Harper's Weekly Editorials on Carl Schurz/Republican Quarrels

by Harper's Weekly

REPUBLICAN QUARRELS.

Every faithful Republican who thinks that the continued power of that party is essential to the national welfare has a right to demand harmony among the party chiefs. Quarrels at head-quarters will not make a peaceful camp. And that there are quarrels, serious and fierce, we all know. The President and Senators Sumner and Schurz, for instance, are not friendly. The New York Senators are alienated from each other, and we recall, with profound regret, a passage between two of the most eminent Republican Senators upon the floor of the Senate on the 4th of July last. The mischief of these differences is incalculable. They may defeat the policy of the Administration, and they may very easily defeat the party in the Presidential election. Unquestionably the difficulty in the State of New York did defeat the party in November. It would not have been a very difficult, certainly not a hopeless task, to recover the State from the Democrats. But the first condition of success was absolute harmony, and that was utterly wanting. Troy defied the Greeks while Achilles and Agamemnon quarreled. Let the Republican chiefs reflect whether Republican victory will crown their feuds.

We do not discuss the reasons of the differences. The blame undoubtedly must be divided. Certainly the President, whatever may have been his mistakes of method or of policy during the last session — and they were very few — did not deserve the kind of censure which he received from certain Administration Senators. Nor can those Senators be justly surprised if he felt hurt, and showed that he was so. The difficulty in New York, as is universally known, springs from patronage. Under our miserable system it is impossible that the control of patronage should not be the measure of a Senator's real power and influence. If one of the State Senators is known to have more success in “placing” his followers, the other is inevitably chagrined, and he is discredited with his party as “of no account.” Personal ill-feeling is very sure to follow. If, then, the Administration intervenes, and, as it were, declares for one against the other, disaffection and open hostility within the party are close at hand. The remedy is obvious. It is with the President. Seeing the situation, he may require of each Senator that the difference be composed upon his withdrawing from active interference, and holding an equal hand between them.

So with the Missouri case. Mr. Brown, the Governor elect, intends, we presume, to act with the Democratic party. But Senator Schurz can not join the Democracy. We do not believe that the German element of the Republican party in Missouri is satisfied with the results of the quasi-Democratic alliance. It is naturally Republican, as Senator Schurz is. But the Missouri Senators also are unfriendly, and the Administration threw its influence in the State upon the side that was unsuccessful. There is, of course, a great deal of angry and doubtful feeling. We hope, therefore, that the Senate will refuse to allow the Missouri war to be renewed upon its floor; and that it will remember that Senator Schurz is amply able to define his own position, and can easily do so by acting quietly with his Republican friends, as he has shown his intention to do by attending the first Republican caucus.

The determination of the President that there shall be Republican peace, and his own refusal to recognize any differences of his own, with a little sagacity in healing those among the Senators, will give him a position and an influence which will be invaluable. Resolute sagacity in the adjustment of the quarrels, and a sense of personal responsibility for the party success upon the part of the Senators and Representatives, will make Republican harmony and triumph as overwhelming as they are desirable.

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