Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/254

 in some way to make my journey financially possible, that my newspaper letters contained nothing that should have been treated as official secrets, but incidents of travel, anecdotes, picturesque views of Southern conditions with some reflections thereon, mostly things which would not find proper elaboration in official reports,—and all this quite anonymous so as not to have the slightest official character; and finally that I had a right to feel myself entitled to protection against such imputations as the newspaper paragraph in question contained.

My first impulse was to resign my mission at once and return home. But then I considered that the duty to the public which I had assumed, obliged me to finish my work as well as I could, unless expressly recalled by the President. I would, therefore, at any rate, go on with my inquiries in expectation of an answer from him to my letter. I was outraged at the treatment I was receiving. I had undertaken the journey in obedience to an urgent request of the President, and at serious sacrifice, for I was on the point of returning to my Western home when the President called me off. My journey in the South during the hottest part of the year was in the highest degree laborious and fatiguing. I had to travel many hundred miles in dilapidated railroad cars over tracks which, originally poor, had for years experienced no repairs, at the rate of ten, at best, fifteen miles an hour, and at a temperature not seldom up in the nineties. Where railroad facilities were wanting, I moved from place to place—usually by night to avoid the blistering heat of the day—in carriages, mostly old aristocratic family coaches that had seen better days, now degraded to mean hack service, the upholstery worn out or ripped open, the lanterns gone, the harness pieced together with ropes and trying one's patience by breaking every moment. I remember especially a night ride in Alabama through a long