CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
to the tariff was hopelessly divided. This was far from the method of uncompromising devotion to principle as Schurz had conceived it; it was an initial concession to the idea of availability, and the fact and manner of Greeley's nomination completed the deviation thus begun. Under date of May 11, 1872, Schurz wrote to Samuel Bowles, the editor of the Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican: “I cannot yet think of the results of the Cincinnati convention without a pang. I have worked for the cause of reform in the largest sense of the word in good faith. I was frequently told at Cincinnati that I might exercise a decisive influence upon the selection of the candidates, and probably it was so. I did not do it because I considered it a paltry ambition to play the part of a President-maker, and because I desired that the nomination should appear as a spontaneous outgrowth of an elevated popular feeling, which would have made it stronger and more valuable. Everything seemed to promise so well. And then to see a movement which had apparently been so successful beyond all reasonable anticipations at the decisive moment taken possession of by a combination of politicians striking and executing a bargain in the open light of day—and politicians, too, belonging to just that tribe we thought we were fighting against, and the whole movement stripped of its moral character and dragged down to the level of an ordinary political operation; this, let me confess it, was a hard blow; and if I appear in the light of a defeated party, I do not under such circumstances object.”
Though his cause was lost, Mr. Schurz had the satisfaction of knowing that he had won the admiration and esteem of all the purest and noblest spirits in the Liberal movement. Commendation of his attitude in the convention and regrets that he had been overborne came to him from every direction.
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