Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/54

his State or the Congressman in his district has interests of his own, peculiar to himself; that those interests are sometimes not exactly those of the country or even of the party at large; that the man who is recommended to him for high official position, as a model citizen of the Republic, has attained that position, in the opinion of his backer, less by services rendered to the commonwealth than by services rendered to a person; that the same man will be represented to him by others, not as the model citizen, but as a villain who cannot be trusted a moment. He will be told that those who judge of political objects and the means by which to attain them from a higher standpoint than mere personal or partisan interest, are amiable theorists, who are well enough in their way, but are useless in the practical conduct of politics; that the practical politician, who cares less for public questions but is skilled in the management of men, is after all the man who can alone be counted upon to preserve the power of his party, and thereby the salvation of the Republic. And when he has gone through this for weeks and months, and his head begins to swim in the confusing contests of interests and ambitions entirely new to him, and he feels himself in many things he has done or left undone under a pressure giving him no rest of mind, a helpless tool of foreign wills instead of being the director of things, he will then conclude that the repulse of the fiercest onset at the battle of Gettysburg and the taking of the angle of intrenchments in the Wilderness, glorious feats of arms, were after all very simple things compared with this. And as he goes on and gradually the light of experience dawns upon him, and he discovers glimmers of truth and finds himself unable to correct mistakes irretrievably made, and to redress injuries irremediably inflicted, and to recover failures which have then become part of the history of the country, he finally will see reason to wish that his