CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
attack on Schurz, directed to showing in particular that in their respective Cabinet careers Schurz had grossly betrayed, while Blaine had systematically sustained, the principles of civil-service reform. This attack was prompted by a severe article on Blaine in the Evening Post, which was not unnaturally attributed to Schurz. It happened, in fact, that Schurz, who was away on his vacation, knew nothing about the Post article until long after its appearance. He accordingly wrote to the editor of the Tribune in a satirical strain, assuring him that “this whole fusillade against the author of the remarks in the Evening Post is directed to an entirely wrong address,” and concluding: “While I, had I been in editorial charge of the Evening Post at the time, should perhaps have preferred to treat Mr. Blaine's posing as a civil-service reformer and as an opponent of the spoils system rather mildly and good-naturedly, in the light of a joke, I am indeed of the opinion, seriously, that the author of the Mulligan letters can never be, and ought not to be, President of the United States.” It was Mulligan-letters Blaine,—self-exposed as both accepting, and seeking more, private pecuniary advantage in return for official favors conferred when Speaker of the House of Representatives,—that Schurz was to oppose in the campaign of 1884. He had a keen eye for the moral issue, and it meant so much to him that he always expected it to be successful.
The nomination of Blaine was followed at once by a great Republican bolt. A week after the Republican convention, the Democrats nominated Cleveland, and thus furnished the bolters with a candidate to whom they were ready to give unqualified support. The personal preference of Mr. Schurz had been for the nomination of Senator Bayard, with whom he was on terms of intimacy and affection. But Bayard did not greatly attract the bulk of the Independents; and among the
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