Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/383

Rh of thousands upon thousands of Republicans, not habitual malcontents, but faithful members of the party, and by no means its least estimable element. I do not accept all that Mr. Curtis says about the means the State government of Louisiana had to employ to prevent intimidation and violence; in this respect, I think, he goes too far. But what he says about the doings of the returning-board and the impression those doings have produced upon a very large number of conscientious Republicans, is undoubtedly correct. It is certainly true that there are grave doubts in the minds of that class of citizens. Those doubts were not produced by “Democratic brag and bluster,” to which no sensible man would yield; but they originated in the proceedings of the Louisiana returning-board itself, and considering the well-known antecedents of that board and the suspicious circumstances surrounding its action on the present case, those doubts are not unnatural. They are expressed in private more frequently and pointedly than in public; but you may safely attribute such demonstrations as the petitions of the Philadelphia and New York merchants to Congress, asking for an agreement upon a fair mode of counting the electoral vote, to just that troubled state of mind. I know that to be so from my own personal acquaintance with a large number of Republicans.

Here and there the theory is set up that all we have to do is to convince ourselves as to the substantial right in this case and then use all means at hand to make that substantial right prevail. Just here some very grave questions present themselves. The letter of Mr. Redfield you sent me, I had already read in the Cincinnati Commercial. I consider Mr. Redfield to be a trustworthy correspondent who believes in what he says, and I myself believe that he is in the main correct. The probability that a fair and free election would have turned out a