THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
the military hero at the head of the government would learn what he needed to know, and that the men in political places of power would treat him with due consideration and fairness.
It was a few days later when I met President Grant at an evening reception given by Colonel Forney, the Secretary of the Senate. I was somewhat surprised when I saw the President coming toward me from the opposite side of the room, saying: “Senator, you have not called to see me at the White House for some time, and I have been wanting to speak to you.” All I could say in response was that I was very sorry to have missed a conversation I might have had with him, but that I knew him to be a busy man who should not be robbed of his time by merely conventional visits. He repeated that he wished very much to see me. Would I not call upon him at my earliest convenience some evening? I put myself at once at his service, and went to the White House the next night. He received me in the library room and invited me to sit with him on a sofa. He plunged forthwith into the subject he had at heart. “I hear you are a member of the Senate Committee that has the San Domingo treaty under consideration,” he said, “and I wish you would support that treaty. Won't you do that?” I thought it would be best not to resort to any circumlocution in answering so point-blank a summons, but to be entirely frank. I said I would be sincerely happy to act with his administration whenever and wherever I conscientiously could, but in this case, I was sorry to confess, I was not able to do as he wished, because I was profoundly convinced it would be against the best interests of the Republic. Then I gave him some of my dominant reasons; in short, acquisition and possession of such tropical countries with indigestible, unassimilable populations would be highly obnoxious to the nature of our republican system of government; it would greatly aggra-
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