U. S. Senate Speeches and Remarks of Carl Schurz/Fees for Speeches

Mr. SCHURZ. I ask the Senator from New Jersey to yield to me for a single moment, and at the same time I would ask the Senator from New York to favor me with his presence for a moment. I desire to make a few remarks of a personal nature, called forth by an allusion made by the Senator from New York.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Very well, sir.

Mr. SCHURZ. It may be known to those Senators who read the Washington Chronicle, of this city, that on the morning of the day after I had addressed the Senate on this subject there appeared an article in the Chronicle severely criticising my speech, and stating that it was a well-known fact that this immaculate reformer was in the habit of receiving $200, and had done so in the late campaign, for the political speeches he made.

Mr. CONKLING. I never saw the article and never heard of it until this moment.

Mr. SCHURZ. I merely desire to say that the Senator, in all probability, if he did not see it in the Chronicle, it having been so widely scattered throughout the newspaper press of the country, has seen it in some other paper.

Mr. CONKLING. Never in connection with this case, and never lately.

Mr. SCHURZ. &ldquo;Never in connection with this case, and never lately,&rdquo; but he has seen it.

Mr. CONKLING. In times past; yes.

Mr. SCHURZ. I was a little surprised, after all the friendly discussions that we have had during this winter, discussions so courteous after so arduous and bitter a presidential canvass, that the Senator should make an allusion in his speech which it seemed to me, as it must have seemed to every one who had seen these rumors, bore directly upon me when he spoke of one who made speeches advocating the cause of this or that party for $200 a day. I think it will be agreeable to the Senator to know that this entire story is an absolute

and unmitigated fabrication, that the humble individual who stands before him not only did not ask or receive $200 for any of the speeches he made in the last campaign, but did not receive a single cent.

Mr. CONKLING. As the Senator is especially addressing me, shall I understand him now to refer to the last campaign alone, or does he mean by his statement to cover previous campaigns?

Mr. SCHURZ. The Senator knows very well that a little over a year ago charges of a similar nature were made against me in the New York Times, that I took occasion to reply to those charges upon this floor in every detail, and that I pronounced the charges connected with this subject, attributing to me the exaction of large sums and all that, unmitigated slanders.

As to the late campaign, I desire to say to the Senator, and take this opportunity of informing the Senate and those who may have seen the reports referred to, that not only did I not receive or exact or take $200, but not a single cent; and in order to inform the Senator more particularly still, so that when he shall have occasion to speak on this subject again he may know what is the truth, I will tell him that during that late campaign I received, unsolicited, uncalled for, unsuggested, a small remittance from liberal republican sources in New York to cover my outlays, which remittance covered about one-half of what I had paid myself out of my own pocket for campaign documents. Not only, I say, is that charge false, but whenever any compensation during that campaign was offered me, and it was so in perhaps a dozen instances, I uniformly refused to take a single cent.

But let me express my surprise that after a session like the one we have gone through, when the bitter controversies of the campaign seemed to have been utter l ly forgotten, after we have carried on all the discussions occurring in this body in a courteous and friendly spirit, now at last, unprovoked, a Senator should feel called upon to make so insidious an allusion as that. I must confess that I do not understand the propriety of it, and I am surprised at the spirit of it.

This is what I have to say to the Senator from New York. I do not wish to engage in any personal discussion with him. We have had such before, and if I do not further interrupt the tenor of these debates by continuing such things now, the Senator knows very well that it is not from any apprehension of the consequences.

Mr. CONKLING. I ask the Senator from New Jersey to indulge me one moment.

The Senator from Missouri has chosen to seize upon this occasion to do two things: First, to exonerate himself from charges made against him. With that I have nothing to do; at least I should have nothing to do but for one fact, to which I will allude in a moment. Secondly, the Senator takes occasion to read me a lecture in regard to and argument or illustration I introduced to the Senate. I deny his right thus to criticise me, and I say to him that he puts himself in the attitude of assuming that he alone has been guilty of this practice, that it is so exceptional and exceptionable that it has not prevailed with others, but with him alone. However that may be, I say to the Senator that, whether he has or has not received $200 a night for speeches, I shall, on any occasion when a question in the Senate is to be tested by the inquiry, comment on the propriety of receiving money for such services. I shall ask, what are the distinctions between its receipt in such a case and in another? I have no apology to make to the Senator from Missouri, but I stand by the propriety and fitness of what I said.

One other word, Mr. President. If the honorable Senator from Missouri on this floor has ever denied that money was paid him for making speeches in past campaigns I did not hear it. I should grieve to hear it. I repeat, that the Senator may hear me, I should grieve to hear him deny that money has been paid to him in past campaigns for making political speeches. He forces me to say this because he arraigns me and reminds me that on a previous occasion he denied charges made in the New York Times. Yes, Mr. President, I heard him deny charges made in the New York Times. I did not hear him, and I venture to predict I shall never hear him deny in my presence that he has received money in past campaigns for making political speeches. I hope the Senator will not put me to the locality, the occasion, and the time. If he should, I might feel called upon to respond.

Mr. SCHURZ. The explanation given now by the Senator corresponds with the spirit of the original allusion. I did not say, and never have said, and never shall say, that in former campaigns I refused to take from political committees that which was to compensate me for the expenses I had myself incurred. Neither do I think that many men, not in official position, if any, have ever declined to accept such re-imbursement. Neither do I think there is any impropriety in it. A year ago last January I stated on this floor that during fifteen years of campaigning, having spoken in almost every State of the Union outside of the Southern States, being myself poor and having no money to spare, but devoting week after week, and month after month, to campaign work, I not only did take, but had a right to take, nay, was obliged to take, compensation for my services equal to the expenses which I incurred, for the simple reason that, without it, it would have been impossible for me to do that work to which I was invited and urgently pressed.

I have not at this moment before me the Globe containing the remarks to which I have referred, but deferring the reading until I shall obtain it I wish to address another word to the Senator from New York, and then let us test the decency of his personal allusion on this

occasion. I have no fault to find with the tone of any argument that he has made. He is at perfect liberty to make any argument he pleases; but when he interrupts the amenities of our debates in a manner entirely unprovoked, to make so insidious an allusion to slanders which have been circulated about one Senator on this floor, I ask him, what would he think if within these days a rumor had been spread in the newspapers charging him with having received $10,000 as a fee from the Central Pacific Railroad to represent their interests, and if I in a speech made an allusion to that fact, and made it in such way as to point to him? Would he not question the right and the decency of such an act?

Mr. CONKLING. If the Senator likes me to answer ---

Mr. SCHURZ. Yes, sir.

Mr. CONKLING. I would rise to denounce as a liar any man who made the statement, and I would authorize the Senator to say to any man who told him so that he lied, and to refer him to me; but I should not find fault with the Senator for hearing the rumor, or for making a remark which had nothing in the world to do with it, which I chose to take to myself, upon the principle that a hit bird flutters.

Mr. SCHURZ. Precisely. Then, sir, I will accept the Senator's own statement, and I will say that those from whom he took the information upon which that allusion is based lied, and I authorize him to tell them so.

Mr. CONKLING. Let me understand that. Does the Senator authorize me to tell any man he lies who says now that, in past campaigns, specific sums, so much a speech, have been paid to and received by the Senator from Missouri?

Mr. SCHURZ. I authorize the Senator to tell every man that he lies who in the first place charges me with having received $200 for any ---

Mr. CONKLING. I have not said $200.

Mr. SCHURZ. Stop; I have the floor now &mdash; with having received $200 for every or any speech in the late campaign; and then I authorize him to charge the man who denies the truth of the statement I am now going to read as a liar again. That will cover the case, I think; will it not?

Mr. CONKLING. I wish to thank the Senator for the very direct and luminous answer he has given to the question.

Mr. SCHURZ. I think it will be still more luminous in a little while. Here it is, and if the Senate will now permit me to read, then the Senator from New York will get as much light upon the subject as he needs to discharge the duty as he himself defined it. I read from the Congressional Globe, January 8, 1872:

Where I had the honor to speak from the same platform with the Senator &mdash;

If the Senator from New York will take this statement, together with anything I said about the other story, and find anybody to contradict it, I authorize him to say that he lies.

Mr. CONKLING. Mr. President, I will take leave of this subject by saying that the remark I made contained no allusion to the Senator from Missouri, although I had seen in the papers &mdash; not recently, however &mdash; that money had been charged by him, and paid to him, for making political speeches. I had heard of it in other cases also, and in my remark there was no allusion to him. I put it as one of several

cases, to test a distinction; I introduced it as an argument which I believed then and believe now just and fair. The Senator from Missouri, who has seen recently in the papers something I have not seen, took it for granted, in consequence of articles he has read, that I was traveling out of my way to make an assault upon him, and accordingly he has brought the matter up. I have only to add that, notwithstanding the somewhat tart remark, and, as I think, grossly improper insinuation he made at one point of his observations, I had and I have no feeling of personal unkindness toward him; and had the Senator not called attention to this subject it never would have occurred to me that he thought or supposed that I was selecting him or making an attack upon him.

Mr. SCHURZ. Mr. President, I should be very glad to take the explanation now made by the Senator from New York as it is given; but I am very sorry to say that when an allusion is made with such particularity as this was made, the allusion can hardly have not been intended to have some personal bearing. When the Senator from New York says that he has no personal feeling against me I am sure that I have given no cause for any; that my conduct upon this floor, my tone in debate, my personal discussions, with whatever Senator it may have been, have not been of such a character as to provoke any personal unkindness. But I again bring home to him that if I had made such a remark as I alluded to with regard to taking a fee from a railroad company, which it would be very far from me to do &mdash; if I had made such a remark upon the ground of statements circulated by the newspapers, I would not call it improper on the part of the Senator from New York, if he called the attention of the Senate to it. I should call it very proper indeed if he should hold me to account for it in the strongest language he could command. I know how personal allusions are made in speeches; and when the Senator made his allusion my mind could not escape the conclusion, nor could the mind of any Senator acquainted with the circumstances, that that allusion was meant for me. If he now says that it was not, very well; let it go. I do not want to have any personal controversy with any one on this floor. I do not shrink from it when it is forced upon me; but I certainly do not seek it when there is no provocation.

Mr. CONKLING. The Senator evidently wants the last word; but at the expense of prolonging an unworthy matter, I venture to make another observation. I mean what I have said. I mean to let it stand. I differ with the Senator when he affirms that he has done nothing calculated to awaken in me any feeling unfriendly to him. I, too, know the modes by which a man by covert insinuation, not bold, manages to say what the Senator has now said, for example, and then shrinks from it and disclaims a willingness to say it. I know how, during the last session of Congress, I, in common with others, was covered with insinuations and with accusations, false in fact, which the Senator had no right to make, and which, as much as any other, he was art and part in. Therefore he must pardon me for dissenting when he says that he has so conducted himself in the Senate as to provoke the resentment of no man.

The Senator a moment ago seemed to intimate some doubt as to my sincerity, when I said that my remark did not single him out. The fact that the Senator deems it proper to feel such a doubt and to suggest it, not only forbids my saying anything further to relieve him, but, had he suggested such a doubt in season, I would certainly not have uttered even the qualifying words which I did.

Mr. SCHURZ rose.

Mr. CONKLING. The Senator wants the last word. I promise him that he shall have it, because whatever he may say I will not be led further in this dialogue.

Mr. SCHURZ. Mr. President, when the Senator from New York got up and said I wanted to have the last word, it seemed to me that he rather insisted upon having it himself. Now, when the Senator alludes to debates we had during the last session, I am sure that I have no reason to retract a single word I then said. But I think also that, a long time having elapsed between that period and this, a bitter campaign having been gone through with, and we having met here again, months ago, again on friendly terms, and having passed through three or four months of animated but courteous debate, then it is extraordinary indeed that a Senator should feel called upon to indulge in such flings as have fallen from the lips of the Senator to-day.

I am rather glad to see him abandon the explanation he gave us once this evening, that he had not intended any allusion to me. I am glad he retracted that, for had he not placed the matter in the right light, I would. And there I will let this case rest.

Mr. CAMERON. Mr. President ---

The VICE-PRESIDENT. The Senator from New Jersey is entitled to the floor.

Mr. CAMERON. Mr. President, as the Senate well know, my voice is not a very strong one, and I rise, therefore, with some fear that I shall not be heard or understood in the prevailing storm which is raging.

Mr. SHERMAN. I hope order will be preserved.

The VICE-PRESIDENT. The Senator from Pennsylvania will pause. Senators will be good enough to resume their seats. Order must be preserved in the Senate.

Mr. CAMERON. When I came into the Senate this morning, rather late, from my committee-room, I found the Senator from Maryland [Mr. ] making a speech, a part of which I heard, and only a small part. I found my name mentioned, and I took the liberty of going to our excellent reporter and asking him to give me a copy of what was said by the Senator from Maryland in regard to myself. He did so, and I will read it if the Senate will allow me to do so.

Mr. CARPENTER. It is impossible for the Senator to be heard in the prevailing storm which is beating on the glass roof above us. I move that the Senate proceed to the consideration of executive business.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate proceeded to the consideration of executive business.

After forty-four minutes spent in executive session, the doors were re-opened.

Mr. FERRY, of Michigan. I move that the Senate do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; there being, on a division &mdash; ayes 29, noes 22; and (at four o'clock and twelve minutes p.m.) the Senate adjourned.