THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD-1857-1864 87 



the contest; but of all the speeches he best liked those of 

 this new orator he preferred them, indeed, to those of his 

 idol Seward. 



I have related in another place how, years afterward, 

 Bismarck asked me, in Berlin, to what Carl Schurz's great 

 success in America was due, and my answer to this ques- 

 tion. 



Mr. Lincoln having been elected, I went on with my 

 duties as before, but the struggle was rapidly deepening. 

 Soon came premonitions of real conflict, and, early in the 

 following spring, civil war was upon us. My teaching 

 went on, as of old, but it became more direct. In order 

 to show what the maintenance of a republic was worth, 

 and what patriots had been willing to do for their country 

 in a struggle not unlike ours, I advised my students to read 

 Motley's "History of the Dutch Republic," and I still 

 think it was good advice. Other works, of a similar char- 

 acter, showing how free peoples have conducted long and 

 desperate wars for the maintenance of their national exis- 

 tence and of liberty, I also recommended, and with good 

 effect. 



Reverses came. During part of my vacation, in the sum- 

 mer of 1861, 1 was at Syracuse, and had, as my guest, Mr. 

 George Sumner, younger brother of the eminent senator 

 from Massachusetts, a man who had seen much of the 

 world, had written magazine articles and reviews which 

 had done him credit, and whose popular lectures were 

 widely esteemed. One Sunday afternoon in June my 

 uncle, Mr. Hamilton White, dropped in at my house to 

 make a friendly call. He had just returned from Wash- 

 ington, where he had seen his old friend Seward, Mr. Lin- 

 coln 's Secretary of State, and felt able to give us a fore- 

 cast of the future. This uncle of mine was a thoughtful 

 man of affairs; successful in business, excellent in judg- 

 ment, not at all prone to sanguine or flighty views, and on 

 our asking him how matters looked in Washington he 

 said, " Depend upon it, it is all right: Seward says that 

 they have decided to end the trouble at once, even if it is 



