Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/464

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CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER

morning,” wrote Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Schurz, “serene in the knowledge that ‘old Bill Allen's’ gray and gory scalp was safely dangling at your girdle.” The chairman of the Republican State Committee formally ascribed to Schurz much of the credit for the victory. At the same time the chairman apologized for not having paid Schurz's campaign expenses and offered to do so. This offer, acceptance of which would have compromised the whole theory and purpose of the speaker's participation, was declined. “I was glad,” Schurz wrote, “to have an opportunity to do what I did do, and feel amply compensated by the result.”

Such moral satisfaction, however, does not provide for the necessities of life. So the Ohio campaign was followed by a particularly long and full season of public lecturing. Schurz's picturesque career, his philosophical mind and inspiring eloquence had for over a decade and a half made him a favorite on the lyceum stage. This enabled him easily to supplement his never large income, whose most regular, if not always most considerable, source was journalism. During the long and tedious lecturing tours of this autumn and the winter of 1875-76 he labored incessantly, by correspondence and personal conference, upon the scheme for “a movement such as that of 1872 ought to have been.” In November, 1875, when it seemed possible that the nomination of Grant for a third term would be attempted, Schurz was full of a project for insuring the nomination of Charles Francis Adams, Sr., by both parties. But shortly afterward the House of Representatives almost unanimously passed a resolution against a third term. With Grant eliminated, Adams ceased to be the most available candidate for the Independents, and Morton, Conkling, ex-Speaker Blaine and Bristow, Secretary of the Treasury, became the leading candidates for the Republican nomination. Schurz

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