Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/283

Rh not do in the present crisis. You would surely not have judged so if you had shared in the great struggles which are now over. You may have been surprised when I defend the present Administration in public. But I believe that a few words regarding my way of looking at matters will make things clear to you. Every crisis in human affairs has one principal question to which all minor questions must be subordinated. We are engaged in a war in which the existence of the Nation, indeed, in which everything is involved. A party has risen in this country that threatens to overthrow all the results of the war, and that at a moment at which the final outcome is hardly doubtful, if the policy introduced is firmly adhered to. There can be no doubt that the Government has made great mistakes; persons who are directing the fate of the country are certainly far from ideal statesmen, though not nearly as insignificant as their critics would represent them to be. But that is of minor importance. The most vital thing is that the policy of the party moves in the right direction, that is to say, that the slaveholder be vanquished and slavery abolished. Whether this policy moves in that direction skilfully or awkwardly, slowly or rapidly, is a matter of little consequence in comparison with the question whether a policy should be adopted that would move in another, a wrong and disastrous, direction. Accordingly, it was easy for me to choose. I did not hesitate one moment. If Frémont and McClellan had been my bosom friends and the members of the present Administration had been my deadly enemies, I should nevertheless have supported the latter.

Counter-considerations of a personal nature, which you mention, such as vindictive criticism, could have no weight. If one wants to accomplish something worth while, one must not allow trifles to interfere. I have long since risen above that sort of thing. People may say