CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
Schurz as to the tendencies of the Grant régime in Southern affairs. At the same time the stream of legislative and administrative scandals began the steady flow which long before the end of Grant's second term demonstrated Schurz's Cassandra-like accuracy in foretelling a general decline of moral tone in political life. During the winter of 1872-73 the Credit Mobilier revelations, followed by the “salary-grab,” brought many respectable reputations into the mire. A sensational case of bribery in Kansas, in which one Caldwell had with little effort at concealment bought his election to the United States Senate, gave Schurz an opportunity, at the special session of the Senate in March, 1873, to make a glowing denunciation of the corrupt influences that were at work all around Congress, especially in connection with the great corporations. At the next session, 1873-74, scandals multiplied. The notorious Sanborn contracts forced a Secretary of the Treasury to resign; gross irregularities in the Interior, the War and the Navy Departments were either revealed or strongly suggested; and fraud and extravagance in the government of the District of Columbia led to the peremptory abolition of the whole system, with a vigorous slap at the President, by a nearly unanimous vote of the Senate, when he sought to appoint to office under the new order his crony, A. H. Shepherd, the chief offender under the old. It was indeed a malodorous flood of corruption and disgrace, and the high-water mark was reached at the revelations of the infamous Whiskey Ring frauds and the sale of post-traderships by Secretary Belknap in 1875 and 1876.
Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1873 the great financial and industrial crisis occurred, which introduced a wholly new element into the political situation and crossed the lines that separated the parties with troublesome questions of the finances
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