CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
ment was the action of a great Liberal Republican mass meeting at Jefferson City, Missouri, on January 24, 1872. This meeting adopted resolutions demanding that the Republican party stand for amnesty, tariff reform and civil-service reform, and inviting all Republicans desiring these reforms to meet in national mass convention at Cincinnati on May 1. Mr. Schurz was naturally in close touch with this Missouri meeting and accepted it as the best available instrument for promoting the ends to which he was committed. There was nothing non-partisan, however, in the assembly at Jefferson City. The purpose accentuated in its proceedings was to make the movement distinctively Republican—to force the nomination by the regular party convention of some one else than Grant. That a candidate should actually be named at Cincinnati was considered by some influential Liberals, notably Trumbull, as neither necessary nor desirable. All that they aimed at was so imposing a demonstration of reform sentiment among Republicans as to convince the administration faction that the renomination of Grant would mean the loss of the election. In the background, however, always lay the possibility of action according to the Missouri precedent of 1870—a nomination that should be endorsed by the Democrats in case the heart of the Grant faction should be hardened beyond relenting.
For this last resort Mr. Schurz had personally little desire. His distrust of the Democracy as an organization was deep and abiding. In Missouri, after the victory of 1870, he had been greatly disquieted by the election of Francis P. Blair, Jr., a peculiarly radical Democrat, to be his colleague in the Senate. That the Democrats should have exacted so heavy a price for their alliance with the Liberals confirmed in Schurz his despair of progress through the old party. His hope
[ 341 ]
