Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/250

216 based upon newspaper-talk, had the Administration been able to set up against it the evidence of great successes?

I feel that in regard to one important point I have not been quite clear in my letter of the 8th. When speaking of “your friends,” I did not mean only those who in 1860 helped to elect you; I did not think of old, and, I may say, obsolete political obligations and affinities. But I meant all those, who fully understanding and appreciating the tendency of the revolution in which we are engaged, intend to aid and sustain you honestly in the execution of the tremendous task which has fallen to your lot. Nor did I, when speaking of the duty and policy of being true to one's friends, think of the distribution of favors in the shape of profitable offices. But I did mean that in the management of the great business of this revolution only such men should be permitted to participate, who answer to this definition of “friends” and on whose sympathies you can rely as securely as upon their ability.

I am far from presuming to blame you for having placed old Democrats into high military positions. I was also aware that McClellan and several other generals had been appointed on the recommendation of Republican governors and Members of Congress. It was quite natural that you appointed them when the necessities of the situation were new and pressing and everybody was untried. But it was unfortunate that you sustained them in their power and positions with such inexhaustible longanimity after they had been found failing—failing not only in a political but also in a military sense.

Was I really wrong in saying, that the principal management of the war has been in the hands of your opponents? Or will anybody assert, that such men as McClellan and Buell and Halleck and others of that school have the least sympathy with your views and principles, or that their