Schurz - who was Lincoln's minister to Spain for a time, rose to the rank of major general in the Union army, became a US Senator from Missouri, and was Hayes' secretary of the interior - on Marx:
"...Karl Marx..could not have been much more than thirty years old at that time, but he was already the recognized head of the advanced socialistic school. The somewhat thick-set man, with broad forehead, very black hair and beard and dark sparkling eyes, at once attracted general attention. He enjoyed the reputation of having acquired great learning, and as I knew very little of his discoveries and theories, I was all the more eager to gather words of wisdom from the lips of this famous man. This expectation was disappointed in a peculiar way. Marx's utterances were indeed full of meaning, logical and clear, but I have never seen a man whose bearing was so provoking and intolerable. To no opinion which differed from his own did he accord the honor of even condescending consideration. Everyone who contradicted him he treated with abject contempt; every argument that he did not like he answered either with biting scorn at the unfathomable ignorance that had prompted it, or with opprobrious aspersions upon the motives of him who advanced it. I remember most distinctly the cutting disdain with which he pronounced the word 'bourgeois'; and as a 'bourgeois' - that is, as a detestable example of the deepest mental and moral degeneracy - he denounced everyone who dared to oppose his opinion...it was very evident that not only had he not won any adherents, but he had repelled many who otherwise might have become his followers." (_Reminiscences_, pp. 138-139)
Michael Hoover