Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/68

48 rendered an inestimable service to the cause of peace and good feeling, where now that cause has to be protected against his pretended friends. If instead of celebrating a triumph he has to deplore a rebuke, whose fault is it? Not ours, sir; certainly not ours.

We know well that the President has had no great opportunities for acquiring extensive political experience. That is certainly not his fault. It might have been an advantage. But the advisers who pretended to be his friends ought to have told him what the result of his interference would be. My colleague has been long enough in political life to know that almost all Administrations which attempted to control the people of a State in the regulation of their State affairs broke down in the operation. He might have told him that nothing was more calculated than such interference to rouse that spirit of independence, that feeling of a citizen's pride which indignantly repels all attempts at dragooning, and that the moral power of an Administration never issues unimpaired from the contest. My colleague at least ought to have remembered the history of Pierce, of Buchanan and of Andrew Johnson, and had he been the President's true friend no temptation of patronage would have seduced him to advise the President to fall into the mistakes of such predecessors.

Now, sir, I will show you how the authority of the Administration was prostituted by its pretended supporters. Here is a circular issued by the chairman of the McClurg State committee, addressed to the Federal officeholders in Missouri:

, October 24, 1870.

The State Republican committee have great and imperative need of funds at once, to carry the campaign