Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/471

 and Stallo of Ohio, Ottendorfer of New York, and both the elder and the younger Charles Francis Adams. Gustav Koerner of Illinois also went into the Democratic camp. It was significant of political conditions and of Schurz's good influence that Koerner, immediately after the nomination, begged Schurz to withhold for a time the publication of his support of Hayes, because if the Democrats became convinced that they could not win the Independents, they might turn away from Tilden and throw themselves into the arms of the inflationists. “We want both parties to nominate hard-money men, so that, in either case, the election of a Republican or Democrat, one of the great objects of the Liberal Republicans would be accomplished.”

Schurz's choice soon became publicly known. To many of the Liberals it was a bitter disappointment, and some of them only stopped short of questioning his motives; for they understood his attitude to indicate his return to the regular Republican ranks, which he and they had abandoned in 1872. And his action was rightly regarded as signifying the termination of the Liberal Republican movement as such, which he had done most to inspire and support.

He would have preferred a new and a reform party, but next to that he had aimed to overthrow the Grant régime, to discredit such Republican politicians as Morton and Conkling and the artful Blaine, and to compel their party to choose reform leaders and a new and liberal policy. Accordingly he considered that the sweeping away of all these men and the selection of Hayes had granted much that the Liberal Republicans had demanded and was an earnest of other improvements in the near future.

Schurz's conclusion to support Hayes soon brought the two men into intimate relations. At a personal interview about