He was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as the United States Consul in Elsinore, Denmark, at the outbreak of the American Civil War and later served as Collector of Internal Revenue for the 1st District of Illinois.

When the revolution in the Rhine Province was crushed by the Bavarian government's Prussian allies, he withdrew to Baden, then fled to France, and finally emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York City in July 1849.

It was during his connection with the Staats-Zeitung that the contest over the slavery question was precipitated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as a consequence of the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.

With the exception of the Western Citizen, an avowed anti-slavery weekly journal, the Staats-Zeitung was the first paper in Chicago to array itself in absolute opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

At the meeting of the Anti-Nebraska editors, held at Decatur on February 22, 1856, which resulted in crystallizing the elements which had been in course of evolution during the preceding two years, he was present and, as a member of the Committee on Resolutions, bore a conspicuous part in giving shape to the principles of the new party which, in its first regular State Convention held in Bloomington, three months later nominated the ticket headed by William H. Bissell for Governor, which was elected in November following.

It was chiefly through Schneider's influence, backed by the approval of Abraham Lincoln, that a resolution was adopted at the Decatur conference favoring tolerance of religious faith and freedom of conscience, as opposed to the principles of the Know Nothing Party.

These sentiments were echoed in the platform adopted at Bloomington in May, and still later reiterated by the first Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia on June 17, in both of which Schneider was a delegate.