Louis F. Schade
Louis Frederick Schade (April 4, 1829 – February 25, 1903) was a German-American lawyer and newspaper editor who was prominent in political and social circles of Washington, D.C., in the United States.
[2] Schade briefly lived in Weehawken, New Jersey, with German friends,[2] but settled in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a correspondent for several foreign-language newspapers from 1851 to 1853.
[6] In 1858, at the behest of Democratic National Committee chairman Charles Faulkner,[3] he took a temporary leave of absence from his newspaper duties to campaign for Douglas in Illinois and Senator George Wallace Jones in Iowa.
This work, the first book-length study of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 in almost a half-century, gruesomely depicted the depredations of black ex-slaves on the white population of Haiti, and predicted that African American slaves would visit the same horrors on their former masters if slavery were abolished in America.
[10] In August 1865, Schade joined the legal team defending Confederate States Army Major Henry Wirz.
Although the list of co-conspirators originally included former Confederate President Jefferson Davis and 12 others, by the time the trial started only Wirz was prosecuted.
[15] The prosecution, whose presentation lasted until October 18, argued that the lack of shelter (Andersonville was 26.5 acres (107,000 m2) of bare ground, fenced with barbed wire), food, medical care, and clothing was Wirz's responsibility as commandant of the camp.
Schade's defense was that Wirz provided the best possible care for the POWs, given the huge influx of prisoners, the complete lack of food and supplies given to his troops, and the severe shortage of both physicians and guards.
Aside from complaints about the military tribunal's behavior and the enumeration of hundreds of legal errors, Schade argued that Wirz was dying and would not live more than a few months.
[20] On April 4, 1867, Schade published an "open letter to the American people" in several major newspapers, in which he delineated the legal failings of the Wirz trial and declared his client innocent.
After his death, Wirz was buried alongside the Lincoln assassination conspirators (John Wilkes Booth, Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, and David Herold) along the south wall of the prison courtyard at the Washington Arsenal (now Fort Lesley J. McNair).
The War Department decided to tear down the portion of the arsenal where the bodies lay, and on October 1, 1867, the coffins were disinterred and reburied in the basement of Warehouse No.
Schade and Baker had argued at trial that Wirz's right arm had been so incapacitated by a war wound that he could not have committed the murders he was accused of.
[24] Schade paid for a burial plot at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and Wirz was interred there on March 3, 1869.
[5] He caused a major scandal in 1871 when he issued a public report accusing Secretary of War William W. Belknap of selling arms to France.
[3] In 1873, D.C. millionaire and Democratic Party stalwart William Wilson Corcoran provided Schade with the financial backing to found the Washington Sentinel.
The newspaper was extremist in its support for the Democratic Party, radical in its call for a reduction in the size of government (which it saw infringing on civil liberties), violently opposed to the prohibition of alcohol, and an ardent advocate for lenient immigration policies.
Nonetheless, the paper's support for its pet policies was so extreme that its rival, the then-tiny Washington Post, called it "a scurrilous weekly sheet...to aid [Schade] in selling a patent beer-bung starter.
"[10] As editor and publisher of the Washington Sentinel, Schade played a critical role in bringing down Alexander Robey Shepherd.
Shepherd (a Republican and close associate of President Grant's) was appointed to the new government's five-member Board of Public Works.
Shepherd made extensive civic improvements to the city, constructing its first sewer system, building and paving hundreds of miles of roads, laying gas pipelines, planting trees, demolishing unsightly structures (often illegally, and occasionally in the dead of night), installing street lights, building water mains, filling in the Washington City Canal, and creating an extensive streetcar system.
An outraged Congress passed legislation abolishing the territorial government and replacing it with a "temporary" three-member commission (which lasted until 1973).
[10] The Memorial Association allowed collector Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd to live in the house rent-free in return for displaying his immense collection of Lincolniana and assassination artifacts in the home.
