Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/469

 Bryant and Alexander H. Bullock were issued for a conference at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on May 15th. Nearly two hundred of those invited—a much larger proportion than had been expected—attended the conference. Among those present, representing many States, were college presidents and professors, clergymen, men of letters, philanthropists and others of light and influence. The care taken to avoid the errors of 1872 was rewarded: the “practical politicians,” who had brought disaster at Cincinnati, were happily absent, and the proceedings were harmonious, cautious and advisory. President Woolsey of Yale was chosen to preside, and the chief feature of the deliberations was the adoption of an address to the American people, prepared by Mr. Schurz. This formulated the needs of the time in the familiar demand for administrative reform and for the regeneration of parties through independent action of the voters. The part of the address that excited greatest interest was a series of paragraphs describing the types of politicians for whom the reformers would not vote. No names were mentioned, but the mordant phrases clearly etched the familiar forms of all the leading Republican aspirants, save Bristow, for the Presidency. Blaine, Morton, Conkling, as well as every “dark horse” whose availability might lie in his weakness and indisposition to offend, instead of in his power and resolution to crush all obstacles to reform, were thereby barred by the Independents. The adoption of the address was followed by the appointment of an executive committee, with power to reconvene the conference in case of need, which was understood to mean a failure of the Republicans to make a proper nomination.

Before the Republican convention assembled at Cincinnati, June 14th, Blaine was suffering from something more than his own “smartness”: he was in the coils of his own corruption, like Laocoön in those of the serpent. He was