Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/78

44 have ceased to be in its ranks so powerful and influential an element as seriously to threaten the great economic interests of the country; when by energetic and successful action in protecting the rights of the voter whether white or black, whether Republican or Democratic in all parts of the country, and by the suppression of fraud at the ballot-box through a healthy and irresistible power of public opinion within itself, it will have won the right to appear in its platforms as the protector of the freedom and purity of elections, and when it will find it no longer necessary to discard the ablest of its statesmen and to put a general of the Army, who has never been anything but a soldier, in nomination for the Presidency, to make for itself a certificate of loyalty to the settlements of the great conflict of the past.

And for all these reasons, in my opinion, the interests of the Republic demand the election of James A. Garfield to the Presidency of the United States. 

 &emsp;

My dear Schurz: Yours of the 20th inst. from Indianapolis came duly to hand—and was read with interest. I thank you for your frank and faithful criticism; and with equal frankness let me say that I do not think my letter of acceptance is a surrender of any essential point gained by the present Administration. On the subject of finance, I did not dream that any one could doubt my attitude, for on every phase of the subject I have stood on the skirmish line against all forms of soft money and bastard silver fallacy. The only fear my friends have had was that I should be too radical. So good and sound a man as Senator Hoar wrote me urging that I avoid suggestions which would create apprehensions of violent change. The key to sound money is, I think, contained in my phrase,