Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/90

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70
The Writings of
[1871

and I think they will guide me to the end. In their advocacy I am profoundly in earnest.

Let no man suspect me, sir, of any willingness to jeopardize for future reforms any of the great results we have won by the struggles of the past. No; not that. By them I shall stand to the last; I will help to maintain them at any cost and hazard. But it is my sincere belief, and I cannot express it too strongly, that there is no policy better calculated to secure those results against all danger, than that which will furnish the conditions for a general revival of national feeling; that which will divert the popular mind from its broodings over past dissensions and occupy it with the great things now to be done for the common good; that which will raise our political life to a higher level of morality; that which will restore once more all over the soil of this Republic the working of true popular government. Whatever temporary disappointments we may have to meet, such a policy is sure to triumph in the end. And I am confident that those who contribute to such a result will, when at a future day the controversies of this period can be surveyed in all their bearings, be considered to have worked for the best interests of their country.




TO CHARLES SUMNER

2020 F St., New Year's Day, '71.

My dear Friend: Your servant has brought joy and strength to this house, so far as such things can be carried in bottles. I thank you most sincerely for what you have sent, but I almost suspect you of sinister motives for having sent so much. Do you intend to bribe me? Do you think you can thus induce me to stand by you when you are to be driven from the Committee on Foreign