Diary of John Hay: May 11, 1861

This afternoon the Marine Band played on the south lawn, and Carl Schurz sat with Lincoln on the balcony. After the President had kissed some thousand children, Carl went into the library and developed a new accomplishment. He played with great skill and feeling, sitting in the dusk twilight at the piano until the President came by, and took him down to tea. Schurz is a wonderful man. An orator, a soldier, a philosopher, and exiled patriot, a skilled musician! He has every quality of romance and of dramatic picturesqueness. . . .

SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 34; Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay, p. 23.