Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/292

268 when the appointed leader of the gold-standard movement in that campaign at last mustered courage enough to pronounce that word.

Early in the Presidential campaign of 1896, I was asked by a representative of the Republican National Committee to make some speeches for Mr. McKinley. Mr. Hobart, the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency, wrote to me personally in his behalf. While, of course, I did not hesitate to give my services to the sound-money cause, which was the foremost issue, I preferred to do so under the auspices of the National Sound Money League, a non-partisan organization, which had its headquarters at Chicago and was managed with great energy and judgment by Mr. Edwin Burritt Smith. It required not a little self-abnegation on the part of a tariff-reformer and an old and uncompromising sound-money man, as I was, to support for the Presidency, even indirectly, the putative father of the monstrous McKinley-tariff and one of those politicians who only recently had exhausted his whole art of plausible speech to mislead and demoralize the Republican party with regard to the matter of silver coinage. But the direct issue between sound and unsound money demanded the sacrifice of feeling, and I went “on the stump” advocating the sound-money cause as such to the best of my ability, without, however, mentioning Mr. McKinley's name in any of my speeches. While I was convinced that his election would substantially extinguish the free-silver-coinage movement, I was profoundly distrustful as to what Mr. McKinley's course in office would be. This distrust, however, touched rather his lack of conviction as to the financial question than any thing else. Could I have foreseen what his foreign policy would be, I should certainly never have supported him.

Shortly after Mr. McKinley's election a rumor arose that the new President would be asked, or that he was