Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/120

110 not, and although a daily increasing number of friends gathered around him, yet a great many could not divest themselves of their early impressions.

And so this became one of the instances, which you so frequently meet with in the history of mankind, in which individuals have to pay a tribute of self-denial to their own greatness. The success of the cause they serve is apt to bring with it the disappointment of their personal aspirations. This is a melancholy fate, but it is no less glorious and sublime, for even the highest positive merit may receive a still higher lustre from the divine anointment of self-sacrifice. [Cheers.] History does not judge men by the outward emblems of power and preferment. The greatest names are those which need no title in order to be great. [Great cheers.] Seward has lost nothing in the Convention. He is to-day, what he was yesterday. He can hardly stand higher; he certainly does not stand lower. [Loud applause.]

We, the delegates from Wisconsin, voted for him to the last. I may say that a few hours after my arrival at Chicago I saw that Seward's nomination was very improbable. I do not lay claim to any particular sagacity for that, for it was a plain arithmetical problem. The causes which brought about his defeat I will not detail; suffice it to say, that they were not of a futile nature. But we stood by him, determined to carry his name as high as possible. Nor did we follow the example of those who changed their votes after the decisive ballot, before the final result was announced; not as though we had been opposed to Mr. Lincoln, than whom there is no truer man in the nation [cheers]; but because we thought we owed it to our old chieftain, that, if fall he must, he should withdraw with the honors of war, surrounded by an unbroken column of true and devoted friends. [Loud cheers.] So the delegations from New York, Wisconsin, and some