Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/47

Rh was a candidate for governor in Missouri, when my colleague refused to vote for him on the ground that his election would be dangerous to the institution of slavery in Missouri; he is the same who as a member of Congress voted for the Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Well, Mr. Rollins was put in nomination, while he was absent from home, without his knowledge and consent. And Mr. Rollins assures me that to his certain knowledge Conklin would have disqualified him, too, had he not relied upon his previous declaration that he would not be a candidate. But Mr. Rollins, returning home on the day before election, reconsidered that declaration, and Conklin, who in the meantime had thoroughly disgusted every decent man, was defeated by a respectable majority. Still he had the impudence to contest Mr. Rollins's seat, but was sent home by a unanimous vote of the senate. The record of that contest, containing the sworn testimony, which proves the facts I have stated, I have in my possession.

But there the story does not end yet. You will admit that in this transaction Conklin had proved himself a thorough villain. His first appointment as supervisor of registration by Governor Fletcher may be excused on the ground that the governor did not know him. But now Conklin had made a public record of irrepressible rascality, and yet in spite of the remonstrances of several Republican members of the legislature, Governor McClurg, the same gentleman whom we defeated at the late State election, reappointed him to the same place, possibly to do the same sort of work. But this time Conklin acted under the impulse of different motives. When he was a candidate himself and determined to elect himself, in a senatorial district containing about nine thousand males over the age of twenty-one years, he registered them down to sixteen hundred and