Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/171

 let the thing go on.” Mr. Potter advised me not to withdraw, and I followed his no doubt well-meant counsel rather against my own judgment.

It turned out that my friend had been more sanguine than I was myself.

Governor Randall, who was a master in management, received the desired renomination by a large majority, and I was again nominated for the lieutenant-governorship, if I remember rightly, by an unanimous vote. This honor I, as well as my friends, thought I could not accept. But in declining it, I emphatically reaffirmed my devotion to the anti-slavery cause and to the party serving it. Some of my friends, however, were not so easily contented. They expressed their anger at what had happened in threatening language, and I made every possible effort to appease them. My first opportunity was a “rousing public reception” given me by the “Young Men's Republican Club” of Milwaukee on my return from the Republican State Convention at Madison, and I most earnestly admonished them never to forget, in anything they might be inclined to do, the great cause whose fate would be decided in the national election of 1860. This admonition I continued to urge upon my dissatisfied friends throughout the State campaign, which had much effect in quelling the disturbance; and the Republican candidates for the State offices were comfortably elected.

On the whole, this was not a promising prelude to an official career. But my wishes and hopes did not in truth contemplate such a career, and I felt that I had neither aptitude nor liking for the business of the “practical politician.”

It was also at this period that I had the first taste of being attacked and vilified by political opponents. With a sort of blank amazement I found myself one day accused in a Democratic newspaper of being in the pay of the Prussian