The New York Times/1892/11/12/Carl Schurz for Senator

by Carl Schurz

CARL SCHURZ FOR SENATOR.

In the discussion already begun concerning the selection of a successor to United States Senator Hiscock the desirability of the office has been rather more fully considered than the qualifications of the aspirants, and we discern thus far no indication that the voice of the people which thundered through the land on Tuesday last has been heard and heeded as it should be by the political leaders. Yet the voters spoke out with such startling distinctness that their meaning must become plain even to the least attentive politicians, and we are persuaded that when the lesson of Mr. Cleveland's astounding triumph has been duly pondered, the gentlemen of the Democratic Party who devote their time to the strifes of politics will be convinced that the power intrusted to their party because of the soundness of its principles and the perfect trustworthiness of its candidate can be retained only by keeping faith with the people. The great majorities that gladden the Democratic heart record a stern condemnation of Republican abuse of trust and a no less emphatic approval of Democratic professions and confidence in Democratic promises. The party must keep its word.

In the State of New-York the Democracy has an opportunity by a conspicuous act of wisdom to confirm the popular confidence in its soundness, and to give a new guarantee of its devotion to purposes that every citizen must recognize as pure and noble. Having a majority of twenty on a joint ballot of the two branches of the Legislature the Democrats will choose from their own party a United States Senator to succeed Mr. Hiscock on March 3 next. In our opinion they can elect no one whose presence in the Senate would confer so high an honor upon the State and upon their party as Mr. Carl Schurz. He would dignify the office itself, now unhappily lowered from its earlier esteem. By his great resources of experience in public affairs and his splendid intellectual abilities he would recall and in his own person re-establish the traditions of those days twenty years ago when he sat in the Senate as Senator from Missouri with such men about him as Lyman Trumbull, Charles Sumner, Oliver P. Morton, and George F. Edmunds, when New-York was represented by Roscoe Conkling and Reuben E. Fenton.

The great State of New-York should send its best-equipped citizen to speak for it in the Senate, to give full authority to its opinions and due weight to its influence. Its immense commercial interests give it a stake in Congressional legislation that can be safely guarded only by a Senator of statesmanlike stature. Would it not be a monstrous betrayal of New-York's commercial, industrial, and monetary interests if its Legislature should send to the Senate Chamber a man capable of no higher legislative function than the mere casting of a vote — a man who could take no part in the constructive work of lawmaking, but would be forced by his limitations of intellect and experience to sit with the dumb herd during the process of reasoning and debate by which legislative conclusions are reached?

We regard Mr. Schurz as unmistakably the best-equipped citizen of this State for the Senatorial office. His public career began more than thirty years ago, and at its very beginning he made his mark as a most effective public speaker. He is second to no man in the country in the art of oratorical appeal. His Brooklyn speech in support of Mr. Cleveland's candidacy in 1884 was the most eloquent and persuasive utterance of that campaign. His letter to the Brooklyn Democrats in September of this year and his speech at Cooper Union at the German-American meeting were most influential and effective in presenting the issues of the campaign that has just closed. His views are known to all men. The political doctrines that received such a tremendous indorsement at the polls on Nov. 8 are the doctrines Mr. Schurz has done so much with voice and pen to expound and enforce. The election of Grover Cleveland to the Presidency implies as a logical complement the election of Carl Schurz to the Senate from New-York.

While we confidently invoke the general approval of the community for what we may call our nomination of Mr. Schurz, it would be vain affectation to ignore the fact that his election would be specially welcome to that very large class of voters who were lately associated with him in the labors of the German-American Cleveland Union. Of that organization Mr. Schurz was a directing spirit, and its efforts in behalf of Mr. Cleveland were untiring and most fruitful. On that theory of politics that awards office as the reward of party service, Mr. Schurz has a title to the Senatorship that should command the respect of the leaders of the Democratic Party in New-York. But it is upon no such foundation that we base our contention in his behalf. It is his conspicuous and well-nigh unique fitness for the high and serious duties of the office, his great abilities, his wide experience, his uprightness of character and integrity of intellect, his broad and matured opinions, his statesmanship, in short, that constrain us to an urgent advocacy of his election to the Senate.

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