With the ending of the war, Schurz began again to take an active part in the political life of the nation, and for a time devoted himself to a study of the perplexing difficulties which surrounded the reconstruction of the South, impoverished by years of war and economically ruined by the emancipation of the slaves. In the autumn of 1867 he again visited Germany. The high position which he now held in the great Republic assured him of a welcome, but the attentions which were heaped upon him were a particular tribute to the man who had once fled by night. Bismarck, “The Minister” of Germany, honored him by inviting him to long conferences, in which he eagerly questioned Schurz concerning the great war in which he had taken part, and asked many questions about the political and social conditions of the Republic of which Schurz had become a citizen. On his return to the United States, Schurz was elected to the United States Senate, representing the great state of Missouri, where he had now taken up his residence. “I remember vividly the feelings which almost oppressed me when I first sat down in my chair in the Senate Chamber. Now I had actually reached a most exalted public position, to which my boldest dreams of ambition had hardly dared to aspire. I was still a young man, just forty. Little more than sixteen years had elapsed since I had landed on these shores a homeless waif, saved from the wreck of a revolutionary movement in Europe. Then I was enfolded in the generous hospitality of the American people, opening to me, as freely as to its own children, the great opportunities of the new world. And here I was now, a member of the highest law-making body of the greatest of republics.” But a still greater honor was to come. With the election of President Hayes in 1877, Schurz became the Secretary of the Interior of the United States. In this high position his ability found ample room for exercise, and the reforms which he in large measure effected, both in the civil-service system of appointment—by which men were placed in government positions as a result of examination on their merits, as opposed to their appointment regardless of merit but as a political reward—and in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, were of unusual value to the nation. On leaving the Department of the Interior at the close of President Hayes’s administration, Schurz was confronted by an almost embarrassing number of positions for his future occupation. For a time he occupied an editorial position on the New York _Evening Post_; but he still continued to take an active and important part in the politics of the day. For some years after his retirement from the _Post_ he devoted himself to literature, and produced, among other books, a life of Henry Clay which won high commendation.