CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
was very roughly handled by the friends of the President, especially Zachariah Chandler and Roscoe Conkling.
To Schurz the turn given to the affair by this war of personalities was in the highest degree distressing. In temper and self-control he was thoroughly unlike the Massachusetts Senator. He feared for the effect upon Sumner personally, and for the effect upon the main question. In a frank conference with the President while the treaty of annexation was before the Senate, Schurz had learned how tenacious Grant was of his purpose to acquire Santo Domingo. The ostentatious repudiation of the Missouri liberals during the State campaign of 1870 had been public notice that the presidential favor would be withdrawn from Senators who, like Schurz, refused to support the Dominican policy. In a number of States there was a promising opportunity to constrain senatorial votes by administration pressure through the party machine. Under such circumstances Schurz was seriously alarmed lest, despite the contrary professions of Morton, a scheme to present anew the direct question of acquisition might suddenly reveal itself. The surest way of meeting this danger was to get public opinion back to the main issue. This he undertook to do in a very serious address to the Senate, on January 11, 1871. He studiously avoided all the extraneous topics that Sumner's invective had brought into the discussion, and confined himself practically to the single question of annexation. It was typical of Schurz's superior methods of developing and leading public opinion.
The argument of the speech was made to turn chiefly on the undesirability of tropical expansion. At the first suggestion of the annexation of Santo Domingo, Schurz had felt instinctively that, apart from the question whether any increase of territory was desirable, the direction of this proposed in-
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