Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/416

 well-organized majority. The proposition of the liberals to incorporate in the platform a plank favoring the immediate removal of disabilities was lost. Thereupon the liberals, headed by Schurz and Gratz Brown, organized a new convention, adopted a platform calling for the immediate removal of all disabilities, nominated Brown for Governor, and, with the aid of the Democrats, who coalesced with the bolters, triumphantly carried the State.

In this Missouri campaign, the radicals had the unqualified support of the administration. The federal office-holders in the State were constrained by the most drastic methods of pressure then in vogue to contribute money and labor to the cause; and President Grant, in a letter to the collector of internal revenue at St. Louis, expressed the conviction that Schurz and Brown were merely aiming to put the Democrats in power, and urged his correspondent to stand by the regular party ticket. Though read out of the Republican party by this high authority, Mr. Schurz did not cease to maintain that he stood true to the principles of Republicanism and that it was the radicals who had deserted those principles. In a speech delivered in the Senate, December 15, 1870, with the laurels of the Missouri victory fresh upon him, be told with great effectiveness the story of the liberal movement. Referring to the plank for which he himself was responsible in the national platform of 1868, favoring the removal of disabilities, he argued that the liberals were wholly in the spirit of Republican policy, and that the President had been misled into his belief to the contrary. This argument was followed in the speech, however, by a very philosophical and eloquent analysis of existing political conditions, with a conclusion that indicated how lightly the speaker regarded any party tie that involved fidelity to a name or tradition or organization rather