabinet Schurz began his fourth venture into journalism. At the invitation of Henry Villard [q. v. ], who had just purchased the New York Evening Post and the Nation, he became head of a triumvirate of remarkable editors comprising besides himself, Edwin L. Godkin and Horace White [qq.v.]. The brilliant chapter in journalism which they thus began ended in two and a quarter years, in the fall of 1883, because of differences as to editorial methods and policies between Schurz and Godkin (Nevins, post, pp. 455-56). The friendship of the three men remained unbroken; until his death Schurz was a valued counselor of the Evening Post. As an editorial writer it was plain that his style was often more oratorical than journalistic, and lacking in terseness. To both the Evening Post and to Schurz, because of his rousing speeches, was attributed to a considerable degree Blaine's loss of New York state in 1884, and the election of Cleveland to the presidency.

Schurz's final venture into journalism began in 1892, when in succession to George William Curtis he for six years contributed the leading editorials to Harper's Weekly. Their authorship was at first kept secret, as had been his contribution of many articles to the Nation, prior to its amalgamation with the Evening Post in 1881, notably some regular letters from Washington in 1872 and 1873. In 1898 his connection with Harper's Weekly was ended by his refusal to support the drift toward the war with Spain. When the war came Schurz warmly opposed it, as he did the annexation of the Philippines, declaring that fatal violence was being done the anti-imperialistic, peace-loving ideal of America, free from all entangling foreign alliances. He once wrote that foreign-born citizens were "more jealously patriotic Americans than many natives are," since they watch the progress of the Republic "with triumphant joy at every success of our democratic institutions, and with the keenest sensitiveness to every failure, having the standing of this country before the world constantly in mind" (Reminiscences, I, 120). This describes his own attitude toward his adopted country.

The latter years of his life Schurz gave to literary labor, to letters upon public questions, and to occasional public speeches. The latter were as always carefully memorized, were marked by a lofty tone, and, like those delivered in the Senate, were "emphasized by graceful diction, and impressive delivery" (Reminiscences, III, 318). An ardent admirer and supporter of Grover Cleveland, except occasionally, as in the matter of the Venezuelan episode of 1895, Schurz championed William J. Bryan in 1900 on the anti-imperialist issue, as he had opposed him on the free-silver question four years earlier. He was for years (1892-1900) president of the National Civil-Service Reform League, and of the Civil Service Reform Association of New York (1893-1906). In every mayoralty election in New York, in which he resided from 1881 on, he made his influence felt in the struggle for good government. Indeed, he held in his last years the unique position of a veteran statesman, a public-spirited citizen, and political philosopher, representing particularly a great group of his fellow-citizens, and battling uninterruptedly for his conception of an America minding its own business, and keeping aloof from foreign aggression and foreign involvements.

Carl Schurz was a man of great personal charm, of commanding presence, despite a very tall and rather lanky figure, of a gay, vivacious, and unusually happy spirit, which was never daunted by his bitter disappointments in the trend of domestic and foreign policy from 1898 on. Devoted to his family, an amateur pianist of talent, blessed with a great sense of humor, together with much playful irony, he took cheerfully those periods of his life when he went counter to public opinion, and willingly paid the price therefor. He remained until his death extraordinarily rich in friends and admirers. His wife died in 1876. Of two sons and two daughters, three survived him; all died without issue. Besides his speeches and unfinished reminiscences (see below), mention should be made of his admirable Life of Henry Clay (2 volumes, 1887), a notable essay on Lincoln in the Atlantic Monthly, June 1891 (also printed separately, 1891 and later), and a pamphlet, The New South (1885).

[There are Schurz papers in the Library of Congress, and there is a collection of private letters in the Wisconsin Historical Society Various editions of speeches and writings are: Speeches of Carl Schurz (1865); Frederic Bancroft, ed., Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz (6 volumes, 1913); The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (3 volumes, 1907-08), containing, in volume III, "A Sketch of Carl Schurz's Political Career, 1869-1906," by Frederic Bancroft and W. A. Dunning; a German edition, containing letters not in the American, Lebenserinner, (3 volumes, 1906-12); Joseph Schafer, ed. and translation, Intimate Letters of Carl Schurz, 1841- 1869 (Pubs. of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Collections, Volume XXX, 1928). Among works about Schurz are: Anton Erkelenz and Fritz Mittelmann, eds., Carl Schurz, der Deutsche mid der Amerikaner (1929); Otto Dannehl, Carl Schurz (1929); C. V. Easum, The Americanization of Carl Schurz (1929); Joseph Schafer, Carl Schurz, Militant Liberal (1930); C. M. Fuess, Carl Schurz, Reformer (1932). See also T. A. Dodge, The Campaign of Chancellorsville (1881); E. D. Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement (1919); T. S. Barclay, The Liberal Republican Movement in Missouri, 1865-1871 (1926); Allan Nevins, The Evening Post (1922); F. M. Stewart, The National Civil Service Reform League (1929); obituaries and comment, Evening Post (New York), May 14, 1906; New York Times, May 15, 1906; Nation (New York), May 17, 1906; Harper's Weekly, May 26, 1906.]

O. G. V.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 428-429:

SCHURZ, Carl, statesman, born in Liblar, near Cologne, Prussia, 2 March, 1829. After studying at the gymnasium of Cologne, he entered the University of Bonn in 1846. At the beginning of the revolution of 1848 he joined Gottfried Kinkel, professor of rhetoric in the university, in the publication of a liberal newspaper, of which he was at one time the sole conductor. In the spring of 1849, in consequence of an attempt to promote an insurrection at Bonn, he fled with Kinkel to the Palatinate, entered the revolutionary army as adjutant, and took part in the defence of Rastadt. On the surrender of that fortress he escaped to Switzerland. In 1850 he returned secretly to Germany, and effected the escape of Kinkel from the fortress of Spandau. In the spring of 1851 he was in Paris, acting as correspondent for German journals, and he afterward spent a year in teaching in London. He came to the United States in 1852, resided three years in Philadelphia, and then settled in Watertown, Wisconsin. In the presidential canvass of 1856 he delivered speeches in German in behalf of the Republican party, and in the following year he was an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant-governor of Wisconsin. During the contest between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln for the office of U. S. senator from Illinois in 1858 he delivered his first speech in the English language, which was widely published. Soon afterward he removed to Milwaukee and began the practice of law. In 1859-'60 he made a lecture-tour in New England, and aroused attention by a speech in Springfield, Massachusetts, against the ideas and policy of Mr. Douglas. He was a member of the Republican national convention of 1860, and spoke both in English and German during the canvass. President Lincoln appointed him minister to Spain, but he resigned in December, 1861, in order to enter the army. In April, 1862, he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, and on 17 June he took command of a division in the corps of General Franz Sigel, with which he participated in the second battle of Bull Run. He was made major-general of volunteers, 14 March, 1863, and at the battle of Chancellorsville commanded a division of General Oliver O. Howard's corps. He had temporary command of this corps at Gettysburg, and subsequently took part in the battle of Chattanooga. During the summer of 1865 he visited the southern states, as special commissioner, appointed by President Johnson, for the purpose of examining their condition. In the winter of 1865-'6 he was the Washington correspondent of the New York “Tribune,” and in the summer of 1866 he removed to Detroit, where he founded the “Post.” In 1867 be became editor of the “Westliche Post,” a German newspaper published in St. Louis. He was temporary chairman of the Republican national convention in Chicago in 1868, where he moved an amendment to the platform, which was adopted, recommending a general amnesty. In January, 1869, he was chosen U. S. senator from Missouri, for the term ending in 1875. He opposed some of the chief measures of President Grant's administration, and in 1872 took an active part in the organization of the Liberal party, presiding over the convention in Cincinnati that nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency. After the election of 1872 he took an active part in the debates of the senate in favor of the restoration of specie payments and against the continuation of military interference in the south. He advocated the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in the presidential canvass of 1876, and in 1877 President Hayes appointed him secretary of the interior. He introduced competitive examinations for appointments in the interior department, effected various reforms in the Indian service, and adopted systematic measures for the protection of the forests on the public lands. After the expiration of the term of President Hayes he became editor of the “Evening Post” in New York city, giving up that place in January, 1884. In the presidential canvass of that year he was one of the leaders of the “Independent” movement, advocating the election of Grover Cleveland. He remained an active member of the civil service reform league. Among his more celebrated speeches are “The Irrepressible Conflict” (1858): “The Doom of Slavery” (1860); “The Abolition of Slavery as a War Measure” (1862); and “Eulogy on Charles Sumner” (1874). Of his speeches in the senate, those on the reconstruction measures, against the annexation of Santo Domingo, and on the currency and the national banking system attracted much attention. He has published a volume of speeches (Philadelphia, 1865) and a “Life of Henry Clay” (Boston, 1887). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 428-429.  


SCHUYLER, George Washington (February 2, 1810-February 1, 1888), state official, author. In politics Schuyler was a Whig with strong anti-slavery sentiments which had him follow William H. Seward into the Republican party. His first political recognition came from the Union Republican convention of 1863 which nominated him for state treasurer. Running on a ticket as candidate for secretary of state, and pledged to support the Lincoln administration, he was elected and served two years. 

(G. W. Schuyler, Colonial New York (1885), II, 377; D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume III (1909).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 472-473:

SCHUYLER, GEORGE WASHINGTON (February 2, 1810-February 1, 1888), state official, author, was born at Stillwater, New York, the son of John H. and Annatje (Fort) Schuyler and a descendant of Philip, a younger son of Philip Pieterse Schuyler, founder of the family in America. In 1811 his father left Saratoga County and purchased a farm several miles west of Ithaca, where George spent his boyhood. Having chosen the ministry for his life's work, he prepared for college and received the bachelor's degree from the University of the City of New York in 1837, but his theological studies, at Union Seminary, were interrupted by his decision to engage in business in order to "extricate a brother from difficulties" (Colonial New York, II, 377). He married, on April 18, 1839, Matilda Scribner, daughter of Uriah and Martha Scribner of New York City, a half-sister of Charles Scribner [q.v.], and they established a home in Ithaca, where two sons and three daughters were born. Schuyler was highly successful in his mercantile and banking enterprises in Tompkins County. Always active in religious work, he transferred his membership in 1842 from the Presbyterian Church to the Reformed Dutch Church (later Congregational), which he served for many years either as deacon or elder.

In politics Schuyler was a Whig with pronounced anti-slavery sentiments which prompted him to follow William H. Seward into the Republican party. His first political recognition came from the Union Republican convention of 1863 which nominated him for state treasurer. Running on a ticket headed by Chauncey M. Depew [q.v.] as candidate for secretary of state, and pledged to support the Lincoln administration, he was elected and served two years. The convention of 1865 denied him a renomination, but Governor Reuben E. Fenton [q.v.] appointed him superintendent of the banking department (1866-70) with: full responsibility for the banking institutions operating under state charter. Incensed by the reconstruction policies and the political corruption of the Grant regime, Schuyler joined the "reformers" who organized the Liberal Republican movement in 1872. With the support of Democrats and Liberal Republicans he was elected to the state assembly, where he served (1875) as chairman of the committee on banking and participated in the framing of a general savings-bank law. He enthusiastically applauded Governor Samuel J. Tilden [q.v.] for his exposure of the corrupt "canal ring," and in January 1876 the governor named him auditor of the Canal Department. Here he served until 1880, correcting many of the most notorious abuses and waging a vigorous campaign for the abolition of tolls and the creation of a system of free commercial waterways. He gave generously of his time to the work of Cornell University, serving for twenty years on the board of trustees and acting as treasurer, without compensation, from 1868 to 1874.

Schuyler's interest in the genealogy of his own family drew him into extensive researches in the colonial history of New York, and in 1885 he published Colonial New York: Philip Schuyler and His Family, in two volumes. Although the work was not a comprehensive history of the province, the sketches of the Schuylers were set against the background of seventeenth and eighteenth century New York, which had been carefully, at times brilliantly, reconstructed from manuscript and printed sources. Completed only three years before his death, these volumes stand today as their author's most enduring monument.

[There is a very brief autobiographical sketch in G. W. Schuyler, Colonial New York (1885), II, 377. See also D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume III (1909); First Half-Century Book . .. of the First Church of Christ, Congregational, of Ithaca; New York (1881); Cornell Era, February 4, 1888; New York Times, February 2, 1888.]

J. A. K-t.


SCOFIELD, Glenni William, born 1817, lawyer, jurist.  Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.  Congressman December 1863-March 1875.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 434; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 434:

SCOFIELD, Glenni William, jurist, born in Chautauqua county, New York, 11 March, 1817. After graduation at Hamilton college in 1840, he removed to Pennsylvania, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1843. He was a member of the Pennsylvania assembly in 1850-'l and of the state senate in 1857-'9, and in 1861 was appointed president judge of the 18th judicial district. He was then elected to congress as a Republican, and served from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1875. He took an active part in the reconstruction measures, and served on important committees, being chairman of that on naval affairs. On 28 March, 1878, he was appointed register of the treasury, and he served until 1881, when he was appointed an associate justice of the U. S. court of claims. Hamilton gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1884. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 434.


SCOTT, Dred (c. 1795-September 17, 1858), slave, was born of slave parents in Southampton County, Virginia. Defendant in an important legal case challenging inter-state slave laws.

(E. W. P. Ewing, Legal and Historical Status of the Dred Scott Decision (1909); J. D. Lawson, American State Trials, volume XIII (1921); Proceedings ... Missouri Bar Association ... 1907 (1908), p. 233; E. S. Corwin, "The Dred Scott Decision in the Light of Contemporary Legal Doctrines," American Historical Review, October 1911).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 488-489:

SCOTT, DRED (c. 1795-September 17, 1858), slave, was born of slave parents in Southampton County, Virginia. His early years were spent on the plantation of his master, Captain Peter Blow, who, in 1827, removed with his family and slaves to St. Louis, Missouri. Upon his death in 1831, Scott was assigned to Elizabeth Blow, a daughter. He was purchased two years later by John Emerson, a surgeon in the United States Army, with whom, as a servant, he spent three years in Illinois and two in Wisconsin Territory. He married Harriet, a slave woman purchased by his owner in 1836. Left by Emerson at St. Louis in 1838, he became the body servant of Colonel Henry Bainbridge at Jefferson Barracks, and upon Emerson's death, passed to his widow, Irene (Sanford) Emerson. She hired Scott to various families in the city. He was shiftless and unreliable, and therefore frequently unemployed and without means to support his family. He often became a charge upon the bounty of Taylor and H. T. Blow [q.v.], the wealthy sons of his former owner, who seemed to feel partially responsible for him. Mrs. Emerson could have emancipated him but did not do so, and left him in St. Louis when she removed to Massachusetts in the mid~ die forties. It seems probable that Scott attempted unsuccessfully to arrange for the purchase of himself and his family (New York Tribune, April 10, 1857).

In April 1846, Henry T. Blow instituted and financed suits in the state courts to secure the freedom of Scott and of his family. The contention was that a slave, after sojourning in free territory, was free upon his return to Missouri. The ignorant and illiterate negro comprehended little of its significance, but signed his mark to the petition in the suit. While the case was before the state courts, 1846-52, he remained under the nominal control of the sheriff, being hired out for $5.00 per month until the termination of the suit. After an adverse decision had been delivered by Judge William Scott [q.v.] in 1852 (Scott, a Man of Color, vs. Emerson, 15 Missouri 576), it was arranged to take the case to the federal courts, and, for jurisdictional purposes, Dred Scott was transferred by a fictitious sale to his owner's brother, John F. A. Sanford of New York. During the interval when the case was in the federal courts, 1854-57, Scott remained in St. Louis, under practically no restraint, a mere pawn in the game, with no regular employment, running errands and performing janitor service. As a local celebrity, he enjoyed greatly his new and unexpected prominence. The United States Supreme Court in 1857 held that Scott was not free by reason of his removal either to Illinois or to Wisconsin Territory. His status was determined by the courts of Missouri which had decided that he was not free. Not being a citizen of Missouri, within the meaning of the Constitution, he was not entitled, as such, to sue in the federal courts (Dred Scott vs. Sandford, 19 Howard, 393). In May 1857 he was transferred, no doubt by another fictitious sale, to Taylor Blow, who very obviously intended to emancipate him and his family. This action was taken on May 26 of that year (Missouri Republican, May 27, 1857). The fact that Mrs. Emerson had meanwhile become the wife of Calvin Clifford Chaffee of Massachusetts, a radical anti-slavery congressman, was the source of much ironical comment and hastened the manumission. Physically unfitted for steady and hard labor, Scott spent the remainder of his life as the good-natured and lazy porter at Barnum's Hotel, St. Louis, where he was an object of interest and curiosity to the guests. He died of tuberculosis, and Henry T. Blow paid his funeral expenses.

[Sources include Blow MSS., in Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis; E. W. P. Ewing, Legal and Historical Status of the Dred Scott Decision (1909); J. D. Lawson, American State Trials, volume XIII (1921); Proceedings ... Missouri Bar Association ... 1907 (1908), p. 233; E. S. Corwin, "The Dred Scott Decision in the Light of Contemporary Legal Doctrines," American Historical Review, October 1911, reproduced, with some verbal changes, in his The Doctrine of Judicial Review (1914); Helen T. Catterall, "Some Antecedents of the Dred Scott Case," American Historical Review., October 1924; F. H. Hodder, "Some Phases of the Dred Scott Case," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, June 1929; J. M. Turner, "Dred Scott" (manuscript copy, 1882, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis); Providence Daily Post, March 17, 1857; New York Tribune, April 10, 1857; Missouri Republican, May 27, 1857; Washington Union, June 2, 1857; New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette (Concord), June 3, 1857; St. Louis News, September 20, 1858. In the official printed reports of the Dred Scott case the name of the owner, correctly Sanford, is persistently misspelled.]

T. S. B.


SCOTT, James, Providence, Rhode Island, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-1836.


SCOTT, Orange, 1800-1847, Springfield, Massachusetts, Methodist clergyman, anti-slavery agent.  Member of Congress from Pennsylvania.  Entered anti-slavery cause in 1834.  Lectured in New England.  In 1839, founded and published the American Wesleyan Observer, an anti-slavery publication.  Withdrew from Methodist Church to co-found the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1843 with Jotham Horton.  He was Manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1838-1840, Executive Committee, 1847-1851, 1853-1855, Recording Secretary 1849-1855.  He was a member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.   

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 187, 285, 349; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 93, 140; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 46, 228-229; Matlack, 1849, p. 162; Annals of Congress; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 438; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 497; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 503; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 315). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 497-498:

SCOTT, ORANGE (February 13, 1800-July 31, 1847), anti-slavery leader, was born in Brookfield, Vermont, the eldest of the eight children of Lucy (Whitney) and Samuel Scott, a laboring man. The family lived at various places in Vermont and spent six years in Stanstead in Lower Canada. The boy's total schooling was about thirteen months. Beginning to feel religious concern in his twenty-first year, he experienced conversion at a camp-meeting held near Barre, Vermont, late in 1820. At this time he was working as a farm laborer, but he was soon giving his Sundays to religious work, assisting the Methodist preacher in charge of the local circuit. His success was such that in November 1821 he gave up farming entirely and began the work of a circuit preacher. In 1822 he was received into the New England Conference on trial and by 1825 was a fully ordained minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church. His advancement was rapid, and within a few years he became, through reading and private study, a most effective speaker. His first important church was in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where he achieved considerable distinction through a public discussion with a Universalist minister. On May 7, 1826, he was married to Amy Fletcher of Lyndon, Vermont, who died in April 1835 leaving five children. In 1829, after serving a number of smaller circuits, he was sent to Springfield, Massachusetts, the next year was made presiding elder of that di strict, and in 1831 was delegate to the General Conference. In 1833 he came in contact for the first time with the anti-slavery movement and was soon an ardent abolitionist. Appointed presiding elder of the Providence district in. 1834 he took the leadership in a movement to open the columns of Zion's Herald, the Methodist paper in Boston, to a discussion of the slavery issue. This was accomplished, and he became the most active contributor. He also began to deliver public lectures on slavery in the larger New England cities.

When the slavery question came before the General Conference of 1836 at Cincinnati, he made an Address (1836) on the subject and was a recognized abolition leader. As a consequence of this abolition activity the bishop refused to reappoint him to the Providence district. After a year's pastorate at Lowell, Massachusetts, he accepted an agency for the American Anti-Slavery Society and spoke throughout New England and New York. In 1838 he published "An Appeal to the Methodist Episcopal Church" in the only number published of the Wesleyan Anti-Slavery Review. At the session of the New England Conference in 1838 Bishop Elijah Hedding [q.v.] charged Scott with using coarse and disrespectful language, but the charges were not sustained. In 1839 Scott with Jotham Horton undertook the publication of the American Wesleyan Observer to plead the abolition cause among Methodists in preparation for the General Conference of 1840. He was a member of that Conference and again led the abolition forces. The radicals however were unable to stem the tide of conservative opinion. He became again the pastor of St. Paul's Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, chosen regardless of episcopal authority. This action led to a bitter fight with the appointing authorities, which was one of the reasons that made Scott consider withdrawal from the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The secession movement rapidly developed under Scott's leadership, ably assisted by Jotham Horton and La Roy Sunderland. These three leaders withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church on November 8, 1841. They began the publication of the True Wesleyan on January 7, 1843, to agitate withdrawal of all abolition Methodists to form a new ecclesiastical body, with opposition to slavery as its chief cornerstone. A preliminary convention at Andover, Massachusetts, on February 1, 1843, provided for a general convention at Utica, New York, on May 31. Scott was the president of the Utica convention, and there the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America was formed. In the interests of this new Wesleyan Methodist Church he became the publishing agent in charge of the True Wesleyan, and when this business was moved to New York City he took up his residence at Newark, New Jersey, though his family remained in Newbury, Vermont. In 1845 he made an extended tour of the western states that proved disastrous to his health, which had been failing for some time. In 1846 he published his reasons for his withdrawal in a book, The Grounds of Secession from the M. E. Church: Being an Examination of her Connection with Slavery, and Also of her Form of Government. A revised and corrected edition was published in 1848. In 1846 he took his family to Newark and attempted to continue his work; but his condition grew rapidly worse, and he died at his home in Newark. He was survived by his widow, Eliza (Dearborn) Scott, whom he had married on October 6, 1835. They had two children.

[The chief sources are his writings, ante, and autobiography in L. C. Matlack, The Life of Reverend Orange Scott (1847), which is paged continuously and bound in same volume with his Memoir of Reverend Orange Scott (1848); see also J. N. Norwood, The Schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church (1923); L. C. Matlack, The History of American Slavery and Methodism from 1780 to 1849 (1849).)

W.W.S.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 438:

SCOTT, Orange, clergyman, born in Brookfield, Vermont, 13 February, 1800; died in Newark, N.J., 31 July, 1847. His parents removed to Canada in his early childhood, and remained there about six years, but afterward returned to Vermont. The son's early education was limited to thirteen months' schooling at different places. He entered the Methodist ministry in 1822, and became one of the best-known clergymen of his denomination in New England. He was presiding elder of the Springfield district, Massachusetts, in 1830-'4, and of Providence district, R.I., in 1834-'5. Mr. Scott was active as a controversialist. About 1833 he became an earnest anti-slavery worker, and his zeal in this cause brought much unpopularity upon him. His bishop preferred charges against him in 1838, before the New England conference, but they were not sustained. Finally, with others, he withdrew from the church in 1842, and on 31 May, 1843, organized the Wesleyan Methodist church in a general convention at Utica, New York, of which Mr. Scott was president. Till 1844 he conducted “The True Wesleyan,” in advocacy of the principles of the new church, which were opposed both to slavery and to the episcopal form of church government. In 1846 failing health forced him to retire from the ministry. Besides many contributions to the press, he was the author of “An Appeal to the Methodist Episcopal Church” (Boston, 1838). See his life, by the Reverend Lucius C. Matlack (New York, 1847). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 438.


SCOTT, Thomas, opposed slavery.  Spoke of slavery as “one of the most abominable things on earth.  If there was neither God nor devil, I should oppose it upon the principles of humanity, and the law of nature.”  He vowed to “support every constitutional measure likely to bring about its total abolition.  Perhaps, in our Legislative capacity, we can go no further than to impose a duty of ten dollars, but I do not know how far I might go, if I was one of the Judges of the United States, and those people were to come before me and claim their emancipation; but I am sure I would go as far as I could.”

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 128, 133; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961)


SCOTT, Winfield (June 13, 1786-May 29, 1866), Commanding general U.S. Army, pacificator, and presidential nominee representing the Whig party.

(Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D. Written by Himself (2 volumes, 1864); E. D. Mansfield, Life and Services of General Winfield Scott (1852); M. J. Wright, General Scott (1894); L. D. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department of the U.S. (1879); Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the U. S. (1904); W. A. Ganoe, The History of the U. S. Army (1924); obituary in New York Tribune, May 30-June 2, 1866)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp.

SCOTT, WINFIELD (June 13, 1786-May 29, 1866), soldier, pacificator, and presidential nominee, was born on the family estate, "Laurel Branch," fourteen miles from Petersburg, Virginia. His grandfather, James Scott of the clan Buccleuch, having supported the Pretender, escaped to the colonies after the battle of Culloden in 1746. His father, William Scott, a successful farmer who had been a captain in the American Revolution, died when Winfield was in his sixth year, leaving four children, two boys, James and Winfield, and two girls. His mother, Ann Mason, was the daughter of Daniel Mason and the grand-daughter of John Winfield, one of the wealthiest men in the colony (Memoirs, I, 3). To her inspiration her son later attributed the continued successes of his long career. Unfortunately she died when he was seventeen. He was already six feet two and of bulky proportions. Two years later he stood six feet five, weighed about 230 pounds, and was physically the strongest man in the neighborhood. He did good scholastic work under the able instruction of James Hargrave and James Ogilvie. It was doubtless fortunate for him that because of legal hindrances he did not inherit the fortune of his grandfather but had to content him self with his modest patrimony. In 1805 he entered the College of William and Mary, but, because of his age and the contention between the student atheists and faculty churchmen, did not remain long. The same year he voluntarily left the institution to study law in the office of David Robinson in Petersburg.

[…]

A resolution to tender him the pay, rank, and emoluments of a lieutenant-general was introduced in Congress, but through political opposition it did not pass until 1855, when he became the first since Washington to hold that office.

In 1852 the Whigs gave him the nomination for the presidency. The campaign was essentially without issues but was marked by exceptionally scurrilous attacks on Scott by newspapers and stump-speakers. Clay and Webster died during the campaign. Other Whig leaders badly advised Scott, whose straight-forwardness was an easy target for the Democrats. He was overwhelmingly defeated by Franklin Pierce [q.v.]. It was the last of his entries into the lists for the presidency, although as late as 1860 he retained some hope of being sent to the White House (Coleman, Crittenden, post, II, 184--85). After the inauguration of Pierce, on account of differences of opinion on policy with the Secretary of War, Scott again removed his headquarters to New York City. In 1857 he opposed the war against the Mormons as unnecessary and undertaken for profit, but he was overruled. In 1859 he was again called upon to perform the functions of pacificator. Though seventy-three years of age and crippled from a recent fall, he set out September 20 for the extreme Northwest, where controversy over the possession of San Juan Island in Puget Sound had again brought the relations between Great Britain and the United States to the breaking point. After he had mingled with both sides and conducted a judicious correspondence, serious complications were averted.

In October 1860, foreseeing the eventual Civil War, he pleaded with the President to reenforce the southern forts and armories against seizure, but to Buchanan and John B. Floyd his was a voice crying in the wilderness. On October 31, and December 12 he renewed his urgings, but with no better success. In January 1861, he brought back the headquarters of the army to Washington, where at his advanced age he actively oversaw the recruiting and training of the defenders of the capital. He personally commanded Lincoln's bodyguard at the inauguration and put the city in a state of defense. Being a Virginian, he was doggedly besought to join the South, but in spite of natural leanings he stuck to his beliefs and remained with the Union. To Lincoln he accorded all aid in his power. Though he did not approve of George B. McClellan as first choice for command of the Army of the Potomac, he supported him even when the younger man's methods were at least discourteous. Had much of his general plan for the conduct of the Federal forces been heeded, the war would have been curtailed; but since he was too old to mount a horse, he was thought to be too old to give advice. On October 31, 1861, he requested retirement on account of infirmities. The next day Lincoln and the whole cabinet left their offices in a body, repaired to Scott's home, and there the President read an affecting eulogy to the old man. Scott was retired with full pay and allowances the same day. In his first message to Congress Lincoln wrote of Scott: "During his long life the nation has not been unmindful of his merit; yet, in calling to mind how faithfully, ably, and brilliantly he has served his country, from a time far back in our history when few of the now living had been born, and thenceforward continually, I cannot but think we are still his debtors" (Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln. Complete Works, 1894, volume II, 104). On his journey to New York, Scott was accompanied by the secretaries of war and the treasury. On November 9, 1861, he went abroad, but in Paris upon hearing of the Trent affair he immediately returned to America, should his counsel be needed. At West Point he received the Prince of Wales and in 1865 presented to General Grant, one of his subalterns in the Mexican War, a gift with the inscription, "from the oldest to the greatest general" (Wright, post, p. 322). When his end was near he was conveyed from New York City to West Point where he died within fifteen days of his eightieth birthday. He was buried in the national cemetery there, some of the most illustrious men of the country attending the funeral. His wife, who died in Rome in 1862, is buried beside him. Of his seven children, two sons and two daughters died early, to his great grief; three married daughters survived him.

Scott had been the associate of every president from Jefferson to Lincoln and the emissary in critical undertakings of most of them. In his public career of nearly half a century he had been a main factor in ending two wars, saving the country from several others, and acquiring a large portion of its territory. Supreme political preferment was doubtless denied him because of conditions and his idiosyncrasies. Called "Fuss and Feathers" because of his punctiliousness in dress and decorum, he often gave the impression of irritability. He possessed a whimsical egotism, was inclined to flourishes of rhetoric, often unfortunate, and was too outspoken in his beliefs for his own advancement. On the other hand, the openness of his generous character led him into acts incomprehensible to calculating natures. He was a scholar, but knew when to discard rules, so that the letter of directions did not shackle him. His initiative and self-reliance never deserted him. He made use of his many talents unsparingly, and the only one of his hazardous undertakings he failed to carry out beyond the most sanguine expectations was that of his own ambition to reach the Presidency.

[Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, LL.D. Written by Himself (2 volumes, 1864), rhetorical but still valuable; E. D. Mansfield, Life and Services of General Winfield Scott (1852), the best of the campaign biographies; M. J. Wright, General Scott (1894); A. M. B. Coleman, The Life of John J. Crittenden (2 volumes, 1871), containing letters of Scott; Dunbar Rowland, ed.,  Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, volumes II, III (1923), containing Scott-Davis correspondence; James Wilkinson, Memoirs of My Own Times (3 volumes, 1816); M. M. Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk (4 volumes, 1910); G. T. Curtis, Life of James Buchanan (2 volumes, 1883); Harrison Ellery, ed., The Memoirs of General Joseph Gardner Swift (1890); W. A. Croffut, ed., Fifty Years in Camp and Field. Diary of Major-General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A. (1909); correspondence, papers, and documents in Old Files Section, Adjutant- General's Department, Washington, D. C.; E. A. Cruikshank, The Documentary History of the Campaign upon the Niagara Frontier (9 volumes, 1896-1908); C. J. Ingersoll, Historical Sketch of the Second War between the U.S .... and Great Britain, volumes I, II (1845-49); 2 series, volumes I, II (1852); B. L. Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (1868); J. H. Smith, The War with Mexico (2 volumes, 1919); L. D. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department of the U.S. (1879); Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the U. S. (1904); W. A. Ganoe, The History of the U. S. Army (1924); obituary in New York Tribune, May 30-June 2, 1866; suggestions from Major C. W. Elliott, who is preparing a biography of Scott.]

W.A.G.


SCUDDY, Marshall S., Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Treasurer, 1846, Executive Committee, 1843-, Manager, 1846.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.