Louis F. Schade

Who was Louis F. Schade?

Louis F. Schade as a law student at the University of Berlin took part in the failed revolution of 1848. Sentenced to death for helping to erect barriers, he escaped from the Kingdom of Prussia. Immigrating to the US in 1851, he became a prominent Forty-Eighter, very active in American politics.

He was the final defense attorney for commandant Henry Wirz to cease his representation in protest against the way the Andersonville Trial was conducted.

A big supporter of Stephen A. Douglas, he assisted Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

In 1878 he purchased the Petersen House where Abraham Lincoln died, now administered by the National Park Service. He served as vice-president of the Washington based American Anti-Imperialist League and edited a newspaper called the Washington Sentinel. He is interred at Washington's Prospect Hill Cemetery, the traditional resting place of Washington's early German-American population.