THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
pose, of well-stored minds, of unselfish patriotism, and of the courage of their convictions. But disgustingly large was, on the other hand, the number of small, selfish politicians I ran against—men who seemed to know no higher end than the advantage of their party, which involved their own, who were always nervously sniffing for the popular breeze; whose most demonstrative ebullitions of virtue consisted in the most violent denunciations of the opposition; whose moral courage quaked at the appearance of the slightest danger to their own or their party's fortunes, and whose littlenesses exposed themselves sometimes with involuntary frankness to the newspaper correspondent whom they approached to beg for a “favorable notice” or for the suppression of an unwelcome news-item. They were by no means in all instances men of small parts. On the contrary, there were men of marked ability and large acquirements among them. But never until then had I known how immense a moral coward a member of Congress may be. I remember with especial interest occasional talks I had with some of my colleagues of the press in which we “compared notes” about the statesmen whose doings we had to report and discuss in our dispatches. If these statesmen always knew what that journalistic fraternity know and think of them, they would often bow their heads in contrite and grateful appreciation of the discretion and generosity which bury in silence many things that would tickle the ears of the groundlings. It is probably now as it was then, that there are few places in the United States where the public men appearing on the National stage are judged as fairly and accurately as they are in newspaper row in Washington. I remained at the head of the Tribune office at the national capital, according to my promise to Mr. Greeley, to the end of the winter season, and then accepted the chief-editorship of the Detroit Post, a new journal estab-
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