Hoist

istence by manual labor and chance teaching,
were terrible. They laid the foundation of that
ill health which even thus early began to attend
him as a dark specter and converted his later
years into a long martyrdom heroically sup-
ported A better prospect dawned when, at the
request of a number of Bremen merchants, he
undertook a study of suffrage in the United
States. In a characteristic burst of emotion, he
had already resolved to throw in his lot with the
western Republic, and now by the Bremen com-
mission his professional interests were directed
toward the same goal. Imperceptibly expanding
under his hands, the suffrage study grew until it
assumed the proportions of a life work devoted
to the unfolding of the American political ex-
periment. For such an enterprise the ideal back-
ground would have been an American univer-
sity; but as no institution on this side of the
Atlantic had room for him, he accepted (1872)
a call to the newly founded University of Strass-
burg, transferring thence two years later to Frei-
burg in Baden, where he fully came into his own
and dominated the academic scene for the next
twenty years. Just before sailing from New
York, he married, as if in token of his continued
commitment to the New World, Annie Isabelle
Hatt, of old New England stock. It was during
his Strassburg period that the first volume of
his monumental work appeared (1873) under
the name, Verfassung und Demokratie der
Vereinigten Staaten. When this was translated
three years later into English, the American pub-
lisher adopted the title, The Constitutional and
Political History of the United States, a dis-
tinctly unfortunate choice since the volume was
far less a reasoned history than an introductory
essay on the constitutional developments after
1750 leading up to the slavery controversy. Slav-
ery, in the author's eyes preeminently a moral
issue, was set in the center of the stage and clear-
ly indicated as the all-absorbing theme of the
drama about to be exhibited. In Volume II,
which appeared in 1878 simultaneously in Ger-
man and in English dress—& practice thence-
forth maintained to the end—the great theme of
slavery is considered in elaborate detail, begin-
ning with the presidency of Andrew Jackson;
and the subsequent volumes, which in the Eng-
lish version reach a total of seven, carry the ac-
count down to its inevitable catharsis in the
Civil War. In spite of its vastness, sure to act
as a deterrent on the general reader, the work
has an amazing intensity which it owes in part
to the compact theme but, overwhelmingly, to the
moral fervor pulsing through it like a ceaseless
tide.

Hoist
By 1892, when the last volume appeared, Von
Hoist had become an outstanding figure among
writers on American history, and on the found-
ing of the University of Chicago was with emi-
nent propriety called to the head of its depart-
ment of history. At Chicago he taught for the
next seven years, until his shattered health forced
him into retirement. Thenceforth he resided in
Italy and Germany. He died in Freiburg, Ba-
den.
Passionately interested in life, Von Hoist
plunged into all the controversies of the day,
never hesitating, when his conscience issued the
command (as for instance in the imperialist
controversy precipitated by the annexation of
Hawaii) to take the unpopular side. Unlike
most professors, he was an orator of extraordi-
nary eloquence, and with his long haggard form,
his dramatic voice and blazing eyes, fairly hyp-
notized his audience. In 1894 he delivered a
series of lectures at the Lowell Institute, pub-
lished under the title The French Revolution
Tested by Mirabeau's Career (2 vols., 1894). I*
is a work of solid information, recounting with
epic energy the story of how revolutionary
France, provided with a savior in Mirabeau, was
tragically unable to make use of him. His other
major publications were Das Staatsrecht der
Vereinigten Staaten (1885; translated in 1887)
and a biography, John C. Calhoitn (1882). The
latter work represents its hero as an American
Don Quixote, perversely moved to place a pure
heart and a sturdy mind at the service of a de-
testable cause. An essay on John Brown (1888)
bears the same moral stamp as all his other
works.
Like every German of his generation respon-
sive to the influences of his time, young Von
Hoist grew up a liberal in thought and a uni-
tarian in politics, inspired by an unwavering
faith in the upward progress of mankind. On
turning to history he felt the breath upon him of
Haeusser, Von Sybel, and Treitschke, leaders of
what is often called the Prussian but might more
expressively be designated the Unitarian school
Conceiving, like these admired prototypes, his-
tory to be purposive and its individual actors
responsible for the good and evil of their day, he
was immutably convinced that the Union cause
was written in the stars and that its Southern
opponents were evil men, manifestly and wilfully
tarred with the evil of slavery. It is the domi-
nation of this philosophical background which
defines the author's great work as essentially a
product of German historiography.
[Important correspondence and papers are in pos-
session of Von Hoist's son, Hermann von Hoist, Chi-