THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
reverence but he answered with a melancholy laugh, and again bade me to mind his advice.
The seceders spurning every compromise because they insisted upon the establishment of an independent Southern Confederacy, and the Republican majority insisting that the result of the election must be unconditionally submitted to by the minority, the bargain policy was bound to fail; and although the temporary consequences of that failure were terrible, it is well that it did fail. The acute Civil War that followed saved the American people no end of chronic civil wars which a successful questioning and a merely conditional acceptance of the legal result of a presidential election would inevitably have drawn after it. When I left Washington it seemed certain that, whatever else might happen, the fundamental principle of republican government would remain intact.
But the election of Mr. Lincoln brought me troubles of a more personal nature. My activity as a speaker and organizer in the campaign had given me a standing in the victorious party which caused me to be regarded more than ever by many Republicans as a person of influence. My Wisconsin tribulation repeated itself. I was flooded with letters requesting recommendations for appointment to office under the incoming administration. They came in a few instances from worthy and meritorious men whom I knew and whom I should have been glad to serve. But a large majority of them bore signatures entirely new to me, and I was astonished at the number of “friends” I had in the United States. In most cases that “friendship” was based upon some casual introduction at a public meeting, or the circumstance that my friend had belonged to a company of Wide-Awakes which had escorted me somewhere, or the equally important fact that he was personally acquainted with an uncle or cousin of mine. They were
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