Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/440

 was that the organization would disintegrate and that the liberal men of it would individually join the party of reform.

By the middle of April it had become clear to the well-informed that the Grant Republicans, though seriously disturbed by the Cincinnati movement, were resolved to persist in their purpose of a renomination. The adhesions to the Liberal cause had been formidable in numbers and importance; many famous Republicans had endorsed the call to Cincinnati; but many others, equally famous, like George William Curtis and Charles Sumner, of undoubted sympathy with the loftiest political ideals, had not enlisted with the Liberals. Moreover, the rank and file of the party that had chosen Grant in 1868 did not welcome the demand that they abandon their hero. In such circumstances the reformers had no recourse but to make a nomination at Cincinnati, and to look to the Democracy for much of the support needed to insure success in the election.

To Mr. Schurz this turn of affairs was far from pleasing. It naturally brought into the foreground the discussion of men rather than measures, of personalities rather than principles. While most of his associates arrayed themselves in active and eager support of this or that candidate for the nomination, he refrained from announcing any preference, and strove only to insure that the convention should be free from the ignoble methods and influences which usually characterized such assemblies, and that no man should be nominated who did not represent, in antecedents and character, the highest ideals of Republicanism and reform.

The Liberals assembled at Cincinnati May 1st. Schurz was acknowledged to be, as Horace White wrote at the time to Trumbull, “the leader and master mind of this great movement.” As was inevitable, however, men and interests that were alien to the aims and ideals of its leader had become