III
THE SENATORIAL FREE LANCE
WHEN the Senate met in December, 1872, after the humiliating tragedy of the Greeley campaign, the position of Schurz and his fellow Liberals had apparently little in it of present comfort or of future cheer. Yet events began at once to give them justification and encouragement. In Louisiana a fierce struggle for the control of the State between two factions of carpetbaggers led to the installation and support, through use of federal troops, of that faction which was headed by Kellogg, and supported by Casey, Grant's brother-in-law, and other prominent Federal officials. The events at New Orleans and at other Southern capitals greatly shocked public sentiment at the North; and even the administration Senators were divided as to the soundness of the President's policy. Morton was the chief supporter of the President in Louisiana matters, and very skillfully thwarted all attempts to loosen the grip of Kellogg on the gubernatorial chair, which federal bayonets closely guarded. Schurz, in debate with Morton in February, was hardly more severe than Carpenter and other Republican Senators in denunciation of Kellogg and the administration; but all effort to move Grant was in vain. The situation gave obvious strength, however, to the whole Liberal contention that the policy of the President in the South tended to the destruction of liberty and order not only in the reconstructed, but also in the other States of the Union.
Such conditions confirmed the fears and predictions of
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