THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
new courage and hope. I do not think I have ever greeted the Stars and Stripes with greater enthusiasm.
My longing to go back to the United States grew stronger every day. The elegant ease of my life in Spain chafed me like a reproach. It became more and more intolerable to me to think of leading a lounging existence at this post with an activity more apparent than real, while those with whom I had worked for the anti-slavery cause were painfully struggling against adverse fate, many at the hourly peril of their lives. All my time not demanded by my official duties—which left me much leisure—was devoted to the study of military works. The campaigns of Frederick the Great, of the Archduke Charles, and of Napoleon, and the works of Jomini and Clausewitz, together with minor books on tactics, I had studied before. I now took the last French campaign in Italy that ended with the battle of Solferino, and some writings of Marshal Bugeaud. I even translated a new work on tactics from French into English, with the intention of publishing it, which, however, I never did. At the same time I made every possible effort to inform myself about the effect which the Bull Run disaster might have produced on public opinion in Europe, especially in those states from which interference with our struggle in the way of a recognition of the independence of the Southern Confederacy might have been apprehended. The advocates of such a policy were, indeed, disappointed at the news from the United States following that of the battle of Bull Run. The victorious rebel army had not taken Washington. The government of the Union had not gone to pieces. The people of the North had not given up their cause in despair. Government and people were simply recognizing the fact that this would be a long and arduous war, and were, with dogged resolution, going to work to prepare themselves for that sort
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