CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
Schurz depicted in the gloomiest colors. Not only the revenue-reformers, but especially the Germans in a body had abandoned the cause when the nomination was made. The most prominent German leaders of the West, he said, were “not only dissatisfied, but fully determined to oppose the ticket with their whole strength and deaf to argument—unwilling, as they said, to be the victims and tools of Frank Blair and New York politicians. … To the best of my information my paper [the Westliche Post] is to-day the only German paper in the country which has come out for the ticket.” … As to the prospects of success in the campaign, Schurz wrote without much hope. “I should not be troubled by any difficulties in the way did I still see and feel the same moral force as before by which to combat and overcome them. But all is changed. That element which was least inspired with the great and noble tendencies of this movement stands before the people as its controlling power, and that element cannot conduct a campaign like this successfully.” The letter contained reiterated expressions of undiminished confidence in Greeley's personal uprightness: “I am very far from suspecting you of having been a party to this arrangement. I believe in you as a pure and honest man.” In conclusion Schurz wrote that he was not clear “whether it is best to go on in the direction we have taken or to begin again at the beginning. I confess frankly to you that I cannot tell yet what I shall do for my part. I ask you only to believe that whatever I may do will not be dictated by any selfish motives, but by the sincerest regard for you and my best convictions of duty. I shall be happy if you will speak to me with the same frankness which has inspired every word of this letter.”
The invitation of this concluding sentence was cordially accepted by Greeley in this reply:
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