Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/372

346 suggestion is not in a condition for presentation—we can't say yea or nay to it until we see it in form for a place in the Constitution.

I am overwhelmed with calls congratulating me on the results declared in Florida and Louisiana. I have no doubt that we are justly and legally entitled to the Presidency. My conversations with Sherman, Garfield, Stoughton and others settled the question in my mind as to Louisiana. 



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You want to know what I think of the present condition of things? I scarcely know it myself. We are completely out of our reckoning. There is so much wrong on each side that many conscientious men hesitate to attack one for fear of playing into the hands of the other. Before the election some of our friends opposed the Republican candidates on the ground that a party must be held responsible for the misdoings of its agents and representatives, and because the campaign on the Republican side had to a great extent been taken possession of by the very men against whom a reform movement should have been directed. That was correct as far as it went; but those who acted upon that principle did not see what was going on on the Democratic side. The reason why I made as good a fight as I could for Hayes was, in the first place, that I had very good reason to trust the honesty of his purpose to eliminate, in case of his success, from our politics that most dangerous element of selfishness and corruption, the spoils, and that he would not fall under the control of the men who pushed themselves in the canvass,—and secondly because I had equally good reason to distrust the character and purposes of the leading men on the Democratic side