THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
much their political standing depended on those same newspapers.
When I rose, the audience received me with a round of uproarious cheers. I succeeded in putting myself into relations of good humor even with my opponents by introducing myself as “a young David, who, single-handed and without any weapon except his sling and a few pebbles in his pouch, had to meet in combat two heavily-armed Goliaths at once.” The audience laughed and cheered again. I then brushed away Mr. Loan's “harmless” speech with a few polite phrases and “passed from the second to the principal.” The laugh which followed caused Mr. Loan to blush and to look cheap. I then proceeded to take the offensive against Mr. Drake in good earnest. To the great amusement of my hearers I punctured with irony and ridicule the pompous pretense that he was the father of the new constitution with which Missouri was blessed. I then took up his assault upon the Germans. I asked the question who it was that at the beginning of the war took prisoners the rebel force assembled in Camp Jackson and thus saved St. Louis and the State to the Union, and who was foremost on all the bloody fields in Missouri? The whole audience shouted: “The Germans! The Germans!” I asked another question: Where Mr. Drake was in those critical days, and answered it myself, that having been a Democrat before the war pleading the cause of slavery, he sat quietly in his law office, coolly calculating when it would be safe for him to pronounce himself openly for the Union, while the Germans were shedding their blood for that Union. This was a terrible thrust. My unfortunate victim nervously jumped to his feet and called my friend, General McNeil, who was present, to witness that the General himself advised him to stay quietly at home, because he could do better service there than
[ 299 ]
