Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/304

270 If that does no good, it will not be my fault. If the President insists on taking a wrong course, in spite of all, he should not be surprised if, later, I take the field against him with the entire artillery that I am now collecting. He will find the guns rather heavy; but I still hope that it will not be necessary. 



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The enclosed paragraph is clipped from one of to-day's New Orleans papers. I cannot deny that it was a painful surprise to me. You remember that I did not seek the mission on which I am at present employed. I accepted it thinking that I could render the country some service. The paragraph has the appearance of coming from one of the Government offices. The charge that I reported the information I gathered, to newspapers and not to you, is certainly unjust. You must have received my elaborate reports from every State I visited, and I am conscious of having done everything I could, to inform myself well, and to bring to your notice whatever I thought could be of interest and service to the Government.

That I have written some letters to newspapers is true; but in those letters I gave nothing that ought to have been kept secret. I think there could be no harm in my publishing incidents, anecdotes and observations that were