The Writings of Carl Schurz/To President Cleveland, February 5th, 1886
TO PRESIDENT CLEVELAND
At the risk of appearing importunate, I address you again. I have been very much affected by what our friend Colonel Burt told me of your feeling that, after your resistance to the demands of your own party friends, you were now suspected of deceiving the people, and that too, by men upon whose support you should have been able to count. Colonel Burt seemed to think that my letter had strengthened that impression in your mind. Believe me when I say that, if I entertained such a suspicion in the faintest degree, I should certainly not have written to you at all. It is just because I have the strongest confidence in your sincerity and highly appreciate the noble stand you have taken with regard to your own party, as well as the difficulties and struggles you have had to go through, that I should grieve to see you drift into a false position which [is] likely to deprive you of the credit you deserve, and the country of many of the fruits of your endeavors.
According to Colonel Burt you had also received from my letter the impression as if I thought you had pledged yourself to communicate to the Senate the reasons for removals. I certainly did not intend to convey any such meaning. What I did mean was that your letter to Mr. Curtis was understood to contain a distinct pledge not to make any removals for mere partisan reasons; that when the performance of that pledge was questioned by persons entitled to consideration, you could not afford to use your Constitutional privilege as a cover for refusal of all information on the subject; that the pledge of the President made the reasons for removals a matter of high public importance; that, to rescue our political life from its demoralization, it was necessary that the pledges of parties and of public men should again count for something, and that, therefore, whatever disposition was made of this matter, it should be such as to sustain the confidence of the people in the good faith of the President.
Consider the aspect of the case. The Republican Senators are not going to let the matter rest. Some of them are in possession of cases of removal which have an ugly partisan look. You refuse all information about them. They contrive some way of investigating them, and they certainly have the power and are very likely to do that. Some of the cases in question are brought out before the public on mere partisan grounds in direct violation of your pledge. Suppose this contingency. In what light will it leave you? As a President who had made a public pledge; who, when questioned about its fulfilment, sheltered himself behind his Constitutional privilege to avoid giving any information; who thus did all, as far as his power went, to conceal the truth, but who could after all not prevent the truth from coming out in spite of him. In that case the charge would be, not only that your pledge had been violated, but that you had done all in your power to conceal and suppress the evidence. Have you considered that contingency?
Whatever the Constitutional privileges of the Executive may be, I know that I express your own feeling when I say that President Cleveland cannot afford to have any concealments of that kind. “Tell the truth” was the word that helped him and his friends over the most dangerous crisis in his campaign, and “Tell the truth” is the solution of the present complication.
Things having gone so far, you may think that you cannot make any communication of the kind to the Senate, not even as an act of courtesy and with an explicit reservation of the rights of the Executive. You may also think that the heroic remedies I proposed in my last letter were too heroic—although I fear you will, before you leave the Presidential chair, wish you had adopted them.
But is not there a middle course still open to you? If you will not now open yourself to the Senate, can you not take the people into your confidence? Can you not make a declaration in some shape, which may go before the public in an authoritative form, stating that you did make such and such a pledge; that—assuming it to be the case—in the confusion of the beginning of the Administration some removals have been made, much against your intention, which were not in accord with that pledge; that you refused laying your reasons for removals before the Senate because of Constitutional considerations; but that you do not mean to conceal anything, and are resolved to deal frankly with the people? And then, can you not, in addition, issue an Executive order, that henceforth in every case of removal the reasons therefor shall be put upon public record?
By such a voluntary declaration you will not only do what is in best accord with your character, but also avoid that greatest of your present dangers that things incompatible with your pledge be proven after an apparent attempt on your part to conceal the evidence, for you will then have forestalled whatever may come out. And, secondly, by the Executive order you will give an additional proof of your good faith, relieve yourself and your Secretaries of much importunity and introduce a very important and wholesome reform. Possibly your Cabinet ministers may at first not favor this. But I know from my experience that it is entirely practicable, and, moreover, this is a case for him to decide whose moral standing with the people is most important and most at stake.
I am so firmly convinced of the wholesomeness of the practice of regularly recording the reasons for removals, that at the last meeting of the Civil Service Association here, I introduced a resolution recommending its introduction either by law or Executive regulation, and it is probable that something to that effect will be adopted at the meeting of the executive committee of the National Civil Service Reform League which will meet on February 16th, the same body to which you addressed your letter containing the pledge concerning removals. Would it not be a happy circumstance if before that time an Executive order like the one here suggested were already issued, so that we might pass a resolution of congratulation instead of one recommending such a step to be taken?
Pardon me for cautioning you against a class of persons whom I know from my own experience,—persons trying to ingratiate themselves with men in power by telling them that those who find fault are a set of mere malevolents and that everything is “all right” with the people. In this respect the atmosphere of Washington is peculiarly deceitful. It is not “all right with the people” in the present instance. There is much criticism of the removals outside of the circle of hostile partisan Senators. I regret to say that I have in my possession a considerable number of letters from Maryland, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and even from New England, letters from men who supported you, and many of whom write to me because they followed my leadership in 1884, that, judging from the removals and appointments they witness in their vicinity, it is “after all pretty much the old thing over again.” This, of course, is extremely unjust, for they overlook the great good that you have really accomplished. But it is a kind of injustice to which all those who are trying to work out difficult reforms are frequently exposed, for even well meaning people are apt to be more mindful of bad things near them than of good things farther away. To this is also owing the danger of reform Administrations to sit down between two chairs, going far enough to exasperate the opponents of reform and not far enough to satisfy the bulk of its friends. That such a feeling of dissatisfaction as above described exists among our friends, is much to be deplored. And I have found that letters and newspaper articles are not sufficient to allay it. The answer that we Eastern Independents seem determined “to see no evil in anything the Administration may do,” and that this is unfortunate, comes back with increasing frequency, and it has a significant meaning.
Believe me, nothing is more distasteful to me than the duty of saying unpleasant things, and I perform it at a present sacrifice of feeling, in the hope of having all the more pleasant things to say hereafter, and publicly.