Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/341

Rh how you will come out, but help you in every possible way to come out right, by active and constant support and coöperation, and to this end, instead of speaking of critical opposition, identify ourselves with you as much as may be necessary.

This view of the situation is gradually gaining ground, but it is still far from being as generally accepted as it should be. You can undoubtedly do more than anybody else to draw the whole, or at least a large majority of this important element, from its expectant and doubting position to rally it around your Administration and thus to promote that active union of the best intelligence of the South and of the North which the public interest demands. You can do this, it seems to me, not only by forming a Cabinet that will inspire confidence, but by telling the country in your inaugural address specifically what you mean when speaking of Democratic principles and a Democratic policy as applied to present circumstances. This, I believe, can be done in such a way as to explode a good many of the specters which have been frightening people so long, and to make those who substantially agree with you concerning the public objects to be accomplished, feel that the further maintenance of an attitude of doubtful expectancy or critical opposition would on their part be positively wrong as well as absurd.

If agreeable to you, I should be glad to submit to your judgment my thoughts on this matter in greater detail. I regret in this respect that, when you will visit this city, as the newspapers say, in two or three weeks, I shall be absent, to be gone from the 13th or 14th inst. until the 1st of March. Personal conversation on these things would probably be more useful. But I apprehend, as you are to leave Albany for Buffalo in a very few days, you will in the meantime be too much occupied with the winding up of your official business, to have leisure for