Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/119

 is now proving itself, a stumbling block to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one nut hard to crack.”

But these discussions had hardly attracted, beyond the boundaries of Illinois, the attention they merited. It was only when the Republican State Convention of Illinois, on the 16th of June, 1858, passed, by unanimous acclamation, a resolve declaring Abraham Lincoln to be “the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas,” that the eyes of the whole American people were turned upon the combat between the two men as an action which gravely concerned them all.

It was, however, well known that Lincoln at the time did not have the sympathy and countenance of all Republicans in the country, nor even in his own State. There were some, and among them men of great name and influence, who thought that their party would be more benefited by clever political maneuvering than by a straightforward advocacy of its principles. In the course of my public career I have not seldom met men of ability who prided themselves so much upon their political cunning that they enjoyed those successes most which had been won by wily stratagem, and would, therefore, always prefer the tactics of crafty combination, covert flank-marches, and ambush warfare to the direct method of open appeal to the public conscience and understanding. I am far from saying that the Republicans who disapproved of the nomination of Lincoln against Douglas all belonged to this class. Many of them, such as Horace Greeley, no doubt believed that the anti-slavery cause would be best served by permitting Douglas to