A republican quote on patriotism.

[DetlefK]

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Schurz

"The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, "My country, right or wrong." In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

Remarks in the Senate (29 February 1872) He was here responding to the famous slogan derived from a statement of Stephen Decatur: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."

Carl Schurz was from southern Germany. At age 19 he fought in the failed democratic revolution of 1848. He was one of the last defenders of the last rebel holdout and escaped from the besieging prussian army via a tunnel.

He fled to Switzerland. On his way, he barely escaped a prussian cavalry patrol he had accidentally run into.

He briefly returned to Germany for a clandestine mission to break a fellow rebel out of prison.

Then he went to France, from there to Britain, from there to the US.

He was a lawyer, anti-slavery activist and Republican.

In the run-up to the Civil War, Lincoln sent Schurz as ambassador to Spain. Schurz successfully convinced Spain not to support the Confederacy.

During the Civil War, he served as a General for the Union Army, where he took part in several battles.

After the war, he was a newspaper editor and a US Senator.

He founded the Liberal Republican Party in May 1872 and after its sounding defeat at the polls he became an Independent.

Later, he served as Secretary of the Interior to the Rutherford B. Hayes-administration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schurz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Republican_Party_(United_States)










THAT is a Republican. And not those spineless weaklings who sell out country and principles.

[fierywoman]

1. The park around the mayor's mansion in NYC is (was?) named after him.