Sen. Carl Schurz of Missouri became a particular bane of Grant because Schurz spearheaded virtually every liberal issue in Congress. An ardent free trader and a leading opponent of Reconstruction, he also led the attack on Grant’s policy on Santo Domingo and on the spoils system. What Schurz was not was anti-immigrant. When he had won election to the U.S. Senate in 1868, it marked more than a personal triumph. It was a sign of the growing importance, particularly in the Midwest, of German Americans, who were the largest single group of immigrants to the United States in the nineteenth century.
