Harper's Weekly/Senator Schurz 1

by Harper's Weekly

SENATOR SCHURZ.

Senator Schurz is the most pronounced of the Republican opponents of the renomination of the President, for he has announced that he will not support it. If it be made, therefore, the Senator would probably dissolve his active connection with the party. We do not understand that any other leader has taken exactly this position. Senator Sumner most warmly sympathizes with the opposition to the President's renomination; but we do not know that he has indicated his probable separation from the party should it be made. Indeed, we feel in regard to both these gentlemen, now as always, that they are essentially and by conviction Republicans, and that they can not support a Democratic policy until the word Democratic has lost all its recent significance.

If, therefore, the President should be renominated, and Senator Schurz should actively oppose his re-election, his attitude would be really that of Wendell Phillips in 1864, who showed why Mr. Lincoln ought not to be re-elected, while no one could suspect Mr. Phillips of wishing the election of General M'Clellan. It is true that practically to speak against Mr. Lincoln was to speak for General M'Clellan. But no one supposed that the speaker sympathized with the rebellion or the slave-holding interest. So to speak against General Grant would be virtually to support his Democratic opponent. But if Mr. Schurz were the speaker, we, at least, should not suppose him to be the advocate of the Ku-Klux. His attitude, like that of Mr. Phillips, would be that of independent criticism, which would yet be in sympathy with the party whose success the criticism imperiled.

Thirty years ago it was said that the antislavery vote of New York, by dividing the Whigs of the State, elected a slavery President, and was really responsible for the Mexican war. But it will not be asserted that the Birney men were in favor of extending slavery. They thought that Clay was not antislavery enough, as the phrase was. And the key of Mr. Schurz's opposition would doubtless be his feeling — which we do not share — that the President is not Republican enough, or that his general policy is perilous. The country would, as we believe, wholly differ from the Senator upon this point; but he could still justly claim to be a Republican in conviction and in purpose.

On the other hand, Senator Schurz would undoubtedly agree that it may justly be urged that the difference of every Republican with the Administration of his party should be expressed without insinuation. In his recent reply to certain personal charges he stated that it was the policy of the friends of the present Administration to defame its critics, and declared that his motives were maligned while his arguments were unanswered. We have read his reply with care, and it seems to us to relieve him wholly of the substance of the imputations made upon his conduct. He was accused, for instance, of making money by the large sums which he received for campaign speeches. But he replied that the money he has received for such services has not covered his expenses. It is not a pleasant thing to allude to such matters, but he was constrained to do so, and he properly said that it is not to be expected that a man who is not rich should give his services in a campaign without compensation. So in regard to his use of patronage. He does not deny that he has conformed to the old usage, but he does deny certain special facts that were charged. Indeed, it is impossible, without branding him as a liar, as he does those who make the charges, not to admit that he has satisfactorily answered them.

But while the Senator successfully replies to the charges against himself, he repeats the insinuation against the President of which we have heretofore spoken, and which, he will agree, should be made very carefully by one who complains that his own character is assailed. In his speech upon the appointment of the investigating committee Senator Schurz asserted that there was some power higher than the Secretary of the Treasury which maintained the corruption and abuses of the general order system in New York. The proof which he presented was that the Secretary had declared his opposition to it, yet that it was maintained. Now as there is no power which, in this sense, is higher and stronger than the Secretary except the President, the remark was an insinuation that the President had maintained and was protecting the fraudulent abuse. Yet if Senator Schurz had taken pains to inform himself more carefully of the facts, he would, we think, have found that while the Secretary was of opinion that the system should be changed, and wrote to that effect, yet that he considered it to be a detail of Administration in which he was disposed to yield to the opinion of his subordinate upon the spot, and did, in fact, so yield. And if this were the truth, as we think the Senator might have ascertained,, he would have seen that the chain of his logic was broken, because, properly speaking, it was the acquiescence of the Secretary in the discretion of his subordinate, and not the overruling of the Secretary by the President, which explained the result. It was, therefore, a mistake to say that there was a stronger power than the Secretary which maintained what was denounced as an evil system; and as the assertion was an insinuation, the insinuation was as unfounded as it was injurious. Senator Schurz, we know, honestly wishes to contemplate public questions from a point of patriotism rather than of mere party. We have more than once expressed our confidence in the purity of his purpose, as well as in his ability. But we ask him if his remark is not an insinuation of personal corruption against the President? If he thinks that the President connived at frauds in the general order business, why not say so? If he thinks that he is not a knave, but merely weak and hoodwinked by others, why not say that? But, if he has not examined and tested the facts so as to feel authorized to say either, ought he to imply what he is not willing to say?

• Page Image at Wikimedia Commons