Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/433

Rh did he not stand there as the embodiment and personification of the pernicious system which derives from his individuality its peculiar character. Gratitude for his military services and respect for his office have long restrained many from expressing their real opinions concerning him. I shall be the last man to forget or to carp at the great services he has rendered in the field of war. The honors he has won, the laurels he has gathered, shall not be touched. But now he is a civil officer, and he asks us to continue him at the head of the civil government of this Republic. With this question his laurels have nothing to do. There are no battles to be fought and no strong places to be taken. And now it becomes our duty to tell the truth concerning him, as we understand it. I shall do so with frankness, but not without moderation.

General Grant came into office under circumstances of extraordinary promise. He had, as General-in-Chief, directed the closing operations of the war. His success had centered upon him the gratitude and esteem of the loyal people, and in granting to the defeated foe a generous capitulation, he had, in a high degree, won even their respect and confidence. There was scarcely a man in the Nation to whose voice they would have more willingly listened, when admonishing them to submit to the inevitable, to accommodate themselves in good faith to the legitimate results of the war, to respect the rights of their neighbors, however humble, and to develop for the common good the opportunities presented by the new order of things—such admonitions being accompanied by work and acts of conciliation and good-will. No man could have done more to revive their best and most patriotic impulses, to quiet their apprehensions, and assure their minds as to the safety of their rights as citizens, to make them feel that they were not to be the step-children of