Jobs and jobbing flourished on every side. An impossible scheme of
reconstruction was trailing its slow, putrescent length along. The revenue
service was thick with thieves, the committees of Congress were packed with
mercenaries. Money-making in high places had become the order of the day.
Was it for this that oceans of patriotism, of treasure and of blood had
been poured out? Was it for this that he had fought with tongue and pen and
sword?
There was Sumner--the great Sumner--who had quarreled with Grant and Fish,
to keep him company and urge him on. There was the Tribune, the puissant
Tribune--two of them, one in New York and the other in Chicago--to give
him countenance. There was need of liberalizing and loosening things in
Missouri, for which he sat in the Senate--they could not go on forever half
the best elements in the State disfranchised.
Thus the Liberal Movement of 1872.
Schurz went to Cincinnati elate with hope. He was an idealist--not quite
yet a philosopher. He had his friends about him. Sam Bowles--the first
newspaper politician of his day, with none of the handicaps carried by
Raymond and Forney--a man keen of insight and foresight, fertile of
resources, and not afraid--stood foremost among them. Next came Horace
White. Doric in his simplicity like a marble shaft, and to the outer eye
as cold as marble, but below a man of feeling, conviction and tenacity, a
working journalist and a doughty doctrinaire. A little group of such men
formed itself about Schurz--then only forty-three years old--to what end?
Why, Greeley, Horace Greeley, the bellwether of abolitionism, the king bee
of protectionism, the man of fads and isms and the famous "old white hat.
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