Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/62

42 In the name of the Germans, sir, I forgive him again.

But while the charges and insinuations thrown out by my colleague had no effect upon the people of Missouri, except the contrary of that which they were intended for, I am sorry to say they seem to have had a strong effect upon the mind of the President. For, as the circumstances of the case have convinced me, it was at my colleague's instance that the President wrote a letter to the collector of internal revenue at St. Louis, in which the following language occurred:

I regard the movement headed by, Gratz Brown, etc., as similar to the Tennessee and Virginia movement, intended to carry a portion of the Republican party over to the Democracy, and thus give them control. I hope you will all see your way clear to give the regular ticket your support.

And it was also at the instance of my colleague that the President subsequently suspended a number of Federal officeholders in Missouri for the reason that they preferred one Republican candidate for governor to another.

While the interference of the Administration in State elections by means of the patronage has long been considered a matter of most questionable propriety and bad policy under any circumstances, I am inclined to think that in this case he who persuaded the President to interfere proved a most dangerous adviser. I have already exposed some of those absurd stories which my colleague, before retailing them in Missouri, poured into the President's ear for the purpose of eliciting from him that denunciatory letter and a sort of commission to punish refractory officeholders in Missouri. To these he added the further assertion that the Gratz Brown movement was distinctly designed to be a war upon the Administration. That the President should have lent his ear to