Page:Visit of the Hon. Carl Schurz to Boston, March 1881.pdf/89

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,—I am very much honored by the invitation to the dinner to be given to Mr. Schurz, and I regret sincerely that engagements which I cannot disregard nor postpone prevent my acceptance.

I should most gladly unite in your tribute to the “eminent ability, the marked fidelity, and the approved success” of his official conduct. Mr. Schurz has many claims to honorable distinction, but not the least of them is that he brought a firm, efficient, and purifying hand to the administration of a department in which the most intricate and widespread abuses of many kinds had been, at least, suspected; and from the evil system of minor appointment and removal in the Department itself, to the vast public interests involved in its exterior operations, his energy, sagacity, and fidelity have been most beneficially felt. Should Mr. Schurz' views, and the recommendations of ex-President Hayes in accordance with them, he adopted by Congress, a great National wrong will be corrected; and a truly just and humane Indian policy will date from his administration of the Interior Department.

That great public services should be attended by great and unmerited hostility is an incident too familiar to be surprising. But when time has healed the wounds of personal feeling, and the character and results of his political and official action are dispassionately estimated, it will be seen, I think, that, since Albert Gallatin, no American citizen not born upon our soil has performed more honorable public service, or merits public respect more truly, than Carl Schurz.