CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
ments for the future, and consulting with his friends, especially in the East, concerning some new occupation worthy of his abilities and agreeable to his tastes. He received offers for large literary undertakings of historical character, and at one time contemplated moving to Massachusetts to be near the best libraries and in touch with the many highly intellectual friends that he had made in that region. His project was approved by F. W. Bird of Boston and by Samuel Bowles of Springfield, the latter characteristically warning Schurz against the narrow and provincializing influence of Boston and suggesting that he might find Springfield or Northampton more to his taste. Bowles also suggested, what would doubtless have appealed very strongly to Schurz, that a return to the Senate from Massachusetts might not be a too remote possibility.
During the final months of senatorial labor in the winter of 1874-75 he had occasion once more to arraign the administration for its renewed interference by force in the affairs of Louisiana. A well-rounded and philosophical discussion of the tendency of things represented by this policy of the administration was the last formal oration of Mr. Schurz on the floor of the Senate.
Two weeks after he ceased to be Senator he wrote to F. W. Bird: “I see some reason to hope that the year 1876 will present an opportunity for a movement such as that of 1872 ought to have been.” This expression suggests the fidelity of the writer to the ideals of the Cincinnati convention, and reveals that in March, 1875, he was revolving in his mind a project to secure in 1876 the triumph that the Liberal Republican movement of 1872 had lost through an unfortunate nomination.
During the first half of Grant's second administration the
[ 361 ]
