Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/82

48 hold you responsible for everything that is said on the stump. But somehow or other the impression seems to have got around that the tone of the campaign was determined upon at your conference in New York as the result of an agreement or capitulation concluded between yourself and the elements represented there. I am free to say that I always considered your trip to New York a mistake, for it was certain that under existing circumstances you could not make it without giving color to rumors of concession, surrender, promises etc., impairing the strength of your legislative record. And I may add, that if, as the newspapers state, you go to the meeting at Warren, the result will be just as injurious with a large class of voters, besides exposing you to the chance of listening to expressions of condescension like those at the Academy of Music in New York, very little short of contempt and insult. I enclose a couple of editorials from the Evening Post and the N. Y. Herald which it is worth your while to read. They may be somewhat overdrawn in their coloring, but they do give expression to a current of thought running through the heads of a large number of people whose votes we need. That the effect of that sort of a campaign is virtually as stated by these papers is abundantly proven by the Maine election. There we had the “sectional” music by the whole orchestra and in endless variations. I will not say that it caused the Republican defeat, but it proved entirely ineffectual in preventing it, while a quiet, conservative, persuasive tone of discussion, in the line of your anti-sectional and reform utterances in Congress, might have won converts and so prevented the disaster.

These things are not pleasant to contemplate, but as your friend I consider it my duty to point out to you dangers you have to confront, and which you ought to see and appreciate in time. I should like to have a talk with