In the following year, 1863, the Confederate army under General Lee again marched North, but was defeated, July 1-3, at the great battle of Gettysburg. In this battle Schurz took part, and from the crest of Cemetery Hill watched the Confederate infantry of General Pickett make their brave charge against the Union forces. Fifteen thousand strong, in a long close line, with bayonets gleaming in the sunshine and flags waving in the breeze, the gray-clad soldiers of the Confederacy appeared from the dark shadows of the woods and came steadily across a mile of open fields. Under a tremendous fire from the Union artillery the gray line slowly melted as it advanced, leaving the soft green of the meadow flecked with gray-clad bodies of dead and wounded. Closing the gaps, they came steadily on, now lost behind a low rise of ground, now again in view, their flags still flying above them. Then, within rifle-range, a cloud of smoke lifted like fog from the Union guns, and as it floated off on the light wind, the Union soldiers saw the remnant of Pickett’s brave band slowly retreating from the field. Although more than a year of war was to follow, the strength of the Southern offensive was shattered.
On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant, and in November came the victories of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. In the following year were other victories in the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. Another drive of the Confederates against Washington was attempted by General Early, but he was defeated by General Sheridan in three battles and was forced to withdraw. Then came the capture of Atlanta and General Sherman’s famous march through Georgia to the sea. On the water were achieved the victory of the Kearsarge over the Confederate steamer Alabama, and Admiral Farragut’s successful passage of the forts at Mobile Bay. In April of the year 1865 came the complete surrender of the armies of the Confederacy. The Union was preserved; slavery was destroyed.
With the ending of the war, Schurz began again to take an active part in the political life of the nation, and for a time devoted himself to a study of the perplexing difficulties which surrounded the reconstruction of the South, impoverished by years of war and economically ruined by the emancipation of the slaves.
In the autumn of 1867 he again visited Germany. The high position which he now held in the great Republic assured him of a welcome, but the attentions which were heaped upon him were a particular tribute to the man who had once fled by night. Bismarck, “The Minister” of Germany, honored him by inviting him to long conferences, in which he eagerly questioned Schurz concerning the great war in which he had taken part, and asked many questions about the political and social conditions of the Republic of which Schurz had become a citizen.
On his return to the United States, Schurz was elected to the United States Senate, representing the great state of Missouri, where he had now taken up his residence. “I remember vividly the feelings which almost oppressed me when I first sat down in my chair in the Senate Chamber. Now I had actually reached a most exalted public position, to which my boldest dreams of ambition had hardly dared to aspire. I was still a young man, just forty. Little more than sixteen years had elapsed since I had landed on these shores a homeless waif, saved from the wreck of a revolutionary movement in Europe. Then I was enfolded in the generous hospitality of the American people, opening to me, as freely as to its own children, the great opportunities of the new world. And here I was now, a member of the highest law-making body of the greatest of republics.”
But a still greater honor was to come. With the election of President Hayes in 1877, Schurz became the Secretary of the Interior of the United States. In this high position his ability found ample room for exercise, and the reforms which he in large measure effected, both in the civil-service system of appointment—by which men were placed in government positions as a result of examination on their merits, as opposed to their appointment regardless of merit but as a political reward—and in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, were of unusual value to the nation.
On leaving the Department of the Interior at the close of President Hayes’s administration, Schurz was confronted by an almost embarrassing number of positions for his future occupation. For a time he occupied an editorial position on the New York Evening Post; but he still continued to take an active and important part in the politics of the day. For some years after his retirement from the Post he devoted himself to literature, and produced, among other books, a life of Henry Clay which won high commendation.
After a brief business episode, he again returned to the field of journalism, and for six years contributed weekly the leading editorial to Harper’s Weekly. Once again he visited Europe; but old age was growing heavy on his shoulders, and on his return to the United States he retired each year a little more from the active fields of politics and journalism which had so long held him, and to which he had so gladly contributed.
On May 14, 1906, surrounded by his children, the end came. “Es ist so einfach zu sterben” (it is so simple to die), was his farewell to those about him. As he lived, so did he die, simply and unafraid.