THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
melancholy; his brain gave way and he sought relief in death. Another suicide, that of Senator Lane of Kansas, which greatly startled the country a few months later, was attributed to a similar cause. “Jim Lane” had been one of the most famous Free-State fighters in Kansas Territory. Since then he was ranked among the extreme anti-slavery men and as a Senator he was counted upon as a firm opponent of President Johnson's policy. To the astonishment of everybody he voted against the Civil Rights Bill. This somewhat mysterious change of front, which nobody seemed able satisfactorily to explain, cost him his confidential intercourse with his former associates in the Senate, and brought upon him stinging manifestations of disapproval from his constituents. He was reported to have expressed profound repentance of what he had done and finally made away with himself as one lost to hope. He was still in the full vigor of manhood—only fifty-one years old—when he sought the grave.
The campaign of 1866 was remarkable for its heat and bitterness. In canvasses carried on for the purpose of electing a President I had seen more enthusiasm, but in none so much animosity and bad blood as in this, an incidental object of which was politically to destroy a President. Andrew Johnson had not only manifested a disposition to lean upon the Democratic party in the pursuit of his policy, but he had also begun to dismiss public officers who refused to co-operate with him politically and to put in their places men who adhered to him. This touched partisan spirit in an exceedingly sensitive spot. There could be no clearer proof of President Johnson's “treachery” in the eyes of the ordinary party man. It was the unpardonable crime. When the man so appointed was a Democrat—well, his offense was regarded leniently, for nothing better could be expected of him. But when a Republican ac-
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