Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/446

412 if he were a Republican; that there is no “returning to the fold” this year, as there was no going into a fold last year, and that we shall be found ready, in the future as in the present and the past, to support the Davenports as against the Hills under whatever party names they may appear.

It should further be understood that while the Independents will support Mr. Davenport for the governorship, they protest most emphatically against the unjust attacks made upon President Cleveland in the Republican platform, as well as against those declarations which are designed to make party capital by a revival of sectional prejudice and ill-feeling between the North and the South. That President Cleveland has made mistakes no candid man will deny; but, on the other hand, no candid man can deny that he has rendered the cause of reform very great service. The professions of Republican politicians in favor of civil service reform would deserve and receive much more confidence if, while censuring real mistakes or violations of correct principle, they proved themselves at the same time willing to encourage with just recognition all the good that is done and all the honest efforts that are made in the right direction, no matter under what party auspices. And as to the Southern question, everybody knows that there has been of late years an immense change for the better in the South; that the disunion feeling of old times has entirely yielded to a new National spirit; that the condition of the colored people as to their prosperity and the protection of their rights, as well as the relations between the two races, is now much more satisfactory than it ever has been; that meetings of colored men in the South themselves protest against the demagogic clamor in the North about their wrongs; that the existence of the evils denounced by Republican politicians would only prove the failure of the Republican party during its long possession of power to remedy them,